Turns out he isn’t funny or sarcastic, and now that he’s recovered from being scared out of his wits, he’s starting to annoy me. “Where else can she be, if she’s not here?” I say, splashing through a shallow pool of rainwater.
“She could be dead.”
I stop in my tracks. The breeze stills. The island’s gone quiet, deathly so. I can’t even hear the ocean anymore. “She’s not dead.”
“How do you know?” asks the boy, finally catching up. His voice is even more attractive breathless. His eyes, a limpid gray to me, gleam with some emotion. I think it’s concern.
I’m both indignant and touched. He asks because he cares. His questions are legitimate and important.
I just can’t afford to face them.
How do you know? I have neither the evidence nor the facts Kay would require. Only a conviction in my heart, a hope that thrives more on some days than others, a living thing I must protect at all costs.
I tear my gaze from the boy, point it forward, and walk. “I just do.”
“So this ridge,” he huffs, trying to keep pace. Slow down—but I go faster. Dusk creeps over the island, darkening the rock beneath our feet like rain. “What’s on the other side?” he asks as we reach a shelf of shale, small enough to walk around, unlike the ridge.
I clamber over it. “Supplies for boats.”
“You”—the boy struggles behind me—“build them?”
“No. I rent them from a shop on the beach.”
“Have you ever reached land when you sail?” asks the boy, ignoring my sarcasm. Or not picking up on it. Which? I want to ask. Joules, am I really that out of practice?
“What if there’s nothing out there?” the boy presses when I don’t answer.
His question rushes through me like the wind.
“Why would you say that?” I demand, then inhale sharply. “Do you remember something?”
The rocks have diminished in size as we’ve covered more ground, but now they loom, shadows bleeding out from their bases, and the land, always so flat, appears pockmarked like the surface of some alien planet.
“No,” admits the boy, sounding truthful.
“Look, love,” I say as we finally reach gravel and I can see the back of M.M.’s house, silhouetted against the waterline by the dying light. “I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I’ve held up just fine these years on my own. I am going to get myself off this island, and I don’t expect you to help. But you’re not ruining my mojo. That’s all I ask of you.”
“Your mojo—”
“Uh-uh.”
“—could kill you,” finishes the boy.
“It wouldn’t be the first thing to try,” I say without breaking stride.
We don’t speak for the rest of the walk.
* * *
For dinner, we have dandelions and eight-pointed-tree leaves. It’s not exactly the best of introductory meals to island cuisine, and the boy pushes it around on his plate, appearing seasick. “You’ve survived on this?”
“No.”
“Then what do you normally eat?” asks the boy.
“Taro.”
“What happened?” asks the boy.
“I lost them to the sea.”
“How?” asks the boy.
I lay down M.M.’s fork. Was talking always this tiring? “I packed all the taro I’d grown when I sailed to find my sister. But we ran into a storm.”
“We,” echoes the boy.
“Hubert and me.”
“Hubert,” echoes the boy.
“He’s not around anymore.”
Silence.
I lift the fork again, but don’t eat. My stomach gurgles—no doubt with indigestion—as I wait. Wait for the boy to start spewing more questions, for his skepticism and incredulity.
“The taros,” he says at last. “Are there any left?”
Finally. A question where the answer is literally in M.M.’s backyard.
I push my chair away from the table. “Let’s find out.”
We emerge onto the porch, into my favorite kind of night. Windless. Calm. The moon is just as white as the sun and the sky is a richer shade of gray than it would be during the day. I love the day too, but at night, when the beach is silver and the ocean obsidian, I feel like I’m missing out on less by not being able to see it in color.
Nights on the island are also cold, though, and I rub my arms as we head down the porch and around to the back of the house, where taros grow in a small plot of dirt. I squat by a row of them. Judging by the size of their leaves, none are ready to be harvested for their starchy tubers.