The boy squats as well. His body radiates heat, warming my right side even though we’re a body-width apart. “The soil looks depleted,” he says, and I glance to him. The moonlight contours his face, bringing out angles I didn’t see before. “You should fertilize it.”
I clear my head. Focus on the plants. “With what?” I don’t exactly have bags of nitrogen compounds lying around.
“What do you think?” says the boy.
Oh.
“Ew.” I shudder. Joules, no.
“Ew?”
“Yes, ew. That’s gross.”
He coughs. Suspiciously.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“You just seemed so gung-ho about this survival thing,” he says, absentmindedly rubbing at his wrists. “I figured you’d be okay with making your own fertilizer.”
“Nope. Definitely not.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Don’t look at him. Don’t make eye contact. Because it’s over the moment we do.
U-me rolls out to see what’s wrong. What’s wrong is that I’ve regressed to cracking up at potty jokes. But I can’t control it. The laughter keeps on coming, wave after wave.
“Do you remember anything?” I finally gasp, cheeks cramping and chest burning, my body alive with the adrenaline I usually only get from climbing the ridge. “Something from your past?”
The boy falls silent. I immediately miss the sound of his laugh. “Should I?”
“Sometimes I find a memory when I rediscover things I know.” I nod at the taros. “You seem to know gardening.”
“I don’t remember gardening.”
“Where did that stuff about the soil come from, then?” To me, it all looks gray, and I tamp down on my jealousy when the boy acts like it’s no big deal.
“I just do,” he says with a shrug. But something about the gesture seems off, as if there’s more weight on his shoulders than he’s letting on. Seconds later, he rises and heads for the house.
Wait, I almost call after him, before checking myself. Boys come running to me. But it’s chilly without him here. I rub my arms, the residual heat on my right side already cooling, then head back to the house as well.
* * *
I have to cross the ridge today, no excuses.
I’m up before the sun and head into kitchen for breakfast. The leaves somehow taste worse after watching the boy struggle to eat them. I chew on one as long as I possibly can, then spit the wad of fibers out the sink window.
The boy’s asleep in the bed. I made the right call in insisting he take it. He looks dead, hair splayed over the pillow, eyes still beneath their lids. The only movement to him is the rise and fall of his chest. The rhythm hypnotizes me, and like a creep, I watch him sleep. Then I ease the bedroom door shut. Pad softly through the house, swiping a kitchen knife on my way to the porch, where U-me’s waiting. She knows the routine. Grab M.M.’s fanny pack and go.
But today, I stop on the deck.
Do I trust the boy enough to leave him unsupervised?
He hasn’t tried to kill me again—tall order, I know—but my throat’s still tender. And though we shared a moment in the taro garden last night, this side of the island is my territory. Home. Out there, past the ridge, in the gray meadow with all the little shrines, even I feel like an intruder. I don’t need an uninvited guest creeping around too.
“Stay here,” I say to U-me. “Make sure he doesn’t leave the house.”
“Strongly disagree.”
“Then what do you suggest I do? Tie him up again?”
U-me whirs.
I rephrase my question into a declarative statement. “I should tie him up again.”
“Strongly agree.”
“No, I can’t do that,” I mutter, half to myself. I can still see his panicked face, the whites of his eyes exposed with fear. He’s not an animal, but a person. A person like me. “I can’t do that,” I repeat, this time to U-me.
“Neutral.”
“I’ve made the climb without you before.”
“Agree.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Disagree.”
“Paranoid.”
“Paranoid: unreasonably anxious, suspicious, or mistrustful, adjective.”
Yeah, that’s not me. “Be a darling,” I say to U-me, “and stay here.”
Then I tuck the kitchen knife into the fanny pack and hop down the porch steps.
I’m not lying when I say I’ve climbed the ridge without U-me before. It just so happens that those were also the times I nearly fell to my death. But I have two years of practice under my belt, and I manage to make it up mostly intact, leaving behind only the skin on my palms. I tie the rope to the top; the descent is easier. I drop to the ground, stepping out of my makeshift harness and leaving the rope in place for when I return.