Clambering down, I brush past the boy. I’ll field his questions later. But once I’m in front of M.M.’s closet, hunting for dry clothes, his words from the other day resound in my skull.
Your mojo could kill you.
I grip the edge of the closet door. Normally, I can trick myself into seeing the hilarity of sleepwalking to the shore. But today, my mind refuses to reframe the shit I can’t control. Thanks to the boy, it’s stuck on the possibility that I could really die the next time. It’s bad enough for me to assume there will be a next time.
“Hey.”
I take a deep breath, let it settle my nerves, then release the closet. “Yeah?”
The boy stands in the bedroom doorway. He’s removed the apron, unveiling his outfit of the day: an M.M. pom-pom sweater and hair, freshly washed, that drips onto his shoulders. It’s a good look. Would be better if his lips weren’t parting to release a flood of questions in three, two, one— “I’d like to join.”
I blink. “Join?”
“Beach yoga,” says the boy, and oh, love. He believes me. Why wouldn’t he? The truth—that I sleepwalked to the beach—is just too out there for him to arrive at on his own.
Let him believe it, then. My problems aren’t his, and what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. “It’s an advanced class,” I say, untying my wet cargos and nearly dropping them before remembering such a thing called propriety. I glance at the boy; he’s already turned around. “Not sure you can handle it.” I step into a dry pair, cinch the waist, and tell him I’m good.
“I’m a quick learner.”
I turn toward his voice—and back up into the closet.
He’s stands in front of me, long-lashed eyes slightly hooded. I don’t think we’ve ever been this close before—conscious, that is. Can’t forget about the time he almost crushed the life out of me.
“Some other day,” I say, flustered at being caught off guard. “Gotta run.”
I wait for him to move and let me pass.
Instead he leans in. His head tips down beside mine, hair dripping onto my shoulder.
“Don’t go.”
His voice holds a command, a plea, and an invitation all in one and my stomach answers with a clench of hunger. My veins throb with blood and I know what I want to do—press him up against the closet and devour him, as I would any other boy who speaks to me like that.
Except this isn’t like him. This isn’t the boy I’ve been getting to know. Nor is it the unhearing, unseeing boy who tried to strangle me on the beach, but—Careful, Cee, says a voice in my head as I cup his cheek and turn my head a fraction, my lips brushing his ear. “Unless you want to be kneed in the balls again,” I whisper, “you’re going to step aside.”
For a long moment, nothing happens.
Then he stumbles back. He clutches his face like I slapped him. He shakes his head, mouth opening, closing, eyes looking to me, as if I can explain his strange behavior, before frowning. “Again? You’ve … done it before?”
His voice is back to normal. My heart rate sure isn’t; my brain’s confused and whiplashed and it takes a lot of effort to think of a comeback. “Clearly, I didn’t do it hard enough to leave an impression,” I say, deliberately eyeing his crotch.
Then I get the hell out.
“Stay,” I order at U-me as I hurry down the porch, swiping my fanny pack on the way.
I trust you, I said to the boy.
You know nothing about me, the boy said to me.
The score chart as of this morning:
Boy: 1
Cee: 0
* * *
Don’t go.
I can’t unhear his voice no matter how I try, and believe me, I try. I chop trees so single-mindedly that the hours run together. The sun’s setting when I finally drag all five trunks to the ridge; I curse when I realize my maximum load of two trunks per climb means three separate climbs.
Better start now.
The sun is already lower by the time I complete my first ascent. I quickly unload the two trunks at the ridge top. As I prepare to head back down for two more, a sound comes from the shore side of the ridge. I freeze. Again—same sound.
A voice.
“Cee!”
I peer over the edge.
Oh my Joules.
The boy is climbing. Without. A. Rope.
I throw him mine—and not a second too soon. He grabs it just as he loses a foothold. My stomach plummets as he plummets, and my heart snaps taut when the rope halts his fall.
“You’re going to get yourself killed!” I shout. Something glints at the base of the ridge. U-me, loafing around. Failed at her supervision job and can’t even be bothered to be useful now. “Help him, U-me, for fuck’s sake.”