I break off. My eyes widen, absorbing the turquoise water around us and the gem-green trees, hemming in the Shipyard.
Turquoise.
Green.
My vision blurs, unable to process. To focus. When it finally refocuses, it’s on the boy, his face mere centimeters from mine, his breaths ragged on my lips. His are pink. His hair is a dark, dark brown, strands matting his forehead. His eyes are the color of the sky.
Color.
Joules, I can see in color.
A voice worms through my sensory overload. It’s the boy’s, ordering to me swim.
Hard to obey when he’s holding on to me like a floatation device. “What are you doing?” I snap, pushing him before he can answer.
We separate with a splash. The boy sloshes backward, floundering, then regains control of his limbs. “What does it look like?” he snaps right back, treading the water.
“Like you’re trying to drown me.”
“I was saving you.” He spits out a leaf. “You weren’t moving!” he cries when I glare at him in disbelief. “And you were under for at least three minutes.”
Yeah, right. Three minutes, and I’d be blue in the face. I only choked on one mouthful of water, and guess who made me do that?
“I counted,” says the boy, swimming after me as I paddle to the rim. “I waited as long as I reasonably could and only jumped in when I had to.” Blah blah blah. I hoist myself out of the pool, flopping onto the green dandelions. “Because believe it or not—” The boy flops beside me, panting. “—this is not my idea of fun.” He glances to me. “Say something.”
“Sorry to break it to you, love, but I don’t need saving.”
“Got it,” says the boy, adopting my annoyed tone. “Will keep that in mind if you’re ever hanging off the edge of a cliff.” Then he sits upright and wrings out M.M.’s sweater. It’s blue. Brings out the color of his eyes.
“What?” he asks when he catches me staring.
I’m still peeved at his meddling, but also curious. “What color is my hair?”
“Black…？”
“And my eyes?”
“… Dark brown.” He looks me over, brow furrowing. “Are you okay?”
I don’t answer.
Black hair.
Dark eyes.
Just like Kay.
Relief trickles through me. I don’t know what I expected. We’re sisters, after all. But I feel closer to her than ever, especially with the new memories.
The memories. They were cut short. There are more, I’m sure of it. My eyes snap to the pool, the source of everything, before I was interrupted— The boy grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. “We’re heading back now.”
“Says who?”
“Says whoever didn’t just try to drown themselves.”
Grumbling, I follow him through the forest, too wet and too tired to pick this bone with him. My whole being buzzes. First memories, now color. It’s overwhelming—and probably the reason why I screw up an hour later, after we’ve gathered the trees, lowered them down the ridge, and it’s time to descend ourselves. I go first, barely a meter down when I lose my foothold. My hands shoot out, grappling for a dip in the rock. I miss, and my other foot swings free.
Above me, the boy shouts. My eyes shut on instinct, and I brace myself for the hard bite of the harness up my ass.
It doesn’t come.
The rope goes slack. Untied.
I keep on falling.
14
SHE WOULD NEVER SEE THE body.
Never know the moment Celia died.
Another sister might not have been able to make peace with that.
Kasey could.
She just couldn’t make peace with her peace.
Beyond the pier, the sea that’d spoken to Celia spoke to Kasey, too. The wind whispered in her ear. Unfeeling. Defective. Deficient. The world had been saying those things to her from the start, from the vandalized locker to the public outcry, when she stomached what others could not. She’d gone numb as Actinium bled, and accepted the fatality of Celia’s prognosis, no questions asked, while he thought to call the copterbot. Even now, the ache lodged in her chest felt like a foreign body that did not belong, and the soreness of her throat, chafed from the scream, was pain she had to resist swallowing. It was human to inflict hurt on yourself and unto others, to let down the levee in the face of the storm, like the literal one currently brewing, dark clouds gathering where the ocean met the sky. Waves churned past her toes, two meters below, and over the churn, his voice reached her.
“Don’t jump.”