The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve told myself that being stuck on Isabela was a mistake. But there is also a small, new part of me that wonders if it was meant to be. If I’m delayed because the universe decided Beatriz needed someone to depend on; if I had to distance myself from Finn to see our relationship more clearly—its strengths, and its flaws.
Unconditional love is bullshit. “Truth or dare. Is there someone at school you wish you could be with?”
I have wondered if, when I eventually leave, Beatriz will go back to Santa Cruz, back to her host family and, maybe, this crush. If that would stop the cutting. Would make her happy.
“Yes.” The syllable is no more than a breath. “But she doesn’t want to be with me.”
She.
I hear the quiet hitch of Beatriz’s breath. She’s crying, and I’m pretending not to notice, which I suspect is what she wants.
“Tell me about her,” I say softly.
“Ana Maria’s my host sister,” Beatriz whispers. “She’s two years older than me. I think I’ve always known how I feel but I never said anything, not until there were rumors that school might close because of the virus. When I thought about not seeing her, like even just at breakfast, or walking back from classes, I couldn’t breathe. So I kissed her.” She curls herself closer to the ladder rungs.
“It didn’t go well,” I state.
“It did at first. She kissed me back. For three days—it was … perfect.” Beatriz shakes her head. “And then she told me she couldn’t. She said her parents would kill her, if they found out. That she loved me, but not like that.” She swallows. “She said I was … ?I was a mistake.”
“Oh, Beatriz.”
“Her parents wanted me to stay during lockdown. I told them my father wouldn’t let me. How could I live in the same house as her, and pretend it was all fine?”
“What will you do when school opens?”
“I don’t know,” Beatriz says. “I ruined it. I can’t go back there. And there’s nothing for me here.”
There’s something for you here, I think. You just can’t see it.
“Will you tell my father?” she whispers into the dark.
“No,” I promise. “But I hope you will, one day.”
We cling to the ladder in the hot throat of the world. Her breathing evens again, in counterpoint to mine. “Truth or dare,” she says, so softly I can barely hear it. “Do you ever wish you could do part of your life over?”
The truth is yes.
But … ?it’s not these past three weeks. Instead, it’s everything leading up to them. The more time I spend on this island, the more clarity I have about the time leading up to it. In a strange way, being stripped of everything—my job, my significant other, even my clothing and my language—has left only the essential part of me, and it feels more real than everything I have tried to be for years. It’s almost as if I had to stop running in order to see myself clearly, and what I see is a person who’s been driving toward a goal for so long she can’t remember why she set it in the first place.
And that scares the fuck out of me.
“Dare,” I reply.
A beat. “Let go of the ladder,” Beatriz says.
“Absolutely not,” I answer.
“Then I’ll do it.”
I hear her release her fingers from the rung, feel the shift in the air as she falls backward.
“No,” I cry, and I somehow manage to snatch a handful of her shirt. With the ropes wrapped tight around my free arm, I feel her deadweight dangling.
Don’t let go don’t let go don’t let go
“Bea,” I say evenly, “you have to grab on to me. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”
A thousand years later, I feel her fingers clutching my forearm. I grab back, forming a tighter link, until she is close enough to the ladder to grasp it again. A moment later, with a sob, she falls against me and I wrap my free arm around her. “It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I wanted to know what it would be like,” she cries, “to just let go.”
I stroke her hair and think: You cannot trust perception. Falling, at first, feels like flying.
SIX
Four weeks after I arrive on Isabela, I get an early birthday present: a strange and unlikely dump of old emails into my inbox. I have no idea why some were coming through, yet not others—but there are several from Finn, and two from my mother’s facility, updating me on her health （no significant change, which I figure is good news）。 There is also a note from Sotheby’s, saying that I have been furloughed, along with two hundred other employees, because of a massive downturn in the art sales industry. I stare at this for a while, wondering if Kitomi wasn’t the only one to delay her auction, and trying to rationalize that being furloughed is better than being fired. There’s also an email from Rodney, telling me that Sotheby’s can suck a dick, and that the only people who weren’t furloughed were tech support, because they’re pivoting to online sales. He never thought he’d have to return to his sister’s house in New Orleans, but who can afford rent in the city on unemployment?