“Only a day. Yesterday morning, we were home in your backyard.”
Only a day ago, she’d had no idea what her tears could do. Her eyes focused on the ocean, made wild by a single day’s rain. She leaned down and squinted at something bobbing on its surface.
It was a human head.
Eureka had known she would face terrible things above the ocean. Still, seeing what her tears had done, this demolished life.… She wasn’t ready. But then—
The head moved, from one side to the other. A tan arm stretched out of the water. Someone was swimming. The head pivoted toward Eureka, took another breath, and disappeared. Then it appeared again, a body moving fast behind it, riding the waves.
Eureka recognized that arm, those shoulders, that dark, wet head of hair. She’d watched Brooks swim to the breakers since they were little kids.
Reason vanished; amazement prevailed. She cupped her hands around her mouth, but before the sound of Brooks’s name escaped her lips, Ander leaned in next to her.
“We need to go.”
She turned to him, brimming with the same unbridled excitement she used to experience when she crossed a finish line first. She pointed at the water—
Brooks was gone.
“No,” she whispered. Come back.
Stupid. She’d wanted to see her friend so badly her mind had painted him in the waves.
“I thought I saw him,” she whispered. “I know it’s impossible, but he was right there.” She pointed weakly. She knew how she sounded.
Ander’s eyes followed hers to the dark place in the waves where Brooks had been. “Let him go, Eureka.”
When she flinched his voice softened. “We should hurry. My family will be looking for us.”
“We crossed an ocean. How would they find us here?”
“My aunt Starling can taste us in the wind. We must make it to Solon’s cave before they track us.”
“But—” She searched the water for her friend.
“Brooks is gone. Do you understand?”
“I understand it’s more convenient for you if I let him go,” Eureka said. She started toward the rainy outlines of Cat and her family.
Ander caught up and blocked her path. “Your weakness for him is inconvenient to more people than me. People will die. The world—”
“People are going to die if I miss my best friend?”
She yearned to go back in time, to be in her room with her bare feet against the bedpost. She wanted to smell the fig-scented candle on her desk that she lit after going for a run. She wanted to be texting Brooks about the weird stains on their Latin teacher’s tie, stressing over some petty comment Maya Cayce made. She had never realized how happy she was before, how rich and indulgent her depression had been.
“You’re in love with him,” Ander said.
She edged past him. Brooks was her friend. Ander had no reason to be jealous.
“Eureka—”
“You said we should hurry.”
“I know this is hard.”
That made her stop. Hard was how people who didn’t know Eureka used to refer to Diana’s death. It made her want to strike the word from existence. Hard was a biochemistry exam. Hard was keeping a great piece of gossip to yourself. Hard was running a marathon.
Letting go of someone you loved wasn’t hard. There was no word for what it was, because even if you didn’t let them go they were still gone. Eureka hung her head and felt raindrops slide off the tip of her nose. Ander must never have suffered so great a loss. If he had, he wouldn’t have said that.
“You don’t understand.”
She’d meant it as a way to let him off the hook, but as soon as it came out, Eureka heard how harsh it sounded. She felt like no words existed anymore; they were all so insufficient and mean.
Ander spun toward the water and let out an exasperated sigh. Eureka saw the Zephyr visibly leave Ander’s lips and smash into the sea. It spat up a gaping wave that curled above Eureka.
It looked like the wave that had killed Diana.