“He smells the infection,” Catcher tells me, pointing to the dog. “His name is Odys. Harry trained him to alert him to the Mudo.”
The dog’s growling is another reminder of how different Catcher is now and I see on his face how much it bothers him. Cira sits on a bench surrounded by bright yellow blooms. She smiles when she sees me but she doesn’t bother getting up. The sun is just hovering over the trees, a last gasp of daylight filtering through the leaves of the Forest.
I notice how frail she looks, how thin. Her breathing is shallow, her lips dry and cracked. I sit down next to her and take her hand in mine. It burns hotter than Catcher’s skin, the blood infection raging inside her. I clutch at her fingers as tears burn the back of my throat and I smell the sharp sting of herbs from my mother’s remedies that are too late to draw out the sickness.
Elias comes into the courtyard with a lantern and a jug of water. I’m instantly aware of his presence, of his every move and breath. He barely glances at me as he offers Cira something to drink and she waves it away. Just as he turns to leave she asks him, “Do you believe what the other Soulers believe?” Her voice is raspy, uneven.
Elias stiffens. He darts a glance at me before asking her, “What do you mean?”
She smiles slightly. “In resurrection. That the Mudo have a second life. A second chance.”
Behind Cira I see Catcher hovering in the shadow of a doorway to a darkened room. He stiffens at her question but stays silent. It’s hard to see his expression in the gloaming but his eyes are tired.
Cira prods Elias. “The Soulers talked about it. When we were all held together back in Vista. They told us about their beliefs,” she says. “They said it was another way of living. That it’s a resurrection.”
“They’re a crazy cult,” Catcher says from the darkness.
Cira closes her eyes. I doubt she even knew Catcher was listening. When she opens them again there’s a spark in them.
She turns to face him and says, “But look at you, Catcher! You’re infected but you’re still alive. It’s been weeks and you’re still here!”
He stays in the shadow, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling. I don’t understand what Cira’s trying to say, what her point is. All I can think about is how her fingers are hot against my own, every inch of her a burning fire. She pushes from the bench and walks over to her brother, her legs unsteady. “What if it’s my only chance?” she asks. “You know as well as I do that I can’t go with you tomorrow. I’ll never be able to keep up.”
“Don’t talk like that, Cira,” he says.
I glance at Elias. I feel uncomfortable watching this, as if we’re intruding, but he’s focused on Cira, his head tilted to the side as if he’s thinking.
“What if I’m like you, Catcher?” she asks, resting her hand on his shoulder.
And suddenly I understand everything. Why she went into the Forest before. What she’s planning to do now. I start to protest, to say anything to stop her but Elias presses his fingers to my arm, keeping me back.
“It’s not worth the risk,” Catcher tells Cira. Anguish laces his voice; I can feel it in every beat of my heart.
“There is no risk, Catcher. Don’t you understand that?” Cira’s almost shouting now. “I’m going to die. Either here when the Recruiters come or on the path when I can’t keep up. The infection isn’t getting better. The fever isn’t breaking.”
I want to close my eyes, to turn my head away. But Elias just slips his hand down my arm until he’s grasping mine, his touch giving me strength and comfort.
Catcher’s fingers clench the doorsill. “And what happens if it doesn’t work?” he growls at his sister, echoing my own thoughts. “What happens if you turn into one of them?”
She puts her hand over his. “Then you leave me that way.”
A sob breaks from him then. “You can’t ask me to do that, Cira,” he says. My heart aches watching them.
Cira leans her head against his shoulder, their backs to us. It’s an image I’ve seen a thousand times over my life: Cira leaning in to her brother. Her tilting her face up to him trying to make him laugh when she tells a joke, to make him relent when she’s gotten into trouble, to get him to give her whatever it is she’s asking for.
I know the look on her face without having to see it. And I know how this will end. Tears burn hot and salty against my throat.
“I’m not asking you, Catcher,” Cira says so softly I can barely hear her.
I can’t stand to listen anymore. I can’t face the pain, can’t face the truth that my best friend is dying and wants to become Mudo. She can’t know if she’ll be immune—none of us can know. What if it doesn’t work?
I pull my hand from Elias’s and run from the courtyard, sprinting blindly through rooms until I burst from the house and into the evening. I race through the shadows, dodging around cottages and cabins. In the distance I see a hill at the edge of the village and I sprint up it until every part of my body screams for me to stop.
I stand looking out over the Forest just as the sun sinks against the treetops. Behind me I hear Elias approaching. I know his smell, the rhythm of his breathing, the sound of his movements.
“You can’t let her,” I say as he grabs my arm and turns me around. “You told me yourself that you don’t believe what the Soulers say about resurrection. You told me none of it’s true.” I pound my fists on his chest and he doesn’t stop me. “It’s just some stupid cult nonsense. You can’t let her do that to herself.”
“It’s not my choice to make, Gabry,” he says.
“But she’s going to kill herself,” I wail at him. “We’re supposed to protect people. It’s what it means to be human. We’re supposed to take care of them. We can’t …” I choke back the words, trying to control my breathing. “I can’t let her do it,” I say, letting the hot tears trace down my cheeks. “What if it doesn’t work? She’ll be gone.”
Elias wraps his hands around mine, pulling me to him. He’s safe and warm and strong.
“Is this all there is?” I ask him. I’m so tired of this struggle, of trying to survive when it seems like there’s no point to it. When everyone I love dies or changes and I’m left alone. “Is this what life is about? Waiting for death? Looking for it? Inviting it in?”
“No,” he says, his voice barely a whisper against my cheek. “That’s not what life is.”
“Then what is it?” I need him to give me a reason to keep fighting. To keep pushing forward even though it’s so hard. Even though I’m not sure I can.
“This,” he says, and he presses his lips to mine.
His kiss is warm. It’s more full of life than any moment I’ve ever experienced. It’s heat, it’s pressure and need and desire. His fingers tangle in my braid, bringing me closer to him and my hands pull to his back, feeling the flex of his shoulders under my touch. Sparks shatter in my head and I understand in this moment what he means about this being what life is.
If I could stay here forever, just like this, just the two of us entwined in the darkness, I would.
Elias breaks away first and I lean back in to him but he steps away and my lips only brush the heat of the air. At every spot he touched my skin tingles. I raise my fingers to my lips, feeling dazed. Wanting more. For the first time I’m content with who I am; where I am. I don’t want to go back in time. I don’t want to erase everything that’s happened because I don’t want to erase this moment.
“You don’t know how many times I wanted to call you Abby or Abigail,” he says, his voice hoarse with longing. “All the times growing up when I’d look at Annah and think about you.”
His words strike together in my head, leaving a trail of chills down my back. A thought occurs to me that makes my chest ache. “Did you … do you think about Annah when you look at me?”
His eyes become guarded. “I think about her all the time,” he says. “I’ve spent so many months going from town to town and city to city looking for her.”
“Am I just a replacement for her?” I ask. I think about everything he’s done for Annah, all the things he’s been through, the guilt he feels. I wouldn’t blame him for thinking of her when he looks at me. But I need him to understand that I’m not her. I’m never going to replace Annah.
His face goes white and his mouth opens. He’s shaking his head but still not saying anything. He looks both terrified and angry but most of all sick to his stomach. I wait for him to tell me that I’m crazy, that I’m wrong. But instead he just turns and walks away, leaving me there in the darkness with the taste of him still on my lips.
The moon is only a sliver in the sky, its sharp edges blurred by the watery heat of the summer night as I walk back to the garden where I left Cira. My mind roars, delighting in the memory of Elias’s kiss and then twisting when I think that he might just want me because I remind him of someone else.
When I get to the courtyard it’s empty and my heart begins to beat staccato. Slowly, I walk over to the bench where Cira last sat. Draped in the middle of it is a small object and I bend over, tracing my finger along the cord of Cira’s superhero necklace. I pick it up feeling the weight of Cira’s hopes and dreams—her belief that someone out there was greater than us and would save us.
Around me crickets whir and a bullfrog grunts but otherwise I hear nothing but the distant Mudo moans. Something shuffles behind me and I turn, dropping my hand to the knife on my hip.
My mother walks out of one of the rooms bordering the garden. She hesitates before coming closer, just a brief momentary pause, and I know something’s wrong.
“What?” I ask her, not ready to bear the weight of something new.
“It’s Cira,” she says.
I close my eyes and let my shoulders fall. She steps closer and places her hands on my arms. “What?” I ask, my voice barely more than the brush of the breeze over water.
“She went to the Forest. She asked her brother to get her something to eat and when he was gone she snuck away.”
“What happened?” I whisper, still a shard of hope left in me that she was right about the possibility of being immune. My mother’s hesitation tells me everything.
My legs go weak and my mother helps me sit. She pulls me against her, wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight.
All I can think about is that it’s my fault. I ran away—I couldn’t face Cira and her pain. If I’d been stronger, if I’d stayed by her side, she wouldn’t have been able to sneak out. She wouldn’t have been able to make it to the Forest.
I was kissing Elias while Cira was sacrificing herself.
“Catcher went after her,” my mother says. “But it’s been a while.” She strokes my hair, tucks a strand behind my ear. I stare at the flower Cira last touched, the edge of its petals turning brown and dry. I never got to tell her good-bye.
“Why is everything dying?” I ask her. “This village. Cira. The entire world. I don’t understand what the point is anymore.”
My mother sighs. “I used to daydream about the world,” she says softly. Even though I can’t see her face, I know she has a faraway look about her. “About all the possibilities that existed past the Forest. I used to dream about the ocean. It was all I wanted to see.”
“How did you know that what you wanted was the ocean?” I ask her, my voice thick with tears.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’d felt it inside, ever since I was a child. Ever since my mother first told me stories about it.”
I think about Catcher and Elias. About how I wanted to stay at the lighthouse, safe inside the Barrier. How I still want to remember and forget.
I close my eyes tight. “What if I don’t know what I want?” I ask her, voicing the fear that rages through me. “What if I never know? What if I’m wrong?”
She places a hand on my cheek. “It will be okay,” she says.
I hold my breath, waiting for her touch to bring me comfort. And then I realize that that’s been my problem all along. Not only wanting comfort and security and safety, but looking to others to find it when I need to find it inside myself.
I’ve spent every moment I can remember scared: scared of the Forest, scared to break the rules, scared of the world outside the Barrier. Scared of life. I’ve always looked at everything as black-and-white: alive or dead, safe or savage.
But then how do I explain Catcher, who will always be infected? Elias, who is both a Souler and a Recruiter? My being born in the Forest but growing up beyond? I could have lived my entire life inside the lighthouse but what kind of life would that have been?
I realize that life is risks. It’s acknowledging the past but looking forward. It’s taking a chance that we will make mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven.
I wipe the tears from my face and push myself up to look at my mother. I feel as though she’s a stranger to me in so many ways. Seeing this village—seeing where she grew up, how she lived—makes me understand even more how little I know about her.
“Are you happy?” I ask her.
“Gabrielle.” She takes my hands in hers and smiles a little. “Life is life,” she says. She shrugs, looking up at me. “You choose to live it or you do not.”
I stare at her, wanting to laugh at the simplicity of what she’s saying. But her words sink into me. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for permission to live my life and she’s given it to me.