When the Moon was Ours (16 page)

They broke the surface, and the thin chill of the air hit him.

His breaths were short. They sounded like the fast, hard winds that pulled through the trees on fall nights. He felt like he should have been taking in the whole sky's worth of air, but he was still gasping.

“Sam.” She yelled at him, held on to his arm even when he broke away from her.

He treaded water to keep himself up. He reached out for her, worrying that as soon as she settled she'd panic and stop swimming. But she kept her grip on him and dragged him toward the bank, scrambling like the water had fingers that would draw them both down.

She clawed her way up onto the bank, pulling him with her.

He knelt with his back to the river, forearms pressed into his thighs. Water from his hair dripped down the back of his neck, and his jeans stuck to his body.

“Sam,” she said, her voice quieter, wavering.

His shoulders hunched forward, curving around the pain that flared through his sternum.

She knelt in front of him. Her wet hair splayed out over her shoulders. Ribbons of water fell down her body. “Sam.” She grabbed his upper arms.

In that moment of her skin touching his, her looking into his face, he saw it. The spark of recognition, like the static off a doorknob shocking through her.

Her lips parted. Her eyes opened so much that even in the dark, he could see every shade of brown and gold. A small gasp matched the rhythm of his next breath.

She understood. She'd caught the defiance and the rage in him.

Each drop of water off his hair drummed against his skin like a needle.

He hadn't slipped, or fallen in, or been dragged in by hands that hated him. He'd gone in on purpose, and she knew it.

At first, he did not register the shape of her hand. It flew quickly, a brown-winged bird with an underside covered in tiny, pale feathers.

He didn't recognize that flash of lighter and darker brown as part of her until it struck his cheek. It pulled from his lungs what little air he had left, enough for a blunted sound at the back of his throat. And the force of her, the weight of how badly he'd wanted her to touch him even if it was this, to slap him, made the rain feel as distant as the stars.

 

bay of billows

They had never hit each other before, not once. Miel hadn't hit him when he reached out to touch a baby rattlesnake they found twirling through the grasses. The sun turned it into a ribbon of pale bronze, and Sam had seemed like he wanted to pet it, like it was an animal in one of his mother's stories.

And Sam had never hit her, never even come close. Not even when a boy at school called him the worst word Miel could think of anyone calling Sam, a word his mother had once, in their old town, found painted on the side of their house. Sam went at him, the closest she'd ever seen him to getting into a fight. But Miel grabbed him, hooking her arms through his, holding him, and she'd felt the rage in him. How he could have overpowered her, but didn't because he wasn't willing to hurt her.

Now Miel had reached across the space between them, breaking that seal on the years they'd known each other. Years of nights together, a few times fighting enough to stop talking to each other, and they'd never struck each other. And now she'd hit her best friend, the boy who came near her when to everyone else she was strange and made of water.

But she had gone into the river after him, thinking he needed her to save him, watching him and worrying with each second he stayed under. She'd hesitated by the edge only long enough to see his shape, the light flash of his shirt, the dark blur of his hair, his arms slack near his body. Then she'd let the water take her.

There was no joy in having covered herself in the water she was so afraid of. Its current called to her, reminding her that it had taken her brother, and her mother, and now it had almost taken her best friend. Its beads covered her skin, like fingers needling her. If she had stayed in that water a second longer, she would have felt the film of her mother's dress brushing her shins, or her brother's fingers grasping at her wrist, trying to save her.

Then Miel had seen Sam's face, the lack of panic, the reckless edge in his expression. And she knew. The water hadn't tried to steal him.

He'd let it have him.

Now they knelt facing each other, his hands on his knees, her arms crossed and held tight against her.

He hadn't broken eye contact with her, even when she slapped him. It frightened her. And it made her want to brush his wet hair out of his face with her fingers, put her mouth on his hard enough that she couldn't tell if she was kissing him or biting him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He didn't answer. He didn't look away either.

“Why did you…” She could not say the words. She could not speak the truth that Sam had gone into the water, in all his clothes, in weather cold enough that he couldn't pretend he was swimming.

“Sam,” she said, making the syllable sharp enough that he'd have to look at her.

A sheen of water made his eyes look like hot glass.

“Where are you?” she asked. “Where did you go?”

Sam's breathing deepened but didn't even. One inhale was slow and paused, the next sharp and broken.

“Why are you shutting me out?” Miel asked.

The change in his stare was so small it was almost invisible, but she felt it as clearly as the border between sun and shade.

“I'm shutting you out?” he asked. “Do you know how much I don't know about you? What happened the other night? Why were you out there?”

Miel got to her feet.

“Where the hell do you get off saying we know each other too well?” he asked.

She wasn't listening to this. She turned her back and started walking.

He stood and followed her, his hand flying out toward her.

“No.” He grabbed her forearm. “You are not walking away from me. I didn't ask you to come here, but you did. So you are not leaving.”

His grip pushed the thorns of her newest rose into her wrist. The pressure of his hand burned into her, her skin red and sore. The bud crushed against her.

She blunted her gasp so it was no more than a sharp breath in.

But Sam felt those thorns.

What he didn't know was how fast this one was growing in. Half because Miel wanted him and her body felt it. Half because the Bonner girls wanted her roses as fast as her wrist could grow them, and her skin and muscle knew enough to comply. The pain meant that, every minute, she had the feeling of those tarnished scissors held against her forearm.

He drew his hand away, and held it out in front of him, studying his scratched palm. Even through her wet sleeve, the thorns had drawn blood in lines as thin as strands of her hair.

He cupped his hand under the back of her wrist, his hold firm, but lighter than when he'd grabbed her.

A flinch ran down her arm. But she gritted her body still. Moving now would be worse than hitting him.

He folded back her sleeve.

Drops of blood stained her wrist. Water had glazed the leaves, turning them almost translucent. The bud, a breath from opening, had grown round and swollen as a bulb on a string of globe lights. A shell of grass-colored petals covered the violet flower, a little of the pink at the center showing.

His breathing and her own heartbeat kept her from hearing the night birds.

“Sam,” she said.

He eased her sleeve back down. “You're so many questions to me,” he said. “And you always will be.” He said the words without admiration. They were bitter, resigned.

He let her go, put his hands in his pockets, his fingers sliding against the river-soaked denim.

She could see the things living inside him, dragging their sharp edges.

“You don't want me,” he said. “So what do you want?”

“Sam,” she said. She wanted him, and he knew it. He had to know it. How much she wanted him hardened the air between them.

She took a step toward him, so slow she hoped he wouldn't notice her narrowing the distance between them. She was as unanchored as she felt on the nights when she and Aracely would lie on picnic tables, looking up, imagining they could fall into the sky.

He turned his back to her, and started walking.

Anger flared through her fingers and spread through the rest of her body. He'd stopped her from leaving, and now he wanted her to let him go.

“You know what?” she said. “You say you don't know me, but you don't know yourself.”

He half-turned, hands still in his pockets, the muscles around his eyes tensing.

“Tell me something.” She came toward him. “Did you ever really want me, or was I just the one you wanted because you knew I'd keep your secret?”

Now he looked as startled as he was angry, like the acknowledgment of things they never spoke of would make them float into the sky, that they would stick like stars and be declared to everyone on the ground in points of light.

“Don't look at me like that,” Miel said. “I'm not gonna tell anyone and you know it.”

His expression shifted again, angry and injured, the tension in his eyes softening but his jaw held tight.

“I know this hasn't been easy for you,” she said. “I'm not gonna pretend I have any idea what this is like for you. But it hasn't been easy for me either. I can't ask you anything. I can't ask what you want. I have no idea if it's okay to kiss you. I have to guess which parts of you I can touch and which ones I can't. We can't talk about any of it because I don't want to push you or confuse you or make you face anything you're not ready for.”

“I am not confused,” he said.

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

His eyes flicked over the ground, the milk thistle and lamb's-ear leaves crowding their ankles like pieces of worn silver velvet.

She'd never tell him what the Bonner sisters wanted, that piece of paper and that name they threatened her with. But it didn't stop the anger from rising out of the center of her, turning her lips hot and making her speak.

“You have no idea what all of us are willing to do for you if you just let us,” she said.

Sam looked up. “One thing, Miel. One thing I didn't want to talk about. I've given you all there is of me. You have it. How much of you have you kept back?”

She had held nothing back just because she wanted to keep it from him. His was a world of painted moons and feather grasses and trees that bloomed in autumn. She didn't want to bring into that world the awful, half-remembered things she grasped at when she had a fever. She wanted to be the girl who belonged under his moons, the girl whose skin he'd set foil stars on in constellations that mirrored the sky.

Maybe she'd kept more from him than he had from her. But he was still as unfamiliar as the valleys of vapor on the moon. She didn't know the safe ways to touch him, or whether she should say his name, let the word
Sam
off her tongue when he was touching her and she barely had the breath for it. She didn't know if it would remind him that she wanted him, or if it would just remind him that he did not want to be a girl called Samira.

She knew him no better than the landscapes in those library astronomy atlases. He was as distant as the lake of summer and the marsh of sleep and the ocean of storms.

“I can't map you,” she said, and the choked laugh in her own voice surprised her. That resignation, the giving-up, made her body feel light, unmoored. “I've tried, and I can't map you.”

“I don't want you to map me,” he said. “I want you to…”

The sound of his voice cut out. He winced harder than when she'd slapped him, his slouch so hard and fast she thought he was doubling over. She stepped forward to catch him, hold him up. But he straightened, pulled himself back.

Even through this, she caught his mouth slipping into the shape of the next word, a word his voice gave no sound. His tongue flicked against his teeth, but then he bit it, stopping himself.

It was still enough to let her guess what he didn't finish saying.

I don't want you to map me. I want you to love me.

The unsaid words clung to her like foil stars. She felt the light from his moons tracing them, the shadows of lunar seas leaving their outlines on her skin. She would wear this night—those words, said and unsaid—on her body. Whether the points of those stars would cut into her hinged on whether she answered what he could not say.

“I love you,” she said, the words said so softly they didn't feel tethered to her. “I've always loved you. You know that, right?”

She meant it however he wanted to take it. That she loved him as the boy who'd first been willing to come near her. That she loved him as her best friend. That she loved him in a way that made her glow with the memory of every moon he'd ever painted and every time he'd spread his hands over her back.

“Yeah, great.” The sarcasm in his voice was sudden, as sharp and narrow as an icicle, and she felt the rose stem dragging its thorns against her skin. “But you know what? I don't love you. Because I don't know you.” He turned his back to her and the river. “You never let me.”

 

lake of sorrow

They had said so many awful things to each other, but this was what echoed in her head like the sound of glass breaking.
I don't love you. I don't love you.

She had loved him since they were small, when they'd met on feral land among the brush of feather reed grass. They had spent nights pretending the stars were things that could be lured to earth. That the fairy rings thick with white-capped mushrooms were the light of the moon seared into the ground.

A little more of the rose slid out of Miel's wrist. It made her bite down on her tongue, the faint taste of blood slipping down her throat.

She knelt next to the water and plunged her hand in, her palm still hot from hitting Sam. The first cord of gold was tracing the hills, but she hadn't gone home, knowing Aracely would probably still be sitting in Ms. Owens' kitchen. If she went home, she'd take Sam's words home with her, and they'd rattle around in that empty house, barren and cold without Aracely's noise and laugh.