Locked (3 page)

When I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember where I am. I bolt upright. I rub my eyes to try to get a clearer picture. But then I remember. The plane crash. The beach. The tribesmen. Ed was the dream. This is reality.

“Hey.”

Noah is in the doorway. He's cleaned up, too, and he's dressed in loose cotton pants and a top.

He sits down on the edge of my bed, and I pull the covers up to my chest. I realize I slept with no clothes on, and I'm naked under here.

“Noah…” I start. “What's going on?”

He puts his head in his hands. “I'm so sorry,” he says. I loop the blanket around me underneath the covers and crawl toward him. I put my hand on his shoulder. He lifts his face up to meet mine.

“Noah,” I say. “You have to tell me what you know. You have to tell me everything. I remember passing out at that river. I was sick and—”

“I couldn't heal you,” Noah finishes. “I tried, but I couldn't.” I see his jaw working. “Asku showed up. I know you met him. He fed you herbs, and you fell asleep. Asku asked me to go with him.” Noah's eyes look into mine, and I see the pain there. “I didn't have a choice. I had to trust him.”

I nod, thinking about Asku's smile in the forest yesterday. About how readily I followed him.

“He brought us to that clearing. I laid you down—” Noah looks at my bare shoulders. I pull the covers up farther. “And then the other men were there. And—”

“Noah, you speak their language. You have powers here.”

He nods. He maneuvers himself off the bed, and I sit back against the headboard. He starts to pace. “I know it sounds crazy,” he says.

“I'm on an island in a bed with no cuts after a plane crash,” I say. “It's going to sound crazy. I get that.”

He inhales, looks at me. “I'm just trying to figure out where to start.”

“The beginning,” I say.

He blows some air out of his lips. “My aunt had always said that my father came from somewhere else. She used to tell me these stories about an island, about his history. How he left when he was my age, and found his way to the mainland. How he met her sister and married her. My parents never said anything like this to me when I was young, but when they died and I went to live with Teresa, she said my mom used to tell her about his history. Neither one of them thought it was real.” He stops, looks at me. “You know my dad wasn't the most reliable guy.”

I remember how Noah used to spend nights at Ed's when we were younger. About how his mother worked and his dad would disappear for days at a time.

“What was the story?” I press on.

Noah takes a breath. “My father was a descendent of an ancient tribe of Native Americans. The Sooike. They were smart, driven by shamanism. They were the most evolved tribe in the magical arts. The legend was that they had a supreme connection to the land. That it would do things for them. It would allow them shelter where others could not find it.”

“I don't understand,” I say. I try to read his face—I have the feeling that what isn't in his words is written there.

“When the settlers came and forced tribes out of the Pacific Northwest, the Sooike moved to an island. They knew it was just a matter of time before their culture was forgotten, and they didn't want that, so they called on their connection and sealed the island shut to keep out the new world. With the exception of my father's escape—leaving, whatever—it has been sealed for over a hundred and fifty years.”

“Oh my God.” My heart is beating wildly. “Noah…” I sit up and cover my mouth with my hand.

“Yes,” he says. “We're on that island.”

I run my hands over my forehead. “But how did we get here? Where are Maggie and Ed and everyone else?”

Noah's eyes falter, and for a moment I know he's thinking what I'm thinking, what has to be true. They're not here because they're not anywhere. They're gone.

“I don't know for sure,” he says. “All I know is that the plane was going down and I grabbed your hand.”

I feel his gaze on my body.

“The island—it recognized me. These are my people. I'm—that's why I was able to…” His eyes trace up the blanket to where my ribs are.

“Heal me,” I whisper.

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“But why couldn't you after? How come you can speak this language?”

Noah pauses. “The language is—I know it because my dad taught it to me.” He looks at me, trying to gauge my reaction. I keep my face still, and he continues. “When I was younge, he used to teach me these words, phrases. It was like a game—a little joke we shared. When I got older, I thought he was a quack. But now I know he was teaching me my—this language.”

This whole thing is ridiculous. So absurd I don't know whether to hysterically laugh or cry. “We need to find Ed and Maggie,” I say. I sit up in a rush. I feel frantic.

“Hey,” Noah says. He comes to kneel on the bed, and then he's wrapping his arms around me. I feel his hands on my bare back—strong and warm—and even with all that has happened, my heart starts racing. Maybe I should be scared of him. But I can't be. Because he saved me.

And how many times have I thought about being with him like this? How many times have I shut down the thought? This is the most contact we've had in nearly two years, and I mentally kick myself for feeling anything good. Anything that's not total devastation. “You're going to be okay,” he says. He whispers it into my ear. “I promise. I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

The same thing he said to me on the beach. I close my eyes and remember the touch of his hands. How he took me from the brink of death and brought me solidly back to life.

I pull back. I rub my hand over my eyes. “I'm sorry,” I say.

Noah runs a hand through his hair. “They were at the front of the plane,” he says. “They'd have radio control. They'd have a way to communicate and get help. If we're alive, they might be, too.”

My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away. I try to go back to the story. To focus on what we know. And then it hits me.

“If the island is sealed…”

Noah's gaze meets mine. “No one knows we're here.” He swallows. The next part is painful to get out, I can tell. “And there is no way to leave.”

I exhale. “But we got here,” I say. “If we got here, we should be able to…”

“They told me it opened to protect me,” he says. “It won't do it again.”

I tug the blanket around me and get out of bed. Now I pace while Noah sits. “But your father!” I say. I practically scream it. “He left. If the story is true, he left.”

Noah nods. “I know,” he says. “But I don't know how he did it.”

“Did you ask?” It's accusatory.

“Of course I asked!” he says. “Do you think I…” His voice trails off.

Want to be stuck here with you.
I mentally finish the words for him.

I swallow. Look away. “We'll figure out how he did it,” I say. “We have to.”

Noah doesn't say anything, and I keep on. “Noah, my sister is out there. Ed is out there.”

This time he looks right at me, and when he does, it makes the air freeze around me. “I know,” he says.

At that moment one of the women from earlier appears in the doorway. Noah greets her with that same language—but this time the words seem to come easier than they did in the clearing.

“What's her name?” I ask.

“Sa-we,” Noah says.

“Sa-we,” I echo.

The woman nods. She holds out a mug to me, and I take it. It smells like roots and vines, and I drink it quickly.

“Thank you,” I say.

Sa-we takes me into the bathing room and gives me something to put on—a canvas dress and pants. I see the remains of my clothes from the crash, clean and lay out in the corner.

As I make my way into the kitchen, I see the sun shining. The ocean looks spectacularly, impossibly blue, and I think how remarkable, how unbelievable, it is that no one has ever been here. That no person besides the tribe knows this place exists.

Noah and I eat on the sundeck. A modest meal like yesterday. We don't talk much. There is too much to say. I also know that Noah isn't a guy of a ton of words. He used to take speech when we were younger—eight, maybe. When his parents were still alive. I remember because the speech therapist would pull him out of our homeroom and all the kids would tease him until Ed told them to shut up. Even then people respected Ed. Even then he protected Noah.

“I'm going to meet with the chief today,” Noah says. “Maybe he can tell me more about what my role in all of this is.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Maybe he has more news about the crash.”

“I'm coming with you,” I say.

Noah sets a hand on my knee. I suck in my breath. We both look at it, but he doesn't take it off. “You can't,” he says. “They already don't want you here.”

“So why am I?” I move away from his hand. I stand. “Why did they let me live? Why not just spear me? Or give me some magical dose of poison and not let anyone heal me?”

Noah knits his hands together. He looks out over the ocean. “Because you're with me,” he says.

That's all. “Because you're with me.”

I glance sideways at him, and I know we're remembering the same thing. We're calling up the same memory. Sophomore formal. Ed had to cancel and go to some leadership seminar. He told me I should go anyway. I didn't want to. I wanted to be there with him. But I had a dress, and Miss Opportunity and my dad were making such a fuss about the whole thing—“You'll cherish these memories forever!”—so I went.

Jessica Eldridge stopped me at the door. She was checking people in and wanted to know why Ed wasn't with me. “You're
alone
?” she said. Her look was dripping with pity and glee—I could read it.
Predictable. Like you could ever hold on to Ed.

I heard someone behind me. In the next moment Noah was there. He was dressed in a suit. To this day, I have no idea where he got it from, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he put his hand down on the check-in table and said, “She's not alone. She's with me.”

I'll never forget the way Jessica's jaw unhinged.

He put his hand on my waist as we made our way into the dance. Girls eyed him up and down, but girls were always eyeing Noah up and down. Ever since we hit puberty. I knew what they saw. I saw it, too. I tried not to, but I did. His insanely perfect abs. The rippling muscles of his shoulders and arms. His piercing blue eyes.

I knew Noah hooked up with girls. I'd hear Ed asking about them when they thought I wasn't listening. But Noah had never had a girlfriend. It was the one thing that kept me sane. The one thing that kept the insanely inappropriate jealousy at bay.

Which was crazy. I had no idea what these girls meant to him. And besides, jealousy wasn't my right. I was with Ed. I loved Ed. But that night at sophomore formal was different. Ed was away, and it felt, somehow, when we walked in together, when we got drinks, when he asked me to dance—pressing me up close against his chest—that we were living in some kind of alternate reality, one where Ed wasn't just not there, but maybe didn't exist at all.

Noah blew off Alison Sussberg and Kendall Highdell, and when he drove me home that night, I can't ever remember being so nervous. I sat in the passenger seat of his pickup, my hands in my lap, my heart hammering against my ribs like a prisoner at his bars, screaming to be set free.

“I had a good time tonight,” I said. “Thanks for filling in.”

“Thanks for letting me.”

I turned to him. I don't know how I let the words slip out. Probably because I had been holding them tightly, pinned down in my throat since the night Ed had asked me to be his girlfriend, and tonight my grip wasn't so steadfast: “I liked being there with you.”

Noah set his hands on the wheel. He blew some air out of his lips. “August…” he started, but I just shook my head. I opened the door before he could say anything else. I ran from the car, into my house, and we never talked about it again. We never really talked about much again.

“She's with me.”

“Because you're with me.”

I never have been. I've never been with him. Not until now. As we sit looking out over the ocean, the memory hanging between us like it's projected on a television screen, something else starts to grow, bloom. The fear, the anxiety, is replaced a small bit with anticipation.

Hope.

A week goes by.

Noah and I share a house, but he sleeps on the mats in the living room. We have breakfast on the deck, then Noah meets with the chief. He says he's learning the language, but I know they're talking about more than that—a lot more. But he doesn't offer, and I can't push him. At least one thing is clear: We haven't found a way off the island yet.

It doesn't mean I've stopped trying.

The week that I went with Ed's family to Mexico was also our one-year anniversary. It was mostly a crazy family vacation—three little brothers does not allow for a lot of alone time. But Ed took me down to the beach after dinner one night. He held a package in one hand and my fingers in the other all the way down to the water's edge. He was wearing this really cheesy shirt I bought him at the hotel gift shop. I remember thinking that he still looked crazy handsome even in embroidered flowers. He was the only guy I knew who would wear that stupid gag shirt just because I had bought it for him.

“I have something for you,” he told me. Without letting go of my hand, he gave me the package. It was small, wrapped in brown paper. I opened it and felt something catch in my throat. It was a glass bottle. Inside was a single scroll.

“It's a love letter,” he said.

I turned the bottle over in my hands. I stuck my pinkie in the opening—too small to pull the paper back out.

“I can't read it,” I said.

Ed put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “You don't need to,” he said. “I'm always going to be here to tell you.” He kissed me then, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, the glass bottle dangling from my fingers.

“What does it say?” I asked, my lips still on his.

“That you are the most intelligent, kind, sweet, beautiful person I have ever met and that I love you.”

I smiled. I kissed him. Sometimes, when I was with Ed, I would see myself through his eyes, and it would feel like the most spectacular, magnificent high. Like living at the tippy-top of a roller coaster, the whole world below me.

“This is a crappy present,” I told him.

He raised his eyebrows, his arms still around me. “I thought it was romantic,” he said. “But if you hate it, I'll just—” And then he took it and tossed it out to sea. I watched the splash of water as it landed.

I hit him. “Ed!” But he was smiling, and so was I.

“It wasn't really for you,” he said. “That was just a gesture of my love. But this is.” Then he took a small tissue-paper parcel out of his ginormous shirt pocket.

I unfolded it in my hands. Inside was a necklace with a bottle cap attached as a charm.

“So you'll always remember,” he said, “that somewhere in that giant, wide ocean is the story of how much I love you.”

I looked up at him. He was beaming.

“It's beautiful,” I said, because I didn't know what to say. I just remember, in that moment, feeling like I didn't deserve this. Like I didn't deserve him.

He motioned for me to turn around, and then he slipped the chain onto my neck. It was cool, and I touched the bottle cap where it landed, in the little pocket between my collarbones.

I'd worn it every day since he gave it to me, but the cap fell off in the crash. It's somewhere in the ocean now. I keep touching the empty gold chain. It feels heavier than it used to—even though there is something missing.

Sa-we and Asku and I make food together—they have taught me how to create that patty out of millet and wheat. Food is scarce. Asku has told me, through Noah, that the island is struggling. The population is dwindling. He and his wife are trying to have a baby, and can't. Asku is teaching me some of his native tongue while I teach him English. We start small and simple. I name an object, and then he does the same. He laughs when I say both the words he does, and the English versions. “Bowl,” he repeats after me, and then bursts into giggles.

At night, Noah and I sit underneath the stars. Tonight is warm, and the moon is so full the beach is lit up. It reflects against the water until the entire ocean looks like liquid silver. I'm stretched out in the sand, and Noah lies next to me. I can feel his breathing, catch the rise and fall of his chest. We're talking about family, and I ask about his parents. He's never told me before what really happened. Ed was the one who said Noah's dad was drunk, that his parents swerved into oncoming traffic.

“I just remember being at Ed's,” he said. “And his parents telling me I couldn't go home.”

I flip up onto my elbow to face him. His blond hair has gotten longer since we've been here and is now in even stronger contrast to the tribesmen—a difference made possible by his blond-haired, blue-eyed mother. “Everyone always said I took after her,” Noah told me last week. “Ironic now, huh?”

“I don't remember it,” I say. “The accident. I mean, we knew each other then.”

“We were young,” he says. “Ten. It was a long time ago.”

“You never talk about it,” I say.

“I don't really know what to say. Sometimes I feel like I never even knew them.”

I think about my mom. How cancer made her different in the end. How it wasn't really
her
anymore. It's hard to remember what moments to hold on to. “I know,” I say.

Noah rolls over to face me. “It's the past,” he says.

He holds my gaze and something passes between us—the knowledge that he's not talking about just our parents, but maybe everything. Our whole life might be there now, too. In the past. A place we can no longer get back to.

“Ed would always tell me not to talk to you about it,” I say. “He wanted to protect you.”

Noah smiles, but it's small, sad. “He was always doing that. Even when I didn't want it. He wanted to protect both of us. He thought he could.”

I nod. I think, again, about the fight I saw the two of them have, but before I can ask Noah about it, he reaches his hand across to my shoulder. My breathing stills. My whole body feels like it's on red alert.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

I swallow.

“Why weren't you sitting with him?”

It takes a moment for me to realize that he's talking about the plane. How Ed was up front, next to Maggie, and I wasn't with them. I flip onto my back. His hand falls. I look up at the stars. “We got into a fight,” I say. As the words come out, I feel the familiar knot in my stomach, the one that winds like a rope all the way up to my heart. “It was my fault.”

“What happened?” Noah's voice is at my ear. Soft. Understanding.

“He want—” I catch myself, not sure which tense to use. “He wants to go to the same school, and I—” I exhale. I blink back tears. “I didn't want to talk about it then.”

I sit up. Sand pours off my back. “You know Ed; he's such a planner. He has everything figured out.”

Noah smiles. His blue eyes light up in the sand. “I know,” he says. “He always goes after what he wants. Do you remember class president?”

I laugh, thinking about how Ed went after the leading office the second we got to high school.
EDUCATION
, as the flyers read. There was no question he'd win, but there was a moment when it got really close. Kendall Highdell started giving out candy and promising open pool parties at her parents' summer house. It was hard to top that, especially when she made the offers in a crop top. But Ed wasn't about to give up. He spent the entire week before the election figuring out how, and then he pooled his savings and bought a Starbucks cart for campus the day before and the day of the election. Kids like candy, but there is nothing like a Frappuccino to really seal the deal.

I remember the three of us—Ed, Noah, and I—sat on the steps of the quad after he won, hopped up on caffeine and his victory.

“He loves you,” Noah says, sitting up. “He always wanted you to know it.”

“I did,” I say. I shake my head. “I do.”

Noah reaches across and takes my hand. “You'll see him,” he says. “Both of them. I'll get us off here.”

He squeezes. I squeeze back.

I suddenly remember the night Ed and I got together. Not that I haven't been thinking about it a lot, I have. I've been thinking about it practically since it happened. It had been a rocky few months. My mother died, then my dad remarried. Ed was there for me, and Noah, too. I've never said this to anyone before. I don't even admit it to myself anymore. But the night Ed came to me, Noah was with him, and I thought, when I opened the door, that Noah was coming to tell me he wanted to be more than friends.

It wasn't until Ed opened his mouth and said we had to talk—that he wanted to tell me something—that I knew where it was headed. Where we all were.

It was stupid to think otherwise. Noah would never have brought Ed. Noah wouldn't have made it about the three of us. “I want this to be okay between us all,” Ed had said. Noah had stood there, a stiff smile on his face, gripping the flowers Ed had given him to hold.

“What are you thinking about?” Noah asks me now.

“Nothing,” I say, but I'm remembering the way my chest deflated right down to my feet. I'm remembering how, even when I was falling in love with Ed, it felt like my heart was breaking because it wasn't Noah—Noah didn't love me.

He leans in close, and for a moment I think about spilling, about telling him everything. But then he says, “Should we go to sleep?”

“Sure.”

We stand up and dust ourselves off. We walk up the sand trail to the house. I rinse my feet off in the basin by the door and hand the ladle to Noah when I'm done. We go inside. It's so dark here, so quiet. So still. There is absolutely nothing except the sound of our own breathing.

I'm walking around him to the bedroom when my arm brushes up against his back. Neither one of us moves until I spin, slowly, to face him. I can see just the outline of his features inside—the moonlight isn't nearly as bright when it's blocked by canvas.

Without even thinking, I trace my hand down his arm. The need to be close to him is so strong, so palpable, that I can no longer fight it with my own thoughts. I feel him suck in his breath. “August…” he says. The same way he did in the car after sophomore formal.

But something is different this time. Ed isn't at a conference; he's in another universe, maybe even dead. And the reality of that, of how isolated we are, makes me feel closer to Noah than ever before.

“I need you,” I say. “I just…”

His arms come down hard around me and then he's lifting me off my feet. My hands loop around his neck, and I feel my chest on his—heart to heart—separated by so much and so little. He presses his lips to my ear. “I'm here,” he says. “I'm not leaving you. I promise.”

I inhale him close to me. My hands reach for him, to pull him closer, but I feel his resistance. He sets me down. In the moonlight I can see how much effort it takes. How fast he's breathing. “Not now,” he says. It's firm. Definitive. “You should sleep.”

My body is vibrating, buzzing so loudly from the shock of his lack of contact. Blood pounds in my temples so strong that I can't even form a retort. I can't try to convince him.

And then he walks down the hallway and into the living room. I just stand there. Caught between the past and this—whatever this is. Him.