Locked (4 page)

My body feels awake and alive before I even open my eyes. I pop out of bed and pull a canvas sarong over me. I go into the living room, then out onto the deck, but Noah is nowhere to be found.

I grab an apple from a basket and sit out in the sun. The apples are rosier than they have been—maybe Noah healed them yesterday. There are green beans there, too, and I take a handful, snapping off the ends and stuffing them into my mouth. They taste decadent. Like chocolate. I laugh out loud and then hear movement behind me.

I turn to find Noah, two spears in hand. A wide smile on his face.

“Come on,” he says. “It's time you put yourself to use. I'm going to teach you how to fish.”

“Seriously?” I say, but I know I'm doing a terrible job of hiding my delight. Spending the whole day with him sounds like heaven.

Noah gives me a lopsided smile. “I think it's time you chipped in. I'm tired of doing all the heavy lifting. It has been a week, and you have not once killed what you've eaten.”

I roll my eyes and dust myself off. “Let me just change,” I say.

I put on my shorts from the plane. Luckily my bra had nearly no damage, and I slip it on under a canvas top. No shoes, but my feet are adjusting to the rocks. The first few days they were tender and sore and bruised, but I think they're developing an extra skin—leathery, thick.

I'm just about to meet him outside when I realize there are no mirrors here. I haven't seen my reflection in what feels like forever. Strangely, I don't miss it.

“Ready,” I say as I round the corner.

Noah's eyes trace up my legs, and I feel my whole body flush with the memory of last night—his arms. His breath on my neck. The low hum of his voice as he promised not to leave me. Then: how he said “Not now.” For the first time, I realize it wasn't a no.

I can't help but feel a little dizzy. And I know it's not just the sun as we walk. Noah moves quickly, but this time I can keep up. He takes me back to the river we climbed to our first day here. The one I got sick at. Immediately he bends down and scoops up water, drinking deeply. I scream out.

“What?” he says, racing over toward me, water dripping off his chin. “What happened?”

“Noah,” I say. “We can't drink from there. It almost killed me.” I check his face frantically. Already one foot ready to find Asku and get those herbs.

“Oh,” Noah says. “That.” But he's biting his lip, a half smile on his face.

“What?”

“That wasn't the water. That was…me.”

“You?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“You had a bad reaction to my
healing powers
.” He makes air quotes around the last two words. “Apparently I did not do it entirely right. I'm learning now.” He looks at me sideways.

“Thanks for almost killing me,” I say, charging past him and into the stream.

“
Saving
you,” he corrects, following me.

The water is shallow, only coming up to my knees, and it's crystal clear. I dangle my fingers in it, bring a cup up to my lips.

“I promise,” Noah says, seeing me hesitate. “The water is fine.”

I drink and remember how it felt that first night, right before I got sick—delicious, chilled heaven.

“Here,” Noah says. He holds out a long spear—a sharpened stick with a piece of metal at the end of it.

I shake my head. “I'm not going to be able to do this,” I say.

Noah told me how hard fishing is. How few fish there are. He's only caught two in a week and has been going every day.

He cups my elbow with his palm. It's cool from the water. “You will,” he says. “Trust me.”

He sets his pack down on the rocks and takes off his shirt. I notice the outline of his torso—the way his muscles move like waves down his back.

“You ready?” he asks, turning to me.

“Yeah.”

He stands perfectly still until the water stops moving around him. He holds a spear out in his hand—hovering there, like a bird about to dive for prey, and then he plunges it into the water. I gasp, jump back. The stream heaves and sighs with movement and then he pulls out the spear, and sure enough, stuck to the end, is a foot-long silver fish.

“Impressive,” I say.

Noah smiles. “I've been practicing. There are more every day.” He glances at me when he says it, then back at the water.

I think about all the days this week he's spent with the tribesmen, the chief. Learning how to be one of them. I think about how things are changing here. Something flares in my stomach—some specific fear—but I push it back down where it came from.

Noah hands me the spear. “Your turn.”

“I don't know,” I say. I'm looking at the fish's bloody carcass. “I think maybe this isn't my thing.”

“Is eating your thing?”

I roll my eyes and take the spear. Noah comes around behind me. “Here,” he says. He places his hands on my waist. His touch feels electric, and my knees buckle under the contact. “Hold it this way.”

He takes the spear and reorients it in my hand, then mimics the motions.
Whoosh.

“You have to be sharp,” he says. “Quick movements, or you won't catch them in time.”

His hand finds my back. “See that?” he whispers, pointing downward. I try, but it's hard to focus on anything with him this close to me.

I follow his gaze to our feet under the water. Three fish swim by lazily. I nod. “Yeah.”

I hold the spear low, and then plunge it down when the fish angles left. I close my eyes, but I feel nothing at the end—just space and rocks.

“Good try,” Noah tells me. He takes his hand off my back and comes to stand next to me. “I think you're hesitating,” he says. “When you see him, you gotta go for it. One split second of fear, and he's gone for good.”

“I don't blame him,” I say under my breath, and Noah eyes me.

“Just focus,” he says. He takes a deep breath; I follow. Exhale. “Good,” he whispers. “Now what do you see?”

I look down. About two feet over from me is a large silvery fish, about twice the size of the one Noah caught. I don't think. I just lift my spear up and stab. But this time the tip is not met with space and rock. I feel it make contact with something spongy. And then the spear starts to shake in my hand. The fish is trying to squirm away. I've caught one.

“I have him!” I scream. Noah and I both look down at the fish. His tail is thrashing furiously, the spear stuck in his side. I have a flash of myself on the beach—the piece of metal in my ribs.

“I'm sorry,” I say to Noah. I pull the spear out gently, and the fish swims away, a trail of blood behind him.

“You're kidding, right?” Noah says. He turns to me, his hands on his hips. “There goes dinner.”

I point to his two fish on the rocks. “What about those?”

“Hey,” he says. “Don't you think it's kind of unfair I have to be the one who kills, while your soul remains untarnished?” He tilts his head to the side, and I can see him smiling. I've forgotten how much we used to laugh together. Before things got so serious. Before my mom. Before Ed.

Noah was never a super-easygoing guy—not to the outside world. To the outside world he had to keep it together. He had to look out for himself. But with us he was different. He could relax. Once, a few years after he started living with his aunt—we must have been about twelve—we were all over at Ed's house. We were watching some movie; I don't remember what. All I remember is that Noah kept doing an impression of the main actor. He had us crying with laughter. And after, when we regained our breath, Ed had said, “I wish other people knew you.”

I don't know him anymore, but I once did. And right now, standing here with him, I think maybe I could again. Maybe I'm beginning to.

“No,” I say. “I figure if I'm stuck here with you the least you can do is provide sustenance.”

Noah shakes his head, but he's grinning—a wide, open smile I haven't seen on him in years.

We spend the next hour in the water, but I don't catch a single fish, and I'm not really trying. “I think I'm pruning,” I tell Noah. My fingers are beginning to shrivel, and a cloud cover is rolling in now—it's getting cold.

Noah runs his eyes down my arms. They're pricked up in goose bumps. “Of course,” he says. “Let's go.”

He helps me out of the water and knots the four fish he caught to the spear with some rope. Then he hands me his canvas shirt. His chest is still bare, and I can see the outline of his abs—hard muscles knotted in rows. I remember summers swimming with him at camp. I know he didn't always look like this. I know there was a time he was skinny and gangly. But it's hard to remember it now.

“You look cold,” he says. “Double up.”

I pull on his shirt. It smells like him. Like the outdoors. Wood and dirt and rain. On the plane I was wearing a sweatshirt Ed had given me, but I took it off when we started flying. It said
EDDY'S
on the front. It was from some fish restaurant he had been to in Hawaii and had brought back for me. I loved wearing it. I thought it was the perfect mix of cute and kitschy. And I loved the way people looked at me when I wore it. Eddy's. I was his.

For a brief moment I imagine it, water-gorged, at the bottom of this ocean, the plastic letters peeling up from the salt.

After we get back, Noah heads out to meet the tribesmen and is gone all afternoon. Asku comes by and we practice our language skills. We cook up one of Noah's fish for lunch and sit outside on the deck, basking in the sun. I tell him to take another one home to his wife.

“Thank you,” he says.

And then at night, after dinner, Noah and I go down to the beach. We bring a blanket, and he tries to make a campfire, but tonight it won't start.

“It's too damp out,” he says. “I think it's going to rain.”

“That's great. It will help with the vegetables.”

Noah eyes me.

“Asku told me there has been a drought.”

Something passes across Noah's face, but then it's wiped away with a smile. “You two are getting close.”

It's cool tonight, cooler than it has been since we've been here. I wrap the blanket we brought down tight around me. “Yeah,” I say. “It's nice to have a friend here.”

Noah sits next to me, his fingers trailing lines in the sand. I can feel last night's embrace between us like another person. It sits upright, focused, on high alert now that the sun has set again. “Good,” he says. “I'm glad.”

“Did you learn anything new today?” I ask. It's the same thing I've asked every night since we got here, always to the same answer: no. No, the chief has not told him anything else. No, there is no magical way off this island.

Noah shakes his head. “I'm getting better at some stuff, but other than that…”

I turn to face him. “What kind of stuff?”

Noah dusts his hands together. He looks at me. “Magic,” he says, smiling.

“Show me.”

He laughs. “I'm not sure I can do it on command. Usually the chief has—”

I edge closer to him. “Try.”

He looks up at me. Our eyes lock. “Okay,” he says softly. He reaches across and gently removes the blanket from my shoulder. The wind hits my bare skin, and I pull my arms around me.

He lays his palm flat on the side of my neck. I'm sure he can feel my pulse there—the beat of my heart pushing the blood rapid-fire through my veins.

I look up at him. His eyes are soft but focused. “It's okay,” he whispers. “I won't hurt you this time.”

I cover his hand with mine. “I know,” I say.

He begins to chant—a low, earthy hum—and I feel his hand get warm. That familiar sensation spreads out from his touch, but it's softer than I remember from on the beach. It's heating me up. In an instant, all my goose bumps fade.

And then he trails his hand down my arm, and as he does, my skin seems to shimmer—like he's dusting it with gold. I suck in my breath, my eyes transfixed.

There is a birthmark on my arm. It's about the size of a penny, and if you squint, it kind of looks like the shape of Washington. “It's your stamp,” Ed told me once. “It's like a little map. If you ever get lost, someone will know where to bring you.”

But now, with Noah's fingertips hovering there, the birthmark disappears.

“It's gone,” I whisper.

I look up at him. His chest rises and falls with his breath—uneven, shaky. “Do you want it back?” he breathes out.

I shake my head. “No.”

Instinctively, I reach up and touch his face. His eyes close. His touch has warmed me from the outside in, and I let the blanket fall even farther away as I trace the outline of his jaw, trail my fingers across his cheek.

He threads his fingers through mine. But then he pulls them away, draws them down, and holds them in the space between us. But he doesn't let mine go. Instead, he grips them tighter. I see him swallow—his Adam's apple moving down his throat.

“I don't want you to think you'll never get off this island,” he says, still looking at our hands in his lap. Then he picks his gaze up slowly and meets mine. I see it all written there before he even says it. “I don't want you to think you'll never see him again.”

I don't know what is happening here. How much of what I feel for Noah is what I always have, coming to the surface and spilling over after all these years, or if it's that I know deep down we might be here forever.

I take my hands away from his. “I don't know what to think,” I say. And then I get brave, because why not? “But, Noah, this isn't just about now.”

Noah laughs. It's not what I was expecting. “Of course it is. August, we're on a magical deserted island together, and your boyfriend might be dead.”