Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories (18 page)

The kids picked up energy as they went. Meredith raced over to one of the fingers of boulders that protruded from the shore into the lake, and Mya and Cody darted after her. Dorrie stayed with the little kids as I followed.

“Here I come!” Meredith shouted, and leapt into the water. She emerged with a laugh, droplets gleaming in her braided hair. Mya slithered in after her, but Cody hesitated and glanced toward me.

“You want to jump together?” I suggested, offering my hand. After a moment, he smiled and took it.

“One... two...”

“Three!” he finished for me, and we sprang off the algae-slick rock into the waves.

The lake wasn’t deep there—I hit the water wide to stop myself from plummeting. Cody dogpaddled around me, his smile stretching into a grin.

“Bet you can’t catch me!” Mya called.

“Bet I can!” he retorted, and pushed off the rocks in pursuit.

Paulette was floating starfish-style, gazing up at the sky. Meredith dove down to the bottom and tugged on my foot. The toddlers stomped along the shoreline beside Dorrie, the other little ones wading in to their waists. They patted their hands against the surface, watching the spray of drops sparkling in the sun, and spun around with bursts of giggles. Farther back, Mason shaded his eyes as he and Howard watched.

Mya and Cody swam back toward me, Mya trying to hide behind me, Cody dodging one way and then the other. He tapped her arm.

“Got you!” he crowed.

“Climb up,” I said, motioning to my shoulders. I helped Mya clamber on and propelled her off into the water.

“My turn,” Cody declared, and I launched him too. He stayed under for one anxious heartbeat too long, and then came up sputtering and beaming. I forced myself to exhale slowly as he and Mya kicked toward Meredith in the shallower water. He was okay.

He looked like a real part of the group for the first time since he’d joined us.

As I trailed behind, I realized that for the last several minutes I’d forgotten why we were here. Forgotten to dwell on the home we’d left fleeing the friendly flu, on the boy lying sick back in the condo building. It looked like the kids had too. Those troubles weren’t gone, but for this brief sliver of time we were just people taking joy in the water. The shadows hadn’t followed us here. And it was fun that had chased them away, not guns or locked doors or solemn plans.

We were relearning how to breathe.

“Leo,” Meredith said, swimming a little farther out, “can you touch the bottom here?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, and plunged after her.

Later, as we were walking back wrapped in our towels, Cody turned to me. “Now that I’ve got the vaccine, do you think I could go hang out with Owen a little?”

I opened my mouth with the instinct to discourage him, but I caught myself. Why stop him from giving his friend some comfort in what were probably Owen’s last days—the way Cody hadn’t been able to comfort his mom? Nell would shield him from the worst.

“That’s a nice idea,” I said. “He might not be... really himself—you know that, right?”

Cody nodded, with a twist of his mouth. “I just thought he must be getting really bored, on his own.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He probably is. When we get back, I’ll tell Nell you want to see him, so she can come get you when it’s a good moment.”

By the time I made it back to the apartment, Meredith had already changed and run off to rejoin the other kids. “It looks like you all enjoyed yourselves,” Kaelyn said.

I ran my hand over my still damp hair, sunscreen smell drifting from my skin. A sense of home, transplanted here.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think it was good for them.”

“
You’re
good for them,” she said, giving me that quietly bright smile that could melt me in an instant. It hit me, in a way it hadn’t really before, that she was right.

I’d given them what no one else had thought to.

Then she lowered her gaze, looking almost embarrassed. “There was something you said, a while ago... It occurred to me that this might help.” She picked up a book I hadn’t noticed sitting on the kitchen island—one of her journals—and offered it to me.

“The first entry, it’ll explain what it is,” she said.

I opened the well-worn cover.

Sept 2

Leo,

It’s about six hours since you left the island.

My fingers tensed around the journal as her voice from several months ago spoke about her regrets—not coming to see me off, letting our rift linger on that long—and her promise to be braver. When I reached the end of the entry, I glanced up at her. She was resting her hand awkwardly on the counter, a hint of a blush in her cheeks, but she looked right back at me.

I loved this girl. So much.

“Kae...”

“That isn’t the important part,” she said. “I just wanted you to know why I started writing first. The part I really think you should see is...” She took the journal, flipped through the creased pages to a spot she’d bookmarked with a scrap of paper, and handed it back. “When I was sick.”

Oct 24

You know how people in books and movies make deathbed confessions?

I didn’t want to think about Kaelyn sick, about how close she’d come to dying—but I kept reading. And, as I absorbed the words, my dread faded.

I remembered the day she’d written about: the summer we were fourteen, the walk along the beach, the kid who’d stopped us with his pointed questions. Reaffirming that we were bound together not just by friendship but by the respective colors of our skin, as islanders but outsiders. I’d had no idea how Kaelyn had felt, though.

This time, as I stood there looking at you, it made me want to kiss you...

I wanted you to be more than my best friend.

After I’d made it back to the island from New York and seen her and realized how close I’d come to losing her, how much
I
wanted her, I’d wondered how long that feeling had been growing inside me without me noticing. Whether that was why I’d been so particularly stung by the things she’d said to me in the heat of that one argument, years ago. Somehow I’d never considered that she might have had similar feelings.

You’re going to spend the rest of your life believing our friendship meant nothing to me, when really the problem was I cared too much.

“I didn’t know,” I said quietly when I put the journal down. Kaelyn took it, turned it in her hands, and set it down again.

“I sort of told you,” she said. “When we got to Atlanta—when we first really kissed?”

I had a vague memory of some mention of fourteen. “I think I was too caught up in the kissing part to be paying much attention to anything else,” I admitted.

She laughed. “Fair enough. I guess it’s been hard to talk a lot about anything that happened... before. I’m never sure how much it’s going to hurt, bringing things up. For me or the person I’m talking to.”

“Yeah,” I said. There were so many questions I’d thought of asking her but hadn’t, for the same reason. I put my arm around her, hugging her to me. “Maybe we should stop worrying about that. Maybe if we talk about it more, it’ll hurt less.” Casting light on the shadows. Letting go of the breaths we’d been holding.

“I’m starting to think so.” She looked up at me. “So that’s what I meant before, when I said us being together is just about us, not anyone else. You meant that much to me before I’d ever met Gav. What I felt, for him—it’s two separate things.”

In that moment, I saw all my love reflected back in the warmth of her gaze. No shadows, no blurring. Just her and me. Just
us
.

It was possible she’d never seen echoes of what might have been when she looked at me. Maybe that had been in my head too.

“Okay,” I said, and this time I completely meant it. I touched her cheek, kissed her, let my head rest against hers. The room was quiet around us, but there was music here all the same, if you knew how to listen for it.

“Dance with me?” I said, without any doubt how she would answer.

She didn’t speak, just set her hand in mine.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
here are two sets of people who deserve most of my thanks here:

To the Toronto Speculative Fiction Writers Group—specifically, Senaa Ahmed, Arvin Gupta, Lorne Kates, Stacy King, Gale Merrick, Carolyn Moore, and Siri Paulson—for offering feedback on these stories when I needed it and getting me on track where I went astray.

And to the Fallen World trilogy’s readers, who stuck with me and Kaelyn all the way through our journey, and have so often send kind words and support my way. These stories literally would not exist without you.

Thank you all, immensely.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L
ike many authors, Megan Crewe finds writing about herself much more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts: she lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family and three cats (and does on occasion say “eh”); she tutors teens with special needs; and—thankfully—the worst virus she’s caught so far is the garden-variety flu. She is the author of the Fallen World trilogy (
The Way We Fall, The Lives We Lost
, and
The Worlds We Make
) as well as
Earth & Sky
and
Give Up the Ghost
. Visit her online at
www.megancrewe.com
.