“The Dead of Summer is like a Mike Flanagan movie: visceral and unsettling. The perfect creepy read!”—TIFFANY D. JACKSON, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Blood

“La Sala is back with a fresh new freakshow! Not only is The Dead of Summer a terrifying, fast-paced, maritime body horror, it’s a timely plea to embrace your community when you can no longer trust those in charge. This is one beach read that will have you sprinting away from the ocean!”—ADAM SASS, award-winning author of Your Lonely Nights Are Over

“A blistering tale of seaside horrors unleashed upon a beloved queer community, The Dead of Summer combines intricate plot with unforgettable characters. Every Ryan La Sala book is a gem.”—TRANG THANH TRAN, New York Times bestselling author of She Is a Haunting

“Ryan La Sala’s The Dead of Summer is a coastal New England fever dream that is equal parts heart-rending and horrifying. As in his previous work, La Sala masterfully balances elements of humor and horror to create a story that is as propulsive as it is poignant. Often told through a chilling epistolary lens, the truth behind what happened to the residents of Anchor’s Mercy is pieced slowly together, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions in a way that will keep them guessing up until the breathtaking end.”—KELLY ANDREW, New York Times bestselling author of I Am Made of Death

“Ryan brings their A-game with The Dead of Summer. As much a work of art stylistically as it is structurally, Ryan’s sharp, signature prose reminds us all of the siren-song power of their craft. An engrossing read that’ll absolutely pull you under.” —KOSOKO JACKSON, USA Today bestselling author of The Forest Demands Its Due

“The Dead of Summer contains La Sala’s signature multitudes: sometimes delightfully campy, always stomach-turningly horrifying, with dread rising like the tide. The perfect beach read to really get that adrenaline going.”—ANDREW JOSEPH WHITE, New York Times bestselling author of Compound Fracture

“A dark and redolent tale of familial bonds, grief, and a secretive summer camp tucked away in the heart of forests vast and dizzyingly wild. The Honeys creeped me out and I loved every moment of it.”—ERIN A. CRAIG, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrow

★ “Pure horror gold.”—BOOKLIST, starred review

★ “La Sala’s slow plot reveal is gripping, and the narrative’s lush prose crafts both deliciously creepy horror scenes and a nuanced, self-assured protagonist consumed by grief and longing for acceptance.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

★ “This layered, complex, and at times truly disturbing novel creates an ever-heightening level of suspense, ratcheting up to an explosive conclusion that readers will not see coming …”—SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

“Unnerving, intricate, and glittering with La Sala’s trademark wit. You’ll be scared of your own reflection after this one.”—RORY POWER, New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls

“Beholder takes readers through a glass darkly and into a spellbinding, spine-tingling world no one but Ryan La Sala could have dreamed up.” —CALEB ROEHRIG, author of Last Seen Leaving

“This book is a wild ride …”—USA TODAY

★ “A top-notch horror novel and a tearjerker.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

TO MY MOM, AND TO MY MOTHERS

Mercy water is clean; Mercy’s beaches are pristine; Mercy oysters are world-famous. But still, the locals get sick. Why?

—“Mercy, Madness, & Malignance” by Doro D’Oliveira

Smile big enough and you’ll end up with tears on your teeth!

My mom told me that. I used to think she meant that happiness and sadness are sometimes simultaneous, but as I stand on the back of the ferry bound for Anchor’s Mercy, watching the mainland vanish bite by bite into the hungry horizon, I know better.

We were never supposed to return to Anchor’s Mercy—our tiny island off the coast of Maine. People who get sick rarely make it back, and my mom was sick sick. But then my mom got better—I mean, Gracie got better. She insists her near-death experience has put us on a first-name basis now. And Gracie decided we were returning home, despite my fears. Don’t be silly, Ollie-baby, an island can’t make a person sick. You don’t really believe those old stories, do you? she protested to my protests. Not everyone gets to go home from the cancer ward. Don’t you want to go home? Don’t you want to have the best summer ever?

And I do, don’t I?

So these days, I’ve gotten good at smiling for Gracie, smiling biiiiig enough that she doesn’t catch me when I cry. I don’t know why I still cry—her leukemia responded to the chemotherapy, her treatments worked, we get to go home. Things are good again, right?

But nothing good ever lasts. Every smile ends in tears. A smile is a threat to you and to me.

“You can’t spell threat without treat.” I toss these words into the wind knowing it’ll rip them up, but to my horror someone answers.

“Let me guess. Old sailor’s saying?”

I almost scream. It’s an older boy with a crisp, golden buzz cut and dimpled cheeks already bitten pink by the sun. His eyes are the same frothed green as the sea churning in the ferry’s wake. The way they look at me—curious, a little surprised—tells me he’s been trying to get my attention only I’ve been too busy sulking to notice. I suck in a deep breath, but the diesel from the engines snipes the back of my throat and I bark a cough. The boy laughs and puts a sympathetic hand on my chest, and it works. My cough vanishes and I fall just a little bit in love.

“I’m Sam,” he says.

“Ollie.”

For a second longer Sam keeps one blazing fingertip on my chest. “Ollie. Got it.” Then he surprises me again by asking, “How long have you been playing the piano?”

My fingers freeze on the railing. When I go a long time without playing, the music in my head finds a way out of my fingertips and onto whatever I touch. It’s a nervous habit I’ve had forever, but it’s been way worse lately. Probably everything in Gracie’s hospital room is covered in my fingerprints from all the phantom music I tapped out to accompany our abysmal year. Of course only I can hear it, but somehow this strange boy has been watching me, listening along. I decide to give him a chance.

“Since forever,” I say.

“I play, too. Since I was three. I could tell you were practicing something. Seemed kinda angry. Chopin?”

“I don’t remember.”

Sam’s grin swivels into deviousness. “Play me something else, then. I bet I can guess.”

I feel myself grinning, too. Challenge accepted. I line my hands up on the railing as he hovers over my shoulder, then cast my fingers into a flurry of silent notes. Tchaikovsky’s iconic piano concerto. I keep it deliberate, embellishing nothing, because I want him to guess right. Sam leans in so close that his breath brushes my ear. He smells like sunscreen and the taffy they sell on the ferry. If I turn just a little, his lips would kiss my cheekbone.

“Oh, too easy.”

I stop playing. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. I’ve got it.”

“You’re vamping. You don’t have a clue.” I cross my arms and tap my foot like a cartoon of impatience. The grin on Sam’s lips might be the most thrilling thing I’ve experienced in weeks. Maybe months.

“What do I win if I guess right?”

I want to shake him by the shoulders and shout, Are you flirting with me? Are we going to kiss?

“Satisfaction,” I deadpan.

Something sparks in his eyes. “Seems like a bad idea to wager satisfaction when you don’t know the first thing about me.”

He’s flirting. I want to flirt back, but I remember: Good things never last. Hope is a trap. I withdraw into my perfect blue coolness, turning to the water. “I know all about you, actually. You’re one of the dozens of unaccompanied rich kids on this ferry, bound for your aunt’s beach house for a few wild weeks of macaroni salad and clambakes before you head back to your private school. Right?”

“Damn, Ollie’s got a bite. Are you a boy or a shark?” Sam laughs but doesn’t say I’m wrong. We watch the wake, a ribbon of churned water trailing off into oblivion. The mainland is gone now. I hide my unease with a sigh.

“What about you?” Sam asks. “Off to vacation, too?”

This is not a difficult question, but a lie stumbles into my response. “The reverse. I was just on vacation in Portland with my mom for …” I do the math in my head. Gracie got sick last August. We left Anchor’s Mercy last September, right after school started back up. It’s July 19 today. That means we’ve been gone for … ten months?

“… for a bit. We’re on our way home.”

“Whoa, you’re from Anchor’s Mercy?”

“Born and raised townie, yup.”

“And you live there year-round? What about school?”

“There’s a school on the island, believe it or not. The entire curriculum is sea shanties and shell shucking.”

Sam laughs, maybe realizing his surprise is slightly belittling.

“So you’ve seen the legendary Sea and Fire Festival?” he asks.

My eyebrows lift. The Sea & Fire Festival happens in February. In the offseason. People build bonfires on the beach all along the bay, creating a smoldering chain against the wintry ocean. When it started, no one knows, but it’s a very townie thing.

“How do you know about that?” I ask.

Sam plays innocent. “Who, me? I’m just a rich kid bound for his aunt’s beach house, remember? Anyway, back to our competition. The song you were playing was—”

Clang! A hand barnacled in silver rings slaps the railing between Sam and me, and a plastic cup is thrust into my face. It sports a tiny umbrella and its bright blue contents smell like the ferry exhaust plus nuclear sugar.

“Cheers, Ollie-baby!”

It’s my mom—it’s Gracie. She matches the drink, with a tiny umbrella pushed into her aqua-blue wig. I told her to wear her normal wig, but she said, I’m done letting my sickness define me. It’s time for the real Gracie to live.

“We should be able to see the water tower soon! And the captain says there might be a pod of whales coming up. Oh, the adventure is already beginning. To our grand return!” Gracie knocks her own cup into mine. I’m caught between wanting to hide my mom from this boy and wanting to hide this boy from my mom. Maybe I should just hurl myself overboard. Keep it simple. Instead, I smile. Smile big and sip my drink.

I cough it back up. “Mom, this is tequila!”

“Sorry, Ollie-baby. The ferry bar doesn’t serve piña coladas anymore—I asked.”

“No. I mean this has alcohol.”

“Well, yes, it’s called a Blue Lagoon Margarita? We’re celebrating!”

“I’m seventeen? And it’s not even noon?”

“So? We’re on a boat. Maritime law applies.” Gracie has finally noticed Sam, and she’s putting on a little show. “Besides, when I was your age I was serving shots to go-go boys at the Last Hail Mary, and do you know what Mary paid me in? More shots. And occasionally crabs. Actual living crabs she kept in a bucket beneath the bar for when a tourist got curious and ordered the Mercy Mai Tai Special. Nothing funnier than watching a mainlander go soft at the sight of a crab swimming in their drink! That’s how she got the name Scary Mary. Bet you didn’t know that, Ollie-Ollie-Knows-It-All!”

I knew that. Every townie on Anchor’s Mercy has covered a shift at Hail Mary’s at some point, and the story is practically the only staff training. Has anyone seen it happen? No. Still, for Gracie’s sake, I laugh and take a big, burning gulp of the drink. My face twists up and Sam laughs at my expense. The traitor! Maybe I am not so in love, after all.

Gracie turns to Sam and brushes back her blue plastic hair, awaiting an introduction.

“Oh, Sam, this is …”

Gracie stares at me, eyes twinkling. Is she my mom? Or is she Gracie? Ever since her recovery, it’s like she shed her old self, the self that got sick, and invented this diabolically bubbly persona, who sat me down and said, We have a fresh start, Ollie, but this time I want us to be friends. No more Mom, okay? Just call me Gracie. I love Gracie, I am so grateful for Gracie, I am lucky she survived. But sometimes, in moments like this, I feel a terrible loss anyway. And I think a terrible thought: I want my mom back.

I take a deep breath and finally say, “This is the legendary proprietor of Singing House. And the hottest hands on Anchor’s Mercy. You should hear her sing-along medleys. They’re famous at all the piano bars in town.”

“Gracie Jo Veltman, at your service!” Gracie curtsies. “I know I don’t look it, but I’m also Ollie’s mom.”

Sam responds with just the right amount of doubt to flatter a giggle out of Gracie. I rush the moment along. “This is Sam. We just met.” I search for any detail other than the rich kid fact. “He has played the piano since he was three.”

“I’m at Manhattan School of Music now,” Sam says with a boastful little bow.

Shit. If I knew he was a conservatory kid, I never would have let him meet Gracie. It’s too late now. The twinkle in Gracie’s eye explodes into a mini big bang. “Oh, you must come to Singing House! We’ve got the most beautiful upright Steinway. It’s been in the family since my grandpa moved to Anchor’s Mercy in the sixties. I swear the sea breeze makes it play like something special.”

Sam quirks an eyebrow. “I’d love to but … what is Singing House?”

Gracie bats at him. “Don’t be silly, everyone knows Singing House. How long are you staying? Where are you staying?”

“For a few weeks, and my aunt’s place,” Sam says.

“Who’s your aunt? She lives here?”

“No, not right now.”

“She sick?”

Sam quirks his head, not understanding the question, confirming he definitely isn’t from the island. “She’s seasonal.”

Gracie reels back like Sam has sneezed in her face.

“Seasonal? Don’t tell me she has one of those big empty houses out in the dunes, does she? Oh god, I’m being rude. Obviously she does. Is she with you? Do you know where she keeps her will? Are you a homosexual? You know, Ollie here is single and about to hear back from his own conservatory auditions. Very eligible. And very charming when he’s not scowling, like he is right now.”

“Mom. Please.” I attempt to halt Gracie, but it’s full steam ahead on the embarrassment express.

“Ollie, relax, we’re just having fun! When Sam comes over, we should invite Bash and Elisa, too. A reunion of the notorious Suds! Sam, you’ll have a million friends by sundown. And if Ollie isn’t your type—”

Blessedly, the ferry lets out a BWAAAAAAAAAAM. I pray the horn is loud enough to eradicate everything Gracie just said from Sam’s head.

“There it is! Home sweet home!” Gracie grabs my hand and pulls me toward the front of the boat and the opposite horizon, where a shining mist has gathered. On the wind I can already hear the music of seagulls, surf, and joyful screams. We leave Sam behind in the scramble, but my mom doesn’t slow down. Heaven on earth awaits, and Gracie is determined to get there first.

Anchor’s Mercy is, scientifically speaking, cursed. During field trips to the island’s oceanographic studies institute, we learned about the peculiar currents and winds that wreath it, making it perilous to sail to and even harder to escape. The result is a rather gruesome history of maritime mayhem. Deep below the waves, rocking in a timeless dark, the ocean floor bristles with shipwrecks that never seem to settle. Without their ships, the ghosts of sailors and captains roam the waves as restless fog. The name they gave our island—Anchor’s Mercy—has made it clear that in these dark waters, there’s simply nowhere else to go.

I don’t know about all that, but the weather part is definitely true. Always, always, always, the island hides in an ethereal haze. It tingles in my eyelashes as Gracie rushes me to the boat’s bow, now mobbed with people trying to get the perfect picture as the island appears to rise out of the sea itself. I try to pull Gracie back (we were told to avoid crowds because of her weak immune system), but she shoves right through a gaggle of women swarming the railing. One of them—dressed all in white—is screaming.

“There was a whale, Dakota. You made me miss a fucking whale! This is not the start of my special weekend I had in mind.”

She’s wearing a pink sash that says BRIDE TO BE in bold black letters, and she’s yelling at a wobbly redhead in too-high heels. The redhead—poor Dakota—scuttles after with at least five drinks clutched in her hands and a look of terrified enthusiasm frozen to her face. Dakota wears a sash, too. It says MAID OF DISHONOR.

I insert myself as a buffer between the bachelorette party and Gracie, who holds on to her wig and leans dangerously over the railing like she means to sip the ocean spray. If Sam followed us, he’s lost somewhere in the crowd, and I decide to let him go. The next moment is just for me and my mom. As is our tradition, Gracie and I take turns pointing out our favorite sights. The iconic water tower, of course, looming like an alien balloon over the town. The old wharf building with all its pretty flags. The steeple of the library tucked into the taffy-colored houses. The dunes softening the southern edge. The lighthouse floating closer. The bristle of boats bobbing between.

“It’s all still there.” Gracie’s eyes brim with tears, like she expected it to wash away. Frankly, I’m just as surprised. My memories of this place have sunk into a part of my mind I never realized was so dark, and now I can feel them rising up, twisted and ruined. A perfectly timed chill gusts over us.

“It’s getting rocky. I think that storm we saw on the news is coming?”

I’ve got my eye on the dark clouds bruising the southern sky, which the news has named Tropical Storm Raquel. How glamorous. It’s been a stormy storm season, and I secretly prayed Raquel would delay our return, but she did the opposite. Gracie abandoned all our stuff in a moving van scheduled for the later ferry so that we could take this one before the coast guard put out their storm warning and halted boat traffic yet again. Her plan worked. We made the last ferry out, a day ahead of schedule, with nothing but suitcases.

“Aww, since when is my Ollie-baby afraid of a little stormy weather?”

I brush away her hand as she tries to cup my chin. I know that pensive look. I know she’s about to give me one of her dumb life-lesson phrases.

“You know what they say, Ollie. The bigger the storm, the wider the rainbow. Always remember that.”

There it is. A Gracie original. I force my scowl into a smile. To a stranger, I’m sure this seems like a nice moment between mom and son.

It’s something entirely different to me.

Growing up, my mom had a little language of sayings.

A secret is a breath you ask another to hold.

Never cry for fun.

Polish perfects it, but it’s the grit that makes the pearl.

We called these gracioms, like idioms combined with her name. I, and anyone who knew her, could anticipate with near psychic accuracy when she’d say a graciom—and which one. It was just the way she talked. At the same time, she resented all clichés that were not her own. If anyone—even a guest at Singing House—ever dared say It is what it is, Gracie would stop everything just to back them into a corner and demand they answer her. But what is it, actually? Say it. Say what you mean!

I asked her once what the difference was between a graciom and a cliché. She thought about it for only a few seconds before telling me, Well, Ollie-baby, the difference is I’m saying the truth, and those wannabe wisdoms are saying nothing at all. And she was right. My mom’s sayings always meant something true, whereas the other adults I knew used clichés to make sure nothing true ever got said.

This was clearest to me at the fundraisers in the offseason. On Anchor’s Mercy, there is always a fundraiser for someone in the offseason. A lot of funerals, too. My mom and I contributed our piano playing—sometimes organ playing, if the guest of honor was already done up in a casket or an urn at the front of the party—and then stuck around to help clean up. It is what it is, the adults would sigh into their drinks before toasting to another townie lost to some vague ailment, leaving me to wonder: But what is it, actually?

I knew better than to ask my mom. On Anchor’s Mercy, you’re not supposed to notice how often people get sick, how quickly they die, or how ready the island is to move on without them. What you don’t look at can’t see you. It was like playing peekaboo with god. For a while this worked, and we were spared. Then we weren’t.

When Gracie got sick, all her heart and humor hissed like coals smothered in wet sand. She vanished into shame. She forbade a fundraiser of her own. We left Anchor’s Mercy, we left everyone. I understood without asking why I couldn’t tell my friends what was happening, and why no one would visit us on the mainland. I also understood her long silences, which sometimes swallowed entire days. Words always mattered to my mother, and some days were too hard or sad to dignify with small talk. She was dying and she was angry. You can’t talk back to death when it’s already in your bones. There was nothing to say but goodbye. Together, we were waiting for her end.

But she didn’t die! Her chemo worked, and bit by bit she climbed back to life. But she came back … different. Hijacked by this born-anew Gracie hell-bent on positivity, and second chances, and joie de vivre, whatever the fuck that is. And Gracie loved clichés. Not the handcrafted gracioms, but the generic kind you see in home decor stores. Quickly, our apartment was crowded with loud, jazzy decorations shouting positivity at me.

LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE.

IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE.

GOOD VIBES ONLY!

The clichés became inescapable. And then, to my horror, the positivity spread into Gracie’s own personal vocabulary.

Salt water is good for the soul, she said to my academic advisor when they expressed concerns about me moving back to Anchor’s Mercy after only one year on the mainland. I’d barely made any new friends, and the ones I had back on Anchor’s Mercy hated me. I told Gracie and she said, The only ship that’s ever unsunk is the friendship! And then there was her new favorite: My blood type is sea positive. Gracie liked to trot this one out at least once a day, to a barista or a waitress. She even said it to Dr. Rosen, her oncologist, at our final visit. Dr. Rosen’s face had clenched like a fist before forcing a smile as she said, Your island sounds lovely, but if something happens, it’s a big ocean between us. I really would just feel more comfortable if you remained in Portland.

But Gracie’s mind was made up. No argument was any match for her brand-new, bulletproof philosophies. I had my doubts, my fears, my anxieties, but I knew none of it mattered. It was what it was.

We were going home.

You know what they say, Ollie. The bigger the storm, the wider the rainbow. Always remember that.

Gracie settles her shining eyes on me, willing me to absorb this pearl of wisdom alongside all the other pearls she’s choked me with. I feel myself try to smile, but instead I snap.

“You know, just because there’s a rainbow after the storm doesn’t change the fact that a big fucking storm is coming. A rainbow’s no good if we drown.”

Gracie scoffs. “So negative! You know, I worry about you sometimes. Always brooding. Can’t you stay positive? Focus on the beauty of life? For me?”

As if I’m not in a constant state of enforced positivity. For her! I bite back on my argument, tasting the pointlessness. I’m being horrible and I know it. So what if my mom’s got a few canned catchphrases? Why can’t I mimic her good moods? Instead, my insides match the ugly, angry storm churning on the horizon, and if I don’t get it together, I’ll darken everyone’s skies. I smile through it.

“Sorry. You’re right. It’s beautiful.”

Gulls circle the deck, crying for chips and french fries left out by the passengers. I focus on their cries, my hand hovering over the invisible keyboard before me on the railing until I find the note. C-sharp. I press it again and again, until Gracie’s hand closes over mine.

“It’s okay to be nervous. I am, too.”

For a second, Gracie isn’t Gracie. She sounds like my mom again.

“You’re nervous?”

“Like a worm on a hook. What about you?”

It’s hardly anything, but this moment is a tiny treasure to me.

“I’m scared,” I admit. A few tears have been hiding behind my eyes all day, and they finally make a run for it. My mom wipes them away. There is so much I’ve been holding back about my doubts, about what I read online about our island’s trends of sickness, about why I can never face my friends Bash and Elisa again after what happened between us. I want my mom to ask me about all of it, and to really listen, but Gracie smiles instead. Smiles biiiig, and I know she’s going to shut me up with another cliché.

“Don’t be scared, baby. The only ship that unsinks is the friendship!” Gracie wraps me in a hug that smells like alcohol and bubble gum. “We’re going to have the best summer ever, right?”

“Right.”

I love my mother, especially when I hate her, but most of all when I miss her, which is constantly. I hold on to Gracie tight, but then someone elbows me in the back hard.

“Hey—” I’m cut off by a chorus of shrieks. It’s the bachelorette party, jostling us aside as they try to snap their thousandth selfie.

“Dakota, you’re missing it! Hurry! Get the lighthouse. The lighthouse!” The bride flaps her hand at Dakota—poor Dakota—who is juggling three phones.

“Wait!” one of them yells. “Shouldn’t Dakota be in the photo, too?”

The group gleefully rearranges, shoving Dakota into the middle, then looks around with dismay as no one takes their picture. Like a giant spider, all their eyes land on Gracie and her bright blue wig.

“Do you mind? Do you mind?” they all ask at once.

Gracie shoves her drink at me and says, “Certainly, ladies. Let’s see some smiles!”

Oh no. I brace myself. Gracie is no good at photos. She gets way too close, causing the bachelorette party to physically recoil, and then she takes just one photo. Sinful.

“Get the lighthouse,” the bride barks, and I nearly toss both drinks at her. No one snaps at my mom but me! But before I can say anything, Sam reappears.

“May I?” He swipes the phone from Gracie, but he’s a perfect gentleman about it. Everyone relaxes as he snaps a jillion photos of the bachelorette party. Another! Another! Now a silly one! The ladies pose and pose and pose, and I protectively drag Gracie behind me.

“How fun,” she says, but she sounds smaller now. Unsure.

“Get the big boat,” demands the bride, pointing.

What boat? My eyes pass through the bachelorette party and return to the darkening horizon, where a massive, ghost-white boat has appeared. It has a giant red cross on the side, bloody and bright as a fresh brand. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a naval hospital ship. But what is it doing here?

Sam is at my side, easily chatting with Gracie as the ferry sidles up to the pier. Welcoming parties clot the wooden dock, waving us in.

Gracie tugs at my arm. “Oh, Ollie, do you see Bash and Elisa? Did you let them know we made the early ferry?”

This is the question I have been dreading most, the one I know I can’t smile through.

“Who are Bash and Elisa?” Sam asks.

Gracie answers as she waves at random people. “Ollie’s best friends. Everyone calls them the Suds ’cause they’re always stuck together, like bubbles, and slippery as hell when they’re in trouble. Which is all the time. Oh, you’ll love them. Elisa has all the boys on their knees, and Bash probably could, too—he’s as handsome as our Ollie, everyone says—but he’s timid. More nervous than a deer in dune grass, that Bash. Honestly, Ollie, I’m surprised he and Elisa didn’t visit us, but I guess I can’t blame them. Between school and college applications and working for their families all summer. Hey, Ollie-baby, are you going to get your old job back at Pizza Monster?”

“Pizza Monster?” Sam asks, intrigued.

“Where are they?” Gracie’s waving has slowed. “Maybe they think we caught the late boat?”

“I’ll go grab our stuff,” I say, burrowing my way backward into the crowd, past bikes and strollers and at least a dozen seasick dogs. Gracie is wrong; no mistake has been made. Anchor’s Mercy is tiny enough that I’m sure the whole island knows this is the last ferry for the weekend. Maybe that’s why everything feels so electric, and final, and important, like we’re all riding one big, last chance. And add in a tropical storm? A flutter of dread pulses in the soft skin behind my ears.

No, I stop myself. Be happy. You are going to have the best summer ever. Or else.

I reach the back deck and I’m alone. Finally. Without anyone to smile for, I permit myself one last look out to sea before the storm takes it all away. I find myself watching that strange white ship on the horizon, its immensity punched out of the sky like a hole in heaven. It scares me, but I shove this new fear down, too. Down, into my own fathomless depths. By the time I find our suitcases, the ship is forgotten, but a ripple of anxiety remains.

“Get ready to live, laugh, love like your life depends on it, Ollie,” I tell myself as I lug our suitcases to the lower deck.

But something flickers in my depths, something rising from my darkness for a fleeting, frigid moment. A question: If this is our brand-new beginning, why does it feel like it’s about to end all over again?

Then it’s gone, and I step off the ferry.

Into the best summer ever.

AUGUST 13

23 DAYS AFTER

22:08

I watched a woman drown today. She was not in water. She was standing in a room, begging for help, as the water within her overwhelmed her lungs. No one helped. There is something very wrong happening aboard this ship.

I have to write quickly. At night. I am a PhD student studying at University. My real name is , but my code name within this mission is QUERENT-2. Defined, it is a person who asks question. I don’t dare ask what became of QUERENT-1.

I do not know if I, or this notebook, will ever make it out of the laboratories aboard the USNS Embrace. Still, my training compels me to keep a notebook of my process and findings. This notebook was not provided to me. No one knows I am keeping it. But even in secrecy, science is science. I am beginning this notebook to compile my own conclusions about the contagion that has overtaken the island of Anchor’s Mercy.

Three days ago men in white uniforms knocked on my office door at my lab in , . Ordered me to pack only a few essentials and then escorted me to a military airport, then a helicopter. Told me only that I had been conscripted to work aboard a top-secret laboratory off the coast of Maine. Asked if I had heard of the island of Anchor’s Mercy. I said yes. Asked me if I had seen the news about the disaster. I said of course.

Here is the story most people know and believe:

• On July 19, twenty-five days ago, Tropical Storm Raquel made a direct hit to the island of Anchor’s Mercy—a popular summer destination off the coast of Maine famous for its shellfish and drag queens.

• July 23: Anchor’s Mercy was put under emergency quarantine, and communication with the mainland ceased. No ships allowed in or out. No details about the nature of disease or origin. Only that it seemed to spread across the island overnight, shore to shore, as though the sea itself had grown sick.

• July 24: The US Navy hospital ship USNS Embrace was deployed to provide medical care for an unknown pathogen.

• July 29: The CDC first announced an emergency effort to evacuate survivors onto the USNS Embrace, but less than a week later on August 3, abruptly declared the entire population of the island lost.

Not dead, not dying, but lost.

• The last ten days: TV memorials, tearful celebrity tribute videos, and rampant speculation. The disaster was dubbed the Mercy Killings by the headlines, and gradually the news cycle began to move on. Anchor’s Mercy was, after all, a predominantly queer summer destination. That a sickness bloomed there, and that it spread fast, seemed to satisfy a dark expectation in the American mind about who gets sick and who deserves to die. The nation turned away from the lost souls of Anchor’s Mercy, grateful they had taken their sickness with them. Others were not so hasty. In the absence of any further updates from the USNS Embrace, online conspiracies flourished. Was it bioterrorism unleashed? A classified experiment ending in slaughter? A supernatural plague? The rapture?

As a scientist, I strive to remove myself from the desperate theater of outlandish theories … but then, riding in the helicopter, the island came into sight through a bank of gray fog. The USNS Embrace remained inert, stark white and immense, dropped into the northern bay. All seafaring traffic had ceased. No fishing. No ferries. Blank sky, not even seagulls circling. No people upon the beaches. No lights shining in the mist. And I thought: The island is a corpse. This ship is its tombstone.

Landing on the Embrace’s helipad, I overheard the men in white—soldiers—discussing a nearly completed evacuation. This surprised me. I asked if there were survivors contrary to what the news had reported. My question was ignored. I was instead brought to the laboratory for orientation.

People in hazmat suits. White lab coats. Standard for a BSL-4 facility, though clearly set up in a rush. I was not yet allowed inside, having to first undergo decontamination, a security briefing, and training. My personal items were seized, including my phone and computer. I was given standard navy fatigues to wear under a Level C hazmat suit, required at all times in the lab setting.

For a few days I was assigned an assistant’s role. A combination of field and laboratory tasks. Then today there was an incident. A “drowning,” they call it, when the infection takes someone. After, a memo was slipped below my cabin door. A new mission. I have been reassigned to an ongoing experiment dubbed TS188. In a biomedical study, TS may stand for test subject. I am surprised. So there is at least one survivor, though the code insinuates they are in some way sick. At the bottom of the memo is a handwritten instruction:

“You have five days. Talk to the TS. Find out everything that he knows before he turns.”

Stranger than this note is the handwriting. I am sure I know it, but there’s no signature. I have begun to wonder who summoned me here. And why. I will keep this dossier in secret.

Tomorrow, my true mission begins.

AUGUST 14

24 DAYS AFTER

11:04

I have just finished my first interview with the boy known as TS188.

They keep the boy apart from the other survivors. Obviously. In a repurposed storage bay deep in the hull, toward the bow of the Embrace. Low ceiling. No windows, no overhead lights. Feels vast and claustrophobic. Only illumination is two torches, which are pilot lights for incendiary precaution devices bolted to the floor at a marked perimeter. Perimeter is red paint in a half circle around the boy’s cot, where he lies with his back to me.

No restraints on the boy. I am told it is all part of the experiment. If he turns and tries to attack me, or even approaches the perimeter, he will burn. His cage is psychological in nature.

The boy: Dark brown curls. Tanned skin. Freckles? Hard to say. Bruises and scrapes cover his back. The medics won’t touch him. They claim he has been exposed, but he has yet to undergo the … ecstatic metamorphosis like the other infected. No growths on the skin yet, either, but it is hard to see him in the dark. All existing test cases indicate it could happen any moment. I have to work fast to learn what he knows. But he is hard to study. Smart. Skeptical. Always joking.

Our interviews are recorded and transcribed by a clicking machine at the desk where I am instructed to sit. I am told to deliver these to the soldiers at the door after each session. They do not know I have kept copies for myself. I hope that by annotating our sessions I can study the boy’s story further. I sense something locked in his words. Something he wants me to know, but not my superiors.

Attached is the transcript of our first session.

AUGUST 14

24 DAYS AFTER

21:26

It is late. The ship is asleep. I cannot stop thinking about what the boy said. I can’t stop scratching my skin. When my escort leaves, I will break curfew. I must know what became of Dr. Romero.

23:43

Back.

The lab was unguarded. Just tape and warning signs. Who would want to go back there? I entered with only a penlight.

The smell: Bleach and burning. And brine. The room: Dank. Salt water. Rotten, like her body was still in there. I tried to turn back, but then I heard voices coming closer. I hid inside the room. Tried to hold my breath. Then I heard her singing.

Her name was Shelly Romero. She sang to herself while she worked. “Broadway is my backup if this whole science thing doesn’t work out,” she said to me on my first day. A joke. I thought of that as my curiosity overtook my fear, and I held up my penlight to see what had happened to Shelly Romero.

It filled the back corner. At its base was a vague human shape, ruptured by growths flowing up the walls and across the ceiling. I automatically catalogued the familiar formations: bubble, elkhorn, foliose, fire. In the wild they grow separately, but here they had all fused together. Glistening with familiar slickness, but colorless now. Bone gray. Dead, like the calcified samples in the lab.

I leaned closer. Could not stop my curiosity. Tapped with my pen. Hard, like crystal. Sharp as cat teeth. So what was singing?

Got too close. My foot slipped and I fell, almost scraping my palm on the growths. From the floor, I snatched up my penlight, and now I saw it differently. Rippling chaos resolved into faces, hands, mouths frozen mid-scream. Dr. Romero’s resemblance echoed upward from her body. The growth was using her form to replicate itself. And that’s what sang: a choir of dead mouths. The sound: like wind ripping over the spouts of empty bottles at the beach.

I listened. Too long. A voice spoke behind me.

“We call it C. imperia. For obvious reasons.”

People surrounded me. Hazmat suits. They used surgical chisels to pry off sections of growth. Blowtorches to burn away the rest. The thing—Dr. Romero—did not flinch as the fire curled its edges away from the glowing metal walls. It was dead, yet its song haunted in the air.

“Now do you understand why I wanted you, specifically, on my ship?”

I understood. I knew the voice. Imogen Pfaff, the director of the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies. My old boss. Of course it’s her. Of course this is her ship, her lab. Her experiment gone horribly wrong. Or right.

I know why I am here now. The boy was correct. About this, and what else?

Tomorrow I meet with him again. I must learn his story. It is the key to all this.

AUGUST 14

24 DAYS AFTER

When Anchor’s Mercy went dark, the news networks scoured social media for clues as to what happened. The above is one of the last known posts from anyone on the island. It’s a photo recovered from the social media of Candice McCormick (third from the left), who was on Anchor’s Mercy for her bachelorette party. In the background, note the USNS Embrace, identifiable due to its size and the red crosses visible even from miles away. This photo was uploaded on July 19, two days before the first estimated outbreaks, and therefore five days before the USNS Embrace was officially deployed to help manage the developing situation. So what was it already doing circling the island, days before anything went wrong?

When I was little—but not so little that I couldn’t hold my own ice-cream cone without dropping it—Gracie and I would sit on the benches of the marina, cones in hand, and watch the ferries come in. She would point out all the interesting people she knew, like past guests of Singing House, or mortal enemies, or celebrities, or dogs she thought looked like celebrities. You never know who might waltz off one of those boats and right into your life, she would say with a wistful sigh. And, inevitably, some long-lost friend of hers would show up, totally unplanned, and she’d insist we all go get lobster rolls.

Today, we are the people waltzing off the boat, and there’s nothing wistful about it. In fact, a lobster roll might kill me. I’m dragging both our suitcases, sweating through my shirt, my head swiveling like a seagull as I search the crowds for anyone from school who might recognize us. Meanwhile, Gracie and Sam chatter away like old friends.

“There’s whale watching and oyster shucking and a shark museum.” Gracie points out the attractions. “Oh, see that pink pontoon? It’s actually the shuttle out to the tip of the bay. That’s the hook of land we passed, with the lighthouse. It’s the best-kept townie secret on Anchor’s Mercy. Right, Ollie-baby?”

“Right.”

“You’ll looooove Singing House.” I wince every time Gracie drags on Sam’s arm. “It’s right in town, right in the heart of it all. Ollie’s friends practically move in every summer. Ollie, remember that year Elisa declared squatter’s rights to one of the guest rooms? Sam, you’ll love Elisa. Like vinegar chased with sunshine. Her dad runs Marine Supply. You said you came here when you were little, yes? You probably remember it? Big old store just full of everything from shells to machetes.” She barely pauses as Sam nods. “Anyway, usually we’re all booked up in the summer season, but it’ll be just family for the next few weeks as we fix things up. If you get lonely in that rambling house, you’re welcome to come stay with us for a few nights. No charge.” And she winks. Like, actually winks.

My throwaway crush on Sam is somehow already deepening past the point of excusability. It doesn’t help that he keeps glancing at me. Is he feeling inspired or entrapped? I know he could just run away, but he seems genuinely interested in Gracie’s ramblings.

“You must have quite the luck.” Gracie’s bracelets jingle as she conducts her tour. “Striking up a conversation with the owner of an empty bed-and-breakfast during the busy season.”

“That is lucky.”

Gracie doesn’t say that the reason the bed-and-breakfast is empty is because everyone, herself included, assumed she’d be dead by now. But sure, let’s call it lucky.

“The sea is full of fortune for those that dive right in,” Gracie pronounces. “We call it Mercy magic. Right, Ollie-baby?”

I know my lines here. “Right. Mercy magic. That’s just how things work around here.”

This, I have to admit, is real. On Anchor’s Mercy there does seem to be a nauseatingly high amount of serendipity. Practically speaking it’s hard to avoid anyone or anything for too long on such a small island, but it’s more fun to think of it like an invisible tide, playing unknowable games of push and pull, floating you toward not what you want, but what you need. I never thought much about it. I only really cherished it once it was gone. Not a ton of magic to be found in the MaineHealth Cancer Care building, and what little we brought with us got rubbed off pretty damn fast. Now that I’m back on the island, I feel it again, plucking at my clothes, asking me to play, but I’m scared of what it might bring me.

Or who.

At the end of the pier, we walk through a rotunda bordered in grab-’n’-go restaurants and souvenir shops. Distant music grows suddenly close as a beat-up, hot-pink Jeep rips the crowd apart and lurches to a stop inches from Gracie.

“Is that Little Miss Mercy 1993?” the driver shouts.

“WILLY!” Gracie screams. A man swings out of the Jeep and scoops her up into a hug, literally halting traffic. I’m next. I groan as he crushes me in a hug that reminds me he was in the army for a mysterious amount of time before moving to work at the piano bars in town. Then he steps back to look at me.

“A twink? Still?”

Willy hasn’t changed at all, either. He is the same tall, deeply tanned man with a buzz cut, muscular arms decorated with blurry tattoos, and bootcut jeans that have swerved in and out of style since well before I was born. He smells like cheap sunscreen despite no evidence that he’s ever used a drop of it. He’s my old piano teacher, and my mom’s best friend, and the closest thing Anchor’s Mercy has to a mayor.

Sam thrusts out a hand. “Sam Hale, sir.”

The respect makes Willy’s eyes crinkle, and he bats the handshake away. “Not too generous with the sirs around here, kid,” Gracie jokes. While we load up the car, Gracie describes Sam as a new friend whose aunt has a place off in the dunes. Willy gets what she means right away—the kid comes from money—but years of bartending keep Willy’s face warm and unaware. Gracie adds, “He plays piano. He’s promised Singing House several songs. Right, Sam?”

“For sure.”

Willy approves. “Well, then, welcome to our island. Need a ride?”

“It’s cool, I was just gonna take a cab.”

Willy and Gracie erupt in protest. A cab? All the way out to the dunes? Preposterous! There’s no point resisting. I grab up Sam’s bag and toss it in the Jeep, and then we squeeze together into the back seat. There’s barely enough room to not touch knees and it’s hot as shit, but once the windows drop and Willy fires up his speakers—he’s got a Celine Dion megamix ready for Gracie—it’s kind of perfect.

“You have been missed, my dear,” Willy says as he tosses an arm over Gracie’s shoulders. “Both of you. It’s been positively dreary without the Veltmans and their magical Singing House. A shroud has been cast over the people of Mercy. A pall. The birds won’t sing. The oysters won’t open. Our top scientists are perplexed. Imogen Pfaff is—”

“Imogen Pfaff?” Gracie cackles. “God, I remember when she got that director job at the institute a million years ago. She’s still here?”

“And drunker than ever. Just the other day she delivered the world’s wobbliest rendition of ‘No Good Deed’ from Wicked. A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

Gracie gasps. “She did not! Where?”

“Where else?”

Together, Willy and Gracie groan: “Hail Mary’s.”

And, like the cursed structure that it is, the dark wooden face of the Last Hail Mary is suddenly staring us down. It’s right at the main intersection where traffic halts so hordes of sunburnt families can pass.

“Still standing,” Gracie says with admiration. “How is Mary, anyway?”

“Hanging in there, but she’s off her feet for now. Not sure she’ll be getting back up this time, but as always we’re hoping for the best, whatever that may be.”

My ears perk up. The ancient and unsinkable Scary Mary is sick? A year ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about this exchange, but I’m different now, and my ears hear old things in new ways. The world of Anchor’s Mercy has changed keys, and there’s a foreboding minor chord hiding in what the adults won’t say.

I lean forward. “What is Mary sick with?”

Willy looks to Gracie, like it’s up to her to handle this, which she does with a rare frown. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Just some adult talk.”

“I can handle it.”

“Ollie, don’t be rude.”

Gracie stares me down, and I want to snatch the stupid blue wig off her head. Rude? Is she really going to treat me as a kid, as if I didn’t sit by her for the last ten months for every single adult talk between her, the nurses, and the doctors? I slump back next to Sam. Willy turns the music up, but I keep listening.

“How long?” Gracie asks.

“Maybe a month. Could be weeks. I visit her on Sundays. You should come say hi.”

“Who’s managing the bar?” Gracie asks.

“We all pitch in.”

“I’ll swing by for the brunch shifts this weekend. Lend a hand. Just until Mary’s back to her old self.”

“You’re a doll, Gracie Jo. A doll.”

I lock this conversation up in my head with a few other thoughts that have been slow-boiling my insides. And I decide right here and now that I will get to the bottom of what the adults won’t talk about. For now, though, I need to play host for Sam’s sake.

We briefly glimpse the bustle of Main Street—beachy boutiques, seafood shacks, candy shops advertising authentic saltwater taffy. A drag queen in a giant red wig stands out front of Willy’s bar, Scuttlebutt’s. She’s waving flyers for tomorrow’s drag brunch. She blows us a kiss as we pass.

“Isn’t it a little early for drag queens?” Sam asks.

Willy laughs. “Ollie, educate your friend.”

“The drag queens run this place,” I say. “Most of them have worked back-to-back brunches, and they won’t rest until the bars close late at night. The devil works hard, but the drag queens of Anchor’s Mercy work harder.”

“Oh, Ollie, you should give Sam a tour! You loved doing that when you were little.”

“Later.” I say it too fast, and Sam narrows his eyes. “I mean, I just want to get home first, but we can explore after, okay?”

Willy turns off Main Street. Thank god. I want to eavesdrop more, but Gracie is determined to get me talking. Dutifully, I drift into my smiling autopilot and do my best to give Sam all the fun facts about town. We’re in the historic district now, where all the houses have names. Here is the Admiral’s House, with the haunted widow’s walk! And there’s Bunter House, named for the owner’s beloved dog, now deceased yet taxidermied somewhere inside, or at least that’s the legend. And that is Maison Voiles, a pretentious little inn Gracie always sticks her tongue out at because they copied our sea-glass stained windows. Oh, and who could forget the little bookshop called the Mermaid’s Tale, locked into a decades-old feud with the piano bar right next to it, called the Mermaid’s Tail? The barstools are shaped like glittering fishtails.

And then, quite suddenly, my tide of fun facts has crashed us onto the shores of Singing House. The car slows out of respect.

The bed-and-breakfast hasn’t changed in any obvious way—it’s the same grand wraparound porch and double doors with sea-glass windows, the same soft pink Victorian facade trimmed with pearly-white gingerbread work, the same jagged roofline of gables, dormers, and turrets that always seemed to fit, like a key, against the beveled clouds of the bay. The garden is still a soft mutiny of hydrangeas, and the wisteria has made progress in its annual consumption of the parlor’s bay windows, but the overgrowth just adds to the house’s feral dreaminess. If anything, Singing House looks even more like itself, like a vision from my childhood. Yet there is something terrible about it, too, though I can’t place exactly what until Willy kills the Jeep’s engine.

It’s too quiet.

There’s no creak from the rocking chairs on the porch as a trio of white-haired lesbians play cards. No squealing front door as matching muscular men stroll out for the night, cackling into their to-go cocktail cups. No one leaning out the upstairs windows, calling down to an old friend they haven’t seen in years who just happened to be strolling by, drawn into the house’s whimsy.

No laughter, no chatter, no piano music tinting the breeze, inviting you in.

We ease around back, to the patio connecting Singing House to several smaller (though just as charming) boardinghouses. They’re in far poorer shape, showing signs of storm damage worsened by the lush rot of summer. A few windows are boarded up, making it all feel abandoned.

While we unpack the Jeep, Willy goes through a list of damages he’s been meaning to get to. Gracie may or may not be listening. She floats around the patio like a lost dandelion puff.

I reach for her. “Don’t worry. We’ll get this fixed up in no time. Aside from the cottages, it doesn’t look so bad.”

Like clockwork, Gracie’s face clicks into a smile, and she takes her hand away. “Bad? Let’s hold off on the nitpicking, okay? There’s so much to be grateful for, isn’t there? Let’s try to focus on that!”

I wasn’t nitpicking, was I? How does she expect to fix any of this if she won’t even acknowledge what’s wrong? Her positivity feels impossible in moments like this, but I can’t say that. I can’t say anything, apparently.

The back door opens with a loud slap and out rushes a woman with her cell phone raised, filming like she’s at a concert. Aunt Maddie, forever in clay-stained jeans, button-ups, and year-round tactical sandals she sometimes—right now included—wears over socks.

“Well, if it isn’t our very own living proof! Welcome home, you rugged bitch!” Maddie circles Gracie like she’s paparazzi, capturing the moment. Fresh hellos and hugs are exchanged, and of course Maddie casts an impressed look between Sam and me.

“Caught yourself a cute one, didn’t ya, Orlando?”

“You guys are gonna scare him off,” I whine, but it’s clear Sam is having the time of his life getting a backstage pass to the most dysfunctional family on Anchor’s Mercy. I’m amazed at his durability but aware we’ve got to let him go home at some point. I cut into the jabber. “Rain’s coming. Willy, can I use the Jeep to run Sam the rest of the way to his aunt’s?”

Take it, I think. This is your chance to run! But Sam hesitates a moment too long, and the adults are on him again, screaming.

“Nonsense!”

“Come in, come in!”

“Ollie, don't be rude to our guest.”

“I’d actually love to see inside,” Sam says. “My aunt always said these old houses had a lot of character.”

Characters is more like it, I think, but I can’t deny it’s a little fun showing Sam around. Plus, the longer he’s here, the longer I have a human shield from all the questioning I know Willy and Aunt Maddie have been saving up. Questions about school this past year, and college applications, and auditions. Questions I absolutely do not want to answer.

The adults race ahead as Sam and I drag the suitcases up the back porch. He notices my silence and, before we go in, he offers an understanding glance.

“My family can be a lot, too. I get it.”

God, that feels nice to hear. I let out a long breath. “Yeah, you’re being a great sport about all this. I can drive you home at any time. Really, just say the word and we’ll sneak away from the circus. They won’t even notice.”

“Are you kidding me? Today has been like one long, private tour. I’m loving it.”

“Don’t you want to see the fun stuff? Like the beaches and the whales and the drag shows?”

“We’ve got all summer. How about we just start with your house?”

I’m not used to someone being so plainly interested in me. It’s exciting and scary and the timing could not be worse, but since when do I get what I want? I know I should say more—to somehow warn Sam off so he can go on exploring the dream of Anchor’s Mercy without the heaviness of my drama—but selfishly, I don’t want him to go.

The bravest thing I can do right now is let him in, and that’s exactly what I do. He pauses in the doorway, and our chests are just inches apart.

“Oh, and by the way, the piece you played on the boat? It was Tchaikovsky, obviously. Piano Concerto Number One.”

I’m holding my breath. He’s right.

“In B-flat minor.” He boops me on the nose. “Show-off. I like that,” he says, and then he whistles his way into Singing House.

Sam rushes inside, but I take a moment to just listen.

Singing House has many songs. There’s the lullaby roar of the ocean, and the glissando of gulls roosting in the upper gables. Footsteps in other rooms send a creaking waltz through the walls and ceiling. The air does something to conversations, too, peeling off the top notes and casting them like copper bells down the curved wooden staircase. My ears catch everything as I stand in the back hall, listening to my memory come back to life.

The adults are already upstairs, shaking the old walls with their laughter as they ricochet between the guest rooms. Sam is way ahead of me in the parlor. I hear him gasp; he’s found the piano.

“Holy shit.” Sam rounds the piano as I enter. It glows in the golden cup of the bay window, and the bench is askew like someone was playing it in a dream until they woke up and vanished. Sam is polite enough not to slide right in, but I suddenly can’t stop myself. I lift the keyboard cover and skim my fingers over the worn keys. Deep in the piano, the wires let out a thrum of recognition. I pluck out a C-sharp and wince.

“She is profoundly out of tune,” I say.

“You have perfect pitch?”

“Unfortunately.”

“How perfect?”

I consider the challenge in his voice. I could let him tap out notes and name them with my eyes closed, but where’s the fun in that? Naming pitches is a party trick. I should show off.

I lean over to crank open a nearby window. The room inhales the sweetness of storm clouds and rain. “Listen,” I tell him.

Sam somehow looks even cuter as he focuses. “What, the seagulls?”

We listen to the birds. My hand drifts over the keys until I’m sure, and then I grab the note. It’s a perfect match—almost. The piano is out of tune, and so is the bird, yet Sam is impressed. I push it a bit further, capturing the cadence of the cries as a repeating series of notes. A vamp. With my other hand I usher in the rolling bass of the thunder. When a bike whizzes by, I snatch the ding of its bell (a high F-sharp) and create a meandering melody with the birdsong. I repeat it all, cleaning it up as I go, coaxing it into coherence. The improvised piece is like a lot of my compositions: fragments smoothed together by an instinct I can’t really define. It’s like I’m playing along to music hovering just outside reality, flooding through my ears and out my fingertips like I’m not a person but a passage.

I let the piece fade away and open my eyes. Seeing the way Sam is looking at me, I snatch my hands back and feel my face warm.

“That was incredible,” Sam whispers.

“Like a fish to water!”

I jump so bad my knees knock the underside of the keys. Gracie is suddenly in the doorway, Willy and Aunt Maddie over her shoulders. She’s got tears in her eyes as she rushes to the piano.

“Oh, don’t stop, Ollie-baby! Play us something else. Sam, you’ve got to hear what our Ollie can do. He’s a genius.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Sam says. His cool demeanor from the ferry has totally thawed. The way he looks at me is everything I would have wanted a few minutes ago, but now I just want to stop this moment from happening. This is one thing I don’t think I can smile my way through.

“Any requests?” Gracie asks the room on my behalf. Aunt Maddie’s got her phone out, filming again. I hold up my hand against the glare of the flash.

“Actually, I can’t,” I say quickly. “It’s totally out of tune.”

“This isn’t one of your fancy auditions,” Willy scoffs. “Just go for it, Ollie. Show-off.”

I want to, I don’t want to. It felt incredible to play again; it felt heartbreaking, too. The song still sings in my ears, ringing for release, but I shake my head. The adults whine like mainlander kids.

“Come on, Ollie!”

“Just one song!”

“Oh, Ollie-baby, you’re no fun anymore!”

I slam the keyboard cover shut as I stand up, and everyone goes quiet. Maddie puts her phone down. The moment lasts for a horrible eternity, refusing to break, until there’s a knock at the door and Bash’s mom, Mrs. Itani, rushes into the parlor with a casserole dish. She nearly throws down her dish when she sees Gracie, closing in for a hug. “Welcome! Welcome back!” she cries.

I’m next, but for me she puts on a playfully scolding voice. “Did you tell my Bashar you would be back today? I would have given him the weekend off! What is going on with you two? He says nothing, nothing, nothing, but something isn’t nothing!”

I relax just a little. He’s not with her. Thank god.

“I know how busy he is,” I say with a shrug.

She flaps her hands dismissively. “Talk to each other, Orlando. I’m begging you.”

“I’ll swing by the shop,” I assure her.

There’s another knock, and another unannounced guest with another casserole dish. Neighbors and friends swarm over Gracie and me, hugging and kissing us, welcoming us home, handing us ready-made dishes, babbling about all we’ve missed. In the jovial chaos, I find Sam’s hand and drag him upstairs to the window nook on the second-floor landing.

“Damn, how long were you guys on vacation?” Sam laughs over my shoulder as I spy on the street below, seeing if anyone else is heading for Singing House.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“I’m figuring that out.”

The blood in my veins is superheated, and it takes me a few breaths to steady my heart. For a moment I was sure Bash and Elisa would show up, but it sounds like they’re both working after all. I just dodged two bullets, but Anchor’s Mercy is too small to avoid them for long.

“So you’re shy or something?” Sam asks. He is so annoyingly observant.

“Or something.”

“I don’t see why.”

Sam drifts down the hall, taking interest in the many seashells framed in glass on the walls. The shells are placed to form intricate designs, called sailor’s valentines. There’s more cluttering the shelves, and even the lamps are scaled in iridescent oysters.

“Gracie is a seashell mom,” I explain, trying to change the subject. “All moms have an animal, right? That shows up on all their stuff? Like butterflies, or bees, or pigs. Gracie is a seashell mom.”

Sam nods. “My mom really loves horses. They’re everywhere in our country house.” He reaches for a hanging photo. At first I think he’s inspecting the shells glued to the frame, but no. He turns it toward me. “This is you, isn’t it?”

The photo is of three little kids holding up a guitar, so big and heavy compared to them that they appear pinned down by it. They’re laughing, though. I’m the one in the middle. And the other two …

“Let me guess. The long-lost Bash and Elisa?”

Sam is right, but by now he’s noticed the silence I’m unwilling to fill. All he adds is “They keep coming up. I bet they were important to you.” Then he joins me in the nook, looking out the window at the tops of the houses.

“This place is amazing, you know.”

“Singing House? Yeah, it’s one of a kind, for sure.”

“No, I mean this town. This whole island. I bet it was so fun growing up here.”

I’m starting to see all the beauty I left behind but never let myself miss. It’s not just the fun of downtown but the homes, glamorous in their seaside shabbiness, with their cedar shingles and flowers frothing from every sill. And it’s the families pushing strollers, and the sound of distant disco from a pool party, and the way even the air itself smells like honey, salt, and sunshine. Piano music echoes up the stairs, the adults singing the house back to life. It feels like a dream, because it is a dream, and that’s what makes it dangerous.

I turn my back on it. “It’s different when you live here.”

Sam bumps me with his shoulder. “Oh, come on. What’s so bad about being on vacation forever?”

I knew my mom was going to die when she sat me down one August evening last year and told me we were going on vacation, because we didn’t go on vacation. We lived on vacation. But something had gone wrong in paradise, and now it was time to run.

There were signs before that. Singing House was empty when it should have been full of guests. My mom had lost weight. At the beach, she refused to swim, and when her shawl slipped from her shoulders, her skin was splattered with scarlet bruises. I knew she was going to her doctors on the island’s lone health clinic, and I knew she was sent to the mainland for some tests, but this was the first time she acknowledged to me what was happening.

Just a little vacation. She said it with so much shame, like a confession. Like she had failed me. And then she asked me not to tell anyone. I smiled for her and played along. Why would I tell anyone? It’s just vacation. She left me to pack a bag. I fell asleep to the sound of her downstairs in the kitchen, singing to herself as she scrubbed her latest basket of seashells, which was a sign, too. My mom mostly collected shells when she needed a pick-me-up, and that summer they began to appear everywhere in our house, like they could fill the new encroaching emptiness.

Vacation brought us to a tiny rental apartment on the mainland, near a hospital in Portland, Maine. I made Gracie take me to her appointments. At first the doctors were optimistic, and it really did look like we would go home soon. When Bash and Elisa called, I told them with confidence vacation would be over soon.

Vacation went on for a month. Then another month.

Gracie got me enrolled in school. I was the first kid to ever go to vacation-school, we joked. We joked a lot, about all of it, and even though vacation on the mainland was not fun, I acted like it was the most fun ever. When things got harder, they had to become funner. Helping my mom to bed was a raucous good time. Shaving our heads ahead of chemo was a gas! Going to the grocery store was the adventure of a lifetime, even if I would have to come back later, alone, to get what we needed because my mom was too weak to stay standing for long.

There were times when all Gracie could do was sit in a wheelchair while I pushed her around. We went to the big home goods store, and we entertained each other by reading the cheesy decor.

LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE.

She looked at that one a long time and then told me, It really is that simple. We bought it. I thought of it as a souvenir.

When it got bad and my mom wouldn’t let me help her anymore, Willy visited us on vacation. One time I overheard them talking in my mom’s bedroom, and she was whispering, Will, I’m ruining his life. Willy surprised me with an offer after that. What if we switched, and I went home to Anchor’s Mercy for a while? Just a few days, to see Bash and Elisa? Wouldn’t I like that?

I wouldn’t. It was better keeping certain things unsaid. I couldn’t afford to waver in the lie that all this was temporary.

I made Willy promise not to say anything to Bash and Elisa, because I would handle it. Soon. Another month passed. Then another. My mom turned as pale as seafoam, and just as translucent under the fluorescent lights of the ICU. I still said nothing to my friends. I kept my smile bright and held my mom’s hand until my muscles turned to marble, and I told her about all the stuff we would do together, at home, once vacation finally ended.

“I wasn’t on vacation,” I tell Sam.

“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t ask me to explain.

I think, maybe, I love him.

As night comes, so does the storm.

Sam and I hide in the upper den, where all the junk from my childhood seems to fascinate him. He asks about every old board game and toy, and for almost an hour we sit captivated by the aquarium set into the bookshelf. Predictably, Sam loves the tiny treasure chest that belches a constant stream of bubbles. I explain all the fish to him, and the coral and anemones, and the snails that wipe away the algae like tiny bejeweled thumbs. I make a mental note to thank Aunt Maddie for not killing it all while I was gone.

Downstairs the adults laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Eventually, hunger wins out, and we sneak down the back stairs to the kitchen to load up plates of pastry-enfolded meat pies (thank you, Mrs. Itani), cold macaroni and cheese, and cinnamon cookies still warm from someone’s oven. We eat fast, then lie on the carpet in the ultramarine glow of the aquarium and watch the lightning flicker against the rain-spattered windows. Sam gets quiet. I’m waiting for him to finally admit he’s bored, but instead he props himself up on his elbows, looks at me, and asks, “So it’s just you and your mom, huh?”

I hate this question. The word just makes it sound like Gracie and I are incomplete, some kind of minimum family, when really it’s the opposite. We are more than enough for each other. Together, our world is so big that people come from all over just to rent a room in our lives.

Sam isn’t pitying me, though. He’s curious.

“I never knew my dad, if that’s what you’re asking. Since forever, it’s been me and Gracie,” I say. “But it’s also been Aunt Maddie, and Willy, and the drag queens, and everyone you met downstairs, and a million guests who have known me since I was a baby. Growing up here was like being raised by an entire island. Everyone pitches in.”

“It sounds nice.” Sam sighs. “Really nice, actually.”

I hear the blue note of longing in Sam’s voice just in time to stop myself from asking about his own family. The way he looks at all the photos on the walls of Singing House, with such wide-eyed envy, I get the feeling he spends a lot of time alone.

Sam rolls onto his back. “Are you curious?” he asks.

A bold question. Of course I’m curious about my dad. A fisherman, maybe? A musician passing through town? I’ve had a million fantasies about fathers washing in and out of our life, but the dreams leave behind a sticky guilt. It’s no wonder that now, beneath Sam’s innocent probing, I reach for Gracie’s well-worn story of my origin.

“My mom always said that her first and most formidable love affair was with the sea, and from that watery affair swept all sorts of treasures. The greatest of all being …”

“You?”

“So the legend goes.”

Even in the dark, I can see Sam grin at the cheesiness. “Why is everything so magical here?”

“It’s sickening. I know.”

Perfectly timed, the lightning dances through the clouds outside, and a soft rumble squeezes Sam and me closer on the rug. Downstairs, someone is on the piano. Willy, I think, with “La vie en rose.” Sam’s pinkie reaches through the shag of the rug, toward mine. I’m amazed to feel myself reaching back.

“Wait!” Sam jumps to his feet.

Oh no. Did I misread him? Did I mess it up?

“I owe your mom a song!”

Oh. I scamper after him down the hall, saying, “You really don’t have to! Honest. She says that to everyone.”

“Nonsense! I just realized what I want to play. It was my recital piece last year!”

“Really, I can drive you home whenever. The storm is just rain right now.”

I almost walk into his back as we hit the stairs. He spins around, a step below me, so we’re the same height.

“I like it here,” he says. “I like you, too.”

Then he dives ahead. My heart either isn’t beating or it’s fluttering so fast it’s gone hummingbird-invisible. This boy just left me stock- still and reeling. Below, the adults buzz as Gracie introduces Sam, and then comes a reverent silence as they await his song.

It begins with a D-sharp in double octaves, three times. I know the piece right away.

Sam has chosen Liszt’s “La campanella.” I grip the banister for dear life. His hands make easy work of the complicated phrases, pulling out a whooooa from the adults. I’m captivated, too. Somehow the song sweeps me right down the stairs and up against his back so I can watch his hands over his shoulder. Too soon, it ends, and before I can think to run away, Sam declares through applause, “Now, if I might be so bold, I would like to hear Ollie play.”

Double shit. Before me, the golden light of the parlor spreads through upraised crystal cups. Maddie’s got her phone out again, the flash on full brightness like a spotlight. All eyes in the room widen, knowing what I used to be able to do. It’s like staring down a galaxy of expectation. I sit down. Now my heart stops for sure. I can’t attempt something fast and impressive, like Sam, without ending up in a knot of knuckles. And it’s out of the question to listen to the music of the moment, like when I was showing off for Sam with those seagulls.

I really, really don’t want to do this.

Then Gracie slides in next to me, sharing the bench, and whispers, “How about we play something together?”

Her hands sit poised next to mine on the keys. We used to play duets all the time as a party trick. It’s been forever, but Gracie isn’t daunted. She starts with a twinkling introduction on the piano’s uppermost register, and the crowd coos with recognition. She’s picked “Over the Rainbow.” The motif opens like an invitation, asking me to meet it with the melody, and I do. Together we sail through the chorus. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t need to be. In fact, I’m barely listening to the notes because, quite suddenly, I’m a little kid again, discovering the miracle of how close two people can be when they make music together. And she’s not Gracie anymore. She’s my mom. And it’s just us and our piano.

And life is beautiful again.

It can’t last. It never does. A dream come true is still just a dream, and all dreams end. The last time I sat at this piano and played this song with Gracie, I had no idea about how fast it could all fall apart, and how bad it could get. Now I can’t help but look up at all these smiling faces—family, neighbors, friends—and wonder, Who is sick? Who is next?

“Ollie-baby?”

I’ve stopped playing. Gracie takes over, buttoning off the duet with an awkward smile as I hide my shaking hands in my lap. She brushes her blue wig back, ready to roll to the next party trick, but then Aunt Maddie asks, “Say, Ollie, any word from those fancy conservatories your mom keeps telling us about?”

Triple shit, I think.

“Nothing yet,” I lie. My tongue is as dry as chalk.

“My friend’s daughter heard back from Boston Conservatory months ago,” Mrs. Itani says.

Gracie beams. “I’m sure we’ll hear soon. Ollie nailed that audition. Right, Ollie?”

“I …”

I always knew this moment would come, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Not with everyone here. Not with my mom still here. She was never supposed to survive. That’s what the doctors said. Facing down those nevers in the hospital, it felt cruel to tell my mom I had failed my audition. That I hadn’t even prepared. Why lock myself away to practice when I could be with her instead? Why tell her that and ruin the little life she had left by letting her feel even a second of blame? So I told her I nailed the audition. I lied, but it didn’t feel like lying. It felt like mercy.

I take a deep breath. I can’t hold on to this any longer.

“I’m not going.”

“To Boston Conservatory? I don’t blame you, just a bunch of rich kids, anyway. But, Ollie, I can’t believe you just turned down an offer without telling me, your mother! All right, spill the beans. Where are you going instead?”

“You don’t understand,” I say. “I didn’t go to any other auditions. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

The rain fills in the silence. Aunt Maddie’s camera light goes dark. Gracie’s face flickers between wounded blue, angry orange, and finally a scarlet shame. She glances at our spectators, and her plastic smile snaps back on.

“Well, don’t apologize to me. It’s not my dream you’re giving up on. But, baby? What happened?”

I can’t answer this question. Even if Gracie told all these townies she was sick, discussing it in front of a mainlander like Sam is unheard of. All I can do is lie, but I’m all out of those, too. My internal reaching only dredges up a molten core that’s been boiling in me all along, and out spews an inarticulate anger.

“You’re asking me what happened? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Gracie smooths over my outburst with a forced laugh. “Baby, I know it hasn’t been easy. God knows we’ve both been through it these past months. But life can’t always be beautiful beaches. I taught you that, right? What do I always say about hardships?”

I hang my head, humiliated. I finally find the courage to tell Gracie the truth, but it’s just going to be smothered under one of her catchy life lessons. Gracie gathers up my limp hands, squeezing my sweaty knuckles as she talks.

“Without pain, there is no real beauty. Think of the oyster, Ollie. Polish perfects it, but it’s the grit that makes the pearl, right?”

I am drowning in her vacant wisdom. I am burning from the inside out. My vision blurs with tears I don’t understand, because I’m not sad. I’m furious.

“I’m not a fucking oyster.”

A few people laugh, thinking the edge in my voice is a joke. Gracie tries to pull her hands away from mine, but I hold on tight. Fear snuffs out the sparkle in her eyes. It’s like she doesn’t even recognize me, and why should she? All my smiles are gone. Everyone wants me to be so happy, but I don’t know how anymore. I said my goodbyes—to Singing House, to music in the night, the magic of eternal summer. To Gracie.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I chipped my heart apart so it wouldn’t sink me into sorrow, but I wish someone had told me to save the pieces. All I have now is this aching emptiness, and all the beauty around me is a constant reminder of what I can’t feel. All this joy, all this dreaminess—I hate it. I am not strong enough to polish my pain into beauty. I am broken, and my mother holds the cold hands of a ruin.

“Oh, don’t be so literal, Ollie.” Gracie tries to pull her hands away again, and this time I let her go. I want to just vanish, but there’s no ending this moment until she gets her point across. Not to me, but to everyone watching. “It means that we make the most of bad things. Lemons to lemonade, grit to pearls. That’s who we are on this island, right?”

The adults give awkward mumbles of encouragement. As my shame becomes a blistering heat across my face, Gracie glows like a saint. “Really, Ollie, all you need to do is look around. Look at all the love! Look at all the beauty—”

I nearly knock Gracie over as I squeeze out from behind the bench. People dart away from me as I try to rush from the parlor, but Gracie’s next words hit my back like daggers.

“Ollie, I don’t understand you anymore!”

“And that’s the fucking problem!” I squeeze my hands into fists, willing myself to just go, but I can’t. I know what I want to say, and either I say it now or never.

“I don’t need lemonade, and I don’t need your stupid pearls of wisdom. I need you to listen to me. I need my mom.”

If I turned around, what would I see? The woman who raised me, who taught me how to listen to all the songs people forget to hear? Or just some lady in a wig, talking down to the child we buried instead of her? I don’t turn around.

“But I’m right here, Ollie-baby.”

“Then why do you talk to me like you’re already dead?”

Even the rain pauses its falling. In the silence, I hear the bench creak, and footsteps approach me.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that—”

The room goes bleach-bright as lightning hits, so close that the thunder rings in the crystal of the chandelier. The lamps surge, then sigh dark, leaving us standing in shadow.

“It’s a blackout,” Aunt Maddie says, announcing the obvious and sounding relieved. “The generators will kick in.”

They don’t. People search for candles, stepping around me like I’m a ghost. Gracie has vanished into the kitchen.

“Come on, Sam,” Willy says. “Party’s over. Looks like the rain has stopped for a bit. I’ll drive you home.”

“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Itani offers. “I should be home, anyway, and you’re staying somewhere in the dunes, right? That’s on my way. Willy, I think you need to stay.”

I should offer to go with Sam, or maybe press him to spend the night. I should chase after Gracie and apologize. Instead, I climb the stairs, back to the window nook, where I can watch Mrs. Itani drive off into the storm. The lightning never returns after that. It stays on the horizon, flashing like cryptic signals.

Someone starts up at the piano again. Willy’s voice carries easily up the stairs. “How about a classic? Gracie, get back in here.” He launches into a favorite. “What’s Up,” by 4 Non Blondes. At first it’s unbearable, Willy and Gracie singing through the strange, dark moment I’ve created, but then I hear more voices joining theirs. The song grows in strength, and soon it’s like I was never even there. A few minutes later, the lamps all glow back to life.

I wander up through Singing House, to our apartment on the top floor. I don’t turn on any lights. Lying on my bed, the fight repeats itself in my ears, over and over, until the words are gone and it’s only a reverberating, fathomless guilt.

Tomorrow, I will apologize.

Tomorrow, I will be a ray of fucking sunshine.

Tomorrow, I will let the best summer ever finally begin.

AUGUST 15

25 DAYS AFTER

09:34

I have looked, and there is no official report of the damage done to Anchor’s Mercy by Tropical Storm Raquel. All I could find was the last transcript from the popular radio show Wake Up, Anchor’s Mercy. For now, it will have to serve as a final snapshot of the island in the hours before the end. Attached here.

I dream that I am swimming deep underwater, and I dream that I am swimming toward light. And air. And an oncoming sense of space, freedom, brightness, and breath.

But in my dream, I am also swimming down.

I bolt upright, the echo of a scream in my ears. I squint against midmorning sunlight, stumble to my window, somehow wide open, and send a curious seagull into a catastrophic flutter across my desk, then back outside.

I snatch my phone from where it’s fallen and blink at a dead screen. Great. I plug it back into its charger, but the outlets are still out. The phone stays dark. Lovely. I flop back into bed, already ready for this cursed day to be over, but then I remember Sam.

Sam!

What a strange bit of magic he was. I wish I thought to get his number, not that I’d be able to do anything with it. I wonder when I’ll see him again. The way he just appeared in my life, it’s not out of the question that he’s already downstairs, in the parlor, on the piano—

Like delayed thunder, the memory of the fight with my mom rolls through me. I shoot to my feet. Sam is forgotten. I need to find Gracie and apologize. Now.

I tiptoe through our tiny apartment. It’s a slanted space stuffed up into the roof of Singing House, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen that was only ever big enough to make Gracie’s morning coffee. We mostly live downstairs, among the guests, but it always felt like being a ghost in a museum. I preferred it up here, except I don’t remember it being so small.

I think I hear someone somewhere below.

“Mom?”

It’s probably Maddie cleaning up. I twist on the shower, not bothering to wait for hot water before scrubbing myself clean. I take longer than I need, mostly because I’m trying to figure out what to say. I’m sorry isn’t enough. What am I sorry for? Any attempt to answer that question circles me back around to anger. I kill the water and stand there, wrapped in a damp towel, wondering if it would just be easier to never bring it up. No doubt Gracie would be more than willing to play pretend, but I’m not sure that’s an option for me anymore. Smiling, even just a little, makes me look deranged in the bathroom mirror.

Then, downstairs, there’s a crash. Another crash. Racing footsteps shake the walls as someone runs through the house and down the stairs, and I hear the front door bang open.

“Mom? Maddie?”

I poke my head out of the bathroom. Someone either just arrived, or just left. With my hair still wet, I pull on my usual uniform: an oversized shirt, little gay cargo shorts, and chunky sneakers Gracie refers to as my anime shoes. I strap on my watch (approved for depths of three hundred feet!) and, aware that it’s almost noon, I rub on some fancy sunscreen from the stash of discarded tubes left behind by guests. As I trot down the stairs, I wonder what I’ll find. A note? A guilt trip left in the form of a cold breakfast waiting for me in the downstairs kitchen? Or maybe Gracie has already started fixing up the house, all by herself. That would explain the crashes.

Running past the den on the second floor, a new sound grabs my ears. A wet, sucking whir, like when the aquarium pump gets clogged. Sure enough, I can taste a briny humidity in the air. I sigh, realizing I never checked on the tank during the blackout, but when I enter the den, my breath locks in my chest.

Fish scatter like confetti across the shag carpet. They glimmer, still wet, and when I try to pick a few up, they wriggle from my hand. A shining mucus now webs my fingers. Disgusting. I search for a bucket I can throw the fish into, hoping a few can be saved, when I see the tank itself.

The aquarium glass has been completely shattered, and the coral inside now shoots out in slimy spires, spreading up the bookshelf. Chunks sprinkle across the carpet, among the fish. The way water drips from the walls, the ceilings—everywhere—it appears the tank exploded.

“What the hell,” I whisper, but then I have to hold my breath against the smell of marine rot. How could Gracie or Maddie just leave this mess? Or did it only just happen?

Motion draws my eyes to something blue and yellow between my shoes. It’s an angel fish in a cup of broken coral, except something is wrong. Or wronger, at least. The fish appears to struggle beneath a lattice of coral, as though the polyps have grown over it. They undulate, taking on the fish’s color, incorporating it. When I reach down to pick it up, something tells me to stop. It’s the way the polyps shiver toward my palm, reaching back, eager to be touched.

I move my hand one way, and the bed of polyps follows. I move the other way. The polyps strain upward, stretching out tiny, hair-thin tentacles.

It knows I’m here.

Right before I pick the fragment up, someone hiccups behind me. I twist, seeing just enough to know it’s Aunt Maddie before she does the unthinkable. With a cry, she slams me to the floor. I try to scream, but all the air has been crushed from my lungs. My hands tangle with hers as she fights to grab hold of my head, but she’s slippery. Why is she so slippery? I manage to finally look at her. Aunt Maddie is smiling. Smiling wide. Her eyes stretch open with a terrible glee that overflows in thick, stringy tears down her cheeks and chin. The tears gush from her nose and between her teeth, too, not a liquid but a mucus that squirms and twists, like it’s alive within her.

“Orlandooooo,” she sings through a clenched smile. “Won’t you play something for us? Something gorgeous? We want to sing!”

I open my mouth to scream, but then I remember my mom’s old saying.

Smile long enough and you’ll end up with tears on your teeth.

I snap my mouth closed and twist my head just in time. Aunt Maddie’s tears lick down my neck instead. My hands scramble through the soaked shag rug, searching for anything to hit her with.

“Orlandooo!” She chokes on my name, a massive bubble wheezing through the froth of her mouth.

Finally, my hands grasp something. The treasure chest ornament! I smash it into my aunt’s temple, and her grip weakens just enough for me to get a knee under her and kick her away. I scramble upright, already ready to apologize, but Maddie scuttles past my feet, crawling into the hall. I toss away the wrecked chest and run after her.

“Aunt Maddie? Are you okay?”

I can hear her crying somewhere in the parlor. I take the back stairs slowly, into the kitchen. I should grab a knife, but I grab a rag instead.

“Mom? Something is wrong with Aunt Maddie. I think I hurt her.”

I use the rag to drag at the mucus all over my neck and hands. It comes off in a fine, pearlescent powder. Aside from a slight numbness where the goo touched me, I’m okay. I approach the pantry—it’s the last place to look—but when I open the door, I’m facing only empty shelves and a window into our backyard.

Behind me, rapid footsteps. I swing out of the way just in time. Maddie barrels past, into the pantry, and I slam the door shut on her. Did she really just try to tackle me again? I bolt the lock and then press my ear to the wood.

“Aunt Maddie? I’m going to go get you some help, okay?”

To my surprise, her answer is clear. “Bless you, Orlaaaaando, but your aunt Maddie is fine. Better and better by the second!”

“Okay, well, I’m glad to hear that, but I hit you pretty hard.”

“Better! And better! And better!”

I can hear the mucus coating her words. Better or not, I’m not opening this door alone. I can’t just leave her in here, though, can I? I ease the bolt open but keep the door shut.

“Just stay put, okay?” I tell her. Then I run to get help.

Gracie’s bike is missing, but mine is right where I left it in the shelter of the carport. I heave it out, brush off the spiderwebs, and rocket toward downtown. Scenes of mayhem blur by me—people pulling tree branches off cars, trucks lifting men up in cherry pickers to examine telephone poles, caution tape caging downed power lines. When I see a police cruiser, I squeal to a stop.

“Help! Help me!”

It’s the only thing I can think to yell as I nearly tip off the bike. Two officers standing nearby head over. A man and a woman. It’s a testament to my escape record that I don’t know their names, but from the way they regard me, I can tell they absolutely remember me and my childhood antics around town. Their radios squawk and crackle.

“Are you okay?” one asks.

“Something is wrong with my aunt. She’s … she’s sticky.”

This gets a laugh.

“I’m serious! She was sticky, and weird, and she tried to hug me.”

“I’ve got one of those,” says one officer. The amusement has already faded. Clearly, they’ve had a rough morning with the storm cleanup. “Listen, we’re in the middle of something here, but if you’d like to open a report, you can head down to the station.”

“Don’t,” the other officer interjects. “It’s a circus down there, and we don’t need any more clowns. Just let your aunt sleep it off, kid.”

“But she needs a doctor!”

“Then bring her to the clinic.”

“I can’t. I locked her in the pantry.”

The officers exchange a look. I rush to explain. “I mean, I unlocked it, but I think she’s still in there. For her own safety. She needs help.”

The officers are distracted by chatter on their radios. I don’t catch it, but something causes them to quickly get into their cruiser and turn the lights on. Before they go, the one driving says to me, “A word of advice. The clinic is a mess right now, too. Whatever it is, you’re better waiting it out at home. Trust me.”

The siren blares to life and they scream off. The conversation was so short that the wheels of my toppled bike are still spinning. I heave it upright and point it toward Scuttlebutt’s—Willy’s bar. Even amid the mayhem, there’s one rule that never breaks on Anchor’s Mercy, and that’s the rule of brunch.

I was right—despite the wreckage, brunch is very much still on in the downtown restaurants—but I was unfortunately right. Downtown is a riot of whining children, red-faced parents, and screaming generators. Most surreal of all are the pods of bachelorette parties clinging to the storefronts like fish eggs, sparkly and seething, ready to hatch with resentment.

Scuttlebutt’s is a madhouse of waiters running between tables, trying to put down trays of drinks and plates of food. At the patio entrance, a familiar group of ladies comforts a white-clad bride-to-be who has sat on the ground and kicked off her heels. “Am I not a good person? Do I not deserve drag brunch?” She poses the question, and the girls are quick to shake their heads. The bride grabs at her redheaded friend. “Dakota, are you sure you made the reservation?”

Dakota! Poor Dakota. She holds up a phone as proof to the drag queen at the hostess stand. The drag queen is a mountain of muscle wearing a sequin tube top and the tiniest pussycat wig I have ever seen. Immediately, I feel safe.

“Ollie?” The queen brushes Dakota aside and wraps me in a hug.

“Hi, Hunky.” I hug back. Hunky Dory has worked at Scuttlebutt’s forever. I knew coming here was the right thing to do.

“Have you seen my mom? She might be wearing a blue wig.”

“I always thought she looked nice in blues. Haven’t seen her, though. How’s she feeling?”

“Is Willy here? I need to talk to him.”

“No Willy, but I can do you one better.” Hunky points her lips skyward.

On cue, feedback from a microphone cuts through the din and all eyes turn to look up at a cherry picker reaching over Main Street. A drag queen has scaled the machine. Not just any drag queen, but the only drag queen who stands a chance of corralling this disgruntled crowd.

“Goooood morning, campers! My name is Wendy Pretendy, and have we got a show for you!”

Wendy Pretendy is a legend for reasons that are about to become obvious to all who watch her. She wears a neon-pink cow-print dress and twin pigtails the color of cartoon lightning. All it takes is a wave of her gloved hands (glittering nails have been glued to the outside of the gloves, because that’s drag, baby), and the crowd is captivated.

“Everyone will get brunch,” she shouts into her megaphone. “But there will be no pushing, pulling, fighting, or whining in the brunch process. Am I clear?”

The crowd is silent. Scolded. Sullen. Wendy rewards them with a glorious smile. “Now, who’s ready to dance? Hunky, hit it!”

Hunky rushes to a speaker system just inside the door, and with a crackle, disco music blares to life. Wendy’s outfit has a lasso that should just be for show, but to everyone’s surprise the rope works quite well as she uses it to lower herself to the road. The crowd gathers around her, captivated, as she spins and dips. People start to shell out dollar bills, casting them at Wendy’s feet.

“Do we have any birthday girls?” Wendy asks through the megaphone.

“Woooo!” A flock of girls stumble to the front of the crowd. Wendy Pretendy gives them their obligatory, saucy wiggle. Her show is working—the tension around Scuttlebutt’s has turned to excitement as a party atmosphere takes over. Wendy’s song finishes and Hunky Dory takes her place, treating the onlookers to a ballad right in the middle of the road.

“Ollie Veltman, party of two!” Wendy calls out into her microphone. I meet her at the hostess stand, and the second she sees me, she knows something is wrong. She pulls me to the back hallway where it’s a little quieter. Alone, she drops the Wendy Pretendy act, and I’m talking to Willy.

“Ollie, where have you been? What’s wrong?” Even with the clown-white makeup and painted-on smile, Willy’s concern is instantly clear.

“My phone died, I just woke up. And our aquarium exploded, and Aunt Maddie … she … attacked me.”

“Maddie? Attacked you?”

I hear how unbelievable that sounds, and I guess technically I attacked her with the treasure chest. And I kicked her pretty hard, too. “She was trying to hug me,” I try to explain. “But she was crying, and drooling, and she was so sticky.”

Waiters dash from the kitchen with trays tipping dangerously with food. Willy lowers his voice. “Ollie. Darling. If I had a nickel for every sticky lady who got into my personal space, I wouldn’t be trying to run drag brunch through the apocalypse. Give your aunt a break. No one is at their best right now. The whole island is a mess. Speaking of, Hunky’s number is about to end and I’m on next.”

“W-wait!” I stammer. “Have you … have you seen my mom?”

Willy squeezes my hand, maybe hearing the guilt in my voice. “Have you checked the shell shop?” he asks gently.

This is code for Slipper Shell Beach, where Gracie always goes to explore the tidal pools when she’s feeling down. She was there a lot last summer, collecting, scrubbing, and listening to each shell sing before placing it on a shelf, or a bedside table, or—if they were especially unique—in the aquarium. It’s the obvious place to look.

“That was quite the fight you two had last night,” Willy says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. I don’t need to add to the chaos here. Willy looks at me with an inescapable sympathy that makes my skin itch all over again. Thankfully, Hunky’s song is reaching its big finale.

“Ollie. Listen. Whatever’s going on, you don’t need to handle it all alone. That boy last night seemed nice, but I think it’s time you went and found Bash and Elisa.”

I cling to the wall behind me. “Can’t I stay here?”

Willy’s makeup crinkles around his kind eyes. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking, but he finally says, “If that’s what you want. But you’ll have to make yourself useful. You remember how to take brunch orders, right? And you remember what to say if anyone asks how old you are?”

I stand at attention and recite my line: “I got bumped in the head by a lobster trap and ever since then I don’t remember.”

“Bingo. Go get yourself cleaned up in the back. We’ve got some major pretending to do. ”

With that, Willy transforms back into Wendy Pretendy and sashays away. I retreat past the kitchen, to the closed-off rooms at the very back of Scuttlebutt’s. It’s a large, low-ceilinged dance club decorated with buoys and old boat parts. At night it’s a blitz of disco lights, but right now it’s so dark I have to prop the door open to let a trickle of midday sun in so I can see. I rummage around below the bar until I find the scary-looking cleaners and a rag, then I scrub at my neck and hands until my skin is raw and red, and I finally feel clean.

In the dark I relax enough for Willy’s reaction to make sense. Am I overreacting? Maybe I just feel bad—about hitting Aunt Maddie, about yelling at my mom, about avoiding Bash and Elisa. My cheeks burn. It seems like I’m finding reasons to run from everyone these days. I toss the rag down and march back through the cacophony of Scuttlebutt’s, not sure what to do. Then, in the street, I see a flash of bright blue hair.

Gracie!

By the time I’m outside, she’s vanished. My heart hammers in my veins and I realize I’m not even sure what to say. I find myself watching a mom wiping at her small child’s face, dabbing away tears that are stringy with snot. They shine, too, like oil on water.

I shiver, remembering Maddie. I can’t go home. Not yet. And I can’t face Gracie, either. I could hide out here, but sooner or later Willy or Wendy Pretendy is going to make me face my feelings.

Gracie’s voice speaks through my frantic thoughts. The only ship that’s ever unsunk is the friendship.

I grab my bike.

It’s time to face the Pizza Monster.

Compared to Scuttlebutt’s, Pizza Monster is disconcertingly quiet. No lights, no music, certainly no drag queens enforcing peace upon the kitsch-cluttered patio. I would call out hello, but I’m afraid the many little monsters decorating the storefront might all turn to me at once. Dolls sit in the trees. Metal sculptures twist from the ground. Grimy plaster cherubs scale the roof. They’re called offerings. People bring them from all over the world, adding to Pizza Monster’s reputation as a haven for misfits. Quiet as it is, it’s like peering into a graveyard. Still, the glass doors of the shop are propped open. Someone—or something—is home.

I step inside, listening for life. Nothing has changed in here, either. It would hurt to see it all again if it wasn’t already so painful to be back. For months, even the smell of oregano has made me anxious, yet here I go, diving right into the beast itself. I scan behind the counter until I spot the massive, dome-shaped oven. Since before I was born, it’s been stylized to look like a giant, roaring monster, with horns and eyes and even pizza-shaped teeth bordering its mouth, the oven entrance … which is glowing? Before I can back up, the mouth lets out a smoking belch, and a boy stumbles into view.

“We’re not open yet—”

Bash sees me and halts. In the past year he’s gone from skinny to sturdy, just like me. The shape of his jaw flirts with manhood, but the wound is still there. The one I slashed into him myself. He shrinks back as though he can hide behind the pizza monster. We both jump when another person enters from the back room holding a stack of boxes.

“The fridge is still cold, but we better use up what we’ve got,” says Elisa. “No telling when the power’s coming back, but we should be able to get through today. Thank god the oven is wood fired.”

Elisa sees me, and the boxes drop to the floor. It’s a punch in the gut to see how much she looks like her mom now. Beautiful, guarded, intelligent. Her light brown eyes are huge as she looks me over, then they narrow with fury. The anger makes her freckles practically glow in the dim light.

For the first time in months, the Suds are all in one place.

At my high school on the mainland, I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t even notice. Willy pointed it out to me on one of his visits, and I shrugged. You should have someone nearby to talk to. I’m sure Bash and Elisa will understand if you make a new friend, Ollie, he joked. When I went quiet, his humor turned to genuine concern. Wait, you haven’t been talking to Bash and Elisa, either? About any of this?

I hadn’t said a word. For weeks their texts had gone unopened, their calls ignored. Finally—blessedly—the calls and texts stopped. Of course I felt horrible, but I also felt relieved. If they knew what was happening, they would try and lift me up, but I only wanted to sink. I thought that if I sank far enough, they might just forget about me and let me go. The Ollie they knew was long gone by then, anyway.

Then, one rainy October afternoon, Bash and Elisa showed up at our door. I remember thinking they should look different, even though it had only been a few months. Time, for me, vanished in every blink. Their sameness disgusted me. I couldn’t even look at them.

Can we come in? Elisa asked.

The apartment was a mess. My fault. There were pizza boxes stacking up. My fault. There were pills that needed sorting in Gracie’s pillboxes. My fault. If my friends came in, they would realize I was not on vacation, and that my mom was very, very sick. My fault. Then it would be true. Then she would die.

My fault.

We miss you, Elisa said when I told her it wasn’t a good time. Bash rocked on his toes. He had a small plastic container tucked under his jacket. Inside was our pet hermit crab, which I guess I also abandoned when I left. Even though he had brought it all the way to me on the mainland, he now seemed intent on protecting it from me. All he could manage to say was Your aunt said—

Elisa elbowed him. He started over. We miss you, Ollie. We’re here for you. If there’s anything you want to talk about, we could listen. We would love to listen.

When I said nothing, Elisa finally showed her anger.

Ollie, it’s been months of you ignoring us. We took the ferry here and we need to take it back in a few hours or we’re gonna be in major shit with our parents. Bash’s mom thinks he’s practicing for the Fishnets game. We don’t have a lot of time.

Something about Bash’s alibi horrified me. The Fishnets was a drag basketball league. The idea of him dribbling in a wig while I was here felt not just absurd but cruel. We had nothing in common anymore. They were exactly the same, separated from me by more than water. Time and space had spilled between us, and now we stood upon separate islands of life. I remember thinking they weren't really in front of me, and that the doorway was just a window between our distant worlds, and all I had to do was shut it.

So I did.

I watched them go. They had brought their bikes with them on the ferry. They picked them off the ground and I remember thinking, How childish. Elisa tugged Bash’s shoulders, but he shrugged her off. He looked up at my building, eyes bright with tears, and he shouted: SUDS STICK TOGETHER!

Then they rode off.

Elisa stares at me, and I think she’s going to run at me with both hands raised in a horror-movie strangle.

“How dare—” she starts to say, but Bash’s mom rushes in, car keys jangling in her fist.

“Oh, Orlando! How are you feeling? Bashar didn’t tell me you were coming by, but what luck! We need all the help we can get if we’re going to open for the afternoon rush. Have you eaten?”

I remember I haven’t, but there’s no room for hunger among all the unsaid words crowding my stomach. I don’t even know where to begin.

“We can handle the rush,” Elisa says frostily.

“You think you can handle everything,” Mrs. Itani chides. “Orlando, what size shirt are you these days? I think we only have extra-large left, but you don’t mind, right? Truly, we could use the help. With you here, I can work on getting that generator back online, and then I need to go check on Mary. Plus, I’m sure these two would much rather have you back behind the line than me, right, Bashar?”

As if she can’t feel the tension, Mrs. Itani has snatched a shirt off the rack of merchandise near the registers and is holding it out not to me, but to Bash. He stands up straight, ever polite before his mother, and takes the shirt. Maybe Mrs. Itani isn’t clueless after all; it’s Bash she wants making this peace offering.

Bash clenches his jaw. Elisa clears her throat, but he ignores her. He lifts his eyebrow—the one with the tiny scar in it—and he asks, “You back?”

I could run, but seeing them, I feel something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in months: a homesickness that Singing House failed to evoke, that rises in me now like a cresting wave. Even through the tension, and even through the anger, I feel that sparkle of excitement reaching out to me. Whether I like it or not, I’m home.

I nod. “Yeah. I’m back.”

“Then it’s shine time, baby.”

Bash tosses me the shirt. I’ve barely caught it before Mrs. Itani has the shop doors all the way open, and the first of many hungry customers is lining up for the best—and only—pizza in town.

Before anyone gets any pizza, the oven has to warm up. While it does, I stand with Bash and Elisa in a little triangle of awkwardness.

“Hi,” I say.

They don’t respond. The heat from the oven is matched only by the burns I’m sure their eyes are leaving on my skin. Whatever the reason I came back here, it simply cannot be worth this. Customers trickle in, lining up, and Bash tells them the first pizzas of the day are still baking. We have a few minutes, but I’m not sure I can survive it if no one will even speak to me.

Finally, Elisa decides to talk. “What do you want?”

“Elisa, be nice,” Bash warns.

“He must want something, right? I mean, why else come back here? I’m surprised he even remembers us. It’s been, what … ten months? And all he has to say is hi?”

I hate that she’s right, but I’ll be damned if I admit that. I pull on the XL Pizza Monster shirt. All worries of Aunt Maddie and my mom burn away for the moment. I’ve got to put this fire out first.

“I came to say I’m sorry,” I lie, but in a way it’s truer than the truth. I didn’t come here ready with an apology, but I’ve been on my way to this reckoning since the moment Gracie announced we were returning to Anchor’s Mercy. Elisa and Bash trade a look that isn’t completely contemptuous.

“Are we still friends?” I ask.

“Heard you had a new friend,” Elisa says. “That you imported him directly from the mainland. Do they make them different there?”

I put the pieces together based on Bash’s reddening ears. His mom drove Sam home last night. I’m sure by now he and Elisa have created an entire fictional biography of Sam, a mainland usurper symbolizing my betrayal of the Suds.

“He’s just a boy I met on the ferry,” I say, not too defensive. “Gracie latched on to him. He’s here alone.”

I’m a terrible person, guilting them with Sam’s predicament. Until this moment, I had barely thought about him.

“Just drop it, Elisa,” Bash pleads, this time putting a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugs him off. “Don’t give me those puppy dog eyes, Bash. He’s not sorry. He didn’t even tell us he was coming back!”

By now we are fully having this argument in front of a family. The father clears his throat, but Elisa gives him a look that could pop a balloon, and he backs off.

“I’m sorry,” I try again. “I’m sorry about a lot, okay? Can you just give me a chance to explain?”

Bash’s eyes are kind. “You really don’t have to—”

Elisa cuts him off again. “You know Gracie was like a mom to me, too. And you couldn’t bother to tell us she survived? I thought she was dead until a week ago. We nearly buried you both.”

When Elisa’s mom left in fifth grade, Gracie stepped in. I never thought about what it might mean to Elisa to lose her second mother. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about anyone else’s loss in all this. My own grief was too huge, but now I realize it distracted me from yet another way I was failing my own life.

“Okay. That’s it.” Bash grabs us both and pulls us away from the counter to a nook in the back. “In two minutes, this place is going to be swarming with people. The horde will descend, and we need to be ready to feed it, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. You two can fight about the flotsam and jetsam of it all later, but answer this for me right now: Is there any reason, on land or sea, that either of you would give up on our friendship forever?”

I can’t look at Bash. My eyes fix on a poster behind him. It’s for one of the many fundraisers that happen in the offseason, but when I see my name, I realize that this one was for me and my mom. I don’t know who organized it, but it’s proof that the love here never died. I just lost sight of it. If I were to be brave enough to reach out right now, would the magic of Anchor’s Mercy recognize me? Or am I truly too far gone to be welcomed home?

“No.” Elisa answers first. “I’m not giving up.”

“Me neither,” I whisper.

“Then it’s settled.” Bash grabs our hands, forcing them together. “Suds stick together, right?”

Elisa and I both grumble in agreement, and that’s enough for Bash. With our spat settled (at least for now), he gives us our orders and then leads us into the rush. The oven is at full heat now, but instead of feeling oppressive, it feels grand. Familiar. Now this particular monster’s got my back.

Hours later, it’s like I was never gone.

The individuals known as Bashar, Elisabete, and Orlando have ceased their inefficient toiling as autonomous beings and united into the legendary hive mind known as the Suds, the only force powerful enough to take on the horrors of the hungry horde. This is all a joking narration from Bash spliced into the hectic atmosphere of Pizza Monster to keep us laughing as we work.

Elisa—the most diplomatic—manages orders, the soda fountain, and the register. I—the quickest hands—hover at her back, fulfilling the orders as they come through to me written on the bottom of paper plates in Elisa’s rune-like code language. Bash manages the monster with his trusty pizza peel—a big wooden paddle he wields with a lion tamer’s flourish—and tosses dough for the tourists. Two ’ronis! One cheese! One Greek! He announces every pie as it exits the oven’s flaring mouth like each is a hard-won prize, as though the oven really is a monster we need to coax into production.

There are moments in the rush where I lock eyes with Bash or Elisa, and I expect it to be awkward, but each time they give me a reassuring smile as if to say It’s good to have you back.

And it feels good to be back. Gradually, my heart unclenches.

At some point, Mrs. Itani gets the generator running and the overheads flicker on. The sun sets early behind returning storm clouds, and the people coming in get increasingly windswept and wet as the storm resumes over the island. I get my phone charged, but the cell phone service sucks. Maybe it’s better, I think, that I can’t text my mom. She might need this time as much as I do.

My earlier dramatics start to feel silly. Not just the whole fiasco with Aunt Maddie, but the way I yelled at my mom. And my brooding before that. And the silence that stretches through the last ten months. I know better than to think this euphoria will last, but so long as my friends are allowing me back between them, I’m going to ride the high. The lows are all but promised. Maybe, for once, I’ll just let things be good while they’re good.

Finally, the rush ebbs sometime after sundown, leaving us delirious with relief. I eat through half a pizza just by myself while Elisa and Bash regale me with stories about their school year without me. I hear almost none of it, mostly just enjoying the way stories are told as duets between them, both talking at once but in a way that’s like hands working together on a keyboard.

The rain picks up, pinching off the flow of tourists, and soon the only people we’re serving are townies, soaked drag queens, and go-go boys fueling up before their late-night gigs. A few other kids from school have caught wind that I’m back, and they pop in to say hey as they rush to and from serving jobs. A few stick around, chatting with us to avoid heading back out into the rain.

“Did you see that navy ship? The white one? I heard it’s a hospital ship.”

“I’m more curious about that yacht in the marina. It’s a real yacht. Huge, not like those little motorboats the circuit gays like to putt around in.”

“I heard the yacht is a stealth craft.”

Bash confirms this, forever powerless against the urge to show off his knowledge of all things boats. He also clarifies that the white naval ship is, in fact, the USNS Embrace.

“It’s supposed to be in the Gulf of Mexico, though,” he offers, but no one really cares.

“I heard Imogen Pfaff is losing her gig.”

This last tidbit catches Elisa’s attention, and she lingers near the drag queen spinning the tale. Imogen Pfaff has been director of AMIOS since … forever. She must be ancient, but like all things born to the sea’s chilled dark, she is a pale and slippery thing that lurks in the island’s crevices and only ever darts into public for a rare errand, or a trip to the mainland. Sometimes she speaks at town meetings. Elisa, I remember, distrusts the older woman completely. Most people do. AMIOS is here for our own good, but that doesn’t quite take the edge off all the strange illnesses the townies keep coming down with.

“Imogen Pfaff is getting fired?” Elisa asks as she mops the floor.

“She’s been coming into Stabby’s every night these past few months,” the queen says. “Drinking like the eel she is, writing in that red notebook of hers. I tried to get a peek at it, but she never leaves it alone. Not for a second.” The queen shrugs. “She drank herself sick, so we kicked her out. Again.”

“She’s been doing drunk karaoke at Hail Mary’s.” I offer them Willy’s gossip from yesterday, and Elisa’s eyes flicker with satisfaction.

As though summoned, the next guest to dash into Pizza Monster is Wendy Pretendy herself, swathed in a gigantic poncho of clear plastic that she hurls to the floor. At first people cheer, but then she scans the room with huge, terrified eyes. Her eyes land on me.

“Everyone out,” she orders. For a moment, I’m sure she’s mad at me for abandoning her at brunch, but then she amends with “Except the queens. Everyone else, go. Now.”

Wendy Pretendy is the kind of person who could give orders to an earthquake. People rush out, and the doors are locked behind them, leaving just the queens and us to wonder what’s going on.

“Ollie. Sit.”

I barely feel my ass beneath me as I plop down at a table with Wendy Pretendy. Everyone crowds around us. It’s like we’re about to arm wrestle or something.

“Your mom is fine,” Wendy says quickly. “Someone saw her at the beach. Don’t worry. It’s not that. It’s your aunt. Where is she?”

“At Singing House. Locked … no, wait, unlocked in the pantry.”

Wendy shakes her head. “Please try to make sense. Start from the top.”

I do my best to describe the way Aunt Maddie wrestled me to the floor, and how I lightly bashed her head with a piece of aquarium decor, and how she ended up in the pantry covered in her sticky mess. I want to add that she’s probably still there, but something tells me Wendy knows otherwise. Like a dark tide, this morning’s forgotten fear creeps back into my stomach.

“I should have listened to you,” Wendy finally says. “Did you tell the police?”

“I tried. And at first they told me to go to the health clinic, but then they told me it was pointless.”

“That’s what I got told, too,” Wendy says. She gingerly massages her temples, despite her makeup.

“Have you seen Maddie? Is she okay?”

“I haven’t seen her, but a couple of my girls reported a few cases of something similar. Sticky tears, big smiles, lots of babbling. I swung by the clinic, but it’s deserted. Police station, too. Everyone’s dealing with cleanup, so now we need to deal with this.”

“It’s probably just a summer cold,” Elisa offers.

Wendy stands up to pace, but then sits back down just as fast. Her eyes lock in on me again. “Did the sticky stuff touch you, Ollie?”

“Yeah, a little, but I got it off with some cleaner.”

“Did it get in your eyes, nose, or mouth?”

I shake my head. I definitely would have remembered if it did.

Wendy seems relieved, but barely. She stands again, this time with a sense of authority that makes the rest of the people in the shop sit up straight. “We’re dropping anchor,” she announces.

The queens gasp, all seeming to understand what this means. They crowd into a booth to whisper about a plan while Wendy heaves me back behind the counter.

“You three. Close up shop. Go home, except for you, Ollie. Can you stay somewhere else tonight?”

Bash raises his hand. “Mine.”

“Great, I’ll tell Gracie when I see her.”

I raise my hand, too. “But what’s going on?”

“Too soon to say,” says Wendy. “But we have a protocol for when something bad is about to happen. If someone calls for a dropped anchor, everything closes down. It keeps people home and out of harm’s way.”

For a moment, we say nothing. Such a protocol seems at first absurd, then completely necessary. Anchor’s Mercy is a world where no one has to hide who they are. Monsters are drawn to that sort of unabashed light.

“What kind of harm?” Elisa presses.

“Some kinda bug, but it’s spreading fast. Stay back here. The adults are going to handle this.”

Wendy leaves us to whisper with her team of queens, and a few minutes later they vanish into the stormy night. Bash dutifully locks the doors behind them. No one seems eager to discuss what we just witnessed, but Elisa’s saved up one last dirty look just for me.

“You got into a whole wrestling match with your aunt and didn’t think to tell us?”

“We had a lot going on.” I say this knowing I’ve already messed up our truce.

“No more secrets,” Elisa says, putting her shoulder into mopping.

We’re quiet as we clean, loading the leftover pies into boxes to be taken home. Right before we leave out the back, the phone rings.

“Ignore it,” Elisa whispers, like the phone can hear her.

“It’s probably my mom,” Bash chides. He snatches the phone from the holster on the wall and answers with the usual line: “You’ve reached Pizza Monster, no, we don’t deliver.”

After a pause, Bash’s eyebrows furrow. He hands me the phone.

“It’s for you, Ollie.”

I might as well be receiving a call from deep space. Who on earth knows I’m here? At first I expect to hear Gracie reprimanding me for worrying her all day, but the moment I put the phone to my ear, I feel that Mercy magic pinching at my heels and I know who’s calling.

“Hi, Sam.”

“Okay, but, like, who the hell is this Sam?” Bash asks.

We’re piled into Bash’s truck, the leftover pizzas steaming up the windows as Bash takes angry little turns through the back roads. Elisa waves her phone at the rainy windshield, telling Bash to turn left, no, your other left. The truck shatters through fallen branches and flooded puddles and barely misses a mailbox shaped like a tugboat. No one else is on the road. It looks like Wendy Pretendy’s orders have been aptly followed.

“I told you. I just met him on the ferry. He plays the piano and Gracie invited him to Singing House last night, and then your mom drove him home.” It’s the fifth time going through all these details for Bash, who has determined we are en route to the lair of a serial killer. I add in an extra detail, for spice. “He’s staying at his aunt’s place. Alone. I think he’s rich or something. His house still has power.”

“How’d he know to call Pizza Monster?”

“Gracie told him I worked there, and he said he found the number on his aunt’s fridge.”

“I don’t trust him,” Bash declares. Again.

“He’s all alone, Bash. Maybe he doesn’t have anything to eat. These pizzas could save his life.”

“Threats of mortal danger or not, Pizza Monster never delivers.” Bash whips us into another turn. Wet branches crack below the tires.

“I think it’s fun. Besides, he offered to pay extra,” Elisa says.

“We never settled on a price. Ollie just said yes.”

“I’m more of an in-person negotiator,” I say. I feel like I’ve left my timidity far behind now that I’m back in the familiar crush between Elisa’s and Bash’s shoulders. I try to place the nervous excitement that keeps bubbling in my chest, like at any moment my breaths could spew out of me as laughter, and finally the word comes to me.

Fun. I’m having fun.

“Here! Turn here!” Elisa shouts, and we swerve onto a private road, out into the dunes.

Sam’s house is big.

Like, big.

Like, what-the-hell-does-your-aunt-do-for-work? big.

I know that’s what Bash and Elisa are thinking as we crunch to a stop, looking up at the big lit-up monstrosity. Sam appears in the headlights, waving at us enthusiastically through the rain. We rush inside, and before I can stop him, Sam pulls me into an awkward hug over the pizza boxes.

“My heroes! How many people can say they’ve received a disaster response from the legendary Suds. You two must be Bash and Elisa. I’ve heard so many cool things.”

Damn, he’s smooth.

“You have?” Elisa pauses in pushing her wet hair from her face.

“The way I hear it, y’all are notorious on the island. I’ve heard so from Ollie’s mom, and Bash’s mom. Elisa—”

“How about a tour?” I cut Sam off before he can make the innocent-yet-catastrophic mistake of asking about Elisa’s mom. It works. Sam guides us through a massive marble-floored entry, into a softly lit hall that punches right through the house to a massive wall of windows that must overlook the dunes during the day.

“Main kitchen is that way.” Sam throws a hand toward a dining room dominated by a circular table that hosts an entire dinner party of ghostly cloaked chairs. Fourteen chairs. Bash counts them out loud. Sam points the other way. “But the den and breakfast kitchen are down yonder.”

“The house has yonders,” Elisa whispers to Bash.

“What happens if I fry an egg in the non-breakfast kitchen?” Bash asks.

“Lobotomy.”

I shush them, but they keep up with the jokes. We follow in a mesmerized wake after the white sail of Sam’s shirt as he sweeps us deeper into the house. The den turns out to be a double-height arena overwhelmed with charm. The chandelier is shaped like a schooner. The thermostat is a nautical dial. There’s a grand piano, and it’s ivory. The plush sectional is deceptively normal except it goes on forever. Everyone I have ever known could probably fit on that sectional. Grimly, I think this room would be a great spot to host a fundraiser. Or a wake. But something tells me Sam’s family doesn’t have the same body count as the rest of us.

“Your aunt’s house is lovely. Thanks for having us over,” I tell Sam.

“We’re not staying,” Bash says. Elisa elbows him.

Sam either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care. He leads us one room farther, to the breakfast kitchen. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s just a kitchen. I slide the pizzas onto the pristine granite counter, but Sam sweeps them off, then kicks his foot against a cooler on the floor.

“Grab that, will ya? There’s not much food in this house, but at least my aunt keeps it stocked with drinks. I didn’t know what you guys liked so I just threw a bunch of stuff into ice. Beers, too, but no pressure. I got the firepit started out back, and if the rain stops, maybe we can hit the pool? It’s heated.”

“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to—”

“Nonsense, Ollie, don’t be rude.” Bash heaves the cooler up, suddenly on board. Some kids are ocean kids, and some are pool kids, and Bash is the latter, despite his obsession with all things seaworthy. The second he learns someone has a pool, he’s on his best behavior. I shoot Elisa a look behind Bash’s back and I’m delighted when she matches my eye roll.

The deck is slick with rain. Just like Sam says, there’s a firepit perched in the back-most corner, a tiny inferno dancing over bright blue rocks. It’s all contained in a massive cabana that has kept a circle of couches dry. There are even blankets. Sam bounces on his toes, excited or nervous to see what we think. I’m dreading the reaction of my friends, but they throw themselves onto the couches and make themselves right at home.

Over pizza, Sam submits himself to the hundred questions Bash and Elisa have about him. I realize how little I asked yesterday as I, too, learn a bad breakup sent him fleeing summer in New York City. Drama! Naturally, the questions turn to his family. Bash and Elisa are as enchanted as I am as they unpack each new scandal.

“My aunt is the rich one, not my parents,” Sam admits. “She works in tech or something. Government contracts. She bought this house forever ago to be near …” He waves vaguely at the ocean. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Boring family drama, but she got the house in a divorce. Lucky me! I needed a place to stay for a little while and she’s always saying it’s cool if I want to visit, so I packed a bag and booked a ferry ticket.”

“Wait, so she doesn’t know you’re here?” I ask. Sam’s eyes glint with a mischief I know Bash and Elisa place a premium on. Suddenly, he’s gone from rich kid to rapscallion fugitive.

“Are you in exile?” Elisa asks.

“Maybe I am. Do I seem like the disgraced type?”

“Could be hiding out from a grisly murder,” Bash offers. “A creepy seaside mansion would be a great place for a horror movie.”

Sam laughs, tossing Bash a beer. “Who’s dying first, then?”

Elisa shoots up a hand. “As the only girl, I’m the final girl. That means one of you is the killer. And I’ve got my eye on …” She ticks a finger down the line of us boys, settling on me. I know to play along, letting out an evil cackle.

“I knew he was too cute to be trusted! I knew it!” Sam insists. “Motive?”

“Insanity,” I plead. “I listened too long to the siren’s call, and it broke me.” Sam is flirting with me. Am I flirting back? I don’t think so, but I can’t bring myself to look at Bash.

“We need a weapon.” Bash ponders for a moment. “How about the schooner chandelier? I’d love to see that, particularly, dropped on someone.”

“Too splashy. That’s a onetime use,” Sam says. “Are knives too cliché?”

“A lobster claw cracker to the temple,” Elisa says definitively.

I shake my head. “A harpoon gun, obviously.”

We go around and around, developing the story like witches throwing increasingly bizarre ingredients into a surreal soup. I don’t worry that Sam might think we’re weird—that’s a given—I’m worried he won’t keep up. Even my own wit is rusty after ten months of barely using it. Sam is great, though, playing along like he’s been by our side since we were toddlers splashing one another in the shallows.

I feel it again—this sense of the summer sprawling before us. If tonight is an indication, the next few weeks will be wild ones. I thought I’d spend them hiding, but here I am with my old friends, making new friends. It reminds me of one of my mom’s often-quoted gracioms: Be nice to everyone. You never know who owns a beach house. I’m glad I met Sam before I knew any of this.

Two pizzas later, with cans of beer toppled like dominoes at our feet, sleepiness is setting in. Elisa yawns, and in a moment of silence she says, “I never thought I’d end up at one of the mansions. They never felt real, you know? It’s not what I expected.”

This is as close to a compliment as Elisa gets. She despises mainlanders and their mansions—thinks of them as an invasive species. She must have decided Sam is benign.

Bash grunts in agreement. “I live down the street—not in something like this—and we make up stories about the mansion people all the time. Most of the houses stay empty, except for this time of year.”

Elisa sits up. “Sam, if your family usually comes in the summer, why aren’t they here? Where’s your aunt now?”

“For all I know she’s hiding upstairs.”

I groan. “Please, I’ve hit my quota of creepy aunts sneaking around empty houses for the day.”

That reminds me to catch Sam up on the drama of the morning and the ensuing dropped anchor protocol. The mood turns chilly as we all stare into the fire.

“You know,” Sam finally says, “there’s tons of empty rooms here, if you guys wanted to stay.”

Bash stands up, stretching so that his belly peeks out below his Pizza Monster shirt. I’m ready for him to announce the night is over, but he doesn’t.

“I gueeeeesss we could stay,” he groans. “My house is under siege of my sisters’ friends for a sleepover, and I’m not sure I’m up for being put in drag by eleven-year-olds yet again. But I’m counting every single thread in the sheets. Anything less than a jillion, and you’ve got a mutiny on your hands.”

Elisa matches his restrained enthusiasm. “My dad’s in Portland right now visiting his brother. I suppose I can settle for this dump, Sam, but if I find a single goose feather in the pillows, I’m burning this place to the ground.”

It’s my turn. I adopt their posh dismissiveness as I swirl a can of beer. “I want that hot tub hot. Please, Sam, will you reschedule these clouds?”

The irony here is that the sky has just begun to clear. Sam bows benevolently, accepting the credit. “Thank you, thank you,” he says. “When it comes time to eat the rich, you all get first bites.”

We splash through Sam’s house as though we never mean to leave it.

“Just don’t break anything!” Sam calls after us. Despite his claims of there being no food, we find a pantry of snacks. Even though no one is hungry, Elisa and I get to work arranging a charcuterie board entirely out of fruit snacks and potato chips, all upon an expensive driftwood cutting board I am certain has never seen the ocean.

“This feels profane,” Elisa keeps saying as she shakes a can of whipped cream. “This is godless. Do you remember the doomsday people who protest at the library?”

“Of course. They’ve been predicting the end times for years.”

“Maybe they’re onto something. I mean, look at this. We are so lost, just as a species.” She adds an elegant swirl down the board’s edge, anyway.

I take the moment to confess something. “I didn’t think you guys would want to stay.”

“Are you kidding? We’re not leaving you alone with this psycho.” She says this with enough bite I know she actually kind of likes Sam, too.

We crowd around as Sam sits at the piano and regales us with wild exploits of his life in New York City. I’m mesmerized at how he accompanies himself, his hands scrambling from hectic études to tremulous ballads, perfectly matching the twists and turns of his actual life. Not to be outdone, Bash brushes him off the piano. Then, plunking out random notes for comedic effect, he tells the story about how he had to dive into the ocean to save me when I fell overboard during a whale watch in sixth grade (mostly true). Then there was the time Elisa posed as an elderly woman to get us into an R-rated movie (completely true, down to dropping her dentures). And who could forget the time Bash brought an entire stadium to its feet by delivering a spontaneous dance performance on the Jumbotron?

“Come on,” Sam groans. “Now you’re making shit up.”

Bash sets his jaw. “Ollie, if you will accompany me.”

I ease onto the piano bench and play a vamp as I set the story up for Bash.

“In seventh grade we took a school field trip to Boston for a Bruins game, and we spent the whole time trying to get the Jumbotron on us, but it kept focusing on other people who would just stop dancing the second they saw themselves, and we were so mad. We promised each other that no matter what, when the big eye found us, we’d go for it. We swore when it came time to shine, we’d shine.”

“So what happened?” Sam asks. “Did the camera ever find you?”

I rumble my left hand in the deep region of the piano, creating suspense. Bash perfectly acts out the moment of being caught in a spotlight. “It did. Right as I was walking back to our seats after grabbing a bucket of popcorn.”

“And?” Sam presses.

“Shine time, baby!” Elisa and I shout Bash’s famous quote. It’s his cue to reenact the now-legendary dance that got an entire stadium to cheer him on. I’m laughing so hard at his commitment that I forget to keep playing.

“Just look up Dancing Popcorn Kid. It was a meme,” I eventually say.

Sam is beyond amused. “Wait! I’ve seen that! The video of the kid dumping popcorn on himself is you? I didn’t know you were internet famous.”

“That’s right. No one can compete.”

My fingers, which have returned to lightly vamping, stumble. Compete? Is that what Bash and Sam are doing? I’m surprised I even care. I feel a little odd, a little new. Blame the shock, blame the cold, blame the beer, but just now the clutch of the day shook loose, and my heart remembered its pulse.

“I think there’s only one way to settle this,” Sam says. “Cannonball contest, anyone?”

We scramble out onto the deck, shedding clothes until we’re hurtling into the luminous pool in just our underwear. It’s so warm that steam drifts from our skin when we get out to do it all again. The euphoria I feel is perfect. Primitive and pure. I can’t help but smile at the way the shatter of light fills our faces with ghastly shadows as we drag one another down through glassy chains of bubbles. When Sam proposes the hot tub, I’m not quite ready to get out of the deeper water. I float with Elisa, looking up through the steam at the flung-high pebble of the moon.

“Ollie,” Elisa says somewhere near me.

“Yeah?”

“Be gentle with Bash, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you guys have always liked each other.”

Bash and Sam are making each other laugh in the hot tub. I feel a pang of jealousy, and the urge to get between them. Maybe I know a bit about what Elisa’s saying.

“That was ages ago,” I whisper, but the still water brings out the harshness in my denial.

“Not for Bash. Just be careful with him, okay? He’s excited you’re back. We both are.” I sense she has more to say, and eventually she adds, “Sam is nice, but he’s seasonal. If you’re really back for good, pick the boy who lasts through the winter.”

I exhale until the air is gone from my lungs, and I sink into the edgeless blue of the deep end. I come up, and Elisa is seated on the pool’s edge, watching me.

I flick a little water at her. “I’ll take the note. Anything else you wanna say?”

She smirks. We both know there’s a lot she wants to say. I’m letting her know I can handle it. Elisa has always been tough, and it has always been worth it.

“Yeah,” she says after a time. “I never got to tell you, but I’m so sorry about what happened to your mom. I know she’s okay now, but I bet it’s still really hard.”

I know she means it, because she looks at me in a way that makes me feel actually seen. I’m not just her asshole friend, and I’m not some clueless mainlander here for a good time. There’s a shared pain holding us together, and even though the embrace is one that hurts, within it I am her brother.

I pull myself out of the water so that I can face Elisa across the drifting steam. It’s like we’re two people floating on a cloud.

“It’s hard,” I admit. “It’s almost impossible, to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

After a whole day, I’m still searching for the words to describe the molten anger that spewed out of me last night. I pick through my words as carefully as I dare, knowing at any moment the bubble we sit in could break.

“It’s just hard to come back to everything and pretend like nothing was ever wrong. I thought I lost everything, but then I got it all back, but I still feel like I’m the one piece that’s missing. Everyone else is so excited, and I’m just …”

“Scared?”

“Yeah. And sad, and …” I search for the right word. “Heavy. Like, too heavy to float along with everyone else.”

“I get that. When my mom …” Elisa’s voice catches in her throat. She takes a second to try again. “After she went away, I used to dream she was on the mainland living a new life. I wanted so badly to follow her. I felt like she had woken up from this nightmare I was still trapped in. I was so sure she was waiting for me. Sending me signs. It took a long time for this place to feel like home again.”

I want to believe that I am traveling through such a thing as Elisa’s long time. I can feel my heart moving. I hope it’s toward home.

“That fight with Gracie sounded pretty rough,” Elisa says.

I glance up at the stars, willing them to stay put. I’m not ready to face Gracie tomorrow.

“You heard everything from Bash’s mom?”

She nods. Her face darkens as she folds up her knees to her chest. Her shoulders betray a shiver, but I don’t know if she’s cold or if she’s crying.

“I wish I could have a fight with my mom.” Her voice is faraway. “Is that weird?”

“No,” I say right away. “To be honest, it felt good. It’s the most we’ve talked in months.”

“Really?”

It feels forbidden to crave what Elisa and I crave, but instead of scolding myself, I set aside my judgment and wonder: Why? Where does this lightness come from, when I think about saying all the unsaid stuff out loud to Gracie?

“It didn’t feel good to yell at my mom, but it did feel good to finally be honest. Ever since she got better, she’s been so determined to be positive. About everything. All the time. There’s no room to be sad, but I’m sad. And I wish I could talk to her about it, but I just end up feeling like I’m not making her fight worth it if I’m not happy all the time.”

“So what do you do instead?”

“I smile.”

Elisa takes a deep breath, unfolds, and looks up at the stars again. “Well, if you need a mom who can really listen, I’m happy to share mine. It’s pretty much all she’s good for these days. Sometimes I light one of her cigarettes like incense and just talk her ear off.”

“What do you talk to her about?”

Elisa gives me a sly glance. “Boys. Girls. My dad. You. And my ongoing plot to ruin Imogen Pfaff’s life.”

“You’re a one-woman show, Elisa.”

She’s smiling, but it’s a smile I know well. One wrapped tight over a wound that still won’t heal.

“Honestly, I mostly just ask her to show me where her lighter is.”

Elisa’s mom, Doro, quit smoking again and again, for years, but she never quit her lighter. It was a tarnished, heart-shaped contraption that popped open with a flamboyant crack. The flame was a wobbling apricot petal. Whatever she wore, it was secure in a pocket for easy access. I remember Elisa fixating on it because when they found Doro’s shoes on the beach, they also found her socks, cigarettes, and cell phone tucked within them, but no lighter.

“Still no luck finding it?”

Elisa shrugs. “Nothing to find, probably. She never left that thing behind. Maybe I’m just jealous of it.”

Bash and Sam call for us to join them, but before the bubble bursts, I need to ask Elisa one last question. I slip into the steam and swim to her edge so I can whisper.

“Hey, one thing I’ve been thinking about since my mom got sick. Do you ever wonder about what happened to your mom’s research?”

“All her old exhibits are still up in the visitors center at AMIOS. We can go if you want. I haven’t been in years.”

“No. The other stuff. Do you think she was onto something? About the water and sand here? The way it makes people sick?”

“Ollie, don’t say that.”

“It’s been on my mind for a while. I mean, something has to be making people sick here, right? And today just got me thinking, you know? Isn’t it weird that the adults have a protocol to keep people home in case of a sickness spreading? It reminded me of your mom’s report. Back when Gracie got sick, I tried looking up anything related to the old Easter Energy plant and the chemical spill in the sixties, but there’s nothing. It’s all so vague. And I’m wondering if maybe your mom’s report—”

“How fucking dare you.”

Elisa wrenches herself up and away from the pool. She grabs a towel and marches toward the house, but I catch her right before she can run inside. I’m not sure what I’m going to say—I don’t think I’m wrong, yet I’m desperate to apologize.

“Elisa, I’m sorry—”

“No, I’m sorry, Ollie. I’m so fucking sorry!” Her shouts draw Bash and Sam out of the tub. “I’m just so sorry that you almost lost your mom. And I’m so sorry you almost lost your friends. And I’m so sorry that despite getting your precious little life back, you’re still so unhappy that you’d rather dig around in my trauma for clues to some old conspiracy theory instead of just figuring out how to be fucking grateful.”

The betrayal is so sharp that it’s through me before I can even feel the pain of the stab. Out weeps my anger from last night.

“I’m sorry, too, Elisa. I’m sorry I wasn’t a good enough friend to you while my mom was fighting for her life against bone cancer. And I’m so sorry that you would rather search for a stupid junk lighter than answers about what happened to your mom. But mostly, I’m sorry it hurts so much for anyone on this fucking island to look at the facts and ask what the fuck is going on!”

“Facts? Well, bad news, Little Miss Pseudoscience, you can’t just make up whatever facts you need to corroborate your own personal tragedy, which, by the way, fucking worked out in the end!”

I spread my arms, trying to grab on to the night itself, and all the drama that’s led to this moment. “The entire island got shut down by drag queens because of an unknown sickness! Does that feel worked out to you, Elisa?”

Somewhere in the last few seconds, Elisa has shattered into someone much smaller and sharper. Every word she speaks has a deadly edge.

“No. It feels like the hysterical mind game of a resentful, broken boy who wants everyone to be as miserable as he is. You should have stayed gone.”

She turns her back on me, on Bash and Sam and the party that’s only just begun, on the stars hanging above the black ocean, and she stomps into the house.

For the second day in a row, I awaken to the cry of seagulls.

I trudge downstairs in my shorts—that’s all I can find from yesterday’s outfit. The kitchen has been tidied already. Someone made tea—probably Elisa. Seeing her abandoned mug, I feel the fading sting of last night’s fight. I’m collecting fights like Gracie collects shells.

The deck and pool are washed in fresh brightness, and that’s where I find Bash doing his morning push-ups. He notices me but doesn’t pause, forcing me to consider the sweat shining on the carved muscles of his back. His phone faintly sings: Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart. Baby, bang it up inside.

Mitski’s “Washing Machine Heart.” There’s another sting from last night—Elisa warning me about Bash’s lingering feelings. The throbbing in my head sinks through me, pulsing low in my gut as Bash stands up and gives me a panting smile. Conspiratorial, daring, and always a little too happy to see me. It’s a smile I’ve thought about a lot this past year.

I snatch up my clothes from where I threw them around the pool. Bash hands me a mug of tea, fitting nicely into my silence as we both consider the seagulls above.

“Should we get into a fight, too?” I offer. “Just to get the rule of threes over with?”

“Give Elisa time. Suds stick together, right?”

“Right.”

His phone is still singing. Why not me? the song pleads. Why not me? Bash fumbles to turn it off, saying, “Cell service is still out and it’s the only song I have downloaded. Ha.”

I badly want to open up to Bash, but after what happened with Elisa, I don’t think it’s a good idea. The deeper the emotions, the closer to the monsters we keep locked away, and what would I find under Bash’s playful act? I can’t afford to ruin our hard-won equilibrium, but at the same time I feel drawn toward the danger. What would it be like to kiss him one more time?

“Hey, Ollie, I was thinking …”

I stand up. Something is wrong with the sky. The seagulls are not flocking at random. Something on the beach has them wheeling in a frenzied vortex. I snatch up my shoes and pull Bash along the boardwalk leading through the dunes, out onto the beach.

I see it right away.

I see it, but it doesn’t make sense.

The coastline of Anchor’s Mercy is famous, always depicted as a beveled ribbon of white sand banded with glittering shells, seaweed fringe, and benches of bleached driftwood. A little up the coast, the spray of surf indicates the rocky Slipper Shell Beach that Gracie calls the shell shop because of the tidal pools that form. Down the beach is where the mainlanders set up beneath a rash of colorful umbrellas. But this section of the beach is pristine. It makes the hulking mass of black flesh all the stranger.

Bash gasps. “It’s a leatherback!”

We get as near to the beached turtle as we dare. The seagulls fly so close I can feel the punch of air from their wings on my neck. They seem eager to feast, but none of them want to take the first bite. I don’t blame them—the creature is the size of a car, like something coughed out of the ocean’s most ancient depths.

“It probably washed up during the storm,” I say. “It looks like it’s been dead for a little bit.”

“What’s all that stuff on its back?”

The seagulls are interested in something growing over the turtle’s head and shell. It looks like many piles of tiny, encrusted volcanoes, each with a black pit of an eye. Within the black pit, pale tongues squirm.

“Barnacles,” I say. It’s gruesome, but common, that barnacles grow on the backs of turtles. These barnacles seem to have fused right to the poor thing’s flesh, however. They weep a familiar, iridescent mucus that beads in the sand like castaway pearls. The smell reminds me of the marine rot at Singing House, too. I step closer. A lone seagull has managed to alight on the shell. I can see its twitching wing and a bit of its beak, but where’s the rest of it? It takes me another moment to realize the bird is dead as well, the barnacles squelching over its body, fusing it to the turtle’s corpse.

“Goooooooood morning, campers! Who’s ready for a beach day?”

Bash and I jump. Sam has appeared at the top of the dune, bending below the weight of a rainbow umbrella, a rolled beach blanket, and the bright pink cooler. He drops it all when he sees us and the turtle.

“We should get back to town,” I tell Bash. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

We squeeze into Bash’s truck, Sam sitting graciously between Elisa and me. I alternate between thinking of how to talk to Elisa and imagining insane catastrophes that might have occurred while we were out in the dunes. I feel a delayed guilt about not checking on Gracie, and I have to remind myself that her plan all along was to shove me off on my own adventure. I’d be surprised if she even noticed I was gone.

The ride into town is dead quiet.

Town, however, is not quiet at all.

There are couples walking dogs and dads grabbing coffee. Bash fires off salutes to a few familiar faces reclining on porches, or watering their flower beds, or trading gossip over hydrangeas. My eyes dart into alleyways between houses and under porches, searching for swept-away calamity, but everything here looks so … normal.

“I knew it. I freaking knew it. Stop the car,” Elisa orders. “I’m heading to check on the shop. Alone.”

Bash pulls over and Sam and I scramble to let Elisa out. Instead of getting back in, I run after her.

“Elisa, wait!”

She’s a meteor. People fling themselves out of her way.

“Elisa, can we talk?”

She spins around, and instead of the anger I expect, she looks exhausted, like she barely slept at all.

“Where is it, Ollie? Where’s the big apocalypse?”

Ironically, we’re in front of the library, where the doomsday people sometimes protest. They’re out today with their big, angry signs, sitting in lawn chairs while their kids play on the lawn. In past years they’ve advertised just a general sense of doom aimed at the debauchery of Anchor’s Mercy, but I see now that the signs have gotten an update. END DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR. WENDY PRETENDY IS GOING TO HELL. At the mention of apocalypse, a few of the people give us a friendly wave.

“Maybe our plan worked,” I say, hating how childish I sound. “Crisis averted.”

Elisa laughs. “Crisis averted? Ollie, most of the island doesn’t have any power still, and as if that isn’t bad enough, you caused a mass panic because of a little summer cold. The doomsday people are having a picnic! That’s not a good sign.”

“I didn’t say there wasn’t stuff to deal with. That’s what I was trying to say last night! There’s something wrong with the island and everyone knows it, but never talks about it! I just think if you were being objective—”

“Objective!” Elisa spits a laugh at my face. “Did you know that over eighty percent of the houses are empty during the offseason? Yet people who grew up here can’t find a place to live. So they leave. And did you know that the island’s freshwater supply is being salinated because we’re pumping too much from the aquifers to quench the thirst of the summer crowds? Half the people who have managed to eke out an existence beyond downtown can’t drink water from their own wells. So guess what, Ollie? They leave, too.”

This isn’t about me. It’s about Elisa’s need to chew on something worth her teeth.

“Oh, and don’t forget the shit show of trying to keep a business afloat. Food prices are skyrocketing. Shit is always breaking. We run out of lumber constantly. And even if we had the food, and we had the lumber, where do you get workers? Oh, surprise, surprise, they left, too! All around us things are falling apart, but there’s no time to rebuild any of it because summer is coming—summer is constantly coming—and we need to slap a Band-Aid on all our problems so we can be ready for the ferries full of people expecting a good time. Because if they don’t have a good time, they make our lives hell. And even when they have the best time, do you know what happens anyways? Say it with me, Ollie.”

My voice comes out a whisper. “They leave.”

“Always,” Elisa snaps. “The worst part is, you have no idea how right you are when you say something is wrong here. Everything is wrong. But do you know what makes it so, so, so much harder to fix? When the people on this island look at all this, and instead of building up the courage to tackle it bit by bit, they turn it all into conspiracy. Of course people are getting sick, Ollie! We can barely keep doctors at our shitty little clinic! Our medical staff attrition rate is the highest in the state, so of course our rates of illness are crazy high, too! Like, fucking duh. But reality is too scary and overwhelming, right? Let’s all just believe in a secret governmental boogeyman! How convenient and spoooooky!” She wiggles her fingers in mock fear. “And I get it, I truly do. The best thing about conspiracies is that they can’t be solved, which means you get to play with them forever and ever, never sparing a moment to un-fuck actual reality because you’re too busy hunting down a mythical, toxic unicorn that you’ll never catch, because you’re making it up at the exact same time!”

I’m not sure I’m breathing. What air is there left to breathe with?

“Okay. I’m sorry. Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

Elisa’s diatribe has only one punch line. Leave. I wait for her to tell me to go, but instead she takes my hand.

“I want you to help, Ollie.”

For a moment there, I thought we were lost. The anger is all still between us, but there’s hope here, too. Elisa is tough, but she has always, always had her reasons.

“Hey, guys?” Sam jogs up behind us. “Sorry to interrupt but Bash had to head out to check on Pizza Monster. What are you guys up to?”

I try to think of where my mom might be at this hour, and surprisingly I have the answer. “Gracie told Willy she’d help with brunch at the Last Hail Mary this weekend. She’s probably drowning in mimosa orders by now.”

“Then you’d better go fish her out,” Elisa says. She does something strange then. She hugs me. “Make up with your mom, okay? That’s a good place to start. Then we’ll do the rest.”

I nod, waving her off. Sam salutes. We start walking toward the Last Hail Mary. He barely acknowledges the fight—the fights—he’s just witnessed, which about justifies sainthood in my eyes. All he says is “My mom says people only fight about what they care about, and only with people they care for.”

“Sounds like something my mom would say, too.”

Like yesterday, the brunch craze has turned downtown into a war zone. Handmade signs in restaurant windows plead CASH ONLY. People crowd Hail Mary’s doors and the air is loud with complaining. There’s music, too, though I can’t see any drag queens dancing. It’s just loud.

“It’s a bit early for this, isn’t it?” A woman holding a pug speaks to a little man in a massive sun hat.

He responds, “Oh, it’s been going like this since last night. They were supposed to open for brunch an hour ago, but no one can get in.”

I feel a flutter of worry. The same flutter that I felt on the ferry, in the soft skin behind my ear.

I address the man. “Excuse me, what’s happening here?”

“I was already in bed last night when I heard the bars were shutting down. Who cares? Not me. But this morning I was in the garden and I heard my neighbors. Evidently Hail Mary’s never managed to close. Got overpowered right away. A mutiny! Imagine that? Some people just don’t know what’s best for them.”

“Imagine!” the old lady pipes up. “Making a bar stay open just so you and your girlfriends can butcher karaoke.”

“But the doors are locked? With people inside?” I ask.

“Or barricaded,” the man offers.

People push to look into the windows, trying to get a glimpse around the dropped shades. A mom holds up her little girl who wants to see. The little girl has a rainbow painted across her nose, and she cups her hands to protect it even as she presses her forehead to the glass. Sam and I push to the front of the crowd, where a man I think is the manager of Hail Mary’s is wrestling a key into the lock of the large, wooden double doors. Nothing happens. When he removes the key, a glistening strand of goo trails after.

The flutter behind my ear turns into an insistent hammer.

“Don’t unlock that door,” I tell the manager.

He shrugs at me. “But it is unlocked.”

The door jolts open, and out flops a pale arm mottled with bruises. I jump back into Sam. Inside, light from a disco ball reveals a crowd of bodies standing still. Then one rushes forward. A woman. She stumbles out the door, clutching shoes to her chest. I can’t help but read her shirt—WIFE OF THE PARTY—barely legible beneath a grime of dried blood.

“Going to the chapel,” she sings. “Goooooing to the chapel.”

Her eyes are huge and shining, and in the dark of the doorway, they reflect like silver coins. Her face is streaked with cried-off makeup. She looks at the crowd and smiles. Smiles big.

The manager steps forward. “Miss? Are you okay? What’s happening in there?”

“I’m gooooonna get married,” the bride-to-be sings.

“Look at the burn on her arm,” Sam whispers.

The woman finally steps into the sunlight and the crowd gasps. A riot of blisters crawls up her arm, hard and shiny like the boiled skin of a bagel. She examines herself, not at all concerned, then she looks up into the light, closes her eyes, sighs.

“That tastes … that tastes goooood,” she says in a singsong cadence.

She needs a hospital, not a chapel, but at the same time I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone look happier. It reminds me of Aunt Maddie yesterday—

Sam grabs my wrist. “It’s spreading!”

And it is. The blisters are expanding across the woman’s shoulder. New patches bubble up on her thigh and calf. The tight, shiny skin weeps an oily iridescence that tints the light around the woman as she twirls, evidently delighted by her affliction. The crowd hails her with comments.

“Someone help her!”

“I’m not touching that. Looks contagious.”

“Poor thing. Looks like sun poisoning.”

The manager steps forward. “Miss? My car is right up the street. How about we get you to the clinic—”

It’s slow, the way she moves, but that’s how she gets so close. Before the manager can sidestep her, the woman has him in a hug. A few bystanders try to pry her off, but the struggle rips open her blisters and out sprays a fine, pearlescent fog. The manager must get a mouthful, because even as he reassures the people who saved him that he’s okay, he begins to cough.

“She just surprised me. I’m fine. I’m—” He coughs harder. His eyes bulge like he’s not getting any air. “Just … some water.”

Someone rushes forward with a bottle. He chugs half of it and then doubles over, clapping his hands over his mouth. Sticky mucus balloons between his fingers. At first it looks like he’s in deep agony, but then he stops moving altogether. He just stands there, his bloodshot eyes shedding humongous, lugubrious tears.

Then he smiles.

Other people are coughing now, too. The thumping music from inside the bar fragments with cries for help in the street, and the lone giggling of the bride-to-be as she squirms against the pavement.

“Goooing to the chapel!” she sings.

A chorus of voices comes from within the dark bar, answering her call.

“GOOOONNNA GET MAAARRRRIED.”

Another girl wobbles out into the light. Then another. Then three more. The same shining tears fall from their wide, gleeful eyes. One has bright red hair and she wears a familiar sash: MAID OF DISHONOR.

Poor Dakota.

That’s my last thought before the doors burst open, unleashing a parade of shining limbs, gargled giggles, and voices raised in song. A choir, I think as I turn to run, singing away any hope of the best summer ever on the island of Anchor’s Mercy.

AUGUST 15

25 DAYS AFTER

21:02

There is a misconception about disaster: It moves quickly.

It doesn’t. I have delved into what AMIOS has uncovered concerning the original outbreak in the bar known as the Last Hail Mary. Eyewitness accounts from within the bar are nonexistent, but the forensics team turned up a karaoke list that implies quite a long wait. Estimated crowd size is 176 people based on cash in register.

Testimony from survivors aboard the USNS Embrace have similar details. The “weepers” generally move slow, except in the first hours of the infection as their body fluids are congealed. One might expect pain, or panic, or even rabidity, but no. I will outline the first two phases of the pathogen’s life cycle and attendant symptoms below.

PHASE 1: DROWNING

• Fluids in sinuses, lungs, and stomach congeal, “drowning” the host. Congealed fluids expand in volume, secreting from the host’s facial cavities, mostly around eyes/nose. Tears and mucus are a known carrier of the pathogen’s spores.

• Onset is marked by an overload of emotion—mostly joy and euphoria. Host’s brain likely being bathed in serotonin, dopamine, and epinephrine (adrenaline). A form of emotional anesthesia, no doubt.

PHASE 2: WEEPER

• No pain or panic reported after “drowning” phase. Means of respiration are unclear. Potential respiration through oxygen-rich mucus in lungs.

• An appearance of languid movements marked by sudden bursts of speed, mostly under light.

• Host emits vocalizations. Laughter and singing are most common. Speech patterns indicate host’s memories are intact.

• Suspected stimulation of brain centers are memories and feelings of hope. Host exhibits an unyielding urge to hug uninfected individuals.

• Growth begins to appear on skin, also stimulated by bright light.

These are likely the two phases witnessed during the initial outbreak. I was also able to interview one individual in the ICU of the Embrace. I’m including his account here:

“I was there. At least I think I was there, but it didn’t really feel like the start of anything. I thought zombies came in crowds, all at once, but these were more like just a couple drunk people. And … it really was only a few of them at first. It was funny. They were dancing and laughing and singing. Some even lay down, right in the street. They liked the sunlight. Others wandered into bars. You could tell the originals because they had that stuff growing on them. Strange stuff. Colorful, shimmery. Pretty mermaid scales, I remember thinking. I thought it was costumes from a party. But suddenly it was on everyone, and people were running, and those things—weepers, we called them—they began to run, too.”

In the hospital with Gracie, I remember marveling at how all minutes aren’t equal. Some pass in a flash while some stop time. And some are so dark and deep you fall into them, only to surface a few seconds later wondering where all the light went.

All the minutes in the maritime museum feel like that. Dark, deep, spiraling, and ticking the world toward a new, horrific nightmare.

At first we hid, waiting for it all to end. It didn’t. By nightfall, when that realization sunk in, we gathered the survivors—only thirteen of us—and the adults tried to make a plan. Even whispering, the tension was intense.

“We need food.”

“We need water. Dehydration kills in three days.”

“We need weapons.”

I remember a dreamy denial stopping me from feeling too much, and there was a moment I almost laughed at the strangeness of it all. These random people, and us, holding ourselves captive in the maritime museum?

Then a little girl called for help outside. I think I stood up, but one of the adults—a man, a lawyer, one of several in a group—ordered me to sit down. Or else. So I slowly sat, sinking into a tyranny that had manifested instantly from the crisis.

That was three days ago. Since then, time has broken into such tiny, dark moments. Too many to count. Too many to remember. They spread like black seashells across my dreams.

Day four. I’m tucked among the dusty displays of the maritime museum, in a grimy nest of sailcloth, curled around Bash so he can sleep. It is utterly silent, as are the rules of my new, drowning world. It is so silent that I swear I can hear the moment the seagulls cease their crying and abandon us for safer shores. Then all that cries are the weepers in the street, and me.

The taste of salt in my own tears drives hungry nails through my guts. In an hour, I can eat two more cookies from my rations and take a sip of flat soda. Delicious. But I’m not complaining. Complaining is a sound, and this close to sunset—when the weepers still react to every little sound with childlike curiosity—it would be lethal to make too much noise.

I imagine silence as a structure. Strong but see-through, like the glass that bottles the boats around us. Even a small sound could crack it, and even a small crack might spread, and then what? In my dream, the sea gives no warning. She seeps under barricaded doors and climbs the steps as a glittering slickness. When she finds me, she pulls herself through the fibers of my clothes, drips up my throat, and, all at once, floods between my clenched teeth.

Suddenly, I’m not dreaming anymore. I really can’t breathe as a humid grip tightens over my lips. My eyes bulge, seeing only shadows, and then Sam whispers in my ear.

“Ollie. It’s Sam. Don’t scream.”

He removes his hand from my mouth, and I suck in a long, low breath. The shadows halt their dancing. I am still in the model ship exhibit of the maritime museum. Bash is still asleep beside me. The light through the heavy curtains is only a trickle now.

Sam is rummaging in cloth around me. He’s frantic. “They took it. The lawyers took your rations while you were asleep. Dammit.”

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wasn’t supposed to. I follow Sam’s soft footsteps out into the main area of the upper floor—a gallery of paintings depicting ships tossed by unruly seas. The other survivors huddle in withered clusters around the light of a gas lantern set low. The faces that peer up at me are strange, dim masks. The factions of the survivors are clear: on one side the townies, on the other the tourists. The biggest group, in both numbers and muscles, are the gay lawyers. Our tiny tyrants. They face down Sam’s anger with indifference. I notice several of them are chewing smugly.

It’s too late.

Sam turns me away.

“I told you we can’t trust them. You weren’t supposed to let your guard down,” he whispers.

“I’m sorry.” Tears prick my eyes. I’m embarrassed to cry in front of him, but it’s happened a lot these past few days.

He hugs me. “It’s okay. I have good news. Follow me.”

Sam and I slowly descend the stairs in the center of the museum. Darkened and quiet, it feels like sneaking through someone else’s house during a sleepover. The bottom floor is split between an expansive display of old-timey sailing paraphernalia (a blank spot on the wall marks where we got the gas lamp) and a gift shop. Sam leads me to a hall in between, to the basement door. The combination lock holding it shut is, for the first time in my life, open.

“How—” I begin to ask.

“Just tried numbers until it clicked,” Sam says. “It only took two days, but guess what’s down there? More food.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

Sam shakes his head.

I close my eyes. More food. I never thought I’d have to make a decision like this, between us and them, but hasn’t that divide always defined my life on Anchor’s Mercy? Some people live here, some people visit, but Gracie always told me everyone belongs. She had a saying about it, even.

When it’s dark, we swim toward one another.

Even hearing her in my head threatens new tears, and honestly I really can’t spare the moisture. I shake off the emotion.

“We share,” I tell Sam.

That night, gathered around the lamp, all thirteen survivors have a silent banquet.

It’s not really a banquet. The food is the same as what we found in the gift shop. Chips, soda, nuts, candy. It reminds me of the charcuterie board Elisa made, and thinking of Elisa makes me too sick to taste anything, so I try to think of anything else.

And it’s not exactly silent. A jovial atmosphere has somehow spawned inside the maritime museum. I feel it, too—a near-giddiness as my body soaks up the sugar after days of eating only stomach acid. Sam gives me a smile I can’t help but return. Bash hunches beside me, but he won’t eat. Before anyone can snatch his portion away, I tuck it into his lap. He murmurs a hollow “Thanks.”

“You’re from around here, right?”

One of the lawyers is talking to me. I think his name is Justin. After we barricaded the doors the first day we were in here, we did a round of terse introductions, and they all seemed to be named Justin.

I blink, for a moment forgetting how to talk. Sam answers for me.

“How do you know that?”

The lawyer shrugs. “I saw him on the ferry. And he knows his way around better than he should. Him too.” He points at Bash, then folds his hands. “So maybe you can tell us what the hell is happening.”

“You don’t have to answer him,” Sam whispers to me. The lawyer gives a patronizing smile that gets right under my skin, which of course is the point. I brush Sam off.

“Yeah, we grew up here, but I have no idea why this is happening, or what it even is.”

Is that true, though? Since we took shelter here, I’ve felt a nonstop sinking into the murk of conspiracy. There was a chemical spill in Anchor’s Mercy in the sixties. The townies get sick. Imogen Pfaff, her red notebook, and Elisa’s mom vanishing. I feel dark truths slither across my brain, but they are too inky to hold for long. And even if I could catch one, I’m embarrassed to admit to myself that even my worst nightmare—that some poison leaching into the sand gave my mom cancer—now feels childish. Reality is so much worse.

“That was your mom with you on the ferry, wasn’t it?” the lawyer asks. “I saw her. The morning after the storm. I saw her walking.”

My hunger is forgotten. All my focus is on the smug, chewing face of this man.

“Where? Please. You have to tell me. Is she okay? Is she alive?”

He’s got me on his hook and he takes his time chewing, reeling me in. I realize I’m asking him something he can’t know—how Gracie is right this moment. But it feels like whatever he says next will determine if she is still alive. I refuse to even blink.

“I’ll tell you,” he says slowly, “if you give me your food.”

Everyone stops eating. Sam tries to stop me, but I toss what’s left of my rations toward him. The lawyer passes the food to his group, and they pat him on the back. Way to go, Justin, good work.

“I was taking a run on the trails that go out to the dunes, and I saw her walking. She was heading away from town. I bet she was still there when the outbreak hit.”

For the first time in days, I feel hope. Not the emaciated reassurances I’ve been feeding myself, but real hope. Gracie is okay. She wasn’t even in town the day of the outbreak. But Sam is angry. He’s on his feet.

“You could have told him that the first day. You’re a monster, you know that, right? Ollie grew up here, and he’s our best chance of escaping when the time comes.”

Sam’s cold logic strikes guilt into the lawyer’s smug expression. I try to look tough even though I’m wondering if Sam has just told me the reason he’s protecting Bash and me. It doesn’t matter after what the lawyer tells me next.

“Your mom was walking without her shoes. But she had that blue wig. She wasn’t wearing it, though. She was holding it in her hands. And she was singing to herself, like those things outside do.”

He doesn’t know Gracie. He doesn’t know my mom at all. I surge to my feet and exit the lamplight, stumbling up the tiny spiral stairs that lead to the crow’s nest. When footsteps follow, I turn to tell Sam I want to be alone, but it’s Bash who sits down beside me. He puts his head on my shoulder and doesn’t say a thing until my breathing has steadied.

“You can talk to me,” he says. “I’m still here.”

I’ve been afraid to add to the maelstrom of anxiety I know is dominating Bash’s thoughts, but now the words rush out of me in a fraying whisper.

“Do you remember the night we were at Pizza Monster, when Willy came in and told us the town was dropping anchor? He said he heard my mom was okay, and that’s all I’ve been able to think about. Where was she? Would she run away? Did Aunt Maddie infect her? I mean, they must have been together, right? But now I don’t know. If Gracie was walking in the dunes during the outbreak, maybe she got away, but why would she take off her shoes? And if she was one of those weepers, she wouldn’t carry her wig around, right? That’s a human thing to do. A Gracie thing to do. Right?”

I’m asking impossible questions that Bash seems to know not to try and answer. We stare at the dark roofs of downtown and the moonstruck bay beyond.

“I’m scared, too,” Bash says.

I rub his shoulder. “Your family is okay, Bash. They’re smart. And cautious. I bet they’re at your house right now, waiting for you to come home.”

Bash sniffs. I’ve made him cry, but he tells me, “Keep going.”

It’s always been easier to handle someone else’s pain over my own, and I feel my old self responding.

“Your dad is baking bread from scratch. Your sisters are arguing about a game they’re making up—but quietly. They know to be quiet, because sometimes the weepers get curious. But you know your mom. She can sense someone on their way over for lunch before the person even knows they’re hungry. She’s guarding all of them. She wants everything perfect for the moment you make it home.”

Bash is nodding, like it’s all real and true. Then he adds to the fantasy like it’s one of our bits, saying, “Gracie is with them. Maybe that’s why she was walking out to the dunes. She knew town was no good, and she was looking for you at Sam’s, but she made it to my house instead.”

Now I’m nodding, too.

Bash continues. “What was her saying? About making friends?”

I smile. “Be nice to everyone. You never know who has a beach house.”

“Exactly,” Bash says. “If she’s not at my house, she’s at someone else’s. Probably telling embarrassing stories about you to pass the time.”

“The true question is …” I pause for suspense. “Is she or is she not wearing her wig?”

“Oh, that wig is on,” Bash says. “And she’s turning this way and that, going, ‘What wig? Where?’ ”

I can see it. I have to stifle a laugh. The joy is scalding and brief.

“And Elisa …” Bash trails off, but I’ve been working on this one for days.

“Elisa is the last person who needs saving. We both know that. In fact, I bet it’s only a matter of time before she saves us, and together we restart civilization in the attic of Marine Supply. No lawyers allowed.”

Bash sits up. “And her dad is on the mainland, remember? He’ll know something is up, right? He’ll come for her. And us. Maybe he’s on his way now.”

Neither of us can help but look back out to sea, but all that floats there are the faraway lights of the white boat I saw from the ferry. I’m still looking at it when a few minutes later Bash sits up.

“Ollie. Look. The library!”

The library is easy to spot. A renovated church, its bell tower shoots up from the surrounding rooftops like a cocked thumb. It’s as dark as anything else, but something ragged drifts from one of the upper windows.

“It’s a flag,” Bash whispers. He rummages around the crow’s nest until he finds the spyglass, then looks again.

“A nautical flag. Blue and yellow!”

Even at the end of the world, Bash is a boat kid. And I’m sure that flag wasn’t there earlier today. Someone put it there, and Bash knows what it means.

“I want to communicate with you,” Bash whispers. “That’s what it means. Ollie, there are other survivors. We’re not alone! We can save these people!”

Before this can sink in, something flickers in the corner of my vision. I stare up into the night until, abruptly, spotlights come on and I’m looking at the bald head of the water tower floating over town. At first I think I’m imagining it, but then the light spreads outward, sweeping into town, and suddenly the streets are aglow. All at once, the town’s power has been turned back on.

Then comes the music. Not from the town, but from directly below us, as the museum’s many displays all come back online.

“Turn it off,” I hear myself whisper. The music is barely audible, yet it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. And another sound is rising to match it: crying. Ecstatic, wet screams in the street below, and they’re running toward us.

The silence is broken, and the sea is rushing in.

The museum has been invaded by brightness, and it is unrecognizable. At first I think it’s too late and the weepers have already crawled inside, but the greasy, frantic bodies swarming through the hallways are the other survivors. They rush against one another, fighting to hide, but somehow I make it to the light switches and plunge the upper floor back into darkness. Bash, taller and faster, gets atop a display, grabs a blaring speaker, and wrenches it from the wall. The lawyers mimic his heroics and in a minute the museum is back to its blessed quiet.

Almost.

The unmistakable sound of sea shanties emanates from behind one of the downstairs doors we’ve barricaded with a bookshelf.

“It’s coming from the workshop exhibit,” I say. “There’s a speaker out there. It plays on a loop. We have to kill it.”

Sam acts first, heaving himself against the bookshelf. I help him, and somehow we get the heavy piece of furniture far enough from the door that Bash can squeeze into the empty, lit-up workshop. He only needs a second, but the moment he’s through the door, the lawyers are shoving the barricade back in place.

“What are you doing?” I throw myself at them, trying to pull them back, but they’re bigger than me. Bigger than Sam, even. I turn to the other survivors watching.

“Help me!” I beg them, but they avert their eyes—or leave. Already weepers are just outside, shuffling toward the music. Even if Bash manages to quiet it, he’s out there all alone. If he runs, I might never find him again. And if he stays …

The sea shanty music dies, leaving only the weepers singing in the night. Gently, on the other side of the barricade, there’s a tapping. It turns into a scraping. I can hear Bash whimper. The lawyers press themselves to the bookshelf as the scraping turns to pounding. I hammer my fists against them until strong arms throw me down and pin me there.

“Let him in, please!” With my face crushed to the floor, I still beg. “I’ll give you all our food! Anything!”

“Tell your friend to be quiet! Now!” one lawyer orders.

“Bash! Be quiet!”

The banging stops. The weepers’ shadows sway behind the pulled curtains. They’re close. They’re practically already inside. A static hisses in the air from the dead speaker, so subtle it makes my ears itch.

The lawyer gets down on my level and says, “Surviving comes down to how quickly you can recognize a lost cause. Basic risk analysis. It’s not personal, kid.”

“You’re going to get him killed,” I whisper back.

“That just means more for us.”

I stay quiet, straining to hear Bash, but I know he’s gone. Eventually, the horde of weepers moves on, too, taking the strange static sound with them. The men keep me pinned a few minutes longer, until my arms are numb. Sam has to hold me up when they finally let me stand. I wipe away the crust of snot and tears with my shirt and glare down the room full of cowards who abandoned Bash. Even after they stole from us and belittled us, Bash wanted to help these assholes. And they locked him out.

Right then and there, I make a decision.

“I’m leaving. Now.”

Sam puts a hand on my shoulder. I think he’s going to try to talk some sense into me, but he faces the room and says, “Me too. Fuck y’all.”

For the first time, the lawyers look a little lost.

“More for you, right?” I say, and the bait of extra rations works. They step away from us as if we’re already infected, just two more lost causes they can climb over to survive.

“Are you sure about this, Ollie?” Sam asks me as I start pulling items off the displays around us. “You have a plan?”

I ignore the question and point at a display of decorative harpoon guns that I am hoping are not so decorative. “Grab what you can carry. We’re leaving in five.”

Hold your breath, I pray to Bash. I’m coming.

Do not breathe.

Do not blink.

Do not remove your mask for any reason.

My world has new rules. My world is trying to drown me.

My hands shake as I tighten the straps on my goggles one last time. Years of grime on the glass make the antique scuba mask almost impossible to see through in the dark, but there’s no way I’m taking it off. Bash needs me. He needs me now, and he needs me breathing air.

“Ready?” Sam whispers.

I nod.

We step from the maritime museum into the boat workshop, and the door closes behind us with a merciless thud. The barricade rumbles back into place. There’s no going back.

The workshop before us is a bristling abyss of black cut through with a single wedge of butter-yellow light—a streetlamp through the open shed doors. It flickers, as though the power might vanish again. I want to call for Bash to come out, but any sound could doom us all. Instead, I picture the workshop in my mind and ask, Where did we used to hide in here?

My eyes draw to the large lifeboat near the back, where the shadows are thickest. A nod to Sam, and he keeps his hand firmly in mine as we step through the chaos of buoys, nets, and paraphernalia that make up the display. I listen for anything that isn’t us, but all I can hear is my own shallow breathing amplified by the mask.

Now I’m at the lifeboat. It’s raised up, and I need to lift myself high enough to see into it. Sam backs away, but I anchor him next to me, clasp his shoulder, and pull myself up.

The boat is empty.

A shadow steps into the light from outside.

“Ollie …” Sam whispers. The shadow is not human. Not anymore. It’s a man twisted inside out, his torso cracked apart so that something soft and heaving squeezes out. At first I think it’s Bash, but then a pale hand plunges up from the boat below and rips off my mask.

Fresh air floods my lungs. I can see! And I’m looking at Bash, curled under the bench of the lifeboat, a finger pressed to his lips. I fight my fear and elation and match his quiet. Sam does, too. We wait until the weeper lurches back toward the street, and then I pull Bash into my arms. He’s shaking so bad he can barely stand.

“You’re okay,” I whisper. “Put this on. Fast. We’re going.”

Sam and I pull goggles over Bash’s eyes and wrap strips of fabric over his nose and mouth. The relief of finding him quickly evaporates as I start to plan what’s next.

“Where are we going?” Bash asks.

Sam pauses, just as curious.

Before I pull my own mask on, I answer.

“The library.”

We start slow. Impossibly slow. The library is only half a mile away, but the once-dead streets have resurrected into a warped mirage of town before the outbreak. People, couples, families stroll through the fresh dark, but everything about them is wrong. They’re demons now, horned with coral and bristling with urchin spines. Or angels haloed in translucent bells of jelly flesh, swaying to their strange, spectral song as their eyes drip with lethal tears.

Weepers.

Clusters of them cuddle beneath the streetlights. The rest glitter in the voids where the lights can’t reach. I know they’re there because even beneath my soft armor I can hear them. They sound, to my musician’s ear, upset—maybe even angry, after being awoken by the power surge. But my ear also detects a gradual easing to their pain. Rallentando, I think. They’re calming down.

“Now,” I whisper.

It’s only a matter of time—maybe minutes—until the weepers settle again and the night fills with their strange fog, and what then? Even now, my heart ticks in my chest like a bomb, counting the seconds until the acid in my stomach explodes into a deluge of slime. I take a deep breath and hold it. There’s no telling how many of those I’ve got left.

We proceed single file, Sam leading as I point the way. One step. Another step. I hold Bash’s hand and tow him along.

Keep going. Keep going.

My plan is to head to the bay, where it will be harder to get boxed in if we get swarmed. We can get there through the wharf building, but first we need to get back to Main. I turn us at the first corner, and the connecting street is blessedly empty. We rush down it, sand crunching between our feet and the pavement. I turn us again, and we’re back at Main, but now we’re passing Pizza Monster. The windows are shattered, and a little old lady sits alone in a booth. She glows like she’s caught in a moonbeam. The glow comes from her skin, clear in places like a rash of invisibility revealing muscles and veins below. Wisps of her hair cling to a skull that has buckled out in a bony accordion of ridges. I tug Bash onward.

Main is quiet. That’s a first. I almost find it funny. Then I see a single baby shoe. There are tons of other items thrown down, too. A sparkly purse, a mangled bike, cracked phones.

I tell myself everyone survived. People throw down all sorts of things when they need to run.

I look but do not find a blue wig.

We reach the wharf building. Through it, we’ll reach the ocean. We pause at the gaping entryway to look down the corridor of shops. No weepers in the flickering gold light, so we ease inside. Some of the shops have already been raided, and some are untouched, but it’s clear we aren’t the first survivors to pass through here. The building has three stories. I try not to think about all the places people might be hiding. What if Gracie is here? What about Elisa? We could be sneaking by them right now, but there’s no way to tell them we’re here without calling the weepers out, too.

At the center of the wharf building is a massive staircase that wraps along the walls in an open spiral. It’s frosted glass at the top, and during the day it would fill the space with a vacant white glow, like my aquarium grow lights. If there are any weepers in the building, they’ll be here. We keep to the edge until something catches my attention.

I signal Sam and Bash to stop. I advance alone, holding my harpoon gun up. It’s the small kind, really just a speargun, but now I’m regretting not attempting to take along the one meant for sharks.

“What do you see?” Bash whispers. I raise a single finger. Hush. I haven’t seen anything. But I hear something distinctly human. I tug down my bandanna so I can listen better, and I hear it again. A child, crying. It’s coming from the wedge of black below the staircase.

“Hello?” I whisper. “Are you okay?”

The crying stops, just for a moment, and when it returns it’s not a single voice. It’s several, then several more, then too many cries rising into a chorus. A light rises with them, illuminating a flowing mass of coral below the stairs. What stops me immediately are shapes within the growth. Shapes of a person I know.

A rainbow cuts across the monstrosity, at the height of a child’s face.

“Ollie!” Bash whispers to me. “Get back!”

In my memory, I watch a woman raise a little girl up so she can peek into Hail Mary’s windows. The little girl is holding up her small hands to protect the rainbow painted over her tiny nose. I see that nose now, over and over, the little girl’s face repeating across the coral formation. Her eyes, too, and her lips frozen open in a cry. It’s like she has echoed outward, her form rippling from a center that I suddenly need to see. I step even closer.

Tucked in the corner where the stairs meet the floor is a body. I follow the rainbow band to where it crosses the features of a tiny, petrified face tipped back in a silent cry. The coral hasn’t just colonized the little girl; it’s built itself off her, stealing her features, her shapes, even the colors of her rainbow face paint.

A breeze dives through the wharf building, the air passes over the mouth. Mouths. And the night unravels with utterly small screams.

Before my own scream breaks from my throat, Sam catches me and drags me onward.

“We’ll go another way,” he whispers.

As the moon rises, so, too, does a light within the many coral growths. They give off a blue-green luminosity, but with an otherworldly, aquatic chill. At least it’s easy to see where we need to avoid now. The coral growths are mostly tiny—clusters of mellow-yellow straws waving from lampposts, organ pipes in fuchsia softly eating the roots of a tree—but there are larger growths ahead. Astoundingly large, and shapes I have never seen in any of the aquariums I’ve pressed my face up against. Human shapes that ripple outward, like the little girl.

“Eyes,” Sam orders softly. I stop looking at a pillar of coral growing up through a bench, at the base of which I am sure I see a dog.

Keep going.

Keep going.

We continue like a school of strange fish, swimming slowly through the quiet wreckage of town. Then Bash accidentally kicks a bottle, and the silence is shattered by a loud ping of glass bouncing on concrete. The light around us ripples as the millions of glowing polyps shiver in reaction, and gradually the air thickens with a hum. We cover our ears, as if the song might infect us, too.

A figure lurches into the road ahead of us. The flash of blue around their head causes me to almost cry out, but as they dance closer I see it’s only antlers of aquamarine. We hurry toward them—we have to, because the next break in the buildings is coming up—and slide away just in time. I don’t glance back, because I know I will see Gracie again, just for a second. I’ll see her in every weeper we pass, if I look hard enough.

Standing at the edge of the water, with eyes trained down the beach on either side, we check on one another. I can feel the adrenaline frying my nerves, and my mouth is sour with dehydration, but I can still breathe. I can still see.

Bash is breathing hard. Too hard. I drag him into a hug until the panic passes.

“The fog is coming,” he groans. “We’re not going to make it.”

“We’ll make it. Come on.”

I lead now, Sam by my side.

“Do you think the library is safe?” Sam asks me.

“Yes.” This isn’t a lie, but it isn’t the truth. Hope is often a thing in between, I’m discovering.

Sam looks at Bash trudging behind us. “Is he good?”

“Good? In this economy?” The meek joke doesn’t even register with Sam. “He’s good,” I say quickly. “Just traumatized. Don’t say anything, though, it’ll make it worse.”

“You got it.”

While Bash has been fraying these last few days, Sam’s quicksilver has cooled into something sharp and solid. He guarded us, and found us food, and stood up for us against the lawyers. I can’t imagine doing this without his steady focus, but I wonder what he thinks of Bash and me. Are we naive kids to him, or his only hope? Maybe we are both. I just know I couldn’t do this without him.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell him. He nods, eyes dead ahead.

We reach a jetty of stone flocked in algae. There’s nothing glowing within it so we pull one another up and over as the tide gushes in the cracks below. I glimpse crabs and snails, and a few barnacles, but the normal kind. For the first time I remember the beached leatherback sea turtle. Suddenly, walking alongside the ocean feels like a terrible mistake. Maybe I’ve known all along this ocean concealed a hideous secret. I think of my mom and the darkness that hid inside her bones, a disease I am now certain was born from this sand, this water.

Gracie. I pick her up, out of my thoughts, and throw her far, far away from Anchor’s Mercy. She is safe. She is hiding. She is with Willy somewhere, or Elisa, or Bash’s family, and they are waiting for us to find them.

We have to keep going. No matter what.

We reach our planned reentry point: the yoga studio parking lot bridging the bay with Main Street. The library is only a few blocks farther, but as we close in on it, we slow down. Then stop.

Unlike several buildings around it, the library is dark. There’s no sign anyone is there. Even worse, the front door of the building is completely grown over in barnacles the size of traffic cones. They glow a deep, dreamy purple. Vaguely, I can make out human shapes crushed together in the monstrous growth, and it’s not hard to imagine people rushing the door during the outbreak. I shudder, realizing the coral has fused them together into a living reef.

“Weepers,” Sam says.

I hold my breath on instinct. I was so fascinated by the door, I didn’t even look at the lawn. Weepers huddle in the grass, some of them still holding up big, angry signs advertising the apocalypse. The doomsday people, vindicated in their marine zombification.

“We should go back,” Bash whispers.

“You know we can’t,” Sam says.

The road behind us has gone blurry as pearlescent fog seeps over the pavement. In previous nights it’s appeared heavy, only rising up to the knees of the shambling weepers, but tonight there are drifts that could easily wash over our heads.

“What else is near here?” Sam asks, and I hear him starting to panic. “There’s got to be another place to hide. You guys know this place, right?”

What I know is that we’re trapped. We either get fused into the zombie reef of the library doors or run into the fog. There’s nowhere to go, and the weepers are looking at us with their wide, wet eyes.

“We need to hide, we need to run.” Bash starts to cry. “We’re dead. We’re so dead. We’re going to end up like that little girl.”

Sam finally loses his cool. “Would you shut up? Now is not the time.”

I cover my ears to block them out. My mind grabs at images of places nearby—Scuttlebutt’s, maybe? The Lebanese café? Sunkin’ Donuts? But each one quickly blossoms into visions of destruction and gore. We need to get out of town, but would we do any better in the forest? The dunes? We don’t have food. We don’t have water. All we have is a harpoon gun and a pizza paddle and two boys about to flip out while I hammer my temples for ideas.

Sam shakes my shoulders. “Where are we going, Ollie?”

I twist one direction, then another. The fog gushes toward us in slow motion. I feel my nose begin to tickle.

“This way!”

The voice comes from the sky. Suddenly, the library’s lawn lights come up, full brightness.

“Keep to the path!”

The lights of the path lead right to the wild mass of barnacles at the front door. The doomsday weepers are intrigued now, babbling incoherent prayers as they crawl toward us, but right when one reaches the path, there’s an earsplitting crack! The weeper goes down, their shoulder exploded by a bullet from above. The blood that sprays from them bounces like beads of jelly across our shoes.

“Hurry! Side door!” the voice orders.

We don’t question it. We dash down the path, ducking as more shots drive the encroaching weepers away. The lights blind me, but I still catch a glimpse of the barnacles against the door. They dilate at our approach, and beaks of bone white snip out, hissing and hungry.

“Turn! Now!”

We pivot, following the path around the side of the library, to a side door hidden by tall shrubs. It opens right as we arrive, and a second later we’re huddled inside a dark stairwell. Then we’re looking into the beam of a flashlight.

“Don’t breathe.”

It’s the same voice as before. It’s a voice I didn’t dare let myself think about, because even though I recognized it, I couldn’t trust my desperate hope. But now I need to know.

“Willy?” I ask the dark.

“Wendy at the moment, but yes. It’s me.”

I want to rush forward, but then I hear the cocking of a rifle.

“It’s good to see you. All of you. But we need to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” I ask.

A small figure emerges from behind the light, completely mummified in plastic bags and duct tape. They hold out three plastic cups of water on a tray. Using kitchen tongs, they extend a cup to each of us.

“Spit,” Wendy orders.

We follow her orders, spitting into the cups.

“Swirl.”

We swirl the cups. An eternal minute passes.

“Dump ’em.”

I’m scared and I’m confused, but I trust Wendy. I dump the precious water on the floor. Sam and Bash copy me.

“Good. Very good. Get out of those clothes and leave them down here. We’ll get you new ones and bring you fresh water to wash up.”

“Can … can we come in?” Bash asks.

“You’re already in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a mutiny to settle. We’ll catch up in a bit. Welcome aboard.”

Wendy climbs the stairs, leaving us with the plastic mummy person. They wrestle off their face covering but stay far away from us. Still, I recognize that moon-bright smile.

“I knew you guys would see the signal,” Elisa says. “Come on. Strip. The Suds have some major work to do here.”

We’re brought right to the basement, to the archives. After an hour sitting in the dark, Wendy finally returns.

She sits in a chair, her back to the open door, and though she’s just a drag queen, she might as well be a dragon blocking our path. She tells us we’ll be here two days, maybe longer, so use our camping lantern sparingly. Then she points out the mattress in the room’s farthest corner. Near it, there’s a bucket.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s not much,” Wendy says. “It should go without saying that I’m glad you’re all safe. I would hug you if I could, but we have to be careful. You’ve seen what’s out there. It’s imperative that we never let it get inside the library. There are children here. Families.”

I turn from the bucket and face her. “Why is this happening?”

Even in the dim light of the lantern, even under the makeup, I can plainly read the battle behind Wendy’s eyes. I have seen that look all my life, anytime I push too far or ask too much.

“We don’t know, Ollie.”

“Bullshit,” I push back. “The adults have always hidden something. What’s left to protect? How come you won’t just say it?”

Another figure steps into the doorway. Just a shadow against the dim light. They place a hand on Wendy’s shoulder, and the hesitance vanishes from the drag queen’s stare. She attempts to look reassuring, but she just looks sad. Before she even says it, I am ready to hear the words that deaden discussion.

“It is what it is, Ollie. We’ve just got to figure out how to survive.”

I squeeze my fists tight. For a second I forget my fear, and I just feel a familiar resentment. Even in ruins, this world is a lie.

“We can handle it,” I insist. “We’re not kids anymore.”

“Once there is something to share, we will share it. With everyone. But for now, we must do what we can to stay organized, and alive. Please, put your weapons in the bin.”

There’s no choice here. I lay down the harpoon gun. Bash relinquishes the pizza paddle. Sam reveals a short dagger with an ornately carved handle that I immediately recognize from the maritime museum’s scrimshaw display. Smart. The figure stays hidden while Wendy collects the bin and heads for the door. Then Bash finally says something.

“Is my family here?”

Wendy again seems to hesitate, but then she says, “No, I’m afraid not. But there are safe houses hidden throughout the town. Probably across the whole island. Don’t give up on them.”

“What about my mom?” I ask.

“She’s not here, Ollie.”

I knew this, but there’s an emotion in Wendy’s voice that scares me. I can’t place it, but it’s somewhere between sadness and terror. It’s gone when she turns, and her fake smile almost confirms the worst for me.

“No more questions for now, okay? Just rest. We will all be safe together soon.”

“Where are you going?” Sam asks.

Wendy laughs lightly. “To do the hardest job of all, of course. Someone’s got to keep all those kids entertained. You came in the middle of Wendy Pretendy’s Bendy Hour.”

The adults leave us locked in the archives. After a minute, I grab the lantern and head for the shelves of boxes.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks as I start scanning the alphabetical organizational system.

“We need to look for whatever we can find about a chemical spill that happened in the sixties. Look for anything about sickness or Easter Energy.”

“The company that owns that old ruin?”

“Exactly. If the adults don’t want to talk about it, we’re just going to have to figure out how to ask the right questions. We should hurry. I don’t know how much light we have. Bash?”

Now that a plan is forming, I expect Bash to bound through the shelves with his usual rambunctious enthusiasm, but he is on the mattress, curled on his side.

“Let him rest,” Sam says.

I nod.

We turn toward the archives and begin our hunt.

After two days in the archives, we find nothing. In fact, we find less than nothing. A suspicious lack of anything surrounding Easter Energy’s work on Anchor’s Mercy. It’s like the silence between the adults has swept ahead of us, erasing any trace down here long before our arrival.

The lamp lasts longer than we do, flickering out the evening of the second day so that we sit in pitch black on the mattress. Bash has barely moved the entire time. I keep a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently.

When the door finally opens, it’s not Wendy like I expect, or Elisa. It’s the person from before, but this time they hold up their own flashlight to light a face entirely out of place in the public library. Without the white coat I almost don’t believe it’s her, but the cat-eye glasses are unmistakable, as is the red notebook tucked under her arm.

“Congratulations, you’ve been cleared of quarantine,” says Dr. Imogen Pfaff, director of the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies. She drops bundles of clothes at her feet. Then she heaves in a bucket of soapy, sharp-smelling water.

“Sponge bath first. Then get changed and meet me in the office. First door at the top of the stairs. One at a time. Sam, you first.”

We take turns with the sponge. The water burns my eyes, and my skin prickles until it’s raw beneath the scraping sponge. We help scrub each other’s backs, then dress slowly. My entire body is sore from being curled up.

Sam stretches next to me. “You know her?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain later.”

Sam goes into the office first—it’s just the front office of the library. He’s inside for a long time, and then it’s Bash’s turn. He’s in there for only a few minutes. When I sit down, Dr. Pfaff says, “Your friend is in a state of shock.”

I nod. I know Bash. The boy curled beside me these past days is someone else.

“He will be okay,” Dr. Pfaff says. “Or he won’t. Honestly, I know more about nudibranchs than I do teenage boys.”

Dr. Pfaff has transformed the tiny office to suit her needs. She has notes and papers everywhere, and countless books spread around her on multiple desks. Her red notebook remains shut, under her folded hands. For a few minutes she just examines me with a penlight. Up my nose, down my throat, into my ears. Then she makes me tell her every tiny horror that’s transpired the last few days. When I describe the people we left behind at the maritime museum, she pinches her lips together.

“Did you tell them where you were going?” she asks.

“No. We just left.”

“Well, hopefully they don’t follow you.”

“They won’t. But … shouldn’t we attempt to get them? There was a family there, with children.”

“Townies or visitors?”

“Visitors.”

“How unfortunate” is all Imogen says, and then we sit in silence as she takes notes.

“Can I ask something?”

“No.” She spares only a glance over the rim of her cat-eye glasses before returning to her notes.

I ask anyway. “Do you know what’s happening outside?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean, do you know the cause?”

“Why would I know something like that, Orlando?”

Dr. Pfaff looks at me for longer now, and even though I’m the one asking the questions, I can’t help but feel she is studying me instead. I try to find my words, but I’m desperately thirsty. And hungry. And the smell of bleach is still making my eyes water. Every little sound in this building makes me squirm where I sit, and I suddenly want to crawl back into the dark.

Still, I do manage to say one thing.

“It’s coral, isn’t it?”

Dr. Pfaff halts in her note-taking but doesn’t respond. She asks her own question.

“You were on the mainland until recently, I’m told. You were with your mother, Grace Veltman. Where is she now?”

“We got back a few days ago. Or last week, maybe? Last Friday.”

“So she’s on the island, then?”

I nod.

“Do you know where? William told me she likes to collect shells. He said you were looking for her at a beach the day before the outbreak.”

I feel the terrible drift toward a conclusion I refuse to face. Dr. Pfaff reads the fear in my expression easily and offers a rare smile of sympathy. “I see. You don’t know.” Then it’s back to her notes.

Thinking about Gracie is painful. A blister on my heart. I tear my thoughts from her—she is fine, she is fine, she is fine—and drive the conversation back to the coral.

“I saw something else,” I realize aloud. “The day before everything happened, my aquarium exploded.”

This gets Dr. Pfaff’s attention. She sits back an inch and snaps off her glasses.

“My aunt was taking care of my aquarium while I was away. It was mostly corals. But I woke up the day after I got back, and it had exploded. And the coral inside was growing up the walls. And it seemed … aware of me, like it could sense me as I moved.”

I can still picture those tiny, translucent polyps opening up to my hand. Reaching. Reaching. What if I had let them touch me? Then I remember the slobber from Aunt Maddie’s eyes. Did she infect me? I would know, right? Should I tell Dr. Pfaff? No, I decide in an instant. My chant for Gracie becomes my chant for myself.

I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

“Listen, Orlando. You’re curious. I respect that,” Dr. Pfaff says. She’s rooting around in her desk. “If I had information to share, I’d share it, but science is rarely a solo endeavor. To that end, I’d like to give you something.” She places before me a tiny machine I at first think is an old cell phone.

“It’s a voice recorder,” Dr. Pfaff says. She shows me how to use it, hitting record so that a red light comes on. “This is Dr. Imogen Pfaff, the time is 7:43 p.m. on July twenty-seventh. Anchor’s Mercy Public Library.” She plays it back and we listen to her tiny, digital voice crackle from the speaker.

“See? Simple,” she says. “I understand you’re close with William. Or Wendy. I don’t know what you call him. And I know you can tell much is being hidden from you. I was wondering if you might accept a mission for me, in the name of science.”

She holds out the recorder until I take it.

“Listen. Observe. Report back. I know all too well that you and your friends are experts at being where you shouldn’t.”

“You want me to spy on Wendy Pretendy?”

Dr. Pfaff’s smile is cold, her eyes lightless. “I want you to spy on all of us. Who knows, your ears might hear things mine cannot, but all data matters if we have any hope of surviving. Don’t think of it as spying. Think of it—”

“As science,” I finish for her. Whether she knows it or not, she has confirmed my long-held suspicion that there is more to Anchor’s Mercy than the story we like to tell our guests. The recorder goes into the pocket of the hand-me-down shorts I’ve been given.

“Now come with me,” Dr. Pfaff says. “It’s time for you to meet our apocalyptic ecosystem.”

AUGUST 16

26 DAYS AFTER

13:44

A few survivors I’ve spoken with in the containment ward of the Embrace also made it to the library. They report remarkably consistent protocol.

Day 1: quarantine. You are kept in the basement, in the archives, a bucket your only bathroom. Hourly, you are made to spit into a cup to see if it thickens the water. Food and water for drinking are provided. And, of course, books upon request.

Day 2: a final spit test, then a sponge bath using a mixture of bleach and water. Finally, a set of clean clothes and toiletries are provided (from the library’s recent storm charity drive). Upon achieving a cleared status, people are integrated into the library’s strictly maintained ecosystem.

Other details I have gleaned:

• A person—at least I think they are a real person—named Wendy Pretendy was in charge. She seems to be the only person who thought to grab a gun. Smart lady.

• The daily schedule generally was: up at sunrise, down at sunset. Jobs were assigned every morning at breakfast. Meals were served three times a day in the innermost common room, used otherwise for meetings, playtime, or nightly readings for the children.

• There was a makeshift infirmary in the administrative offices, two community bathrooms with dubious plumbing on each floor, and a storage room used as a pantry, kept locked by Wendy.

• The library’s success in maintaining so many survivors appears to also be due to the charity drive. The limited resource was fresh water (they did not drink from the tap out of paranoia). All were given one bottle that they could refill at mealtimes from a tested supply.

• Everyone had a job assigned each morning. Free time was assigned, too. Not much to do. Reading was an option, of course, but books had to be diligently checked out. One lone surviving librarian named Tiff seemed to be in a state of shock, only able to do her old job.

• No kissing. No hugging. No sharing toys.

• No going near the doors. The front was colonized by C. imperia “barnacles,” leaving a back door and a stairwell exit, both taped shut. Shades were constantly drawn to make up for the lack of air-conditioning. Windows were covered with newspaper. Lights were used sparingly, and the power was generally kept off via circuit breakers.

• No sound above a whisper, enforced 24/7. Of course.

Before the Anchor’s Mercy Public Library was a library, it was an arts center, and before that it was an Episcopal church. I know this fun fact (and more!) because Bash used to volunteer here, first as penance for some unknown crime from our childhood that none of us can recall, then out of pure, nerdy joy.

In the darkness of present day, it’s like the building has reverted to its previous holy sanctuary. The vaulted ceilings fill with whispers, and the tall, narrow windows have been papered over with pages turned opaque gold by the setting sun. Shelves of books have replaced the pews, but they’ve been pushed into a makeshift neighborhood of dorms. I catch a few eyes staring through the gaps as we walk down the aisles. Looking up, I see more faces floating in the dimness of the upper floors, which look down into the central space.

Dr. Pfaff leads me to the back of the building, where a long-ago renovation has replaced the altar with a community room. It hides behind large double doors cupped in twin grand staircases that lead to the upper stacks.

“Brace yourself,” she tells me. “Natural selection is at work.”

Inside, dozens of adults stand against the walls or sit on the floor, forming a semicircle around a sprawl of little kids paying rapt attention to Wendy Pretendy, who is perched on an armchair with a book raised high. She uses her flashlight to spotlight the pictures as she animatedly reads aloud. It’s a testament to her talent that not only the kids listen, but the adults do, too. When she’s done, she motions to Dr. Pfaff, and Bash, Sam, and I are brought before the room.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet our most recent family members. This is Bash, this is Ollie, and this is Sam. Can you give a biiiiiiiig Anchor’s Mercy hello to our new friends?”

Wendy is still in character. The children murmur hello. The adults do not seem as welcoming. A woman raises her hand, already talking before Wendy calls on her.

“We should vote on this.”

“Oh, but, Meeghan, they’re already through quarantine.” Wendy says this like quarantine is the most fun ever—never breaking character. “And we did vote, remember? We voted to take in any other survivors if they went through quarantine, and our new friends here were soooooo patient. It wouldn’t be very nice to ask them to leave now, would it?”

“Nooooo,” the children say, transfixed.

“But three teenaged boys? Can we spare that much food?”

Dr. Pfaff cuts in. “Wendy—or rather William—has been successful in supply runs thus far. We have plenty of rations.”

“But no gluten-free options,” Meeghan whines. “I specifically asked for a wheat alternative for my little Kristofer. I would expect a scientist such as yourself to understand the link between gluten and developmental delays—”

Before Dr. Pfaff can unleash a diatribe we all see brewing behind her glasses, Wendy steps back in. “You know what I think? I think it’s nearly bedtime! And if the adults want to chitchat, we can do so later, at our usually scheduled time and place.”

“We need a radio!” a man shouts from the back. “Those boats on the horizon are NAVY. I’m telling you!”

“We need food! Healthy options!” Meeghan reiterates.

The transfixed calm of the kids is cracking as more people shout out requests.

“The water tastes like chlorine.”

“Why can’t we turn the power on? I want to charge my phone!”

“I’m sick of cold soup!”

“The end is near, the end is near!”

“We should leave before we get eaten alive!”

“We should fight!”

Wendy claps twice. The adults simmer, but do not silence. I sense this is as loud as anyone dares get within the library.

“We are safe in here,” she says. “And we have what we need to be safe for a long, long time, so long as we’re careful. Since the power came back, I’ve lit the tower, and it’s only a matter of time before the navy sees our flag, and once we get a radio, we can hail for help directly. Until then, it is all our jobs to stay calm. And, if new friends arrive, it is the library’s policy to welcome them in. If that means Willy has to do more supply runs, so be it.”

“It would be easier if you took someone with you,” a young father offers.

“You’re all too important to risk,” Wendy says, nodding at the kid asleep in the father’s arms.

“More to the point, we only have one gun,” Dr. Pfaff says with none of the whimsical words of Wendy. The children whisper like she’s cussed. From the back, a man says, “Mrs. Rosenthal keeps a handgun in her register at the yarn store. She showed me! Even knitted a little holster for it.”

Suddenly, the room is full of adults shouting out the locations of guns. Display cases, tool sheds, secret nooks! Come to think of it, even Wendy’s rifle looked like something pulled off a mantel from my own memory. She’s got it with her now, out of view from the kids. I wonder where she took my harpoon gun. Seeing the tension here, I understand why all weapons—even Bash’s pizza paddle—had to be confiscated.

Wendy stands. In her heels she is immense.

“Spotlight, please,” she says kindly, and two little girls at the front raise flashlights to her face.

“I hear you, I do. I share your worries. We will discuss everything tonight, after bedtime. But I will take this moment to remind you all of the policy we voted on at the start of this. No one here is a prisoner. Anyone who wishes to leave can leave, but they will not be permitted back in. Are we clear?”

Wendy lets this unsaid threat hang in the air. The silence is consenting.

“Good. Now, my sweet little angels. It’s bedtime, yes?”

Gradually, the parents step forward to coax their children up to bed. I expect to stick around for the meeting Wendy previewed, but Pfaff guides Sam, Bash, and me to the other side of the double doors.

“But—”

“Adults only,” she says.

The doors close.

Predictably, a group of teens wait at the top of the stairs, ready to eavesdrop. Out of habit I instantly find the other townie kids. In the summer, when Anchor’s Mercy swells with thousands of new faces, seeing the occasional familiar face becomes a daily delight. Even if you despise the son of a bitch like sand in your fruit salad, Gracie would add. The same desperate rapport flashes between us now. My brain automatically matches faces to facts.

Clive DeMario. Son of Marc DeMario, who owns the sunglasses store. Not Sunny Side Up. The other one. Shady Business.

Abdu Bwire. Former scooper at Sundae Scaries Soft Serve. One time sneezed so hard he popped a zit on his forehead. Lost that scooper job but got incredibly hot as revenge.

Hannah Choi. Drunk mom, sheriff dad. Sweeps hair at the salon for cash, but everything she overhears ends up on her gossip blog Hannah Headlines. Nemesis to most.

Then there are the faces I don’t know. A handful of tourist teens whose names I instantly forget as they grumble introductions. And last, a tall girl with mouse-brown hair pulled way back into a low ponytail, who is the one person I recognize but have no name for.

“Harrigan.” She spits her name like she hates it, or hates me. Something about her stare—wide, black, and shining like an untrusting animal about to bolt—is familiar, and I realize she belongs with the doomsday people. A few similarly groomed kids hang at her knees, but she pulls them away.

And finally, there’s Elisa. She’s already hugged Bash and Sam, but she stops awkwardly at me, busying her hands with a stray curl that has escaped her clinical crown of braids.

“Ollie. I’m … glad you’re okay.”

Our fight hangs between us like halted snow. I feel the icy prickle of resentment on my nerves. I should be thrilled to see Elisa again, and at some level I am, but for days now I have had little to warm myself with but the grim conviction that all along, I was right.

I was right.

This island is sick. This island is making us sick. If Elisa wasn’t willing to see it then, she almost certainly sees it now, but can she handle being wrong for once? Elisa looks at me like she can hear my thoughts, and I know she hasn’t forgotten where we left off. If she feels guilt, she’s masterful at hiding it. Like the star citizen she is, she composes her face into a pleasant smile.

“I’m here to show you to your new home.”

I try to match her smile. Maybe the adults think we’re just immature teens, but I can prove otherwise. I can handle the truth.

I trail after her, my hand resting on the recorder hidden in my pocket.

Within the library, the silence is always singing.

It’s only been a few days, but already I know the music of this place. Mornings begin with a funeral dirge on the main stairs as socked feet bring sleepy, never-sleeping survivors to breakfast. Then there is a sullen symphony of chewing and scraping through the latest meal of barely warm oatmeal. The next hours are a stressed adagio as we do our jobs as quietly as possible, knowing the weepers are most active in mornings and afternoons. Midday, when the weepers hide in shadows from the heat, is when we are allowed to speak above a whisper, but hardly anyone does. Depending where I am in the afternoons—yet another atonal adagio—my ears pluck out different notes.

The squeal of the book cart is an ironically gleeful high C.

The shushed child’s wail starts at an A-sharp and settles a few steps lower at a hiccuping, simpering G.

And at night, with people settled into makeshift bunks among the open stacks of the upper floors, I begin to know the private elegy of each person’s crying. The soft keening has no real intonation, but the musicality of it is inescapable.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I sit at the organ. It’s a relic left over from the library’s former life, in the exact same spot on the second-level balcony, overlooking the sanctuary. It still works—Willy used to make me practice here on slow afternoons in the offseason, and it was always a mortifying affair. Too many buttons, too many keys, and a sound as loud as angels screaming. I hated this organ, but now I find it comforting just to look at. I hover my hands over the keys, and I imagine all the sounds of the library’s silence draining out of my ears, dripping down my fingers, into endless silence.

“You’re not thinking of starting a sing-along, are you?”

I open my eyes, the imagined music echoing a second longer before I realize someone outside my head is talking to me. Willy stands at the top of the stairs.

I retract my hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, I trust you. But the wiring of this old building is weird, and I’m pretty sure the lights of the tower and that organ are on the same breaker. Which is now on. So, just be careful, okay?” Willy looks older now. Years and years older, like his whole life just caught up with him. “The truth is, I’ve been looking all over for you. How did we ever find each other without cell phones, am I right?”

It’s evening. If we don’t have assigned chores, we can do whatever we want. Mostly people attend Wendy Pretendy’s nightly read-along for the kids. After that, the adults close themselves into the common room and argue. The other teens and I sit at the top of the stairs and whisper about our theories. How long do we have? How much food is left? Is anyone coming to help us? It’s hard to tell how tonight’s meeting went—Willy’s emotions are often concealed under the inexhaustible smile of Wendy Pretendy’s makeup—but if he’s come looking for me, I’m guessing the adults finally need some help.

I reach for the recorder in my pocket. Since Dr. Pfaff gave it to me, it’s felt like a weight pulling down on my conscience. I haven’t recorded anything, but I also haven’t told my friends the mission she gave me.

“Can I come in?” Willy prompts.

I take my hand out of my pocket and nod. This moment is not for Dr. Pfaff.

The light in the library is always dim because of the paper covering the windows, but just enough light spills from the tower to turn Willy’s face into a mask of worry. He uses a filthy rag to mop the makeup from his cheeks while he asks me how I’m handling everything. I know all the right answers to fend off worry; it’s remarkable how similar these conversations are to ones I used to have with Willy, in a room kept just as dark, as Gracie lay between us in her hospital bed.

“I’m hanging in there.”

“We’ll get through this.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“But I am worried about you.” Willy cuts through the awkward small talk. “We’ve barely had a moment alone since you got out of quarantine. I’m sorry about that, kiddo. I’ll admit, there was some pushback to your arrival, and some of the adults think I’m playing favorites letting you guys stay here, but screw them. You’re like my own children. I hope no one has been giving you a tough time?”

Most of the people here survived the outbreak because they were already in the library, or close enough to be grabbed by Wendy as she rushed inside. Wendy couldn’t convince any doomsday people to flee the slow onslaught of weepers, but she did manage to save a few of their kids. Three doomsday adults—and Harrigan—scrambled after their kin, inadvertently allowing themselves to be saved, too, but for some reason they resent Wendy for this. They whisper about her and hold small meetings in the theology section when they think no one will notice during her nightly read-alongs, which their children attend without complaint. And they seem to think Bash, Sam, and I are a sign that the library’s status as a sanctuary just got a lot shorter. They tuck their small kids away from us and serve us daggers at every meal.

“Everyone has been very welcoming,” I say. There’s no need to worry Willy more.

“How are the others doing? I’ll admit, I’m a bit worried about Bash.”

I nod at the corner quickly. Willy jumps. Bash sits in a beanbag chair, unmoving, unreactive, a book limp in his hands. He’s been like this since we got here. These days I always make sure he’s near me, even though he might as well be miles away. Even now, he shows no sign of hearing Willy.

“Bash? You okay, kiddo?” Willy whispers a little louder. Bash turns and it’s like he’s a wooden puppet being repositioned by invisible hands. His eyes find Willy, and he gives a stiff thumbs-up.

“Hey, Willy?” Bash asks in a far-off voice. “How come you have my grandma’s rifle?”

It’s a strange question, but one I instantly know is valid. Bash knows about stuff like this. Willy takes a second too long to reply. “Because I was with her during the outbreak.”

I have to tell myself to breathe. Willy’s evasiveness was probably a minor mercy, to spare Bash from the loss of one more family member. And this time, instead of shying away, Willy lifts up his chin and faces the truth head-on.

“I should have told you, Bash. I’m sorry. I was checking on her like I always do on Sunday, and I heard people screaming, and …” Willy swallows. “I wanted to take her with me, Bash.”

“You left her?” I hate the accusatory tone in my own voice.

“No. No.” Willy’s eyes shine in the dark. “I tried to take her with me. Carried her, but then we had to run. She told me to go, and I did. I wish I left her in her own home. But instead—”

Willy’s hand trembles over his mouth, and he doesn’t finish the story. He looks at Bash with such raw shame, I have to stare at the organ keys.

“I’m sorry,” Willy says.

“It’s okay.” Bash turns back to the book in his lap. He has been on page 139 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for two days.

“Should he be reading that?” Willy whispers to me. By now most of the survivors have accepted that the thing infecting people is some kind of ocean-borne coral.

“Exposure therapy?” I shrug. Bash has always loved books about boats and monsters of the sea, even before he worked at the library. He’s read everything here a dozen times. He likes real boats, too. He used to make us go to the pier when the tall ships arrived, and he’d name each line and sail within the creaking structure. I asked him once why he loved boats, and he described for me the unimaginable power of the ocean, both its tendency to destroy and its capacity for life. Yeah, but why boats? I had pressed, and he said, Because atop all the crushing power of the sea, a ship’s ability to float across infinity comes down to being absurdly fragile. And that’s fucking cool.

Right now, I think of Bash as a boat. Floating and fragile, but with cracks I can’t reach. I just hope he doesn’t sink.

“Sam seems to be doing all right,” Willy offers.

This is true. Sam has surprised everyone with his affable personality. Even the doomsday people like him, maybe because he’s an outsider.

“Now, Elisa. She’s been better since you guys arrived, but … something is on her mind. I asked, but she won’t say. Any ideas?”

“Imogen Pfaff,” I say plainly. Because, duh. What are the chances that Elisa’s nemesis would just happen to be at the library the moment the town descended into a weeping, pastel carnage? Yet Dr. Pfaff is here, hiding in her office with her little red notebook and books, barely interacting with the other survivors. She attends meals, speaks to no one, then vanishes back into her work.

“I’ve noticed that, too. The first few days, I was certain Elisa was going to smother Dr. Pfaff in her sleep, but alas: no pillows,” Willy says. Of course he knows about Elisa’s longstanding hatred of Imogen Pfaff—we used to torment the poor director with pranks anytime our class visited the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies. Our parents were too busy during the day to take a call from the principal, so Willy bailed us out every other month, it seemed.

“But I’m not talking about how Elisa feels about Pfaff,” Willy says. “She mentioned some kind of fight. She said she was scared that the last words she said to you weren’t very nice, and I notice you two aren’t talking. What’s that about?”

The fight with Elisa feels like someone else’s life. I shrug. Truth is, I still feel an ugly urge to gloat in Elisa’s face. I told her something was wrong, I told her this island was sick, and she mocked me right outside the library doors. The very same doors that are encrusted with giant, mutant people-barnacles. The urge never lasts, though, always souring to a slick guilt that bubbles in my stomach when I think of all the things I missed—Aunt Maddie as the first weeper potentially, and the exploded aquarium, and the unspoken pattern of sickness. I had the answers, but I refused to ask the question, and now the world is ending.

I ignore Willy’s question and ask my own. “That day when the weepers showed up … I heard my mom was seen walking in the dunes. Maybe to the beach. Do you think …”

Willy closes his eyes a fraction too long, like I’ve made him flinch.

“She’s out there, Ollie. If it means more time with you, she’ll survive anything. She’s already proven that once, hasn’t she?” It seems like there’s more to say, but Willy’s eyes flick back to Bash. “Lights out in a few. And cover that organ up, will you?” is all he says.

I close the organ, then shake Bash out of his stare-off with his book. He permits a stiff hug from Willy before floating away.

“Ollie.”

I stop, one foot already on the stairs.

“We might be here awhile, you know that, right? I see lights at night on the water, but they won’t come close to the island. If we had a radio, we could hail them, but right now it’s just a waiting game. Help will come for us. We’ve just got to be here when it does, okay?”

“We won’t run away, don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I mean. Look, you don’t have to talk to me, but I wish you would talk to each other.”

He means the Suds.

“I have never seen love like what you have with your friends. Love like that can outlast anything. The world isn’t ending, but even if it was, the Suds should survive. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I nod, thinking it’s good Willy doesn’t know how bad the cracks are between us. But then I wonder if, in a way, he is asking for my help. Until this second I was solely focused on outlasting a clock forever ticking me toward death, but the way Willy looks at me makes the music in my head ring with a new, far-off hope. What if I stop waiting, and start helping?

“Put Bash on cooking duty,” I tell Willy. “He’s always had bad anxiety, especially in big crowds, but if you give him a job, he can do it, and he loves to cook.”

“Like Pizza Monster?”

“Exactly.”

“I see. Thank you, Ollie. Get some sleep.”

I head upstairs to where we’ve turned the teen room into a makeshift dormitory. I lie between Bash and Elisa, thankful for them even if it feels impossible to break the silence between us. I haven’t talked that much in days, and the conversation’s heaviness pulls me into a deep sleep.

In the morning, we trudge downstairs to breakfast, but there’s a new melody weaving through the silence. Bash. He’s humming. When it’s time to go to our jobs, he bounces off to the kitchen. I glance at the job board. Willy is right. Even if the world ends, we cannot end with it. As I head to my own job, a plan begins to form.

I set my watch to wake me up earlier than the rest of the library. Just before dawn, when the light is a dishwater gray through papered windows, I sneak down to the common room and find my name on the job board. I wipe it off and move it elsewhere. After breakfast, I pretend to check the job board alongside everyone else. Bash heads to the kitchen, Sam heads to help Imogen Pfaff in the infirmary, and I join Elisa at the circulation desk.

Tiff, the traumatized librarian who has sat at this desk since I was a baby, smiles at us in a way that feels like she is dreaming us up. She’s got boxes of books for us to reshelve. According to Willy, doing this job is all that’s between Tiff and a total meltdown.

“I know you switched the names around,” Elisa says plainly.

“What names, dear?” Tiff asks.

“We’ve got a job to do,” I deflect, heaving up the box of books that’s been dropped off for reshelving. Elisa rolls her eyes, but she grabs her own box and we head to the stacks. We push the cart along in strained silence until finally Elisa cracks somewhere in the horror section between KO and SA.

“Just say it. Just say I told you so and get it over with.”

I push a pretty blue book into the stacks and ask, “Do you remember our third fight?”

This is a test. Elisa loves a test. She puts her hands on her hips. “Of course. It was the custody battle for our hermit crab, Crabigail.”

Crabigail the Hermit Crab was like one of our many made-up characters, except she was very much a real hermit crab. Everything else about her backstory—her tragic origins to her rise to stardom to her fall into obscurity, even to her dazzling comeback—was an ongoing fiction we used to imagine together. But, mostly, she was just a crab in a little plastic carrying case.

“Do you remember how we got her?” I push.

“Yeah, we stole her from Dr. Pfaff when our class visited the institute.”

“Rescued,” I correct.

Everyone who knew the story of Crabigail knew she was being tortured in Pfaff’s secret laboratory. And the rescue was legendary, too, even among the adults. It involved a bait and switch—Bash posing as me so that I could go missing, triggering a building-wide search and allowing Elisa to backtrack to Pfaff’s lab, where I’d hidden myself away. We stole the crab right out from under the distracted scientists, then reappeared in the building’s parking lot just in time for the head count. Elaborate, yes, but ingenious.

“Oh, right, the best heist in the world. Who could forget,” Elisa says, but I can tell she’s forcing back a smile. The Heist of Crabigail was her favorite of our hijinks. And for a time, the little pet was a mascot of all the past and future pranks we dreamed up and pulled off. That’s why I bring her up now. I want Elisa to remember what it was like to work together and take for ourselves what the adults told us was beyond reach.

Elisa doesn’t look inspired, though. Her mood turns blue. “Do you remember how it ended, though? Our custody fight?”

I remember as I feel my way through the answer. “We argued, but then we didn’t make up because … your mom went away.” I’d forgotten that was the same year, just a few months apart.

Elisa slumps to the ground. I join her. She lets our shoulders touch.

“You know what I remember? I remember the day after my mom vanished, your mom came over and hugged me. And after a few days, when my dad fell apart, Gracie came back, and this time she brought you. And we were in my room, and we didn’t know what to say to each other, and then you saw Crabigail on my desk.”

This part I remember well. I didn’t know how to acknowledge what was happening with Elisa’s mom. I thought she would come back any minute, even though Gracie had told me she was gone forever. Forever didn’t make sense, yet I felt how much the time had suddenly revealed its shape, falling into perfectly separated pieces over the blade of before and after. In Elisa’s room, I knew I wanted to hold her close, but I didn’t know how.

“You said we should just move in together and make it easy for Crabigail. No more split custody, no more fighting.” Elisa laughs. “And then I moved in to Singing House.”

I of course remember when Elisa lived with us, but she has all these memories lined up in a sequence that was mysterious to me. I realize the continuity, for her, is her grief. The loss of her mom.

“When I think of that little hermit crab, I think about how there was a time when my entire world was sinking, when my dad was drowning himself, and when the island that saved me was Singing House. And you, and Gracie, and Bash, and Willy.”

“And Crabigail,” I offer.

Elisa’s laugh has a little more of her familiar heart in it. “Bash took her when you left, you know.”

I know this. I flinch, because I know what’s coming next.

“She didn’t last without you.”

It feels absurd to mourn the death of a hermit crab amid the devastation of maybe the entire world, but like Elisa, that crab was curled at the center of stories, memories, losses, and victories. It was a mascot of not just the Suds, but the particular magic looping around us. And it had died.

Elisa lets me put my head on her shoulder.

“We’ll just have to steal a new crab from Pfaff,” she says. “But we need a name.”

We trade a few ideas, making each other laugh with their absurdity.

Kelly Clawkson.

Clawn Mendes.

Shellvis.

We run out of names. I notice Elisa’s hands are restless. She stands up, pacing.

“You’re doing your thinking dance,” I point out.

“Am not,” she says, but for the rest of the morning I can tell she’s working toward some difficult conclusion. I give her time as we shelve, and finally, after lunch when we’re in the tiny kitchen helping Sam and Bash wash dishes, she throws down her rag and huffs.

“Fine! Jesus. You win, Veltman!”

I could act surprised, I could act smug, but instead I’m just curious. Elisa goes to the door and gently closes it. Now it’s just the Suds. And Sam. But the difference barely matters. If he’s on this side of the door, he’s a Sud.

“Crabigail got me thinking about how good it felt to put Pfaff in her place,” Elisa starts. Sam cocks an eyebrow, but there’s no time to explain. Elisa turns to me. “Ollie, I owe you an apology. Do you remember what you said to me about the island? And my mom’s research, and Gracie’s cancer?”

I have lived in the echo of that fight since this whole disaster began. Of course I remember, but is she going to make me say it?

“I said our island was sick, and that it’s making people sick.” Elisa nods, and like a ladder rung I pull myself up further. “And I think I was right. It’s like the island is being infected by the ocean. And it’s like your mom knew about it first and tried to warn everyone. But then she …”

“Drowned.” Elisa is barely breathing. “Well, after that, when I lived with you, I gave myself a secret mission. I was going to find my mom. I would come here, to the library, and check out any books about the history of Anchor’s Mercy, but something weird happened. Someone else started checking out the same books and never returning them. And everything in the archives about Easter Energy—”

“Vanished,” I say, rapt.

“I saved a bunch of my mom’s research, too, in my school binder. Not everything, but enough, because I thought when I got older, it would all make sense. And now it’s starting to, and I hate that I was so wrong when I yelled at you. I guess I’m saying all this because I’m sorry.”

I should just accept this apology, but I’m captivated by little-Elisa and her dossier of pilfered research. “What happened to everything you collected?” I ask.

Elisa looks sick with regret. “One day at the library, I threw it all out. Summer was coming and my dad needed me. And I was mad at my mom. I didn’t want to end up like her. I forced myself to move on, but I wish I kept it. Now it’s probably gone forever.”

We hang in the silence, accepting this dead end, and then a plate smashes on the tile floor. Bash stands there, hands dripping, staring at Elisa with wide, distant eyes. All at once it’s like he returns to his own body, drawn into focus by some conclusion that’s caught him off guard during Elisa’s story.

“Ummm. Maybe not forever,” he says. “I think there’s something you guys need to see.”

Bash leads us to the quiet reading room. As one of the few rooms with doors, it’s being used as a place to sleep, but right now it’s empty. We step over beds of cardboard and trash bags stuffed with clothes, to the back display, which is a delicately constructed model of a ship atop a shelf carved and painted like a stormy sea.

“Close the door,” Bash whispers. “No one knows about this but me. I found it one day when I was bored.”

Bash does something utterly un-Bash. He climbs atop the back of a chair and wrenches the model ship off the shelf. He hands it to me, and I’m amazed how light it is for something so massive.

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat, actually,” I whisper.

“Hush. Just watch.”

Bash’s hands explore the dusty shelf, feeling for something. With a creak, the waves come up as a thin board in his hands, revealing a cavity below.

“This library is full of hiding spots,” Bash explains. “This one was mine, but I haven’t used it in years.”

He pulls out an assortment of very Bash-like treasures. Shark teeth, a sketchbook, and a strange copper device that looks like a biblically accurate protractor.

“It’s a celestial navigation tool. A sextant.” Bash blushes, and I realize he probably stole it from the maritime museum forever ago. Then Bash reaches to the very bottom of the hiding spot and pulls out a bright pink school binder, and Elisa claps her hands over her mouth.

It’s her binder from fifth grade.

Quickly, Bash tries to explain. “Tiff the librarian found a bunch of books in the garbage one day, and this. She asked me about it because Elisa’s name was on all the schoolwork inside. I said I’d deliver it, but I kept it here. The books, too. I knew we weren’t supposed to talk about what happened to Doro, so this just seemed safer. Then I forgot.”

The binder has the heft of a holy relic. He hands it to Elisa and it pulls her down to the floor, where she slowly unzips it. We all lean forward. Inside are school worksheets neatly completed in her loopy handwriting. She flips to the very back, where a divider marked DO NOT ENTER hides a packet of stained pages titled “Mercy, Madness, & Malignance” by Doro D’Oliveira.

AUGUST 16

26 DAYS AFTER

22:09

“Mercy water is clean; Mercy’s beaches are pristine; Mercy oysters are world-famous. But still, the locals get sick. Why?”

At the boy’s urging, I attempted to consult Director Pfaff about all that transpired at the library. She was not in her office.

How unfortunate.

Of the many boxes crowding her desk, there were none labeled “library,” as the boy wondered. There was, however, an unlabeled box containing items in clear evidence bags, including library books, a digital recorder, and a spiral-bound paper: “Mercy, Madness, & Malignance” by Doro D’Oliveira, ecologist.

Here is where I admit something: I know all about Doro D’Oliveira. This paper is mythic. Six years before the outbreak that currently has the island on lockdown, Doro D’Oliveira published a paper claiming increased instances of cancer and chronic illness on the island. The “Mercy, Madness, & Malignance” paper was declared a farce due to its complete lack of evidence, which Doro promised was forthcoming. It was immediately notorious, but its circulation was limited, and even the occasional online scan was next to impossible to find. Holding it now is like reading the words of a ghost. I will include what I was able to transcribe quickly in this dossier. The underlines are added by me.

The ecologist Doro D’Oliveira introduces us to Anchor’s Mercy with the following:

“Seventy miles off the ragged coast of Maine is the unwanted island of Anchor’s Mercy. The island occupies a specific, perilous position as the immovable pin around which several tides and trade winds swirl, conjuring fog, swells, and storms from the Atlantic, and wreathing the tiny island in so much oceanographic chaos it remained untouched by humans, or at least unwanted, for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the invention of the engine that passage between Anchor’s Mercy and the mainland became dependable, yet even then the island proved unforgiving for those unable to find it on the first try. As though reluctantly coaxed from the depths, it is the sole spire of land punching up from an ocean floor that drops away with astounding steepness as the American continent ends and the abyss begins. In these waters, there is nowhere else to go, and so the island has always enjoyed a somewhat smug position as both a last hope and only choice to those on the verge of drowning.”

Doro D’Oliveira then delves into the island’s interlocking history as both an LGBTQIA+ haven and a site of rumored contamination.

“By the mid-19OOs, ferries regularly traversed the interlocking tides that had once protected Anchor’s Mercy from humans, yet while Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket grew bustling communities of wealthy vacationers, it wasn’t until the LGBTQIA+ community declared Anchor’s Mercy a haven that it began to truly thrive. But why was it the gays, and no one else? Perhaps they found the island’s forsaken history dramatic and fashionable? More likely, they simply liked it because the land was scenic yet shockingly cheap, even in the 198Os, due to what the townies call the Sixties Spill.”

Not much is known about the Sixties Spill. Even Doro seems unsure of her facts. She writes:

“In 1959, due to the island’s remoteness, the power company Easter Energy built one of the world’s first nuclear power plants on the island’s northern shore, near the estuaries. In 1961, there was some sort of accident, resulting in the coast guard moving the entire population to the mainland for two months while the spill was cleaned up. As part of the island’s settlement with Easter Energy, the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies (AMIOS) was built near the ruins of the decommissioned power plant and outfitted with the necessary technology to declare the waters of Anchor’s Mercy clean just months later.

“Rumors are hard to scrub out of the coarse fabric of a talkative seaside town. The Sixties Spill lowered property values enough to cultivate a vibrant, beachy bohemia that has since blossomed into a rich tourist economy, and though many modern residents whisper about the higher incidences of cancer and chronic illnesses among locals, such talk is considered sacrilege and paranoia by a community that simply cannot afford to drive tourists away.

“Mercy water is clean; Mercy’s beaches are pristine; Mercy oysters are world-famous. But still, the locals get sick. Why?”

The paper ends with Doro D’Oliveira promising a forthcoming report of “irrefutable data and truths” that substantiate her claims. I had hoped such a report might be waiting alongside her paper, in the box of evidence, but it was not. It might not even be real, though what happened to Doro after the “MM&M” publication implies perhaps something in her report was worth killing her to keep concealed.

What is clear, at least to this scientist, is that the modern tragedy of Anchor’s Mercy may not be modern at all.

The teen room wobbles with candlelight as Elisa, Sam, Bash, and I lean over the spread-out contents of Elisa’s fifth-grade binder.

There’s the paper “Mercy, Madness, & Malignance” from her mom. A young Elisa highlighted sections of it pertaining to the chemical spill at the Easter Energy facility in the year 1959. Also in the cache is a thin library book titled Our Island: A History of Anchor’s Mercy Through Photos. The text inside is cramped, and the images are low-quality, like a townie historian put this together. Some photos are old enough to be black and white, and there are even old-timey drawings scanned into the book illustrating sites of shipwrecks. Elisa flips to a pre-marked page and turns the book around.

She’s showing us a photo of people in white lab coats on a boat. The form of the Easter Energy facility is clear behind them on the shore. The caption reads: 1959. Scientists from the Easter Energy program enjoy a day on the water.

“That was taken in Devil’s Clutch,” Bash murmurs. There are no photos of the spill itself, but a drawn map shows a shaded region of contamination covering the island’s eastern half. The next page is a photo of people in front of a construction site, captioned: 1962. Representatives of Easter Energy join with locals to celebrate breaking ground on a new research facility center on the island’s north shore. The building, just steel bones in the photo, is a familiar shell curving into the dunes.

“This is where AMIOS is built,” Elisa says. “And these are the people who built it. Look at the logos on the uniforms. The machinery, too. It’s all Easter Energy.” She flips the book around to read. “ ‘As part of the agreement between Easter Energy and Anchor’s Mercy, a facility was designed and erected for the longstanding mission of rehabilitating the aquatic ecosystems surrounding Anchor’s Mercy following the ecological crisis of 1961. The center’s construction funds, design, and scientific staff were provided by Easter Energy, along with a sizable endowment to see the mission through to its end.’ ”

“Sorry, but what does all this mean to you guys?” Sam asks.

Elisa and I whisper over each other, trying to explain the complicated history on the island with the now-defunct Easter facility, and Sam does his best to repeat it back to us.

“Okay. So, in the sixties there was a chemical spill from the power plant, but it was allegedly cleaned up. And you think that the spill at the Easter place somehow resulted in … all that crazy shit outside? And as a result, townies have been getting sick with stuff like cancer, because the island is contaminated, and somehow this has all been covered up by a science center I used to visit as a kid called …”

“AMIOS,” we say in unison.

“Right. You think that AMIOS has been in Easter’s pocket this entire time, hiding everything for them? Why would they do that?”

“Hiding, or studying,” I say. “The researchers at AMIOS study all kinds of marine life. Sharks and whales, but also algae blooms, arthropods, and mollusks. Maybe even coral. But I think Elisa’s point is that AMIOS was monitoring Mercy’s water and the surrounding ecosystems after the spill, and if anyone knew something was wrong, it was them.”

Elisa sighs. “And my mom created this report with all these findings she claimed AMIOS was denying. People thought she was nuts, so she hid it somewhere. I only ever found a few notes stuffed into the books she was reading, but they don’t make much sense.”

The last thing from Elisa’s binder are random scraps of paper. The way Elisa holds on to them, I’m positive the cramped handwriting on them is her mom’s.

“You think her report proves that Easter created the coral that’s eating everybody?”

“On accident or on purpose, they for sure created something horrible and tried to hide it,” Elisa says. She flattens one of the notes out next to the candle. It’s a torn-out page from a journal, and it reads: THEY DON’T WANT IT TO GROW BACK. THEY TRIED TO KILL IT. THEY KILLED US INSTEAD. WE ARE MAGGOTS UPON A POISONED CORPSE.

Elisa folds the paper back up, and now I don’t read her gentle touch as loving. She fears these artifacts. “I have tried not to think about any of this for years,” she says. “But now I wish I knew where my mom hid her report. I’ve looked everywhere in our house. It’s not there.”

“What good would her data do us?” Sam asks. “We’re not scientists.”

That can’t be argued. I almost suggest we bring the report to an actual scientist, like Imogen Pfaff in her makeshift lab downstairs, but now I see Dr. Pfaff through Elisa’s grudge. Even if AMIOS was established to rid the island of the freaky flesh-eating coral, Pfaff is still implicated in the cover-up, and maybe even the murder of Elisa’s mom.

“Trust me. We need my mom’s report. Her data could prove something here is wrong,” Elisa states.

Bash is studying the photos in the book. “No shade, Elisa, but I think we pretty much know something is very wrong.”

“But if we got off the island, we could do something with the report, right? Ollie, you know doctors on the mainland. Your mom’s medical records are beyond Pfaff’s reach. They could corroborate my mom’s findings.”

I’m nodding, but then I’m shaking my head. The obstacles are too huge. How would we get to the mainland? There are boats in the harbor, but without keys or a crew, we’d be dead in the water. Literally. And the tides are notoriously hard to escape around the island.

Sam sits up suddenly.

“Maybe we don’t need to go get help. Maybe it can come to us. Wendy’s been trying to signal to that big boat on the horizon. She needs a radio, though. Where can we get a radio?”

We discuss our options. Clearly, there isn’t a working radio in the library, so we’d need to look in town. The wharf is the obvious answer, but it’s infested with weepers. We need to find something closer.

“Scuttlebutt’s,” Bash says. “Wendy’s got all those vintage radios behind the DJ booth.”

Now I’m sitting up, too. I just saw those with my own eyes, days ago. Elisa launches into out-loud thinking of how we’d get in and out of Scuttlebutt’s, but Sam and I are there to temper her ideas with the unfortunate reality that there’s no way we make it through the nightly fog. Plus, we have no idea what’s hidden inside the nightclub. Bash is back to zoning out, and I notice him rip a page from the history book. He folds it and pockets it. I let him.

We sit in silence, and the eerie noise of the night fades through the papered windows. Weepers are babbling in the distance, but there’s a new sound that tickles the inside of my ears. A harmonious din that I think must rise from the coral itself, like a vibration just at the edge of my hearing. I try not to think of it as singing, but my mind can’t help but find the cadence in the song’s swells.

“What I want to know,” Bash says after a long time, “is how do we kill this shit.”

All eyes turn to me, the only person here who’s taken care of an aquarium.

“Actual coral bleaches when the water is too warm for the algae that feeds it. So maybe we could try heat?”

“Great. Maybe Scuttlebutt’s has flamethrowers, too,” Elisa says. “What else?”

I go through the chemistry of my tank in my head, but it’s been so long and I can’t remember the actual names. “Acid would do the trick. Anyone got any acid?”

Bash raises his hand. “There’s lemon juice downstairs. We could mix it into water and put it into water guns or something.”

“Bash. Bashar. Come on now.” Elisa is already laughing through her scolding. “Are you seriously suggesting we save the world with lemonade?”

Bash shrugs. “When life gives you lemon concentrate …”

It’s his lilting smile that sets me off laughing, too, and once I’ve started I can’t stop. Laughing this hard feels insane, like choking on light, but this is a breath I am glad to give up. For the first time in a week I feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes, and I let them tumble down my temples as I lay my head in Bash’s lap. The others aren’t handling the absurd suggestion any better. Our laughing even earns us a testy shhhh from the nearby stacks, causing us to blow out our candle and bury our faces into our bundled clothing.

I fall asleep in Bash’s lap, one hand holding on to Elisa, the other on to Sam. I fall asleep with salt on my tongue. I fall asleep still smiling, with tears on my teeth.

Ollie-baby?

Wake up. It’s me. Where are you?

Are you looking for me?

Something has gone wrong inside my bones.

Ollie-baby? I can’t breathe.

I awaken beside the organ, curled against the window, my forehead pressed to the paper of the glass. The dream fades, but the heartache doesn’t. I had a dream about Gracie. She was calling to me. Why did the dream bring me here? The paper has peeled back. Through the gap I glimpse what’s become of the world outside the library, and I wonder, How could anyone survive this nightmare?

Clouds of fog twenty feet high drift down Main Street. Rashes of corals wrap the edges of buildings, street signs, and cars, throbbing with luminous pastel light. Barnacles bubble across the sidewalk like cobblestones. Several weepers are right where Wendy shot them down on the lawn, but their colors are dull now. A few other weepers sway over them as though curious, or in mourning, but their faces are looking up at the library, captivated by the lit tower.

I can’t help but look into each of their faces, searching their wide, unblinking stares for any sign of the people they used to be. Does the coral take everything? Can it infect a person’s soul?

I pull myself away. I’m ready to go back to bed when, steps from the window, I freeze. I rush back, peeling paper away until I can see more of downtown. My hands shake. Sometime in the last few hours, the winds have changed, and now the fog is drifting away from the rooftops.

In a solitary moonbeam I can see the topmost edge of Singing House.

And in the top-floor window, in our tiny apartment, a lantern has been lit.

I stare at the signal, not believing what I’m seeing. I expect the fog to swallow the town up again, but the wind stiffens until it’s howling through the gaps in the windows. The library creaks below the oncoming storm. A single glance at the sky—no stars, just a sheet of gray through which the moonlight barely drips—and I know that this storm is our chance to leave the library. Maybe our only chance.

I race to the teen room and silently shake the others awake. I show them the view of town cleared of fog.

“If we’re going to get that radio for Wendy, we need to go now or never,” I whisper. “It’s shine time.”

Elisa nods. Sam nods. Bash holds his own hand, and I think he’s going to vanish into himself again.

“Won’t Willy be mad?” he asks.

“Willy will be mad, but Wendy would be proud. She can’t keep this place afloat with the power of pretend much longer. We need a way to call for help,” I say.

Bash nods. Now we’re all in. We dress silently but hold our shoes in our hands as we sneak through the stacks and down the back stairwell. At the last step, we lace up our shoes, tighten our bandannas across our faces, and pull our goggles down over our eyes. When we’re ready, we ease open the door. The night is a perfect square of darkness beyond, smelling of salt and rain.

Hand in hand, we dive in.

The door to Scuttlebutt’s hangs on bent hinges, like a kicked-in tooth.

“Any other ideas?” Sam whispers as we examine the wreckage.

We could go back to the maritime museum, or search through a few of the vintage stores. The wharf is a risk, but not far, and of course we’ve considered hiking all the way to the boating supply store. All those would cost us precious time. No one wants to split up. We don’t know how long the ocean breeze will last, and none of us want to find out what happens if the prickle of rain turns into a drizzle.

Selfishly, I want to get to Singing House. If we get the radio quickly, then I’m sure I can beg the others into a detour back to the library. They saw the light in Singing House, too. If it was their mom, they’d do the same, right?

This is why I step into Scuttlebutt’s first, making the decision for all of us.

“Hello?” I whisper. If there are people hiding here, I don’t want them taking any shots at us. I hear nothing in response except the wind gushing through the empty wreckage of the restaurant, flapping up flyers and strewn napkins. Plates of festered food sit on the few tables that haven’t been thrown sideways. The floor is sticky, but with the blessed stickiness of spilled cocktails and beer. I risk a long, deep breath, smelling for the marine rot of the coral, but all I can detect is the oversweet tang of gone-bad orange juice.

We ease through the dining room, toward the club in the back. Wendy has it designed like the hull of a wooden ship, with curved boards bending the walls around a spacious, glitter-stained floor that normally shines with disco light. Like painted angels, figureheads from old ships hang over us, dripping strings of plastic beads and paper decorations left over from the Fourth of July. The air is denser. Sour. But the stillness is a relief. I try to tell myself the dark is our friend, that it means the coral likely hasn’t rooted itself in here. Bash and I head behind the bar to grab whatever water bottles we can find, but it looks like someone has already had this idea. There is, however, a large jug labeled LEMON JUICE. Bash holds it up. Victory!

“Guys!” Elisa whispers. “Look!”

Sam’s got Elisa hoisted up on his shoulders so that she can reach the shelves above the DJ booth. She’s pulled down one of the many radios. A newer-looking one toward the top that lacks the charm of the antiques, but almost certainly still works.

“Look for the power supply,” Bash whispers. “It should be with it. A little black box.”

Elisa feels around for a few more seconds and then shows Bash what she’s found.

“Does it work?” Bash whispers. Elisa wrestles the cords into the socket, and the radio lights blink on. She reaches for the dial.

“Wait—” Sam says, but he’s too late. Elisa cranks a knob on the device and a static cry stabs through the silence. She drops the radio in surprise, and Sam nearly drops her. There’s a scramble as they duck behind the DJ booth to find it, and somewhere in the chaos someone must bump something. The disco lights come on.

“Turn it off,” I whisper, but what’s the point? The radio is yelling something—“Commencing forensic operation”—and then it finally goes dead, the power cord wrenched from the socket by Sam.

We hold our breath, willing the silence to re-form, but from the door comes a gurgling hiccup. I scramble over the bar and close off the passage leading to the way we came in. In silent unanimity Bash, Elisa, and I agree on the back door. We used to prop it open (much to Wendy Pretendy’s annoyance) to make for an easy escape from Scuttlebutt’s on nights we snuck in. Now it will save our lives. We run toward it, but then Sam shouts, “Ollie, behind you!”

I duck just as a web of slime cascades over my head. A body, heavy with momentum yet utterly silent, twists after me. In disco light I catch only a glimpse of its mutilation—twitching urchin spines puncturing through spongy skin, all down the weeper’s bare back. More spines wrestle from their yawning mouth, sending a sticky lace of slime in my direction. I duck again, crawling backward across the floor. I try to get my goggles back on and only manage to rip them off.

“The lights, hit the lights!” Elisa cries.

Sam drags his hands over the controls on the soundboard. First, all the lights come up, and I briefly glimpse the wet maroon carnage that has infested the back walls of the dance floor. In response to the burst of light, a pulse heaves through the monstrous growth, and several human shapes shiver awake. Sam hits the board again, and the lights strobe a thrashing white.

FLASH.

FLASH.

FLASH.

“Back door!” I shout, pointing. “Go! Now!”

Before us, the weepers appear to jump through the light, teleporting through the flashes until they’re looming over us. A woman this time, her eyes smoothed over by a quivering bulb of jelly. She retches violently and a fleck of spit hits my cheek. I drop to the floor, scraping the substance away from my mouth and nose, fighting not to breathe even though my pulse is a greedy hammer in my veins. There’s no time to wonder if I’m dead. The weepers multiply, awakening one another.

FLASH.

Three weepers.

FLASH.

Seven weepers.

FLASH.

Too many slime-slick bodies to count, and now I can’t find my friends. It’s a dance break in slow motion, and unless I move fast I’m about to be twirling among them. Ahead, I glimpse the back door swing open with a bang. The weepers twitch toward the loud sound. I try to see who makes it out, but the crowd is thick now. All I hear is a scream—Elisa. I can’t get to her. Even a step toward the exit puts me in range of a weeper with long frill-like tendrils growing from their lips, whisking the air like tongues.

I duck into the DJ booth, landing atop a warm body.

“It’s me! It’s Sam!”

I grab his arm. “We have to do something!” But I’m pleading like a child. We’re the ones who are trapped. I reach up and bash my hand over the controls, searching for a way to douse the strobe light. Will it even work? Or once the weepers awaken, is it too late? I find a bank of sliding buttons and I pry them all the way down. The room sinks into black, finally, and the weepers slow in their shuffling.

“You did it,” Sam whispers. He’s shaking beneath me. Not crying, but full-body shakes that rattle his teeth.

“Did they get you?” I whisper.

“I don’t think so. You?”

I can feel where the globs of slime have soaked into my bandanna. I rip the cloth away, just in case.

“I’m good. We’re going to be okay. Just follow me, okay?”

We crawl from the DJ booth on our elbows. In the dark it’s impossible to tell where the weepers are until, like a slowly rising sun, the coral growths resume their eerie glow. A bloody-red light that makes it feel like we’re crawling through a giant’s veins. In a way this is better—we can see a path toward the exit. But it’s also worse—in their glowing stupor, the weepers cease their chasing and lock into a shivering formation among one another.

They seem agitated. Unwilling to go back to sleep. Except for the occasional twitch, they move slowly, fluidly, dreamily. I realize it’s only a matter of time before they begin to shed their spores, drowning us where we hide. I squeeze Sam’s hand. Time to go.

We take it slow. I lead, trying to both keep my eyes down while also looking where I’m going. Was the door dead ahead, or to the left? Sam keeps one hand wrapped around my ankle. Above us, the weepers sigh and whisper, but most are too transformed to be understood. Still, the sound of a sigh is utterly human coming from these monsters. As they make their familiar hum, chills rush down the skin of my back.

I pull us a few more feet, but suddenly I can’t feel Sam. I twist, but the wobbly legs of a woman peppered in polyps nearly trot over my face. I roll left, onto my side, and she misses me by inches. Another weeper crushes my hand, but I force myself not to cry out. I ball up against a patch of clear wall, cradling my knuckles, aware of the growths hanging directly over me. I have to keep going, but where is Sam? I scan through the forest of legs.

There! I spot him crawling on his elbows. He’s going in the exact wrong direction. Our eyes meet briefly and he mouths something, but it’s impossible to read his lips beneath his bandanna. He lowers it and tries again.

Go.

I shake my head. Absolutely not. Bit by bit I drag myself toward him until I’m forced against a pillar. He takes momentary shelter against a curved velvet bench. We have no choice but to stare at each other, waiting for some miracle to part the crowd enough for us to pass. Sam waves urgently, then points at his ear.

He’s telling me to listen.

I haven’t known Sam long—only days, only moments—but in those moments he has demonstrated an uncanny ability to hear the music just outside our reality. At first it was the music in my mind on the ferry, then it was the spontaneous composition I played for him at Singing House. If he hears something, I trust him. Going against every instinct, I close my eyes.

I listen.

Past the gasping, past the euphoric crying, past the sticky suck of clotted lungs, the weepers have a sound like nothing I’ve ever heard. From within the library, it sounded like a distant chorus, but within this closed room it’s closer to the howl of wind; dissonant, stark tones rubbing dangerously against one another. There’s a grittiness to it, too. I feel like if I listen any longer, the abrasive discord will burrow through my brain.

But I stop straining to hear. I stop trying to name the notes, or tune the song, or fix the composition. Instead, I follow Sam’s instructions. I just listen. I let the maelstrom of tones lift me up, chaotic and beyond my control, like a glittering wave pulling me from the sand. At first my mind kicks, like my feet trying to find the ocean floor, and I panic when there’s nothing there—this is just incoherent noise! No grounding bass, no certain rhythm!—but then I hear something miraculous deep within the voices: the cradle of a chord. It flits in and out of my ears as the voices creating it drift past one another in their individual études, but suddenly there’s a sense to the song. And I can hear it. And it’s music after all.

I open my eyes, knowing exactly what to look for. The chord is based around a lone weeper standing still in the middle of the dance floor, sustaining a long and meandering descant. The coherence depends on the weepers swirling around the center. As they drift, they slide through harmonies that briefly align, tangle, drift, and shatter, all in a loop that repeats itself. Sam hears it, too. He nods at me, counting through the sequence. Together, we step into the swirl. We stay low. We go slow. The dance is so intricate that I feel a weeper brush my elbow when I’m only a hair ahead, so I force myself to match their pace perfectly. Now that we’re moving with them, though, they don’t seem to notice us. Glee rushes through me, but I shove it down so that I can focus. This isn’t over yet.

And there’s one big problem left. As the weepers have calmed themselves, the air has begun to sparkle. The lullaby has begged the coral polyps open, and the fog begins to trail after the waltzing weepers. Sam and I squeeze to the floor, trying to stay within the sequence, but at this rate we won’t make it to the exit. At most, we have seconds of clean air left before the room is saturated.

By sheer luck I reach the door first, but I don’t run for it. I stand, scanning for Sam, but the air is blurry as the fog begins to fill up the room. I take one final breath, begging my brain for an answer. How can I show him where to go? I need a light of some kind. My hands dig into my pockets, finding the digital recorder. That will have to do. I start it up. The red recording light blinks. I wave it in front of me, hoping the motion catches Sam’s eye. If he runs for it, I’ll be ready. I’ll take his hand and pull him free, and we’ll be outside in no time. Safe, with the heavy back door slammed at our backs.

BREATHE.

My lungs are already aching.

BREATHE.

My body fights my brain, but I don’t give up.

I think I see him, rising as a shadow among the glowering red of the weepers. I take the last bit of air in my lungs and whisper, “Sam! This way!”

I squeeze my eyes shut right before the fog wraps around me. Every second without air is a void spreading in my brain, emptying my thoughts. My lungs don’t just burn, they blacken in my chest. But I know Sam is close, I can hear him in front of me. I know that I just have to wait a little longer, and I will feel his hand on my chest, pushing me toward the door, and we will dive toward the future.

Together.

BREATHE.

BREATHE.

BREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHE.

I feel myself blacking out. My thoughts shrink into nothing beneath the rebellion in my chest. Soon, my body will breathe for me, and my throat will thicken with glitter, and I’ll die.

No, I’ll live on, my body bursting apart in a chaos of spines and polyps and tremulous tendrils. I’ll drown, then dance forever.

At last, I turn my back on the dancing weepers and I run.

“No water, no water!”

“I know, I know, I know! Use this!”

“Will it work—”

“Just do it!”

Something pours over my face, and pain sizzles into my eyes and up my nose, and I can’t stop myself; I finally take a breath. I cough it back up. The world tastes like lemons.

Hands. Hands all over me. Hands scraping at my face, my lips, my ears. Hands ripping off my clothes, my shoes. Hands dragging me across concrete.

I can’t see, pain like a scorching hand squeezing my eyeballs.

I wait to drown, but then I don’t.

I wait to cry, but I can’t.

I wait to hear Sam’s voice, but it never comes.

“Hit him again,” Elisa orders. I’m set on the ground again and lemon juice gushes over my head. Despite the burning, I keep my eyes squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes. Just for a second, Ollie.”

That’s Bash. I let him tilt my head back. My eyes flutter open. Elisa holds open my lids as Bash tips the remaining jug of lemon juice into my face.

This time, I scream. It’s a scream without sound, just a boom of anguish hurling itself out of my body. Elisa holds me upright until finally the stinging in my eyes fades, and when the tears come, they fall through the lemony stickiness, but they’re just tears. Tiny, salty beads of pain.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Elisa says, cradling my head.

Bash stands a few feet away, blinking back at the way we came. The empty jug falls from his dust-covered hands.

“Sam? Where’s Sam?”

We barely make it away from Main Street before the clouds crack open and lash us with rain. Below my bare feet, the concrete turns slimy, no doubt due to the particles of fog hiding in the cracks. Soon, we’re soaked, but I’m thankful. I stand below a leaking gutter, letting the dingy water drag the remaining slime from my hair. Even after, I still taste lemon juice, but that’s better than a mouthful of congealed stomach acid.

I wait for my thoughts to turn euphoric, and my eyes to open wide with joyful tears, but I feel empty. That’s how I know I’m going to live. Sam is probably dead by now. The reality sinks into me with an unfathomable weight.

“We need to go back to the library.” Elisa uses her body to shield the radio parts. Bash has his arms wrapped around me, trying to warm me up.

“We wait for Sam,” I demand through chattering teeth. I’m in just my underwear because we ditched my clothes. The only thing I’ve got left is my watch and the tape recorder clutched in my hands.

“It’s been almost an hour,” Elisa shoots back.

“He’s alive.”

“If he’s alive, he’s hiding. Like we should be.”

Elisa is smart. I can feel that she doesn’t believe what she’s saying—that Sam has somehow both escaped and found a place to hide—yet she knows it’s what I need to hear. It’s possible Sam found another way out—the door we entered through, for instance. Maybe the fog never swallowed him. It’s not likely, but neither is the fact that I’m not a weeper right now.

“He could have gone back to the library,” Bash offers.

I love them both. They didn’t see what I saw. The cloud of fog, the waltzing weepers, the immense tumor of coral rotting up the wall of the club. All those details terrify me, but the thing that scares me the most was the way Sam shivered in my grip behind the DJ booth. If I hadn’t found him there, I don’t think he would have been able to move. He was totally frozen.

Questions swarm through my mind. Would he have stayed hidden? Would hiding have been safer? Then I remember that it was me who decided to go into Scuttlebutt’s despite Sam’s hesitance, all because I was trying to hurry to Singing House. Did I kill Sam?

I step out of Bash’s embrace, feeling like no one should be touching me.

“Ollie, you’re okay,” Elisa says. “We got lucky this time.”

I can’t bear her comfort. I know she’s right, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Whatever luck we share, it stopped just short of Sam, and I can’t escape how unfair this all is. Sam wanted to be our friend. He tried so hard, and what did it get him? If it wasn’t for us, he’d be out in that big house in the dunes, lonely but safe. Instead, he’s …

He’s gone.

I wonder what to even say. I wonder what my mom would tell me. Not Gracie but my mom, who put such weight into the words she spoke about those who are gone, and who are done speaking for themselves.

There are no words, I decide in this moment. Or there aren’t enough words. All we can do is keep going and make sure Sam’s sacrifice means something.

“The sooner we get this radio to Willy, the sooner we can get help,” I say.

Elisa and Bash nod.

We run as fast as we can, hoping luck hasn’t left us behind, too.

The rain pauses just as we reach the library.

I expect all the windows to be lit, a full-on search underway with spotlights lighting the sky, but all the windows are dark and the tower lights are down. It looks like the library is asleep. I’m hesitant to wake it with the news of what’s happened. For a few more minutes, the people inside get to steal precious sleep thinking this building will save them. Sooner or later, though, the horrors of the island’s reality will burst through those doors.

I’m just sorry we’re the ones to have to bring it in.

We chart a course around the lawn, but not too close to the opposing houses that spill pale green light out into the night. The back of the library is a gravel parking lot, but the only car is a run-down school bus covered in colorful graffiti, only ever in use for the parades. Otherwise, there’s just a few storage containers. No weepers. We run for the side door.

Elisa reaches it first. The door doesn’t budge.

“It’s locked.”

The obviousness of this outcome is a shameful shock to all of us. Of course it’s locked.

I rush us around the corner, to the back door, but that’s locked, too. Obviously. With those lunatic book-ban zombies on the loose, the library would have implemented some bolstered security years ago.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel lot behind us. Human footsteps. Relief shines through my dismay. Sam, thank god! But then I hear the click of a gun cocking.

“Don’t even think about— Oh, Jesus Christ, Ollie. What are you three doing out here? Why are you naked?”

It’s Willy. He’s wearing goofy pajamas and bright yellow gloves, and a ring of keys dangles from his hands as he hefts his rifle over his shoulder. At first he looks surprised, and then he looks angry. Then, after a brief confusion as he counts us, he looks worried.

“I thought you guys always stuck together. Where’s the new kid?”

I’m back in archive-jail, but this time I’m alone. Through the door I can hear Elisa and Bash receiving the scolding of a lifetime in the hallway. “You knew the rules! You were explicitly told!” Willy’s voice presses through the wall, and I absorb it as I sit in a damp huddle.

I can’t help but think that the last time I was here, the space was cramped and hot. Sam was right beside me, on his back, arms thrown over his head, feet kicked up against the wall. Even in the dark, I could see him so clearly. It’s like he glowed.

I wipe at the tears with the back of my hand. I don’t know why, but I keep listening to the recording I took on the dance floor. Somewhere in the swell and crash of the weepers’ hymn are Sam’s final breaths. If I listen hard enough, maybe I can be there for him. As an act of exploration, I let my hands spread across the mattress in front of me and I play along.

Two hours into my sentence, the door finally opens, and a cup of water awaits me on the floor, next to another bucket of bleach-water. When my spit doesn’t turn the water to slime, Willy takes a step closer. He won’t hug me, though.

“If you die, I will kill you, Orlando, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I sniff.

“No one wants you three back here but me, understood? And I am furious with you. I am heartbroken for you.” Willy bends so he’s looking me in the eye. “But, Ollie, I am thankful. The radio could be the key to everything. That’s the only reason you’re not getting voted out. Still, it doesn’t excuse you guys taking such a huge risk. And Sam …” Willy catches himself before the emotion can crack his voice in two. “Just wash up, okay? And here, these are the only clothes we’ve got left. And Dr. Pfaff needs to see you.”

Willy has handed me my old outfit back—my Pizza Monster shirt, cargo shorts, and shoes that were confiscated when we arrived. Washed and dressed, I’m back in Dr. Pfaff’s office as she finishes her notes on the accounts given by Elisa and Bash. We must have arrived in the middle of some important work, because for the first time I see the red notebook spread open. The pages unfold outward in a complex way, and I realize it’s not just a notebook. It’s a scrapbook. At a glance, I see a massive map of a building, and a red line traced through it, but when Dr. Pfaff sees me looking, she folds it up brochure-style and slaps the red book shut.

“Orlando. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you back here so soon.”

She pulls on gloves—not medical ones, but the kind people use for cleaning, like Willy was wearing. I guess that’s all they’ve got. She does her tests, scraping at the tissue in my nose, shining a light into my eyes.

“It was an accident,” I finally blurt. “We were in Scuttlebutt’s and we thought it was safe, but then the lights woke up the weepers.”

Dr. Pfaff shushes me. “I’m sorry about Sam, too, Orlando, but there is the chance he survived, just like you did. We make no assumptions. Now, do you have anything to report to me? Your friends already told me about the radio. That’s interesting, but is there anything you, specifically, have to tell me?”

I completely forgot Pfaff’s missions. I haven’t been spying on Willy, like she asked, or anyone for that matter. The idea feels absurd. What does she think these people are hiding? What does she think I’ll find by sifting through the sonic fragments of their grief? Most of them are elderly, or stressed parents with little children, and yeah, sure, a handful are worshipping a death cult, but they’ve been anything but discreet about it. So what’s left to upturn in the sealed terrarium of this library, where nothing but the Suds has managed to come in or out?

Oh, but that’s not quite true, is it? Willy was just outside himself.

“You know something.” Pfaff leans in.

Shit. She’s an expert at prying information off the smallest facial feature. I try to think of something else I can tell her, and then it hits me: I’m not exactly empty-handed, am I?

I place the digital recorder on the desk between us and hit play. The air crackles with static, and then the office fills with the shifting song of the weepers I recorded by accident as I tried to lead Sam to safety.

Even though the moment in Scuttlebutt’s felt like forever, the recording is only a minute. Pfaff replays it.

“These are …”

“The weepers,” I confirm.

“Poetic name. Others have been calling them the infected, but that’s not quite right, either. To be specific, these are people who have been—”

A voice speaks from the doorway. “Colonized.”

Elisa is standing there, arms crossed. She lets herself in and sits down. Dr. Pfaff looks at her with a mix of intrigue and fear, like she might look at an aquarium full of poisonous lionfish.

“We already know the weepers are colonized with some kind of fucked-up coral created by you and your mad scientists at AMIOS,” Elisa says. “What we need to know now is how to stop it.”

“Or understand it,” I say.

“That may very well be the same answer.” Dr. Pfaff sighs.

Elisa narrows her eyes. She looks from the digital recorder, to Pfaff, to me, and I think she’s figuring out where I got the device. I decide to worry about it later. If I can get Dr. Pfaff’s gears turning on the weepers, she won’t be able to resist talking through some new breakthrough.

“I’ve been listening to the weepers since they showed up,” I say. “At first I wasn’t sure, but now I’m confident. The sounds they make aren’t just random vocalizations and screams. They’re singing.”

This, I know. Sam showed me how to listen. I’m not him, but I have to earn the belief he put in me. Maybe I can make myself indispensable to Pfaff’s mission.

“There’s intonation. Phrasing. Calls and responses. I don’t understand it yet, but I think I could if I listened long enough. Music is its own kind of language. Maybe this is how they communicate.”

By the way Pfaff’s eyes look through Elisa and me, I can tell that I’ve told her something that’s clicked a puzzle piece into place. Her hand even twitches toward her red notebook. I want her to say what she’s thinking, but instead she hands back the recorder with a shrug.

“Interesting theory, but coral lacks ears. Brains, too, for that matter. All the anatomical machinery to support your theory simply doesn’t exist in the phylum as we understand it.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Elisa puts her hand on my knee under the desk. She wants me to let this go, and I do. We both saw the way Pfaff reacted, and we both know the woman is just trying to misdirect us.

“You may go,” Pfaff says, turning back to her work.

Elisa elbows me, like We can’t leave empty-handed. Right. Okay.

“Actually, we want to know what you were doing at AMIOS,” I say, making sure it sounds like a demand and not a question. “We know Easter Energy funded the whole operation, so don’t bother lying about it.”

Pfaff’s eyes focus for a moment, but only to squint at us with pitying amusement. She locks her hands together, over the red notebook. I note that the moment her work with AMIOS and Easter is brought up, she guards the red notebook like a dragon curling around its treasure.

“Ecosystems are fragile things, and they must be maintained,” she says. “A body is like an ecosystem, too, in a way. Within our veins there are predators and prey. Within our tissue things grow and wither, bloom and rot. We are taught that the enemy of our body is decay, but like all ecosystems, the end comes as a result of imbalance. Growth, unchecked, can sicken, too. You should know, Orlando.”

She means Gracie’s cancer. I grip the fabric of my shorts, hanging on every word of what she’s telling us.

“All ecosystems have their balance. Our bodies. Our island. And the treatment for unmitigated abundance is just the same.”

“Poison.” I spit out the word. Just like the chemotherapy they gave to Gracie, the answer Pfaff describes is one that requires the near death of the host to kill off a ravenous sickness, except she’s talking about Anchor’s Mercy.

Elisa clears her throat. “Are you saying the spill in the sixties was … on purpose? To kill the coral?”

“Cnidaria imperia,” Pfaff whispers, and it sounds like both a correction and a confirmation. In fact, she almost sounds reverent of the coral—Cnidaria imperia. Elisa is not impressed with the unspecific answer, and she slaps the desk as she stands.

“Just tell us what you were doing at AMIOS.”

“You may very well survive long enough to find out for yourselves.” Pfaff rises to meet Elisa’s stance. The woman is much taller. The focus in her eyes is terrible now, crawling over Elisa’s upturned face with cruel scientific interest, as though Elisa isn’t a girl but a specimen.

“You know,” Pfaff says, “you have your mother’s eyes, Elisabete. Be careful what you make them see.”

“Fuck you.” Elisa turns, heading for the door. “Come on, Ollie.”

I hesitate. That was a well-aimed arrow, striking Elisa right where her pain meets her fury. Now I’m not only sure Pfaff is hiding something invaluable but that we are close to guessing it. I stand, but I don’t go. I anchor the uncomfortable moment a few seconds longer, knowing that in a battle between Elisa and anyone else, Elisa’s stubbornness will win.

I’m right. Pfaff relents with another long sigh.

“You want answers? On this island, there’s far more hidden inside than out. You might start with whatever your beloved Wendy Pretendy is hiding in those containers out back.”

I can picture the containers. Large shipping containers, like off a cargo freighter. I barely ever noticed them rusting out back behind the library, but now they glow in my mind.

“Why not go look yourself?” I ask.

“I have my work,” Dr. Pfaff says with a shrug. “And now you have yours. The container is locked with a padlock, but it’s been the same padlock for years. Tiff would know the code, or someone else who worked at the library.”

Elisa and I make eye contact.

Bash.

Elisa only lets us get halfway up the stairs before grabbing my hand and spinning me to face her.

“Did Pfaff give you that recorder?” She barely attempts a whisper.

“It’s not what it looks like. She …” I lower my voice. “She doesn’t trust Willy.”

“But you trust her? After everything?”

I pull Elisa up the stairs, to the kids’ reading corner. Most people either linger downstairs or have returned to the stacks to go back to bed. Among the tiny chairs and strewn blocks of the kids’ corner, we have at least a little privacy.

“Of course I don’t,” I say to Elisa. “The only reason I took the recorder was because Pfaff said she was trying to gather data that might help figure out what the hell is happening outside, and why.”

“You can’t trust her, Ollie.”

“Whatever she’d done, she’s still a scientist—”

“And you can’t trust her science, either!” Elisa pushes her hands up through the hair frizzing at her temples. “She’s probably the whole reason we’re in this mess!”

Normally, I let Elisa tinker around in her grudge against Pfaff, but I can’t anymore. Too much has happened and too much is about to happen. Challenging her trauma doesn’t make me a good friend, but if I were to let her get colonized by a flesh-eating coral, that’s not being a very good friend, either.

“Look, Elisa. I don’t trust Pfaff, but there is way more to what’s happening than just one marine biologist. You said it yourself; whatever has been happening on this island goes back years and years and years. Pfaff is old, but she’s not that old. If we want to figure this out, we’ve got to dig deeper than just our personal grudges. All the adults are hiding something.”

“So you do want to spy on Willy?”

I try to tamp down her voice with my hands. “I want to know the truth. I want to figure out what’s going on, and why, and how to stop it. And I want to save …”

I think of Sam. His memory has the halting regret of a song cut off mid-crescendo, right before it resolves into something beautiful. He was supposed to survive. He was one of us. The splinter of guilt I first felt standing in the rain has spread into something wild and uncontrollable. Me eating me, like a cancer of my own subconscious. I pull my thoughts away from it, toward the memory of the glowing window at Singing House. I might have failed Sam, but there’s someone else out there who needs me, who I can’t afford to fail again.

“I want to find my mom,” I blurt out.

This knocks Elisa back a few inches. Her eyes soften, but just a little. There’s an opportunity to say more and, for once, I decide to take it.

“You already know about the fight with Gracie in front of everyone. I bet half the island knew about it, before all hell broke loose. But Gracie and I never got a chance to make up, and I can’t help but feel like if we didn’t go to bed angry, she’d be here, now.” I imagine losing her again and I don’t know if it would be harder or easier. What I know is that I will not be finding out, because she’s okay. She’s at Singing House, waiting for me to come home, and she’s okay.

“Is it childish of me to think she might be fine?” I ask Elisa. “So many people on this island know her and would take her in, right? But I don’t know. I keep dreaming about her drowning, like the weepers. And tonight, the light was definitely on in Singing House. What if she’s home? Right now? Waiting for me?”

I don’t know where all this is coming from, and I’m sure Elisa is annoyed at me derailing our argument, but somehow she’s holding my hand and letting me say what I need to say.

“We’ll find her, Ollie,” Elisa says. The judgment is gone from her voice. “And we’ll figure out how to stop this and save everyone. It’s not childish to have hope. And you’re right. This is bigger than my grudge against Imogen Pfaff. We’ve got to explore everything, before it’s all gone and it’s too late. It’s our island, after all.”

“Yeah. It’s our island.”

Elisa squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.

Eventually, when enough silence has passed, she asks, “So, what do you think is in that storage unit?”

There she is, I think.

“My theory? Guns or something. Willy was in the military. He has Bash’s grandma’s gun. When I got here, he confiscated my harpoon gun. I bet it’s all in there.”

“Wow, Velty, you sound excited. I didn’t take you for a fighter.”

The word fighter makes me think of Gracie again. She got called that a lot when she was being treated, but she never felt it fit. If it’s a fight, there’s a winner and a loser, she would say to the nurses. No one really responded, probably because it was so clear she was losing. That was her point, I think. I always wanted to fight with her, somehow. Or for her.

Now I feel like I can, in a way.

“After the shit we pulled, I doubt Willy is going to let us out of his sight,” Elisa says.

I sit up straight, realizing it’s not Willy we should be evading. I point at my watch. “Riddle me this, Elisa: What is the one hour a day we know Willy is occupied?”

“It’s Wendy Pretendy’s Bendy Hour! Let’s get those sharks a’shaking!”

The kids put their hands up, matching the drag queen, and bite the air with their little palms. Wendy uses a toy mallet on the chimes she keeps in the common room, to mark the start and finish of her iconic hour of dancing, reading, sing-alongs, and of course a final lullaby to usher the kids off to bed. She can’t do the sing-along since her show has to be conducted at a stage whisper, but the rest of the show is surprisingly consistent.

Tonight, we sit at the back, near the door. Looking at the heads of all the parents and kids circled close to Wendy’s lantern, I feel bursts of nostalgia needled with despair. Wendy’s been putting on her Bendy Hour forever, but I am hyperaware that this is one of the last read-alongs this library will ever see. We can’t stay here forever. Either someone saves us or we save ourselves.

I think of a bit of Gracie wisdom that never made much sense to me but suddenly shines with understanding.

Some secrets are kept, and some secrets keep.

Anchor’s Mercy is, I realize, an island full of people being kept by their secrets. Now that Pfaff is telling us where one such secret hides, I can barely stop myself from running right at it. There isn’t time to do anything else but run. The world is ending, has maybe already ended, and I won’t be kept down by more secrets. Not mine and not someone else’s.

“Come on,” I whisper to Bash and Elisa. We exit quietly, without anyone noticing.

We tiptoe around the stacks, to the lobby. The lights are on in Dr. Pfaff’s office, but I’m not worried about her catching us. I’m not worried about anyone else, either. Willy has posted adults at both the back and side doors, leaving us with only one very stupid yet foolproof option for sneaking out.

The front door.

The barnacle door.

The front hall of the library was sealed almost immediately after the outbreak, and none have dared to venture back since. I guess no one else is dumb enough. I can both see and smell why. The air in here is damp and cold, tingling with salt and rot in my nose. Darkly, through the glass, there is a faint sense of squirming, and I swear I look right into a swirling eyeball. I shiver, reminding myself that beneath the mass of fused barnacles there is a layer of flesh.

If you don’t look, you won’t scream. That’s our rule.

I keep my eyes on Bash as we bypass the main door for a small side door, hidden behind a rolling corkboard cluttered with flyers for town meetings, odd jobs, book clubs, and the charity drive. Bash takes a deep breath, puts his shoulder against the door, twists the old lock, and shoves.

It pops right open. Nothing slithers in or spits at us. We let the door creak wider, and Bash places his book at the base to keep it from locking us out again.

Outside, I expect to see the lawn, but we stand within an alien tunnel. The barnacles have grown up the front door, across the pillars, and down the opposing walls. They carpet the ground, fusing together in mounds with black, gaping holes for heads, wide enough and deep enough to reach my entire arm into. I shudder, imagining what I would find inside.

Elisa pokes my back. I’m stalling. I hold my breath and step carefully so I don’t crush even a tiny barnacle. Even so, I sense the creature sensing me. The thorny growths bristle, and a few open like sleeping lips. One of them—protruding from the wall upon what I think might be a person’s shoulder—opens wide enough for a feathered tongue to flick the air. I catch Bash just in time. It lashes inches from his nose.

We hold still, waiting for it to retract. Looking around, I can see patches of smoothness amid the riot of texture, and I realize what I am seeing is skin. Buried humans. The half-moon of a woman’s face shines down at us. Her skin is pale, her lone eye a milky orb frozen wide. I can see her pupils darting around, like she’s still alive.

No, like she’s dreaming.

When the barnacles around us squint shut, Bash starts moving again. I rush after, pulling Elisa for the final few steps until we’re safely beyond the alien corridor. Weepers still wait for us on the lawn, but with the lights out they barely take interest in us as we turn the corner and rush along the bushes, to the back lot. There, the storage containers await. There are two, both padlocked shut, but it’s clear only one is being used. A soft white light leaks out through the cracks.

“Shine time,” Bash whispers to himself. When Elisa and I asked him about the lock, he recited the code without hesitation. He was in and out of this storage container often in his volunteer days. He said it was used to store furniture, mostly, and occasionally books, but as the door creaks open, we appear to be looking into a cramped living room. There are, in fact, several guns. They line one wall, propped up and ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. My harpoon gun is among them.

A curtain has been hung up, blocking our view of the farthest depths of the container, but that’s where the light is coming from. The air is utterly still.

Across the parking lot, a weeper hiccups. We rush into the container, pulling the door shut behind us. I listen to make sure the weeper passes, but instead I hear a familiar, haunting hum from within the container. The next step I take, something crunches beneath my shoe, and I trace a powdery web of coral growing right through the carpet.

“Guys—”

I’m too late. Bash rips back the curtain, and the light gushes over us as he unveils a weeper huddled in a small cot, it’s upper half infested with growths. I squeeze my eyes shut, ready for the monster to flood our bodies with fog and jelly. Instead, it speaks.

“Finally, some friendly faces.”

I crack an eye open.

Beneath the horror, a human looks back at us. She’s been propped up in her cot and swaddled in blankets. Horns of coral grow from her skin, faintly pulsing with buttery light, but unlike any weeper before, her eyes seem to really see us. She reaches for Bashar’s hand, and I have to stop him from reaching back.

“Please, don’t run. I don’t have much time,” she croaks. “And I should very much like a few final words. Bashar, don’t tell me you can’t recognize your own grandma. Do you know who I am?”

Bash just stares.

I finally take a breath and stand up straight, because we are in the presence of a local legend.

“It’s nice to see you, Scary Mary.”

Pfaff marches us right through the double doors of the community room, interrupting Wendy just as she’s getting to the end of The Rainbow Fish. Seeing the harpoon gun at my back, Wendy drops her singsong voice and stands up.

“Imogen, what are you doing?”

Dr. Pfaff knows Wendy well. She makes me get on my knees, right in front of the whimpering children, and she rests the point of the harpoon against the back of my neck. I’m left looking up into a crowd of candlelit faces. They draw away from me, whispering.

“What did they do?”

“Should we run?”

“What’s happening? What’s happening?”

And gradually, from a place so deep in the shadows that the candlelight can’t reach it, the doomsday people begin to pray.

“And the dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air …”

Dr. Pfaff speaks in clear, precise words. “These three have broken our rules for a second time. I found them sneaking outside, once again jeopardizing the safety of this sanctuary.”

“That’s not what happened!” I start, but Pfaff presses the harpoon deep into the soft of my neck, forcing me almost to the floor.

“How is that fair?” Pfaff asks the room. “How can any of us expect to feel safe when our leader is playing favorites? The rules apply to all of us, or none of us. Is that not how we voted?”

“Imogen, please, I’m sure there’s an explanation for this,” Wendy says. I twist to see her through the wall of wobbling candlelight between us. Her rifle is nowhere near her, but if anyone can handle an unruly crowd with words alone, it’s Wendy Pretendy.

“Is this true? Did you go outside again?” Wendy asks Elisa.

“Yes, but—”

The whispers turn into a low roar.

“Outside? Again?”

“Have they been tested?”

“Why did she let them back in here?”

Even as Pfaff quiets down the audience, the prayer weaves tension into the air.

“In the making of the world, an angel came down from heaven with a key to the abyss, to seal back the Leviathan, and so it shall be in the unmaking that the angel will return, and the Leviathan will rise to cleanse the world in flood.”

Dr. Pfaff has to speak louder to be heard by all. “The children show no signs of infection … yet. But I for one am curious what was so important in the storage units that they would break our quarantine yet again and risk the lives of everyone here.”

The question is perfectly worded to stoke the whispers again. Like a school of fish, all the frantic curiosity suddenly coalesces into a united shape: “We deserve to know the truth!”

“Imogen, please,” Wendy says. “Don’t do this.”

Imogen raises up the digital recorder and plays the latest file. Scary Mary’s voice is as faint as creaking trees, but the quiet she speaks into is profound.

“Willy has been in and out of here, taking care of me. Tell him thank you for me? He’s a kind one. Too kind. Asked him to kill me ages ago but he won’t.”

“That,” Imogen states, “is an infected individual Willy has been keeping captive in the storage container out back.”

“She isn’t captive!” Wendy shouts, realizing her mistake a second too late. The few adults holding on to hope shake their heads in disbelief. Wendy faces their doubts head-on. “Listen to me. There is still so much we don’t know about what is happening outside, but we cannot assume the infected are beyond treatment. Mary was fighting her infection! And I have heard from other pods of survivors that they are witnessing the same thing. It’s not deadly—”

“Liar.” Pfaff starts the chant, and it spreads into the mouths of the adults throughout the room. I bite down on my bottom lip and, despite the stab of pain in my neck, I push myself up.

“It doesn’t matter!” I yell. “Mary is dead now. She died in front of us. We’re safe!”

But no one cares. The panic in the room has risen out of the reach of words. Everything unsaid in the hushed weeks leading up to this fight spills out, all the adults shouting to be heard at once. Watching it all fall apart brings me back to the moment that Scary Mary took her last, rattling breath, and her eyes went cloudy, and gradually she began to crumble like a sandcastle. It’s like the crumbling has reached into the roots of the library, and now the building is about to fall down around us.

Tiff, ever the librarian, swivels like a sprinkler, spraying her shhhhh everywhere. No one but me seems to see or hear her. The adults scream at one another and gradually the children among them lend their own shrieks to the rising panic.

“Quiet. Quiet!” Bash keeps shouting next to me. “We have to be quiet!”

From the front hall comes the sound of glass shattering inward. The adults halt their bickering. Hands are clapped over the bellowing mouths of infants, trying to get them back under control. Everyone hangs in a moment of terrible impatience, listening to hear if it’s too late. Far away, but getting closer, the voices of tremulous song sift into the quiet of the stacks.

I lock eyes with Bash and Elisa.

The weepers are inside.

Dr. Pfaff turns the harpoon gun toward Wendy.

“Give me the keys to the bus. Now.”

“Imogen, I can’t do that. The bus is our only emergency escape. You can’t abandon all these people.”

“I’m not. Several here have already agreed to come with me. This was a long time coming.”

Several adults separate from the mob, standing with Pfaff to make their allegiance known. A few teens, too. I see now how Pfaff did it—how she posed as a quiet authority in the library and undermined Wendy, how she stoked discord and distrust to bring about her own outcome. We were always within her experiment.

“Anyone who wishes to leave this place will be taken care of at my lab at the institute. We will be safe there, but we must go immediately. The library has already been compromised. Now, the keys.”

Elisa shoves herself in front of Pfaff, ignoring the wicked harpoon. “Don’t go with her! She can’t be trusted!” With the offer of escape, Pfaff has completely turned the tide of the panic. The adults shove Elisa to the ground beside Wendy. I’m thrown next, then Bash. Now the audience stands behind the director. She is their only hope in a disaster she herself has brought about.

Wendy reaches into her skirts and, as though handing over her own heart, she gives Pfaff a dangling set of keys.

“Go with her,” Wendy says to us.

Someone in the crowd—the mother named Meeghan—protests. “Not them! They’re infected! They should stay! All of them!”

People give small cheers of agreement. I seek out the faces of other townies, people who have known me my entire life, people who have known Wendy for even longer, and they divert their eyes in shame. Pfaff’s mouth is an unerring line upon a face of grim determination. “I’m sorry,” she says to us. “But progress always requires someone to be left behind. You understand.”

Keys in hand, Pfaff backs toward the door.

Wendy pulls herself up to her full height. “Imogen, do not open that door—”

Dr. Pfaff shoulders open the doors, and in rushes the smell of brine and rot. Standing just outside the door is a young boy wearing a bike helmet, but even from a distance I can see it’s badly cracked by an antler of coral shooting up from his crown.

“Kill it, kill it!” someone screams.

“No!”

Wendy bounds over the candles as Pfaff raises the harpoon gun. Right before the two collide, Pfaff turns, and there’s a crack that sends everyone to the floor. When I look again, Wendy sways back, a bolt of silver jutting from her sternum. She stumbles and then falls in slow motion, into the candles.

I rush to her side, swatting at the small fires that burn up in the layers of her skirts. Blood, thick and black, quickly soaks her bodice. I grab the harpoon, but she catches my wrists.

“Don’t.” Her voice is thick with blood. “Leave it in. You need to go.”

People are screaming. Smoke fills the air from where the fallen candles have thrown their flames. I ignore everything, scooping my arms under Wendy so I can drag her upright. She shoves me off. I just try again, until she grabs the sides of my head.

“Ollie. Orlando. Listen to me. You need to take this.”

Sweat dots Wendy’s face, melting her makeup. Her eyes are wide. Fiercely alert. But I can feel the tremor of weakness already in her hand in my hair. She holds up her fist and reveals a key.

“This is the actual bus key,” Wendy wheezes. “But now it’s up to you to get everyone to safety. Go to the docks. There are survivors. Other townies.”

“I’m not leaving you!” I grab for the harpoon again, but Wendy shoves me back just before the little boy with the helmet crawls between us. Somehow Wendy gets a knee under her, and she’s rising.

“I’m right behind you,” she says through gritted teeth. One hand presses where the harpoon juts from her ribs. The other heaves up her rifle. This time when she tells me to run, there is no talking back.

I turn into the smoke, and I run.

The library is a riot of singsong chaos. The heavy barnacles that once blocked the front doors have imploded inward, creating a gaping wound of softened wood. Weepers dance across the hissing crust, grasping and pulling one another, like one gigantic wave of flesh flowing into the stacks.

“Bash!” I call. “Elisa!”

My voice barely pierces the cacophony of scraping, clicking, hiccuping, and screaming. Survivors scramble over one another, looking for a way out, but I already hear the now-familiar sound of someone choking on the slime forming in their lungs. It’s only a matter of seconds before the first floor is completely overwhelmed. We need another way out.

Think, I scream at myself. Think.

If the library is flooding with weepers, we need to seek higher ground. That means going up and around to …

“The side stairs! Follow me!” I call out, but as we rush to the staircase I see weepers have already climbed to the second floor.

One weeper, a woman in a sparkly dress that perfectly matches the maroon algae coating her arms and legs, looks back at us. Her mouth splits into a huge smile of blackened teeth as she babbles nonsense. “And in the fall the mountains burn festive colors, and we’ll go apple picking and sip cider!”

She rushes toward me, unseeing, arrested in some illusion that drives her to embrace whoever is closest. I duck, but she catches a boy right behind me. Clive DeMario. He gets a mouthful of her hair as she curls around him.

“Help—help!” Clive calls to me.

“Ollie! Move!”

That’s Bash! At the top of the stairs, through the blockade of weepers, I make out a rumble that makes sense only a split second before I see the edge of the library cart pushed into view. It teeters at the top of the stairs, captivating the weepers, and then with a final shove it’s crashing over them. They shatter in slow motion, as brittle as seashells but full of viscous blood that splatters the walls. I throw myself sideways just before the cart grinds me to a pulp.

I reach back for Clive. He’s on his hands and knees, pulling long strands of goo from his throat.

“Please!” He reaches for me, but we’ve got to keep going.

“Now!” I shout to the survivors following me. There’s a path up the stairs, out of the chaos of the main floor. I charge through the mess, reuniting with Bash and Elisa. There’s no time or space to acknowledge that Wendy has been left behind. The mission she gave us is too important.

“Side staircase,” Elisa is shouting. “Get to the bus!” But she herself won’t run. “Ollie, people are hiding upstairs,” she sobs. “Mostly the little kids.”

We need time to evacuate the library, but at this rate the weepers will have every corner of this place slick with slime in just a few minutes. If only the doors had held. If only the adults hadn’t been so loud. If only the weepers could be fought back or slowed down. But it’s too late. The safe hush of the library has been torn apart by the song of the weepers, soaring as high as the vaulted ceilings.

Like screaming angels.

An idea hits me.

I slap the bloody bus keys into Bash’s palm. “Bash, go to the bus. Get it started. Elisa, get the kids out of here. I’ll buy you time.”

She catches me by the arm. “How, Ollie?”

My idea is insane, but I know it will work. In a way, it’s the very thing I have been training for all my life.

“The performance of a lifetime. Do you trust me?”

My friends hold on to me a second longer, then nod. I shake loose, rushing up the stairs to the third-story landing, where the forgotten organ waits.

Running through the second-floor stacks, I check and—yes! The tower lights are still visibly on through the papered windows. I remember Willy telling me the organ is on the same circuit, so be careful, because even just a flurry of accidental notes could bring about the downfall of the library. Now I’m hoping the same notes will save us.

I slide into the organ bench, checking over my shoulder. Another wave of weepers is rushing up to the second floor, sealing off my exit as they twist and twirl toward the organ’s balcony. This has to work. I throw back the organ’s wooden key cover and hit the first few notes.

Nothing happens.

Was I wrong? Is it broken? My scrambling hands make only a series of dead thunks. Then I remember: Organs are machines, they require starting up. Willy showed me once, his hands guiding me in the process, but can I do it by myself? I find the switches on the far right. One says START. I slap it on and beneath me the instrument begins to whir.

“Come on, come on,” I coax it. I hit the second switch, marked RUN, and music bursts from where my fingers already have a chord pressed. Before I can play more, a weeper—a pillar of ultramarine frills trailing from a bulbous jellyfish crown—sways toward the new noise. Right as it focuses on me, I grab the bench and swing it. Hard. Right into the creature’s middle. It screams with two human voices and topples into the windows overlooking the lawn. The paper rips away. The glass cracks and half the panes shatter, but the weeper catches itself with its human hands. It would take just one powerful hit to send it through the window, but I stop. Splayed against the glass, I see what makes the creature so immense: It’s a father with a child piggybacked on his back, now forever fused together.

The child looks at me, their face badly warped through the jellyfish crown, and even though I know these two are long gone, I can’t do it. I can’t kill them. I drop the bench and rush to the keys.

Listen, I tell myself. Listen.

The piggyback weeper slowly stands, its nest of frills twitching toward me.

Listen. Just listen to them.

All around me is screaming and chaos. I try to block it out, listening back in time to the moment on the dance floor with Sam, where we waltzed among these monsters. They hadn’t felt like monsters then. They hadn’t felt like people, either, or even individuals. It had felt like swimming in the valley between two waves, both thrown and pulled in the same instant, as though being held by a force of unimaginable strength choosing, for just a moment, to be gentle.

Pfaff said that the weepers have no ears to hear with, yet with my very own ears, I listened to them soothe one another in a language of lullabies. What had it sounded like? Where do I even begin? The screaming night punctures my focus. The weepers are at my back. I squeeze my eyes shut. I tell my hands to play—play anything—but what if I do it wrong? What if this song is my last? These thoughts spring from the dark memory of my failed audition, when I really did think the music had left my life forever. It feels unfair that now, when it really matters, when I can already feel the sting of encroaching tentacles reaching for me, the music of my mind has abandoned me.

A tendril hisses against my neck and pain crackles across my exposed skin. A jellyfish kiss I can’t escape. I’m done. I’m lost.

In my final moment, I think of Gracie.

I think of my mom.

Is she watching from Singing House’s attic? Will she see me die? Is she listening, and will she hear me scream? When I’m a weeper, will she let me come home? Kiss me? Hug me? Sit me down in the parlor? Will she bundle a blanket around my shivering, ruined body and give me one final word of advice?

In the face of inevitable death, I already know what Gracie would say. She has already told it to me so many times.

We do not end, we echo.

What will my echo be? A cry stifled? A smile screamed? Out of furious rejection, I jam my fingers into the organ keys. What I play is unknown to even me—it’s not fragments of past compositions, or songs I’ve memorized. It’s something I’ve only heard once, when I stood in the glittering fog of the dance floor and begged Sam to crash into me. I remember thinking it sounded like a hymn, so I let it be a hymn.

The organ sings like something from another world. When, ten measures later, I am not dead, I turn over my shoulder.

The piggyback weeper stands, tentacles limp, looking down at me. It’s not alone. I play at the center of abundant horror. Dozens of weepers shiver and sway on the organ’s balcony, and more peer up from the stacks below. Many are unrecognizably transformed, like their bones have exploded within them, revealing pulsing scallop flesh. Others are remarkably human, and some are brand-new. I even recognize Tiff, lips still pushed to shush, as massive tears squeeze from her eyes.

I have to keep playing. As I do, I remember more of the hymn I had begun to transcribe in isolation. I build off it, paying close attention to the way the weepers twitch with agitation. The music isn’t dependable—there’s no set key, no real time signature, hardly any structure at all—but when I hear the weepers nearest me begin to hum along, I know this will work. I know they will listen to me, if I listen to them. And I keep an eye out the window, searching the distance for any sign that the others got away.

A flash of light catches my eye. Headlights!

The bus rolls over the corner of the lawn, then halts. The back door opens, and Bash appears waving his pizza paddle as straggling survivors run through the transfixed clots of weepers to get aboard.

Go, I urge them. I have no idea how much longer this rapport will last, but I know my own chance to escape has come and gone. I can’t stop playing. I’m part of the reef now, and strangely, I am calm. Would it be so bad, to stop hiding? To be grown into something monstrous, beautiful, and utterly un-alone? I think of the dad and his kid, fused into eternal joy, and I feel myself begin to cry.

“Care for a duet?”

My hands falter as someone steps to the keys beside me. I look up, into the bloodied smile of Wendy Pretendy.

“Told you I was right behind you, kiddo. May I?”

Wendy—no, Willy—is barely standing. He leans on the edge of the organ like one of his legs might not be working. His other hand comes away from the harpoon wound slick with red. Still, despite everything, he is gentle with me as he eases me off the organ so that he can play.

“Now, I can’t do all that,” he says as his own fingers attempt a clumsy version of the hymn I was composing. “But how about you give your old teacher a little hint?”

I understand the question before I understand the reason he’s asking it.

“I think they like the key of D, but they like to be heard, too.”

“Like a call-and-response? Well, now that I can do.”

Notes fly from Willy’s hands, enthralling and precise, and I recognize the opening of Elton John’s “Sacrifice.” A classic. But why this song?

And then I get it.

“No,” I cry, but Willy’s got his showman smile at full brightness.

“I’m afraid so, kiddo.”

The change in music has made the weepers rustle with intrigue. I can feel the calm I created in the library slipping away. And the air, saturated with briny stink, is cut through with smoke now, too.

“Come with me,” I demand.

“You know I can’t do that. The show must go on, right?”

I swipe at the tears blurring my vision. I have minutes—no, seconds—left with Willy. All the things I’ve wanted to say well up in my throat. Even through his smile, it’s clear Willy is on the verge of collapsing. He plays through the pain, lifting his voice to catch the fraying attention of the living reef around us.

“Good morning, children! My name is Wendy Pretendy, and I’m so glad to see your smiling faces. I hope those limbs are ready to get loose because guess what time it is!”

Willy puts a hand to his ear on reflex. I can’t leave the call-and-response unanswered, so I meet Willy’s voice with my own.

“Wendy Pretendy’s Bendy Hour!”

My voice cracks. Willy’s does not. With a flourish he transitions into a new song. I know this is my final cue. I back away, carving a slow path through the crowd of weepers that have begun to draw tighter toward the organ. Each step is a blistering betrayal of my body against my mind. When I’m halfway down the stairs, Willy calls after me.

“Oh, Ollie, there’s something I wish I told you forever ago.”

I have to keep my eyes ahead—even the smallest touch could break the captivation. But I lift up a hand, letting Willy know I’m listening.

“Okay, kids, let’s use our ears!” Willy’s singsong voice fills the entire library. “Let’s reallllly listen!” He fingers into his next song, also in the key of D. The way he plays it, it’s like he knows it will be his last. Exquisite intention rings through every note from the organ, and Willy’s voice fills the night.

“She’s got a smile that it seems to me

Reminds me of childhood memories.”

I get to the bottom floor, where the air is hazy with burning books. The weepers are sparse here, and the barnacles of the door have sealed themselves against the smoke. The lawn is packed, but the weepers are all looking up, at the window, listening, and none notice as I slip through. Suddenly, I’m at the bus and hands are pulling me inside. The engine gives a throaty rev, and we’re rocketing away from the library. I race down the aisle and fling open the back door, but the guttural roar of the motor drowns the music out. In seconds, it’s already a memory.

But I know that song. Gracie used to play it all the time, saying This is a Guns N’ Roses classic, she’d say. You know, your dad loved this one. And to me she’d sing the familiar refrain.

Whoa-oh-oh! Sweet child o’ mine.

AUGUST 17

27 DAYS AFTER

03:34

Can’t sleep. Finally got up to write down a thought.

Talking with the boy, seeing the horrors he and his friends survived for myself, I find myself asking this question: What must a person be made of?

Maybe this is the wrong question. Maybe we are not made of what, but who. Our friends, our families, our communities, our mentors. The people who love us, the people who hate us, even the people who hunt us. In talking with the boy, it’s clear to me that the primary adaptation leading to their survival was not some innate biology—not physical strength or speed or stamina—but something altogether unobservable and unscientific. I think of it as an invisible net of connections. A who upon which they could pull, that heaved them up and out of danger time and time again.

I’m sorry. These notes are wrong. I am avoiding an important development. The labs have been testing tissue samples from the boy, comparing them to those of other survivors, trying to determine what sets him apart. A pattern did, in fact, emerge, but only because I told them what to look for.

In the old woman’s story, she speaks of a red powder falling from the sky. This reminded me of the compound used in the lab to neutralize hostile samples of C. imperia, also a red powder. It’s highly flammable, but we are assured totally nontoxic to humans. For C. imperia, it’s deadly, turning the colorful growths a bone white.

In marine ecosystems, corals turn white when their environments turn hostile, usually through warming waters. The delicate symbiosis between the coral and the algae is disrupted, and the dying coral bleaches.

I had a question: Was the red substance the same across both timelines?

Current theory: This compound has nestled itself deep into the bodies of many upon the island, providing a natural defense against the aggressive, though not completely implacable, C. imperia onset.

So then, perhaps it is not what we are made of, and not simply who, but also where.

AMIOS has been transformed into a fortress of white sails and scarlet light.

We have been here for thirty hours, but it’s hard to use that word. We. We is a bucket riddled with holes, people slipping out all the time. Aunt Maddie, Sam, Willy—so many haven’t made it this far. I can’t think about it for too long before I feel the drag of gravity pulling me away, too. I hold on to whatever and whoever is left and hope our bucket doesn’t have much further to go.

The night we arrived at AMIOS, there was a smoldering glow across the marshlands and I wondered if the sun had decided to crawl back over the horizon. Our bus, pinned within a caravan of military Hummers, rumbled past entire channels of marshland set aflame, then turned down a service road that approached the AMIOS campus from behind. We were bound for the low cluster of science buildings that the public rarely was invited into. The nearer we got, the thicker the scarlet glow became, until we were told to get off the bus and walk, at gunpoint, through a massive gate.

A camp of tents that is our new home waited in the lot beyond, the white vinyl bathed pink by stadium lights glowering overhead, flapping in the gentle ocean breeze. We stood under red clouds as they counted us. The marsh beyond was utter blackness speckled with flames.

What burned? Who? I asked myself.

We were safe, they said. Finally.

And then they closed the gates behind us.

At first they kept us together—it’s important to separate batches of survivors in quarantines, they said, implying there were many others already safe inside the camp. Hearing that, I felt hope, and I shoved it away. Just as bad as grief. I needed numb. In a featureless tent, white-suited scientists tested our spit, took our blood and urine, assigned us ID numbers, and let us scrub ourselves with cloudy water that itched in my eyes and nose. Then, once they determined we were safe, they separated us.

It happened when I was asleep. One moment Elisa’s head was on my shoulder, and the next she was gone.

So far, people have been led away for all sorts of reasons—usually first aid. But the next time I saw Elisa, it was through a fence that cut through the encampment.

The encampment, I realized, was really two encampments. The word we had ripped apart yet again.

After two days of quarantine, we are permitted to meet the other survivors. We’re led into a central ring of tents—taller, with heavy flaps for doors, and large tubes spilling across humming machinery that cycles the air. Bash and I stay close to each other, expecting to be dragged apart at any moment, but when they herd us into the common area, he suddenly rushes away from me.

A woman’s cry fills the tent, sharp and joyful, and Bash vanishes into a hug. His family—his mother, his father, his two little sisters—wrap him in a mess of grateful tears. All around me people are crashing together, crying on one another, holding each other so tight that they fall to the ground in each other’s arms.

A memory flashes over my vision of the moment I left Willy behind, and suddenly I’m back in the mosh of all those weepers. People, families, friends, interlocked forever in such desperate, happy embraces. I stand still, my arms slightly lifted from my sides, ready for my own joyful reunion. I wait for Gracie to emerge from the crowd.

“Ollie, dear, come sit with us.”

Mrs. Itani gently pulls me into their family hug.

And I know.

Gracie isn’t here.

This is all temporary.

That’s what they tell us. They, being the white-uniformed scientists who speak to us through plastic face shields. Temporary, meaning that we will be evacuated to the hospital ship floating safely off the coast, the USNS Embrace, soon. Soon, meaning forever. Time drags toward the moment we leave Anchor’s Mercy, and while others rejoice—we’re saved!—I can’t share their relief. What about all the survivors still out there? Who will save them when we go? I know we can’t be the last, but no new group ever makes it through quarantine after us.

For an hour at dusk and an hour at dawn, we’re allowed to leave the tents and sit in the courtyard. That’s just the name people have given it, but in reality it’s a large circle of concrete at the front of the encampment, facing the gates. It used to be the parking lot, but now the lampposts have been rigged with metal tubes and tanks that click and hiss, constantly exhaling a stream of shimmering gasoline. I don’t need to guess what the machines do; the concrete below us is scorched black. It’s just like Scary Mary said. Soldiers in white, like astronauts, with guns that throw fire as high as the trees, except all these guns are aimed at us.

The kids, not knowing better, use the scorch marks for made-up games.

I sit in the shade of the tent, against a fence separating the two camps. Elisa sits on the other side.

“Bash seems happy,” I tell her. I tell her this twice a day, when we meet here. I guess she has no one else on her side, either.

“Good. He deserves it.”

She says that every time, too.

And even though we never say the next part, I know we’re both thinking of our own families in the silent minutes that pass. By now I’ve asked around for any hints about Gracie, but most of the people here were rounded up at the start of the outbreak from nearby houses, like Bash’s family. We’re some of the only people who managed to escape town. It’s the same of Elisa’s side.

“I’m so glad my dad is on the mainland,” Elisa says, but I know she misses him. “I wonder if this is happening there, too?”

“I doubt it,” I say, looking at the AMIOS buildings looming over the camp. There’s the nondescript science buildings where white-clad guards constantly escort frazzled-looking scientists between laboratories, and higher on the hill is the visitors center, where we used to go on school field trips. I wonder if the fish tanks inside are still full of fish. I remember a large room with a dropped center where all sorts of other animals were kept in a “living display” meant to simulate one of the island’s tidal pools. Elisa must be touring her memories, too, because she asks if I remember the horrifying whale display.

“Of course,” I scoff. “Who could forget a giant fiberglass whale head half-submerged in murky green water, with blowhole misting action?”

“It had those buttons that made it sing, too.” Elisa laughs. “Remember when you broke it because you tried to use the buttons like a DJ booth?”

“Collab of the century.”

“No wonder Pfaff separated us,” Elisa says grimly. We haven’t seen Pfaff since we arrived, but in a way she’s all around us via the guards in their strange Easter armor. Even the scientists all look a little like her. They say they came off the Embrace, but they don’t look like navy to me. Like the guards, their lab coats are branded with Easter’s logo, too.

“If my dad knew I was here, he’d come for me,” Elisa says definitively.

I think about Gracie. Besides her, in the limbo of loss my heart seems to always be sinking in, she is joined by Willy. Elisa reaches through the fence to calm my hands, which have begun playing a piano piece on the ground before me. With a pang I realize the song in my head was yet again “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

“Are you thinking about Willy?” Elisa asks.

“No.”

I only lie because I know Elisa already gets why I’ve been so stuck on this the last few days. I can’t help but read into the million moments between Willy and me that always substituted so beautifully for not having a dad. Or not knowing one. But now, with this damn song playing in my head, I wonder if I had one all along, and if I knew him after all. Gracie loved to say I was a treasure borne from her love affair with the sea. I always thought this was a metaphor for some drunk mistake with a sailor, but now I’m not sure. And it doesn’t matter. By blood or by water, Willy helped raise me.

I hold Elisa’s hand until the music is crushed in our grip. I don’t want to think about this anymore.

“Ollie, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Elisa says right before the sun sets and we have to go back into our tents. “I’ve been asking around about why there are two camps, and it seems like most of the people on my side are from the mainland. They’re all visitors.”

“Weird. Our side is all townies.”

I expect Elisa to balk at the insinuation she’s not townie enough for the townie side, but she’s chewing on her next question.

“That’s what I noticed, too,” she says. “So I’ve been wondering: Why would Pfaff separate townies and visitors? And then I thought about Bash’s grandma. She was resistant to the infection, right? Why do you think that is?”

“Mercyfolk are a hardy bunch,” I muse.

“We both know it’s the opposite. We’ve got that poison in us already. That’s what my mom’s paper said.” Elisa lowers her voice. “Have people … have people on your side started to go missing?”

I shake my head. What is she getting at?

“It’s just that every day, they call a few names for random testing, but not everyone comes back. They pick loners, people without family mostly, like me. Why?”

“They said they were going to start transporting us to that boat. The Embrace. It’s a hospital ship.”

“I think something bad is happening to them,” Elisa says. “Experiments, maybe. I know that’s crazy, but if the scientists want to find a cure, they’d test on healthy subjects, right? People with no natural resistance?”

The red lights come on above us, and a siren announces lock-in for the night. We slowly rise, holding hands between the chain link.

“Ollie, I’m scared.”

“Don’t get picked,” I tell Elisa. “We’ll get out. I promise.”

Footsteps approach from my side. Bash stands there, a smile fading on his face as he sees us holding hands. He puts his hands on his hips, dad-style.

“Don’t tell me you guys are scheming without me.”

“Of course not.” Elisa’s laugh is painfully flat, betraying her fear. I know she doesn’t want to ruin Bash’s good mood now that he’s back with his family, but the boy hates to be excluded.

“Actually, you know what? I don’t even want to know,” he says. “Didn’t the library teach you guys anything?”

“That wasn’t our fault,” I say, but I sound just as unsure as Elisa. The truth is, I’ve replayed the events of the library so many times in my head that I’m not sure if we nearly ended the world or saved it.

“We’re finally safe, and you guys want to mess it up?” Bash asks.

The guards are calling us inside. Before Elisa goes, she gestures to the fence separating us.

“We are not safe, dumbass. We know the truth about Pfaff. We will never be safe.”

Then she leaves.

Bash and I walk under the throbbing red lights to our own tent, but his good mood proves remarkably oblivious to Elisa’s worry. I’m conflicted between trying to snap him out of it and just letting him coast for a few minutes longer. After dinner (unremarkable airplane food almost certainly from the Embrace), I take up his invitation to sit with his family. His sisters, Lil and Yas, put our short hair into pigtails, and his parents tell me—not without a break in their voices—that they have always considered me a part of their family.

When the lights are lowered, and the world is only the dark red of the nightlights, Bash and I hang our hands off our cots and link fingers. My thoughts drift from Gracie to Willy to Gracie to Sam to Gracie. Back and forth, back and forth, my mind unwilling to linger too long in any one spot, as though something dark lurks just below. Soon, though, I am too tired to tread the waters of my anxiety, and the thing below comes up to claim me. Sinking into dreams, with my guard falling up and away, I do manage to ask: Was Willy my dad?

I sit up in bed, sweating through my sheets. Not the question, but the answer, burns in the inside of my skull. I don’t want to know, because if the answer is yes, then I just lost a parent. Another parent, maybe. My world keeps getting smaller.

I look at the cot next to me, where Bash is sound asleep with his hair still in pigtails. His hand drifts in the emptiness between us. I guess I let go. I tuck his hand under his sheets. I am happy for Bash, and I’m grateful for his family, but Elisa is right. Something here is very, very wrong. We are not safe. What little is left of my world is up to me to save, and I can’t do that by ignoring my instincts.

At dawn, when we’re allowed outside, I go right to the fence. Elisa isn’t there. I wait, and wait, and wait, until the sun starts to burn the back of my neck, but she doesn’t show. Then, right before we’re called in, she jogs around the corner.

We grip our fingers through the fence. If we only have a few minutes, we need to make the most of it, so I try to speak fast and calm.

“I’m in,” I tell her. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll do whatever I can to help. We’ll leave Bash. Just for now. But we have each other.”

Elisa nods. The fire in her eyes doesn’t dim. “I already have a plan,” she says.

“Of course you do. What is it?”

“Do you remember when we faked those rashes to get out of square dancing in gym class?”

I remember the cartoonish pink spots we speckled one another with, and smile. “Yeah, we used my mom’s favorite lipstick.”

“It was a good plan, right?”

“We weren’t allowed back in school for a week. What made you think of it?”

“Because—”

Elisa’s eyes widen as she watches someone approach over my shoulder.

“Orlando Veltman?” a woman in a hazmat suit says, checking her tablet. “You need to come with us.”

Guards grab my arms and pull me around the back of the tent. I only get out one shout for help before someone slugs me in the face. Stars shoot into the back of my skull, but I force my feet to dig into the gravel.

“Ollie? Ollie?”

I twist around, and Bash is running along the tents. More guards are closing a gate between us. He shakes it, shouting my name. His hair is still in pigtails.

The guards drag me toward one of the anonymous gray buildings. Scientists in white coats step aside and peer at me. Briefly, through a gap between buildings, I’m able to see down to the beach of Devil’s Clutch where the Embrace awaits. Is that where I’m going? Am I getting off the island? A fleet of smaller boats cling to the Embrace, ferrying supplies to the research pier. More tents have sprung up, white masses clinging to the coast like fungus. It’s like the reverse of town. Here, the natural world is being infested by people.

We don’t turn toward the Embrace. I’m pivoted to a doorway held open by people in hazmat suits. Taped signs warn what lies beyond.

ENTERING CONTAMINATION AREA. NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT.

“No!” I shout. “Please! I’m okay! I’m okay!” I try to shake the hands off me, but I only earn myself another punch to the head. Time cracks and I slip into a throbbing nothing, then all at once I’m back in myself and the world has jumped ahead without me. I must have passed out. Now I’m sideways, lying on a cold floor. Colorless lights glare down at me, and black windows watch from the wall.

“Oh thank god.”

Elisa is next to me. She helps me sit up. I wince, somehow my entire head aching. Congealed blood cracks in the corners of my mouth, and I do my best to clean my teeth with my tongue.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Elisa whispers. “I tried to warn you, but it happened so fast.”

My memories are drifty, slithering apart as I try to piece together how I got here. Elisa puts herself between me and the observation window, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“Don’t be mad, okay? I got called in for testing. They had everyone’s samples in a crate, so I found yours and … I did something. You know when Scary Mary crumbled? I took a bit of the white coral. I don’t know why, I guess I thought we could study it. It crushes really easily, so I slipped a little into your sample. Mine too.”

Either I’m still half-unconscious, or Elisa’s plan only makes half sense.

“You got us back in quarantine?” I grumble. “On purpose?”

“Just trust me, okay? Now that you’re up they’re going to come back in here. And you’re going to sneeze. Okay?”

Sneeze?

My head is throbbing. The lights are so bright that I can hear them. I don’t think I heard a single word right, but sure enough the doors open a few seconds later and in stroll two men in hazmat suits, carrying trays of strange equipment. They lean over me. One holds me down while the other prepares to inject something into my arm. Right as the needle punctures my skin, Elisa bursts from her corner and tears the hood off one of the men. Suddenly, I’m face-to-face with a young man. At first he’s surprised, then he’s annoyed, and then he’s afraid.

I sneeze.

It’s a perfectly cartoonish spray of blood and spit. The man screams like I just belched fire. The other hazmat runs for the door, unlocking it with a key card right before the man grabs his legs and drags him back, begging, “Don’t leave me! Please! Help me!”

We don’t see how the struggle ends. Elisa plucks the fallen key card, and the door locks behind us as we rush out. The hallway is blessedly clear, but we already hear footsteps coming our way. Elisa uses the card to get us into the observation room—a cramped amphitheater of benches—and at the top is a sign marked EXIT. We run for it, through another door, down a hall, and into a dark laboratory. I do my best to stay by her side, but the way she moves through this place is like trying to trail a minnow through a maze, and I remember her mom used to work here.

We huddle in the dark until the sounds of people outside pass. Ahead, an office has been left open, and faintly I hear the ocean through a cracked window. The window is just big enough for us to get through. Now we’re on the outer perimeter of the camp but facing a fence nearly as tall as the building we just escaped. Elisa doesn’t stop moving for a second, though. She leads us along the building, up an embankment.

“Wait,” I whisper, even though out here the ocean breeze is loud in my ears. “We’re heading away from the camp!”

Elisa nods but doesn’t stop. She knows exactly where she’s going. We duck low, letting a Hummer crunch by, and when the coast is clear, we cross a narrow lot, to a back door of the visitors center. Elisa tries the card and, after a breathless pause, the door clicks open and we dart inside.

Panting, with our backs pressed to the door, we now stand in some utility room of the visitors center. It’s cold and it’s quiet, and the air stinks with the smell of a thousand gallons of aquarium water that badly needs filtering. If that’s any sign, no one has been here in ages.

I can’t help it. I let out a little laugh of appreciation at Elisa’s savviness in escape artistry.

She grins at me and says, “Gesundheit.”

I bow, entirely willing to praise my own kind of genius.

We explore the building slowly at first, making sure there are no leftover aquarium workers lurking in the shadows. The stink, we discover, emanates from the tidal pool display, which has mostly desiccated into a grave of rotting starfish and anemones. The fish tanks themselves are all running just fine, filling the darkened building with shimmering blue light. We sit in front of the octopus display with a pilfered picnic of junk food from the gift shop. The obvious question is what to do next, but the obvious answer is that if we knew what to do next, we probably wouldn’t be covered in Cheetos dust inside an abandoned aquarium. Running seems to be the obvious answer, but Elisa now seems hesitant.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she says, dusting off her hands. “About my mom’s research, and where she might have hid it.”

“Any ideas?”

“A million ideas,” Elisa groans. “As a kid, I thought finding it would be like a game, like it’d be in a supercool hiding spot. Like those fake books they sell at the novelty shop. A hidden treasure that only I would know about, because only I would know where to look.”

“She never gave you any hints?”

“That’s the thing. I’m sure she gave me lots of hints. She was always trying to tell me stuff, about her research, about the island, about the sea, but I never wanted to listen. I could tell people thought she was crazy, and I was afraid they would think I was crazy, too.”

Elisa has made a tiny scene using gummy sharks swimming around the untied laces of her shoe.

“It must have been hard for her,” she says. “Trying to tell people the truth, people not wanting to listen. And I just made it harder.”

“She loved you. And I know if she could see you now, undermining Pfaff at every opportunity, she would be proud.”

“I feel like I’m letting her down,” Elisa says, poking at the sharks.

“If you found her lighter, what would you do with it?”

“Blow this place up.” Elisa laughs.

I contribute a few fish-shaped crackers to Elisa’s snack aquarium. We run out of food and end up contemplating the octopus tank. It’s dark, the animal hardly more than a rippling tentacle in the back corner.

“Why this tank?” Elisa asks me. “You sat right down in front of it.”

She’s got me there. “Every time I’ve been here, the octopus has been hiding, and I thought maybe it would come out if it knew we were hiding, too. Plus, I just think they’re cool, you know? This was my favorite exhibit growing up. What about you?”

Elisa takes a second to think. “Whenever we came here, my mom brought me to the lab buildings mostly. Real science, she called it, but of course I would whine and beg until we got to come in here. And now it all seems so childish, you know?”

“But what was your favorite animal?”

“You’re gonna make fun of me.”

“Try me.”

“The stupid singing whale. Something about the size of it was so terrifying to me. I used to bang on those buttons forever, and my mom would be like …” Elisa lifts her voice to capture her mom’s musical scolding. “Elisabete, I show you the wonders of the sea, and you fall in love with this grotesque puppet!”

I laugh, because really the thing was kind of grotesque. I look around, wondering if it’s still in the room with us.

“Did you know you could go inside it? There’s an air pocket where the blowhole is,” Elisa offers. “She showed me once, when the pool was drained. She had to fish stuff out of there all the time that people dropped in. She never returned any of it. She called it hidden treasure and …”

I grab her arm. We jump to our feet, scattering the snack aquarium. We’ve both had the same thought at the same time.

Treasure.

We turn to the backmost tank, where the horrifying whale sleeps. Even in the dim light, I can see its immense shape through the murky water.

Elisa steps toward it. “Do you think—”

Elsewhere in the building, a door bangs open, and our time alone in the aquarium comes to an end.

Flashlights whisk down the hall. We can run toward the whale tank, or away. Without even looking at each other, we both dash for the whale.

The tank is a massive half-moon dug into the aquarium floor, allowing visitors to look down at the sunken whale from above or meet it head-on through the observation glass below. Right now, the thing is half-submerged, its blowhole exposed. We scramble over the partition, holding on to the glass with just our fingers. I don’t dare look down, but I can feel the hulking shadow just below the surface. When the whale was working, which was hardly ever, a complicated mechanism would cause the entire thing to rise up, and then the upper half of the head to hinge open and expose the bristled baleen gums and pink tongue. Now the idea of the thing moving at all is nightmarish.

“This is my worst fucking fear,” Elisa whispers at me, and the way her voice trembles tells me she means it. Flesh-eating coral? Fused-together zombies? Secret science laboratories? None compare to the simple, inexcusable reality of something very big hiding just below you in unclear water.

Footsteps approach, and the flashlights dip into the dark of the room. One beam lands in front of the octopus tank, where our snacks lie scattered.

Shit.

Feet first, I slip into the water as gracefully as I can, afraid even the tiniest splash will make the flashlights look our way. Now I’m next to the whale, the skin of my arm brushing its slimy fiberglass hull. I slide along it, hating every carved detail—its contemplative eye, the bristles of its massive lips, the plaster barnacles fused to its nose. I grab for Elisa where she clings to the edge of the tank and put my full weight into dragging her down with me.

A woman’s voice asks the dark, “Did you hear that?”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

If we get caught, they’re going to test every molecule of moisture in our bodies until we’re as desiccated as the starfish in the rotting lagoon. I don’t wait to find out if they’ve spotted us. I dig my toe into the whale’s curved jaw and pry it open.

“Go!” I whisper to Elisa. The look she gives me could kill, but she takes a deep breath and dives for the gap. I feel her wriggle through. I do the same the moment she’s inside, but without someone holding it open, the mechanism closes, clamping me in the whale’s lips. Bubbles burst from my crushed chest, and I take in a lungful of the foul water. Then Elisa’s hands crawl over me, find my hips, and pull. I vanish inside, and the jaws muffle shut, but I’m not safe yet. It’s pitch-black, and I need to breathe. I grasp on to Elisa as she guides me to a pocket of air inside the puppet’s skull.

“Quiet,” she whispers, clamping a hand over my mouth even as I try to breathe. Instead of coughing out the water, I swallow it down. It tastes like pure poison, but I resist adding my vomit to the slurry we float in. Our only light is a narrow beam filtering in from the blowhole, mostly blocked by a water pump used to create the whale’s iconic foul spray.

Together we breathe, and we listen. No doubt our pursuers are checking every tank, and there’s no way the water in this one had time to settle. When voices suddenly become louder, I know we’re toast. Then there’s a crackle of a speaker somewhere in the display and the whale begins to sing. I nearly shriek, expecting the machine to come alive and swallow us down, but Elisa keeps her hand against my lips. Finally, the singing ebbs, and we can hear the voice of the woman from before.

“Would you look at that. Still works. Kinda,” she says to her colleague, who responds, “Always hated this thing. Come on, let’s get back to the director. She’s going to want to put out a search party.”

The light from the flashlights fades, leaving us once again in utter black. I cling to Elisa, but after a minute she slips away. Backward. Deeper into the whale. With a small splash, she’s gone.

“Elisa?” I whisper when she doesn’t come up after a few seconds.

“Elisa?” I ask again, after a minute.

No answer.

This, I think, is a new personal low for me. As if the world dissolving into slime and bubbles wasn’t enough, I am now trapped in an animatronic whale. Alone. Then Elisa punches back through the surface with something in her hands. Something boxy and hard, which she snaps open. I hear the crinkle of plastic and a tin-metal tap, and then there’s a crackle of light out of nowhere.

And Elisa holds in her dripping hands a tiny, dancing flame. By its light I can see the heart-shaped lighter that’s produced it, and the plastic bin in which Elisa found it. The bin is stuffed with plastic-sealed folders, wrapped so nicely that we can read the top one easily. We whisper the title to each other.

“The Slow Water Report: The Notes and Findings of Doroteia D’Oliveira.”

AUGUST 17

27 DAYS AFTER

14:24

I informed Director Pfaff of my need to take samples at the tidal pools north of Slipper Shell. She approved the outing and sent me into the field with two armed guards. They stood near me, guns ready, as I poked around the pools pretending to look for a made-up bivalve.

I saw the “tree” right away. South. Atop a distant dune. I made an excuse to get closer. It wasn’t a tree at all. Just twisted driftwood dug into the sand, with trash hung on it. Did the boy want a piece of garbage? I puzzled over this on the walk back to the tidal pools. As we got in the jeep to leave, I realized what I had missed. Told the guards to drive back to the tree because I had forgotten something. They were not happy, but I was able to keep my voice commanding, like the director, and it worked. They circled back, and this time they waited with their guns pointed inland as I traipsed back through the tall grass.

The base of the tree was a pile of sand encrusted in shells. Fallen leaves. At first I thought they shaped a cross, but then I tilted my head. It was an X.

Buried a few inches beneath the sand was a pink cooler, latched shut. I checked to make sure the guards were turned away and then in one quick motion I opened the cooler, grabbed the contents, and stuffed them in my sample bag.

I didn’t open my bag again until I was back on the Embrace unpacking the fake samples I had taken. Looking at the cooler’s contents, I knew right away this is what the boy meant for me to find. I put on my gloves, and I got to work.

We found it.

We actually found it.

The mythical report—the research Doro D’Oliveira lost her life trying to protect—now has a name: The Slow Water Report.

Floating in the dark, our breaths loud in the shell of the whale skull, I hear the echo of what Scary Mary told us behind the library. I was there when the water went slow in the pipes. The two pieces of the puzzle ping against each other, fitting together in my mind to form a theory. Doro’s research into the past of Anchor’s Mercy would have brought her to the few surviving elders of the island, including Scary Mary.

I’m desperate to tear through the pages, but first Elisa and I need to focus on the much more important problem: getting out of this animatronic death trap.

One at a time, we slide from the slimy whale lips. We hang in the murky water, listening to make sure no one is in the aquarium with us, and then we heave ourselves out of the tank. Even if we’re alone right now, those guards are likely to circle back any moment. Whatever we do next, we’d better do it quickly.

And we’re not going to get anywhere fast, soaking and shivering like this.

I point with my eyes. Gift shop.

We peel off our prisoner uniforms, exchanging them for the finest merchandise AMIOS has to offer. The only shirts that fit are cheesy T-shirts featuring marine life and puns. Elisa reads mine aloud.

“All Is Whale? Really, Ollie?”

“I think the little embroidered humpback is cute.”

Elisa laughs as she puts on a bucket hat. Despite the tension, it’s clear she’s in a good mood, or maybe just an excited one. I feel it, too. Our search took us all the way through the end of the world, down into the gullet of a horrifying whale puppet, but we now hold between us the long-awaited answers to the greatest mystery of our childhoods. Or at least some answers. Despite Elisa’s bolstered mood, I can’t help but feel like the report will contain more questions than keys.

“We need something to protect these documents,” Elisa whispers, clutching them to her own shirt (it shows an embroidered crab and reads NO HUGS CLUB). “The bin my mom put them in is about to fall apart.”

“What about this?” I hold up one of the giant metal AMIOS-branded tumblers. The kind that can survive everything from a blowtorch to being run over by a tank.

With care, Elisa rolls up the documents and slides them into the tumbler, screwing on the lid. She keeps the lighter in her hands, though, clumsily popping it open every few seconds. The years have shrunk it in her grip, but she manages to get a few sparks out of it every other try. When she does, her eyes crackle with satisfaction.

Somewhere in the building, a door bangs shut.

Elisa and I lock eyes, and a silent discussion occurs. What do we do? We’re both eager to read the report, but the clues inside won’t do us any good if we get caught. Hiding is out of the question—they’ll find us eventually no matter where we go. So, outside? The only windows in the building look out over the coast, but the activity down in the bay seems to have halted as jeeps race up toward AMIOS. My ears pick out a siren rising distantly. An alarm, maybe.

We nod. It’s decided. First run, then read.

We grab a backpack from the shop (shaped like a shark, of course) and shove whatever we can inside—a towel, a lobster bottle opener, two hermit crab key chain flashlights, and granola bars. Then we slink to the front doors. Thank god they lock from the inside. Through the glass we glimpse the dusk settling on the marsh beyond.

“Ollie, I hear people,” Elisa whispers.

We crouch behind the front desk, which is shaped like the bow of an old fishing boat. In the dark I notice the red lights blinking on the security cameras in the corners. Then, with a buzz, the lights of the lobby burst to full brightness. All of them.

That’s our cue. Time’s up.

We dash through the glass doors just as the world outside turns a dusty blue. The sunset is nothing but a glowering ribbon wound through immense black clouds, but it’s still not dark enough to hide us. We only make it ten steps on the main road before someone shouts, “EYES ON TARGETS! MAIN ENTRANCE! THEY’RE ON FOOT!”

The shout comes from the roof. Bullets bite the pavement at our heels as we sprint for the marsh. In the final scarlet light, the expanse before us is a maze of cordgrass hills and channels carved into the glittering black silt. The tide is out! That’s just the luck we need. We dive right in and it’s not long before the flashlights follow. More men, more shouting, but they don’t know the marshland like we do. One wrong step and your entire leg is swallowed by the stinking mud. The shouting turns to cussing, and I allow myself to smile as we scuttle along the grassy edges where the mud holds best.

We manage to put some distance between us and AMIOS, but we’re not safe yet. The edge of the forest is nothing but a black mound in the distance, and anyone with a map will know where we’re running. Our only hope is to get there first, and get there fast.

Something else is bothering me, though. Where are the weepers?

I shove the thought down. I focus on staying low. Slime fills my shoes, sand grits between my knuckles. Our path can’t be a straight one if we don’t want to get shot, and in the moonless night it’s almost impossible to figure out which way to go. We use the red lights of AMIOS to orient ourselves as we carve an unsure path to freedom. Soon we’re passing the perimeter of torches I saw the night we were escorted here, and that’s when I catch the gleam of a smooth helmet hiding in the grass.

Between us and the distant forest, five guards rise from the dark.

“Stop running. We have you surrounded.”

The voice is firm. A woman behind a white Easter helmet, leading the ambush. Elisa and I back against each other, breathing hard. The guards raise guns like the ones we saw before—flamethrowers exhaling gasoline that causes the air to twist. It makes the guards look like wraiths of the marsh as they close in on us.

Elisa hugs the souvenir tumbler to her chest. The report will survive the fire, but we won’t. It will be swallowed into the silt of the marsh, melted into our blackened skeletons.

“Target’s secured. Awaiting orders,” says the leader.

In the silence that follows, I hear a far-off keening, and it’s coming nearer. At first I think it’s a bird, or many birds, but at our feet the pools of seawater shiver, and the wind curls with a familiar aquarium rot I’ve come to associate with weepers. Something is approaching on foot. Something massive.

“We need to run,” Elisa whispers.

“No.” I hold her still. “We need to vamp.”

“They’re gonna melt us like marshmallows.”

“Just trust me.”

The leader must receive her orders because she repeats them in an emotionless bark.

“LIGHT ’EM UP! DIRECTOR’S ORDERS.”

“Wait!” Elisa thrusts the tumbler into the air. “Tell Pfaff we have something she needs.” The guards halt, keeping their flamethrowers on us as they wait to see what their leader says. Elisa repeats herself. “Tell your director we have found the report of Doro D’Oliveira.”

The leader raises a hand, stretching the moment into an excruciating eternity. All we can hear is the throaty gasp of the flamethrowers breathing their acrid exhaust. I try to see into the dark, and I think I catch something passing in front of the torches. It’s close now.

“Get ready to run,” I whisper.

“Oh, so you want to run now—”

A guard to the left suddenly falls back, her cry crushed from her lungs with a wet thud. The guards nearest to her turn, letting forth plumes of fire that catch in the cordgrass, but nothing hides behind them. Then, from the right, there’s another shout and another thud. The squad whirls around, baffled, and all at once the night explodes with fire and screams. Human screams, and the screams of something else. Something crying out from many mouths at once, all fused into obliterating unison.

I grab Elisa’s hand. “Run!”

We only make it a dozen steps before one of the guards—the leader herself—tackles me, but it’s two on one. I drive the leader into the mud, pinning her weapon between us. Elisa cracks the tumbler against the leader’s perfect white helmet, shattering the faceplate inward. Blood joins the stink of gasoline, but before I can see if the woman is dead, a cord of pure pain ensnares my leg.

I scream, reaching for Elisa. I know this pain. It’s the stinging tendril of a jellyfish, but I have never felt it like this. I see that a translucent tentacle clings to my bare calf, extending back twenty feet into flaming marsh. It squeezes, as tough as a tongue, oozing venom down my skin. Pulling is pointless; whatever on the other side is reeling me in with a steady, unstoppable strength. I roll, thrusting my leg into the nearest patch of fire—anything is better than the white-hot sting soaking through my nerves—and the tentacle releases me. Flailing, it clings to the next nearest body. The leader. Instantly, she’s yanked into the marsh, her scream crushed into her throat by whatever catches her.

Elisa pulls me up, and together we drag my throbbing leg out of the fire’s reach. The seawater puts out the worst of the pain, but I can see angry blisters already forming on my calf and knee.

“All is not whale,” I groan into Elisa’s shoulder.

“We’re almost there. We’re almost at the road,” she huffs.

We’re not moving fast enough. Through the fire and smoke, a shadow prowls, searching for a way through. The sound it makes is a tormented whimper unlike any of the other weepers so far, a cry of exquisite pain that rings in the tiny bones of my ears. And now I can hear individual words.

“Gooooing to the chapel.”

The night boils with the discordant refrain, a dozen voices merging into one.

“Gonna get marrrrried.”

On the road behind us, a jeep lurches to a stop. Headlights blast our backs. Elisa drops me and throws herself over us both. We press into the muck, waiting to see which doom befalls us first. From fire, or from light?

The weeper-monster stops singing. The night quiets. Footsteps crunch on the road. I peek into the glare and see the shape of a man standing in the headlights, searching the flaming marsh. When he finally shouts, it’s not the commanding voice I expect from the guards.

“Ollie? Elisa? You better not be dead!”

Elisa’s hand squeezes mine. It’s Bash! How he got here doesn’t matter—he doesn’t know about the danger lurking in the smoke.

“You guys can’t just leave me, okay?” Bash shouts. “That’s not what friends do. They don’t leave each other behind.” There’s real emotion in Bash’s voice. Desperation. He paces at the edge of the road. He’s scared, but not of the right thing. The rest of the night has gone too still around us. The weepers, or whatever dragged those guards away, are listening, too. At any moment, from any side, they could rush Bash.

“Whatever happened to Suds stick together?” Bash cries. “You can’t just leave me behind!”

Already the fires are shrinking against the damp wind of the marsh. We have seconds, maybe less. I ignore the needling burn of my leg and push myself up. Elisa is right by my side. We scrabble up the bank and fall over Bash in a messy embrace.

“I knew it, I knew it!” he sobs. “The second the alarms went off, they came for me, but then everything turned to chaos and they threw me into the back of this jeep.” He’s babbling through tears. “But then they just got out and ran into the marsh, so I thought I bet those two idiots are on foot out there, and then I saw the fireballs, and I thought you guys … I thought maybe you had …”

“Later, Bashy,” Elisa says with forced cheer. “Tell us all about it in the car.”

We rush him back into the driver’s seat. Elisa shoves me into the back seat, then throws herself atop me. It would hurt, but I can’t feel my leg anymore. Numbness has set in.

“Why are you guys dressed like tourists? Is that a bucket hat? Is that a souvenir tumbler?”

“I said later!” Elisa swings the back door shut. “Just drive, Bash.”

“Drive where?”

Up the road, more headlights are rocketing toward us. Ahead of the jeep the smoke thins, and against the red lights of AMIOS, we watch a shadow rise. Its spines of coral jut straight up to the starless sky.

“Anywhere else!” I scream.

Bash cranks the car into drive, and just as the shadow starts toward us, we cut away.

“Don’t you ever leave me behind again,” he keeps saying. “I heard the sirens and I knew the two of you pulled some shit. I knew it.” Bash and the car are one thing, both seemingly furious with us as we’re rolled against the doors in a violent turn.

“Kill the headlights!” Elisa manages to scream. Bash snaps through a bunch of buttons on the console until the lights are dark, never once interrupting his rant. Somehow we’re already in the forest.

“I know I said I wanted to stay, but that’s not the same thing as being left behind. You could have at least left a note! A clue! But noooooooo.”

Elisa pulls me into the crawl space of the back seat as branches lash at the windows. The car’s radio crackles as someone commands all units to “spread out, search the surrounding forest, find those little brats, and retrieve the documents.” Bash hits it until it turns off so he can yell at us a little more.

“I could have gotten really hurt, you know! Do you know how embarrassing it is to be interrogated when you’ve been kept in the dark? They didn’t even have an interrogation room! They were about to execute me in a parking lot!”

I do my best to get a look out the side window and see dead stoplights rocketing by. We’re nearing town. There’s no sign of the monster in the abandoned cars around us, but with the wind rushing in my ears, I can’t hear it coming. It doesn’t help that Bash is still yelling, too.

“So it was just me and these idiots. And then all hell broke loose when you made a run for it, and the adults were rushing all over the place, and they dragged me along in this jeep. Next thing I know my guards are pulling over to run into the marsh, and I’m alone. Again!”

Bash finally breaks, stopping us right before the road vanishes into a bank of thick, unmoving weeper fog. He’s breathing hard through a swell of emotion I know is no joke to him. He slaps the wheel in frustration. “And my mom wonders why I have abandonment issues.”

Elisa and I are frozen in a knot somewhere in the back seat, listening to the click of the engine. It seems like a bad idea to tell Bash to be quiet—it might make him louder—so I whisper, “Bash, we’re really sorry. We didn’t want to take you away from your family.”

Bash’s hands clench and unclench on his thighs. He stares ahead, into the wall of fog. Elisa and I unfold from each other so we can reach out and wrap our arms around him, like a deranged human seat belt. It helps. His breathing levels out. His voice lowers.

“You guys are my family, too.” His whisper scores my heart. “Suds stick together.”

Finally, Bash hooks his hands over ours, holding us back. Then he twists around to get a good look at us.

“What happened to you guys, anyways? You smell like gasoline.”

“It’s a long story,” I say, hiding my whale shirt before he notices that, too. “But something was chasing us in the marsh.”

Bash’s voice gets even softer. “Weepers?”

“Something bigger,” I say.

“And, like, way grosser,” Elisa adds, pointing at my leg. A raised welt wraps from ankle to thigh, and it feels like my nerves have grown nettles, but the numbness is a temporary blessing.

“Just a sting,” I assure myself.

“And, Bash, we found something. In the visitors center.” Elisa hoists up the dented tumbler. “Something that could change everything.”

Bash looks incredulously at the tumbler. “A sensible solution that combines hydration and style?”

Before Elisa can respond, headlights shine through the back windows. First one, then two, then five vehicles screech to a halt, boxing us against the fog. Before we can figure out what to do, boots stomp over the pavement and every window fills with gun barrels. We’re surrounded. One of the soldiers lifts up their gun and smashes the butt against the window.

CRACK.

The window holds, but it won’t for much longer.

CRACK.

Cracks shoot across the glass.

CRACK.

Where do we go? What do we do? If we get dragged back to AMIOS, we’re never making it out again, but all that awaits us ahead is the drowning fog.

Not all, I remind myself, watching the way the lights in the fog group and scatter. The weepers saved us once. Why not again?

“Drive,” I tell Bash.

CRACK.

One more hit and we’re doomed either way.

Elisa catches Bash’s hand on the gear shift. “Don’t. We’ll drown!”

“We won’t,” I say. “Drive. Now.”

THUNK. The soldier’s gun hits the metal of the jeep as we lurch forward. Right before we enter the fog, I slap off the AC, killing the air circulation in the car.

“Close the vents,” I cry.

And we plunge into the sparkling depths of downtown.

Anchor’s Mercy, the town, has sunk into a pastel oblivion. The fog drifts as high as the trees now, giving the world the illusion of a weightless, underwater realm drifting by as we drive through the abandoned streets.

Breathe, I tell myself, but I’m watching the world through the cracks of the window inches from my head. No fog seeps through, but every bump threatens the submarine safety of the jeep. I tap Bash’s shoulder and direct him through a few turns, toward the ocean. That’s where the breeze will be the strongest.

We pass weepers. Many of them. They show a sleepy interest in the jeep, but in a guarded way, like schools of fish curious about the underside of a boat. None get too close, preferring to hang back in the fog. I’m thankful I can’t see their distorted faces. When we pass the library, I don’t let myself look, yet I can’t help but listen. A muffled cacophony pours out of the burned-black windows, and I swear I hear Willy’s voice joined to the chorus.

“Bash, the radio,” Elisa whispers.

The equipment mounted on the dash flickers, and static swells through as we pass large coral growths. I remember the same static seeping into the dead speakers of the maritime museum when the weepers showed up. The marsh, too, before that invisible monster found us. Static served as a ghostly preamble.

“Radiation,” Bash says, in awe. “Electromagnetic radiation, maybe? Like radio waves, from the reefs?”

We shrug. Science fiction is Bash’s thing. Elisa reaches to fiddle with the radio volume, but even when the radio is off, the static never quite leaves my ears.

In a rare break of luck, I’m right about the ocean breeze. Bash brings us to a stop in the parking lot of a seaside playground, where the fog thins into slanting drifts.

I exhale a breath that I swear I’ve been holding for all the hours that have transpired since Elisa told me to sneeze. I let my head thunk against the seat. My watch says it’s after midnight now, but I feel like I won’t sleep for days.

“Are we safe?” Bash wonders.

Even in the dark, even through the fog, we can still see the glow of the strange reefs throbbing violet-blue-green. Some move. Weepers soothing themselves back to sleep after we passed through.

“For now,” I say. That’s the best I’ve got.

“We just have to breathe slow, like scuba divers,” Bash says. “We’ll be okay, but at least we’re together, right?”

Elisa and I return his sad smile. He points at the tumbler in her lap.

“So, what did you find?”

Elisa yanks open the tumbler and spills the documents onto the seat. This time, when she flips open the lighter, the sparks catch. She holds the small fire in her hands, letting the light illuminate the pages of her mother’s long-lost secrets.

AUGUST 17

27 DAYS AFTER

19:03

Doroteia D’Oliveira was not well. This much is clear from her mythic report, which the boy handily guided me to. The Slow Water Report, as it is called, begins in earnest. Notes about groundwater samples mostly. Then it unwinds into a scramble of notes, diagrams, and maps that reflect a brilliant mind most unwound.

It begins with a note:

“If you find this, tell no one. Show no one. Run, read it later, and then find me. Hopefully, I am still alive.”

It appears Doro understood herself endangered. The next several pages of Slow Water indicate why. During water sample testing at AMIOS, Doro discovered her results were being tampered with when, according to her margin notes, she watched the digital readouts change in real time on her computer. She switched to paper after that. Then, across a litany of tests she performed in secret, her red pen highlights the same trace amount of an unknown substance over and over again. She eventually names it “second-phase anomia halomethane,” shorthanded to A6-II, a red powder I have become rapidly familiar with.

Doro might have been mad, but she had a sense of humor about it. Rather than make up a name for her mystery compound, she simply used “anomia,” a word describing the experience of not being able to readily name what your eyes can see.

“It’s everywhere. The water. The soil. Even the shells on the beach. The other day one of Elisa’s friends was over and they lost their tooth while playing. I found it while vacuuming and thought to give it back, but I needed to know. So I tested it. And there it was, buried in the bone. A6-II. Of course I tried to tell the child’s mother. She is a close friend. I fear my explanation was mangled by my fear of what I was acknowledging about Anchor’s Mercy. But the other mother was, to my surprise, encouraging. Holding my hand, the other mother told me something I can’t forget: ‘To find out what is beyond the horizon, you must first lose sight of the shore.’ I resolved then and there that I was not betraying my community by uncovering this darkness. A6-II is in all our bones. It’s everywhere, but only on this island. I must find out why.”

A page later, Doro’s frantic search ends with the obvious answer: the Easter Energy spill of 1961. Her notes contain photocopied pages of books about the history of Anchor’s Mercy. Her red pen circles people in blurry photos building the AMIOS campus. Over and over again she appears to find connections back to Easter Energy.

The middle section of the report is most bizarre. It is titled “Conspiracy.” No real science here. Mostly interviews with unnamed elders on Anchor’s Mercy in an attempt to construct primary sources for the Easter Energy spill. If there were tapes of these interviews, they were separated from her report, but from one transcription we find the report title’s origin.

“I was ready to dismiss everything the old woman said as her usual hijinks and mischief, until she told me that she still remembered the day the waters went slow. That caught my ear. In the labs at AMIOS, a colleague of mine has been tasked by Pfaff to study the hagfish, an eel-shaped fish with a nasty yet fascinating defense mechanism. When stressed, a hagfish produces a perfectly clear slime from glands along its body. The amount released is only as much as a teaspoon, but in half a second it expands by 1O,OOO times, smothering the water around it. If it’s in a predator’s mouth, the slime will coat their insides and clog their gills. I have experienced this slime myself only once. It is terrifying in its invisible, spontaneous manifestation. I felt the viscoelastic substance on my skin for days, and I could only manage sips of water, holding them in my mouth for a second before being sure it was safe to swallow. So when told me the waters slowed, I thought of the hagfish and Pfaff’s preoccupation with them, and I listened.”

This particular interview is a turning point for Doro. Her findings drew a messy link between Easter Energy’s chemical spill, trace amounts of her phantom compound, A6-II, and incidences of sickness on Anchor’s Mercy.

This final section of Slow Water comprises maps of Easter Energy’s plant on Anchor’s Mercy, circa 1959 when it was built. The maps are overlaid with drawn depictions of the freshwater lenses that supply the island’s potable water resources. Using a method of hydrology that might as well be ancient witchcraft, Doro isolates where the spill must have occurred and maps the way the chemical might have spread. The old water tower is in a direct splash zone, and she circles it again and again, crowning it in large, victorious letters: S L O W W A T E R.

“What were they trying to kill? Where did it come from?”

This question brings Doro to the desk of Dr. Pfaff.

“She carries that red notebook with her always. I do not believe it is hers. It appeared with her one day, after a trip into the Easter Energy compound, and she studies it like it’s the prophecies of Nostradamus. What does it say? What was Easter actually doing in those labs?”

The final pieces are hasty scribbles on a napkin, barely legible because of a tear right in the middle. Through the tear spreads long tendrils, like a jellyfish. Around the tear, a series of doodles depict a stick figure going from distinctly human to something buried in coral.

The final pages of the report indicate Doro knew she was doomed for whatever she had learned. She includes photocopies of her birth certificate, her passport, and even old wedding photos. She was determined not to be erased, indicating she was finding others who had been.

Strangest of all: a cutout from a newspaper, where Doro’s red pen appears to annotate and correct an article about her own suicide. Alleged suicide. I do not know what to make of this.

And then there is the note to Elisabete, her daughter, where all Doro’s frantic scribbles suddenly resolve into clean, coherent handwriting

“Elisa, my brave girl. If you are reading this, I am gone. I don’t know what it means to leave you this burden, yet I am sure you must be the one to carry it further. I have raised you to question everything. Question science. Question AMIOS. Question Director Pfaff and her fleet of goons. And, if you must, question me. God knows I am not perfect, and even now I have my doubts about the contents of this packet. But never question my love for you, no matter what they do to me or my memory.”

Taken all together, The Slow Water Report could easily be dismissed. The uncontrolled tinkering of a mad scientist and paranoid mother. For this author, two things remain clear:

1. Doroteia D’Oliveira was not well.

2. But she was right.

Elisa is flickering. Face, nose, eyes, her features shift in the battered flame of her mother’s lighter. She closes The Slow Water Report and, just for a second, I’m afraid she’s going to blow out like a candle. Vanish. She snaps the lighter shut, and I reach for her in the dark to make sure she’s still there.

“I’m okay,” she says. “This isn’t about me. I’m okay, I swear.”

She sounds very, extremely, absolutely not okay. She sounds … I don’t know what to call the devastation in her voice, but I know I recognize it. I’ve felt it, too, this nauseating slurry of wonder and hopelessness, anger and grief, and—what’s that last emotion? Embarrassment, maybe? An undefinable humiliation that I often felt as I looked out Gracie’s hospital window and realized the world was more complicated than just my pain. That my pain was only personal.

I wonder if, like Elisa looks now, I looked like the loneliest person in the world. I squeeze her hand. She’s so still to the touch that I let go right away.

“Did you see that last part?” Bash asks, excited. “The obituary?”

I catch Bash’s eye and shake my head. Stop right there. We can’t know what it means to Elisa to have searched for these documents for so many years only to find a note that says so much but confirms too little. What’s clear is the heartbreak on our friend’s face. Right now, the question isn’t how to give her hope, but what will help hold her together. What’s a good friend in this moment? Bash nods, understanding. We can’t give her space, so we give her silence.

For a while, we sit in the car as the fog swirls over us, and no one talks.

I pull the key chain flashlights from the shark backpack and start reviewing the documents up close. The reports are dense and complicated, full of grids and diagrams that I don’t understand. Doro used a red pen to circle things quickly, and the ink has since smudged, but it’s all still legible. I feel giddy, holding the exact proof I used to fantasize about throwing at Gracie’s doctors when they told me these things just happen and it is what it is.

This thing didn’t just happen. It isn’t what it isn’t, and what it isn’t is an accident.

“We’ve got to tell someone.” I state the obvious, hoping the option of action is what Elisa needs to move ahead.

“Who?” Bash asks.

“The government. The FDA. The CDC. We just found proof of a major cover-up that we can now link to the outbreak of—what did Pfaff call it? Cnidaria imperia? It’s not an infection, it’s an infestation. And the Sixties Spill wasn’t an accident. It was an extermination attempt. Maybe it worked for a time, but how many people did the contamination make sick? How many fundraisers and funerals did we go to, all because they poisoned our island to kill their mistake?”

I’m shivering with adrenaline. Now that we know the poison is real, it’s like I can feel it deep in my bones, turning my marrow black and sticky. But we don’t have to end up like Scary Mary, or even Gracie. We can save ourselves, and we can save everyone else poisoned by this cursed island.

“What I want to know is where the coral came from,” Bash says.

“Cnidaria imperia,” I correct.

“Whatever. Was it some kind of science experiment? It does look kind of nuclear, doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s been here all along, like the ancient organisms trapped in the icebergs?”

I’m about to tell Bash that none of this matters considering the shit growing all over the place outside is clearly not going back to the lab, or the iceberg, or wherever it came from, but then Elisa speaks for the first time in an hour.

“We need the red notebook. The one Pfaff stole from the labs at Easter, that she always keeps with her. That has the answers.”

“No.” I shake my head adamantly. “We need to get off this island and find someone who can help.”

“How?” Elisa asks with blunt doubt.

I jerk a thumb at the ocean beside us. It’s the only clear view we have. Out past a harbor overgrown with coral, boats rise and fall in the soft surf. The moonlight peeking through the low clouds forms a path directly into the horizon.

“You think you’re the first person to think of using a boat to escape an island? The navy would be on you in a second. And besides, I’m not running away and leaving those people at AMIOS,” Elisa says, and suddenly all her fire is back, but why is she aiming to burn me? I open my mouth to protest, but she says, “Even if we could leave now, we might never be able to come back, and what happens then? What about Bash’s fam? What about Gracie?”

“Hold up, hold up.” I pump the air with my palms. “We just nearly got flambéed in the bayou, and you want to go back to AMIOS? For a notebook? Absolutely not. First of all, escaping was your idea, Elisa, and second of all, we can’t save everyone alone. For now, Bash’s fam is safe. If we get off this island, we can tell the world about what’s happening here.”

“Look around, Ollie. The world doesn’t care!” Elisa shouts right in my face. I’m stunned. She slumps back, crossing her arms. “It’s been weeks of this, and where’s the world? If help was coming, it’d be here by now.”

“There’s the hospital ship,” Bash suggests.

“It showed up days before the outbreak,” Elisa snaps. “I don’t trust it.”

“People will care,” I assure Elisa. “If they knew what was happening, what was really happening here, they would care. And thanks to your mom, we have proof that something has been brewing on this island for decades.”

“Thanks to my mom, we have nothing. Even if by some miracle we do make it out, all we have are the rantings and doodles of a crazy lady who killed herself. Everything else we found—my old books, Scary Mary’s final words—got taken by Pfaff!”

I am horrified by Elisa’s distrust. It’s like she’s giving up right in front of me, not just on us but on the world. I can’t judge her, though. Didn’t I do the same, months ago? It’s like Elisa and I have traded hearts. I’m trying to do what’s right for everyone, but all she can think to do is root herself in resentment.

I thrust a finger at the page Elisa still clutches in her hand. “A crazy lady who killed herself? Is that what you got from this? Your mom could still be alive, Elisa. She might be out there, right now, waiting.”

Elisa holds up the obituary. “That’s worse, Ollie.” And then, in a single motion, she rips it in half.

Bash and I gasp. Elisa’s voice is expressionless, but tears catch the faint light of the flashlight between us.

“All this time, I wanted a sign that my mom was out there, alive and waiting for me, but I didn’t think it would feel like this. If she’s alive, why did she let this happen? If she did all this to save me, where is she now?” She looks at the torn paper in her hands and, quieter, she says, “When she was dead, she didn’t have a choice. But if she’s alive, she chose to save only herself.”

Elisa sniffs and uses the backs of her hands to wipe away the tears, leaving streaks of mud on her cheeks.

“I’m not going to do the same thing to our island. I’m not going to run away.”

I get what she’s saying. There are people I want to save, too, but how can my heart hope when it’s this battered, this burned, this bloodied? I think of Sam waltzing forever upon a glittering dance floor, and Willy accompanying his own deadly recital, and Scary Mary petrified in a cage of pearlescent bones. Their sacrifices got us to where we are now. If we don’t take the opportunity to run, we doom the hope they left with us.

“Running for help isn’t the same thing as running away,” I say, raising my voice over the din of static from the radio. Bash tries to shush us, but Elisa gets one last jab in.

“Figures you’d just give up on Anchor’s Mercy. You already did it once.”

Elisa’s words sting worse than the jellyfish’s touch, and in a far more sensitive place. I open my mouth to hit her back, but a sudden surge of static from the radio drowns me out. Bash smashes it until it fizzles. Then, from outside the jeep, a new sound approaches the car. It’s a crunching, grating drag, like knees skinning across pavement.

“Do you hear that?” Bash whispers. But we all hear it. The glass begins to quake in the windows, vibrating with a frequency that slowly resolves into a voice. Several voices. Dozens of voices.

“Goooooing to the chapel,” they sing.

“It’s them,” I whisper.

The fight evaporates between Elisa and me. We both glimpsed the thing in the marsh. Bash hasn’t. “Who?” he hisses. “Who?”

The wind has died away. The darkness and fog make it hard to see more than a few feet outside the car, but by noise alone we track the thing as it circles the jeep. When it doesn’t pass us by, Bash hovers his hands over the keys in the ignition.

Elisa squeezes my hand and points with her chin.

It’s right in front of us.

Looking through the windshield is like locking eyes with the terrible darkness of open ocean, waiting for the great jaws of something unfathomable to rise toward you. I can feel it rushing at us. Static prickles my ears, and the glass in the window beside me feels ready to burst like a bubble.

“Everyone, take a deep breath,” I say.

Bash cranks the ignition.

The darkness explodes with light.

Whatever air I have in my body, I scream it right out. It’s not an it, but a them. People—a dozen or more—fused in a kaleidoscope of limbs mashed together yet moving as one. The coral fusing them together is like a horrific, living exoskeleton, joining crab-like legs upward into a crest of horns, crowning a face of many faces. All the eyes are open, all the eyes are weeping. And flashing among its gathered scalps is a small city of plastic tiaras. In fact, a few tattered sashes trail from the creature’s scrambled anatomy.

It’s them. The bachelorette party, the very one that shoved aside Gracie on the ferry, plus a few extra birthday girls and unfortunate alpha bros. I can’t stop myself from finding a head of greasy red hair among the many, and there she is, twisted into the creature’s hind leg.

Poor Dakota.

We scream. The radio screams. The creature—my mind automatically labels it Bridezilla—screams back.

“GONNA GET MARRIED!”

“Drive!” Elisa shouts. Bash cranks the wheel right as the bridezilla lumbers forward. It clips our back bumper, fully lifting the jeep off the pavement, but we have just enough momentum to carry us forward. We screech past a row of parked cars and twist from the lot on a trail of sparks.

“Go! Go!” Elisa is crying out.

“Where! Tell me where!” Bash screams back.

The fog hurtles over the jeep, pulsing now with bioluminescence as the reef awakens around us. Another hit lands on the back of the car and it’s like being struck with a meteor. The rear window explodes, shooting glass into the back of my head, and I feel my eyes begin to itch.

“Go!” I scream, but the jeep is struck again, from Elisa’s side. Then another hit, then another. Bash flops forward, arms over his head. I drag myself between the seats to steady the wheel, yanking us away from the onslaught. A break in the fog ahead opens like a corridor, and I see a white radiance, and I scream for Bash to floor it, and he does.

We punch out of the fog.

Into a blazing light.

Into a stunned stillness.

Into a low, concrete wall.

The world swings around us, the jeep bouncing sideways like a hockey puck. We spin but don’t tip. Air rips around my face, suddenly fragrant like soil and fresh rain. I hold on to Elisa in the back seat for dear life until, finally, our crash ends in a symphony of snaps. When I dare to open my eyes, I’m looking at the full blue blossom of a hydrangea in my lap.

The air here is clear. All the singing has ceased, replaced by an unnatural silence and the click click click of a blinker. I sit up. We’ve crashed into someone’s garden. The flowers are everywhere, invading from the smashed-in windshield. In the sudden brightness, droplets of blood shine across the petals. I forget all about the bridezilla at our heels.

“Elisa? Bash?”

Elisa’s hand thrusts up from the blossoms—she hasn’t let go of the metal tumbler once. “I’m—I’m okay …” she stutters. Her door is buckled in, so we wrench mine open and climb out of the car. We find Bash deep in the floral wreckage of the front seat, but by some miracle the profuse blood is only from his nose. He winces as we get his seat belt off him and help him out.

“That could have been way worse,” he groans.

“Oh, I think the horrors have been sufficient, actually,” says Elisa.

“Seconded.”

It’s clear which direction we hurtled in from. A scar cuts through several lawns, vanishing in a bank of fog. At first I can’t make sense of how we somehow rocketed out of the nighttime and crashed into the day, but, looking up, I see the sky is still black with clouds. I realize the light around us emanates from coral that has spread over the houses like a skin of snow. It gives off a pale, comforting light, but no fog.

Bash spits a mouthful of blood. “Was that what chased you in the marsh?”

“Yeah, and it’s still there.” Elisa points at the direction we came from.

The bridezilla hides within the fog, its immense form sending out ripples as it paces an unseen border at the edge of the pale coral. It cries out. My mind twists between disgust and sympathy. Those were people once. Maybe they’re people still, even now. But the way the thing moved—unified by a predatory intelligence—it would be wrong to think of the unholy unity as human.

“Why isn’t it attacking?” I wonder aloud. Even from afar, we can hear the incessant babbling of the creature’s many mouths. I note that their singsong voices have shifted into an unsure minor key. Then, as though dejected, the voices diminish to grumbles and moans, and the bridezilla lumbers away.

“It’s scared?” I guess.

Bash gives a boastful laugh. “Of the Suds?”

I shake my head. “No. This place. Look, the coral is different here. It’s …” I trail off, slowly seeing for the first time where we actually are. I know these houses, even buried like this, and I know the slant of the road from spending many summer afternoons on my knees drawing in chalk, and I even know these hydrangea bushes.

I turn, and though every single thing about this world has fallen apart, one thing still stands: Singing House.

The bed-and-breakfast has changed in obvious ways—the grand wraparound porch is frilled with fungal bells, and the sea-glass windows bubble out of their frames with clustered replications. The soft pink Victorian facade squirms with rosy rashes that reach outward, like too many hands with too many fingers, and the roof’s jagged lines have softened, filling in with shag the color of thirsty moss. All of it shivers and surges, causing the shape of the house to drift in and out of focus like a long-ago memory on the verge of amnesia. But it’s not all unfamiliar. Unlike the last time I stood here, absorbing a lonesome silence, the salty breeze carries music to my ears. Not the tremulous song of weepers, but real music. Music from a human’s hand.

Piano music.

“Ollie. Ollie! Don’t!”

I yank out of Elisa’s grip. I’m running before I can stop myself. Questions crowd my thoughts, but none louder than: Why is the coral here turning white?

I rush up the steps. The railing crumbles beneath my hand. The doors are skeletons of white lace on rotted hinges, and they turn to dust when I push them open.

Why is the coral white? Why is it all dying?

The music is getting louder. So is the answer drowning out my hope that Gracie is here and that she is okay.

I rush into the parlor, where the white light is brightest.

Like a ghost, a woman is there, sitting at her piano.

She turns toward me.

Gracie is real, but she is not okay.

AUGUST 18

28 DAYS AFTER

01:34

Every epidemic starts with someone. Patient O.

Early in the C. imperia outbreak, a team of epidemiologists mapped where the growths of C. imperia were the most advanced, indicating outbreak epicenters. One was the bar the Last Hail Mary. Another was a bed-and-breakfast known as Singing House, owned and operated by Gracie Jo Veltman. A phone was found in the pantry of Singing House belonging to Gracie Jo Veltman’s sister, Madeline Veltman. Recalling what the boy told me about his aunt, I requested to see the phone. Past midnight, in the dark of the lab, I charged the phone until it turned on. There was no password. I opened the camera and viewed the videos leading up to Sunday, July 21, the day of the outbreak. Here is what I witnessed.

Friday, July 19 (2 days before outbreak):

VIDEO 1: A shaky video of a door opening onto the back patio of Singing House. “Well, if it isn’t our very own living proof!” yells someone, presumably Aunt Maddie. She films the reactions of Gracie arriving home to Singing House. Gracie wears a blue wig.

VIDEO 2: Orlando Veltman sits at a piano, back to the camera, turning in surprise as a voice (Gracie’s) says, “Like a fish to water!” Another boy stands beside the piano. Sam?

VIDEO 3: Nighttime. The dark parlor of Singing House. Orlando Veltman at the piano again, but Gracie now joining him. They play a duet. The video cuts off as some kind of fight ensues.

Saturday, July 2O (1 day before outbreak):

VIDEO 4: Aunt Maddie films the sky, dark with storm clouds. The camera swings toward a beach badly eroded from storm waves and covered with debris from the sea. “We survived,” Maddie tells no one. In the distance, Gracie is picking through the debris. As Maddie gets closer, it is clear Gracie has been crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed. She hides behind her bright blue wig. “Find anything good?” Maddie asks, pointing the camera into a basket at Gracie’s feet. “Always,” Gracie says, tossing in a few shells. Then: “Let’s get home. I want to be there when Ollie wakes up.” Just before Maddie ends the video, she asks her sister, “Are you sure you want to tell him, Gracie?”

VIDEO 5: The kitchen of Singing House. Countertop. Bins of shells soaking in sudsy water. Gracie wearing yellow gloves, scrubbing at a shell with a toothbrush. Aunt Maddie says, “The ocean was glad to see you, sister. Oh, we should do a little show! Like, a shell haul! Oh my god, please!” Gracie does not seem enthusiastic, but Aunt Maddie ends the video mid-convincing.

VIDEO 6: Only a few seconds later, Gracie stands beside an aquarium somewhere in Singing House, smiling yet clearly annoyed. The shells lie on a dishrag, drying. Gracie picks one up and holds it up to the camera. “Shell haul!” she says with forced enthusiasm. She rotates the shell. A conch. Aunt Maddie goads her on. “What’s it sound like?” Gracie holds it up to her ear and says, “Hmmm. A little jazzy. A little blue.” She drops it into the aquarium with a wave. Aunt Maddie presses her to do another, but Gracie resists. “I’m not really in the mood. I should go wake Ollie up before I head to Mary’s. I told Willy I’d help out.” The camera sways. “Just one more. Come on, at least show us the mutant one you grabbed for Ollie.” Gracie rolls her eyes, but then she smiles and picks up the next shell. “This one is my favorite.” The shell is multiple shells, all fused together around the glass-smooth throat of a conch. There is a glimmer of gray-purple, like the inside of an oyster. “What kind of creature made this, do you think? Something totally out of this world, I bet,” says Gracie. Aunt Maddie asks her what it sounds like, and Gracie holds it up to her ear. “Sing for me, little shell,” Gracie says. The camera zooms in. Gracie begins to make a joke: “Oh, this one holds an entire symphony!” But she cuts off as something squirms out of the shell, into her ear. Then she screams. The microphone muffles, catching only the sound of the shell dropping into the aquarium, and then the phone falls face down on the floor. A few minutes later, it is snatched up and we see a final shot of Maddie. She is wiping at something in her eye, and she is saying, “Gracie, come back! We need to get you to a hospital! Where are you going?” Then she begins to cough, and the video ends.

This is the final video on Madeline Veltman’s phone.

Gracie’s eyes shine like faraway stars.

“Ollie-baby, you came home.”

The parlor ceiling has caved atop the velvet couches, and the reef—once tiny enough to be contained in the aquarium upstairs—flourishes down the walls, flows on the stairs, festers over the furniture, over everything. Shapes I recognize ripple throughout the surreal structures: spires of candelabras, the jellyfish flamboyance of the fallen chandelier, the translucent sconces fluttering like heart chambers. And Gracie. A face, an arm, a hand, a hip. Echoes of her reverberate in the pastel reef, so that the room appears full of crystallized ghosts. They draw together toward the bay window into the woman herself, at her piano, fused to the bench.

She stops playing.

“I knew you’d come back, but … I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

When she turns to me, I see the destroyed half of her head where the Cnidaria has blistered away her ear and clouded one eye. Her blue wig is long gone. Self-conscious, she hides the patchy hair of her scalp, and it’s the familiarity of that motion that snaps me back into myself. In the last year, I have watched Gracie wither and grow, watched her skin gray and flush, watched her hair fall out. Watched her fight. I have faced every degrading transformation alongside her, always with love, always with laughter. I handled everything.

And I can handle this.

I step through the wreckage of the parlor, and I sit down on the bench with my mom. She shrinks from me. I knew she would do that. Like I’ve done a hundred times, I reach into the curl of her body, find her hand, and hold it.

There is no sting, no prickle. The air here doesn’t choke or drown me. I don’t even think about why or why not. This is my home, and this is my mom, and we’re just two people sitting at a piano.

“For a long time I was sinking. Just sinking. But then I heard you somewhere above me, or outside of me, I don’t know. But in my heart, I swam toward you,” Gracie says to me. “I hear so much now. It’s all a song, all a song, and when I listen, I seem to lose myself. I remember … I remember …” The light of the reef dims, then surges, like Gracie’s mind extends throughout the house now. “I remember your song. I remember you. All three of you.”

Bash and Elisa are in the doorway, shirts drawn up over their mouths protectively, eyes wide as they absorb what’s happened to Singing House. They see me at the piano and freeze. I shake my head to tell them to stay back. This Gracie beside me is and is not my mother, or at least not just my mother. I don’t think she will hurt us, but there’s something else in her voice now. Something uncanny and detached. It’s as though she speaks for the coral growing within and around her.

“I remember me, too,” Gracie says, reading the worry in my eyes. “But … it’s like I can remember entire years before me. Oh, it’s so odd. I remember the centuries in which I was small, nothing but a single flower drifting in the dark, and then I gushed through this brilliant tear, right into this world. I was tiny then. Simple. Just a single waving hand reaching for the light. And I was hungry. When we are young, we only know how to eat and how to grow, but now I am learning how to think. And how to feel. And once I’m big enough—once I’m wise enough—I suppose I’ll decide if I want to stay.”

I know Gracie better than anyone, and this isn’t her—not entirely—but because whatever speaks through her is using her voice, I also know something else. She, and it, are telling the truth.

“We locked it in,” she whispers, her single eye searching some invisible distance for a way out. “We locked it in with us, and our lovely light. Oh, Ollie-baby, no wonder it wants to stay. Anyone would. Our island is heaven, you know.”

That. That right there. That was Gracie. My throat tightens and my heart burns. It’s just like Elisa said. It’s almost impossible to know she’s just alive enough to miss.

“Mom, we’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”

“Ollie, wait—”

I ignore Elisa’s protest and pry a horn of coral from the bench. I stop immediately when Gracie cries out, and the soft white light flickers. It’s like Singing House itself has flinched. Dust flutters down from above as the house settles.

“Why?” I begin to cry. “Why did it do this to you?”

“Oh, every big thing starts as a little thing. This little thing just happened to start with me. I remember a storm and I remember a fight, and I remember a sunrise and I remember the beach. I see myself reaching through water—a tidal pool. We found each other. But don’t worry, Ollie-baby, it doesn’t hurt much anymore. It’s the softest conquest this body has ever seen. It’s kind, you know. That’s why it seeks out our joy. It’s like I always say …”

I say the graciom for her.

“The tide gives as much as it takes, right?”

“Right.” She smiles. “Don’t worry about me. You three should go, before the sun comes back around and wakes up this mad world.”

“But what’s going to happen to you?” Asking is like pulling out a knife lodged deep in my heart; necessary, but I’m not sure I can survive the blood loss. Gracie tilts her chin up, like she’s listening to approaching music. “I don’t know, but something tells me I won’t be guessing for long.” She attempts a smile, but like the light around us … it flickers. She’s lying. It’s just like Scary Mary, and we both know the reason the reef around her is fading.

Gracie’s smile turns ashamed.

“Don’t make me say it, Ollie. Please,” she whispers.

“Say it.” It comes out too harsh, but I know now that if this moment doesn’t end in truth, I will relive it forever.

“Please,” I try again. “Just tell me.”

Gracie turns to her piano. These keys have played her through every up and down. They surrounded us with love and songs. They waited under their cover, through a quiet no one thought would end. Then, when we finally came home to them, they danced beneath our hands in the seconds before our final fight. It’s no wonder Gracie reaches for them now, but her fingers fall soft and silent on the keys. There’s no outplaying this one.

“The cancer came back. I was always going to die, Ollie-baby.”

Gracie hangs her head, reflexively wiping at any spilled tears, but there’s nothing to hide. No tears left. I put my head on her heaving shoulder. The sound of my mother crying breaks open my world. Her fear fills the room, the entire house.

“When did you know?” I ask.

“Oh, sweetie, weeks and weeks ago. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to know. It was supposed to be our best summer ever.”

Tears race through the dust on my cheeks. “I think I knew,” I say, a crack in my voice now. We sit quietly. I made her tell me, and now she did, and I’m not sure there’s worth in any other words. My mom was always going to die. What’s left to say?

She doesn’t see it that way.

“I hope you can forgive me. For lying to you,” she whispers. “I just wanted to show you that there are places worth saving. And even if it was the last thing I could do, I was determined to bring you home, back to your family. It’s a beautiful life on our island, isn’t it, Ollie-baby?”

I smile, tasting my tears in the back of my throat as I swallow. I consider asking her about that word—family. Does it include Willy? But I know the answer will be yes, just like family includes so many others Gracie hoped would take me in once she faded away.

I just say, “Yeah, Mom, it was a beautiful life.”

Soft hands come to rest on my shoulders. Elisa and Bash. Gracie turns to them. Seeing the three of us back together, the twinkle in her eye triples.

“It is beautiful,” she insists.

The light in the room has faded now, nearly all the way gone. The air has turned gray with the threat of an impending sunrise. Through the back windows, I can see a sliver of the sky about to burn open with tomorrow. Our time has come to an end.

“Can we have a moment?” I ask my friends.

They nod. Before they go, they say their own goodbyes. To Bash, Gracie gives her brightest smile and says, “The heartthrob with a heart. Take care of them, Bashar.” And for Elisa, Gracie’s smile falters. “My brave girl,” she says, swallowing. “Our island’s pride and joy. Don’t forget to take care of yourself.”

My friends go, leaving me alone with Gracie. As gentle as I can manage, I hug her. She is featherlight in my arms. Even her clothes have been sapped of color. I press my face into the soft skin at the base of her freckled skull, and for the first time in a year, I let my mom see me cry.

I don’t smile through it. I don’t try to be brave.

I cry.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she whispers to me. I can hear the fading in her voice. Even though I’m the one who is a mess, I stop my sobbing long enough to tell her not to be afraid. I don’t know how she hears me through the hiccups, but she does.

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” she whispers. “And I’m not gone. We do not end, remember?”

“We echo,” I say, miserable.

I can hear the smile in Gracie’s voice as she whispers a final pearl of wisdom into my ear, just for me to know and hear. I nod, finding enough strength to sit up and face her.

“How about that,” I say, smiling through the tears. One last smile, for Gracie.

“That’s my Ollie-baby. Now, go catch up with your friends.”

I rise from the bench, an unsure bubble. I float to the parlor door. I know that if I look back, I’ll break too badly to take those final steps outside, so I don’t look back. I stand at the stairs, facing the door, and listen to the home I’m about to leave behind. At first there’s nothing to hear; the songs of Singing House are all silent to me now. Nothing creaks and no one laughs … but then, one final encore remains in the bones of this place. Piano music, fragile as morning light, drifting from the parlor, and a woman humming a new melody to herself. It’s not a song I recognize, but I know it’s a lullaby. I catch it in my heart.

Elisa and Bash are waiting for me on the porch. They each take one of my hands, but I’m the one who leads them away.

Soon, my mother told me, I’ll just be another song you get to sing. How about that?

When Elisa asks me where we should go next, I say, “The beach.” There’s no place left to run.

It’s a rainy morning on Anchor’s Mercy, and a fresh cloak of mist—real mist, straight off the Atlantic Ocean—falls over the island. The spectral fog dampens into a sticky glitter under the wheels of the wrecked jeep as we roll through my neighborhood. The underwater world of the night before has become dreamy, softened ruins, and the growths of coral we pass stand tall and dark, like abstract tombstones. In the quiet, the cries of waking weepers bounce between the houses, but we make it to the edge of town. When we see red lights in the distance, we ditch the jeep and continue on foot into the forest. For an hour we walk in silence, stopping only to split the granola bars and water, and then we reach the dunes.

Elisa points at my leg. “Can you keep going?”

The sting from the bridezilla has dissolved into a constellation of broken blood vessels, but it looks worse than it feels. In fact, I barely feel anything at all right now. The ocean mist swathing the island may as well pour from my own numb mind, where even simple thoughts and feelings seem to occur to me across a vast, obscured distance.

“I’ll help you,” she says. She holds me up with one arm while the other cradles the metal AMIOS tumbler, her mom’s report safe inside.

In the open arena of the dunes, it’s hard to tell what direction we’re going in. The mist is cloud-thick, and even the sun seems lost as it drifts through the overcast sky above us. I can hear the ocean, but each time we reach the top of a dune, all that awaits us is a descent into more sand, more grass, more mist. When we skid to the bottom of the next valley, we find a braid of our own footsteps, and we realize our progress is not only slow but circular. We slump to the ground.

“We can’t stay here,” Elisa says needlessly. “We need to find shelter. Then food. Then, I don’t know, self-actualization, I guess. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

I shrug, putting my head down. This sand is the most comfortable thing I have ever lain on, or is the heaviness in my bones bound to plant me anywhere? I want to close my eyes, but if I do, I’m never getting back up. I could die right here, decay right here, bloom into something else right here.

Bash shivers next to me. For a while now he has been wiping at his nose and eyes, then checking his hands, then wiping again. He keeps pushing up his sleeves to check his arms, too, and now that he’s seated he begins to check his legs. I want to tell him to quit freaking out, that he’s okay, but even that minor lie feels exhausting.

I close my eyes. Just for a second.

“Get away from me!” Bash shouts.

I open my eyes to Elisa being shoved to the ground. Bash stands between us.

“Bash, you’re okay.” Elisa drags her hair off her face. “You’re not infected. We would tell you.”

“How do you know? What if it’s already inside me, right now? What if I turn into one of those—” Bash glances at me and his eyes are frantic pinpricks. “I’m sorry, Ollie. Your mom—I don’t want that to happen to me. I can’t.”

His nails ravage an invisible infection crawling up his neck. He digs under his filthy shirt to scratch his stomach and lower back. Elisa tries to grab his hands, but he shoves her down again. Their cries seem very far away. I should tell them to not be so loud in case that monster is still out there, but it doesn’t matter. I have never felt a more complete emptiness than right now.

“Ollie, will you please help me.”

Bash lies in a heap, his shirt and pants torn off, his skin scored and bruised. Elisa drapes over his shoulders as he dry heaves into the sand.

“Just promise you’ll kill me,” Bash cries. “Kill me for real. Right in the head. Before it happens.” His crying echoes in the bowl of the dunes until it softens to just a whimper. I don’t know what to say, so I try to think of what Gracie would say.

The only ship that’s ever unsunk is the friendship!

I hear her singsong assurance, and the fissure in my heart cracks a little wider. If ever a ship has run aground, it’s this one.

Elisa is standing over me. “Ollie, are you okay?”

Dumbass question. I ignore her.

“Ollie, I’m sorry about your mom.”

She doesn’t sound sorry. She sounds mad. Looks mad, too. Her apology is the kind of apology that expects an apology in return. When I don’t respond, she taps me with her toe.

“I’m worried about Bash. I think we should consider going back to—”

“We’re not going back to AMIOS,” I state.

“Not us. Him,” Elisa whispers. “His family is there. He was happy. And safe.”

“We can’t split up.”

Elisa groans. “Then will you help me keep us together? Bash is falling apart, and you’ve gone nonverbal, and I …” Elisa sinks to her knees. The metal tumbler thunks into the sand. “I can’t do everything for everyone.”

My mom told Elisa she was the island’s pride and joy. Even now, with the island in ruins, Elisa still wears that burden without question. My mom admired Elisa, but in this moment I dread her.

“Listen,” she says just loud enough for me to hear. “I’ve been planning it all out in my head. If we go back to AMIOS, we can make sure Bash is okay, and then we can get onto that big ship? They’re dragging people there anyway, so it should be easy. Then all we need to do is figure out how to get to the radio, and we can call for help just like you wanted. Plus, we’ll be closer to Pfaff and her red notebook. Maybe if we steal it, it can show us how to stop the coral?”

“Cnidaria imperia—”

“Whatever. The point is, we have a real shot at this. What do you think?”

“I think you’re a naive idiot.”

Elisa flinches like I’ve thrown sand into her face, and I kind of have, but she doesn’t give up.

“Ollie, I would love to give you the time to grieve, but from where I’m sitting you’ve had ten months, plus some, to prepare. I didn’t even get a second. And in the end, you got to say goodbye. Most people don’t. I know what you’re feeling is truly immeasurable, but we don’t have time for infinite sadness. That thing is out there, and the second this mist clears up, I guarantee AMIOS is going to send out drones or something to find us. We need to act.”

I finally look her in the eye. “We’re three people, Elisa. Three kids.”

“Who have done more to uncover this island’s mystery than anyone since my mom! Don’t you see how close we are?” She rises to her knees, like she’s begging me to hear her. “We’ve faced the impossible before, haven’t we? Remember our third fight? Remember Crabigail? And what about the time we hijacked the Scuttlebutt’s float at the Pride Parade? Or a million other schemes and pranks that should have gotten us grounded for life but didn’t? This is no different. If there has ever been a time to shine, Orlando Veltman, it’s now.”

I scoff. Her optimism is enraging. “Elisa, the second we get on that ship, we’re dead. This isn’t one of our little games. We can’t pretend our way to saving the world.”

“Pretend? Who’s pretending?”

“Oh, come on. You are one wig away from being Wendy-freaking-Pretendy, Elisa. Grow up.”

“Oh yeah?” Elisa gets on her feet now, shouting down at me. “Well, I’d rather be Wendy Pretendy than … than … Heidi Gaslighty!”

I gasp. How dare she evoke Heidi G at a time like this. There aren’t many lines left for us to cross with each other, but that’s one of them. It’s the last thing I expect and I can’t help but laugh.

“Elisa, look around! Our town is totally destroyed, and the only hope of survival we have is a fleet of evil marine biologists who want to keep us in cages. And even if we do find a way to fight the coral, what’s the point? The sand is poisoned. The island is sick. Everyone we care about is going to die, so what the fuck is there left to save?”

Elisa pulls herself up. It’s like she stands utterly alone in the mist.

“We save each other, dipshit.”

My face prickles with heat. I know she’s right. Worse, she knows she’s right. It just makes me angrier. Still, when she reaches out a hand to hoist me up, I take it. It’s only then that I notice something.

“Where’s Bash?”

A single set of footprints breaks away from our scuffle, running off between the dunes. We dash after him, snatching up discarded clothes as we follow the trail through tufts of cordgrass. Then the grass thickens, and we lose him.

“Shit. Shit!” Elisa spins. She gathers her hair up with her hands, like she does just before a meltdown. “Do we split up?”

“No,” I say firmly. “Maybe. I don’t know!”

“Ollie, what if that thing is out there?”

“Bridezilla?”

“Oh my god, you named it?”

A boy cries out in the distance. We run through the grass, letting it nip and slice at our skin. At the top of a tall dune, we find Bash standing with his hands on his hips. He’s nearly nude and covered in scratches, but suddenly he wears a massive smile.

“Look!” he gloats, grabbing our hands. For a moment I fear his sudden, euphoric energy, but then I feel it catching in my own throat as I see what he’s found.

We’re on the beach. The ocean, barely visible, laps at the edges of the mist. The sand is dotted with toppled umbrellas and chairs abandoned long ago. Nestled into the grass, half-covered in seaweed, is a shock of pink plastic. A cooler. A cooler we all recognize from the morning after our final slumber party.

Bash pries it open with a maniacal laugh. It’s still full! By now all the ice inside has melted, setting adrift a fleet of bottled drinks and bags of chips, but it’s almost better this way. We take turns holding up the cooler for one another to drink from, and it’s like guzzling a miracle. Only a few minutes later the sodas and chips are consumed, yet it feels like an entire era has passed between now and the fight Elisa and I were having. Even the mist seems to clear.

“I take it back,” Bash says through a mouthful. “Don’t kill me. I thought I was dying, but I just needed a little snack.”

“Push me like that again and not even the littlest snack will save you,” Elisa says. They hug each other.

I turn away from the ocean, searching for only a moment before I find what I’m looking for. A great house hovers behind us in the mist.

Sam’s house.

Just like Elisa says, the mist clears by the late afternoon and the sky fills with the thwap thwap thwap of helicopters. It’s impossible to know if we covered our tracks well enough in the sand, so we make sure we’re ready for the moment Easter’s forces arrive at Sam’s house. It happens right as the sun sets, with a centipede of vehicles rushing down the driveway and trampling the lawn to make sure we’re surrounded. We know there’s no point in resisting, so we stand on the back porch, hands raised, and let them load us—separately—into the caravan.

Before that, we sat and watched the sunset together on the deck, pointing out every little color to one another while we told old stories. New stories, too, like the time Bash saved my life with lemonade, and the time we watched the most powerful drag queen on earth run an apocalyptic library like the navy, and the time the staff of Pizza Monster broke their non-delivery rule to answer a distress call in the dunes that became a slumber party at the end of the world. And even though we try to write it into a myth, none of us can get through the story about how Sam came into our lives, changed everything, and then vanished. The injustice is too fresh, and Sam’s ghost feels too close, like at any moment he will rush in with that goofy, promising smile on his face. But we checked every room of this big, lonely house. Sam never made it home.

Before the capture, and before the sunset, when the afternoon sun had just begun to burn away the mist, we sat on the floor of Sam’s living room and we made a plan. Like most of our schemes, it’s a bad idea taken incredibly seriously. It starts with spreading all of Doro’s notes around us, then bottling it all back up in the souvenir tumbler. It ends with a walk back to the beach, a deposit in the evidently indestructible cooler, and then a spontaneous art project: First, we find branches of driftwood and construct a tiny, twisted tree, then we commence a scavenger hunt for the best stones and shells. We use what we find to make an X, like an old pirate map. A promise that there is something to be found here, for the next person who dares to look.

And before all that, when the mist still bearded the beach and we felt like just three kids outside time and space enjoying a snack on a cloudy day, we held hands and reminded one another of the world’s most fundamental and unbreakable rule.

Suds stick together.

Suds stick together. I repeat our motto in my head as I try to slow down my breathing. I’m in the back seat of a van, a bag yanked over my head, a gun jabbed up against my ribs.

“Orders?” a man asks. Not me, obviously.

Another man says, “Keep that hood on him. We don’t know if they’re contagious. The director wants them brought right to isolation while we finish transferring the rest of the stock to Embrace. Whatever you do, do not let them communicate. The way the director talks about these three, it’s like they’re telepathic.”

I can’t help but smile under my hood.

“These are the kids that took out Barbara and her unit in the marsh?” the first man asks.

“Affirmative. Little pyromaniac fucks lit them right up. Bashed Bab’s helmet in, too. Truly sick.”

The gun digs into my thin T-shirt. They think we killed the guards who chased us into the marsh?

“That wasn’t us,” I start to say, but something blunt slams into my temple. I awaken seconds later to laughter and a nauseating ache that fills my mouth with bile.

“Do it again!” someone up front begs. “I missed it!”

I brace myself for another hit, but suddenly the vehicle swerves and all the guards are shouting.

“Did you see that?”

“What was that out in the marsh?”

“Too big to be a tank.”

The radios in the car whisper with static and, even in my delirium, I know the answer. I can barely hear through the shouting, but if I could, I know the chorus of screams currently charging the caravan would have lyrics, and those lyrics would be full of chapels, and love, and marriage.

Shit, I think. This is not the plan.

The men are yelling at one another. The driver swerves again, and the car is suddenly rumbling over uneven terrain. Someone is shouting, “Go, go, go!” And even through the hood I can see the glaring red lights of AMIOS filling the car.

While everyone is distracted, I grab at my hood and yank it off.

We’re almost there. We’re almost inside the walls.

We don’t make it.

The jeep is crushed from above.

AUGUST 18

28 DAYS AFTER

08:55

“Do not feed the bridezilla!”

Early this morning, ahead of my final interview with TS188, I visited the ruins of AMIOS.

By now all scientific operations have been transferred aboard the Embrace, per Pfaff’s orders. She calls it our stronghold. Not much could be salvaged from the explosion without risk of contamination, which is probably why the remaining security forces were surprised at my arrival. I told them what I needed and flashed my credentials. They obliged, showing me to an armored van crowded with monitors. Most had gone dark—the CCTV network had gone offline during the explosion, too. I asked them if they had a copy of the footage from the final moments, as I had requested. They produced a tape labeled “Bridezilla.” Here is what I saw:

The camera fixes on the back lot, where the temporary quarantine camps were erected. Machinery has been affixed to the lamppost. These I recognize as ranged incendiary devices, or flamethrowers, as is made clear at the 22:O2 mark. The scorch marks on the ground indicate quite a significant range.

In the footage, people are being lined up at gunpoint by guards. The guards all wear head and face coverings, while people in hazmat suits appear to be counting the crowd. I believe this is the moment before many of these people were brought onto the USNS Embrace. For the most part, the people stand with their heads down, but about six minutes into the footage the entire crowd flinches. There is no sound to the video, but it’s clear something loud draws everyone’s attention in a single direction. People’s mouths open. They wail silently. They cower. A shadow flows over the pandemonium, indicating something quite large has crossed over the floodlights of the courtyard. Then everything begins to shake, and the camera suffers a blow. When the image clears, the viewer feels as though they are hanging sideways over a different perspective of the courtyard. Now we can see the large metal gates have bulged inward, and the mangled face of a jeep shines into the camera. The glare makes it quite hard to see what has thrown the jeep into such a predicament.

People scramble across the frame. Many of them have their wrists zip-tied, held at their waist as they run. People trip, fall, are trampled. The soldiers, when visible, raise their guns at something behind the glare of the jeep.

The crushed jeep shudders as something barrels over it, into the courtyard. The camera can’t adjust quick enough to see the details. I attempt to brighten and adjust contrast, but the creature’s shape is baffling. An abundance of legs beneath a bulbous, armored body trailing prehensile tendrils. Arthropodal, vaguely. Hellish, certainly. Spikes of distinctly coral shapes ridge its back, seeming to form an exoskeleton cage around exposed organs. Wet, pulsing organs.

The creature spins, distressed in the courtyard’s brightness. It collides with the camera, badly diminishing the video quality. Then the video goes dark.

This is not the only video I recovered from AMIOS. I asked the security officers if the jeeps had dashboard cams. They did. I asked them to take me to the jeep crushed in the video. It had not been moved, though by now it was almost completely colonized with C. imperia. Light pink, losing color as the officers doused it with the chemical A6-II, but still alive. It was getting bright, close to the time the reefs are most “awake,” so I had to act quickly. I reached my arm into the crushed car and ripped the device from the windshield. I have it on my desk now. It is badly crushed, but the card inside appears intact. Here is what it shows, picking up moments after the jeep is crushed:

The dashboard camera peers directly into the courtyard. Through its eye, we can see the crowd of people pressed up against the courtyard’s eastern wall. There are maybe one hundred adults and children, all struggling to get far away from the creature as it finally sees them.

(I should note that it is unclear exactly where the creature’s eyes are located. Zoological analysis indicates its sensory awareness extends in all directions. And while it is drawn to light, it is most sensitive to sound. This might be why it is drawn to the screaming crowd.)

Because the creature is still backlit, it remains shielded in black contrast, though that will soon change. We can see a pair of malformed pincers at the end of one limb, which it uses to swat away the few guards still attempting to shoot it. The bullets do little, only knocking knobs of coral to the concrete. The knobs, along with the rest of the growths atop the creature’s back, begin to emit a strange vapor. Heavy, like dry ice, and colors that seem to baffle the camera recording.

The guards pinned under “Bridezilla” are drowned first, vanishing from view. The vapor flows toward the trapped people. The few visible children in the shot are crushed backward in desperate attempts by the adults to shield them from exposure.

Then, from the side, one girl runs. She is Elisabete D’Oliveira, instantly recognizable as she faces up, into the floodlights. She grabs one of the fallen guns and turns it toward a fuel tank directly above the creature. She hits it, showering the creature in incendiary fluid, but it does not ignite. The creature stalks toward her. She is forced to retreat, to the crowd, but then she sees where another of the tanks is dangling from its perch. She heaves the hanging nozzle around, pointing it at the creature. She hits it, trying to activate the pilot light, but nothing happens.

The creature draws closer. She slams it again. And again. The flamethrowers never ignite.

The vapor is around her ankles now. The creature is entirely focused on her, readying itself to charge.

This part is where I must make several assumptions. First, based on body language, I assume young Elisabete was able to smell or hear the gas hissing out of the valve directly above her. Second, based on facial expression, it is evident to me that the girl reached some sort of resolve. During the following action, which is clearly visible through the jeep’s camera, Elisabete never breaks eye contact with the creature.

My final assumption is that when Elisabete reaches into her pocket and lifts up a lighter, it is the missing lighter of her mother, Doroteia D’Oliveira.

One flick, two, and fire appears in Elisabete’s hand.

Briefly, the jeep camera is overcome with a glare that gradually resolves into a cone of fire washing over “Bridezilla.” The vapor is burned away, drawn up into a sudden gust by the heat. For the first time, we can see the many stolen body parts that comprise the creature, though it is impossible to make any identifications. All I can make out are several tattered sashes waving from the creature’s spine, like pennants, one of which clearly says “Bride or die” before burning off. The fire throws the creature backward, causing it to collide with another tower, and a final explosion blinds the jeep’s camera, ending the visual.

The recording does not end. There is one final detail I will now mention: Unlike the CCTV camera, the dash cam of the jeep has sound. Mostly it picks up static pouring through the radios, but as the creature burns, the static thins, and a passenger within the jeep can be heard crying. They sound crushed into the back seat, struggling. The final noise is a smash of glass and then there is the sound of what I assume is the person being rescued from the wreck.

The way the person screams, they have not been rescued by someone they think will save them.

I can’t feel my legs. They’re beneath me, but it’s like floating in a bath of needles. I’m being dragged through a flaming courtyard. Heat sucks the moisture from my mouth, my eyes, and ashes coat my throat. If Bridezilla is the smoldering pile against the tents, what’s the monster that’s got me by the arm?

“I will not let you brats ruin everything I have worked for.”

Imogen Pfaff has me with one hand while the other hoists, of all things, a metal tackle box.

Is she going on a fishing trip? At a time like this? The pain in my left leg is pushing through the numbness now, making me delirious. Each step puts me closer to blacking out, but I can’t abandon my body now. We had a plan. What was the plan? Where are Bash and Elisa?

Pfaff pushes me toward a group of survivors huddled where Elisa fell, but I don’t see her. I only see a blackened limb jutting from the huddle. It’s still clutching a gleaming metal lighter.

NO.

“Elisa!” I scream her name, but my voice is a desperate rasp. “Elisa, get up!” The fire she created was like the engines of a rocket ship, and she conjured it with her bare hands. The last I saw her, she was engulfed in the blue blaze, all of her blackened by the sudden brightness.

And now …

I finally wrench away from Pfaff. No, I beg Elisa. Get up. Please. Not you. Not you. Pfaff tries to pull me back, but I shove her down. She splays on the concrete and the tackle box spills, sending glass vials skittering. Pfaff crawls after the vials, and I crawl toward Elisa.

Not you, not you, not you.

A gun goes off, and a bullet chips the concrete in front of my face.

“Stand up, Orlando.”

A wet warmth dribbles from a slice of pain on the side of my head. Pfaff has shot through my ear. The world muffles as blood flows into the wound, and as I fight to stand, all I can hear is the gunshot ringing in my skull. The pitch is a C. A little flat.

“Face me.”

I’m sure the next bullet is going to splatter my brain down my neck. I turn my back on Elisa and the crowd of survivors. Pfaff’s white lab coat is filthy with ash and blood. A portion of her scalp has been peeled back with burns, exposing angry pink skin. She clutches several glass vials to her chest. They swirl with iridescent fog.

“You’re not going to get away with this,” I tell her.

Pfaff squints, and I think maybe she hasn’t understood me, but then she laughs. “You don’t even know, do you? All your sneaking around, and you still have no idea what this all is, do you? Not everything we don’t understand is bound to be evil. The world is much bigger than that. The ocean is much deeper than that, and I’m afraid you’re out of your depth, Orlando. It’s time to let the adults do their work.”

Now Pfaff addresses the crowd behind me.

“Do not panic. The navy has sent a hospital ship to aid the people of Anchor’s Mercy in our time of need. Transportation boats are ready at the AMIOS docks, and I’ve already called for reinforcements to escort the survivors. If you stay calm and follow my instructions, you will be okay.”

By now the fires around the courtyard have exhausted themselves into glowering, scarlet coals. The faces of the people watching waver in the heat. I think I know these faces. They are neighbors. Teachers. Friends. Guests. Drag kings and drag queens. But if they listen to Pfaff, they’ll simply be test subjects.

“The hospital ship is a trap,” I shout. “It was circling the island days before the outbreak. They knew this would happen. They cut off our power. Isolated us! And if we leave now, we’re never coming back to Anchor’s Mercy. That ship will be our graveyard.”

Pfaff’s laugh is not amused. “Now is not the time for baseless conspiracy theories. Don’t give in to fear and distrust. There is no cure for this plague, but you will be safer with the full force of Easter Energy protecting you from those monstrosities.”

“They are people. They sing, they dream, they listen!” The heat in the air is nothing compared to the power I feel within me. Gracie wasn’t a monster. She was herself right to the end. Scary Mary, too, and who knows how many others? But why do some people hold on to their lucidity while others are subsumed into the organic abominations of the reef? I think I know, but it takes facing a reality I have made myself sick rejecting since the moment Gracie got her diagnosis. There’s no time for denial now, and no reason. Gracie is gone, but because of her Anchor’s Mercy might be saved.

“This island is making us sick. It always has.” I raise my voice like I’m Willy calling on a crowded bar to sing along. “We’ve known it for years. How many fundraisers have we attended in the offseason? How many funerals? And people say nothing is wrong, but we all know better. We all feel it. You all knew my mom, Gracie Jo Veltman. You’ve all listened to her play, you’ve all heard her sing.”

A few people are nodding. I bite through my fear to say what needs to be said.

“She was … already sick when she got infected by the coral, and it couldn’t colonize her. She wasn’t a monster. She was my mother, right until the end. She is living proof that we can survive this.”

Pfaff’s voice has genuine curiosity. “Are you saying the people of this island have a natural resistance?”

“No.” I turn on Pfaff. If ever there was a time to shine, it’s now. “The resistance is unnatural. A poison you’ve denied for decades. But the Cnidaria, the coral, it needs a healthy host. It can’t thrive in a body that’s already sick. And we—everyone from this island, who drinks this water and builds a life in this sand—are sick. Isn’t that true?”

“He’s right!”

Bash pushes through the crowd, trailed by the reaching arms of his family. They try to drag him back, but he stands tall, letting everyone see him. Murmurs fill the courtyard.

“Is it true?”

“How can we be sure?”

“Who do we trust?”

Pfaff raises her red notebook and adds her own voice to the chaos. “The infected are not human. Once exposed, it’s only a matter of time before an individual is colonized. Do not listen to this boy! A few outlier cases prove nothing.”

The discussion cuts off when the busted metal doors of the courtyard are wrenched sideways, and a squad of white-armored soldiers rush in. They keep their guns up, aimed at the survivors, and soon they’ve got me and Pfaff surrounded.

“Director Pfaff, your time is up,” the leader states. “Our orders are now to prioritize your evacuation to the Embrace. A helicopter is waiting. You are to come with us. Now.”

The survivors are starting to panic again. Some pull toward the soldiers, others pull away. I’m losing them.

“I’m not done here,” Pfaff says to the leader. “I need to have a test population. I was clear about that.”

“Plenty have already been loaded onto the Embrace, ma’am. We’ll get the rest soon, but right now our orders are to secure you, specifically. And the samples, of course.”

I try to capture the attention of the crowd, but now the panic is in full swing.

“Don’t get on that boat!” I scream. “We outnumber them, we can overpower them! You have to believe me! Believe us.” I think it’s working. I see people stepping forward, not to flee but to fight. The soldiers notice the shift, too, and they tighten around Pfaff.

“Enough of this.”

I turn to Pfaff just as something splashes me in the face. Something cold. It’s a second before I realize it’s the vial of fog, and by then it’s already in my mouth.

“NO!” Bash bursts from the crowd, but Pfaff steps into his path with another vial uncorked and raised. People drag Bash back, away from me. Why? I spit the fog from my mouth until the taste is all gone. I hold up my hands.

“I’m okay!” I laugh. Pfaff has just given me the exact moment I need to show what I’ve discovered. “See? I’m totally fine—”

Something kicks in my stomach. A stabbing spasm that forces me to draw a ragged, involuntary breath, and I feel the length of my throat fill with slickness. My lungs light up in my chest like I’ve huffed pure ethanol, but the taste is mellower, brighter, inviting, invasive.

Fuck.

I beg myself to stop breathing, to stop letting this thing into my body, but holding down the urge to cough feels like hugging red-hot coals to my belly. I embrace the pain and let it focus me, and gradually the cough subsides. I can still taste the fog, but I think … I think I’m okay.

I stand up, and I smile.

“See? I’m living proof.”

But that’s not what comes out my mouth. The moment my lips part, a clear sludge slithers down my chin and chest. Tears, too, thick and heavy. I catch them in my hands.

FUCK.

I look up, humiliated and scared and desperate for a friendly face.

“Bash? Bash? I’m …” I pull at the sludge filling my mouth, feeling it flex deep down in my stomach.

“I’m here, Ollie. I’m here.”

But Bash is so far away from me, wavering like he’s underwater. Or am I underwater? I feel like I’m sinking fast, each thought a slow bubble bursting up and away from me with reckless buoyancy. I try to hold on to myself, but my fear has softened into a remote sense of wonder. How strange, I think, looking at the tears webbing my fingers. And how lovely.

Pfaff’s voice is gritty and harsh, piercing the submerged veil around my mind. “This is the fate that awaits all those who choose to stay. If you want to live, I suggest you cooperate with the soldiers from the Embrace. They will be here momentarily.” Then, to the guards, she says, “Tell the cleanup crew that I want Orlando Veltman here tagged with the rest of the test subjects. His theory intrigues me. If he doesn’t turn, we’ll want to know why not.”

I begin to hear it all as music. The footsteps rushing past dance on my nerves. Where is everyone going? Are they leaving me behind? It’s hard to remember what’s happening. I have to fight. These people are counting on me to show them this can be survived.

“Please! Give me a chance!” I beg. “I’m still me. I’m still Ollie. O-L-L-I-E! Gracie’s kid! I play the piano at Singing House!” Another mouthful of slime chokes me. I tear it out of me, feeling its elastic tendrils wrench from my sinuses. “This is my home.”

I am screaming. I am drowning. How do I make it stop? How do I take a breath? How do I survive? Since the moment of the outbreak at the Last Hail Mary’s, I have imagined this exact moment, when the sea finally flows into my lungs. How can one person fight the entire sea? My mind races through lessons Gracie taught me long ago about what to do if I’m ever caught in a riptide.

Stay calm, she would tell me. You can’t outswim the tide. All you can do is float long enough to be saved.

I find my heart beating beneath my soaked shirt. I listen to it, counting out the measures of my death. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. I stretch each beat until I finally feel it slow. 1 … 2 … 3. 1 … 2 … 3. The drowning feeling doesn’t let me go, but it does slow down, and I feel the fog clearing from my mind.

I’m doing it, I think. I’m floating. I’m going to survive.

The joy of this realization is overflowing.

“I’m floating! I’m floating!” I wobble to my feet, to show that I am, in fact, floating. But why are people screaming? Can’t they see I’m floating? They back away from me as I reach for them. Not like my neighbors at all. People are kind on Anchor’s Mercy, quick to hug, slow to let go. I smile big and bright, reaching out, but they do not reach back. They are not smiling at all.

They are scared of me.

Oh.

An ugly feeling spreads through my euphoria. Not sadness and not fear but shame. I was wrong. I’m drowning, I think as I feel gravity pulling me down. I let it. I fall, but I never feel the pavement catch me. I plunge inward, leaving the flaming red world behind as I’m swallowed by endless blue.

I’m floating far below the surface now.

Above, light cascades through rippling waves. Below, a wide and infinite dark.

Bash? Elisa? I try to call my friends, but there’s no answer. I sink lower. I am aware that I have fallen into myself, but the illusion of the water around me does not alarm me. I can finally breathe. Still, even though I can’t quite recall why, I am scared.

Mom?

Now I do hear something. An answer, maybe. It sounds like singing, and even though it’s far above me, it reaches right through the crystal-clear water and catches me by the ears.

“Twenty-five years and my life is still

Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope

For a destination.”

I know this song. I heard it just a little while ago. I picture Gracie singing it, at her piano in Singing House, surrounded by candlelit faces. The memory echoes with the angry way I yelled at her. This is what she sang with her friends after I stormed off. It hurts to hear the pain I put into my mother’s voice, but I make myself listen.

“And I realized quickly when I knew I should

That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man.”

Her voice is no longer alone. I can hear Bash now, too. And a whole crowd behind him. They are trying to pull me back, pull me up, toward the surface. Am I strong enough to face the world above? Or do I let the darkness below finally take me away?

I turn toward the gloom below as it ripples apart, revealing the most stunning reef I have ever seen. It’s dazzling, and huge, and terribly complex. I sink past towers of coral as tall as skyscrapers and jellyfish the size of cars. Alien fish flutter around my arms, nipping at me playfully. Are they real? Their tiny bites tickle even as the water turns rosy. Hello, I think as I face the radiant abyss.

The reef sings back. At first it just sounds like static simmering in the water around me, but gradually I realize I understand it. It’s like Gracie described. A song. It nearly drowns away the voices calling to me from the surface, but they sing louder.

“And I say, hey hey hey hey

I said hey, what’s going on?”

For a moment, the two songs compete. One below, one above. The one above is a mess, though. I mean, they’re practically shouting! But I get it. It’s a good chorus, the kind that needs to be shouted at full volume, in a car, on a sun-soaked back road, on the way home from the beach. The best summer ever. Or hammered out on a piano warped by salt air as your mom hugs against you. The best summer ever. Or hummed on a back porch in the middle of the night, as you look up at the stars and wait for a new day to rescue you from all the indignities of yesterday.

The best summer ever is yet to come.

I turn back to the voices calling me to shore. I understand my island better now, even as I sink into the reef shining beneath it. Everything finally feels clear.

My mother was right. It is beautiful, I think.

Then what’s left of my mind scatters into a million mouths of light.

AUGUST 18

28 DAYS AFTER

10:34

This is my final entry in this journal.

I have been instructed to board a helicopter bound for an unknown location in two hours, to report my findings to unknown people. I assume Director Pfaff’s superiors. The report includes my lab findings, field observations, and abridged insights from my conversations with patients aboard the USNS Embrace. And, of course, my conclusions from all interviews with TS188. By all accounts, it fulfills my original objectives set out by Pfaff: derive a zoological analysis for C. imperia, with recommendations for how it might be contained and controlled. In those two regards, my report is complete.

With that said, I consider my mission a failure.

When it comes to C. imperia, we know how to contain it, but we only think we can control it. If there is something my conversations with TS188 make abundantly clear, it’s that the human acts of containment and control are a frail mesh against the keen knife of nature’s imagination. Containment and control will not stop C. imperia. So what will?

I think, finally, I know.

My report stops here, but it is time for one final conversation with TS188.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE MERCY KILLINGS DOSSIER

Hello, explorer.

A wise mother once said that to find out what is beyond the horizon, you must first lose sight of the shore. I invite you to swim at your own risk into what I’m about to share.

You do not know who I am. You never will. You must trust me anyway. I am trying to save your life.

The dossier in your hands concerns the mysterious disaster that befell the island of Anchor’s Mercy this past July, resulting in conspiracies popularized as the Mercy Killings (from which this dossier takes its name).

Here is the story most people know:

It has been two months since the island of Anchor’s Mercy—a popular summer destination off the coast of Maine famous for its shellfish and its drag queens—was put under emergency quarantine after Tropical Storm Raquel made a direct hit, cutting off all communication with the mainland. It has been two months since the navy hospital ship the Embrace was deployed to provide medical care for an unknown pathogen that seemed to spread across the island overnight, shore to shore, as though the sea itself had grown sick. It has been two months since the CDC first announced an emergency effort to evacuate Anchor’s Mercy, then abruptly declared the entire population of the island lost.

Not dead.

Not dying.

Lost.

In the absence of any communication from the USNS Embrace, or the thousands of “lost souls” on the island, online conspiracies have flourished. Was it bioterrorism unleashed? A classified experiment ending in slaughter? A supernatural plague? The rapture? The best lies always begin with a bit of truth.

This dossier is no theory. I should know. I was there, aboard the USNS Embrace. And what I can tell you is this: What happened—what is still happening—in those waters makes even the most deranged conspiracy theories look like Mother Goose.

In your hand, you hold proof. For the public, I have risked my life compiling and releasing this dossier. Within, you will find reports from clandestine laboratories; interviews with boys who do not exist; images, videos, and recordings scraped from the most classified governmental databases. Evidence of the largest cover-up in the history of the United States of America. All this information was stolen. None of it is verifiable. All of it is true. And what it amounts to is this: The intense secrecy surrounding Anchor’s Mercy is, I regret to inform you, justified. But some secrets are kept, and some secrets keep. It is my official verdict that the government is not keeping this secret; they are being held hostage by it. And when this makes landfall (which it will), there won’t be a fist of dry land that’s safe. But do not despair. This dossier is not evidence that the world is ending, but proof it can be saved.

That is where you come in, explorer.

Leave the safety of your shore behind. Abandon the land you love if you wish to save it. Trust me.

Trust us.

Keep your eyes on the horizon, and pay very close attention to what happens next.

There are moments in life that force us to swim for our lives and ask us what, exactly, we are made of. Writing this book was one of those moments for me, but in the dark dips between swells of inspiration, I realized—again and again and again—that the composition of my creative determination is not made of simply what, but who, and even where.

I am made of Provincetown, Massachusetts, a beachy queer haven that has held my hand for one week every summer, from childhood to now, inspiring not only this book’s setting and colorful cast, but also its emotional marrow. So thank you, Ptown, and thank you to the generations of queer elders who built, maintained, and fought for such a sanctuary, who loved me without knowing me—just some daydreaming kid in the future—enough to make sure I would have this sanctuary one day. I hope to do my part in becoming the where of someone else’s survival by making sure such a place exists years and years from now, when I’m only sand and seashells beneath the blanket of that next daydreaming kid.

Now for the best part: the who who made this book possible.

To my parents and family for all the joy, excitement, and support as I continue to stress everyone out by risking my life to write these books. I’m sorry for getting abducted! And vanishing into a seaside cottage in the dead of winter. And insisting on scuba diving and swimming under boats just to see if I can hold my breath long enough. A special thank-you to my mom, a woman of remarkable light and compassion, to whom this project is dedicated, and who first brought our family to Ptown. Thank you, for everything.

To my agent, Peter Knapp, for his faith in my words and his unflinching commitment to my very strange projects. You’re the best, as is the whole team at Park, Fine & Brower. Thank you, Stuti Telidevara, Danielle Barthel, Kathryn Toolan, and especially Jerome Murphy for early editorial work on this story. You are the best team an author could ask for.

Speaking of sanctuaries, I must thank Scholastic for being not just the publishing house of my books, but a home for my dreams. To my editor, Jody Corbett, who was frustratingly right all along, about far, far too much. I am remarkably proud of what we’ve created. And to Maeve Norton, responsible for every designed element of this book, which are … the best parts of this book! You’re a genius and an icon! To Janell Harris (production editor) for making this maelstrom readable and real. To David Levithan (publisher) for so much, but specifically the funny little video you made chasing a seagull to show exactly how far Scholastic would go to tell the story of Anchor’s Mercy. To Brooke and Seale sparkling boldly in publicity; to Erin, Rachel, Greyson, and Amanda killing it in marketing; to Ellie in the Oval Office with the Clifford-pelt rug; to Lizette, Emily, Sabrina, Maisha, Meredith, and Michael upon the frontier of library-land; to Paul Gagne and the finely attuned virtuosos of the Scholastic Audio team; to Maya Marlette for lending me a seaworthy vessel (a car named Tony Hawk) for my Ptown sojourn; and to the entire sales team pulling my career through ever-shifting tides … thank you all, again and again and again.

There are many real-life people to thank for the fictional details of this book—too many to name here—but I must thank my Cape Cod ambassadors Rachel Lake and Julian Cyr, my aquatic sports expert Mike Brennan, my marine biology source Bryan Legare, my bed-and-breakfast guide Richard, and all those old people at that town meeting about water in Truro. If I haven’t made you proud, I hope I’ve made you smile. Feel free to give me notes the next time I see y’all on Commercial Street.

Speaking of real-to-unreal, I must thank my friends for providing endless material for me to fictionalize. From Wendy Pretendy to Crabigail to jokes I have yet to find a spot for (looking at you, Coat Checkula, the vampire who works coat check), my imagined worlds are so vibrant because of all the color, laughter, and screaming you contribute to my real one. Thanks for sticking with me, like suds tend to do.

To my writing friends, who are just like my other close friends except in need of more therapy, thank you! This past year writing this book was incredibly difficult yet not quite impossible, and the hairline difference in between is entirely made of your undaunted support and meaningful patience. Thank you for listening to all the bad words I had to get out so that the right words could make it to these pages. And a special thanks to my angel Adam Silvera, for holding my feet to the deck (on FaceTime) while I outlasted the seasickening epiphany that it was time to abandon ship and start this book over (again).

To Tracy, my own little lifeboat. I didn’t know all the gifts of dark waters until you floated forth and pulled me aboard. Thank you for telling me about buildings and boats, music and marvels. And for listening when I need to swim myself into circles figuring out a new idea. With you, no horizon seems out of reach. :)

And to you, my readers. Like a pirate’s map in a bottle tossed to your feet by stormy seas, I have no way of knowing when this story will find you. Still, I hope when you finish it, you lift up your head, close your eyes, and listen. Upon the breeze is an echo only you can hear, calling to you from somewhere you belong. Such a place might not yet be real—you may have to pull the island out of the sea itself and open its shores so that others can brave fitful waters to find you—but sanctuary awaits. Maybe at the edge of the world. Maybe in the far future. But in a world connected by water, no one and nothing swims alone. I know I don’t.

Thank you for keeping me afloat.

Love always,

Ryan

February 22, 2025

Ryan La Sala is a bestselling and award-winning author known for his genre-defying, queer-centered horror and fantasy, including The Honeys and Beholder. His work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and more. He writes to you from New York, overseen by his cat, Haunted Little Girl. He can hold his breath for one minute and three seconds. You can ping him on his shell phone at ryanlasala.com.

Turn the page for a peek at The Honeys …

My sister wakes me with a whisper.

“I love you, Mars.” Her voice crumbles in her throat. In the moonlight from my window I can see the gleam of tears streaked over her jaw. She hovers so close I can smell her. Not her usual shampoo, but an unright odor. The rich sweetness of decay, like molding flowers.

“Caroline? You’re back?” I’m confused. The summer night swells with cricket song and the curtains billow against her hunched form, like the outside is trying to take her back. I used to leave that window open all the time when we still snuck out onto the balcony connecting our bedrooms. On nights like tonight, I used to wait for Caroline to tap tap tap on the glass, a book and a flashlight ready. But Caroline and I haven’t met on our balcony in a long, long time.

It’s her, though. Only Caroline would know I still keep the window unlocked, just in case.

“Caroline?” I ask the shadow. The overripe stink.

No answer.

“Why are you home?” I’m too sleepy to hide the hope in my voice. Despite everything from this past year, I’m happy to see my sister. I’ve waited so long for her to come back for me.

She lifts something above her head. I recognize the shape, the catch of soft moonlight on rough metal. It’s my iron sundial. She must have grabbed it from my bookcase. I use it as a bookend because it’s so heavy.

She stifles a sob, heaving the sundial high. I reach for my phone on the nightstand.

“Caroline, what’s going on—”

“Forgive me,” she sobs.

Caroline brings the sundial down on my hand, crushing nail and bone into metal and glass. I’m about to scream when she lifts it again, and this time she brings it down on my head.

Pink lights.

Pink walls.

The blood in my eye turns the clean brightness of the upstairs hallway into a rosy nightmare as I run from my room. From crashing and chaos.

I am slow and I am stumbling. I cradle one hand with the other, feeling familiar skin bent into unfamiliar carnage. The knuckles of my hands don’t match anymore, their twin-hood out of alignment. Like Caroline and me.

She storms behind me. She’s so close her stink overwhelms me. All I can hear is her screaming.

Mars. Mars. Don’t go. Don’t go.

It’s not her voice. It’s not my sister. It’s something wearing her skin, filling her flailing body like a pressurized water hose. She overtakes me before I’ve made it to the stairs, and the pink world whirls as we hit the floor. Upside down, I see the door to our parents’ room open, see Mom in her nightshirt halt. Gasp. Scream. Dad calls up from downstairs.

I barely dodge the next hit, the iron sundial smashing into the floorboards beside my head. I blindly drive a hand upward into a slippery jaw and the sundial tumbles away, down the stairs with gunshot thuds. My vision is fucked up, but in the brightness of the hallway I can see Caroline now. She is filthy, her brown hair clumped with dust and debris. Her clothes cling to her, black with mud, but the plastic Academy logo still shines on her uniform’s sleeve. She pulls something from her waistband and holds it over us.

A knife. My sister has brought home a knife.

But what scares me more are her eyes. Later, I will try to convince myself that there was no sign of my sister in that wild stare. But my dreams will replay this moment with cruel clarity; trap me within it like a bug preserved in amber. I will want to believe I am being killed by a monster, but in the stare of my attacker I don’t see monstrosity. I see my Caroline. Lucid. Herself. So recognizable that my agony—even my shock—dissolves into relief. This is the first time since this awful year began that I’ve looked into her eyes and seen her—seen her—looking back.

Caroline cringes, and it’s all the warning I have before she plunges the knife toward my face. I twist but a seam of fire rips open in my ear. Now I scream, but I can’t hear it, can’t hear anything through the white-hot pain. I feel the house tremble under my back as Dad hits the top of the stairs. I feel Caroline get dragged away. I roll to my side and use my good hand to heave myself onto the banister. I stare into the chandelier that hangs into the great drop of our entryway. The lights are still pink, the world still blurry. The whole house spins beneath me like I’m the center of an unbalanced carousel.

I am powerless as I watch Caroline kick and bite at our dad. Not Caroline. Not our dad. Strangers. Actors. Unreal characters that have broken into my life for this improvised horror. Mom stands in her doorway, another imposter. She claps both hands over her mouth, frozen. I want to scream at her. Want her to help. To fix this.

Caroline sinks teeth into the meat of Dad’s hand. He’s a big man; he flings her off with violent disgust, driving her into the mirror at the top of the stairs. The glass shatters over her, but she never stops moving. Not for a second. She plunges toward me, the carpet twisting beneath her shoes as she tries to get her footing. But she’s too close, too out of control. I know what will happen before it happens.

Caroline trips. She falls into me, arms hugged tight around my shoulders. The banister snaps and we hurtle backward. Then down. The ceiling fills my view. We fall through the chandelier; then the chandelier is falling with us. Like dancers, we spin in the brief infinity of the drop, a storm of light and crystal and blood.

When we hit the floor, Caroline hits first.

She breaks beneath my body. I’m close enough to hear her snap, to feel her stiffen, and to know she’s gone too still. I am wrapped in her arms, her hair, in the sweet stink she brought home. The silence and the stillness scare me more than anything else.

I struggle free, broken crystal biting flesh from my naked thighs, my knees. In the wreckage, I stand.

I look at my sister.

She’s covered in my blood. Her body curls into itself. Her face is the last thing to stop twitching. One eye half-lidded, the other flung wide open like a doll.

Caroline is looking at me when she dies. And she is smiling.

When we were five years old, Caroline gave me a little pink calculator.

It was shaped like a cat and had candy-bright buttons. She liked it, but I loved it, and she loved me, so it became mine. Growing up, she was always like that. Generous and maybe a little too insightful about what people wanted. I played with that calculator endlessly, and when I lost it, she surprised me with a new one. It was our dad’s accounting calculator, stolen from his desk, and because she was Caroline, she’d drenched the buttons in sticky pink nail polish. Just for me.

Caroline got in trouble, and I got a hobby. She gave me lots of strange devices after that, and I bought her every color of nail polish I could find. It was our joke. One year it was an old-school abacus in exchange for neons. Then the sundial for thermosensitive metallics. And finally, my favorite: a 1987 Mayfair Sound Products calculator, made in Japan. A blocky device bigger than my hand. Pleasantly heavy, with noisy buttons. And all I gave her was royal blue. Painfully inadequate, but she wore that color all the time, even after we stopped talking.

In the aftermath of Caroline’s attack, I find the Mayfair at the very bottom of my room’s wreckage. It is utterly smashed. Ruined. But what gets me—what finally shocks me out of my stupor—is a perfect, bloody fingerprint on the device’s one unscathed corner. She must have picked it up, considered it, and put it back before reaching for the sundial to wake me.

I don’t understand why. I don’t need to understand why. I sob as I sift through the mess and, searching for each piece, I learn something.

Death isn’t the end of a life, but the division of it. When someone dies, their soul scatters into all the things they’ve ever given away. Love. Bruises. Gifts. You struggle to piece together what’s left—even the things that hurt—just to feel haunted.

It takes me until sunrise to find every broken bit of the Mayfair calculator. The house is quiet by then, Mom and Dad with the body at the hospital. I face the pieces alone, laid out on my desk in the weak morning light. There’s the brushed metal frame, the popped-out buttons, the emerald guts of circuitry veined in copper. Cleaning the grime off was the easy part. Now I’m trying to figure out how this goes back together. If it goes back together at all.

I don’t know how anything in so many pieces could go back together.

Caroline is dead.

My sister is dead.

There are no pieces, no parts, that can be assembled to make sense of the absence my sister has become. There is just a sudden, shocking emptiness where her life used to be.

I try to count the voids. To trace their shapes. When a person dies, you do this. You try to account for what’s gone. Some of what’s missing will be clear right away. The missing sound of their voice, or the to-do lists they’ll never complete, or the new blankness that sits in their chair at breakfast. Those I’m ready for.

But so much worse are the small, infuriatingly small gaps—really just pinprick holes—that Caroline leaves everywhere else. Emptiness, fired through my memories like buckshot, so scattered that I can’t quantify what’s gone. I can’t count it. I can’t measure it.

My sister becomes a constellation of voids.

And, like the broken calculator, I’m incapable of adding it all up, of making any kind of sense out of it. So I sit at my desk, for days and days. And I stare at the pieces floating in the muted light of each sunrise. Bent metal, plastic buttons, emerald guts, copper veins. Pieces, parts of a former whole.

But now all I see is the new emptiness that separates them.

When I fear something, I study it. Caroline would dance about it or probably write a poem. Something dreamy and creative. But I’m our logical half. A killjoy, but smart. Our necessary evil—we used to joke growing up—as our joint fears pushed Caroline toward art, and me toward research. Toward data and science. Maybe even an anecdotal account from a primary source, if I got desperate.

No one will talk with me about what happened. I become desperate.

So I research death.

I learn about sky burials and water burials. I watch videos of dances and parades, and even ashes being turned into fistfuls of beautiful blue-green beads. I learn about the Jewish custom of covering mirrors so that a mourner’s contemplations reach inward, not outward.

I cover my mirrors, too, but it’s because every time I see myself, I see her. I glimpse her final, twitching grin, like a translucent film laid over my own face. Our face. We’re twins. Not identical, but close enough.

We are twins.

We were twins, I guess.

That happens, too, according to my research. When someone dies, suddenly you’ve made an enemy of the past tense, but the past tense is all you’ve got now and it feels like it knows it.

Well. Fuck the past tense, I guess.

Oh, and also: Fuck the upstairs banister. After that night, I avoided even looking at the splintered breach where Caroline and I fell. Then one morning I woke up to men in boots bounding up and down the stairs, and suddenly it was fixed. That was somehow worse. An ugly feeling burned in me when I put my hands over the new wood, something like betrayal. I didn’t get why, but it’s that same ugly feeling that I feel now, a week later, only eight days after Caroline fell to her death in our home, as I watch a truck pull up our driveway to deliver a brand-new chandelier.

I watch the men hoist the crystal sculpture into place. And as I watch it rise, I think, As far as death rituals go, Caroline would’ve loved this. The drama alone.

Not the chandelier, but the fact that our parents couldn’t go two weeks without replacing it despite the death of their daughter. Same with the banister. I should commend them for even going a day, but then I look up chandeliers online. This one is custom, the kind of shit you have to pull a string to get in less than six weeks. As the installation team turns it on, I force myself to look directly into its cold, bright guts.

When our parents ordered their new chandelier, was their daughter even officially dead?

My mind answers in Caroline’s airy voice.

Probably not, Mars, she laughs.

We hold the funeral in our home a day after the new chandelier goes up.

Like all things with my family, the funeral is a careful performance of obfuscation. It’s the Matthias family way. Mom’s a New York senator, after all, so it’s all of our jobs to keep up appearances. Our lives are beholden to the public eye, and I guess that means our deaths are, too.

As family and friends enter, there will be no sign of what happened here. The crystal has been swept up, the debris vacuumed away, the blood scrubbed from the grout. I secretly think Mom and Dad planned the funeral around the chandelier’s delivery, and not the other way around. It radiates a joyful warmth, boasting that there’s nothing to hide and, even if there was, there’s nowhere to hide it. The light fills every corner of our spacious colonial mansion, which has been bedecked with calla lilies; poster-huge photographs of Caroline, fresh from Staples; and a sweet perfume from the beeswax candles Caroline loved to burn.

What attempted murder? What accidental suicide? Not in this Lovely American Home. Here, enjoy a canapé, why don’t you?

“Mars, sweetie?” Mom calls from inside the house, and it barely reaches me outside on my balcony. The same one Caroline crawled over to get into my window. I’m hiding out here, fiddling with the still-busted Mayfair calculator. “Mars? Are you up?”

I climb inside. I’m supposed to help direct the catering staff during setup, and later I’m on welcoming duty at the front door. Welcome! Come on in. Drinks are that way; the body of my sister is over there. The reenactment starts at four o’clock, don’t be late!

Officially, Caroline did not die in our house. She died two days later, in the hospital, when it became clear she wouldn’t wake up. When the doctors scanned her, they found a milky mass in her brain, and we all learned a new word: glioblastoma. The tumor accounted for her “uncharacteristic behavior,” said the doctors. Her death was inevitable, coming for her no matter what, once that thing took root. In a way, the swiftness of her death could be seen as a mercy.

They said that. But they didn’t know about the attack. No one does, and no one will unless I tell them. Dad took me to a twenty-four-hour urgent care center somewhere outside Westchester County while Mom rode in the ambulance with Caroline. Dad answered questions for me while they checked out my hand and swabbed blood from my hair.

Officially, I was crushed by my bookcase. Dad was ready with the lie when the physician’s assistant asked. When they asked me again in private, just me and the PA, I said, “I know I look bad, but you should see the bookcase.”

Like I said: a performance of obfuscation. And without Caroline here, I’m now unquestionably the lead. I hate it. Our duet has become my solo. For all my sardonic theatricality, I never wanted this stage to myself. It’ll be like this for the rest of my life. I wonder if it will ever not feel like its own form of death.

It certainly feels like death today.

A million times during setup I stop to look for her among the staff filling our house with chairs and tables; filling the tables with pastries and cut fruit. A million times I don’t find her, and I shiver when I remember that she’s in the one room I refuse to enter: the parlor, transformed with drawn shades and dimmed lighting, an entire wall crowded with tribute bouquets from everywhere—from school, from the hospital, even from Aspen. And at the center of the arrangement, a casket of polished cherrywood.

“She would have loved this,” Mom actually said as the coffin was being dragged in through the solarium. The same thing I thought when I watched the chandelier rise like a cold sun. I was being sarcastic, the language Caroline and I shared behind our parents’ backs. Mom is being sincere.

She would have loved this.

As if Caroline spent countless hours vision-boarding her big day. Her “Celebration of Life,” which is printed on the programs in big, loopy letters.

Caroline would’ve hated all this—the performance, the programs—but especially the term Celebration of Life. Caroline was a highly accomplished seventeen-year-old, but she was seventeen years old. There is very little life to celebrate, certainly not enough to go around. In my mind, I joke to her that there’s nothing more gothic than a celebration that hinges on the guest of honor being dead, and she says, Mars, please, don’t make me laugh.

And I remember the way she laughed.

I stop talking to her after that.

After setup and before guests arrive, I’m sent upstairs to get ready. Mom, or more likely one of her aides, has laid out a garment bag on my bed, and inside it I find a simple black suit. I lie beside it in a damp towel, looking at the ceiling, holding Caroline’s knife to my chest. If we’d called the police it would have been confiscated as evidence, but instead I just picked it up from the mess and cleaned it myself. I discovered that it’s not a knife. It’s just knife-like. It’s a flat blade of metal, one end square and sharp, the other hooked. It’s a beekeeper’s tool, meant for prying open the wax of a hive. I press it against my body until the cold metal is as warm as my skin. I stay like that until I’m dry.

For once Mom told me I could wear makeup. Usually she pleads with me to “tone it down” when I’m in public, but not today. It’s not because she’s warming to my fluidity. It’s because all the other signs of what happened—the banister, the chandelier—have been swept up, patched, and hidden away. I’m the evidence that remains. Laced in my mother’s permission is the demand that I do my duty as a Matthias and hide myself, too.

I sit at my vanity and stare into my face. Our face. Our wide jaw and high cheeks, our sharp Cupid’s-bow lips and downturned nose. Our hair is brown. Caroline kept her hair long and in her face. I keep mine long and pulled back, usually, but I let it fall forward now. It hides more when it’s down.

I’m great at makeup but let me tell you, not even a drag-queen-level contour can hide that I’ve clearly been through some shit. Diligently, I blot away my bruises and pin my hair to cover my bandaged ear. I flip my septum piercing up into my nose. I can’t do anything about the plastic splint holding my hand together, except maybe bedazzle it, but even that’s a bit much for the eccentric Matthias twin.

My splinted hand catches on my sleeve as I pull on my jacket, and I hiss in pain. Even small movements hurt, sparks of fire lighting up in my nail beds where the sundial smashed. There’s nothing I can do but wait for my knuckles to heal and my broken nails to grow.

And who knows if I’ll ever hear right again? I still wake up each morning with an earful of blood. Even now, as I apply a fresh bandage, I feel a wet tickle as it begins to soak the gauze.

When I’m ready, I take up my post in the foyer, where I politely welcome guests dressed in dark suits and dark dresses.

I’m so sorry for your loss.

My heart goes out to your family.

You’re in our prayers.

I accept the sad words. I shake one hundred hands, thankful Caroline crushed my left hand and not my right. More than once I catch myself tucking away certain observations so that I can trade with her later, like we always do at the end of Mom’s fundraisers. I shiver, sad all over again, and I’m about to excuse myself when a trio of girls march up to me and one says: “Mars, right? Fuck, you look just like her.”

The girl who speaks doesn’t shake my hand. She pulls me into a hug and I am struck by the overwhelming familiarity of this perfect stranger.

“You probably don’t remember us. We’re Caroline’s friends from camp. I’m Bria.”

“I’m Sierra.”

“Mimi.”

They each hug me. They are the prettiest girls I have ever seen. Mimi is small, round, and pale in a peplum-waisted dress. Sierra is tall, tan, and sleek in a black jumpsuit. And Bria wears a crimson sweaterdress despite the heat, though her brown, marble-smooth skin doesn’t appear to even have pores. They’re completely different, but together emanate a harmonizing beauty. Their loveliness puts me on high alert, as does the fact that they’re from camp. They mean Aspen. As in the Summer Academy at the Aspen Conservancy, where Caroline was when the tumor began to dissolve her sanity.

Allegedly.

If they are who they say they are, what ended in this foyer—right where we’re standing—began with them at Aspen.

“This is …” Bria looks around the grand entryway, at the guests and their expensive mourning splendor, at the lilies and the glossy photos, and finally at the new chandelier. “… so strange. Like, too much, you know? She’d be so mad. Oh, Mars, it must be terrible to have to deal with this without her.”

“I …”

A sob cracks in my throat, surprising me. It’s the first emotion I’ve shown all day. Bria takes my hand and holds it; squeezes it, willing strength into me. I regain myself.

“Listen, Mars,” she says. “I know it can’t mean much, but we’re so, so sorry for your loss. Everyone at Aspen loved Caroline. We were worried when she left so suddenly. And then we heard the news and …” Bria holds my hand even tighter, like it’s the only reason they drove (or more likely were driven by one of the many chauffeurs smoking in our driveway, holding the news vans at bay) two hours from the Catskills.

I pull away. Their hypnotic beauty fades. Finally, I feel what I’m supposed to feel. Anger. The snarling grudge I’ve been tending to summer after summer, as Caroline fled to Aspen without me. With them. She chose them—these rich, glossy dolls—over me, over us, and I’ve hated them from afar for years. But now that they’re here, my resentment withers in their warmth. They feel like she felt. I want to hug them like I didn’t get to hug her.

My breath shakes up through me. I have so many questions for them.

“Caroline loved Aspen,” I say. “She said it was her favorite place in the world.”

Sierra and Mimi exchange a look behind Bria, whose expression stays plain and considerate. I go on. I’m suddenly desperate to know what they know.

“She may not have been acting normal in her last couple weeks. They say the tumor was putting a lot of pressure on her brain. She might have been pretty confused?”

I make it a question, but Bria just nods sympathetically. It’s Mimi who gives me what I want.

“That explains it. She was so different. Like, so paranoid. Even toward us? Usually she tells us everything—well, at least me everything—but then in her last week she—”

“We’re sorry,” Bria cuts in. “Mars, you probably don’t want to hear this. Not today.”

I tuck this moment away for inspection later. Caroline used to be the most easygoing person, always up for anything. She looked forward to Aspen every year, except this past year something changed. She became anxious, and it only got worse as summer closed in on her. Caroline felt something bad coming with the season. She saw signs none of us could see. Maybe she felt that thing growing in her head.

“You used to attend Aspen with her, right?” Bria asks.

I stiffen. How much do they know about my disastrous departure from Aspen? I only answer with: “Yeah, forever ago.”

“Why’d you stop?”

It’s a good question. It’s uncommon to stop attending Aspen once you get in, assuming your family doesn’t blink at the five-figure, eight-week tuition (plus mandatory fees for private tutors, excursions, and transportation). But the way she asks it tells me she knows the truth. Maybe not all of it, but enough to know my falling-out wasn’t a matter of money.

“Just didn’t feel like the right place for me anymore,” I say, gesturing at my body. Dressed in this suit my parents picked out, I look mostly boy, but if Caroline told them anything about me, they’ll know what I mean.

They nod in unison.

“Yeah, people can be assholes,” Sierra says, speaking for the first time.

“It’s not so bad now that we’re older,” Mimi says. “They renamed Battle of the Sexes to the Village Victory Cup. It’s, like, all the same gender warfare stuff? But still.”

“You should come visit,” Sierra offers. “Like, a redo. And you can bring home the rest of her stuff.”

Mimi shoots Sierra a wide-eyed look. Bria, quick and smooth, asks, “Do you ever think about coming back?”

I do, all the time. And I could go back, if I wanted to. But not attending Aspen has turned into a protest that I refuse to end. Still, I miss it every year when Caroline leaves in June, and I resent her every year when she returns in August, kissed brown by the sun and overflowing with private memories baked golden by the hot summer air.

They are waiting for my answer. When they blink, it’s a cascade from left to right, like they’re one large spider.

“Not really,” I say, unsure of what I just saw.

“Fair,” Bria says. “We brought you something. Sierra?”

Sierra opens her bag and pulls out a heavy cylinder wrapped in paper. I know what it is right away. A candle, like the ones we have lit all over the house. I can smell its waxy sweetness on the paper.

“We found it in her bunk with your name on it.”

I stare at Caroline’s handwriting. For Mars. I bite into my cheek to force the tears back. The girls hug me one at a time before slipping into the crowd, and the next grieving party takes their spot before me.

It’s only during a break an hour later that I unwrap the candle, careful not to rip the paper where Caroline wrote my name. The wax is a rich yellow, molded with a honeycomb pattern. Caroline used a metal lettering tool to impress my name into the wax, too. The letters are messily spaced. It’s cute. It’s terrible.

I turn it over carefully, knowing there will be a wax bee melted into the side.

I gasp, nearly dropping the candle.

There is a bee all right, but its body has been crisscrossed with gashes, as though carved by a red-hot knife.

Turn the page for a peek at Beholder …

The Sunday night of the party, a few hours before everyone dies, a girl with bleached bangs is telling you all about her future.

She is, of course, very wrong about what comes next. Her hand spiders up your leg (she thinks you’re older than you are; everyone does). You are uncomfortable (with her, but also in general; the outfit you shoplifted for tonight is way too tight, and you’re sitting on the arm of a sofa that’s probably worth a year of your rent).

You aren’t sure why you’re still here, in this exquisite penthouse apartment. Uhler brought you but, old as he is, he probably left hours ago. And your yiayia, even older, is probably still awake at home, praying over her mirror, begging God to deliver you back to her safely.

You, you, you.

You are Athanasios Bakirtzis. Reckless, charming, self-destructive Athanasios. Athan to your friends, if you kept any, but that last part—the self-destructive part—usually scares them off. Which you like. It means the next time you burn your life to the ground, no one else gets caught in the blaze.

The girl with bleached bangs squeezes your thigh, and you turn back to her. For a moment, you were just staring off at the wall. Specifically at the wallpaper. It’s a sickly yellow color, infested with a sprawling, golden design that seems to shift every time you blink. It looks like neurons—rotting neurons that flicker with poisonous thoughts. And just for a moment, while your eyes sought some logical escape from the pattern—a break or seam or anything that would disrupt that unending, wretched design—it felt like your brain was slowly filling with poison, too.

What’s in your future? the girl asks, her hand squeezing again. What’s fate got in store for you?

Your fate, your future. Two things you refuse to think about, thanks to years of your grandmother’s superstitions. You glance at the wallpaper again, and it’s like being wrapped in your yiayia’s claustrophobic beliefs. Is tonight the night you finally cut your way free?

My future … you say, trying out the words.

The girl squeezes, and her eyes focus on you for what feels like the first time in almost an hour of one-sided conversation. She really wants to know.

You make an excuse to go to the bathroom. Alone.

This is the excuse that saves your life.

I close the bathroom door, shutting out the party.

The room smells like the perfume of the trio of girls who were just in here. It’s a tiny, beautiful space. The dark green wallpaper rustles with monstera leaves, and a golden faucet gleams in the candlelight.

It’s serene. Safe.

I wish I could match it. I often feel this harsh contrast between me and the artful rooms I pass through, working for a designer like Uhler. Someone arranged this space with love and intention. I wish someone would peer into the chaos of my interior and pull me into peaceful composition. It’s no wonder the rich enjoy life; they get to live it in such beautiful spaces. Like this penthouse. It’s softly lit and artfully decorated and way, way too big for the bachelor who Uhler introduced as the host when we arrived. It’s hard to believe anyone lives in so much gorgeous emptiness.

I’m not threatened by the casual grandeur, though. I’ve faked my way through dozens of these parties before. It’s easy. The guests are always the same: brand-new New Yorkers trying out being fascinating, looking for someone to listen to them prove it. As Uhler’s personal party date, that person is usually me.

I’m a good listener, they always tell me, which is true. But the actual truth is that I know if I ask people about themselves, they’re less likely to ask about me. By the night’s end, I know everything about them.

For instance, Hannah Chloe Kaplan, the girl with bleached bangs, thinks she’s an empath because she can read “vibes,” and for the record mine are immaculate, and she doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions because they’re for weak people who don’t believe in spontaneous evolution, whatever that is, and she’s upset with her boyfriend because he doesn’t flush the toilet all the time, which I agreed sounded like weaponized helplessness of the first degree. All this I learned just by letting her talk, and I don’t think she even knows my name.

Athan.

I’m still not ready to head back out there. I flush the toilet with gusto and take my time washing my hands.

Athanasios.

My name means “immortal” in Greek, but it might as well mean “survivor’s guilt.” In my head, I hear the whole thing spoken in Yiayia’s pleading voice. Athanaaaasios. I should go home—this is far too long to be away from an old woman who depends on me—but lately I can’t be around her for more than a few minutes a day. Her rituals, her superstitions, her wards against some all-seeing evil eye that’s searching, searching, searching for what’s left of our family. She’s gotten so much worse in the past few months.

Look, just look, my mind whispers as I wash my hands, but I keep my eyes off the mirror. Not yet.

How long can I hide in here? I don’t want to go back out to the party until that girl has found another person to talk at. There was a cute boy watching me over by the window, but his eyes were shooting daggers. Probably someone I ghosted. Oh well. I should look for Uhler, but he never stays at these things long. And besides, I can’t keep running to him every time I start to feel lost. His charity won’t last forever. I’m not even sure it is charity. All these party invitations, all the checks slipped to me so that Yiayia and I can keep up with our monthly rent—it’s got to add up to something, right? I’m not eager to find out what.

Look. Just a peek, I urge myself.

It’s embarrassing, but I’m building up the courage to look at myself in the mirror. Most people look at themselves without a second thought, but not me. Of all Yiayia’s superstitions, avoiding mirrors is the most important.

Yiayia doesn’t want me to end up like her, I think.

Morning to evening, my grandmother clutches a scratched-up hand mirror and prays. Sometimes it’s a frantic song, and sometimes it’s a quiet mumble I hear through the thin walls of our apartment. For a while we could still go on walks, me leading her with one hand while she used the other to hold the mirror up so she never had to look away. Not anymore. Now she won’t leave our apartment. The praying has gone from a few minutes each hour to a constant babble. She even falls asleep with the mirror buried on her chest, clutching it with hands that have gone clammy and stiff since they used to tuck me in. The few times I’ve tried to slip it away, her grip seizes like a nightmare is blowing through her dreams.

That mirror has her trapped, and I don’t need to wonder why. She tells me, in her rare moments of lucidity. Athanasios! she’ll cry out suddenly, her voice rising like a siren wailing over the din of the city. Our eyes cast curses! On and on, her warnings reel with the momentum of a far-off catastrophe rushing toward us. What we can see, can see us!

Ever since the fire that took our home and family, she’s filled my head with cautions against the evil eye and all the doom its focus brings. Never let it find you, Athanasios. Promise me you will never look for it. Greek superstitions, as ancient as the Acropolis. Myths that have turned into a madness I’m afraid I’ll inherit.

Dr. Wei says the resentment I sometimes feel toward Yiayia is okay. That it doesn’t mean I don’t love her, or miss her, or want the old her back. Dr. Wei says that sometimes we self-mythologize to make ourselves big in our own minds, and Yiayia believes her praying is an act of heroic sacrifice. It’s called a compulsion. He says that I probably have a predisposition, but I still have the chance to prove to myself that mirrors can’t trap or hurt me. Gently, Dr. Wei has asked if I really believe in evil eyes. In mirrors and their magic.

I said I don’t believe in any of it.

But I’m lying.

Because it’s not all myths. I’ve known that since the first time I broke Yiayia’s rule, found a mirror at the very back of our family’s frame shop, and saw what our eyes could truly do. I’m not sure if the Sight is a superpower. It feels more like a curse I can’t control. It happens automatically in any mirror—in anything reflective—when my reflection’s gaze meets my own. It makes living in a place like New York City, an entire world gilded in reflective glass and chrome, a hazard. But I’ve gotten good at dodging myself.

I’ve experimented here and there when I’m feeling brave, mostly just to prove to myself that I’m not suffering from some contagious delusion. I’m not. The power, or blessing, or curse, is real. But that’s all the more reason to fear it. Dr. Wei says my fear enables the mythology, but Dr. Wei can’t see what we can see.

I dry my hands on expensive towels, the kind with tassels. I’m done. Nothing else to do now but face my fears.

Look. Just for a moment. Just for a blink.

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.

For the briefest moment before it happens, I’m able to see my reflection. It’s like looking at a stranger. Someone else’s eyebrows in an unsure furrow, someone else’s chestnut curls, someone else’s fear clenched in an unfamiliar jaw. Then I look into my own eyes, and the Sight activates.

Time reverses in the mirror, showing me everything it has seen this night. I watch my reflection look away, then reach for the towels. I watch me un-dry my hands, then un-wash them; watch the water flow up into the faucet; watch myself back out of the bathroom and the girls from before cram inside; watch a cloud of perfume hang in the air over them before sucking back into their little spritzing bottles.

Now that I’ve finally looked, I’m captivated. The girls gaze at one another in the mirror as they touch up their makeup, but it feels like they’re gazing at me. They smile and laugh. They look so close. I put a hand on the glass and tap, like they’re in an aquarium.

Something slams into the bathroom door and I jump. The reflection in the mirror lurches with my shock, jumping into the previous day, showing a man on the toilet, scrolling on his phone. I cover my eyes, blushing.

The slam turns into knocking. “Just a minute!” I shout.

I rush to reset the mirror. My mind scrambles, and so do the images in the glass. The edges glow white-hot.

“Stop,” I beg the mirror. “Stop. Please.”

I shouldn’t have looked for so long. I tap my fingertips over my eyebrows, like Yiayia used to do when I was a little kid and had even less control over our family power. If she’d only let me practice, if she’d just told me how …

The slam comes again.

Tap tap tap. Stop stop stop.

A scream squeezes through the gap as the door is pushed open. I only just catch it with my foot. The lock must be broken. I peek, and the mirror is back to normal. This time, I avoid my reflection as I swipe my phone from the counter, put on a smile, and swing the door all the way open.

“Sorry—” I start, but no one is there.

The hallway is empty. The party has gone silent. I turn toward the living room, expecting to find it suddenly vacated, but everyone is still there. Just standing still, like statues. Is it a game? Or a prank? A surprise, maybe? But they aren’t huddled in gleeful anticipation, waiting for a person to walk through so they can explode with Surprise! Happy birthday! They look scared. Everyone is facing the walls. Hannah Chloe Kaplan, the girl who said she was an empath, notices me standing in the doorway. Tears are gushing from her unblinking eyes, dragging dark stripes of mascara to her chin.

“Help me,” she whispers. Her eyes rise to the wall behind me.

I turn, but before I can see what she’s looking at, a shadow cuts through the crowd and rams into me, knocking my phone from my hand. It’s a person. They grab me around the waist, driving me backward until I stumble back into the bathroom.

I land on my ass, swearing.

“Hey, what the f—”

The person—the boy I saw earlier, the one watching me from the window—cuts me off. “Don’t open this door. If you don’t open it, they won’t see it. I’ll come back for you when it’s safe.”

He slams the door in my face, and I’m left with just the flash of an impression. I recognize him now as one of Uhler’s many interns. I remember him because he always wears that bandanna knotted around his neck. Orange, black, and white, like a monarch butterfly’s wings. I caught those colors now. I’m sure it was the same guy.

But … what the fuck?

I race to open the door, but hesitate. What did he mean? I’ll come back for you when it’s safe.

It’s the tiniest pause, but in that time something unleashes beyond the bathroom door. It shakes on its hinges as screams flood the penthouse. High, keening cries. Voices pushed to their limits, cracking, breaking, wrenching out of bodies thrown into violent motion.

It’s the other party guests, but how could people sound like that? It sounds evil. Rotten. I back away from the door, expecting something foul to gush from under it.

The screams go on.

And on.

And on.

For minutes.

For an hour.

I press to the back wall and stare at the door, imagining myself opening it and running, imagining my phone somewhere on the floor where I dropped it. Could I grab it? Dial 911? Call Uhler, or even Yiayia? Pointless visions. I’m too much of a coward to go for it. Whatever evil Yiayia warned me against, it’s found me. I looked into the mirror for too long, and it looked back. I don’t know what’s happening, only that I deserve it. I ball myself up next to the toilet and stifle my sobs, afraid they’ll hear me.

The screaming finally resolves into words. Pleading words. The people scream Can anyone hear us? They start to bicker, and it turns into an argument. But at least they sound human now. I nearly work up the courage to swing open the door and try to help, but that’s when the fighting breaks out.

Crashing. Breaking. Agonizing moans. I don’t know how long this goes on for. An hour? Hours? Time frays and unravels as the sounds of violence shred through the thin walls hiding me.

Then someone knocks.

A very polite knock.

So polite, I nearly shout “Occupied!” Like I would in the single-person bathroom of a crowded restaurant. But the memory of the boy with the butterfly bandanna stops me.

He said they couldn’t see the door.

I stay quiet. The knocking moves around, like someone is trying to find the hollow space behind a wall. I creep to the door and just barely make out whispering. It’s Hannah! The empath. Was the boy right? Can she not see the bathroom’s entrance?

She knocks and knocks, whispering, “Please God please God please God don’t let me die in here.”

She’s not looking for a way into the bathroom. She’s looking for a way out of wherever she is.

I’m scared. I’m tired. But hearing her plead like that … it awakens something in me. I turn off the lights so I can see her walking through the glowing band at the door’s bottom edge. The next time her knocking takes her toward me, I give a gentle knock back, just for her to hear.

She goes quiet. I can see her shuffling back and forth.

I knock again. If I can draw her close, I can open the door just enough to squeeze her in, then shut it again. Then she’ll be safe, too. She’ll have a phone. We can call for help.

Her knocks are soft. Questioning. She’s close now. I can hear her breathing.

I knock back one more time.

She shouts, right behind the door, “HERE! HE’S IN HERE!”

All at once the bathroom vibrates as an entire crowd stampedes down the hall, ramming against the walls with terrifying speed. People crawl over one another to get at the door. I fling myself against it, holding it shut, but they don’t even turn the knob. They just pound their fists, desperate and furious. Their cries layer into a messy chant.

Come out, come out, little Athanasios!

The lights flicker. The mirror flickers, too, like it’s responding to the thing in the hall. Not the people, but the thing that’s taken hold of them. The thing that is searching for me.

Then it all goes wrong for Hannah Chloe Kaplan. Within the chaos, I hear her screaming, Back off! Hey! Stop! You’re hurting me! Her voice slides down to the bottom of the door as the crowd begins to crush her. Her cries turn strangled and then I hear a crack. Then another. Meaty snaps of bones. Bloody, bent fingers thrust beneath the door—the only visual evidence I get. They twitch as the chaos outside pulverizes her.

Then it all goes still.

It’s still for minutes. Maybe an hour. I can’t look away from the fingers, and the blood drying on shattered nails. Then, with a schwoop, the hand pulls away. Gone. I blink, realizing that the light from the hall has turned from gold to white.

It’s morning.

I get up slowly.

I crawl to the door, bending as close to the bloody gap at the bottom as I dare. I listen. I can hear the far-off sound of a siren. Traffic. New York, reappearing on the other side of whatever hell the penthouse vanished into for the past five hours.

It’s quiet. It’s so quiet now. Is it finally over? Has the eye finally turned elsewhere?

I close my eyes as I stand, afraid to even glance in the mirror. My hand finds the doorknob, shaking as it twists.

I open the door and my eyes at the same time.

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Copyright © 2025 by Ryan La Sala

Illustration on page 321 by Ryan La Sala

All rights reserved. Published by PUSH, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. PUSH and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: La Sala, Ryan author.

Title: The dead of summer / Ryan La Sala.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : PUSH, 2025. | Audience term: Teenagers | Audience: Ages 14 and up. | Audience: Grades 10–12. |

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ollie fights to survive a deadly summer on an island off the coast of Maine after it is placed under quarantine due to a long-sunken horror rising from the sea.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025006892 | ISBN 9781546125877 hardcover | ISBN 9781546125891 ebook

Subjects: CYAC: Survival—Fiction | Plague—Fiction | Islands—Fiction | LGBTQ+ people—Fiction | LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Paranormal fiction | Queer fiction | Novels

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L14 De 2025 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

First edition, September 2025

Jacket art © 2025 by Bose Collins

Jacket design by Maeve Norton

Author photo by JJ Reddington / RGS Media Productions

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