Page 40 of The Dead of Summer

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.