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came eight years after Tom did, and that’s how his life has been since. Trailing behind his older brother, who is everything to him. He never probes too deeply into why Tom means everything to him, for fear of uncovering hidden pain about their father having left. He prefers to just let it be fact: all really wants is to be close to his brother. Tom did swimming in school, so had to do swimming too. Tom learned the guitar, so learned the guitar. Tom developed a passion for mathematics and science, so decided he would be passionate about the same. When Tom left university in Chicago and went chasing the worst storms to hit the country, had all his fears realized: he was being left behind. It was this damn eight years between them: What had possessed his parents to leave it so long? Why couldn’t they be two years apart like every other pair of siblings he knew? Tom didn’t stay put anywhere, he followed weather events, studying the extremes endured around the world—at one point he found himself in Siberia, of all places—while was still trying to get through high school. When Tom moved for a time to Svalbard, was limping through his biology degree. only caught up to him, at long last, on his most recent venture into the wilds of the world: a stint at the research base on Shearwater Island, which was dealing with extreme weather shifts, enough to garner Tom’s interest. So much farther away than Tom had ever gone before. All the way down near Antarctica. By this stage Tom was very good at remote, at cold and exposed, at quiet. had never been away from the bustle of the city. But he was determined. He had chosen to study, in a somewhat calculated way, pinnipeds and cetaceans, creatures that traversed the world, that could be found in many pockets of many seas, and thus hedged his bets. A bizarre choice, for someone who had never seen either a whale or a seal. The closest he’d come to an ocean was Lake Michigan. But he knew Tom would choose a rough-edged coastline somewhere. And this time was going with his brother.

The research base on Shearwater is full of interesting people from all over the world. Many of the scientists are from Australia or New Zealand, because of the proximity, but there are quite a few Americans to make and Tom feel more at home, including Hank, their team leader. None of the researchers can make much sense of , who has extremely limited field experience, almost no publications, and who chose to study sea creatures without knowing the sea. It’s quite clear that he has attached himself to his older brother and been pulled along to this outcrop of the world. As a result, never feels very comfortable among the inhabitants of the base. But then he meets Raff.

“Do you know someone hanged themselves off those?”

There is sun, and they are lying in it, letting it warm their faces.

“Off what?” sits up, shields his eyes, follows Raff’s pointed finger to the fuel tanks in the distance. “No.”

Raff nods. “I heard talk about it, a few years back.”

“When did this happen?”

“I dunno. Before I came here.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

stares at the big round barrels, at the metal walkway near the tops of them. “Very sad,” he says, letting the image go.

Raff shrugs. “I tried to look it up online, but I couldn’t find anything. It’s probably an urban legend, like the Shearwater Carver.”

shudders, he hates that story. A man so overcome by the spirits of the dead that he took a knife to all the researchers in their beds, killing them one by one. It can’t be true, surely, but it is disturbing enough that the story exists at all, that there is such a presence here that anyone who comes tries to make sense of it.

He thinks of the weekly psych sessions they’re each required to complete, check-ins to make sure they aren’t suffering any mental health problems due to the nature of their isolation.

“Why does everyone here love saying the place is haunted?” he asks. Halloween is always celebrated with more gusto than Christmas or New Year’s.

Raff’s mouth quirks. “To laugh, instead of being disturbed.”

He supposes that makes sense. Hates thinking about any of it, so turns his mind ahead.

“There’s a botanic garden just outside Chicago,” says.

Raff looks at him and grins, knowing exactly what he’s doing. “And I’m sure he’d love it. But it’s a long way from the sea.”

“Alright, where, then?”

“Vancouver Island,” Raff says without hesitation. “The most whale sightings of any place in the world.”

smiles and thinks about this. “Loads of orcas and humpbacks there.”

“And seals and sea lions.”

“Vancouver Island it is then.”

They laugh, but the laughter trickles away, both aware of how unlikely this plan is to happen. Still. It is nice to lie here in the grass and the sun and daydream.

“A few years ago,” he tells Raff, because Raff loves whale stories more than anything and is always searching his mind for things to tell him, “researchers watched as several orcas attacked a gray whale and its calf. The orcas killed the calf. But then something happened that nobody had expected. Humpbacks arrived on the scene, more than a dozen of them. They ignored the krill-rich feeding waters around them and instead put all their energy into fighting off the pod of orcas, stopping them from eating the dead calf. The humpbacks spent over six hours protecting that baby and it wasn’t even their own kind.”

Raff looks at him.

“There’ve been hundreds of accounts of humpbacks helping other species,” says. “Some of them even include humans. It defies reason. Some scientists say it’s because they’re attuned specifically to the sound of orcas as a threat to their babies. But that doesn’t explain all the stories.”

“Then why?” Raff asks.

“They feel empathy,” says.

When Hank makes the announcement to all the researchers gathered in the mess, it’s like a lifeline for . Three extra months here on Shearwater. Three extra months with Raff. And during these months Raff will turn eighteen and then maybe will not feel so guilty for the things he imagines doing with him.

Despite the excitement that blooms at the thought, waits to see what Tom thinks about staying on another season to help Hank categorize the seeds in the vault. Their team leader has asked for three extra sets of hands.

He is lucky, then, that Tom has fallen in love with Naija, the base doctor, who wants to stay and help.

On the morning of Raff’s eighteenth birthday, there is a storm brewing.

Things have started to get very bad on Shearwater, but wants to give Raff one good day to forget all the rest, all the shit with his family and with Hank, just one.

, Tom, and Naija are living in the red field hut and spending most of their time in the vault. It is a strange experience, and at first Hank made them take a lot of breaks, insisting that so much time underground, specifically under this ground, with this particular task and all its complicated tragedy, could very well make them loopy. So he was on them all the time, checking they’d eaten, checking they’d slept well, checking they’d been up and out for fresh air. This task was asking a lot of them.

All of that stopped when Hank began to change.

But in any case, for Raff’s birthday, has a plan.

They’ve never spent a night together. With Raff sharing a lighthouse with his family, and sharing a tiny field hut with two other scientists, and their whereabouts always needing to be accounted for, there’s no privacy. But there is an empty field hut, with a green door.

On this stormy morning, Tom is drinking instant coffee in the kitchen. makes himself a cup and silently rehearses what he will say.

“You and me on first shift this morning, Al.”

nods. “It’s Raff’s birthday.”

“I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about any of it.”

“Nothing’s happened,” he assures his brother quickly. “But I won’t be sleeping here tonight. I’m gonna stay in the green hut.”

“Shit.” Tom rubs his eyes. “That’s dumb. It’s not safe.”

rolls his eyes. Gives his brother a look. “We’re leaving in a couple of months. And then that’ll be it. And everything here is nuts and I just want him to have a nice birthday. That’s all.”

Tom shakes his head. “I really don’t want to know.”

Later, once they’ve finished another monotonous day underground, Raff waits outside in the Zodiac for to stuff things into an overnight bag. Naija is teasing him mercilessly and laughing that booming belly laugh of hers and Tom is ignoring the whole thing.

But as goes to leave, he says, “I don’t like the storm, Al.” And coming from Tom, who is an expert on storms, that actually means something. But is already on the train tracks, barreling out of the station. He shoves Tom as he dashes past him.

“See you in the morning.”

Raff drives the Zodiac through raging winds and rain and swell that drenches them, mooring it to the metal steps of the green cabin. They climb up and into the shelter, but before closes the door he looks back to the red, where he can see his brother in the doorway, lifting a hand. waves back.

The storm grows. They both spend some time watching it through the windows, noting the rise of the sea, acknowledging with wonder how high it’s come, how it smashes against the walls of the huts. They can recognize that the waves perhaps should not be so high or so violent, but they are distracted.

wakes in the middle of the night to a mighty crash. The rain and wind are both so loud he is deafened. Tom is in their room, looming over them, and behind him is Naija.

“Come on, it’s not safe.” His voice is barely audible over the sounds of the storm and the creaking of the cabin pylons.

They don’t need to be told twice. and Raff grab their things and head for the door. They climb down the steps into the Zodiac, battered by the weather. Raff doesn’t wait—Tom and Naija’s Zodiac is here too, they’ll be right behind—he takes off into the waves, headed for the shore.

But in Raff’s Zodiac, turns to look behind, to check his brother is following. Instead what he sees where the green cabin sat only moments before is something different, shapes he can’t make sense of in the dark and the swell. He blinks, squinting, desperately trying to understand, and then the whole shape moves and he realizes what he is looking at: the cabin has come off its pylons and is on its side in the water. A wave dumps onto it, disappearing the entire hut. screams and Raff grabs for him but is swift, he is plunging into the rough ocean, mad with terror and with grief for he already knows, deep down. The waves batter him and he realizes he may have drowned himself, too, but while there is blind hope he will still try to find him, he will kick and struggle against this violent sea, reaching in the dark for Tom’s body.

He loses consciousness for a second or two but revives quickly as he’s pulled back into the Zodiac. Raff’s strong arms have plucked from this maelstrom and the engine is gunning them away from the hut. What madness possessed him to bring them out here? To this flimsy matchbox house on its toothpick legs? It’s been said for years the green cabin isn’t to be occupied, not since the sea got so high. His brother told him this morning it wasn’t safe.

His brother, whom he has killed.

They do manage to recover the bodies. Dominic and Raff do. They go without telling , and they don’t ever show him what they’ve found, they simply invite him to help bury the sheet-wrapped figures. is distressed—he and Tom have been raised firmly secular and yet he feels a need to wash his brother’s body properly, to give him some sort of ceremonial burial. Instead he shovels dirt onto Tom. A grave down here at the bottom of the world, an unmarked, anonymous grave in the middle of nowhere, without any way to call for help or tell his mom. As he shovels the dirt he thinks of how he has always been trying to catch up to Tom, has spent his whole life chasing after, and how he might actually be able to do it now: in eight years will have closed that gap at last. It is a disaster. It is unbearable.

He finds himself walking north to the isthmus and sitting in that same spot, in the grass overlooking the base, he does this often, no matter the weather. He finds himself looking down at the fuel tanks.