Chapter Thirty

As soon as our friends are gone, Bodin approaches Mama and offers her his arm. “You must be exhausted,” he says.

For the first time this evening, I scrutinize her face. For all of the notice she gives me, I can’t believe that her fatigue hasn’t registered before. The flame from the fire highlights fine lines in her face. Her eyes are glazed, as though she’s been awake too long, and her breathing seems…labored.

My heart pounding, I step forward. “Mama, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart.” She waves me off. “Just need to sleep. I’m going to let this young man walk me to the shelter. Maybe get me a bottle of water?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Bodin says gravely.

I shoot him a grateful look, and they make their way through the sand, Mama leaning more heavily against his arm than I would like. He’s practically carrying her.

I bite my lip. We’ve only been on this hell island for four days, and Mama’s deteriorated so much. Too much. How much more time does she have? This close to the end of her life, she deserves cool, clean sheets and tall, frosty glasses of ginger beer. Not this.

“This is awful,” Rae pronounces, dragging me from my thoughts. She crosses her arms and scowls at Eduardo and me in turn. The lengthened shadow that the fire tosses on the sand performs the same action, doubling the injury.

Eduardo sinks to the ground and kinda huddles into himself, his big linebacker body curled into…well, a big linebacker ball.

I raise my hands, palms out. Rae’s just lost her little sister to the hands of an unfeeling scientist. We’re stuck on this twisted paradise. And we have no control over what happens next. I give up.

“It can be my fault, if you want,” I offer. “I don’t mind.”

Rae blinks, as though all sense and rationality has fled my brain. “But it’s not your fault,” she says slowly. “Obviously.”

“I thought it might make you feel better,” I say. “You know, to have someone to blame.”

Rae grins, fast and ferocious. “I had that coming. And you’re probably right. Lola usually bears the brunt of my bad temper, but I couldn’t exactly lash out at her when worms and flowers were falling out of her mouth. I guess I directed it at you instead. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” I duck my head. “I, uh, have been known to take my emotions out on other people, too—namely, Mama.”

She narrows her eyes. “I was also hard on you for another reason. You remind me of Lola. You’re both so much stronger than you think. So, you should actually be flattered that I would consider you as a stand-in for my sister.”

“Oh, I am. So flattered.” I hold up three fingers, bending my thumb to touch my pinkie. “Girl Scout’s promise.”

“You. Lie.” Rae shakes her head, but her lips are curved, too. Just the tiniest bit. “I bet you were never a Girl Scout.”

“I certainly was.” I bob my head. “For about two weeks. And then Mama got on my case about how a Girl Scout is helpful and considerate and does all of her chores. It got annoying…so I decided I wasn’t a Girl Scout anymore.”

“Brat.” I swear there’s a note of affection in her voice. “Told ya you were like my sister.”

“The brattiest,” I agree. “My poor mama. She has the patience of an angel.”

“You’re not half bad, Alaia,” she says. For Rae, this counts as high praise. “But as much as I don’t hate you, I need to be alone right now.”

I give her my cheekiest salute. “Gee, thanks. I love you, too.” And oddly enough, I kind of mean it.

Rae disappears into the woods, in the opposite direction from camp. I start to head off, too, so that I can check up on Mama, but as I turn—

Yep. The ball of Eduardo. Still there. Still unmoving.

I barely know the guy. Have exchanged only a few sentences with him. But I can’t just leave him here. Not when Mama’s in good hands. Not when he’s Mateo’s brother. And especially not when I have a pretty good idea why he’s frozen.

I amble over and plop down next to him. He, too, has the foresight to spread out his sleeping roll, so I sit on the edge of it. He senses me, I can tell, because he shifts ever so slightly away, even as he maintains his impressive imitation of a beach ball.

I’ve never met anyone else with OCD before. Oh, sure, I’ve heard stories of people. Mama’s many acquaintances never fail to tell her about this cousin or that aunt who suffers the same compulsions as me. But I certainly don’t know them. And they’re not remotely close to my age.

I want to bond with him. Ask about his particular brand of compulsions. Find out if the rituals fade as one enters their twenties and the brain more fully develops. But although we’ve been stranded on this hell island together, he has yet to make eye contact with me. Not a single time.

“I’ve been stuck, too,” I say conversationally, wondering if he’ll even bother to respond. “Usually at corners. The beveled edge of a table, or a banister with all of those decorative grooves?” I shake my head at the unnecessary evils. “I can never get the symmetry just right. I have to touch with my left hand, then my right, but then my finger accidentally rolls a millimeter or my nail clicks against the wood, and so I have to do it again. And again and again, until someone stops me. Usually Mama. But in the caves, it was Mateo who helped me when I thought my head was going to explode. When I believed that I would never get clean, ever again.”

Eduardo lifts his head from his arms. “You have OCD?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“And Mateo told you about mine?”

I nod, not sure if he’ll be angry that his brother shared his disorder with me.

To my surprise, Eduardo’s shoulders relax. “He must trust you, then. He and I have an understanding. I said it was okay for him to share my condition with a person he trusts, since it’s his lived experience, as well as mine. Matty’s been rescuing me since he was a little kid. And I…” He looks up at the stars, but I know he doesn’t see any of the constellations. “I shied away from him like he was repulsive to the touch.”

The poor guy. Not only was his brother carried away—in a net, no less—but he’s been beating himself up for wronging the one person who’s always been there for him. No wonder he’s wrapped his arms around his legs. There’s nothing else holding him together.

“You’re a good person,” I say. “Mateo believes that, and I believe him. He loves you through and through, and he understands that it was a natural reaction. He forgives you. He knows that anyone would’ve had that reaction, had they been in your position.”

“So, you can communicate with animals now? Like Sylvie?” Eduardo asks doubtfully.

“Nah. I’d be handcuffed if I could.” I stretch my arms up and in front of me, so I can narrow the sky into the triangle of my hands. Maybe that one patch of stars will help me find the right words to alleviate his pain. “I know because if I had a brother like you, and I adored and looked up to you the way Mateo does, that’s how I would feel.”

“You didn’t back away from him,” Eduardo points out. “You talked to him as though he were still in human form.”

“Yeah, but that’s only because you paved the way. You gave me time to reconcile my feelings, to unjumble my thoughts. I would’ve been too scared to talk to him, otherwise.”

Eduardo stands, his movements quick but graceful. You can see the athlete he once was in the way he stretches to wake up his body once more.

“How old are you, kid?” he asks as he bends himself in half.

“I’m seventeen, just like your brother.”

He straightens. “When I was your age, I still hadn’t fully embraced the necessity of exposures. Oh, my therapists had tried to drill it into my head, that exposures were the only surefire way to noticeably decrease the severity of my compulsion. But I didn’t truly get it. I still believed that the compulsions were a part of who I was.” He snorts. “Like it was a part of me to stop whatever I was doing, plug my ears, and pray to God fifty times a day.”

He shakes his head, disgusted. “You would not believe the number of hours I devoted to my rituals, day in and day out.”

“Try me,” I say wryly. I know enough about scrupulosity OCD to know that it makes an individual obsessed with being a good person, so much that they constantly question their morals, religion, and ethics. They fear that they may have inadvertently crossed a line—even though it’s obvious that they have not.

He flashes me a grin. “Yes, I suppose only someone who’s experienced it could understand. But take it from me, kid. Your OCD is not a part of you. Don’t delay your exposures. It will only make your compulsions worse, not better.”

I nod slowly. I, too, have received the lecture from therapists on countless occasions. But it’s one thing to acknowledge a set of facts. Quite another to believe in their truth to the very core of my being.

I want to believe that the OCD is not a part of me. I do. I wish, more than anything, that I could let the anxiety recede, so that the true Alaia, the one that I am at my core, the one that isn’t plagued by a million “what-ifs,” can come to the surface.

“Your best is good enough,” Eduardo continues, his voice barely audible above the whistling of the wind. “I promise.”

I’ve heard those words before. But they mean something entirely different, coming from someone who’s lived through a similar hell. “Thanks.” I clear the gunk from my throat. “That’s helpful.”

“Can you please leave me now?” he asks gently. “I know you mean well, but I need to bear this pain by myself.”

I nod and creep away, respecting his wishes. Did our interaction ease his suffering, if only slightly? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t have many answers in this complex, messed-up world, but I feel just the tiniest bit less lonely in this isolated island of my mind.

Sometimes, that’s all we can ask for.