“We met last summer.”
“Last summer?” Nico frowned, her knees bumping into the bed as she took a step toward me.
“You were busking—”
“Busking?” she interrupted again as she looked at me like she didn’t recognize the word.
“You’re a singer,” I told her, and she looked so astonished that I remember thinking that it was such a strange thing to know something about someone that they don’t know about themselves.
“A really good one,” I added, the words coming a little easier now.
“I mean…” She blinked at me. “I like singing in the shower.”
“And you play the guitar. You were playing the guitar the morning we met.”
“I don’t even have a guitar.”
“You do. I don’t know where it is now, but you do. You used to take it everywhere.”
“There’s a broken one in the attic,” she said to herself. “But I thought it was Dad’s.”
I let her process that for a second, then said, “And you play the piano and the violin.”
Nico seemed even more startled by that. “What was I? Some sort of savant?”
“Not quite,” I chuckled lightly. “But you’re very talented.”
I almost used the past tense as well, but managed to correct myself before I did.
“That explains the Moleskine. They must be my lyrics, not other people’s.” She reached down and picked it up, flicking through it as she asked, “Where was I busking when we met?”
“Outside Brighton station.”
Nico went quiet again and I could tell that she was trying to remember, so I held my breath as I waited.
But nothing came.
“What happened?” she asked.
“When you were done, we chatted and you gave me a sticker with your Instagram.”
“I have an Instagram?”
I nodded, achingly aware of how confused Nico looked.
How lost and found, all at once.
But it was right there.
I could see it in her face.
It will be the next thing I tell her.
The next thing.
“I followed you,” I said carefully, like a lighthouse guiding her back to shore, “and we started talking.”
“Then what happened?”
“We met for a coffee a couple of weeks later. But then we … um…” I lost momentum, unsure what to say.
Nico turned her cheek to look at me. “Mum said we were together.”
I shrugged awkwardly. “I mean, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It was nothing serious. Just casual.”
“How casual?”
“We didn’t go on dates or anything. We’d meet up, get a coffee, and walk around.”
Like we do now, I almost added, but I managed to swallow back the words before I did.
“We’d see each other, but then we wouldn’t for a few weeks. Then we would again. Like I said, casual.”
“Casual,” she repeated with a slow nod.
But that obviously didn’t trigger anything, either, as she shook her head.
“What happened on New Year’s Eve? You said that I was supposed to see you? Why didn’t I?”
“You didn’t show up.”
I saw something flutter across her face then, and I was sure that was it as she tilted her head and looked at me, her forehead pinching. “I didn’t show up?”
“You sent me a text,” I said sheepishly, the tops of my ears burning at the memory.
“What did it say?”
“That you’d bumped into friends.” I forced myself to take a breath and said, “Then you dumped me.”
She looked horrified. “Dumped you?”
Nico parted her lips to say something, but nothing came out as she shook her head and started pacing again. I could hear her muttering to herself and she did it for so long I was sure that was it, she was going to grab the duffel and leave, but then she stopped and looked down at the pile of her stuff on the bed between us.
“I did what you said, you know?” she told me, her gaze settling on the red-and-black-striped sweater.
“What did I say?”
“You told me to call 111, remember?”
I remembered.
I’d asked her if she’d called the next day and she said it was fine, didn’t she?
She said she was fine.
What if she’s not fine?
“I called them that night, but I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.”
I had to suck in a breath before I could ask, “Sure about what?”
I tried to brace myself, sure that she was about to tell me that she had cancer, or something.
But how do you brace yourself for something like that?
“I’m fine,” she said, and I stared at her until she said it again. “I’m fine, Mara.”
“Fine?”
“Yeah. They said that I’m fifteen. I’m young and on an obsessively healthy diet, so there was no need for me to detox. They told me to stop taking the supplements to see if it made a difference.”
“OK,” I said to myself, the inside of my head a snowstorm again. “That makes sense.”
“But I knew Mum would never let me stop taking them. So I’d wait, then flush them down the toilet.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing. Within three days, I felt better than I have since the morning they pulled me out of the sea. But I didn’t say anything because I was terrified that whatever it was would come back. Then it did.”
“Yesterday?” I asked, but I already knew.
Nico nodded.
“When you were supposed to see me.”
She cleared her throat, her voice a note weaker than it had been a moment before as she said, “So, when I got sick again yesterday, I freaked and told Mum that I needed to see a doctor. She promised to take me to see a specialist. The specialist being a biomagnetic therapist called Soren who reeked of patchouli.”
She laughed, but it quickly turned into a sob as she sat on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.
“Mara, what’s going on?” she asked, her shoulders shaking as she wept.
But she knew.
We both did.
“It’s OK, Nico. It’s going to be OK,” I told her.
Even though I had no idea if it would be because how do you recover from something like that?
From knowing that your own mother is making you sick so you won’t leave her?
“It’s OK,” I said again, desperate to reach for her.
I could see her coming apart at the seams in front of me, but I was terrified that if I touched her, she’d unravel completely. I couldn’t just let her cry, though, so I inched my fingers forward and let them curl around her shoulder. As soon as I did, Nico breathed my name, turning into me as she looked up at me with those dark, dark eyes. I caught her in my arms before she folded and held her as tightly as I could.
We stayed like that—her sobbing and me with the tip of my nose in her hair, telling her it would be OK over and over, like a prayer I was tucking between her curls—until she stopped crying. When she did, she nodded and I let go, wiping her cheeks with the cuff of my denim shirt as she tried to catch her breath.
“Thank you, Mara,” she said as I waited for her to stop shaking.
After a few minutes I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “It’ll be OK,” I whispered into her curls again. “Stay here tonight. Get some rest and we’ll deal with this in the morning, OK?”
“OK,” she said with a sniff as I caught a fresh tear with the pad of my thumb and swept it away.
I saw that Michelle’s phone was still on the bed then and I reached for it.
“Where are you going?” she asked as I clambered off the bed.
I smiled when I got to the door. “To ask Erin if she doesn’t mind bunking with Michelle tonight.”
When I got back into the yurt, Nico looked so pleased to see me that I mirrored her loose smile.
She was sitting up in the bed, waiting for me, her shoes discarded by the door.
My mother would be apoplectic if she knew I was getting into bed with outside clothes on, but I was too exhausted to care as I kicked off my slides and crawled into the bed next to her as though I’d done it dozens of times before. I thought I would at least tense when I lay next to her, but the sheets were cold and Nico was warm, her curls spilling onto my pillow as she snuggled into me and immediately fell into a deep, easy sleep.
I must have done the same, because I woke up suddenly. It was still dark. After four, according to my phone. I realized then how cold I was, and when I went to tug the duvet over me, I realized that Nico was gone. I sat up, my heart throbbing as I told myself that she was fine, that she’d just gone to the toilet, which is probably what woke me up. So I put on my slides and grabbed my phone and the flashlight my father had insisted I pack and went to look for her.
As soon as I opened the door, the air stuck to my cheeks. The June dryness had passed, the smell of the firepit shooed away by another kind of smokiness as a thick mist dulled the stars and smothered everything ahead of me, forcing me to walk a little slower in spite of my swelling panic.
I could feel a charge in the air, the spark of something that seemed to be getting closer, making it harder to keep up with my breath as I checked the communal toilets to find them empty. Still, I checked each stall as I tried to call Nico’s phone, but when it wouldn’t connect, I remembered that there was no reception at the campsite.
So, I hurried over to the seating area to find the fire was out and the chairs were empty, a pair of white leather sandals forgotten next to an empty bottle of wine. My heart began to beat even faster as I asked myself where Nico could be. Then I really began to panic as I shot a look over to the cliff edge.
That’s when I saw her, her back to me and her hair wild.
She was standing so close to the edge that I wanted to run over and yank her back. But I realized that she could have been sleepwalking and told myself not to run—to be careful—because I read in a book once that you’re not supposed to wake someone when they’re sleepwalking because the shock could kill them.
But when I stood beside her, Nico shivered and said, “There’s a storm coming.”
The way she said it made me shiver as well as I looked out at the sea. The moon was hidden by the mist, which blurred the line of cliffs on either side of us. But the sea was loud, the waves gathering pace, and when the wind howled, it sounded like all the doomed souls lost beneath it were crying out at once.
“There’s a storm coming,” she said again as I carefully slung my arm around her waist.
She was right, I knew, as the gulls shrieked, almost drowned out by the sea hissing back and forth—back and forth, back and forth—over the pebbles and rushing up the rocks to touch the big black sky.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told her.
Nico let me lead her away as the heavens opened, the rain so sharp it felt like the stars were falling as we ran back to our yurt.
As soon as I got inside, I wished there was a lock, and pushed my backpack up against the door.
She was already in bed when I slid in next to her, her breathing slower.
Steadier.
“Promise me,” she said, her breath hot on my cheek as I heard a rumble of thunder followed by a crack of lightning so bright, it drew a white line around the door. “Promise me that whatever happens, I’ll always be your pearl.” She found my hand beneath the duvet and threaded her fingers through mine. “Your pearl of a girl.”
I squeezed her hand. “I promise, Nico.”