Page 33 of If Anything Happens To Me

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yes. Sleep fixes everything,” she said.

Inside the warehouse were some lifesaving packets, kept aboard the patrol boats. I got one packet and tried to tear it open. The wrapping was too thick, so Matt handed me his Swiss Army knife, and I cut it open. I shook out the thin red blanket that was inside and spread it on the ground under a tree. There were also bottles of water and power bars inside the packet, and we shared them.

Iris nibbled on a power bar, then lay down on the blanket. Within a few minutes she had fallen asleep, and I covered her with another blanket from a second lifesaving pack. I glanced over at Matt and saw him texting. But when our eyes met, he put his phone into his pocket. We walked to the other side of the shed so we could talk and not wake Iris up. We sat really close together, leaning against a pile of lobster pots.

“I haven’t known what to say to you for a long time now,” he said. “Ever since Eloise disappeared.”

“People don’t know what to say,” I said. “And when they do, I don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m not exactly ‘people,’?” he said.

“I know.”

The way he was gazing into my eyes made me feel like crying. I’d been on my own with everything until now—Eloise’s death, finding Iris in the woods, not knowing what was going to happen next.

Matt’s blue eyes reminded me of summer skies. His expression was so warm it pulled me even closer to him, so I was almost leaning against his shoulder. I thought back to one night last September, when we’d started a tennis match. We had played on the old courts at Hubbard’s Point, without lights, until well after the sun had gone down. We played through dusk, into the dark, till we couldn’t see anything. We were just friends, that’s all we were, but it was as if our rackets were magnetized to the ball, or that we were to each other.

I felt that way now.

“Life is hard without her,” Matt said.

“For you, too?” I asked, tilting my head to look at him.

“Yeah. She’s your sister, and you two did everything together. But your happiness spread to all of us—to me. When I think of you without her . . .”

I waited for him to finish that sentence, but it seemed he couldn’t. He cleared his throat and looked away.

“Sometimes I wonder what it’s like for you,” he said. “Without her here?”

I closed my eyes. These were not the normal questions people, even close friends, asked. People wanted to know how she died, who found her, what they did to her, whether we got a ransom note. They wanted to know the kinds of details you would read about in a mystery novel, or see on a true crime show. This question was different enough that I felt like answering.

“Lots of times I feel her with me,” I said. “In certain places.”

“Like where?”

“On Dauntless Island. In the Braided Woods. Or at home, sitting on the couch.” I touched the back of my wrist, then the back of my neck. “I’ll feel something right here, not quite a tickle, more like the lightest breeze moving across my skin. I know it’s weird, but I’m sure it’s her. I’m not just imagining things.”

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Matt said. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t feel her nearby. How can she really leave?”

“Because she’s dead,” I whispered, and hot tears scalded my eyes. In New London, thinking of ghosts, I had known that Eloise was now among them. The sea breeze swirled around us, smelling of salt air, seaweed, and lobsters. The scents of our childhood, my sister’s and mine.

“I think she’s here right now,” Matt said. “Because she knows you need her.” He was leaning so close to me, our foreheads almost touching. I felt lightheaded—was he going to kiss me? I thought back to our almost-kiss at Ocean House last summer.

I had wanted to kiss Matt for so long, but my emotions were crashing through me, as if I was a human earthquake. It was all too much; I couldn’t help it, I did that hunching thing with my shoulders and my heart. I looked down at his hands.

Matt wore a Turk’s head bracelet—we’d all learned how to make them in sailing class a few summers ago. It was a three-strand braid of narrow white cord, woven into a mysterious knot that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Once you made the bracelet and put it on, you secured the strands until they were pretty tight, but loose enough to not cut off circulation. You didn’t take it off. You swam with it on, showered with it on, slept with it on.

But Matt saw me looking at it. He tugged on it, working it free, loosening the bracelet enough so he could slide it over his hand. Then he reached for my left hand and slipped it onto my wrist.

“You need this,” he said.

“I do?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. He held my hand, laced his fingers with mine. “It’s a talisman. To make sure everything works out.”

“Finding Hayley, you mean?” I asked, looking into his blue eyes.

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