Page 91 of The Narrow

“Eden,” she says, breathless. “Eden, I’m so sorry. What I did—I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. I reach out, catch her hand. The familiar thrum of pain travels up my arm, but it’s almost comforting. Like proof that she’s really her. Her skin is cool but not cold. More alive than ever. The moon breaks between the clouds and lights her hair with silver fire. “Listen. We don’t have much time. We have a way for you and Grace to be together again, but we have to do it fast. Oster is here. He’s coming.”

She grips my hand tight. “Oster? Geoffrey Oster? He was our teacher,” she says.

“I know. You showed me, remember?” I ask.

Her face contorts with anger. “He hated me. He thought he could control Grace. He tried to poison her against me,” she snarls. “And then he—he—” She coughs, her words cutting off.

“No. Don’t think about that right now,” I say urgently. “Look at me, Maeve. You know where Grace is, don’t you? You couldn’t make me understand at first, but now you’re nearly whole.”

“The girl,” Maeve says, her eyes wide. “She’s in the girl that fell in. Grace saved her, but it trapped her somehow. She lifted the girl out of the water, and then she couldn’t get back. She couldn’t get back to me.She left me there.” Her voice rises to a wail.

“She didn’t mean to leave you there,” I say, my hand against her cheek. The starburst of blood in her eye spreads, then contracts again. “She didn’t remember. She and Del—the girl—they’ve become the same person somehow. Their memories got all jumbled together. She didn’t know she was Grace until today.”

“She didn’t leave me?” she asks plaintively.

“No. They kept her from you because whenever she got near the water, even a drop of it, she started to drown again.”

“ ‘They.’ You mean Oster,” Maeve says with a snarl. It’s like her death has scraped away everything but raw emotion. She saws back and forth between rage and grief and longing. They’re all she has left.

“Maeve, if you go near Del, she’ll die.”

“And I’ll have Grace back.”

“Delphine doesn’t deserve to die,” I say. “You can’t want that.”

“Who is she to me?” Maeve asks harshly.

“I love her,” I say. I squeeze Maeve’s hand tightly. I need her to understand, even in her tortured, altered state. I can’t let her anywhere near Del unless she understands.

Maeve laughs softly. She brushes the hair back from my face. “Of course you love her. She’s Grace. There is no one easier to love.” She bends and brings her face close to mine. “I could drown you, too, Eden. Then you could have infinity, like we were supposed to.”

I shudder. She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t mean the things she says with that cruel edge in her voice. I lift my chin and speak steadily. “There’s another way. We think if you do what Grace did, you could be alive again.”

“But I wouldn’t be me,” Maeve says. Her thumb runs over my lower lip. “And you wouldn’t be you. We would rewrite each other. We would be someone new.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” I say. The rain has soaked through my sweater. I’m shivering now. Maeve is steady.

“No. Maybe not,” she says. Her voice is distant. “You are akind person, Eden. I’ve never managed that. Kindness. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.” She rests her hand over my heart, staring down at it. “Yes. I think I can see. How to slip inside. How tobecome.”

“Maeve, get away from her.”

I turn sharply, pulling out of Maeve’s grasp. Oster staggers toward us. He’s carrying a flashlight; the beam half blinds me. I raise a hand against the glow.

“My God, it is you,” he says, staring at Maeve.

She makes a sound like a growl and steps toward him, but I put a hand out to restrain her.

“Get out of here,” I tell Oster angrily. “You’ve done enough.”

“I don’t know what she’s told you, Eden, but she isn’t who she says she is,” Oster replies, holding his ground. “Maeve was expelled because of her relationship with Grace; that’s true. The girls’ parents wanted them separated because they didn’t want their daughters involved in a same-sex relationship—that’s also true. But it isn’t whyItried to keep Maeve away from Grace.”

I ignore him.Whatever he says, it will be a lie.

“We’re not supposed to have favorite students,” Oster says. “But of course we do. And Grace was one of mine. She was a serious girl, but bright, and the funniest one in the room when she opened up. When she told me about Maeve, I was supportive at first. I helped keep her secret.”

“He’s lying,” Maeve says. “He always hated me. Hatedus.”

---