Chapter 19
My mouth tastes like metal in the morning and my head is throbbing. Honey is beside me. The top of Kane’s head is butting the top of my head.
I don’t have much energy, so I lie around and read books. The girls swim and lounge around too. Hayden has left camp for a long walk.
Amelia and Mischa are at the table with a pack of cards playing Speed. It’s fun and boisterous and competitive. They are slamming cards down and laughing and arguing, occasionally tickling and wrestling. A lot of touching. They’re frisky like kittens; their playfulness has them both in stitches.
I watch it with envy. It’s far more amusing than anything I could provide, if Mischa was forced to keep my company.
He doesn’t look at me all day. He only looks at the girls, a lot.
Sabrina the most. I think he’s lost interest, at last. Maybe me crying like a little baby last night left him disgusted with me. I could understand if it did.
My brother makes me spar with him. I am angry, and I take it out on the boxing pads. My mind runs off somewhere else. We’re dripping with sweat soon enough, I’m pummeling the life out of him so fast he can’t keep up. Everyone starts watching. Mischa offers to go a few rounds and Kane steps in.
“Austen is kinda... scary good,” Kane explains.
“I see that,” Mischa says.
“He only spars with Will. It’s a safety thing.”
Hayden makes a bonfire. We spit-roast the boar. I can’t eat. After dark we watch the flames like they are television.
Amelia and Mischa sit together. It seems like they are on the cusp of coupling up.
I feel homicidal. My jealousy is selfish and hypocritical, but can’t be helped.
The wind changes and Hayden and I get a burst of smoke from the fire.
He decides he needs his inhaler, and goes back to the boat.
I get away from the plumes and move closer to Mischa.
Kane is exhausted, and says goodnight. He lays his blanket on me and Mischa before he goes.
He puts it over our front and I move over.
I’m now almost as close to Mischa as Amelia is.
I shuffle over more, and now I am closer.
I put my hand under the blankets, against his leg.
He looks alarmed, then puts his hand on my tailbone. I try not to smile.
“I love star gazing,” he says. “There was a night when I was younger I realized that I was so poor and so hungry that I had nothing but my sister and the stars in the night sky. Luckily they were the two most beautiful and precious things in the world.”
“How were you poor?” Isobelle asks. “Aren’t you a rich Russian guy’s kid?”
“My dad found me when we were refugees in Austria.”
“Where were you before that?” Billy asks.
Oh God, here we go.
“We’re from Yugoslavia. There was a war that tore the place apart from the time I was a baby. It would die down in one place and ignite in another. We were sent to my aunt but she was hit by a precision missile.”
Isobelle and Sabrina look at me and William but we don’t give anything away. We listen quietly.
“So what are you?” Amelia asks. “I mean, where exactly are you from? What side were you on?”
“I never picked a side.”
“No, but really though,” she prods him.
“Does it matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one reason people ask that, to decide if I had it bad, if they like ‘my side’, to judge how much me and my people deserved it. I was eleven when I fled. Children don’t get to choose sides, but they do get to be target practice.”
“I...” she stutters. “I just...”
Mischa slides his other hand into mine and we weave our fingers together.
“When we get back to civilization, you’ll do research, pick a side you feel was somehow the biggest victims, and if that’s not what you think my side is...”
“No I...”
“And I can’t say I wasn’t on a side, because mixed people were targets of everyone and if that were really true I’d be dead like my friends.
I saw dead kids from all sides. My adopted dad was the first grownup I ever trusted except for my parents, and I just thought adults must be insane. I’m only on my own side.”
William whispers to Sabrina and she nods. Then he decides to leave for bed with Isobelle. He’s trying not to seem rattled, but he is.
“I don’t mean to upset you, Will,” Mischa tells him.
“Not at all,” he shakes his head, but won’t look at Mischa. “I’m just tired.”
“I don’t blame anyone; I’m not bitter. I can’t live like that.”
He doesn’t know what to say in response. I can feel the girls shift into protective mode. Sabrina comes over and sits at my side.
Isobelle steps in front of Billy.
“That’s a good way to look at things,” she tells Mischa.
Isobelle leaves her blanket with Amelia, but doesn’t take her eyes off Mischa.
My brother looks up at the sky. “I’m sorry about your aunt.”
Mischa shrugs. “It’s best not to feel guilty or angry, Will. Children do not share the guilt of their parents. I wouldn’t want them to think that, no matter what their fathers did.”
He quietly nods. “No.”
Billy looks relieved. Mischa handled all of that beautifully.
All of my fears and worries about him start to lift.
I watch the worry lift off Sabrina and Isobelle too.
If I did fall completely in love with Mischa, it would be right now.
I won’t, but if I did, I would be his, for life, from this moment on.
It won’t happen, but maybe we can actually get through this without a total meltdown from my brother.
Billy takes Isobelle’s hand. “Your turn to get naked for me tonight?”
“You want to draw me like one of your French girls?” she asks.
“Amongst other things,” he says.
It is tense and quiet after they leave.
“I’m sorry about asking,” Amelia says. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It’s okay. I’m not angry with you. It’s natural to look for answers for something you don’t understand.”
I rub the small of his back, under his shirt.
Sabrina is a quiet one, but a master in tact, and changes the subject.
“I’m going to wish on the next shooting star,” she says and looks at Mischa, “and you can have the next one.”
One blips past.
“Your turn, Mischa.”
Another star shoots towards the horizon.
"Time for bed,” Sabrina says.
She kisses me goodnight and mouths to me, asking if I’m okay. I nod. I’m fine.
“I love you,” she tells me, then extends her hand to Amelia. “Come on, I’ll walk you back.”
Amelia takes her hand and turns in for the night.
“I think I just got my wish,” Mischa says.
I sigh. “I think you know what I wished for.”
We both laugh at the idea.
“All of that was very uncomfortable.”
We laugh again.
“I know it’s not her fault either,” he says. “I try to remember that it’s not easy to relate to.”
“Be charitable to us running-dog capitalist Westerners. We’re not as worldly as we think we are.”
Mischa smiles. “I’m also in a weird mood too. I kind of wish you had let me die on Bondi.”
“My apologies,” I say flatly. “I’ll try to remember that for next time.”
"Like I said, weird mood.”
“Why do you want to be dead?” I ask.
“I think my father’s not alive.”
“You think but don’t know?”
“I didn’t know he was dead until Friday. He was on the beach talking to me when I was unconscious. I asked him if he was dead and he said he was.”
I pause a moment. “When you weren’t breathing on the beach you saw him?”
“Yeah,” Mischa says. “A disturbing jolt of news to receive when you are about to die.”
“Maybe the fact that you were hallucinating is part of a near-death experience?”
“I thought about that, but it doesn’t matter because it feels real. My father is either dead, or it was a delusion of my brain being starved of oxygen. Whether or not he was, sooner or later it will be true.”
“I sometimes lose my connection to my surroundings when I get stressed,” I explain.
“It’s usually only a few moments. My head flies away to other places.
I know it’s not healthy and definitely not wanted.
The point is you went through something awful.
I know how awful it is to be outside of your own body, in a dream, from a distance, and everything seems unreal. ”
“What had happened felt real, and like an incredible burden.”
“One thing we all have to accept is the certainty of death.”
“Some more than others,” he says.
“True. I just don’t think I can ever make this thing right again.”
I look at his eyes, staring at the fire.
“What thing?” I ask.
“My life.”
“You’ve had a rocky couple of years. Stability is not everything, but everything is nothing without stability. Give yourself time.”
“Maybe,” he smiles. “But you make solid ground feel a little impossible. I mean, why are you even letting me hold your hand?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe you wore me down, maybe it’s a mind-trick, maybe it’s the wine. I’m definitely jealous of Amelia getting closer to you, but maybe it’s just because I wanted to remember what it’s like to be touched.”
“Do you like it?”
I shrug. “It’s nice, I guess.”
The fire is dying down.
“I never expected this,” Mischa says. “Never expected my heart to break like a regular mortal. I’ve never had to hunt for affection.
Most people show an interest in me, yet I’ve been hit so hard by some overwhelming force from outside of the physical world that now I’m drowning.
Now I wish you could cut open my chest and tear out my heart to stop the pain.
I told Amelia that I want to take it slow, but I think she wants it to be soon.
I don’t exactly want to follow you around like a lost puppy forever.
I don’t want to impose if it’s really not what you want.
.. I just think I should tell you, because I don’t want all my desperate moves to sound like pressure, and I’m trying to be the only one that gets hurt in this. ”
I have a plummeting feeling in my stomach. “Same.”
“But if there is any chance... literally any hope that you would... I don’t mind waiting. I will wait or I’ll go with Amelia tonight and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“Don’t miss out on account of me—I’m not going to stop you. You owe me nothing. Go with her if you want.”
“I don’t want. I have known so little real want in my life.
But the few things I have ever wanted, I want so much they torment me.
It has all been eclipsed by the want for you.
You burn me. It’s charring my insides; I feel like any second it will burn through my skin and I will become nothing if I can’t have you.
I want you beyond words. What do you want? ”
I stay quiet and stare at the fire, feeling for words in the darkness. He bared his soul to me, yet my soul does not reply.
“Want is a strange way to put it,” I say, finally.
He huffs in frustration. “Need. Yearning. Pining. Aching. Fucking aching. I ache for you and if I can’t have you I will never be whole,” there’s pain in his voice. “Kiss me and I will never kiss anyone else. Hold me and I’ll never hold anyone else.”
I do not kiss him. I do not hold him. My soul remains silent. His face is frozen in the warm orange glow while he waits. He sighs and takes my hand off of his.
“You’re going?” I ask.
“It’s time to get some sleep; it’s very late,” he sighs.
He puts out the fire. The galaxy above us becomes bright and milky. We both stare at the brilliant night sky for a moment.
Not a word.
Can my soul be dead?
“Come on,” he says.
He reaches his hand to me, and pulls me to my feet. I stand there, holding his hand until he drops it.
“You are going to Amelia?” I ask.
“I think I’m going... to bed... with her. For my own sanity. There’s no privilege in having someone you don’t want... wanting you. No matter how much I want you...” he sighs, defeated. “Good night, Austen.”
My hand grabs the back of his top. I don’t know why it’s doing that.
He stops, but I don’t have the courage to move.
He steps around and I let him bring his face to mine.
I put my lips on his mouth, slowly and softly until he breathes in sharply, and parts my lips with his own.
He puts his hands in my hair and mine go to his face.
Our tongues touch and I breathe in sharply again.
It’s like an earthquake is rumbling under my ribs.
We press ourselves together and are enclosed in the warmth of our bodies.
His kisses become hungrier and harder, until we take a breath that we had both been holding.
I can feel the flood of emotion welling inside me.
I’m not fighting it. He’s not holding back.
His ache for me is being soothed. In the kiss is the promise that there is something there, that the ice will melt, and he will have me.
I don’t know why I am misleading him like this.
While we kiss I let him work his hands up my spine under my shirt, massaging the tension all the way down from the back of my neck.
I let out a groan and push my pelvis harder into his, so I feel how hard he is under his pants.
I look at his black silhouette in the dark.
Even his outline is beautiful. My head nods automatically, but I don’t know what it’s agreeing to.
In the heat of the moment he drops to his knees and nuzzles at my middle. It surprises me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I need you in my mouth,” he says.
“No no no...” I step back. “You’re a little drunk. I don’t want anything bad to happen.”
“Alright,” he agrees.
He gets up and kisses me once more, softly and sweetly.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Why I did that, why I’m doing this. I’m so sorry, it’s not...”
“No. Don’t be sorry,” Mischa sighs. “It’s okay. I’m an idiot. Let’s just forget about it. We should head back.”
Then he takes my hand and leads me back to the boat, sleeps near me, but he won’t speak another word.