Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
I wake up by the ocean.
I know it’s a dream because it’s summer and there are clusters of families and friends and children milling around, building sandcastles that I step on without trampling. Sand pies that I stumble over without smashing.
I accidentally step on limbs as I run from person to person, searching each face for that smile. The one that says unknowable things.
Marcus.
I’m looking for Marcus.
This is the first dream I’ve ever been in without him, and I feel it acutely, like hearing the echo of my voice in a tunnel. The sound is full but filled with an aching aloneness.
There is a magic to being unseen. To running to the water, scooping it up and letting it slip between my fingers. Allowing grains of sand to sift then burrow between my toes.
But the other magic—the magic of being alone together—is gone.
Marcus is gone.
I’m just alone.