Chapter 5: What He Crossed

I ran down the hill with the flare gun in my fist and did not remember picking it up.

Abel shouted behind me to wait.

I didn't wait.

By the time I reached the beach, the man had washed up on the sand on his hands and knees, coughing seawater.

His grey shirt was torn at one shoulder.

There was blood on his forehead, and his left forearm was scraped raw along the old burn scar I knew by touch.

He lifted his head, and saw me.

"Lena."

It was Rhys.

For one second my whole body wanted to run to him.

I felt it in my knees and my chest.

Then I thought of the pilot's dry whisper, and I raised the flare gun and fired.

The flare hissed past his hip and hit the sand a foot from his hand, spitting red light and smoke.

He didn't flinch.

He looked at the flare, then at me, and stayed exactly where he was, on his knees in the sand.

"That's fair," he said.

"Don't you talk."

"Lena, where's Junie?"

"Don't you say her name."

"Is she alive?"

"Yes." My voice cracked on it. "No thanks to you."

His face did something I had never seen it do.

It simply came apart, all at once.

He bent over with his forehead almost on the sand and made a sound I will hear for the rest of my life.

I stood over him with the empty gun and I did not know what to do with my hands.

"Rhys," Abel said, coming up behind me, breathing hard. "Get up, man. Before she reloads."

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