“But where are you going to go?” he says.
I look at him, at his beautiful, perfect face, and I try to remember the boy I used to know, the one who didn’t yet know the power he had. The skinny boy. The awkward boy. The sweet boy. The boy I loved.
That boy is gone, just a story now. We are all just stories.
Where am I going to go? Where else is there but here? And what exactly am I stopping myself from doing?
Ivy said everything mine is yours.
I close my eyes and imagine we are on a different island, one far away from here.
I feel the whisper of his lips, the press of his body against mine. I am solid. I am not a ghost, floating around, watching these bodies move together. This is my body and only my body. I can do with it whatever I want.
I am not letting him have me. This is not about him at all.
It’s not just the boys who get to take. It’s not just the boys who get to want.
Ash is just a body with nothing inside it.
It’s my turn now.
I’m sorry, Ivy.
But I’m also not.
“I never know who I’m going to get,” he whispers into my mouth, and I don’t know what or whom he’s talking about—me? Ivy? Tami? Which one of the three girls he has on rotation now? Or is he talking about which version of me—this person who exists without Ivy, or the one who’s nothing but an extension of her.
But there are different versions of Ash too. There is one who loves Ivy, and there is one who needs Tami. And there is one who thinks he’s entitled to yet another. One who thinks he can have us all, that he doesn’t have to choose. There’s a version of me who hates him as he touches me, as he leads me into the house and up to Ivy’s bed, the sheets still tangled from before her leaving.
Hate and want are not exclusive. They can partner. They can feed each other.
Now here I am, claiming Ivy’s bed for myself, and now my body will add to all the stories that have already been told here. My want will add to all the other wants.
But still, I will imagine she is here, with us. She is telling our stories with her body. She is conjuring us into being.
* * *
• • •
I wake up in the forest, alone, and I know that Ivy is home. It is time to find her. It is time to start again.
Little mushrooms sprout out of my skin, and I pluck them off. Their names are on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember what anything is called.
24
It is near sunset when Ivy comes back. The sky is orange and the sun is the color of blood.
I wonder if she can tell, if she has a sense of what we’ve been up to. If she can smell us on each other’s bodies.
She will not tell us about the meeting. She makes us promise to not ask questions. All her shiny things have fallen off and her skin is raw.
She returns with more bottles, more vials, more pills, more potions to conjure magic.
“I did everything he wanted” is all she says. “I did everything I know how to do.”
My rage is big enough for both of us. Its source is infinite, as old as skin.
* * *
• • •
The fires have gotten worse. They are coming down the mountains, eating up the small towns a hundred miles away. We have to stay inside. Outside the glass walls is a thick soup of smoke. The world is on fire.
* * *
• • •
We don’t bother with fancy drinks anymore. We don’t bother with clothes. Time is running out. We burn the tiny paper umbrellas in the sink. Garbage piles up around us.
* * *
• • •
My foot throbs. I think it’s infected.
* * *
• • •
“Are you happy?” I ask Ivy.
A glass shatters on the floor. I cut my finger as I try to clean it up.
“Who said anything about happy?” she says. “I’m just trying to survive.”
* * *
• • •
She takes my hand and puts my finger in her mouth. I feel her warm wetness close around me and pull. My blood is inside her now. There is a piece of her inside my foot, turning into a pearl. We are fused. Whole. We can never be separated.
* * *
• • •
It is better this way. I am not enough on my own.
* * *
• • •
Our teeth grind themselves into stardust. Sparks shoot out of our eyes.
“We are bottomless pits,” we say. “We are black holes.”
* * *
• • •
Ash says: “But you’re a star.”
* * *
• • •
We say: “Stars and black holes are related.”
* * *
• • •
We look it up. We read, brow knitted: “‘A black hole is a massive star that runs out of nuclear fuel and is crushed by its own gravitational force.’”
* * *
• • •
Ash says: “Look who’s an astrophysicist all of a sudden.”
* * *
• • •
Some stars have twins. From far away they look like a single star, but when you get closer, you can see there are two orbiting around the same empty center.
* * *
• • •
There is not enough to go down our throats or in our noses. There is not enough to fill us up. There is not enough to put the fire out.
* * *
• • •
“Black holes are invisible,” we say.
* * *
• • •
Ash says: “Huh.”
* * *
• • •
There is never enough of anything.
* * *
• • •
“A black hole is a star dying.”
* * *
• • •