I swim in some lazy circles, working to calm my pounding heart. Finn paddles up beside me and then seizes my ankle, tickling the bottom of my foot. I shriek and laugh, splashing away from him. We play until we’re both exhausted and my feet are numb. Then we collapse together on the grassy shore.
“I can’t believe you grew up like this,” Finn marvels. “This forest, it’s the type of place you read about in books.”
My skin crawls.And what a caveat that existence includes.“It’s nothing special,” I mumble.
“Looks pretty special to me.”
I can’t help but notice that while he is talking about the forest, his eyes are on me.
Finn reaches up and snags a fluffy dandelion puff caught in a breeze. “I mostly grew up behind walls. My father always acted like he didn’t give a damn about me or my brothers, but that didn’t stop him from shrinking our world down to the size of a postage stamp. I wasn’t allowed to go much farther than our front door until I was sixteen.” Suddenly, he blows on the puff, sending the individual seeds scattering. “Since then…I’ve tried to be anywhere but home.”
I didn’t expect this confession, or how much it would resonate. My chest feels hollow, hot and cold all at once. “My mother’s the same. Before I was born, she experienced some pretty terrible violence. I think those scars have never fully healed. It’s like she doesn’t know when it’s all right to stop running.”
He rolls over, bringing his face inches from mine, and my breath hitches. “Tell me something you haven’t told anyone before.”
I roll away, putting more distance between us. “Like what?”
“Like a secret.” Finn folds his arms over his chest.
I don’t know how to tell him that everything I’ve sharedisa secret. “I don’t have any.”
“Everyone has secrets. I could go first, to get started.”
“Go ahead.”
“My secret is: Ihatemy father.”
I study him sidelong. Finn glares up at the clouds like they’re withholding answers. “Everyone loves to tell me that I look just like him. My mother says my personality is the most like his, too.” His idle hand tousles his hair. “You know how terrible that is? Getting told you’re just like the person you hate most in this world?”
“What makes him so bad?” I ask. “I mean, besides the murdering innocent animals and saying you have dog shit for brains.”
“Everything,”Finn mumbles. “Just…everything.” He rolls his head to face me again. “Anyway, that’s my secret.”
We appraise each other for a long moment. I know he’s waiting for my answer. In the wake of what he just admitted, a half-truth feels insufficient. So I speak honestly. “I guess…I guess my secret is that I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?”
“Showed someonethis.” I gesture around us. “Due to my mother’s general paranoia, we usually keep to ourselves”—I gulp—“so I haven’t had a lot of chances to meet people like you. Boys, I mean.”
A little smile twitches on his lips. “I haven’t met anyone like you, either, Lyria.”
As we lie there sunning, with the waterfall roaring around us, something swells within me. It’s a revelation that makes me feel filled to the brim with golden light—weightless, like a dandelion seed drifting on the wind.
I daresay Finn is my very first friend.
don’t sleep that night.
Instead, I lie awake listening to his breathing as anxiety twists my stomach into serpentine coils. The inevitability of his departure has me plummeting into bottomless dread. Finn’s arrival imploded my life, infinitely expanding the scale of my world. I can’t fathom how I am supposed to shrink it again after he’s gone.
After a subdued breakfast, I retrieve his sword in its scabbard from where I stashed it in the cupboard. “You’ll probably also need this.”
Finn lights up like a hearth. “I thought I lost that!”
“Technically, you did,” I say wryly, handing it back to him. “Maybe try to hold on to it next time.”
Now I don’t know what to do with my hands.
Perhaps Finn is racked with the same indecision, because he pauses much longer than necessary. “Can I…expect to see you again?”
