Page 26 of Meet Me in Another Life

She flicks sand at him until he flinches. “Want to play pirates?”

He opens his eyes just long enough to roll them. “We’re not twelve anymore.”

It stings. She never wanted them to grow out of their old game. She doesn’t really believe he has. He just knows what fourteen-year-old boys are supposed to like. Cars, and girls, and fighting: not playing at exploring the high seas with their sisters. He didn’t even want to come with her today. He only agreed because he didn’t want to stay home to listen to their parents argue.

Thora stares back out at the water, remembering the blue world beneath. Muted sound and ripples of light, and the feeling of a truth hidden down there if she searched long enough. “Why won’t you let me swim past the barrier?”

“It’s dangerous,” Santi mumbles. “There are signs. You can read, can’t you?”

“No,” Thora retorts.

Santi opens one eye to peer at the book in her hands. She turns it surreptitiously until it’s upside down. He half-smiles, but shakes his head.

Thora won’t let it go. “Since when do you care about signs? There were signs all over the lighthouse in Ehrenfeld, but you still went ahead and climbed it.”

Santi sits up, brushing sand off his back. “That was different.”

“Why?”

“The lighthouse was actually worth exploring.”

Thora snorts. “You told me there was nothing in there. It was just an empty shell.”

“There still could have been. I can tell you now, there’s nothing in this lake except pee and old cans.”

“You don’t know that if you haven’t explored it.” He’s doing what she hates, pretending to know better. “Why do you have to be so—big-brothery about it?”

“I am your big brother.”

“By like half an hour. It doesn’t count.” Santi thinks it means something, that they were born at almost the same moment: fate reaching back from the future, binding them together. Thora just thinks it’s funny to tell people they’re twins when they look nothing alike. She crosses her arms. “And you know what I mean. Acting like I’m some little kid who’s going to get myself hurt. I’m not.” Thora has never felt like a child. Not when she was six years old in her dad’s car careening across the wet road. Not now, fourteen and angry and never allowed to express it because Santi has reasons to be angry that she could never equal. “Why don’t you just admit it’s because I’m a girl—”

“It’s not because you’re a girl. It’s because I’m not letting you put yourself in danger for something stupid.”

It’s hard for Thora to remember, sometimes. He has lost so much in his life that the idea of losing her must feel like madness, like the God he believes in testing him beyond destruction.

“Santi, it’s just a lake,” she says, more gently than she knew she could. “There’s no sharks. There’s no tsunamis. Nothing’s going to happen to me.” She doesn’t tell him that shewantssomething to happen to her, wants the unknown and all that comes with it, a desire so strong she can’t put it into words.

“Justleaveit,” he snaps.

She opens her mouth to protest, then closes it. It’s not her nature to hold back. But she’ll do it for Santi. She wonders who she learned that from.

“Hey.” She ducks into his view until he looks at her. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says.

“My birth family didn’t think they were going anywhere.” He rubs his hand across his face. “No one does. Until they do.”

Santi doesn’t talk about his birth family. Thora sits very still, feeling like she’s eavesdropping on him talking to himself.

“My father died mid-sentence.” He frowns, biting his nails. “I’ve never stopped thinking about that. Why wouldn’t God even let him finish his thought?”

Because God had nothing to do with it.Thora files that under “things that wouldn’t help” and tries again. “What was he saying?”

“Nothing important. Arguing with my mother about the next turn.” He shivers. “When I think of the things he could have said, if he’d been ready—”

“I guess...” Thora hesitates, unsure if it’s her place to talk about this. “I don’t know if I’d want to be ready. I feel like I’d rather just—go. In the middle of what I’m doing. Die living, you know?”

Santi glances up at her. “Are you scared of dying?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation. “Terrified. But that’s because I don’t think there’s anything after.” She shrugs. “It’s different for you. You think you’re going on to your parents and your—your sister.”

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