Free Locked by Parker Witter

to fall into them and stay there forever. “I’m right here,” he says.
    My eyes well up. I can feel the tears begin to fall—hot and salty as they skim down my cheeks. “No, you’re not,” I say. I’m crying now. The sobs get stronger, until I’m shaking. Noah wraps his arms around me, and I fold into him.
    â€œIt’s okay,” he keeps saying. “I promise I’ll get us home.” But I know now, for the first time since we got on this island, that they are just words. He can’t. He’s right: He doesn’t have the power.
    I cry until there are no more tears left, and then I wipe my eyes, go inside, and begin forever.
    Alone.

Chapter Nine
    I don’t know how long we’ve been here, or how long we’ve been apart, but it feels like forever. Months, maybe more. In reality, it has probably been no more than a few weeks, but time slows down, spreads out, when you’re stuck on a deserted island. There isn’t any TV to fill the days. No school. No homework. No friends or family.
    Some days I think my sister and Ed didn’t make it. That they crashed in the sea just like us and drowned or, more mercifully, were killed on impact. But some days…
    Some days I let myself think about them being alive. I think about the coast guard coming to get them. I think about Maggie—scared, small, and Ed helping her. I think about my little sister—all alone at home with a disconnected dad and a stepmother who doesn’t even know her middle name. And some days? Some days not being able to be there for her, not being able to save her either way—from death, or a life without support at home—makes it difficult to get out of bed. She wasn’t even supposed to come on that trip. If I hadn’t insisted we spend spring break looking at schools…if I hadn’t convinced Dad to make the school let her come…she wouldn’t have been on that plane. She wouldn’t have been dragged around looking at colleges that had nothing to do with her own life. She was only a freshman. She should have been home painting her nails with her friends and going to the movies and shopping with Dad’s credit card. She should have been lying out on our sundeck and watching movies and making popcorn and blowing off studying. She’s fifteen years old. She shouldn’t be dead.
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    Noah is so distant. I hardly ever see him for more than a few minutes at night. He’s gone in the morning before I wake up, and if he’s around during the day he’s silent. He won’t touch me. He will barely even look at me. This notion that the island is keeping us apart starts to feel crazier and crazier. It’s Noah; it has to be. Noah doesn’t want me. He’s the one who doesn’t want us .
    Or maybe it’s Ed. Like Maggie, he’s always on my mind. I can’t get past our last conversation, that the last words I said to him were that I didn’t know. It was a lie; I knew. I loved him. I wanted to be with him. Why didn’t I tell him that?
    â€œYou’re like a piece of modern art,” he told me a week before we left on the trip. We were sitting on my bed, finishing up some homework, I don’t remember what. We had stopped to make out. He had his hand on my stomach and was drawing some circles there, above my tank top.
    â€œModern art?”
    Ed smiled. He kissed my cheek. “It’s so hard to figure out what’s going on with you.”
    I pushed his hand off and laughed. “There’s nothing going on with me.”
    Ed blew some air out of his lips, ran a hand through his hair. “You are,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like…”
    â€œWhat?” I put my hand on his back, right below his shoulder blades. Ed was always a little bit more sensitive than me. He didn’t love me more than I loved him, I don’t think, but I guess you could have looked at it that