He stops pacing to look at me. I just look back at him blankly.
He grabs the sides of his head. “Dammit! This is bad. Oh, god. What have I done? Why did I lay it on so thickly? You probably just needed a thin coat to begin with, maybe. I could’ve tried that first. Why didn’t I try that first?”
The cabin door opens and Remington and Ana Maria walk in.
Ana Maria runs over to me. “Chrys, you’re back!” She points at her eyes. “I’m all healed. Man those wounds were deep. Took forever.”
Remington goes to Hunter. “What’s wrong, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I did something bad, Remy.”
“What?” he says.
Ana Maria waves a hand in front of my face. I follow it with my eyes.
“It’s Chrys,” Hunter says, “I’m… keeping her calm.”
Remington turns to me quickly and bends down to see my face more clearly. “Why? Why are you doing that?”
“She killed someone in town—accidentally—and she was freaking out. I told her I’d just calm her down until we got back. But I just tried to remove it and she was begging me to put it back. I-I couldn’t stand seeing her like that so I just…”
Remington stands up straight and passes a hand through his hair. “Oh, jeez. Ana Maria, can you heal mental stuff?”
“I wish,” she says, frowning at me.
I blink back at her.
“Then you have to tell Li,” Remington says. “She’ll tell you what to do. I’ll stay here with Ana Maria.”
“Or we could all go,” Ana Maria says.
“No, there’s no need for you and me. Besides, you were talking my ear off in the infirmary about wanting to finish making your stuffed sea slug. Why don’t you work on that now?”
She frowns, keeping her eyes on me. “Fine. I guess.”
Hunter takes my hand and pulls me up. “Come on, Chrys.”
“Oh, Remington,” I say in a monotone. Something is bubbling up to the surface about him, something I want to tell him, but I’m not really sure what, so I just say, “I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?” he asks.
“I don’t know…”
“Is it about Giselle? Did you give her my letter?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s it. Sort of.”
“You didn’t give it to her?”
“I gave it to my friend. She said she’d pass it along.”
He nods. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Anyway, you two should go quickly—catch Li in her office. It’s almost dinner time so she might leave soon.”
Hunter, still holding my hand—something about that seems strange, by the way, but I’m not sure what—pulls me away. I follow him, stepping around the unfinished board game that’s still out on the floor.
We go out of the cabin.
As we walk across the field, Hunter says, “I’m going to let up, just a little bit. That should be fine, right? It’s just a little.”
The blanket of calm in my mind gets thinner and I become more aware of the sensations in my body—my heart beating dully, the warm air on my skin, Hunter’s hand in mine.
Something breaks through the blanket. It’s a thought. Hunter is holding my hand but he shouldn’t be doing that.
I pull my hand out of his.
He stops and turns to face me. “What’s wrong?”
“You can’t hold my hand.” I try to think of why, exactly, he shouldn’t do that, but it can’t break through the blanket.
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
His face turns pink, and that reminds me of something else, something that manages to wiggle out from under the loosening blanket. It’s what Ron said about Hunter.
“Do you like me?” I ask, aware that some part of me would never have asked that, but that part is smothered down now.
Hunter rubs the back of his neck, which is also becoming red. “Uh, is it obvious?”
“Not to me. But Ron said something about that. I just wanted to know if it’s true.”
“Yeah, it’s true.”
“But why? We just met.”
He sighs. “I don’t know. This kind of thing never makes any sense. I just know that when I’m around you, things feel a lot better.”
“Even though my emotions are a mess?” I say, feeling everything beating on the blanket, trying to get past.
He shrugs. “Everyone has messy emotions.”
“Then what makes me special?”
“I don’t know. But, look, it doesn’t matter. I don’t expect anything from you. I know how you feel. And I’m really sorry for doing this to you. I’ll make it right, I promise.”
“It must feel nice for you though, me being so calm. It feels nice to me too, so you don’t have to—”
“No. It doesn’t feel nice. It’s wrong. It’s not who you are. I don’t want you to be like this.”
“You don’t want me to be calm?”
“I do want you to be calm. Just not like this. All of that stuff you can sense beneath the calm, I can sense that too. It’s disturbing. There’s so much buried there, and you have to confront it. You used to be really good at changing your emotions, making yourself feel less depressed, happier. Can you try to do that now?”
“No, I don’t want to see that stuff down there anymore.”
“But you have to eventually. I’m not going to keep it locked up for you forever.” He turns away. “Let’s go to Li.”
He keeps walking to the Main House and I follow him. We get to Li’s office. Hunter knocks.
“Come in,” Li calls.
Hunter opens the door.
“Oh, you two are back already,” Li says, hidden behind stacks of books on her desk.
“Li, we need to talk to you,” Hunter says.
Li gets up, her head visible above the books. “Alright. Come into my lounge then.” She goes through the side door, leaving it open.
We follow and sit down on the sofa.
“What is it?” Li asks. She looks at me with furrowed brows.
“Chrys accidentally… killed a woman in town,” Hunter says. “I’m keeping her calm right now. She doesn’t want to confront it.”
“Ah that explains it,” Li says,
