Fear: A Gone Novel

vibration might wake her. Her breath tickled.
    Sam’s mind was happy to let this go on forever. His body had a different idea. He swallowed hard.
    Her eyelash flickered. Her breathing changed. She said, “How long can we go before we have to talk?”
    “A while longer,” he said.
    The while longer eventually came to an end. Astrid finally pulled away and sat up. Their eyes met.
    Sam didn’t know what he expected to see in her eyes. Maybe guilt. Remorse. Loathing. He saw none of those things.
    “I forget,” Astrid said, “why was I so against doing that?”
    Sam smiled. “I’m not about to remind you.”
    She looked at him with a frankness that embarrassed him. Like she was taking inventory. Like she was storing images away in memory.
    “Are you back?” Sam asked.
    Astrid’s gaze flicked away, evasive. Then she seemed to think better of it, and she met his gaze squarely. “I have an idea. How about if I just tell you the truth?”
    “That would be good.”
    “Don’t be so sure,” she said. “But I’m out of practice lying. I guess living alone kind of made me intolerant of BS. Especially my own.”
    Sam sat up. “Okay. Let’s talk. First, let’s jump in the lake for a minute.”
    They made their way on deck and plunged off into the chilly water.
    “People will see us,” Astrid said, smoothing her hair back and revealing the tan line on her forehead. “Are you ready for that?”
    “Astrid, by now not only everyone at the lake, but everyone in Perdido Beach and probably whoever is out on the island knows all about it. Taylor’s probably been here and gone, most likely Bug, too.”
    She laughed. “You’re suggesting gossip actually moves at speeds that are impossible.”
    “Gossip this juicy? The speed of light is nothing compared to the speed this will move at.”
    “Move at?” she mocked. “Your preposition is dangling.”
    Several bits and pieces of leering jokes came to Sam’s mind, but Astrid had gotten there quicker and she shook her head and said, “No. Don’t. That kind of joke would be beneath even you.”
    It was good to have her back.
    They climbed aboard and toweled off. They dressed and came out onto the top deck with breakfast: carrots, yesterday’s grilled fish, and water.
    Astrid got down to business. “I came back because the dome is changing.”
    “The stain?”
    “You’ve seen it?”
    “Yeah, but we thought maybe it was because of what Sinder’s doing.”
    Astrid’s eyebrows rose. “What is Sinder doing?”
    “She’s developed a power. She can make things grow at an accelerated rate. She has a little garden right up against the barrier. We’re experimenting a little, eating just a little of the vegetables, seeing if there’s any kind of … you know, effect.”
    “Very scientific of you,” Astrid said.
    He shrugged. “Well, my scientist girlfriend was off in the woods. I had to do my best.”
    Had she just reacted to the word “girlfriend”?
    “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…” He wasn’t sure what he hadn’t meant to do.
    “It wasn’t the word ‘girlfriend,’” Astrid said. “It was the possessive. The ‘my.’ But I realized that was stupid of me. There’s no better way to say it. It’s just that I haven’t been thinking of myself as anyone’s anything.”
    “No girl is an island.”
    “Seriously? You’re misquoting John Donne? To me?”
    “Hey, maybe I’ve spent the last four months reading poetry. You don’t know.”
    Astrid laughed. He loved that laugh. Then she grew serious. “The stain is everywhere I looked, Sam. I traveled along the barrier. It’s everywhere, sometimes just a few inches visible, but I saw areas where it rose maybe twenty feet or so.”
    “You think it’s growing?”
    She shrugged. “I know it’s growing; I just don’t know how fast. I’d like to try to measure it.”
    “What do you think it is?” he asked.
    She shook her head slowly, side to side. “I don’t know.”
    He felt as if a hand was squeezing his heart. The FAYZ punished happiness. He had made the mistake of being happy.
    “Do you think…,” he began, but he couldn’t quite get the words out. He changed it to, “What if it keeps growing?”
    “The barrier has always been a kind of optical illusion. Look straight at it in front of you and you see a blank, non-reflective gray surface. A nullity. Look higher up and you see an illusion of sky. Day sky, night sky—but never a plane. The moon waxes and wanes