“Stop!” His voice rings out sharply, hard as a slap. He releases me and I stumble backward. “Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that—what we felt, what it meant—that’s done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.”“Alex!”He has started to turn away; now he whirls around. The moon lights him stark white and furious, a camera image, two-dimensional, gripped by the flash. “I don’t love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never loved you.”The air goes. Everything goes. “I don’t believe you.” I’m crying so hard, I can hardly speak. He takes one step toward me. And now I don’t recognize him at all. He has transformed entirely, turned into a stranger. “It was a lie. Okay? It was all a lie. Craziness, like they always said. Just forget about it. Forget it ever happened.”

“Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that-what we felt, what it meant- that's done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.”

“I do know you.” I’m still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat,struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is amonster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together,broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, andwhole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his evenas he tries to pull away. “It’s me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard—”“Don’t,” he says. His voice breaks on the word.“And I always beat you in Scrabble,” I say. I have to keep talking, andkeep him here, and make him remember. “Because you always let me win.And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we couldfind from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And yousaid to mix them—”“Don’t.”“And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were sohungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.”

“I’m Hana,” Hana says. “And this is Lena.” She jabs me with an elbow. Iknow I must look like a fish, standing there with my mouth gaping open, but I’mtoo outraged to speak. He’s lying. I know he’s the one I saw yesterday, would betmy life on it.“Alex. Nice to meet you.” Alex keeps his eyes on me as he and Hana shakehands. Then he extends a hand to me. “Lena,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve neverheard that name before.”

“I don't love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never love you.”

“Lena.” Alex’s voice is stronger, more forceful now, and it finally stops me.He turns so that we’re face-to-face. At that moment my shoes skim off the sandbottom, and I realize that the water is lapping up to my neck. The tide is comingin fast. “Listen to me. I’m not who—I’m not who you think I am.”I have to fight to stand. All of a sudden the currents tug and pull at me. It’salways seemed this way. The tide goes out a slow drain, comes back in a rush.“What do you mean?”His eyes—shifting gold, amber, an animal’s eyes—search my face, andwithout knowing why, I’m scared again. “I was never cured,” he says. For amoment I close my eyes and imagine I’ve misheard him, imagine I’ve onlyconfused the shushing of the waves for his voice. But when I open my eyes he’sstill standing there, staring at me, looking guilty and something else—sad,maybe?—and I know I heard correctly. He says, “I never had the procedure.”“You mean it didn’t work?” I say. My body is tingling, going numb, and Irealize then how cold it is. “You had the procedure and it didn’t work? Like whathappened to my mom?”“No, Lena. I—” He looks away, squinting, says under his breath, “I don’tknow how to explain.”

“Before, Alex seemed far away. Now the room is full of him: He is so close I can't breathe...move or speak or think. Every time he brushes me with his fingers, time seems to teeter for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving. The whole world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.”