Nolan and I don’t move.

“That’s impossible,” Nolan tells me. “There’s no way.”

I chuckle dryly, looking away as Alex nears us. “I know. If you had put a scene like this into Orman, everyone would chalk it up to magic.”

His reply is too quick. “Magic isn’t real.”

I look hard at the boy who stood by the lake and saw flying whales, the same one who took an unspeakable horror that has left him terrified of water and made Orman. He fashioned his despair into something the world could hold and admire and feel comforted by, and he doesn’t believe in magic.

It’s absurd.

“If you think of another explanation, let me know,” I say, and then Alex is hoisting me up on one side and taking me to the car.

“Come on, guys. What are you doing out here?”

Nolan fills Alex in on the way back to Val’s, the three of us, and Wally, bouncing around uncomfortably in the small cab. Nolan and I don’t say another word to each other about magic or anything else.

We don’t need to speak to feel something has changed. We can’t go back to being the same two people we were in the boathouse a few hours ago, before I answered his unspoken cry for help, before he conquered whatever fear forbade him from entering the water in order to help me. Before he confessed that he, too, has a before and an after and that it has something to do with Orman and someone he couldn’t save.

It feels rather like we just took out a giant troll in the bathroom, or fought our way to Mordor, shoulder to shoulder. It’s true: there are some things you can’t go through together without ending up friends.

chapter ten

Nolan wants Alex to drive his truck around the trees and through the sodden miniature meadow that encircles the bookstore. He wants us to bypass the parking lot entirely and pull straight up to the door.

“She can’t walk that far, Alex,” he says across me. “Her ankle is probably twisted or broken or—”

“I am not messing up the ground when the festival is only three days away,” Alex says as he puts the truck into park. His voice is quieter than Nolan’s, nearly drowned out by the rain that coats the windows.

Nolan has no such problem. He’s practically yelling. His eyes are not as wild as they were beside the lake, but they are still a tinge feral.

“Ask me how much I care about your festival right now. She’s hurt. It’s my fault. We’re pulling up to the door.”

Alex opens his mouth to respond, but my movement stops him.

I turn my body toward Nolan and—as slowly as we crept to the lighthouse—raise my hand to his cheek. I blush a little, knowing Alex is watching our every move, not knowing why this feels so inexplicably natural.