I shouldn’t have dragged reality into our hideaway, but if Marcos is anything like me, the memories of his grandma might be jagged but he enjoys reliving them.

“My grandma was my best friend,” I admit. “If she hadn’t died, none of this would’ve happened to me.” My throat clamps shut, unwilling to let me continue. “She died really suddenly, and then everything went bad. She would’ve never let my mom do this…get this way…let the Reverend get to her.”

My hands slap a shield over my face, and I’m terrified to open my fingers and find Marcos looking pitifully at me. I don’t think he’d pity me—I just don’t want him knowing these things yet. How relentlessly, hideously trashy my DNA is. How fragile I am. I need him to believe that I’m strong enough and smart enough to get us off this island without falling to pieces over my Goddamn mother. “I’m sorry you lost your grandma,” he says. “But I’m glad you came here.” When my fingers finally separate, Marcos is scanning the cavern. “What if we just…stayed?”

“In the cave?” I sniff, pondering the blankness of the sanctum. There isn’t even food.

“Well, what else? I go back to Texas and you go to Illinois? This way here, I can always see you.” Marcos smiles with no teeth, only dimples. For all of his family turmoil and months at Nightlight, his handsomeness remains open, unlined, and hopeful.

And it obliterates my heart.

“I want to tell you something,” I say, my stomach lurching with a truth I’ve put off way too long. But Marcos deserves it. “Right before I came to the island, I had a boyfriend.”

“Okay, that’s okay,” he says rapidly. He isn’t heartbroken—worse, he’s courteous about it. A kind boy angry with himself because he should’ve known this was too good to be true.

“He gave me this recorder. His name is Ario.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, I’m not done—”

“It’s really okay—!”

Marcos withdraws his feet from my lap, ready to rush back to his depressing reality, but I clutch onto his leg. “Marcos, stay. He’s leaving for college. I think it’s over—it’s…it’s over. Ario didn’t…he doesn’t have any idea what’s really going on with me. He knew—and he tried to be cool with it—but he’ll never get it. He couldn’t. The total nightmare I lived with. My negative, messy life scared him. And after all of this with Nightlight—if I make it out alive—yeah, maybe I could go back to him…but if he didn’t understand me before, he’s really not gonna understand me now.”

Marcos’s leg relaxes back into my lap. His fingers snap once, the click echoing throughout our sanctum. “…I’d understand you.”