I duck under the windowsill, crouching low to force my body through the small opening. Once my feet are firmly on the roof, I stand, feeling all of a sudden reckless and oddly brave. My heart’s battering wildly against my rib cage, and I’m a whole story up from the ground, feeling dangerously free and untethered. Somehow I’m closer to Levi in this moment than I have been since I left him. Like there’s some kind of inexplicable connection between us. Me, here, alone on the roof. Him, there, alone on the island. Maybe he’s doing, and thinking, the exact same thing I am. In this moment, I feel so desperate to see him, to feel him, to be near him. I don’t think I realized it until now, but I long to see Levi again the same way I long to know who I am—if I’m a Similar, just like him. If we have in common this one, gigantic piece of our pasts. I feel like I owe it to him to find out.

I jump.

Tensions

I’m falling through the air. I know I won’t die; the boathouse roof isn’t that high up. Only a story. But still. The likelihood is that I’ll break a bone, maybe two. And yet, there’s something so freeing about jumping from this roof. Like I’m leaping, unavoidably, toward my fate, my future, and—wrapped up in that like a big, tangled mess of twine—my past.

I’m halfway to the ground when I accept that I’ve made a massive mistake. My hands fly up to protect my head, and my stomach feels like it’s being ripped out of my body as I land with a sickening crunch on my right side. I hear something twist and snap, and the wind’s been knocked out of me. Adrenaline must be kicking in, because I only vaguely hurt, and I remember this is how I felt when I leaped from Harlowe’s car. I know I’ve done something incredibly stupid. At least I’m alive.

I’m able to sit up. There’s no blood, which is something. After taking stock of my limbs, I pull up my pant leg to assess the damage to my throbbing right leg. There’s an enormous bruise spreading over my ankle, which is swollen and red. It’s probably sprained, but judging by how tender it feels, there could be a hairline fracture as well. I grimace as I try to put weight on it. I can stand, and so I do, gingerly testing my weight to see if I can walk back to campus.

I hear something. A rustling in the trees by the shoreline. My eyes dart in the direction of the noise, and I spot the outline of a figure there. Someone who’s been watching me. Someone who probably saw me jump.