I do as Ellis says. Relax.

I wonder, briefly, if Roxy’s bones could be here. If we could be just above them.

Deep breath.

And there we are, floating in the black.

‘Sometimes I come out here,’ Ellis says, ‘like, probably further than what’s safe, and float for ages. Especially at night, depending on which direction you’re facing, it’s hard to tell where the sky stops and the sea starts.’

‘Kinda nice,’ I say about the phenomenon. He’s right; there’re moments I can even see the stars reflected in the waves.

‘Out here I feel like no one is their own person, maybe.’

‘Hm?’

‘I guess, trying to relate to people, you think about how different everyone is from you. At least, I do.’

‘I do too.’

‘And I wonder silly stuff now. Like who I’d be if my family had b-been normal. And who I’d b-b-be if I’d grown up somewhere normal.’

I don’t speak. Saltwater laps my ears.

‘I didn’t know my grandma well. Constance, I mean. Kinda cold and angry. Even she seemed like she didn’t want anything to do with me sometimes. And I love Mom. Obviously. I get why she wants to keep me safe. It’s just us. But, I don’t know. I wonder how things might be if it had been different. But I don’t know if knowing that would make me happy. Because then I might start wishing for it. Or, even, I don’t know … maybe that version of Ellis is worse.’

My throat contorts in on itself and I can’t speak. I want to speak to him but I can’t let myself.

‘But then I think,’ he says, ‘after all that, out here, in the d-d-dark, I don’t really feel like anything. But in a good way. I feel like a thing in the water.’

‘A thing in the water.’

‘Bodies in the water …’

We’re quiet.

‘I think about this a lot too,’ is all I can muster.

‘I know. That’s why I’m telling you. Like, I talk to Peyton about things sometimes but I don’t know what she’d say to this kind of stuff.’ Maybe I prickle at the mention of her name, because he asks, ‘Is there something going on with you guys?’

The question is so grounded that I’m nearly shaken from my float. I angle my head towards him. ‘You noticed?’

‘A little. Do you like her?’

‘Well enough.’

‘That’s funny,’ he says. ‘She said you guys fight like you hate each other.’

‘We do.’