Luna and the Waterfolk arrived at Beckett’s former Outpost.

She led them around to the port entrance, half full of water now. The furniture inside was floating and loose, pushed by the currents toward the open stairwell door.

Luna kneeled on her board and paddled through the floating debris, shoving chairs and tables away with her paddle to gain access to the stairs. “Luckily we left the door open, or we might not have gotten it open.” She tied her paddleboard to the door hinge. The rest of the group lashed their paddleboards together in a long line. Luna doggie-paddled into the stairwell and climbed. When she pushed through the roof door, oh.

This place had felt like home after only two nights and three days, Beckett had been her family. All she had, and...

She had said goodbye.

It had been easy because she lost everything. She had faded away, becoming a hopeless, drizzled puddle of nothing. She was gone. And when you’re gone you can’t hold on anymore. You say goodbye.

She had been certain she would never see this place again. Because she would never see anything again. She had paddled away, expecting her gone-ness to be forever. And it was forever, and ever and ever gone. The end.

But her body hadn’t complied. It had turned up found, claimed, rescued. But her self floated around watching, untethered, unsure. Found wasn’t a relief when you’ve gone, it’s more like an inconvenience. Like a stutter that you wish no one noticed. Like a crash she wished she had watched out for.

Because how do you go on living once you’ve been gone?

And now, here, opening the door to the rooftop, she found herself—alive. The floating around numbness had gone too. She felt pain, knocked in the gut, doubled over, breathless pain. She dropped to her knees.

Sky rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”

Luna said, “I don’t—no.”

Sky asked, “Buzz, can you carry her to the shade?”

Strong arms lifted Luna. She kept her eyes closed tight, her face shoved into the darkness of her shoulder. Fabric pulled at her hair, it was cool, shaded. She guessed she was inside the canvas tent, but she refused to look, and then she was deposited onto Beckett’s bed. Tears welled up and brutally broke free. She curled into a fetal position, and sobbed, her fists jammed into her eyes.

Sky asked, “Luna, will you be okay? We need to get the food, and—”

River’s voice called, “Did you see the garden?”

“A garden?” Sky left the tent.

Luna cried and cried.

She didn’t think she could ever stop. It was an ocean of tears, of sadness, or loss. For everything she had lost.

But she did stop. The waves finally stopped crashing on her shore and she rolled to her back and looked up at the inside of the tent roof.

Like everyone else Beckett was gone. His shelter empty, and it was just as well. She was a mess. It hurt so much, the memory of his face, the dimples, the brush of his hand, that she felt like she was cracking apart—her empty shell had become too fragile, pieces. Like she might not be able to get back up again.

And a Nomad who couldn’t get back up was a disaster. A catastrophe. The kind of person that broke people’s hearts.

She was wasting all this pain and anguish on him.

He wasn’t lying on a bed crying over her, because he didn’t really meet her. She had never even told him her own name. Any feelings he had were for a dead girl. A girl that was gone, named Anna Barlow, who had been paddling to the settlements, but never made it. A girl who would fade away.

He would be sad, but he would get over her, with his dimpled smile and his mountain house. He would fall in love with a mainland girl, and Anna would be the Nomad who helped him not be so scared on his last few days at the Outpost.

That had been her purpose, her reason, to help him not be so scared.

He would move on.

But her plight was harder.

She knew him. He had been an open book.

She needed him. He had been her safe harbor.

She wanted him, he had been her choice. Waterfolk didn’t get many choices, react, survive, and like Sky was doing, settle.

Luna had stripped off her yoga pants and introduced him to her spectacular awesome, and now the pain ripped through her core with every second that she remembered—

Without her brain being aware, Luna sat up, swung her legs to the ground, and took a deep breath. Then she stood.

It was time to rejoin the living. She was Waterfolk. She might be an empty shell, fragile, but she wasn’t a catastrophe. She needed to get supplies for her new—but first...

She appraised the room. The copy of Walden was still on the night stand, but books would never make it through the ocean, even with the best of intentions. She looked in the trunk at the end of the bed. There was a T-shirt there, forest green. She held it to her face and inhaled. It smelled of Beckett. She pulled it over her head and tied the bottom in a knot, tight around her waist. There was also a watch on the ground, half under the bed. She picked it up. It was silver, the clock face looked antique, valuable. She wound it up and held it to her ear, it ticked. She set the time. It also had teeny tiny words that spelled out, waterproof. She turned it over and it was engraved: G. S.

She put it on her wrist and twisted it a bit to fit. Okay, these were enough.

She strode across the tent, pushed the flap, and wearing her remembrances, stepped outside to pretend to be alive.