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“You’ve never seen a more devoted father, though,” Nix says. “He spent every minute with me after my mother died. I was only three years old. I don’t actually remember her. I tell him that I do, but the image I have of her face . . . it’s just what I’ve seen in photographs. I don’t remember her voice, or what she was like. I rely on him to tell me.”
I swallow hard. I know for myself how quickly those details fade, even when you’re much older, even when you think you could never forget . . .
“He took me everywhere with him,” Nix says. “He showed me how to run, climb, shoot, fight. He never treated me as inferior because I was a girl. I was always his heir, always expected to grow to be just like him. And that . . .” she sighs. “Is a blessing and a curse. Because of course I’m notexactlylike him. One person can never be just like another.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding, shaken and confused.
Every time I talk to Nix, I feel like she’s relating the exact thoughts swirling around in my brain. She’s voicing my own deepest fears and insecurities, reflected back through the open mirror of her face.
I, too, am supposed to be just like my father.
And Iwantto be. I want it desperately.
I just don’t know if I am.
“You don’t think we’re destined to be like our parents?” I ask her. “Almost every culture has an idiom that says it’s inevitable. ‘The appledoesn’t fall far from the tree’; ‘a fish’s child knows how to swim’; ‘like river, like water . . .’ ”
“Who says that last one?” Nix asks me.
“It’s Catalan. Zoe told me—Cat’s sister.”
“I like it.” Nix smiles. “But no river is the same, and no body of water.”
We’ve reached the edge of the forest that separates the fields and vineyards on the north end of the island from the village on the south. You can follow the road through, or you can diverge onto the many paths that lead through the trees, down into the river bottoms.
“Do you want to run for a while?” Nix asks me.
“Okay,” I say.
I’m still wearing my gym clothes and a beat-to-shit pair of Ares’ old sneakers. I could get new shoes, but it’s been helpful these four years to wear his clothes whenever possible, to read his books, and carry his school bag. A continual reminder of the role I’m supposed to play, so I don’t accidentally slip into being myself.
Nix likewise sports the plain white t-shirt and gray sweatshorts the school provides, the white knee socks only coming halfway up her long shins.
“Come on then,” she says, throwing a teasing smile back over her shoulder. “Try and keep up.”
She sprints off along a side trail, her thighs flashing under the hem of her shorts, her coarse, wild hair streaming behind her.
It’s cooler in the shade of the trees, and darker. Nix is fleet as a deer. I can only keep sight of her from the brilliant red of her hair and the white flag of her shirt.
I can’t tell if we’re running or racing—if she wants me to catch her, or she’s trying to get away.
I sprint full-out, wondering if this is a test. Wondering if her heart is hammering as hard as mine as my pounding feet chase after her.
My sneakers churn up the scent of pine needles and dark earth. As I follow her trail, I can smell Nix as well. A perfume of salt water, clean sweat, and the warm red scent of her hair—like fox fur, wild strawberries, sandstone . . .
Nix leaps over fallen logs, darts around the pine trees. Her laughter echoes through the woods.
She’s a white stag. Catching her will win me some prize: a wish granted, a door to another world . . .
I hear a rushing sound—we’re coming to the river.
I run faster, sure that Nix will stop up ahead. I don’t want her to stop, I want to overtake her.
I sprint forward, the taste of iron in my mouth, almost close enough to grab a handful of her hair . . .
She halts so abruptly that I almost skid into her.
“We’re here!” she pants.
