His eyes sprang open, and he pulled his hand from hers. What was he doing? What would Meghan think if she saw him holding hands with Sky? How could he do that when Lani was out there somewhere, probably suffering? A couple days ago he didn’t even know this girl’s name!

He scrambled to pick up the magnifying glass. “Uhhh . . . here,” Alex said, shoving it at her. “You want to try?”

She looked startled for a moment, and perhaps a bit annoyed, but then nodded and took it. Kneeling, she magnified one of the pictures. Then another, and another, concentrating harder on each one, but nothing came of it. Finally, on the fourth picture, she really looked at the dots. Was there something they weren’t seeing? She gazed at the picture for several moments, looking at the pattern of the colors, the various sizes of the dots. Some were open circles, and some were solid, filled in. She let her mind wander and kept her gaze unwavering. And then she reeled back and almost dropped the glass.

“What? What is it? Did you see something?” Alex gripped her shoulder, nothing but business now.

She nodded. She tried to trace what she had seen on the palm of her hand, but gave up and instead waved Alex to slide in next to her, which he did. She held up a finger, squeezed his shoulders, and wiped a hand across his furrowed brow, trying to tell him to relax. She breathed in and out, then tapped his chest so he would do it too.

“Okay, okay. I get it. I need to be calm. I was watching you, you know.”

Sky nodded and held up the glass to the fourth painting. She pointed two fingers to her eyes, then to the painting, encircling it to indicate he should focus on the big picture, not just the center of it.

“Got it,” he said. He took a deep breath, let it out, and gazed calmly at the picture. He let his eyes blur just slightly as he looked at the dots. He noticed they were all different sizes, and some were a solid color while others were just rings. He stared and stared, and when the girl next to him shifted and her shoulder brushed against his, he stopped thinking about how important it was to get this clue and started thinking about what it would feel like to kiss a girl on the lips, not that he ever would, but maybe someday, and then he wondered if she thought he was cute, even though he was really a mess after weeks of cleaning up in seawater, and then without even realizing it, before his very eyes, the dots began to shimmer and move.

Alex was so startled that he gasped and stopped relaxing, and the dots went back the way they were. “Bricks and mortar!” he cried. “Something almost happened.” He focused again.

The girl gripped his knee, excited, and that was enough to distract poor Alex in such a way that the dots began to shimmer and move again very soon. He stayed very still, and within seconds all the purple dots had moved to form letters, and the letters solidified and popped out from the painting one at a time, kind of like a 3-D door when you finally get it right. It was almost as if Alex could reach out and grab the letter blocks. But the most hopeful and exciting thing happened when the letters stopped popping, because they twirled around like they were dancing, and they rearranged themselves until the letters spelled a word.

And that word was “BREATHE.”

The Sun Also Rises

On the cool stone floor of their prison, Samheed and Lani huddled together to try to sleep. “When it’s cold like this, I bet it’s nighttime,” Samheed tapped into Lani’s hand, but she didn’t answer. She was already asleep. Samheed uttered a silent sigh.

He was uncomfortable with Lani’s head resting on his upper arm, treating it as a pillow, and he debated whether he could slide his arm out without disturbing her or letting go of her hand. They were tethered by a promise. Their hands weren’t tied together by anything but fear of the other being snatched away. They didn’t know who could see them or if someone— or a whole roomful of people—might even be standing a few feet away. It was a creepy feeling. Samheed shivered and tried to stop thinking about it.

Soon enough Sam knew he had to either pull his arm out from under Lani’s head or lose a limb due to lack of circulation, so he nudged Lani and yanked his arm away, stopping in time to catch her head in his hand. He set her head gently on the stone floor and freed his fingers from her hair, then instinctively smoothed it away from her face, knowing how much it tickled his own nose when she flung it about. He found the most comfortable position under the circumstances and took a fresh grasp of Lani’s fingers while he waited for the numbness in his arm to subside. Eventually his lids drooped, and he slept too.

When Lani awoke, she didn’t bother to open her eyes—what was the point? Instead she readjusted her grip on Samheed’s hand and rolled to her side, pushing her back against his to try to warm it. Under different circumstances, she might delight in holding a boy’s hand for an extended period of time, even if it wasn’t Alex, because it was a new feeling, and Lani was nothing if not an explorer of new things. But there came a time when enough was enough, and after what must have been many days, even weeks, she was so tired of holding Samheed’s hand that she sometimes squeezed it very hard to try and get some of her frustrations out.

The crazy thing was that Sam, who was such a hothead when she first met him, didn’t seem to mind. He let it happen, knowing there was no other way to express emotions in their mute world. He’d squeeze back, but not like one might expect Samheed to squeeze when angry, so it never hurt Lani. Something had changed in him since his early days in Artimé. He’d grown mellower. Lani liked that. She liked it a lot.