The House Above the Sea

3.

He wakes up before anyone else, though it's hardly waking up at all since he spent a large portion of the night lying awake, watching the gray ceiling.

Joey is still fast asleep. In the dark—Joey can't sleep a lick unless the blinds are all the way shut—Neo swaps pajama pants for gym shorts and tosses a dark hoodie over his head. He leans down to put on tennis shoes—nearly trips into the wall, but quickly recovers—and slips out into the hall through the cracked door.

The glass wall clock above the main staircase reads 7:30; the sun is already up, sliding in gentle golden sheaths through the windows. He has an hour, give or take, before the house rises from its current state of eerie stillness. Aunt Vivian will be up first to check on the baby, and Uncle Duke will follow, stumbling about to get ready for work. Joey is the only outlier; he doesn't have summer practice today, so he might not wake up until noon.

One hour. Neo has one hour to find the ring, get back, and act like he never left at all.

Checking first to make sure the alarm system is off, he steps out onto the front porch, greeted immediately by the buzz of friendly insects and the smell of saltwater in his nostrils. One of the neighbors is out already, watering her rose bushes. She waves a hand at Neo, and he waves back, jumping onto his bike and speeding up the hill.

By the time Neo reaches the abandoned house, his forehead is already sheened in sweat, the sudden humidity making him regret tossing on a sweatshirt in the first place. He twines a finger through one of his curls, which are delightfully frizzed, and hops off his bike.

He's not sure why he expected something to be different, but nothing is. Same brittle grass, same overgrown yard, same massive swaths of peeling white paint. For a second Neo just stands there, his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. He lets the wind, which is twice as strong at this altitude, play at his hair and his clothes. He wants to stay there for a moment, examining the house from a safe distance, but then he feels his empty pocket and his mission surges up again like an unwanted memory.

Then he's on his hands and knees, picking through the grass, his eyes peeled for a glint of silver or diamond in the sun. As he does it, he feels the time ticking by, stretching longer and longer. Has an hour passed already? No. Only twenty minutes. Maybe it's there, he thinks, wandering towards a garden trellis that's more vine than wire. I haven't checked there.

But it isn't there. It's nowhere, and forty-five minutes later Neo is sitting on a half-rotted porch step, watching a line of carpenter ants march towards the front door, making a trail through the dust, and feeling sorry for himself. At the time, taking that ring was imperative. There was no other option. He never imagined that losing it could feel so much worse.

A creak sounds behind him, and Neo jolts. A rat? he thinks. A stray dog? He gets to his feet. Despite the record number of stray animals Joey is known to bring home on a whim, Neo's not so inclined. He isn't fond of the idea of catching rabies, especially not so far from home.

Nearly frantic, he jumps to his feet and whips around. Then he stops.

A boy stands at the house's threshold, or just behind it, really, as if he's afraid of the shafts of morning sunlight just ahead of him. He's young, Neo notices, maybe even younger than Neo is, with a messy head of longish black hair and cheeks a slight but rosy pink and gently, downward sloping eyes that echo of an Eastern ancestry. Half of a pearly white seashell is strung along a thin leather rope around his neck, and held out in the boy's dirt-streaked palms is the ring, glittering and wholly intact.

Neo hesitates. "Where'd you find that?"

The boy nods his head in the front yard's direction. When Neo still doesn't move, the boy leans forward a bit, offering the ring again.

Silently, watching the stranger with caution, Neo takes the ring and shoves it in his pocket. "Do you live around here?" Neo asks after a while. "I'm—uh, Neo O'Reilly. Joey Irvine's cousin."

The boy tilts his head, and though his eyes are questioning, he says nothing.

In the back of his head, Neo knows he's running out of time; he should be home soon if he's hoping to evade Aunt Vivian's suspicion. And yet something—he's not sure what—is keeping him here. "Do you...speak English?"

The boy fiddles with the hem of his flimsy T-shirt—faded, as if he wears it too much—and nods.

Neo sighs. Great. Now I feel like a racist jerk. "So do you talk?"

Now he shakes his head.

"But," Neo adds, frowning, "you can hear me."

The boy's face crinkles suddenly into a smile, and he makes a strange, quiet chuffing noise Neo realizes a second later is laughter. He's leaning against the door frame, his whole chest shaking with the effort, while Neo just stands there, utterly bewildered.

When silence falls between them again, Neo lets it sit for a moment before he asks, "Were you born like this?"

The boy shakes his head.

"So are you sick?"

Another shake.

"Oh. So it was an accident?"

Bit of hesitation, then a shrug.

Neo's head is starting to hurt. He knows that it's rude to ask so many questions, but they fall from his lips without his permission. This boy, whoever he is, is the first person on this island besides Joey and the rest of the family that Neo has had any extended contact with. In many ways, it feels like a breath of fresh air.

But the next question is a mistake: "What's your name?"

Neo knows it's a mistake as soon as it leaves his mouth, but as he's sputtering to disregard it, the boy simply squats down, dragging his finger through the fine coat of dust left on the porch.

As Neo watches, he spells out three letters:

K-I-T.

"Kit?" Neo says.

Kit nods at him with a pleased little smile.

Neo should be done, he thinks. It's certainly been more than an hour, and besides, he's probably grilled Kit enough. Yet he, too, lowers himself to a crouch, meeting Kit's eyes, a lovely, warm shade of brown.

"Do you live in the neighborhood? Like, back down the hill," Neo says, hugging his arms to his chest. "I just haven't seen you around."

Kit gives another fervent shake of his head.

"Where, then?"

Kit lowers a finger to the porch, nail nearly boring into the wood. Neo blinks. It's almost as if he's saying, Here.