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They’re on the boat for four days, and then an island in the middle of the sea, where the shores are craggy and the air smells like sunset and salt. And then a cabin, run down and beaten, where Riley lays Will out like a modern day Endymion, combs her fingers through his hair and pushes a needle into his veins twice a day.
“Carefully, carefully,” Kala tells her on the first few trials, gentle and watchful. Riley has tied off her own arm and plunged in a syringe more times than she can count, but it’s different when she cares. Kala smiles at Riley, and Riley knows that she senses the warm wave of gratitude that rolls off of her skin.
“Where the fuck are we?” asks Wolfgang. He always paces, a bundle of nerves, flips back the ratty curtain and squints out at the misty sea, lets his eyes dart around the room.
“Of the coast of Faroe,” says Riley. Wolfgang scoffs. “I’ll move on again soon,” she adds.
“Where?” asks Wolfgang.
But Will starts to stir, and Riley reaches instinctively for Kala. When she turns around again, Wolfgang is gone.
It’s lonely on the island, with only her sleeping prince and her headphones for company, and the crashing waves of the sea. Riley thought she had hated London, but now she finds she misses its sleepless pulse. She smoked her last cigarette days ago, and she misses those too.
“I know how you feel.” Sun perches on the rock next to Riley. Her wan blue grey prison uniform blends into the scree. “I’m not sure I even miss the nicotine. It’s the comfort. The smell.”
Riley tastes a memory of smoky tobacco on her tongue, and she and Sun lock eyes. In unison, they let out the same deep breath.
“Can’t you barter in the clink for that stuff?” Nomi asks. Immediately, she makes a face. “Sorry. Was that insensitive? Should I not say clink?”
“You can say whatever you want.” Sun looks into the distance, but they all know she’s not upset, as surely as they know that Riley is tinged with melancholy, that Nomi is still full from breakfast, that across another ocean, Capheus is rubbing exhaustion from his eyes and reminding himself that he is low on gas.
Riley is persistently lonely, but she’s never really alone. So what’s her problem?
“The middle of a crowd can be the loneliest place in the world,” Lito tells her. “A crowded mind is no different.” Sometimes he speaks with a wisdom, with poetry, that Riley can feel is not quite his own, and she thinks it must be a reflection of Hernando. To love is to create one’s own kind of cluster.
“Very romantic,” Capheus says with a flashing grin. “Riley By-the-sea.”
The days drift in and out like the tides, and the others drift in and out with them, bringing jokes and comfort and flavour from their towns.
The rest of the time, it’s Riley, just Riley. She’s the only one who leaves fingerprints, in this cabin, on an island, easing one eighth of her soul into deeper sleep each day.