It’s been a month since she left in the night and didn’t return. I clutch the necklace she gave me, praying on the wind she’ll return for me.
“Mona.” I startle when Eli calls my name. I place the necklace back in the pocket of my dress as he comes racing from the tree line, his arms entangling around my waist, dragging me backward until we both fall into the sand, the sounds of our surprised chuckle tickling the air around us.
Father would disapprove of our playfulness, calling it frolicking. He calls Clara an unruly child, and I discern he’d use the same names for me if he saw how at ease and relaxed I am with showing my skin and being in Eli’s arms. Contact makes me feel alive, human. My father would see it as a flaw, an insult to him. With all his beliefs and rules, both his children want to escape him, can he not see how ironic that is? He keeps us secluded on an island in order to preserve our purity, and it only makes us want freedom.
“Why do you play near the water? You realize this will upset your father,” Eli whispers into my ear before releasing me. I crawl onto my knees as he swats the sand from his slacks.
“My father wants us to fear the water, so we never leave this place,” I state the truth. Even paddling is forbidden here. There are tales of a monster living in the ocean’s depths to stop us from wanting to cross it. Our island is a privately owned land bought by my father’s father over sixty years ago.
Despite us being only a couple of hours from a major city by boat, it feels like its own world. Most of us born here have never left this place. All outside influence is kept away. If it weren’t for the books snuck in by a few who get to leave, I wouldn’t understand anything about the outside world.
“This place is our home, Mona.” Eli exhales.
He hates my curious mind. He loves this island and me trapped on it.
My home is with Clara.
Reaching forward, he swipes a strand of hair from my cheek and smiles fondly at me. The silence tightens my stomach. Eli has always cared about Clara and me, but there are lingering looks when we’re alone that encourage me to think he sees me as more than a friend despite our five year age gap. Eli loves our life and believes in my father’s vision, all but when it comes to touching me when he shouldn’t. He scolds me for rule breaking, yet he breaks the worst one.
My eyes dip to his plump lips, my mind pondering what it would be like to kiss them, be kissed by him. Would it be like the storybooks? Enchanting? Life-altering?
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, his tongue swiping out to dampen his lips. I’ve been brought up to believe my thoughts are un-pure and my chastity should be kept for my husband only, but there’s a nagging voice inside me telling me my life is mine and I should do what I feel, not what I’m forced to.
Every thought that isn’t in line with the scripture tells me I’m unruly, but maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.
My father calls it darkness expelling God’s light. Corrupting the pure. What’s so great about being pure? We’re prisoners to his light, not the darkness.
“I wonder what it would be like to be kissed.” I shrug a shoulder, and a smile hooks the corner of my mouth when his eyes widen and appear to turn to glass.
“Do you want to be kissed?” He edges forward, blocking out the sunlight.
My body tilts toward him, my face an inch from his. Every exhale is his inhale. His lips part as his chest rises and falls more rapidly.
I open my mouth and whisper, “I do,” before pecking his nose, getting to my feet, and darting from the sand into the tree line.
“Brat,” he calls, giving chase.
My laughter sends birds flying from the treetops, my feet crunching leaves and branches beneath them as I run. I hear his approach and screech when he collides with me, taking me off my feet and spinning me. He deposits me against a large tree trunk, pushing my back against the bark.
He’s too close. Fire fills his eyes. “You know I can’t kiss you,” he says, but his body tells me something else.
“It’s my birthday,” I remind him. Reaching up, I pull his lips down on mine, and he doesn’t fight it.
The touch is sloppy, uncoordinated. Teeth clank against teeth, our inexperience apparent.
The earth doesn’t move, and my belly doesn’t dip. My life isn’t altered.
Disappointment sprouts roots inside me…and they slowly begin to grow.
Three
Mona
The house is quiet when I return. A sense of dread fills my belly every time I step over the threshold. Our house is on the border of our island, so close to the harbor, I can see it from my bedroom window. Many nights, I’ve thought about running, hiding on one of the food supply boats that go to the city to collect stock for the market we have here, but fear holds me hostage.