He stirs.
“You hear that?”
He gives me a look. Stupid question. Of course he hears it. Thechop-chop-chopof a helicopter. A spotlight slides around the landscape. Luckily, the Kevlar of the canoe isn’t reflective like metal would be.
Kiro closes his eyes and traces my lips. We’re two peas in a pod in the slim canoe and he’s feeling my lips.
The moon comes out from behind a cloud, lighting his features. “Look at me,” I whisper.
He opens his eyes. “I’ve been looking at you for days, Ann. I’ll never be tired of looking at you.”
“I mean look at my eyes. I want to see your pupils.”
I place my hand on his beard and pull up his right eyelid, then the left. The left pupil is bigger, but only slightly.
“Does your head still hurt?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
His pause tells me everything. “I’m feeling better. I’m almost home.”
I slide my thumb along his unwelted cheekbone. “Almost home.”
“I can’t wait for you to meet them. Especially Red and Snowy. They’ll be older now, but they’ll remember.”
Home is all he ever wanted. “I’m looking forward to meeting them.”
“I’m surprised they’re not here already. They’d be here if the helicopters weren’t up there.”
“What if they never give up on finding you?”
“They always give up on finding me,” he whispers.
There’s this silence where my mind spins with all of the sadness of that statement.
He pulls me to him more tightly. “I can hear you thinking.”
“No you can’t.”
“Your breathing changes when you’re thinking in dark pictures. It always has.”
He’s right, of course. “You think you can read minds now?”
“No. I can read your body. Even at the institute. All I had was to watch you. Think about you. You know when I first knew you were special?”
“When?”
“It was The Hulk. When you made a joke about The Hulk.”
“Oh my God. I knew you tracked it. Your lips moved, and your eyes were like, sotherefor a second.”
“You surprised me.”
“Yeah, and you pretty much gaslighted me. Iknewyou were aware. God, everyone made me think I was crazy. Including you.”
The helicopter comes over again, flashing its light down the shore. We still; we don’t even speak, like the helicopter might hear us.