Day 30:

Your monster doesn't talk today. You continue reading your father's journal, exercising, and attending your meetings.

"You know, I am proud of you," your mother tells you during the USOAT board meeting, after the others have dutifully filed out of the room. "The Bubble shift isn't easy, but Afua tells me you are doing very well at controlling the Hyde."

A lump forms in your throat, like clay lining your esophagus. "I try."

Your mother smiles down into her tea. "Perhaps I underestimated you, Y/N."

Day 31:

Today the monster talks to you, but you do not respond. You can't bring yourself to read your father's book, either.

The wind buffets the sides of the boat in gusts. It is a lonely day.

Day 35:

You wake up this morning to screams.

They come just before your fitness requirements, the cheerful song discordant in your ears as you sprint out of bed and run towards the hatch at the end of the living room. You don't bother changing out of your pajamas as you throw open the door and hurry down the stairs.

The shriek comes from your right, louder this time. You flick on the light and the monster leaps at you, hurtling into the glass with a force that makes the Bubble shake and almost knocks you over.

"Tyler!" you shout, staggering back as the monster screams, saliva flaying from its mouth, full of sharp teeth. Its eyes are red and bloodshot and its claws rip at the glass as you come closer, spraying sparks across the glass as they rake across the metal with a violent shhhhriek.

The walls rattle, the light overhead flickering. The boat itself seems to moan, swaying under your feet.

It screams again, ramming its body against the wall with a BOOM that shakes the ground beneath you.

"Tyler!" you call again, trying to move with the rolling of the boat. You don't want to get closer, but what choice to do you have?

Leave, a voice in your head says. Leave and do your fitness reqs and he'll stop once he's tired.

And then what?  You think back, the next slam knocking you to the floor. The acrid taste of blood fills your mouth. You yelp, your head spinning, dizzy. You scrabble your fingers on the concrete, using them to press yourself up to keep going. And then he wakes up alone and we pretend it never happened?

"Tyler," you say one more time, forcing yourself to get up the last couple yards and press your hand to the glass. Your sides heave, breathing heavily. "I know you're in there. Come on."

The monster opens his mouth to howl, but you suck in a breath and ignore how the sound blasts your face, keeping your shaking hand on the glass. "You're safe here," you shout over the roars, your mind searching back to what your Dad would say. "I'll take care of you. It's all going to be alright. Tyler, listen to me."

The monster stops, and its swollen head thrashes down to meet your hand, the bloodshot eyes rolling and wild with panic.

"Hey, Tyler," you say, trying to ignore how your voice quivers and almost doesn't come out of your throat. You smooth your hand along the glass as if you could touch the beast. "Shh. Shh, it's okay. You're safe. I'm here."

The monster whines, clawing at the glass, its twisted gray body shaking.

"I'm here," you whisper to it, pressing your head to Tyler's monstrous one. His eyes are huge, afraid, searching yours.

"La mer," you start, voice scratchy and tripping over the words, "qu'on voit danser... le long des golfes clairs a des reflets d'argent..."

The monster's head shoots up, and he watches you, but his breathing stills, the panic fleeing from him like wiggled lines in a comic book.

"La mer," you continue, "des reflets changeant sous la pluie."

The monster's legs gather underneath it, and its form shivers.

"I learned that song in French class," you say. "It's about the ocean. Kind of suits us, doesn't it?"

The monster's gray form collapses into Tyler, gasping on the floor.

"Tyler!" You say, dropping to crouch by him. "Tyler. Are you-"

Your voice cuts off.

He gasps for air on the floor, his skin covered in beads of sweat, shirt damp and plastered to his arms. Coughing like smoke rattles his bones, body convulsing on the ground.

"Tyler," you choke out, pressing your hands all over the glass.

He stays there, gasping, until the shaking finally stops. His hand press into the ground, lifting himself up until he can prop his shoulder against the glass.

"You're all right," you say, relieved, shoulders relaxing for the first time this morning. "For a second I thought-"

Tyler coughs again, hands shaking from where they press against the glass. His head lifts, and his eyes glide up to meet yours.

Something inside you seems to shift when they lock.

His heavy breath shakes his whole body, but he doesn't move from where he looks at you. His eyes are wide, the same green as when you met him. Green as sun on the sea, you think. Your breath echoes in your ears like crashing surf.

But the way you look at each other this time is different. Before, you searched eyes as though prying their shallows for wrecks. Now, it seems, you bathe. You swim in the color. There is the way the light- even this dismal, basement light- reflects into his eyes when he stares into yours.

He sees so much more than you know, you feel, a zing of fear zipping through you, but you do not look away. How can you?

You have been opened, as surely as the ocean surrounds you, cracked open by saltwater fingers and sands of time. With his eyes gazing into yours, you feel as though the sand that muddies your waters has been stripped away, leaving you clear.

His mouth curves up into a weak smile, turning his head, eyes still on you, drinking you in.

"I'll go get you a washcloth so you can get clean," you say, inhaling, the breath shivering in your nostrils, but neither of you move.

"You pulled me back out," he breathes. "How did you do that?"

"I just-" the words lodge in your throat, and you lick your lip. His eyes flicker down to your tongue, and you flush. "I just... talked to you. That's all."

"You're not scared of me?"

"I wasn't going to leave you like that."

"Why?" The word is but a breath. It's what you've both been searching for, as you dodge each others eyes and drink in greedy stares when you can let your eyes meet.

"I don't-" you shake your head. "Maybe for my father. He believed in Outcasts."

Tyler turns his head. "Don't do that," he tells you, tracing your hand on the glass with a finger. The room seems to rise a degree, a heat shivering through you, the lines he traces with his fingertips all but glowing along your palms like strands of light. "Don't lie to me, Y/N. That's not why you stayed."

You shake your head, breathing catching in your heart like you have oceans in your throat. "Maybe for Sheriff Galpin, then."

Tyler shakes his head. "Y/N."

"Why did I stay, then?" You ask, raising your eyes to his, immediately swallowed by the depth of them, warm ripples running through you. "Why did I stay, Tyler?"

"Because, somehow, we're friends," he says, and a thrill like pure lighting runs through your body, coiling in your stomach. We are friends.

"That's not allowed," you say, but you feel the ends of your mouth starting to pull up, too. "USOAT-"

"I don't care about USOAT," Tyler says, and he looks down, a smile flickering over his face. "I don't care about USOAT at all, Y/N."

"Everyone cares about USOAT," you say, shaking your head, but you're still smiling, anyway.

A loud chime from the Bubble above makes you jump, and a voice over the PA tells you, "Fitness Requirements missed. Immediate, mandatory meeting with the board required."

"Not everyone," Tyler mouths to you, and whatever gripped your heart at the news loosens.

"The board isn't so bad," you tell him. "But I do have to go."

"Good luck, warden," he says from where he rests against the glass.

You run up the stairs, then turn around and grab a washcloth from your bathroom. You run it under cool water, then run it downstairs and send it clattering across the tray.

"Here!" You say, sending it over. "I have to go, but here. Go get clean."

He raises it to you as you pull back the door, and when you face the board, you are not afraid.

You point to the door and try not to think of the eyes behind it and you tell them, "I had an emergency with my Outcast. He needed help, and I helped him."