Took Me Yesterday (book 2 of The Tomo Trilogy)

Stay With Me

We didn't head back. After following Miles' map out of the hospital—with little to no problems—Noah turned off the map. He severed our connection with the crew, then walked in the opposite direction of the barracks. I ran behind him, unsure of how to break his silence. By the look in his eyes, madness swirled inside him, and I wasn't one to play with his. He did enough of that to himself.

"I don't get it," he mumbled.

It wasn't until we walked for fifteen minutes that I realized where we were going. The beach. It blinked its blue eye in between standing buildings and broken ones. Noah had yet to tell me what the bomb was about. Noah had yet to tell me anything.

"You think you'll explain some time today, or—"

Noah stopped in his tracks. His eyes trailed the sandy hill in front of us. In the setting sun, his golden hair lit up like a halo. "Did you not see what I did?"

I swallowed, taking a moment to glance down at my mother's file in my hand. I hadn't seen her face in years, not in person anyway, and this photo was more of a mug shot than the swaying, shouting woman I knew.

"I saw."

"Then why are you acting like you didn't?" His voice was taut, croaking with every broken syllable. "Why are you acting like nothing just happened?"

"Well, for one, I don't know what happened," I said, calmly. I tried to not let my twisting stomach dictate my emotions. "I want to know, but I don't—"

"They were experimenting."

The electric boards flashed in my memory. Then, the children. The dead children.

"We don't know that," I tried.

Noah's fist curled up at his side, but he didn't say anything. He simply shook his head and started up the hill. I chased after him. I didn't have to chase him for long. I nearly ran into his back when he stopped at the top of the hill. I opened my mouth to yell at him, but I swallowed a blast of wind instead, sand and all. Still, I didn't care, because what was in front of me was much more important.

The lighthouse from his photograph stood in front of us, right at the edge of the water, the beacon off despite the darkening sky.

"Noah," I breathed, "is that—"

"Yeah." He collapsed on the sandy hill and stared at it like it was a ghost. I stared at him like he was one.

"It's real?" I asked.

A small smile played across his lips. "Of course it is, Sophie."

I mean, he did take a picture of it. In fact, the photograph remained folded up in my backpack. I currently used it as a bookmark, which was much more flattering than what he probably would've thought or what I would've admitted to myself, so I sat down before I confessed to anything.

His arm brushed against mine, almost as if he were leaning against me, but then he propped his knees up and laid his good arm on them. For a while, I listened to the ocean waves lap against the shore, half expecting the lighthouse to turn on at any moment, but it remained unlit, a silhouette against the darkening sky. Noah's eyes reflected the encompassing ocean, murky and green and lost, and his stillness was lost on the waves.

"He brought me here when he thought I was old enough to understand," Noah said, avoiding the word father for the first time since I'd known him.

I looked up and down the bank, trying to picture Noah and his father sitting oceanside, discussing a world filled with drugs and banned books and illegal immigrants like me. Then, organ trading. And worse.