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He was lying on his back fully clothed on top of the neatly-made blankets, and this was not unusual, nor was the fact that he was once again smoking in bed. What was unusual was that he did not have a book at hand; that his phone was set aside on the desk. He was not even, as he sometimes did, idly bouncing an old rubber ball (scavenged from somewhere) idly off the wall, keeping a running score for some imaginary game. He was doing nothing, no distractions propped up in front of his face: just lying motionless in a haze of smoke.

He paused before he glanced at her, and he took in the cooler and the drinks before he paused again and lifted himself onto one elbow, put the cigarette out, and reached to retrieve his coat before he thought better of it and joined her rolling up his sleeves, instead.

"Where to?" he asked quietly, strangely as if she were giving him an assignment.

"Not the beach," he said immediately, firmly but without emotion. A pause again, and he added: "Not the house, either."

He felt guilty as soon as he said it but didn't retract it. The last thing he wanted was to ensconce himself in what he'd come to think of as America's personal delusions, in empty bedrooms and echoing hallways thickly populated with a girl's farfetched daydreams; the idea of the beach with the ocean or the entire Island at his back wasn't much better.

He had not, since leaving the upper floor, regretted the move. He'd not found the basement a hardship despite America's misgivings. It wasn't until he'd woken up full of fear that morning that he missed the little white room, not because of the luxuries it afforded or the convenience of it but because it was small and closed off and safe; because it had a solid door and because the sunlight coming in between the blinds was enough to chase the darkness out but not enough to make him feel exposed. It was a childish longing. He dismissed it, but so too did he dismiss the skin-crawling open air and the misery of America's hopes.

He finished rolling up his sleeves, and he reached to relieve her of half her burden, without asking. "Do you know Camille Ryland?" he asked suddenly.

A long, long silence. When he broke it, it was irritable: more than that, it sounded angry, in a tightly-controlled, quietly-dispensed sort of way.

"Is there anyone on the Island that you haven't, though?"

"What plans?"

"It would be much easier." It was thinly-contained anger, still, unchanged--if anything, amplified. He cursed suddenly, under his breath. "I left my ******** cigarettes in my coat." And then, without any segue at all: "Were you pissed about--about Cee? Not the ******** pageant thing, I don't give a s**t. Never mind."

He stopped, let her get a few steps ahead while a dozen comebacks jostled for selection.

"It sucks, doesn't it," he said, barely lifting his voice after her. "To get a little piece of a person and think you've earned it, think maybe it means something, and then just get reminded again that no, it'll get handed out to whoever asks."

The anger drained out of him, because it was impossible to direct it at a person who didn't even acknowledge it; who wasn't aware of it; who never stopped to consider themselves the source of it even when it was handed to them explicitly. It was too exhausting.

I'm so ******** tired, he thought dully, again. He twisted the bottom of the rope ladder in his fingers as she ascended, and numb, apathetic, shifted his armful to follow her, heaving himself with an uncharacteristic lack of grace onto the floor of the treehouse and immediately folding up into a corner, arms over his knees, and the only emotion he had room for was the desperate regret that he'd forgotten his cigarettes.

And he, again, ignored the question.

"You would change your mind," he told her suddenly, unfeelingly, without malice. "If he decided he wanted you to."