Cane's POV
The sun was a brute. It had been for over a month. It didn't shine; it hammered down on our little island, baking the sand and turning our skin to leather. We'd settled into a rhythm, a weird kind of normal. We had chores, we had our grump-hunting strategies, we had arguments about whose turn it was to check the fish lines.
And we had games. You have to, or you go crazy.
"You're blinking. I saw it."
"I did not blink. That was a strategic ocular reset."
Stephanie sat across from me on the sand, her legs crossed. Her hair was a wild, sun-bleached mess tied up with a strip of vine. Her eyes, narrowed in fierce concentration, were fixed on mine.
"A what?" I snorted, not daring to look away.
"You heard me. My eye needed a momentary recalibration. It doesn't count."
We were in the middle of The Great Staring Contest of Day Thirty-Seven. The stakes were high: the winner didn't have to scrape out the coconut shells for dinner.
