School, too, went on in its usual pattern. Mara had tests and essays and the constant, low-level negotiation of being seventeen and busy, and she handled it with a mixture of energy and last-minute effort that somehow usually worked out. Tess had her own workload, quieter but no less demanding, and she handled it with steady, methodical care, planning her assignments in her notebook, ticking them off one by one. They helped each other in the ways that suited them: Mara quizzed Tess on dates for history, making a game of it, and Tess helped Mara see the structure in an essay that had sprawled in too many directions, drawing a little diagram in the margin that made the argument suddenly clear. Mr. Ellis, the school counsellor, saw them both from time to time, not because anything was wrong, but because Greyhaven High encouraged students to check in about course choices and plans for after graduation, and he was kind and unhurried, asking them what they enjoyed and what they hoped to do next, and listening without rushing them to an answer.
As April moved toward May, the light in Greyhaven changed, becoming warmer and longer, and the town began to prepare for its spring festival. Banners appeared on lampposts along the harbour road, and the market square filled on Saturdays with stalls selling plants and baked goods and handmade things. The festival was a big event for a small town, with music and food and games, and, this year, something new: a mural, to be painted on the side of the community hall, chosen from proposals by students at Greyhaven High. The announcement came one morning in assembly, when the headteacher stood on the stage and explained that the festival committee wanted a mural that celebrated Greyhaven, its harbour, its people, its shore, and that any student could submit a proposal, a sketch and a short description, to Ms. Alvarez by the following Monday. The hall buzzed with excitement. Students turned to each other, whispering ideas, and Tess, sitting in her usual row, felt her heart beat a little faster, because she already knew, with a sudden, clear certainty, what she wanted to propose.
On Sunday evening, after Elena had left for her shift and the house had settled into quiet, Tess laid the finished proposal on the kitchen table and called Mara over. The painting showed a tide pool at low tide, clear and unhurried: a starfish spread across a flat stone, a hermit crab picking its way across the sand, seaweed drifting in green and brown ribbons, and, in a shadowed corner, a small anemone with its tentacles open. Beneath it, in Tess's neat handwriting, was the title: What the Tide Leaves Behind. Mara looked for a long time, then said, simply, that it was beautiful, and that she could almost hear the water. She did not offer to rewrite the description or carry it to school for her. She asked Tess what she wanted her to do, and Tess said, just be there on Monday, and Mara promised she would. They sat together a while longer, drinking tea, the painting between them like something they both knew how to protect.
Tess slept with the folder beside her bed that night, and carried it carefully to school in the morning. She slid the folder across Ms. Alvarez's desk on Monday afternoon, and walked out into the hallway feeling as if she had left something breathing behind her.
On Tuesday, Tess tried not to check whether anyone had looked at her proposal, and failed in the particular way that only waiting can make you fail. She did not go to the art room during lunch to peer at Ms. Alvarez's desk, because that would have been obvious, and she did not ask anyone else whether they had heard anything, because that would have been worse. Instead she carried the waiting with her from class to class like a damp sketchbook in her bag, something that changed the weight of everything else without quite changing its shape. In first period she counted the minutes by the way the light moved across the desks. In second period she drew small tide pools in the margins of her notes, not because she meant to, but because her hand went there when her mind was busy elsewhere. The starfish came out neat and five-pointed. The hermit crab kept looking braver than she felt.
Mara noticed before lunch, the way she always noticed things about Tess, even when Tess was trying not to be noticed. They were not identical, and people who did not know them well sometimes forgot they were twins at all, until they saw them standing side by side and caught the same set to their jaws, the same way of listening with their whole faces. Mara was taller by a couple of inches, and louder in the way that came from years on a field hockey pitch, calling for a pass and being heard across a field. Tess was quieter, and her loudness, when it came, was in colour: a wash of blue-green across paper, a line that knew exactly where it wanted to go. On Tuesday, Mara watched her sister push food around a tray in the cafeteria and understood, without needing to be told, that the folder was still sitting somewhere unread, or read and not yet answered, and that both possibilities felt equally heavy.