North of Nowhere

by Liz Kessler

  I opened my eyes. Something that felt like a dagger made of ice sliced though my insides.

  The boy in the photo on the poster was Peter.

  I don’t know how long I stared at his picture. All I knew was that I could hear everyone coming back downstairs and I was still standing next to the door, gaping at the poster they’d given me.

  I shook myself and stuck it up in the window, and then I began asking myself questions I had no idea how to answer.

  Like: what should I do? Should I tell them? Tell them what? That I’d met him? That I saw him yesterday? So what? It didn’t mean anything. It might just make them think I had some answers, and I didn’t want to give them false hope. The last thing I had was answers to any of this.

  But what was the alternative? Say nothing?

  “We’ll be back later on, then,” the woman was saying to Gran as they came back into the lounge. “We just need to take the rest of these posters around town — get them put up everywhere we can think of.”

  That was when I thought of an excuse to get out of the pub. If I did something useful, it might stop my brain buzzing with panicky half thoughts and unanswerable questions.

  “I’ll take them,” I burst out. “You’ve got enough to do. You need to pack up and move in here and everything. Let me help.”

  The couple looked at me. “I can’t believe you’re all being so kind,” the woman said. “You don’t even know us, and you’re all going out of your way like this — it’s incredible.”

  I pretended to lace up my shoe so I could look down and hide my face. I didn’t want any of them to see the guilty blush I could feel creeping around my neck and cheeks. Yes, I wanted to help. Of course I did. But I was doing this for me, too. I needed to do something about the disturbing thoughts that were beginning to knock at the outer edges of my mind. What if Peter had broken his promise? He had seemed like the kind of person who was true to his word — but what if he wasn’t? What if he had taken the boat to Luffsands, after all? I had no idea how to find out, but maybe I could look for clues if I was out and about, rather than stuck here in the pub.

  The man was looking at his daughter. “Why don’t you go, too, hon? We can handle the packing.”

  For the first time, the girl glanced up and met my eyes. I wasn’t sure I wanted her help. For the first time all week, I wasn’t really hoping to make new friends. I wanted to be on my own to try to work things out in my head. But there was something about the way she gazed at me that made me think perhaps we could use each other’s company. It was the expression in her eyes. She seemed lost, alone, and scared — pretty much how I was feeling at that moment. Plus, having someone else around would probably help to occupy my mind before my worries got out of control.

  “That’d be great,” I said.

  The girl looked up at her parents and nodded. “OK.”

  Her mom exchanged a quick glance with her dad. “Don’t go far,” she said. “And stay together all the time, OK?”

  “OK,” we both replied. Then the girl took the rest of the posters from her mom and we set off into town.

  “Hey, I don’t even know your name,” I said as we headed down the street toward the harbor front. I wrapped my arms around myself as we walked. I’d been in such a hurry to get out that I’d forgotten to grab a coat. Still, it was mild out and it wasn’t raining, so I didn’t suggest going back for it. I couldn’t face returning to the pub just yet.

  “Sal,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Mia,” I said. “Well, my real name’s Amelia, but no one calls me that anymore, except my gran — or my parents if they’re yelling at me about something!”

  I smiled, and Sal smiled back. “I know what you mean,” she said. “Everyone calls me Sal. My middle name’s Elizabeth, and very occasionally, my parents call me Sally Elizabeth. It doesn’t happen very often, but I know I’m in trouble when it does!”

  I laughed, and suddenly I felt lighter than I’d felt in hours. There was something about Sal that felt easy and nice. She was probably about my age, and she probably had about as many people to talk to around here as I did. If it weren’t for the fact that we were looking for her missing brother, we could probably have had a good time together.

  “Do you and Peter get along well?” I asked as we turned the corner onto the seafront.

  Sal shrugged. “OK, I guess. We don’t argue, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I can’t imagine Peter arguing with anyone,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Sal suddenly stopped walking and looked at me. “What do you mean? You know my brother?”

  My cheeks heated up as though I’d been caught in a lie. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had nothing to hide.

  “Yeah, I’ve met him on the beach a couple of times,” I mumbled.

  I held my breath as Sal continued to stare at me. Then she turned away and continued walking. “Well, you’re right,” she said. “That is the kind of person he is. He gets along with everyone.”

  I let my breath out and fell into step beside her.

  “I just hope nothing’s happened to him. I couldn’t bear it if he . . . I just want him back,” she said.

  “We’ll get him back,” I said firmly. “We’ll find him.”

  We walked in silence after that. I kept trying to think of something else I could say to make her feel better, but I had nothing. Part of me wanted to tell her about what we’d nearly done — how Peter had wanted to take the boat out — but what was the point? I already had it in my mind, getting all tangled up in my thoughts, hopes, fears. She didn’t need it doing the same thing to her.

  And anyway, Peter had sworn he wouldn’t take the boat out. He’d promised. Telling Sal a half story about something that almost definitely hadn’t even happened wouldn’t help.

  There was only one option: we had to find him.

  “Look. Should we take a poster in there?” Sal was pointing to a shop at the far end of the harbor, a boating store called Shipshape.

  “Good idea. We should try everywhere. We can ask if they’ve seen him as well.”

  We hurried toward the shop.

  A bell clanged halfheartedly as we pushed open the door.

  “Hello?” I called. There was no one around.

  I’d never been in the shop before. I must have walked past it a hundred times and hardly noticed it. Boat fenders and ropes and fishhooks had never been my thing, so it was hardly surprising. But now that we were inside, I wished I’d taken a look sooner.

  “It’s like a whole other world in here,” Sal whispered, echoing my thoughts.

  Rows and rows of shelves ran the length of the shop, each one crammed with every item you would ever need if you were planning a trip out to sea.

  Ropes coiled into circles so big they were like mini rotaries; anchors in every size, from something that looked like a pair of garden shears to one that must have been twice my height; charts that looked as if they could have helped you plot your way to the moon; a gazillion fishing rods. All of them stacked and stuffed into every available bit of space in the shop.

  “Hello?” I called again as we tiptoed along a row of bright-yellow raincoats toward the counter in the far corner of the shop.

  Sal pointed to a brass bell on the counter. “Shall we . . . ?”

  “I guess so.”

  Sal picked up the bell and shook it. It echoed around the shop. No one came. I was about to suggest we give up, when I heard a shuffling sound from a room behind the counter.

  An elderly man appeared in the doorway. His hair — what there was of it — was wild and wispy, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. He had a shiny bald patch in the middle of his head, and as he stood there, he flattened a few strands of hair across it from one side.

  His face was pocked with scars, as though they had a lifetime’s stories of battles to tell.

  He turned a pair of piercing green eyes toward us and squinted. “Can I help you?” he asked gruffly.

>   Sal took a step forward. “We, um, we wondered if we could put this up.” She peeled off one of the posters and held it out to the man. “It’s my brother,” she explained as the man pulled a pair of glasses out of his pocket, wiped them with the corner of his shirt, and slipped them on. “He’s missing,” she added.

  The old man took the poster and scanned it silently for a few moments. Then he looked up slowly and turned his gaze on both of us. Something that might have been a smile flickered across his eyes. Was he laughing at us?

  “It’s not a joke,” I said quickly. “It’s really serious. He’s gone, and we need to find him.”

  The man put the poster down on his desk. The smile still seemed to be there, glinting deep inside his strange green eyes. Then he shook his head. “I’m not laughing,” he said carefully. Then he turned his back on us.

  Sal and I exchanged a glance. “So you’ll put our poster up?” Sal asked.

  The man waved a hand at us without turning back around. “Aye, I’ll put your poster up.”

  And with that, he shuffled off into the back room he’d come from.

  Was that it?

  “Do you think he’s coming back?” Sal whispered.

  “I don’t know. Should we just hang on a minute and see?” I whispered back.

  We waited for a minute. Then another. Finally, I turned to Sal. “I think we should go,” I said. “He said he’ll put it up.”

  “We could pop back later, just to see if it’s in the window,” she suggested.

  “Good idea. Come on, let’s go.”

  We turned and made our way back through the shop. Sal opened the front door and we were about to leave when the man called from the back of the shop.

  “So, which one of you is Mia?” he asked.

  We stopped in our tracks so quickly that if we’d been playing freeze dance, we’d have tied for first place.

  I was the first to recover. I turned toward the man. “I’m Mia,” I said shakily.

  The man nodded. “Thought so. Just checking,” he said. Then he held out a plastic bag and added, “This is for you.”

  I stared at him from across the shop. Then, feeling like a doll made of wood, I somehow walked back to the counter and stood in front of him. Sal followed me.

  The man put the bag down on the counter. As I glanced at it, my stomach seemed to coil up inside me as tightly as the fishing ropes at my feet.

  The bag had my name on it.

  The man shoved it across to me. “For Mia” was scribbled on the side in a faded marker pen. As I stood staring down at it, he reached under the counter for a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette papers. “Are you going to take it then?” he asked, pulling off a paper and spreading tobacco across it.

  “Is it really for me?” I asked. “I mean, how do you know I’m the right Mia? How did you even know I was Mia at all? Who left it for me?”

  The man rolled his cigarette and lit it. Then he exhaled a line of smoke and coughed a long, rasping cough. When he’d finished, he wiped his hand across his head again and said, “Which of those questions would you like me to answer first, my dear?”

  “How did you know I was Mia?” I asked.

  “Gave me a description,” the man said.

  “Who did?” Sal asked.

  “Boy who left the bag.” The man shrugged. “Said his name was Peter.”

  “Peter?” Sal gasped. “Peter?”

  My stomach twisted into another knot. Peter had been here! He’d left something for me! What was it? And when had he left it? Since I last saw him? Since he’d disappeared?

  And why had he come in here, anyway?

  The old man pointed at the poster. “Plus, he looked like that. Same scruffy hairdo, anyway.”

  “When did he come in?” Sal asked, her voice coming out in a kind of tight squeak.

  “Oh, a little while ago. He said I might be waiting some time for you.” The man took another long suck on his cigarette. “He was right about that,” he added, and suddenly burst out laughing.

  His laughter soon turned into a wheezing, rasping cough. As he was laughing and coughing, a phone on his desk started ringing. The man picked it up, turning his back on us as if we weren’t there.

  “Eric Travers,” he said curtly into the phone.

  I walked around to the other side of the counter and stared at him until he looked at me.

  “When did he leave it?” I whispered.

  He waved a hand at me as if to shoo me away.

  “It’s important,” I said.

  He frowned at me. “Just hold on a second, will you?” he said into the phone. Then he cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and turned to both of us. “I’m done. Go on with you, now,” he said roughly.

  “But —”

  “But nothing. Go. I’ve given you the package. I’ve done my bit. I don’t want any more to do with this.”

  “Please, Mr. Travers,” Sal began. “It’s really imp —”

  “I said GO!”

  Sal and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows in a question. I shrugged back a reply, and we turned and began to scurry out before the weird old man shouted at us again.

  “Hey!” he shouted at us when we were halfway down one of the aisles.

  I turned back around. He was holding the plastic bag in his hand. “Don’t forget your package.”

  I ran back and grabbed the bag. I’d been so freaked out by everything I’d almost forgotten it.

  “Thanks,” I said. Then I turned and hurried out of the door, while the man went back to his phone call.

  Sal was outside sitting on a bench overlooking the harbor.

  “Well, that was weird,” I said, plunking myself down next to her.

  “Just a bit,” Sal replied.

  I turned to face her. “You want to go back and tell your parents?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I want to get the rest of these posters up first — and find out what’s in that package.”

  “OK,” I agreed. “But when we get back, whatever else we do, we’re calling the police,” I said firmly.

  Sal swallowed. “What are we going to tell them?”

  I took a breath and turned away as I slowly let it out again. “That we might have just met the last person to have seen Peter before he disappeared.”

  She sat by the window all day. Well, perhaps not the entire day. The first hour after her father had left was spent in her bedroom, shouting, cursing, pacing her room so hard it was a wonder there was any carpet left when she finally stopped.

  Finally, she tore a page out of one of her mother’s notebooks, and began to write her feelings down. It was the only way she could get them out. She would have used her diary but she had sent that away with her father.

  She wrote about how angry she was with her father, how he spoiled everything, how she hated him, hated Luffsands, hated everything right now.

  Finally, when the anger was out, she wrote about her fear.

  Eventually, all she wrote was, “Father, please come home soon. I love you and I just want you to be safe. I’m sorry. I’ll never get angry with you again, I promise. Just come home, please.”

  After that, she put down her pen, folded up the paper, and went downstairs. When she had hugged her mother tightly and whispered an apology that she wished her father would hear, she took herself to the window seat and sat, looking out at the sea raging below and trying to calm her heart.

  It was still two hours before high tide and already the angry swell was rising fiercely, beating against the harbor wall like an angry mob that would not recede until it had wreaked the havoc it craved. The few boats inside the small harbor reared like rodeo horses with every wave. Each time, Diane’s heart reared with them, so hard she feared it would come out through her mouth if she wasn’t careful.

  She watched the sea level inching ever higher with the tide, watched the swell grow more and more angry, all the time desperately hoping to see her father’s boat returning.

&nbs
p; Why had she let him leave her in such a mood? She faced directly out the window and offered her plea bargain to the sea: bring my father home, just let him come home today, and I swear I’ll never say a mean word to him again.

  Finally, with nothing left to barter, and all out of wishes, she curled up in the seat, closed her eyes, and prayed.

  “Are you going to open it, then?”

  Sal was perched on the bench next to me. The package was on my lap. I didn’t know exactly how long we’d both been sitting staring at it, and I didn’t really know what Sal made of what had just happened. I didn’t know what I made of it. My brain turned over and over, trying to find an angle that made sense. Here’s what I had come up with. It wasn’t much.

  I’d seen Peter yesterday. He’d wanted to take the boat out but he’d promised he wouldn’t. At some point after that, he’d gone missing.

  That was about it. And in among the thin scraps of information that wouldn’t piece together was one question that nagged at my mind: did he take the boat?

  I looked at Sal. Her eyes were full of sadness and confusion. I couldn’t keep the doubts to myself any longer.

  “Sal,” I began. “I need to tell you something.”

  She looked up. “What?”

  I opened my mouth to continue, but I couldn’t find the words. Surely my doubts would only make her even more anxious. And was it fair to give her even more to worry about?

  No, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give her an extra burden to carry, as well as what she was already feeling.

  And another thing, if Peter had delivered this bag to the shop, didn’t that mean that he was still on the mainland?

  Truth was, there were still too many question marks surrounding my troubled thoughts, and it simply wasn’t fair to share them with Sal till I knew where they would lead. Which meant I had to come up with some way of finding out where that might be. Or coming up with a plan, at least.

  I smiled at her. “I just want to say, I’m sure it’ll all work out,” I said. “We’ll find him.”

  Sal smiled back. “Thanks,” she said. “I really think we will, now that we’ve got you and your family helping. The police were helpful, but I could tell they thought Peter was just a typical teenage boy — going off without telling anyone — and he’d turn up any minute. At least I feel like we’re doing something useful now. Your family has been so kind.”