“Does this one go with my skin tone?” It’s neon yellow.
“Mm-hmm,” Willa says.
Bodhi sways side-to-side, posing model-like over her shoulder as she does so. She’s pretty, in an earthy-beach-bum way, with her dark blonde hair, green eyes, and freckles, but Willa lives with her and thus knows Bodhi’s hygiene habits intimately and so could never find her attractive—not with the way she clips her toenails.
“With the crotch strap or without?” Bodhi says.
“With, obviously.”
The door chimes, and a customer enters. Willa looks over, startles, then slides off the stool and onto the floor as if her bones suddenly turned liquid. Bodhi’s face appears over the edge of the stand. “Uh…”
“It’s her,” Willa hisses. The dark, sharp eyes. The pointed chin, lifted haughtily. The shining raven hair and deep voice as she asks—demands—if anyone is working here. It’s her. “The chick I ran into this morning.”
“Oh.” Bodhi disappears, then reappears. She’s still wearing the neon yellow life vest. “She’s hot, did you run her over on purpose?”
“No!” Willa moves to a crouching position instead of being a human puddle on the floor. “And I didn’t run her over; I ran into her. And it was, like, at least half her fault anyway.”
Bodhi’s face is impassive. “Okay.” She disappears again.
Willa crouches behind the counter. She listens as Bodhi helps the woman find a lightweight, waterproof fleece jacket and begins to regret her possibly dramatic fall to the floor. Where does she go from here? It’s not as if they’re mortal enemies on the cusp of a duel to the death at sunrise; they’re just strangers who had an unfortunate run-in. But it’s too late, Willa is committed to stay crouched on the floor until she leaves; it’s not as if she can now jump up and yell “surprise!” as though hiding from customers is just one of the many fun perks Porter Sails offers.
Willa’s foot is falling asleep, and then Bodhi’s legs appear behind the register, thank god. She starts to ring the woman up, and then four more legs appear, two in medium-wash denim and two in loose linen pants. Willa looks up. “Heyyyyyy, Robin and Jenn. I’m just, um…” Willa pats the ground as if she’s looking for something and doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Willa, dear, are you okay?” Jenn asks.
Robin puts her hands on her hips. “I think you got more hurt than you let on when that person ran into you this morning.”
Willa’s eyes widen. And then the person who ran into her leans over the checkout desk, spots Willa crouched on the floor, and looks at her with even more judgement and contempt than she had this morning.
“Um,” Willa tries to find something to say that won’t out her as a—a truth-stretcher—to Robin and Jenn or a good-for-nothing, careless jerk to the person she was a careless jerk to. “I, uh. Lost an earring?”
* * *
Willa loves the ocean in winter. There’s a settled peace on the empty beach where she eats a microwaved burrito she bought from the nearby gas station. It’s still cold in the middle.
In the summer, when the beach is busy and bright and hot, the ocean is joyful and full of promise, but in the winter the churning gray waves and cold abandoned beach are haunted, a cold reminder that the ocean exists for itself and not for the people who splash in its waves.
“Do you ever feel like you’re wasting your time?” Willa’s voice is carried on the whipping wind to where Bodhi sits cross-legged next to her on the sand drinking from a carton of chocolate milk.
“Time is an illusion,” Bodhi says, off-hand, as if it’s just something she’s heard people say to sound deep and cynical. “Or something.”
“I don’t mean like, philosophically,” Willa says, picking up a pinto bean that fell on her lap. “I mean, aren’t we supposed to be discovering who we are right now? Trying new things? Living our best lives?” It’s as if her teens were spent faking it until she figured out who she was, only she never got to the place where she becomes someone. Maybe she is just fucking around.
Bodhi takes a thoughtful sip of her chocolate milk. “I dunno, man. We get to be part of that every day.” She nods at the waves. “We’re not tied down or running the rat race. Having freedom and the ocean? Doesn’t get much better than that.”
“Yeah,” Willa says, but remains unsettled. The reality is that Bodhi gets to be free in a way that Willa can’t; she gets to coast while Willa has to tread water and gasp for every breath. She can’t say any of that though, because she needs Bodhi to think they’re the same, otherwise the entire bedrock of their friendship will crumble beneath the lies.
“You okay, dude? You seem off today.” Bodhi, for all her unaware super-chillness, is at heart a genuinely kind person. Having her and Robin and Jenn means the world to Willa.
“Yeah, I dunno. I think the weather is getting to me.” She huddles her arms around her knees order to emphasize this notion.
“I hear you. I have half a mind to sail down to the Keys just for some warmth.”
Willa nods, as if that’s something she’s ever done, and her phone starts to vibrate with dozens of notifications coming in at once. She pulls her phone out, expecting likes and comments on the beach picture she just posted. It’s a black and white shot of old pier posts leading out into the ocean. The caption reads: We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop was not there, the ocean would be missing something.
There are likes and comments on the post, but the flurry of activity is because she’s been repeatedly tagged on something. Willa unlocks her phone, opens the app, and sits up straight. It’s a sailing competition. One that’s coming here. A sailing competition that’s coming here that dozens of people seem to think she should participate in. She, Willa, who cannot sail but has told everyone she knows and thousands of strangers on the Internet that she can.
“Oh, crap,” Willa says out loud.
Ch. 4
Willa moved to Porter Island from Ohio when she was three, after her parents split. It was an ugly breakup, or so her mom said, and, since her father never bothered to come around and tell his side of the story, that’s the version she believes. Young and broke and desperate for a new start, her mom came here to the vacation home her parents own, where she’d spent many happy childhood summers.
So Willa grew up swimming in the ocean, with sand on her skin and salt in her frizzy curls. When the boat regattas were in town she and her mom would pack bologna sandwiches and freshly squeezed lemonade and go to the beach to watch the sailboats skim past. “Imagine being that free,” her mom would say. “Just you and the wind, the sea, and the sky.”
Imagining was the closest she ever got.
Most of the kids Willa went to school with had parents who owned the construction companies that built the beautiful ocean-front homes or ran the hotels that attracted hordes of tourists or owned the restaurants and shops where said hordes dumped their money. Willa’s mom worked long hours cleaning rooms at one of those fancy hotels. Willa told everyone she was the night manager.
When Willa was sixteen, her mom remarried, and, when she was seventeen, her mom and new stepdad moved to Kansas City, and Willa stayed. And then they had two kids and her mom and her mom’s new husband stopped coming for visits. Since then, she has had to look out for her own self-interest more than ever, because no one else will. Maybe her choices aren’t quite on the straight and narrow sometimes, but she has do what she has to do to stay afloat. And that’s why it’s impossible for her to escape this damn boat race.
Initially, she dismisses the idea completely. Walking back to the sail shop with Bodhi, with their clothes shedding sand and Bodhi waxing poetic about her favorite places in Key Largo, Willa types up a quick post addressing everyone who has pointed out the upcoming regatta. I would love to do this, she writes, over a melancholy blue background, so badly. And I’m super stoked th
is comp is coming to our little island, but it looks like I missed the entry window. A few sad-face emojis and a boat emoji and a heart emoji, and that’s that, until she’s clocking out and notices even more notifications, then stops cold outside the back door.
“Someone entered me,” she says.
“What was that, dear?” Robin’s office chair squeaks as she leans back toward the hallway.
Crap, she didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Oh, nothing. Just, gosh, I really wish I could enter this race, but there’s an entry fee, so.”
“Oh, Bodhi mentioned that.” She takes off her reading glasses and folds them thoughtfully. “You know, if you really want to do it we could certainly sponsor you. It’s a major competition, lots of eyeballs on it. It would be great publicity for the shop.”
“That… would be awesome,” Willa says, even as she feels her withered soul exit her body. “So, so awesome.”
“Of course, there is the matter of your shoulder.”
Yes! Her shoulder. Oh, thank god.
“God, yeah. If only my shoulder wasn’t an issue,” Willa says, with a sigh and a frown and heads home, relieved that one of her lies is coming back to help instead of haunt her.
“I think it’s become like a metaphor,” Bodhi says later, at home.
“What?” They’d been sitting in silence, well, silence minus the thunk-thud, thud-thunk of the barstool where Bodhi sways side-to-side.
“Your shoulder. Ma said you really want to race again, but it’s holding you back. But I was thinking, the injury itself isn’t the problem. It’s the idea of it.”
Stomach sinking at how dangerously close Bodhi is to figuring her out, Willa snaps, “Pretty sure it’s the actual injury, Bo.”
“No, dude.” Bodhi stops swaying and, uncharacteristically serious, looks at Willa. “I’ve gotten hurt while sailing, too, and it’s scary, I get it. But if you can’t get back up and push through it, you’re sunk for real. I mean, didn’t you say you wanted to be living your best life or something? Isn’t this a chance to do that?”
What can she say? It is. Willa nods. She’s trapped. She’s out of excuses, unless she comes clean and tells everyone on social media and in her life that she’s standing on a starboard of lies. “A boat!” It’s Bodhi’s turn to look alarmed at the non sequitur. “I don’t have a boat. Can’t race without a boat.” Bodhi’s sailboat isn’t meant for racing, and Robin and Jenn own an old cumbersome cruiser, and all the rentals in the marina are meant for leisurely day trips around the islands, and it’s not as if she can just go out and buy one.
Oh, thank god.
The next morning at work she drops a box of quick-release shackles and loses ten years of her life after someone comes up behind her and claps.
“Sorry to frighten you.”
Willa thought she was alone in the store and isn’t sure how she missed someone coming in. “Mr. Kelley. It’s okay. Guess I was in the zone.” He owns the marina next door, where he rents out the slips and rents, sells, and services boats. He’s an older man, with a heavy eastern North Carolina accent and the chapped, leathery skin of someone who spends most of their time outdoors. He’s nice, always lets Willa lurk around his marina for boat pictures. He encourages it, even, as long as she stumps for him.
“Heard you were in need of a boat.”
Oh, no. “Mr. Kelley I couldn’t possibly ask you to—”
He holds up a dry, pink hand; his watery blue eyes fill with deep sincerity. “It’d be my honor, truly. I’ve watched you scamper around on those boats. I see the way you look at ‘em. How could I not let you take one out to follow your dream? I believe in you, kid. I won’t take no for an answer. Honestly, it’d break my heart if you didn’t use it.”
How the hell is she supposed to refuse that?
That night, while staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping, Willa cycles through the many harrowing stages of letting a little white lie get well and truly out of hand. Maybe, she thinks, maybe she is good at sailing and just doesn’t know it. Maybe she’s even a sailing prodigy, nothing but raw, untapped talent that she’s been too afraid to tap into. She has a lot of theoretical knowledge, which has to mean something. She can skateboard and surf a little, which is, like, basically, almost the same thing. Right? It’s possible this entire thing will blow up in her face in an epically humiliating way. In fact, that’s the most likely scenario. But what if it isn’t? What. If.
This is insane. Willa flops onto her stomach and lets her arm dangle off the bed. She can’t just hop on a boat and expect to win a sailing regatta that attracts some of the best competitors from all over the world. No, of course she can’t. But if she can…
Willa flops back over. Terror and excitement and extreme misgivings war in her gut. If she can actually win it, not only can she save herself from being found out as a fraud, she could also win the ten thousand dollar prize. No more couch surfing in the summer. No more scrounging for change to buy breakfast or splitting half a burrito with Bodhi for lunch. She could buy a car. She could get a place that’s really hers. She could pay off credit card debt. She could go back to school and do… something. She could do something.
Willa sits up in bed; excitement finally wins. She’s gonna do it. She has a boat, an entry fee, people who believe in her, and the audacity to believe that she can, which is certainly the most important part. She can do this.
Ch. 5
She can’t do this.
On her next day off, Willa goes to the marina with pep in her step and hope in her heart and boards the sailboat that Mr. Kelley points out. It’s a tidy little racer, white with sails striped in purple and orange and blue. “She ain’t fancy, but she’s fast,” Mr. Kelley says as he watches Willa carefully climb aboard. The boat is designed to be operated by a single sailor, so it’s a snug fit, even with the mainsail rolled up and the boom swung away toward starboard. The dinghy wobbles as Willa settles into it, and her stomach follows suit.
Preparing to set sail is a simple procedure. She’s watched and read about it dozens of times. Just check that the lines aren’t tangled, pull them onto their cleats and off their winches, watch the boom, secure the tiller, then hoist. Simple. Willa scans the lines and the sail and the boom, takes a breath and—nothing. Her hands won’t move; her arms won’t reach; her legs won’t un-crouch. What if she ties a knot incorrectly and something gets tangled or, worse, slips free? What if she can’t figure out how to direct the sails? What if she can’t even make it out of the marina? What if the tiller isn’t attached correctly, and she can’t steer out in the open water? What if the boom isn’t cleated and it swings out and knocks her into the ocean? Willa chances a look over the port side. The water looks cold; better not risk it.
“Gettin’ to know her a bit?” Mr. Kelley calls. He’s replacing some boards on the dock nearby, probably to keep an eye on her. Because he believes in her, which is just frickin’ great.
“Oh. Yep.” She pats the boat as if it’s a dog. “She’s a beauty! Maybe I’ll sail away and never come back!” Willa fake-laughs, and Mr. Kelley chuckles and gives her an oh, you gesture. It’s not a half-bad idea. Sail away and disappear, and then no one will ever find out what a big faking faker she is. She can start a new life on a new island. Or hey, maybe she’ll get lucky and fall overboard. She can only sit in the boat and do nothing for so long before Mr. Kelley will get suspicious, so she mumbles an excuse about needing to get home before dark. She takes it slow on her skateboard, coasting down the streets as if spinning out the daylight hours is going to somehow help her out of this predicament.
When she was a kid, well before she ever picked up a skateboard, Willa was invited to a classmate’s birthday party at a roller-skating rink over on the mainland. Overconfident in her ability to roller-skate despite never having tried it before, she strapped on a pair of heavy brown skates, hopped into the rink, and immediately bit it; she landed ass-first on
the hard, shiny wood floor. The lesson should have been that learning something new requires patience and hard work and perhaps a decent helping of humility. But Willa lied, saying she hurt her ankle, and then watched the rest of the party have fun from behind a plastic wall. Full of hubris, she picked up skateboarding soon after that; she asked her grandparents to send her a skateboard for her birthday. She was just as bad at that, but she practiced riding behind a dumpster at the hotel while her mom worked. That way no one ever saw her fall.
In short: She’s fucked, and there’s only one thing she can do.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi! Is everything okay?” Her mom’s tone is worried, an indication that Willa should probably call more often.
“Yeah. No. I dunno.” Willa sighs. “Honestly, I’m dealing with kind of a situation?” Understatement. A thud and a screech drown out her mom’s response. “What? Mom?”
“Wha—” Another screech. “Hold on, Willa, okay?”
Willa sits on the bottom step of the cottage’s porch stairs and listens to the faint sounds of her mom dealing with her kids. Willa knows it’s not true, not really, but it seems sometimes as if her mom started over without Willa. She finally got the relationship and family and life she always wanted, and Willa is just that first messed up pancake in a batch that she started too soon, too young, before she got the hang of it and made things right.
A pack of bikes is parked next to Bodhi’s bicycle, and muddy kayaks lie abandoned in the dirt driveway. Bodhi has friends over. That’ll really hinder Willa’s evening plan to wallow in self-pity.
“You still there, honey?” A little breathless and sounding frazzled, her mom comes back on the line. “Now, what were you saying? About a situation?”
“It’s—” Willa starts, only to be interrupted again by someone crying.
“Let me put on a video for them; hold on.”
“No, it’s fine. Honestly, it was nothing. Just wanted to chat.” Her mom starts to protest, but Willa cuts her off. “Seriously, I’m fine. I’ll call tomorrow.” She won’t, but she hangs up on the fake promise anyway. Amelia and Atticus are little, and Willa is an adult. She had her mom all to herself for almost nineteen years. They need her more now. It’s fine. She’ll figure it out on her own; she usually does.
Tack & Jibe Page 2
