Willa checks in and learns that she’ll be one of the last to launch, and it seems as if the whole morning passes as she waits for the other boats to gather in a clutch at the starting gate. Then, finally, it’s almost her turn. She quickly takes and uploads a few pictures and short videos of the event, tightens her life vest, and rubs sunscreen on her face and neck. Robin and Jenn wish her luck and tell her that they’re so proud of her, and Willa stammers and blushes and takes a deep breath before boarding her skiff.
“Willa! Willa, over here!”
One foot lifted off the dock, Willa looks up. “Mom?”
If not for the spray of water hitting her face and the heat of the sun on her skin, Willa would swear she was still asleep and dreaming. There, on a patch of sand near the launch site are her mom and her mom’s husband and their two little kids, waving and smiling and calling her name. Willa stares, then jumps when a horn blares. She waves back and takes the signal to get in her boat and into position. The shock of seeing her mom makes Willa fumble with the lines and get a shaky start as she heads out into the water. Robin and Jenn go to talk with Willa’s mom. Willa’s foot gets tangled in a rope.
Once out on the water, Willa tries to stay in the back and away from the collection of boats drifting around the starting gate. She’s not used to maneuvering around so many boats so close together and makes a note to give everyone a wide berth during the race. Seagulls scream nearby. The wind pushes the sails in and out. A racing official dressed in red zips past in a red motorboat.
What’s Mom doing here? How did she find out? Willa finally gets her foot free from the rope and tries to focus on the race and only the race. Then she wonders, with a heavy sinking in her gut, what her mom is talking about with Robin and Jenn. It’s not a stretch to think that her mom would mention that Willa has never competed in a sailing race, that she’s never sailed before, ever, at all. It occurs to Willa that while she’s bobbing on the water the whole house of cards she has built as her fake life is crashing down.
She’s so distracted that when the first horn blares, warning everyone that the race is about to begin, Willa thinks it’s the starting signal and jumps the gun, releasing the mainline and luffing out the sail, catching a gust of wind that sends her lurching ahead, and right into the hull of another boat.
A whistle blows. The referee boat hoists a black flag. Willa doesn’t need her years of theoretical sailboat racing knowledge to know that’s bad.
She’s ejected from the race.
Disqualified. Hit with violating Rule 12 from the official Racing Rules of Sailing: A boat clear astern shall keep clear of a boat clear ahead and Rule 14: A boat shall avoid contact with another boat if reasonably possible.
And that’s it. She’s finished before she even started, disqualified before the race even began. The starting signal sounds, and the boats take off while Willa docks and drags herself, dejected, back to the beach. Bodhi has joined the crowd who gathered to watch her fail. No, she didn’t fail; she didn’t even start. How did it end like this? All that preparation, the worries, the scheming, the lies, for what? Her mom and her mom’s husband and their kids and Robin and Jenn and Bodhi all gather around her; their faces are etched with confusion and pity. And, if the pitying looks from these two families, who are there for each other no matter what while Willa has herself and no one else, weren’t bad enough, it gets even worse. After generic words of sympathy from everyone, it’s Bodhi who says what everyone seems to be thinking.
“Willa, why in the world would you enter a sailing race if you’ve never sailed before?”
Ch. 22
Willa falters, glancing back and forth at the group gathered around her, unsure which lie to tell. If she says that of course she’s sailed before, she’s just rusty still is all, her mom will know that’s untrue. She could say that she’s been sailing a lot in the years since her mom moved away and started a new life without her, though of course Jenn, Robin, and Bodhi will know that’s not true. The wind gusts around them, and in the distance the flock of sailboats glides across the water, the race going on without her, their sails high and colorful in the bright blue sky. Down the beach, Willa spots Lane, and her heart soars. Lane came to see her! Oh, but Lane saw her ruin everything before it even began. But she could escape, say she needs to talk to her coach and put off this whole disaster, perhaps forever if she disappears into the crowd and keeps going. But she can’t deal with how she’s disappointing Lane, too, how everything she did for Willa was a waste of time, so Willa looks away.
It’s the end. The end of everything.
As everyone stands around waiting for Willa to explain, and Willa waits for everyone to turn on her, her little brother Atticus whines, squirming and dancing, “I hafta go potty.” Willa’s mom looks around, toward where the public bathrooms used to be, but they tore the old ones down a few years ago and put in new ones with water-saving toilets and automatic sinks several yards farther up the shore.
“I’ll take him!” Willa blurts. “I— I know where the bathrooms are.” She grabs his hand before anyone can protest.
On the trek up, Atticus holds tight to Willa’s hand, completely trusting that Willa has his best interest in mind. He manages to kick up more sand than a windstorm, takes the wooden stairs one painstaking step at a time, and clutches himself in a way only a three-year-old can get away with.
“You don’t need help or anything, do you?” Willa asks, holding the stall door closed, since Atticus seems to have no qualms about leaving it wide open while he does his business.
“No!”
Thank god. While she waits, Willa tries to form a plan. She can send Atticus back down the beach by himself and she can take off. Go to Hunter’s house and get her stuff, then take the ferry to the mainland. She has enough money for bus fare to get to— Where, exactly? And what if Bodhi goes back to Hunter’s place before Willa leaves? If she rides her bike, she’ll be much faster than Willa will be on foot.
“My pants are stuck!” Atticus calls, and Willa sighs. What chance does this child have of making it back to his parents on a crowded beach if he can’t figure out his own pants?
Resigned to her fate, Willa sighs. “Okay, I’ll help you.”
She takes her time, going even slower than a three-year-old’s pace allows. She and Atticus stop to watch a predatory cluster of seagulls close in on a teenager with a bag of chips. Atticus chases the birds down the beach until they disperse and fly away, then Willa chases him, and then they watch the sailboats now far off, like toy boats bobbing on the waves.
“Well, time to face the guillotine,” she says, holding out her hand.
“Huh?” He takes her hand and looks up at her for an answer. Atticus and their two-year-old sister Amelia are perhaps the only people she hasn’t completely betrayed and misled, who have any reason to still trust her, and that’s only because they barely know her.
“Nothing,” Willa says. Time to finally come clean.
Back by the shoreline only her mom and her mom’s husband, with little Amelia tucked in his arms, are still there. Her mom gives Willa a very familiar look when they approach, one of disappointment.
“Mom.” Willa’s voice cracks. Atticus lets go of her hand to dig a hole into the sand with only his little hands.
“We will talk about it later,” her mom says, definitively. “Now then, we’re only in town for the weekend, so why you don’t come with us to our hotel room. We’d like to spend some time with you.” Her mom’s husband looks dubious. Willa feels the same way. But what choice does she have? Where else can she go?
“Yeah, okay.”
* * *
They have lunch at her mom’s favorite seafood restaurant, where the fish comes battered and deep fried, with a side of coleslaw and hush puppies that leave blotches of grease on the paper-lined plastic baskets. They sit on a deck over the water, where Amelia and Atticus can run around and throw
french fries to the seagulls that stalk the place.
“So what are you—” Tim, says. “Um. How are you… lately?”
Tim has graying black hair and a round, flat face. He’s older than her mom by several years, divorced but with no other children. Willa has only seen him in pleated, pressed khakis and button-up shirts in various shades of blue, though admittedly she hasn’t seen him very many times. Today’s shirt is periwinkle, perhaps brighter than usual on account of his beach vacation.
“I’m not great, Tim,” Willa quips, spearing a deep-fried shrimp. “Not great.”
“Willa,” her mom warns, in the same tone she just used to tell Amelia that she needed to stop licking other people’s chairs.
“It’s okay, Christina,” Tim says. “Rather indecorous of me.” He chuckles. Willa rolls her eyes at him. “I’m sure everything will blow over soon,” he adds.
“I doubt it.”
“Okay then,” her mom says. “Let’s talk about it. What exactly happened?”
Willa chews her shrimp, shakes her head, and mumbles, “I dunno.”
Her mom considers this, clearly dissatisfied, but says, “Fine then, you can stay with us this weekend; I’ll go to the house and pick some stuff up for you. You can take time to figure things out. And then we will talk.” She glances at Tim, who seems to indicate that he’s fine with this plan. “But Willa, you’re better than this.”
Willa nods. She’s pretty sure she isn’t.
Atticus and Amelia need a nap, so they all hunker down in the hotel room, which is outfitted with two double beds and a stiff upholstered chair. Tim lies down with the kids and nods off before they do; the three of them softly snore while Christina tidies up the toys and tiny little shoes littering the room. Willa sits sideways in the uncomfortable chair, with her phone in her hand but not turned on, trying to come up with some bullshit post about being disappointed but that true success means getting back up and how she can’t wait to get back out there. Ugh.
Atticus snuffles and rolls over, curling up closer to Amelia. It’s funny, Willa thinks, how she decided that they both look exactly like Tim, and because they are Tim’s, that they’re foreign to her. But Amelia’s wispy brown hair is growing in the same spirals as her own, and their mom’s, hair. Atticus’s chin is dimpled, just like hers, just like their grandfather’s. There’s something about the way they both laugh, hiccupping and high-pitched, that is so familiar, so like her own. She’s been reluctant to claim them, but now that the chips are down, who is there? Just this. Her family, which she supposes includes Tim, who is maybe not so bad and looks at her mom as if she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Maybe living in Kansas City wouldn’t be so bad.
After nap time, her mom and Tim take the kids to the beach, though the whole complicated procedure of getting the kids into bathing suits and sunscreen and hats, then packing a cooler and diaper bag and toy bag and chairs and umbrellas hardly seems worth it. Willa stays behind, claiming that she isn’t up to it, and, in truth, she really isn’t.
Once they finally leave, she gets onto Instagram, ready to go with a cheesy quote and a black-and-white picture of a dandelion growing through the sidewalk that she took some time ago. Her stomach sinks when she looks at her notifications. Someone got a video of the crash at the starting gate and tagged her in it. There’s comment after comment about her poor sportsmanship and how it was an attempt at cheating, and others pointing out that she clearly didn’t do it on purpose because she clearly didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Those are worse. She’s lost a good chunk of followers, including some of the companies that she does affiliate posts for. The number continues to plummet as she watches. Her planned post is suddenly insufficient. She doesn’t know what to say, which comments to address first or at all, so she closes down the app, then shuts off her phone.
Kansas City may not be far enough.
Ch. 23
Amelia and Atticus go to bed at seven p.m. sharp, even on vacation. Willa’s mom and Tim settle into the other bed and snuggle up to watch something on a laptop with one pair of earbuds stretched between them. Willa puts in her own earbuds and tries to find a comfortable position on the rollaway bed, which proves to be difficult because it seems that, instead of being stuffed with springs and cotton, it was filled with knives and sawdust. After she squeaks the wobbly metal frame one too many times, Christina shushes her, so Willa gives up on finding a comfortable position and accepts her miserable fate.
It’s not even dark out, Willa laments, silently and to herself lest she be shushed again. She’s on her stomach, draped partway off the bed with her phone on the floor and one arm dangling to scroll listlessly. Every time she checks her Insta, she’s lost more followers. The veil concealing her true reality was even flimsier than she thought: one mistake, just one misstep, and that was it, gone. Her followers, her job, her relationship with Jenn and Robin, her friendship with Bodhi, half of her rent, all of her dignity, gone. Lacking the even the slightest bit of self-preservation, Willa checks on her follower account again, then sighs so loudly that she checks over her shoulder to make sure it didn’t wake any small children. She clicks on her own profile and plays the last video she took.
“I just want to thank everyone real quick for all of their support,” Willa says on the video, with the sun-dappled ocean behind her, her hair in wild tendrils, the sound of a sail snapping in the wind, the boat rocking on choppy little waves. “You have made me realize that I am stronger and braver and more capable than I ever thought possible. And if anyone out there is facing a difficult hurdle, I hope this inspires you to just go for it despite your fears. You have so much more to gain by trying and failing than never trying at all.”
They’re bullshit platitudes that meant nothing at all, but people ate it up all the same. Willa shuts her phone off and yanks out her earbuds. The only sounds in the room are the occasional gust of wind that’s strong enough to rattle the shutters and Tim’s weird, whistling nose breathing. Is this what she’s resigned her life to? Tiptoeing around the sleeping schedule of toddlers and pretending she hasn’t resented Tim for years because he took her mom away and pretending she didn’t resent her mom more for going. Is she giving up her home, her friends, her life, the persona she’s spent so much time and effort cultivating for years only to lie here in the dark on a shitty, fold-up hotel bed and let everything crumble? No.
She sits bolt upright. The bed screeches. Her mom shushes her. Tim’s nose whistles. I’m going out, Willa mouths. Her mom’s eyebrows lift, but she nods.
It’s still light out and blustery when she reaches the marina. Her mom thought to retrieve her skateboard; it felt like being reunited with an old friend when she got it back in her arms—her only friend, now. Willa kicks the board up and sets it against a tree before making sure Mr. Kelley isn’t in the marina office. She quietly makes her way down the dock to where the boat is usually tied up. But it’s not there; the spot is empty. Is it still at the race launch site? One of the officials who reprimanded Willa did say something about an investigation. Willa glances around at the other boats docked on the slip. She could just take one and bring it right back; no one will miss it. What if someone does miss it, though, and she’s arrested for stealing a boat? If only she knew of a boat that no one ever uses… At a house where no one ever seems to be home…
Willa makes herself to go as fast her muscles and the board will let her, pushing hard against the pavement and taking every shortcut she can think of. The sunlight fades; everything is dark blue and moody around her. The strong wind howls around her; that should help move things along. She’ll be back before dark, no problem.
There are no lights on at the Cordova house. Willa takes the long, winding driveway slowly. No cars are in the garage when she peeks in; she sees no signs of life inside the house when she presses her face against the dark windows. “I’m just borrowing Lane’s boat,” Willa tells herself as she
thunks down the walkway and winds through the wetlands. She’ll follow the race course and redeem herself, complete the race as she knows she can, and everything will be fixed. She’ll tell Robin and Jenn and Bodhi that she didn’t tell her mom about the sailing and the shoulder injury, because her mom is afraid she’ll get hurt again. That makes sense. And she would have worried too much. And she’ll tell her mom, separately, that it was all a misunderstanding. It was her first boat race ever, but Robin and Jenn must have misheard and thought she’d been racing forever.
And as for her followers, Willa decides as she approaches the dock, she’ll go live while she successfully runs this course, explain that a sudden rush of wind caught her off guard, that it happens! All the time! And she’s for sure going to enter another race soon. She can fix this. She can right this ship. It’s not too late.
Willa’s pace slows and she stops. Lane’s boat isn’t here, just the larger daysailer with a below-deck cabin that’s meant to be comfortable for weekend trips. It’s much bigger and more complicated than what she’s used to, but it’ll sure look great on her video. Willa hops into the boat before she can change her mind and sets about figuring out all of the many unfamiliar lines and ropes and the complex navigation system. After she works out how to get the sails up, Willa starts a new video, holding her phone high as she loops the anchor rope free and the sun sets behind her. Far off in the distance, thunder rumbles. She needs to be quick.
“Hey, everyone, so earlier today was a definitely a disappointment. For me most of all. And I know for you all too. But I wanted to explain and encourage all of you out there that we aren’t going to let a little setback make us give u—”
“What the hell are you doing?”
Willa screams, spins around, and fumbles her phone. She drops it right into the water with a sad little plop and loses her grip on the mainsail all in the same terrifying moment. “Lane! What are you doing here?”
Tack & Jibe Page 10
