Safe Harbour

by Christina Kilbourne

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure they just had to go somewhere and took Tuff with them,” Lise says.

  I’m crouched down near the ground and Lise is standing beside me.

  “Where would they have to go at seven in the morning? You said yourself they’d likely still be sleeping. Why aren’t they here? Where’s Tuff?”

  Panic invades my body. It started as a scratching in my chest but now my stomach is heaving and my limbs feel numb. My eyes see everything in double and I feel as though I’ve lost my sense of balance, like I’m teetering at the edge of a steep cliff. That’s when I lean over on my hands and throw up into the long wet grass.

  When my stomach is empty, I sit upright, on the back of my legs.

  “I’ll text Brandon. He has a car.”

  I reach for my phone but Lise grabs my arm and holds it so tight I can’t move.

  “We can cover more distance in a car. And maybe Erica will make lost dog flyers.” My mind is alive with ideas, sparking like a downed power line lying on wet pavement.

  “Harbour, chill! It’s okay. They wouldn’t let anything happen to Tuff. We just have to go find them. Or wait for them to get back.”

  She releases my arm and I rub feeling back into it. “It’s not okay! It’s not. It’s as far from okay as it can get. It’s a disaster. Dad told me never to leave him. Not ever. Not even for an hour. I mean, sometimes when I’m in the library. But I should never have left him overnight. What was I thinking? I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

  I start to cry, then hug my body and rock. The desperation I feel is deeper than I knew was possible.

  “They found him. Dad was right. He said if I ever left him they’d find him and take him. Now we’re all screwed.”

  “They who? Who found him? Who took him?”

  “The guys who want the information. Them. The agents. The Homeland Security agents. Or the terrorists who pose as them. You can never be sure anymore.”

  “You aren’t making sense, Harbour. Why would Homeland Security want Tuff? Or terrorists? He’s a great dog, but I don’t think anyone’s dognapped him.”

  “Because of the information stored on the computer chip. That’s why they want him. It’s inserted under his skin.”

  “What computer chip? What information?”

  “Maybe Frankie and Josh are secret agents. This was their plan all along. They’ve taken Tuff.”

  Lise laughs, but when I stare up into her face, her mirth dissolves into fear. I stand up and take hold of her shoulders.

  “I have to go. I can’t tell you why. If they find you and question you, pretend you don’t know me.”

  I turn to leave but she grabs the back of my sweater.

  “Harbour, wait! I don’t understand. You’re ranting.”

  With a flash, it all makes sense suddenly: the hamburgers, the doughnuts, Lise taking me to the shelter. Horror fills the hollow of my chest. I turn for one last look at her face and pull free from her grasp. “I have to go.”

  The expression on Lise’s face changes once again, this time from fear to relief.

  “Tuff!”

  I whip around in time to see Tuff launching himself through the air. The next thing I know I’m pinned to the ground and he’s licking my face. Frankie and Josh wander up a moment later looking tired and annoyed.

  “Dumb dog wouldn’t stop howling all night,” Josh says on his way past us. He doesn’t stop to talk and heads straight to the garage, disappearing through the makeshift door.

  “Sorry. Josh is kinda pissed,” Frankie says and yawns. “We’ve been walking around to keep Tuff quiet. I think he thought we were looking for you.”

  “Bro, you look like shit,” Lise says, then hands him the coffee and bag of doughnuts.

  “Whatever. I’m gonna head inside and catch some zees. Been a long night.”

  “Thanks for taking care of him,” I say softly from where I’m still lying on the ground with Tuff. “And I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah. I hear ya. He’s a nice dog and all but he can’t stay with us again. Josh wanted to kill him. But thanks for breakfast.” Frankie holds up the doughnut bag and coffee cup then ambles away.

  We watch him fold in half like Flat Stanley and slip through the plywood opening into the garage. When he’s out of sight, I wrap my arms around Tuff and squeeze him to my chest until he stops squirming. Tuff finally relaxes and rests his chin on my shoulder with his nose by my ear. I feel his heartbeat pounding against my ribcage and we lie like that together until our shared panic turns to relief.

  “We won’t do that again, will we? No more sleepovers for either of us,” I whisper into his ear.

  CHAPTER 9

  DAD AND I never stay in one place for long, rarely ever longer than a couple of weeks. We move about as we choose, sometimes anchoring in a hidden bay, sometimes spending a few days in a marina, and sometimes mooring if we find an unoccupied buoy. Some nights when I’m tucked up in bed, Dad motors under the moonlit sky so that when I wake up in the morning our destination is a surprise.

  We’ve travelled the entire coast of Florida multiple times, been to the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti — to all of the Caribbean islands. We made it as far south as Venezuela one winter and as far north as North Carolina one summer. When I was really young, the first year we lived aboard, we travelled the entire coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, but all I really remember is eating mango sprinkled with chili powder in Cancun and buying shrimp straight from a trawler near New Orleans.

  All that moving means I never really had a friend before Lise. Besides Tuff, I mean. Sure, I played with other kids when our paths crossed, like when we stayed at a marina long enough for boat repairs, or when we anchored at a town to restock, back in the days when Dad still went ashore. But I left those friends as quickly as I made them.

  My favourite times were when we tied up to a flotilla of other boats and, while the parents drank and chatted about the best places to anchor or what marinas to avoid, we kids would hop from boat to boat, exploring each other’s worlds. But I never had a friend who I saw day after day for over two months. And the problem, I realize in the days following my night at Lise’s shelter, is that you start to miss friends when they’re gone.

  This is what I think about to pass time while I’m curled up in my sleeping bag, savouring the warmth I know I won’t feel again until I climb back in at bedtime. This is what I’m still thinking about when Tuff scratches at the flap of the tent and I’m forced to shed the warmth of my sleeping bag to crawl outside after him. I gasp when I look up, surprised to find a brand-new world, a transformed ravine. Everything is covered in white — not snow, but frost. Every blade of grass is cloaked in a delicate veil that glows silver in the morning sunshine.

  The branches are covered in intricate patterns of ice and the leaves left clinging to the trees are edged in white lace. Even the air looks frosty, like particles of snow are suspended in the muted sunlight.

  “Holy shit,” I say as the brittle grass crunches beneath my shoes.

  Tuff runs back from the forest with his breath billowing in front of him. The cold doesn’t bother him, but I’m disoriented. The frost bites at my nose, and my fingers feel numb when I pour kibble onto the ground. The water is partly frozen so I bang the Tropicana jug for a drink.

  “This is absurd!”

  I pull the youth-shelter track pants over my jeans then put on both sweaters and my raincoat to keep warm. Eventually, after two rounds of jumping jacks, I start to feel heat radiating from my core again.

  “Lise is right, we need a plan B. I don’t know what Dad was thinking coming here. I mean, it may be safer, but we can’t camp out much longer. I don’t even know if living on the boat will be possible.”

  But Tuff doesn’t answer. He’s too busy scarfing down the last of his breakfast. My mind drifts and I picture the next five months tucked deep inside my sleeping bag next to Dad with just our noses poking out for air. Then I bring myself back to the
moment, blow life back into my hands and dig out a can of tuna.

  “Even this is going to start freezing if it gets any colder.”

  I remember Frankie telling me to sleep with my drinking water to keep it thawed, but I can’t imagine sleeping with canned goods, as well. I sit down and gouge icy tuna from a can with my fingers. I’m too cold to spread it on crackers this morning. When the can is empty I lick my fingers clean then tuck my hands under my armpits.

  “We’re so screwed,” I mutter.

  As the day progresses the sun burns through the foggy morning and brings warmth back to the ravine. I watch the icy patterns on the trees disappear and the frost dissolve on the ground. Tuff rolls from side to side on the damp grass and yelps playfully. The cold morning has brought him an extra dose of energy.

  I look around and understand what Lise meant when she said I’d lose my privacy with the leaves gone. In the summer I could barely see beyond the circle of my camp, but suddenly now I can see straight across the valley, at the back walls of houses and garden sheds. I realize just how easily the bright orange fly of my tent stands out among the drab grey surroundings. Far in the distance I catch a flicker of someone cycling along the paved trail, then turn toward a sudden movement deep in the nearby undergrowth.

  It’s just a glimpse, but I freeze instinctively. Tuff’s ears perk up and he starts to sniff the air. Then I see what Tuff smells — a coyote standing, staring at us, his coat camouflaged against the grey tree trunks and dead brown leaf litter.

  At first I assume it’s someone’s dog who’s slipped his collar, but when it doesn’t move, I know it’s a wild animal. I grab Tuff and pull him close, then wrap him in my arms.

  “It’s okay, Tuff,” I whisper when he starts to whine. I think about the handgun Lise made me wrap in plastic and hide under a log. I wish I had it now but it would take too long to retrieve. So I sit still and dig my fingers into the warmth of Tuff’s fur.

  Maybe we’re still hidden, I tell myself. Maybe the coyote hasn’t seen us.

  But despite the lies I try to force down my throat, and although the coyote seems unperturbed by our presence, I know he must live nearby. We’ve probably been neighbours all summer, and he probably already knows our smells and routines.

  Whenever I let my eyes wander, it takes a moment to pick him out again, he’s so well hidden in the stillness of the tree trunks. He stares without blinking, a stare that could be considered either hostile or curious. There’s one thing for certain, though: he’s not afraid of Tuff or me.

  Eventually his ears twitch. One rotates backwards as if he’s listening in two directions at once. Then he sniffs the air, turns and melts into the trees. My eyes scour the ravine to catch another glimpse of him, a clue about what he was doing, where he was going, if he has any intentions of returning. But he’s gone and the forest appears empty again. I’m left with only the memory of his presence and the unmistakable realization that we’re living on his terms.

  I breathe, finally, but hold Tuff tight to my chest. The feeling of his heart beating in his chest calms my own.

  “That was close,” I whisper.

  Tuff turns to lick me and I bury my face in his fur.

  “You’re really stylin’ with all those layers,” Lise calls out when she barges into our campsite a few hours later. “You look like a marshmallow with hands and feet.”

  I’m not surprised by Lise’s arrival. I’d seen her coming from halfway up the ravine, which reminded me once again that my campsite is completely exposed. If I can count ten houses, I reason, the people in those ten houses can also see me when they look out their windows.

  “I’m practising for winter,” I say when I look down at my overstuffed torso stretched out in a patch of lukewarm sunshine. For a moment, with the sun on my face, I was oblivious to the fact I was wearing every piece of clothing I owned.

  Lise throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, sweetie, you have no idea. Here.”

  She dumps a bag of clothing over me.

  “The church people had a coat drive for the shelter so I grabbed you some things.”

  I sit up and sort through the items scattered around me.

  “That’s actually a pretty nice jacket. I almost kept it for myself.”

  I hold up a black puffy jacket with a fur-trimmed hood. It looks like something I saw one time on a TV documentary about Antarctica. I stand up and try it on, zip it up, and flip the hood around my head. It feels like looking out from inside a tunnel.

  “There’re gloves, too, and a hat,” Lise says as she helps dress me until I’m puffed up like Baymax. “You’ll grow to love these ear flaps.”

  “Is this fur?”

  “Fake fur, but feel how soft it is.”

  By the time she helps me into a pair of snow pants I can barely walk.

  “This is a joke, right? I’m not really going to need all this, am I?”

  “That and more,” Lise says, suddenly serious. “You’re still going to need some boots. And a second set of gloves.”

  When I begin to feel claustrophobic, I peel the jacket and snow pants off, then crawl into the tent to put them under my sleeping bag. The ground is getting colder every night and the extra insulation will come in handy. On my way back out, I grab two sleeves of soda crackers and join Lise in the patch of sunshine.

  “It feels like the sun’s losing power. Like a dying battery. It’s strange to be sitting in this patch of sun right now and not even feel hot.”

  Lise pops a cracker into her mouth.

  “You’re not in Kansas now, Dorothy,” she says.

  I sigh so deeply Tuff raises his head to look at me. There’s no place like home.

  Although I’ve eaten crackers and tuna for ninety-three days straight, I don’t complain. If there’s one thing living aboard with Dad taught me, it’s to be grateful for what you have in front of you.

  “Look what else I got.” Lise digs an ancient flip phone out of her pocket.

  “Does it work?”

  “Just for texting. It was an old one of Joyce’s. She told me to take it and text her if I’m running late. She’s on nights for a while.”

  “She’s got a soft spot for you.”

  “It’s the dreads. She says I remind her of her uncle or someone back in Jamaica.”

  I take the phone and copy the number into my contacts. Then I type: Hey, Lise. It’s me Harbour!

  Her phone pings and she grabs it from me. “Cool. My first text.” She types back: Stop wasting my battery.

  We pocket our phones and go back to eating crackers, the jug of cold water between us.

  “So what do you miss the most? Besides your father and the boat?” Lise asks after a few thoughtful moments.

  “Different things at different times. But for some reason, today, I’m missing Boca Chita.”

  “Boca whata?”

  “Boca Chita. It’s a little island on Biscayne Bay, across from Miami. Whenever we’re in the area we stay there. One time we stayed for a month, camped in the harbour. It’s a national park now. But my great-great-grandfather owned it once. My dad, when he was a little boy, used to go over there to visit on holidays. Before the government appropriated it.”

  Lise swallows a mouthful of water. “Wait. Your family owned an entire island?”

  “It’s just little. But yeah, my family owned it, long before I was born.”

  These stories, the facts of my life and my father’s life, are so familiar to me I never bother to think how they might sound to someone else, to someone who grew up without much of anything and especially without parents. Up until this summer I spent almost every day with my father, minus a few nights when Tuff and I slept on islands alone. But I push those memories out of my head and return to the warm memories of Boca Chita that leave me feeling quiet with longing.

  “And the government took it away from you?”

  “They paid for it. They paid my great-great-grandfather. And then they took it.”

  “Did he want
to sell it?”

  “No, but he didn’t really get a choice.”

  “So they stole it from him?”

  “I guess. Governments do that sort of thing all the time, though. Like when they build a new road and someone’s house is in the way. They boot people off their property and take it over for the common good.”

  “So what’s on the island now?”

  “Picnic tables, toilets, an old stone wall, a lighthouse. It’s really pretty. There used to be more buildings, like back in the 1950s. But by the time my great-great-grandfather bought it, most of them had been demolished. At one point it was owned by this big electronics millionaire. He’s the one who built the bulkhead around the harbour and the stone buildings. But then one night his wife died there under suspicious circumstances. He sold the place not long after.”

  “I can’t believe your family owned a private island in the middle of the ocean.”

  “It’s not that far from Miami, actually. And it’s at the north end of the Florida Keys. So it’s not exactly in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Still, you owned a whole island. Who else can say that?”

  Lise pops another cracker into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. I lean back in the leaves and stare up at the sky. I feel like a bug trapped under a bowl. There are no clouds at all, just a pure, unadulterated baby-blue canvas stretching from one edge of the ravine to the other. The sky has been clear for days, which has been nice, except it means I haven’t caught a glimpse of Mom’s face at all.

  “What else do you miss?”

  There are so many things I miss about my past life it’s hard to sort through them all and pick only one. The best thing I can do, I realize, is to tell Lise an interesting story.

  “Snorkelling. I miss the coral reefs and the fish. I miss feeling like I have the ocean to myself and being submerged in the water. My absolute favourite snorkelling place is off Key Largo. There’s an underwater statue called Christ of the Abyss. It’s cool. You can dive down to it and watch the fish swimming around his outstretched hands.”

  I sit and raise my arms in the air to mimic the statue.