Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  I don’t bother reading. Instead I write Saz the world’s longest text. I want to know why she didn’t tell me about Yvonne. I want to know her reasons for keeping this secret from me. Did someone order her not to say a word? Did Yvonne say, You can’t tell anyone, not even Claude, because Mary Grove is too small a town and we don’t want this getting out?

  I write until my eyes grow heavy, and then I delete the text and turn out the light and lie there in the dark, sinking into the bed under the weight of my chest, no longer hollowed out but filled with—something. A feeling of homesickness. Of not being wanted. Of being all alone in the world. On earth. In the universe. And everyone has someone, but I am just me. And at night they all go inside and lock the doors and turn on the lights and pull the curtains, but I can still see the light shining out of the windows. And I am outside, in the dark, alone.

  I have lived through this day. This first day. Only thirty-four more of them to come.

  DAY 2

  The next morning, I feel it before I open my eyes: I am somewhere else. The air is not Ohio air, but Georgia air, warm and sultry. There is something old and seductive about it. And the summer has a sound here—the constant hum of cicadas.

  There is more to it than geography, though. I am somewhere else in other ways. And this, I know, is part of growing up. The part they don’t tell you. That you can find yourself suddenly in another room, one that looks nothing like the one you’re used to, and there’s no getting back—no matter how much you want to—because from now on there is only here, and the only thing to do is settle in and try to make sense of it and tell yourself that this is your life now. This is what it looks like. And you’re going to be okay. You can do this. Because you don’t have a choice.

  * * *

  —

  I eat breakfast in the reading nook while my mom gets ready to go to the island museum, where some of Aunt Claudine’s papers are apparently stored. She was up early for a run on the beach, and this is another thing that is different. My dad is the runner, not my mom. For years he’s tried to get her to go running with him, but she would never do it.

  She says now, “Why don’t you come with me to the museum? I’m not exactly sure what I’m walking into, research-wise, and I’d be shocked if anything’s been documented or cataloged. I could use your help.”

  “Thanks, I’m good.” I’m not budging from my window seat. I am going to sit here reading until August.

  “Humor me. If you don’t feel like helping me with work, at least pretend you’re going to explore. Bicycles are on the back porch.”

  “Okay.” She is distracted this morning. She knows that I never learned to ride a bike.

  “There’s plenty of lunch stuff in the fridge, but we can meet for dinner at the inn, although we should really be using some of this food Addy left for us. I’ve told her I’m paying her back—for all of this.”

  “If anyone should be paying her, it’s Dad.”

  “Well.”

  And she goes quiet as she gathers her things and opens the door.

  Mom, I want to say, I hope the museum is everything you want it to be. I hope you find a story there or something to lose yourself in so you won’t be sad or lonely. Because our exile here isn’t just about me. But for some reason I don’t say it. Maybe because my parents have asked me to be mute, and now I am.

  Instead I say, “I think I should go home sooner than August. Like, in a week or two.”

  Her smile wavers. “No.”

  “Mom.”

  “Claude.”

  I stare at her and she stares back.

  I say, “If the separation was his idea, he should have been the one to go.”

  “My work is flexible. His isn’t.” She sighs, and suddenly she doesn’t look sad or tired or like she’s trying to make the best of things. She looks angry. “And I’m protecting him again.” She shakes her head at the ceiling and then turns her eyes back on me. “I never want to disparage your dad to you, but I’ve got to learn to stop doing that.”

  “Probably.”

  “Here’s the truth. I didn’t want to leave home either, not after we decided to separate. He didn’t tell me we had to leave, but I couldn’t stay, not in that house, and not in Mary Grove. I hope you can understand that.”

  But August might be too late. Yvonne will replace me as Saz’s best friend, a best friend she can also sleep with, so guess what? Yvonne wins. And Wyatt will marry Lisa Yu and I will die here on Virginity Island.

  Instead of saying any of this, I get up from the window seat and hug her. I whisper into her hair, “I hope the museum is everything you want it to be.”

  * * *

  —

  Ten minutes later I’m alone except for Dandelion, warming himself in the sun that hits the dining room floor. It’s been nineteen hours since I’ve talked to Saz, and this is the longest we’ve ever gone, our whole lives, without hearing each other’s voices. I try to imagine what she’s doing. If she’s with Yvonne. I tell myself not to feel jealous, but I do, even though Yvonne isn’t me and I’m not Yvonne and we mean different things to her. I think of my dad in our house all alone except for our dog. I say to Dandelion, “You may not miss Bradbury, but I do.”

  So it’s just me.

  And my thoughts.

  And so much silence.

  I pick up a book, the latest Celeste Ng, a novel I’ve been saving for summer days just like this one. But the problem with reading is that it’s too easy to get distracted. I read the same words over and over, and it’s like reading air or clouds or something else intangible. I set the book down and look out the window. The trees are the kind that come alive when they think you’re not watching. I sit waiting for them to move, to give themselves away. They stay perfectly, unnervingly still except for the Spanish moss swaying in the breeze.

  I get up and wander the living room, looking at the framed pictures, the shelves. Addy’s books are mostly beach reads, dog-eared with bent spines, spanning the past twenty years. I pull out The Joy of Sex by Dr. Alex Comfort, which looks as if it hasn’t been opened since the 1970s, and flip through the pages. The illustrations make me think of police sketches, and there is hair everywhere. I’m so mesmerized I don’t even sit down. I just stand there reading.

  Never blow into the vagina. This trick can cause air embolism and has caused sudden death.

  “Oh my God,” I say to Dandelion. “You won’t believe this.” I keep flipping and reading. Each entry is funnier and more outdated than the next.

  Vibrators are no substitute for a penis.

  cassolette: French for perfume box. The natural perfume of a clean woman: her greatest sexual asset after her beauty.

  I say to the book, “How about her brain?” But the book seems uninterested in this. Instead it advises women to protect and cherish that natural perfume as carefully as they do their looks. Two chapters later, the author sings the praises of the “well-gagged woman.”

  And that’s it. I’m done with Dr. Alex Comfort. I slide the book back onto the shelf and hunt for the TV. There are famously no televisions on the island, and it takes me a minute to find where Addy has hidden hers. I study the DVD collection stacked beside it. I pull them out, one by one, and even though I’m a sucker for music and books and films from olden times, there’s nothing I want to watch, except maybe the last one, a movie Saz has mentioned to me more than once. It’s French, black-and-white.

  I study the picture on the DVD cover. The girl looks cool. So cool. Like someone so strong and fearless, her heart could never be broken. Someone who would pour a drink over Dr. Alex Comfort’s misogynistic head. Or give her number to a handsome, barefoot stranger on an island. Or do whatever the hell she wants.

  I hold it up so Dandelion can see. “What do you think?” He yawns and rolls onto his back, paws curled, blinking at me.

 
I turn on the television, slide the movie in. I watch, studying Jean Seberg as if I’m going to be tested. Hair. Clothes. Smile. Walk. Every gesture. Dandelion curls up next to me and kneads my leg. I pet him without thinking, and he stays until it’s over.

  As the end credits are rolling, I shiver. I’m not sure if I loved the movie or hated it, but I know this: I’ve never seen anything like it. Boy falls for girl, girl falls for boy, boy has a gun, girl wants to be a writer, boy steals cars, girl betrays boy, boy refuses to leave girl. All of this happens in beautiful, photogenic Paris, and I sit there feeling like I need to see the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées right now.

  But there’s something else. In the pit of my stomach, a slightly ominous burning feeling is growing, which means, against all better judgment, I’m about to do something inevitable I’ll probably regret. I rummage through the kitchen drawers till I find a pair of scissors, tuck the DVD case under my arm, and march into the bathroom.

  * * *

  —

  Twenty minutes later, I have chopped off my hair, giving myself a pixie cut. I don’t know what makes me do it except that Jean Seberg looks so completely secure and happy and comfortable in her skin, like nothing bad or upsetting will ever happen to her because she’s just too together, too sure of who she is. Besides, short hair is more practical. It’s too warm on this island to have long hair, and it’s just hair, after all.

  I hold up the DVD case and compare. Unlike Jean Seberg, I am a cross between an elf and a fairy, and it is not a good look for me.

  I throw on my bikini, a T-shirt, and black pants, the tightest I own, which is the closest I can come to Jean’s iconic outfit. I decide from here on out to go braless when I’m not wearing a bathing suit. Let’s face it, I don’t really need one anyway. I rummage through my mom’s makeup until I find what I’m looking for—a red lipstick. I draw it on. Make a pout. Draw it on more.

  I grab my map. Grab my notebook and a pen and throw them into my bag. There’s liquor in the house, but it’s locked in a cabinet. I scrounge through drawers for the key, but the only thing I come up with is an old pack of Virginia Slims. I throw these into my bag too, along with a lighter. On my way out, I grab a navy blue Greek fisherman’s cap that hangs in the hall—the kind my dad and Addy’s ex-husband, Ray, used to wear sailing when we lived in Rhode Island—and put it on, making my hair disappear entirely.

  I walk outside. As I’m standing in the sun, a deer trots away, across the dirt road that curves past the house. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I yell, which of course makes it run. I adjust the hat, tugging at my hair. At where it used to be.

  DAY 2

  (PART TWO)

  Following my map, I start down Main Road, which connects one end of the island to the other. In all that emerald green of forest, it’s a slash of white—sand, solid as concrete, crushed with shells, and rumble strips in a washboard pattern. I head south now, the only person on earth.

  At some point I see it up ahead—Rosecroft. The drive curves toward the remains of the house, which rise up through the trees. This was where Samuel Blackwood Jr. first settled with his young wife. Where my great-grandmother was raised until she left the island, never to return. This was the homestead where my great-great-grandmother, Aunt Claudine’s mother, died—where the gun went off, where they found her body, where the bullet carved a perfect hole in the closet door—and where Claudine lived out her life until the house burned in 1993 and she died two months later.

  Rosecroft itself is enormous and vast, a watercolor against the blue, blue sky. Most of the roof is gone, and the remaining walls follow a jagged line. Except for one intact section of the second story, there is grass instead of floors. Instead of a ceiling, there is sky. Vines twine in and out of doorways and windows, which are like eye sockets, blank and staring. A sign warns AREA CLOSED, NO TRESPASSING. I walk past this, up the steps, and onto the grass.

  I climb in and out of windows and doors, trying to imagine what each room was used for. Here is the kitchen. Here is the library. Here is the nursery. Here we laughed. Here we fought. Here we loved and dreamed. Here is where the fire started. Here is where the first brick fell. Here is where we died.

  I wander to the back of the mansion and stand on what must have been the veranda. Directly in front of me, several yards away, a fountain sits silent and empty.

  I drop onto the top of the steps that lead down and away from the house and dig through my bag for my notebook and pen. The sun burns my arms and shoulders. I pull out the cigarettes, light one up, and inhale. This is my very first cigarette, and it feels momentous. The taste immediately makes me want to hurl, and I cough for a full five minutes. I finally wind to a stop, eyes tearing, and turn to a blank page.

  Dear Saz.

  I stare at these two words. There is so much to say to her, but how do I say it?

  It’s probably time I told you why this letter is coming from the coast of Georgia, not Atlanta, and why I won’t be home this summer.

  She is going to be surprised and probably angry that I didn’t tell her. But I have to tell her.

  I write six pages, front and back, and then I sit there a while longer, smoking the cigarette down to a nub. I light up another one, and another, inhaling them all, until I see some of the guests I recognize from the inn, walking sticks, cameras, heading for the ruins. I take one last drag and then throw up in the bushes and head for the beach.

  * * *

  —

  The sky is electric from the sun, and I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, so I’m holding my hand over my eyes and squinting. I take off my hat and I feel naked without my hair, like I might burn up and melt away. I slip off my shoes and the sand is soft and cooler than I expected. I see a truck way, way down the beach, which is strange because I thought this island was no cars allowed. But right here there is no one. It’s just me and this ocean, stretching for miles.

  I pull off my clothes, stripping down to my bikini, the black one I bought with Saz back in April, when we were making plans for our last epic summer before college. I leave the clothes on the sand in a crumpled, wilted heap beside the shoes and the fisherman’s cap, as if this beach is my bedroom floor. I wade in, and the water is warm. I pause when it reaches my shins.

  My earliest memory is of my parents and me standing on a beach, feet in the water, holding hands. I remember the waves rushing in, rushing out, and the way the sand clung to my ankles as the ocean tried to drag it away. I remember my mom laughing and shouting “Don’t let it take you!” to the sand or maybe to Dad and me. I remember breaking free and grabbing at the sand, trying to help it stay.

  I wade deeper.

  To my knees.

  To my thighs.

  To my hips.

  I catch my breath. My heart is going thrum thrum thrum.

  To my waist.

  To my chest.

  I wait for the drop-off, but the thing about the drop-off is that it happens all of a sudden, without warning. I think, Not this time. And I go under. My decision. This is the drop-off because I say it is. I close my eyes and swim into the ocean. In Rhode Island, we lived on the Atlantic. I know the danger of currents and swells and whirlpools. I know how to swim in calm water and wild water and what to do if I start to panic. I’ve been swimming as long as I’ve been walking, first in the ocean and then at the Municipool in Mary Grove, Ohio.

  Underwater, there is no more bottom, no more floor. I open my eyes and imagine what it would be like to live here, in the sea. I swim, and it feels good to move like this. The waves grow choppier, but I keep going. When I get tired, I float on my back, letting the current carry me. Part of me is terrified and part of me is thrilled and part of me doesn’t care at all. I pretend I’m dead and let my body go limp. The water holds me up, and this is always surprising because I feel so heavy, I should sink like a stone.

  I tread water, looking all ar
ound me, and there is nothing but open ocean.

  Which is why I open my mouth and scream. I scream and yell and shout, throwing everything I can—everything I’ve been holding in since that day my dad came into my room, every bit of the anger and fury I’m feeling at both my parents—at the ocean and the sky. I hurl words and sound as far as I can, until they disappear into all that blue.

  A wave hits me in the face like a slap. I sputter, snorting in water, snorting it out, and when I catch my breath again, I am quiet. I float on my stomach and open my eyes, staring downward into nothing because it is too deep and dark. My body drifts. I am being tossed back and forth like a ball.

  I come up for air, and the current is strong here and the island seems far away. How did it get so far away? I picture myself drifting over the waves, all the way to Africa, where I will wash up on shore and begin again. New name. New continent. Maybe my dad will worry. Maybe he’ll realize he made a mistake and that he actually does want a family.

  I go facedown again and float.

  I am thinking I should turn back soon because I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been out here. My stomach growls and I feel the hollow ache of hunger.

  Suddenly, something grabs me around the middle, and my head jerks up and I am breathing and coughing because I’ve just inhaled half the ocean. My first thought is, Shark. But there are arms around me, carrying me through the water, and the arms are attached to a boy.

  I manage to cough out, “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t need saving. I grew up on the ocean.”