Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  Dear Clew,

  Some more treasures from the depths of your room. Let me know if there’s anything else you want or need. Bradbury and I miss you, and your things miss you too, which is why I thought I’d send more of them. Hope you’re taking care of yourself, kiddo. Looking forward to August.

  Love,

  Dad

  All these years my dad stopped setting foot in my room, and suddenly—now that I’m gone—he’s in there all the time.

  I pick up my phone and write him a text: Please stop sending me things. I’ll be home in August and this is just more for me to pack up and carry back there. Unless you don’t want my stuff around because it reminds you of me, in which case DON’T GO IN MY ROOM.

  Every angry thought pours out of me. How dare he go into my room and take it apart, removing my things like he’s conducting surgery, separating my things from each other, invading my home.

  I leave the text unsent, undeleted. Mom says sometimes you need to write out your feelings but you don’t necessarily need to share them—like maybe the person you’re mad at just won’t get it or won’t care, so sending them a big long text or email will only make it worse. As long as you get the feelings out of you.

  I add: In case you were wondering, Mom and I are doing fine. She’s busy with work, and I’ve met someone and slept with him, which means—according to Dr. Alex Comfort—that I’m a woman now. No more Clew. I’m not your little girl anymore.

  And what I mean is, I’m still your daughter but it’s different now. That’s not because of Jeremiah, though. That’s because of you.

  And then I sit there, the words out of me and on the screen. I let them stay there for a good long while before I delete them.

  * * *

  —

  I almost don’t go to the beach but something leads me there. A sense of obligation, maybe, to the turtles and to myself. There’s something about the routine of it that I need. Seven-thirty p.m.: cocktails. Eight-thirty p.m.: dinner. Ten p.m.: ocean. There’s this comfort in knowing what I’m doing when.

  I walk to Little Blackwood Beach, the air buzzing, the heat settling into my skin. There is this moment that makes me catch my breath—when I emerge from the canopy of trees onto the sand, and the moon is in the sky and also in the water, and it’s all I see, this enormous red moon that looks like it’s on fire.

  I go past the dunes, searching for the turtle nest I marked with the flashlight and covered with my sweater. The flashlight has been replaced with a wooden stake, and netting covers the sand. There’s no sign of my sweater.

  I walk a little farther and then sink onto the ground, and suddenly I’m not alone on the beach. It’s funny here, on this island—how you can really feel the history sometimes. Maybe it’s the color of the sky or the volume of the cicadas or something about dusk settling over the marsh. Or maybe it’s just my own changing mood. Tonight, under the red moon, the ghosts of Blackwoods are everywhere, riding the turtles into the sea and dancing in their finest clothes and trying to fight the flames as Rosecroft burns.

  According to my mom, on March 11, 1993, Aunt Claudine woke up knowing she would die that day. No floor dropping out from under her. No surprises. She was living at the inn then—or the house that became the inn—which she’d inherited after her father’s death, and which she’d willed to the Park Service. She asked her mother’s friend Clovis Samms to drive her to Rosecroft one last time, even though it was in ruins, having burned down two months before. At noon, she returned to her bed, her feet already cold. The coldness spread up and throughout her body. Hours later, she was dead. The autopsy would uncover cancer, but if she had ever been diagnosed, Claudine never let on.

  I think about the knowing. Of Claudine waking up knowing she would die—what it would be like to wake up in the morning and know the end was coming. Of Tillie Donaldson Blackwood thinking her whole life was ahead of her on her wedding day. Is it better to be prepared? To have to wait for it, knowing there’s nothing you can do? Or is it better to have the world change in an instant—like mine did, like Claudine’s did—without warning?

  I fish the blue notebook out of my bag and write these things down, my eyes adjusting to the dark and the moonlight. I’m so deep in thought that I don’t notice Jeremiah Crew until he’s standing over me.

  “Captain.”

  I blink up at him. For a second, I think he’s a ghost too.

  He says, “Miss me?”

  “No.”

  Yes. And it’s not just my heart that starts pulsing faster. My entire body begins throbbing at the sight of him.

  “I’m pretty sure you did.”

  He hands me something and it takes me a second to recognize it. My sweater.

  “Thanks for marking the nest.”

  He sits down next to me. I drape the sweater over my knees like a blanket even though I’m the opposite of cold.

  “So,” he says.

  “So.”

  He runs his hand over the sand. Scoops some up. Scatters it. Rubs his hands together to brush them off.

  “Look,” he says. “I’m sorry. Once a shit-heel, always a shit-heel to some degree. You didn’t have to tell me, but you did anyway. A little after the fact, but you told me.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t have to tell you. It’s my body. I decide what happens to it. And you weren’t mad when you thought I was just some easy summer girl that you could hook up with.”

  “I never thought you were some easy summer girl. Nothing is easy about you, Captain. But okay. And you’re right. And I missed you too.”

  “I didn’t say I missed you.”

  “But you did.”

  I’m thinking of Wednesday and Terri and the warnings they’ve given me about him. But then I think, Maybe they don’t know him like I know him. Which is why that part of me says, “I did.” Because what do I have to lose?

  I look at him and he looks at me and neither of us looks away. And I can see it in there. He still likes me. And I can’t help it: I like him.

  He says, “So I had some time to think, and here’s what I came up with. You be honest with me; I’ll be honest with you. I’m talking this is you; this is me. We got off to a pretty good start, so let’s keep it going. Take it or leave it.”

  I dig my feet into the sand as I try to formulate thoughts and words and organize them sensibly, intelligently, articulately. I’ve never done this before—spilled my soul to a person I’ve just met. Even with Saz, back when we were ten, it took some time. What if I can’t do this? What if I’ve done all the spilling I can do? I open my mouth and say the first thing that comes out.

  “You and Wednesday. What was that, exactly? And do you still like her? And are you planning to hook up with her again this summer while you’re also hanging out with me? Because I don’t know that I’m that evolved. I’m actually certain I’m not that evolved. Not that I love you or need you to love me, but I’m pretty sure I can only sleep with someone who sleeps with one person at a time.”

  He laughs. “Wow. Way to embrace the honesty. So you’re saying we’re going to sleep together again?”

  “I’m talking theoretically. Hypothetically.”

  “That’s not how it sounded.”

  I hold up my hands like, Who’s to say?

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” He rubs his face. Looks out at the ocean, and I can see him arranging his own thoughts. “So Wednesday and I hung out for a couple weeks last summer. It was basically just sex, and every now and then we’d, like, go to the beach or hang out around the Dip, which is mostly what she wanted to do. I’m not planning to hook up with her again, much less while hanging out with you. If I wanted to be with Wednesday, I’d be with her.”

  “I don’t want to find out that you’re, like, comparing us in any way, and I’m some sort of consolation prize.”
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  “You could never be a consolation prize, Captain. You’re like that giant purple carnival bear, as big as a fucking SUV, that costs a bazillion tickets. The one you knock yourself out trying to win by playing Whac-A-Mole and Shoot-the-Duck and whatever else you have to do so that you can bring it home. Also, I’m not really a guy who sleeps with more than one girl at a time. And besides, you do know we’re on an island.” He gives me this half grin. “So what scares you most? With us?”

  I give this a little thought. “That you’ll be really into me one day and the next day you won’t be, and I won’t see it coming. Because apparently feelings can change overnight. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m too much. Or maybe I’m not enough.” All the things I’ve been thinking since my dad told me he was leaving.

  “You’re enough. Trust me. You’re more than enough.” He laughs a little, but I can also tell he means it.

  “Not that you have to like me forever, but I just don’t think I could survive another Now you see the floor, now you don’t.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m the guy who shows up. When the dad leaves, when the mom falls apart. And when I have feelings, they don’t change overnight.” I open my mouth to ask about Wednesday and he says, “I said when I have feelings.” Which tells me maybe I am different in some way.

  I take a breath. Let it out. “So what scares you most?”

  “You.”

  Our eyes lock, his and mine, and it’s the single most erotic moment of my short life. There’s all this heat, but more than that. Something like love.

  “And me,” he says. “I scare the shit out of me. I have this way of sabotaging the good things in my life, because for a long time when anything good happened, I didn’t think I deserved it. So I fucked it up, most of the time on purpose. I know enough to know I don’t have to, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. As you can probably tell.” His voice is soft and raw.

  I think about this. “So I have trust issues because people leave me, and you fuck good things up on purpose because at least that way you won’t get hurt.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Perfect.”

  “At least we know what we’re in for.” He bumps my arm with his and I bump his back. Somewhere inside me, the wall crumbles a little.

  I say, “For the record, I think you’re a giant purple carnival bear too; otherwise I never would have done anything with you. I mean, what kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “The likes of which I’ve never seen.”

  He smiles.

  I smile.

  “So does this mean you want me to be your girlfriend?”

  “Is that what I said?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, sure, if you want me to be.”

  “I want you to be.”

  “I want to be.”

  He leans over and kisses me. He wraps his arm around me and I nestle into him and it feels good there.

  I say, “Maybe it’s better not to talk about what happens when we leave here.” I wave at the island.

  “Whatever you want, Captain.”

  We sit there and for some reason I’m thinking only about what happens when we leave.

  He looks up at the sky. “It’s a full moon. Which means a king tide. Which means good treasure hunting.”

  I picture pirate galleons and gold coins and trunks of jewels—mountains of sparkling, glittering stars. I picture Miah and me sailing the seas in a pirate ship, scattering gold everywhere to everyone. Suddenly the world seems possible. I tell myself, You can do this. Just be careful.

  “We should go tomorrow. I’ll bring mud boots for you.”

  “Why do I need mud boots?”

  “You’ll see. What size are those feet of yours?”

  “Nine.”

  He whistles.

  “What? That’s, like, average size.”

  “Nothing about you is average, Captain. Even your giant feet.”

  * * *

  —

  I’m home before midnight, and my mom is still awake, working in the little office. I stand in the doorway for a moment and watch her, the tilt of her head as she reads something, the way she leans into her laptop as she types, the way she hums to herself now and then, as if she’s listening to a song I can’t hear.

  Suddenly I’m filled with all this love. I walk up and, without a word, wrap my arms around her. Mom drops the papers she’s reading and hugs me back, and we stay like this for a long time.

  DAY 11

  The next afternoon, Miah and I rattle and bump past Rosecroft in the truck, down a dirt path through the scrub. On the dash, the shells and alligator bones and other island relics flash in the reflection of the windshield, disappearing and reappearing as we drive in and out of the tree cover. He is singing, completely off key, as I hold on to the fisherman’s cap so that it doesn’t blow away.

  As he sings, I think about second chances and being human. About having no clue whether or not something’s going to work out. I used to believe I knew all there was to know about myself and everyone around me. My world in order. Everything in its place. And now I’m riding in a truck with a boy I’ve just met—a boy I’ve had sex with—who is taking me somewhere I’ve never been.

  The truck bumps to a stop on the edge of the marsh. Miah reaches behind the seat and pulls out a pair of rain boots, dark green and crusted with mud. “You’re in luck.”

  “You don’t have anything cuter? Like in a red polka dot?”

  “Get out of the truck.”

  I perch on the running board in my bare feet and pull on one boot and then the other. There’s water in the left one but I’m not taking it off again. Instead I stand in front of him—sundress, fisherman’s cap, mud boots, left foot squishing in an inch of standing water—and squint up at him like, Ta-da.

  He says, “You’re officially an islander, Claude Henry. You’re one of us now.” In that moment, they’re the loveliest words he could ever say, as if all my life I’ve been waiting for them. He’s shoeless, of course, and wearing the super-short military shorts.

  “You do know you look like a giant dork in those.” I nod to the shorts.

  “I actually prefer wild-animal-wrangling, shark-teeth-collecting, freedom-dispensing warrior. Why don’t you touch them, Captain? Go ahead—you know you want to. They’re the softest things on earth.” He kisses me. “Next to your lips.”

  I kiss him back and then we’re basically making out against the truck. His arm goes around me, and he’s pulling me in, and I’m pressed up against him.

  “Ready?” he says into my ear, and at first I think he means, Are you ready to have sex again? Here, with me, in this truck?

  “Ready.” Yes I am.

  But then he’s slinging the camera over his shoulder and we’re off, and I’m following him down this path, which opens onto a vista of sky and water. We go tromping across the sand, packed flat and hard, not soft and white like Little Blackwood Beach and the dunes. The marsh water cuts in and out, and we wade through the shallows, hopping over the deeper sections. He extends a hand and I take it. When we come to water the size of a small river, he stands there.

  “I don’t like the look of the creek.”

  “That’s a creek?”

  “The tide’s still coming in, which means we’re going to have to swim when we come back.” He frowns at my sundress.

  “You’re not the only badass here.”

  He goes first, and the water only comes up to his knees. He waves to me and extends his hand, and I go in, dress plastering to me like a second skin, and wade through sludge. I push in front of him and claw my way up onto the shore, into the marsh grass.

  He’s up after me, and we’re already muddy and wet. He leads the way, through the reeds and onto the beach, what ther
e is of it. All at once, the sand turns to mud, thick and dark and suctiony. My boots make a thwup-thwup sound as I walk. It’s a balancing act, trying to go across it without sinking, and I feel it pulling me down, down, down. Whenever I get stuck, Miah takes my arm and wrestles me out.

  “Pluff mud,” he says. “Some people call it marsh mud. That grass growing out of it is spartina.”

  “I know so much about nature now.”

  This makes him laugh. He pulls off his shirt, and at first I think he’s going to just keep going and shed his shorts too. I go kind of cold and hot all at once because I really want him to strip down, and I’m imagining yanking off my dress and standing there in only mud boots, my underwear, and five inches of bug spray. But then he holds the shirt out to me. “You’re freckling. I mean even more so than usual.”

  “Thanks.” I pull it on and knot it at the waist, and I can smell him on me—fresh and earthy, like a breeze. This is my boyfriend’s shirt, I think. This is my boyfriend.

  He sinks into the mud and I sink, and then we’re both stuck and we go pushing forward, like we’re moving through quicksand.

  * * *

  —

  Shells and rocks are scattered across the sand and mud as far as the eye can see, as if this is all that’s left of the world. They stretch out into the ocean, into the horizon. I walk looking down, not sure what to pick up and what to leave. Miah is collecting things. This is a shark tooth. This is a fossilized shell. This is a prehistoric tooth of some sort. This is part of an alligator. This is an armadillo bone. They all look the same to me and I don’t know how he tells them apart. It’s like he speaks the language of the marsh and I’m on the outside. Except that right now I’m not on the outside because he’s translating every bit of it for me in a way that makes me feel a part of this island and a part of him.

  He bends over, drawing a circle in the sand. “There’s a shark tooth in there.”

  I study the sand as if it’s the most important piece of earth on, well, earth. I bend over and pick up the smallest black triangle. I hold my palm open for him to see.