Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  “You’re a natural.” And the way he says it makes it sound like he’s talking about more than shark teeth. He leans in and kisses me, tongue finding mine. I drink him in, the warmth of him, the smell of him, the taste of him.

  “I can’t wait to be naked with you again,” he says.

  And then we’re kissing like two wild animals, and just as we’re tugging at each other’s clothes and getting ready to throw each other down in this mud and spartina and marsh, a horn blares from somewhere. I look up and it’s the ferry passing by. Grady waves at us from the deck, wearing a big fat smirk, and I think what we must look like, groping each other, my hair standing on end.

  Miah and I break apart and move down the beach, him drawing circles, me picking out the shark teeth, until I have a fistful of them. He pulls one out and holds it up. “Millions of years ago, this fell to the bottom of the ocean floor in just the right place and was covered in sand. And here we are, just you and me, after millions of years, finding it.”

  I shake the teeth in my hand and think about how they’re like little broken fragments of something. Like little broken hearts.

  “Where do you think love goes when people stop loving you? Do you think there’s, like, a junkyard where all the lost and discarded love is collected?” I open my palm and arrange the teeth in the shape of a heart.

  “Where love goes to die?”

  “Yeah, or waits to be recycled.”

  “Recycled love. Now, that’s something to think about. I don’t know. Maybe it’s even stronger because it’s forged from all these different types of love, all the parts that survived.”

  “Maybe,” I say. I think this over as he draws another circle and I pick up another tooth. I add it to the heart I’ve made and then I close my palm and shake all the teeth again, mixing up the pieces. I’m picturing all the different facets of love: understanding, sex, security, romance, hurt, trust, vulnerability. All the different pieces that make up romantic love and nonromantic love—like the love I have for Saz and my other friends, and the love I have for my mom. And, even though I don’t want to, for my dad.

  I say, “I used to think the fact that my parents were happy—or seemed to be happy—made me invincible, like I could walk into any room in the world and everyone would be my friend because I didn’t know love could change or disappear. I mean, I had friends whose parents were divorced, but knowing that from the outside is different from feeling it.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t about them being happy with each other. Maybe it was about them knowing how to love you that gave you superpowers. My parents couldn’t stand each other, and when they were together, there wasn’t a lot of room for us kids. If they were ever in the same room, I’d turn around and walk the fuck out because it was always going to end in a TV remote or worse getting thrown at you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I’ve never even heard my parents argue. My friend Saz says that’s weird.”

  “Maybe there’s a world where parents don’t yell at each other but they talk things out when they fight. I don’t know. I don’t think I saw my dad as an actual, like, person until about a year ago. He was just this invisible force that fucked up my mom’s life and mine.” He stares out at the horizon, as if he sees something—a memory, maybe. “But if he hadn’t done that, I might not be here walking on this beach with you.” He turns those eyes on me and I can see them coming back into focus.

  “I wouldn’t be here either. If my parents hadn’t split up.”

  Would I trade walking on this beach with Jeremiah Crew if it meant my parents could still be together? Would I trade who I am right now, in this moment, sun shining on me, shark teeth in my hand?

  He draws another circle and together we stare down at the sand. I bend over. Pick up the tooth. Hold it up.

  I say, “I just wish they could have stayed together and I’d still somehow be here.”

  “If they hadn’t split, you’d probably be a different Claude.”

  “Probably.”

  “What was she like? Pre-island Claude?”

  “A big dreamer, wanting to go out and see the world and live a big life somewhere. I was, I don’t know, restless but comfortable, maybe not in my own skin so much as at home, in school. I thought I knew exactly who I was. But I was also pretty naïve. You could say I have a much deeper understanding of how the world works now.” I smile up at him. “My writing teacher told me I needed to feel more to make readers feel. And I used to wish something would happen to me to make my writing more interesting.”

  As nothing as these things sound, they’re the hardest things I’ve ever said to anyone. This is me, I think. Take it or leave it.

  “So are you writing now?”

  For some reason, this makes me go quiet, maybe from some sense of guilt that I should be writing more than I am. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been scribbling things down lately with no real purpose or goal, and I’m not sure I can call that writing.

  I say, “Not really.”

  He raises the camera and aims it at the crabs scurrying past our feet. “My photos are a way of telling stories but without the pressure of all those words. I used to think of them as a way to capture everything that’s good. Everything my life wasn’t. But now I take pictures of all of it: the sad, the disturbing, the ugly. It’s kind of why I collect bones. They tell a story. Usually a tragic story, because, you know, they’re bones, but to me there’s beauty in that.”

  “There’s beauty in every story. And there’s a story in everything.”

  “Like these teeth.”

  He draws a circle in the sand. I pick up a tooth and hand it to him and I think about what Wednesday said about never getting to know the real Jeremiah Crew. Maybe I am different.

  He says, “Or maybe I’ve just been on this island too long.” And he shoots me a grin that I feel all the way in my toes. I look away, directly at the sun, because it isn’t nearly as blinding.

  “So what was Pre-island Miah like?”

  “You wouldn’t have liked him. Bad boy. Angry at the world. Honestly, it’s like a really reckless, really unhappy person who lived a long time ago. This is the only me I know.” He shrugs, and it’s honest. “That doesn’t mean I don’t wonder who I’d be or what all this would be like if my dad had stayed or been a different person. But it could be that no matter what happened, no matter what he did or who he was, I’d still have ended up the guy you see before you. I just know I’ve gone through some shit and it’s made me, well, me.”

  As we walk, little crabs are scurrying everywhere. He says, “Listen.” We stand still and you can hear them scuttling around in the reeds—the faintest music. The island already seems like a relic frozen in some other era. And right now, in this moment, I feel time stop. Suddenly I can see every shadow, every color. I can hear every sound. I look around me, and for maybe the first time in my life, I’m in the here and now. Not the past or the future, but here.

  I straighten, half sunk in the mud, palm filled with shark teeth and shells and sand, and watch Jeremiah Crew walking away from me, head down, scanning the beach. He bends over, scoops up a piece of sea glass, keeps walking. And in that moment I’m filled with something like love for this boy who knows so many of my secrets. Who is teaching me to find shark teeth. Who brought me mud boots. Who is showing me his island. This barefoot boy, made of sun and light, who’s one with the mud and sand and marsh. Collecting treasure. Finding beauty in the littlest things. Wounded like me, but not looking back. In the moment. Looking forward. Marveling at what’s in front of him. At home in his own skin. At home wherever he is.

  I think, I could live here. I could be happy here. Right here with him. I could stay here forever.

  * * *

  —

  The creek that was a pond is now a river. The air is hotter and wetter. The bugs are ci
rcling. Miah stands in front of me, scanning the horizon. Water as far as the eye can see.

  I say, “Are there alligators in there?”

  “Not small ones.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means come on, Captain.”

  He helps me down off the bank, into the water, and I let out a scream because I’m slipping and sliding, and then we’re both laughing our heads off, and my arms are around his neck and he’s holding his camera above his head and he’s carrying me, and my dress is hiked up around my waist, and he pulls it down and smooths it over my knees.

  Then he kisses me and I feel safe here, in his arms like this, as if nothing bad will happen in the world ever again. I want to stay right here for the rest of the summer, maybe the rest of my life. But then he’s setting me down on the opposite bank, and I’m soaking wet and muddy, and he slaps a mosquito on my arm and peels it off me.

  I look up from the bite, which is already a bright red welt, and his eyes are on mine. “What?”

  And then he takes my face in his hands, brushes the hair off my forehead, and kisses me again.

  DAY 11

  (PART TWO)

  Mom and I walk arm in arm to the inn. I wear black because it makes me feel sophisticated. Red lips. Ballet flats. Enormous sunglasses perched on my head. I leave off the fisherman’s hat. We’ve gone fifteen steps and my skin and hair are already damp from the heat and I have two new mosquito bites on my arm because I wanted to smell like Miss Dior and not bug spray.

  I look up at the inn, which looks fresh and clean in spite of its age, and for some reason I think of the Secret Drawer Society. I ask my mom if she’s heard of it.

  “Addy and I used to dare each other to sneak in there and leave notes for the people we were crushing on. God, those notes are probably still in there, unless they’ve started cleaning them out.”

  I’m thinking about what I would write as we reach the steps of the inn, and I look up and see Miah before he sees me. He’s waiting on the porch, straddling the railing, and when he turns his face toward us, I catch my breath. He’s wearing this suit jacket the color of the ocean, and a light blue shirt. He is so beautiful it hurts my heart, and I want to be close to him.

  Mom looks at Miah, at me. “From now on, I’m chaperoning the two of you.”

  “Mom.” I think, Oh my God, please don’t know we had sex.

  “The three of us are going to have such a fun time this summer.”

  In that moment, Miah sees me and his face lights up. He meets us on the top step.

  “Captain.”

  “I almost didn’t recognize you with shoes.”

  “They’re like prisons for the feet.”

  Beside me, my mom clears her throat.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “Mrs. Henry.”

  “Call me Lauren.” She doesn’t correct him about the last name. “So tell me about yourself. How long are you here? What is it you do when you’re not on the island? And what are your intentions with my daughter?” She pretend-frowns.

  “Ignore her, please,” I say to him.

  He says, “The next three weeks. Try not to get in trouble. And I have no idea.”

  This makes her smile. “Okay, then. Interrogation over.” To me she says, “Don’t worry. I’m going to go talk to that nice couple from Cleveland. See you at dinner.”

  After she walks away, I say, “Are you eating with us?”

  “I can’t. I thought I was. Hence the prisons for the feet. But Bram’s having an Outward Bound emergency. After I help save some stranded trail clearers, I’ll come get you and we can walk on the beach. There’s a meteor shower tonight and it should be pretty incredible, as long as the moon doesn’t get in the way.”

  There are voices and the bang of a door, and suddenly all these guests and staff are milling around and converging on us. I wave to Jared and Wednesday but in my mind I’m going, Don’t come over, don’t come over. Wednesday looks past me at Miah and then turns away. I try not to focus on the way her hair shines in the early-evening light.

  “You left your phone in my truck.” Miah hands it to me and says, “I brought you something else.” It’s a clear container with a black lid. Filled with treasure.

  I open the lid and shake the contents back and forth, examining the shark teeth and shells and other pieces of things I can’t identify. I pull out the prehistoric tooth he found. “But that’s yours.”

  “We found it together.”

  For the first time, I feel this kind of weird formality with him. Maybe it’s because we’re dressed as if we’re going to prom and he’s not barefoot and my mom is somewhere nearby, but I don’t know what to say.

  The ringing of a bell makes me jump. Miah is on his feet, the ones imprisoned in shoes, and says again, “I’ll be here afterward to get you.” And he kisses me on the cheek, lingering there for a second. In my ear he says, “You are spectacular, Claudine Llewelyn Henry.”

  * * *

  —

  After dinner, we drive to the dunes and spread out the blanket, and we’re the only living souls around. We lie down, side by side, under the largest moon I’ve ever seen. Miah says, “We may not get anything. But who knows? The brightest meteors can sometimes shine through, if we’re lucky.”

  I’m feeling that same weird formality, even though I’m the only one dressed up. His suit jacket is gone, the pants have been replaced by shorts, and he’s barefoot again.

  The night feels muted, as if it’s waiting, and we stay quiet, lying there, not touching. I want to lean over and kiss him or take his hand or feel his skin. I reach out to touch the gold of his arm, at the spot just below the rolled-up sleeve. My fingers are as light as a breeze. He looks down at them and then up at me.

  “Captain.”

  “Crew.” And then I laugh. “Captain. Crew. Get it?”

  He stares at me for a good long minute and then he’s laughing too. “Goofball.”

  Suddenly a single trail of light blazes above us, and the sky comes alive with streaks of light and color. We immediately go silent, staring upward. The meteors are like fireworks without the noise, and I imagine the sounds they would make if they could—a kind of bright, spiraling symphony.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to see them,” I whisper.

  “We weren’t.”

  We fall silent again, watching. They’re doing it just for us, I think. Our own private concert.

  At some point, a long time later, I tell him, “My dad says that it’s a rare person you can be silent with. Companionable silence, that’s what he calls it. He says most people talk too much about nothing.” I can feel Miah’s eyes on me. “He says there’s a difference between not talking when you’re there together and not talking when one of you is there and one of you is there but far away.” My voice drifts off and now I’m thinking about my dad when I don’t want to be thinking about my dad. At all.

  I look at Miah and his eyes return to the symphony overhead. “Captain, not talking with you when both of us are here, under this sky, is better than talking with anyone else about anything.”

  * * *

  —

  By midnight, the clouds have moved in. We drive through the dark to Rosecroft, which is shrouded in fog. The moon is blurry and out of reach but the sky is bright from the glow. When we get to the ruins, Miah parks the truck but leaves the engine running.

  I say, “I would hate to disappear without writing my story first.” I’m thinking of Tillie Blackwood but I’m also thinking of myself, the way I disappeared from Ohio and who I used to be, out of my life and into my parents’ secret.

  “That’s why stories are important, Captain. Maybe you can write about these people someday.”

  “Maybe.” And for the first time in a while, I feel it, the old itch to work on my novel,
or maybe write something new. Not just scenes and thoughts and feelings, but something whole, start to finish, about where I come from and where I’m going and the fact that I was here.

  Miah fiddles with the radio and suddenly there’s music: “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. He turns it up and gets out of the truck, leaving the doors open. The song sweeps out, surrounding us here, surrounding the ruins, charging the air. And then he starts dancing, and the boy can move—something I already know. I start to move too and the music fills me until I am the music and the music is me.

  The two of us dance through the ruins, under the fog, under this weird glowing moon. I half expect Rosecroft to dissolve in front of our eyes, beneath our feet, absorbed by the mist.

  He’s playing air guitar and I’m playing drums, and now his flashlight is a microphone and we are singing into it even though I don’t really know the words.

  We leap and shake, and we are the earth tremors. I am freer than I’ve ever been, and in this moment it’s the greatest song I’ve ever heard. And then Miah sweeps me into him and against him and we sway together. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him, and we are all this possibility and almostness and maybe.

  * * *

  —

  Afterward we sit on the tailgate of the truck, legs swinging, music playing low. The fog has lifted and the moon is back.

  I say, “What about you?”

  “What about me, Captain?”

  “Don’t you want to write your story?”

  “You mean besides leaving behind a criminal record?”

  “I’m serious. What about your photographs?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. I mean really thought about it. I’ve spent most of my life trying not to dream too big.”

  The moonlight on his face casts him in shadow, and for a second I feel like I’m seeing into him.