Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

  And then something would happen—Clio couldn’t figure out what, but something—that would pull Ollie away for a minute. Maybe he would rescue a small child from a giant tangle of killer New Jersey seaweed. Jackson would move closer and say, “Sorry. It’s just jealousy. You guys are so perfect together. It’s not fair.”

  “Yeah…” Clio would answer. “I know.”

  Long sigh here.

  “You were right to wait seventeen years for the perfect, kissable guy,” Jackson would go on. “I just dated whichever guy crossed my path. I feel dirty now. Cheap. Like a balled-up napkin from a coffee place that you find at the bottom of your purse, and it’s kind of…hard. And you don’t know why. That’s what I feel like. The mystery napkin.”

  Clio would smile benevolently.

  Admittedly, the real Jackson would never say this, not in a million years. The real Jackson considered herself a connoisseur of kisses. In fact, she classified them using the same method normally employed by wine tasters. She claimed this was the best way. A look test. A sniff test. A taste test. A consistency test.

  Some guys, she explained, had a thin, smooth technique. Quick, darting moves. They tended to taste of mint because they were obsessed with technique and chewed gum compulsively if they thought they had any shot at all. Some were more full-bodied. With them, it was a slower experience, one that Jackson always said had “woody aftertones.”

  She stopped short of the swilling-and-spitting part of the wine-tasting metaphor because it kind of fell apart there.

  The phone was ringing again. Unknown number. Clio had reached her house by this point. The call could wait. She had good news to deliver first.

  Where There Is a Balloon, There Is Always a Pin

  This was a Thursday night, and Thursday nights were Clio’s mother’s date night. Date nights had been going on for the last eight months—basically, since the start of the school year, when Rob (the date) turned up on a tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that her mom had been leading. Thursday was the only free night they had in common, so it became the night that Clio got the house to herself, plus twenty dollars to spend on Thai takeout. Thursdays smelled of jasmine and ginger and were washed down with delicious, sugary Thai iced teas. Jackson would probably come over at some point, and they’d do homework or watch TV. Or they’d just blast music and mess around online.

  Thursdays were beautiful things, and this was the king of Thursdays.

  But her mom was home, and she didn’t look even remotely date-ready. She was standing at the kitchen bar in one of the oversized men’s dress shirts she always wore when she’d been working in the studio. Her hair was in pigtails. Suki, Clio’s orange cat, sat on one of the stools looking deeply shocked about something. Clio picked him up, set him gently on the floor, and took his seat. There was nothing to eat at the bar but a jar of sesame seeds her mom had left out after cooking last night’s stir-fry. Clio shook some into her palm and licked them off.

  “I’m thirty percent more lovable than when I left,” she said, picking the last spare seeds off her hand and popping them into her mouth triumphantly. “Ask me why.”

  “Impossible,” her mom answered. “You’re already too lovable. Did your dad call?”

  “Yes,” Clio said. “About sixty times. But I’m about to get unbearably lovable. Go on. Ask me why.”

  “Did you talk to him?” her mom asked.

  “Not yet. Go on. Ask me why. ‘Why are you so lovable, Clio?’ The answer will amaze you.”

  “Okay,” her mother said, sighing just a little. “Why?”

  “Because I think I just got a job at Galaxy. That means thirty percent discount. I did the math. Between us, we spend about three hundred dollars a month there. With the discount, that’s a hundred bucks for nothing. A hundred bucks! Or ninety. Whatever. Plus Ollie says that sometimes we get opened containers that they have to accept as returns.”

  “Who’s Ollie?” her mother said, still not looking quite checked in. This news should have brought a lot more enthusiasm.

  “Just some guy who works there,” she said quickly. Of course, this summer was when he would become much more than that, Clio hoped. But no announcements until it was all official. “Did you hear the part about the discount? Because I can repeat it. I can even throw in a few dance moves to really bring it home.”

  “Do you want a cup of coffee?” her mom asked. “I just put the pot on.”

  The coffeepot hissed and dripped in the corner as if to prove its existence and role in the conversation. Clio looked at it, then at her mom, who still wasn’t smiling. Her expression was kind of like the one she’d worn after she’d had laughing gas at the dentist, just before she’d started having a heated, emotional conversation with the sofa.

  “What’s wrong?” Clio asked. “Why aren’t you jumping up and down? Why aren’t you on a date? Why are you making coffee at five in the evening? You didn’t…break up, did you?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s something else.”

  Clio’s brain went searching for what “something else” might mean, and the answer readily presented itself. Her mom and her boyfriend, Rob, had been dating for eight months. Her mom had come home every time, and Rob had never stayed over. It was only a matter of time before she got the “Clio, when a man and a woman love each other very much…” or “when one lives in University City and one lives in Society Hill…sometimes, there must be sleepovers” talk.

  “Maybe I’ll get some coffee,” Clio said dismally as she got up to take a mug from the counter. “Do we still have that fancy vanilla creamer?”

  “No. You drank it all. Listen, Clio. Sit down a minute.”

  Clio sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island, where they ate all of their meals. She steadied herself and told herself that in a minute’s time, she would need to smile graciously and accept the inevitable. It was time for breakfast with Rob. There would be a man’s razor in the bathroom again. There could even be a boxer shorts sighting.

  “I got a letter today,” her mom began.

  Clio loosened. This was going in a strange direction, one that didn’t sound like it had anything to do with Rob’s underwear.

  “A few months ago,” her mom went on, “I applied for some funding for school. A real long-shot fellowship through a private benefactor. I never thought I’d get it. But I did.”

  “That’s amazing!” Clio said. “You were scaring me back there! How much is it for? Does it give you a salary?”

  “Yes, it does. A good one. And it pays for the rest of my research fees. It even pays off one of my loans.”

  “Okay. You completely beat my thirty percent discount. I give.”

  “The catch is,” her mom said, “I have to do a ten-week special project this summer. The foundation that gave me this money just bought two sixteenth-century Dutch paintings. They’re in very bad condition. They were lost in the Second World War, and they’ve just come to light. They were stored in houses and warehouses and knocked around. They’re a mess. I have to work on them.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a catch,” Clio said. “That sounds like your job. The thing you like to do.”

  “It is. It’s a very exciting opportunity, actually. The trouble is…the paintings are in their private facility, a new workshop space they just built. That’s where the work has to be done. And it’s in Kansas.”

  Clio felt her stomach plunge.

  “Kansas is far from here,” she managed to say.

  “It gets slightly more complex,” her mom went on. “The reason your dad was calling…”

  Clio cocked her head. This made no sense. The way her mother said this, her voice going up in pitch, the words slowing down, her eyes no longer looking into Clio’s…If Clio hadn’t known better, her mom was about to suggest that she stay with her dad. And that wasn’t possible.

  “He had an idea,” her mom went on. The inflection was even more sad and guilty.

  “I know this sounds crazy,” Clio said, “but
it almost sounds like you’re about to suggest that I spend the summer with him, wherever he is. And you know that is a horrible idea.”

  “Clio—”

  “But you would never suggest that,” Clio went on. “You would never, ever, in a million years betray me like that and send me to stay with Dad. Or let him stay here. You’d do something sensible instead, like stick me in an orphanage.”

  “Look—”

  “I have full confidence in you, Mom,” Clio said, her anxiety increasing as her mother failed to deny the fact. “I know you wouldn’t do it. So go ahead. Tell me the clever plan you’ve come up with that lets me stay here. I’m ready for it. Hit me.”

  “He called after I got the news,” her mother said, leaning heavily on the bar. “Just by coincidence, to see how things were. I told him the news. I had to—he’s entitled to know. You two get four weeks every summer as part of the custody agreement.”

  “I acknowledge that you were fulfilling your legal responsibility,” Clio said. “He knows you will be in Kansas. Fine. He’s in the loop. Now, where am I staying?”

  “He had a counteroffer. A good one, Clio.”

  Clio fell silent. The coffeepot hissed. Her mom quietly poured herself a cup.

  “Define ‘counteroffer,’” Clio finally said.

  “He wants to take you to Italy for the summer. He has a boat there.”

  “And you said ‘no way’ and hung up the phone, right?”

  Now her mother fell silent, poking at her coffee with a spoon. Clio put her head down on the kitchen bar. She felt crumbs adhering to her forehead.

  “Why is this happening?” she mumbled.

  “I think this could really work,” her mother babbled on.

  “Fine,” Clio replied, picking up her head. “Whatever. I’ll go to Kansas. Obviously, that’s what you’ve been trying to get me to say. You were trying to show me that it could be worse. Very smart.”

  Clio looked up at her mother. The laughing-gas look was gone. It had been replaced by the expression she had when Clio was seven years old and her mom had had to tell Clio that her dog, Ziggy, had died while she was in school that day.

  “The problem is,” she began, “we’re not even going to be in a city. We’re going to be way out, in a converted farmhouse. I talked to someone who’d just been out there. He said there was nothing around.”

  “You’re not taking me? You’re just going by yourself? What about…Rob? Your boyfriend?”

  This question seemed to cause her mother the most pain of all.

  “He’s offered to come with me.”

  It was like Clio had been slapped. Slapped hard. Crumbs started raining from her forehead.

  “You’re taking Rob but leaving me?”

  “It’s not like that,” her mom said firmly. “This is just one of those situations where things come together in a weird way. Rob has decided to go freelance for a few months. He can work out there. With you out there…”

  “You’re picking Rob over me?” Clio said in disbelief.

  “No. I was saying that there’s nothing for you to do out there, Clio. Plus your father has a legal right.”

  “You have met my dad,” Clio said. “Haven’t you? I thought we agreed that he had given up any rights he had. If he wants to see me for four weeks, he can come here or to Kansas or wherever. But there is no way that I am spending ten weeks with him.”

  “It’s Italy, Clio!”

  “Who cares? Remember Greece? Remember how I got this?”

  She held up her arm, twisting it so the tattoo was facing her mother.

  “You don’t need to remind me of anything,” her mother said firmly. “Do you think I would do this if I thought it would hurt you in some way? You’re out of school for the summer, so it doesn’t affect that. And you’re older and smarter now. You can stop him if he gets out of control.”

  “I can? You didn’t seem to have much luck.”

  That was a low blow, and Clio knew it. But it was true. The argument had reached a painful impasse. No matter what, all her dreams for the summer had just been crushed. The job, Ollie, the kissing, the beach, even the nonexistent red boots…

  Once again, her parents’ problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.

  Mementos and Omens

  Clio curled up in a ball on her favorite chair in her attic room, ruminating on the disaster that was now her summer. A couple of hours earlier everything she had wanted had all been within reach, and now it was being ripped away—like every other good thing that had been screwed up by her father. This now included her kiss.

  Clio couldn’t really explain why she had never been kissed, but she knew it had something to do with her dad. No, Clio’s father had never physically stopped her from being kissed. He didn’t leap into the scene and deliver a kung fu chop between her pursed lips. Her father had a bigger, more total way of ruining her life. It was a comprehensive thing.

  Their house was a good example of how things worked. The house was wonderful and Victorian. Three stories. Two turrets. It was beautiful and in the middle of Philadelphia to boot. It was also falling to pieces. It leaked. The wind whistled through it. One turret was home to bats. The other was rotted and in serious danger of falling off. And the whole structure leaned about four inches to the left, which couldn’t be good.

  Her father had wanted it, though. The idea had been to refurbish it, return this little slice of Philadelphia history to its former glory. Her mother had opposed the idea but caved to his infectious enthusiasm. The house was theirs, but the transformation never happened. The money and the time just vanished, and now Clio lived in what was left. Her situation had been unstable, destined to fall apart from the start. And her father was the architect of this destruction.

  People would call her lucky because she was going to Italy. If she tried to tell them that Italy wasn’t going to be so great, she would look like the ultimate spoiled brat. “Daddy’s taking me to Italy!” Pouty lips.

  No one knew what being with her father was like. No one could see the evidence littered around her. Not just the house, but this room was full of evidence, little pieces of the story. Everywhere she looked, signs of her own former and now impending doom.

  The raspberry soda can from Peru: purchased on one of the very first trips after Dive! was made. Not content with the person offered by the hotel, her father hired an “expert” guide to take them through the rain forest. He got them lost for four hours. This soda was the thing she bought when they finally made their way back to a town.

  The Japanese ramen bowl: it had contained the ramen that she ate after getting her tattoo done. It was raining. The tattoo burned and itched like crazy. She and her father ran across the street to one of Tokyo’s countless ramen bars. Clio could remember every moment of that day. She and her father were tucked into a small blond-wood booth, with red paper dividers separating them from the world and giving their little corner of the city a warm glow. It was good soup too, with fresh roasted pork and green onions. Her father was talking about his next plan. He had an idea for opening a school, a radical place, with no buildings. It would just offer constant experience, like the life that Clio was leading. He had taken her out of normal school by then. Clio loved the idea of other kids joining her. She paid for the bowl so she could keep it. She loved the shade of red. It was a slow day, so her father paid the chef to let Clio come to the back and learn how to chop and cook a little. They used to buy a lot of things then.

  They arrived home from Japan to find two things. One, the massive tattoo on Clio’s arm was a bridge too far for Clio’s mother. And two, her father’s “business partner” had defrauded them. Whatever money hadn’t been spent was essentially gone. The party was over.

  It took her father a while to get the message. He refused to believe it. Refused to go back to work. Tried to keep on doing things as before. There was a fight every night. He grew sullen. Her mother grew quiet. And finally, t
hey sat her down to tell her that sometimes parents don’t get along and can’t be married anymore.

  Clio took Suki to her room and stayed there for a day. She even dragged Suki’s litter box and food inside. When she emerged again, her father had gone. Her mother said that he had moved to an apartment with his friend from work, Martin. Clio didn’t know that dads could just move out of houses and in with friends. Apparently, they could.

  He kept in touch, of course, swinging into her life at all the wrong times. He’d fall silent for weeks and then turn up outside her school expecting her to come along with him for some insane weekend battle reenactment or a quick trip up to New York to do the underground tour of Manhattan’s abandoned subway stations.

  Suki sat on the edge of the drawing table now, looking out the window. This was his favorite spot. Who would look after Suki if they weren’t here? Would Suki go to Kansas? Clearly, her mother had to go to Kansas. Even Rob could go to Kansas. Clio could fight this if she wanted to. She could tell her mom no—that she was coming along. Kansas. A dry, flat line. No friends in sight. Her mom would be busy in the studio, and she…

  She envisioned herself standing on a lone plain, looking out at hundreds of miles of empty farmland. The tallest thing in sight. A surefire target for lightning.

  No. Maybe there would be some kind of silo. One lone silo in the distance. That would draw the lightning.

  No matter what, she wouldn’t be here. There would be no Ollie. She flipped open her sketchbook. She had started her eighth picture of him. The plan had been to give him one. That was how she was going to try to start it off. It made her want to cry. In fact, she started to until she heard footsteps on the creaking stairs that led to her room. Clio blotted at her eyes as her mother carefully pushed open the door and held out a takeout menu.

  “I thought maybe we could order something together,” she said.

  “I’m not very hungry,” Clio said. “The sesame seeds were very filling.”