The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

I kiss him gently, warming his cold lips beneath mine.

  Kiss me back, Hector, I beg. Please.

  Look who has the power now. Is this what you want?

  This is what I want. I want this strange, broken boy who could see this strange, broken girl. Even when he didn’t know what he was looking at.

  I can linger forever, if need be, with my mouth waiting for his to speak against mine. I could wait a century, even as his bones crumble against my skin.

  Slowly, as if melting drop by drop, Hector’s arms unglue themselves from his sides and encircle my damp waist. He embraces me and lifts me up, angling his face so he can fit my lips more perfectly. I hold his face in my hands, wishing I could control the kiss, when I know I have no power.

  It is nothing like our first kisses. The ones where we stepped cautiously into each other’s sphere for a few short hours, testing the solidity of the plane between us. Now we’ve found that the ground is riddled like a honeycomb and we’ve fallen through.

  Fallen. Falling.

  After too short a time, he breaks the kiss, but not his hold on me. The embrace is so tight. He’ll be gone tomorrow, and his embrace says so. Finally, we breathe. Not a sigh of relief, but of something far more complicated.

  “Oh God, Anda,” he whispers against my neck.

  “No gods here, Hector. Only us.”

  It’s a prayer, of sorts.

  Or a curse.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  HECTOR

  How many ships do I need to sink to stay here forever?

  What sins must I commit to unmake myself?

  I don’t move a muscle, conscious of my hands absorbing the warmth of her back. Her cheek presses against my grizzled one. I hear her inhale, ready to speak.

  I don’t want her to say anything. Please don’t talk. Let’s just stay like this and pretend there isn’t any future. Ever.

  “Do you really have to go back?” she whispers against my chest.

  Anda already has me waking up before I’m ready. I squeeze her hard, but I know I have to answer eventually.

  “Yes. I made a promise to your father. It’s safer.” I don’t say for who, her or me.

  She nods. “How much time do we have, then?”

  “He’s coming back tomorrow morning. He’s taking me to Rock Harbor. The same friend who dropped him off is going to drop me off in Michigan.” At least I won’t have to go back to Grand Portage. He’s giving me a chance, even if I don’t have one with Anda.

  The water laps at the shoreline in a quiet, hypnotizing rhythm. The sun, though briefly out for the morning, is now gone. It’s already darker, and the ominous weather makes me shiver. Everything around us seems to be waiting on our next words.

  She looks out at the lake. “I thought we would have more time,” she says.

  I slip my hand into hers. “We have now.”

  When she turns to me, her eyes are swimming. “So you don’t hate me.”

  “No.” I pause. “I don’t completely understand you, but I don’t hate you. You’re complicated. You’re not one thing.” I close my eyes for a long second. “I should know. I’m not one to judge.”

  “But it makes you run,” she says quietly.

  Running. I don’t know how to explain to her that I always, always feel like I’m running. Running toward something, running away. I’m a moving target, I’m in pieces, I’m never whole. Sometimes velocity and trajectory are better than the mass itself. So yeah, it feels natural to run.

  “Will you ever stop?”

  “I don’t know. I can learn to. I have to unlearn some habits, I guess,” I say quietly.

  “I should unlearn some habits, too.” She hesitates, then adds, “I’ve only ever valued one half of myself over the other.”

  I look at Anda. “Can you do it? Can you stop the whole ship thing?”

  “I am right now.” Her face looks calm, but her hands are tight fists, as if the reminder itself is work.

  “Can you do it forever?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” She looks worried. “I can’t stop death. You know that.”

  “But there was already a natural cycle.”

  “I took myself out of the cycle.”

  “Why?”

  “It upset Father.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t worry too much about what other people think,” I say. “It gets tiring, doesn’t it?”

  I sit down, and Anda promptly sits in my lap, wraps my arms around her damp waist. I like the way she doesn’t ask. People tiptoe around me all the time, all except the ones who should. I love how she thinks of my body as an extension of hers. No one’s ever done that before.

  “I’ll weigh you down so you can’t run,” she says. But my body is still tense, and she feels that.

  I shake my head.

  So she gets up, turns around, and sits on my lap so we are face-to-face, her legs wrapped around my waist. My heart immediately starts to gallop as she entwines her arms around my neck. Our noses are an inch apart now, and all I can think about is whether or not it’s possible to kiss someone for twelve hours without breathing. Speaking of which, I’m breathing really damn fast now.

  “Feel like running?” she whispers.

  “Maybe,” I lie.

  She takes her hands and pushes my shoulders so I fall backward on the broad stone beneath us. She pulls my arms above my head, holds my wrists down, and straddles my waist. Her eyes bore into mine.

  “How about now?”

  I don’t answer her. I just let her kiss me.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ANDA

  I could do this forever. Trap this boy and make him mine. I would let his marrow bones crumble beneath me and I would still sing and kiss the splinters of him until he was nothing but dust. But I do not say such things aloud. I am learning that my sentiments aren’t always…well received.

  We kiss for a long time. The air is cool, and I’m too preoccupied to keep the temperature at bay. So our hands search out pockets of warmth—under his shirt, the nape of my neck, the narrow of my waist and his.

  After what seems like an hour, he surfaces to breathe. I pout, still sprawled over him.

  “C’mon,” he says, sitting us both up. “This rock can’t be comfortable. Let’s take a walk.” He leans back and pulls me to my feet.

  “You want to walk?”

  He nods.

  “We’ve walked a lot already. Over forty miles,” I remind him. I’m still staring at his lips.

  “Fine. Then I’ll walk.” He crouches down and pats his shoulder. “Get on. I’ll take you on a tour of the grand Menagerie Island.”

  I climb onto his back. He shows me how to wrap my legs around his waist and drape my arms over his shoulders. Oh, this is worth relinquishing my position of pleasantly crushing him against a rock. This is very good.

  He treads carefully, his boots looking for each secure step with thoughtfulness. There are a dozen ways to trip and fall, even on this tiny rise of land, but he never falters. I squeeze his broad, angled shoulders tighter and kiss the back of his neck. I could do this all day.

  “I could do this all day,” I tell him, realizing that there isn’t a point to keeping anything to myself anymore. Especially when it doesn’t involve crumbled bones.

  “Good.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “No. Are you?”

  I shake my head. He pauses, before asking, “So…do you need sleep?”

  “Sometimes.” I think for a while, and then explain. “My body needs sleep sometimes. I don’t always know what I’m feeling, when I need it. Father recognizes it better than I do. I get…angry. And irrational.”

  Hector laughs as he carries me around a cluster of lacy cedar bushes, fragrant with their oil. “You are always irrational, Anda.”

  I nod. It’s true, after all.

  Hector stops walking and turns his head so he can see me. “You know, I haven’t had many bad dreams since we’ve met. Most of the time, I dream of rain, and the la
ke, instead.”

  “Tell me about your bad dreams, Hector.”

  He gently lowers me to the ground. Menagerie Island is so miniscule that we’re already on the east end. I slither my hand into his, but he won’t look at me. His eyes are on the distant horizon where the sky is clearer. The clouds behind us are pushing closer. Already, a slight mist moistens the air. I can taste the heaviness of rain coming.

  Hector shakes his head. “You don’t really want to know what my bad dreams are about.”

  “I do.”

  “No. Because then they’ll become your bad dreams, too. And I don’t want you to think of me like that.”

  “Hector.” I pull him closer and bury my face in his neck. He smells of sweat and shame, and I’d make it into a perfume to wear every day, if I could be so lucky. “Take me with you.”

  He encircles my wrists in his hands, the same way he did when he found me in the lake, trying to pull me above water. Instead of forcing him away with a riptide, I pull him down, down to the ground. I sit in his lap and wrap his arms around me, as if they were the harnesses of a rocket ship. I offer him the nape of my neck to hide his face against.

  “Tell me everything,” I whisper.

  And he does. Slowly, carefully, unfolding like an ancient letter. He’d never told anyone, because he’s never been sure of the truth. It started when he was eleven. His uncle often left a half-drunk beer in the kitchen, forgetting which bottle he’d finished and hadn’t. With his uncle snoring in his recliner by the TV, Hector would chug it down, wincing at the bitterness. Knowing and hoping that it would make him feel unlike himself, because being Hector wasn’t pleasant.

  Soon, he got used to getting drunk once or twice a week and stumbling to his room to sleep it off. It made getting in trouble with teachers and his uncle tolerable. It made him forget that his mother never bothered to contact him after he moved in with his uncle. He and his uncle were fighting a lot then. Sometimes his uncle would try so hard to show he wasn’t angry all the time. He’d buy him a nice T-shirt, or make him his favorite breakfast—bacon and cheese melt sandwiches. They’d rent videos and watch them together. Anything with spies or espionage. Those were the best. Then they’d spend the evening picking apart the plot holes.

  But it wasn’t enough to stop the fighting. So he took the bottles and more from the fridge, guzzling them to forget. He’d forget about Korea. He’d pretend he’d never tasted the sweet cakes of tteok stuffed with red bean paste, or heard his mother laughing while he’d clumsily bow to her on New Year’s Day. He’d forget about his dad. In his dreams, he’d burn the letters that promised everything and delivered nothing.

  And then one day, he woke up in bed on a Saturday at noon. His body ached like he’d had the flu. His brain pounded like gravel had tumbled within, scraping the insides of his skull. There was dried blood inside his pants, and there was pain, the worst pain he’d ever had. He figured he’d hurt himself by accident, somehow, while he was out of it.

  Two weeks later, it happened again. No memory of anything, but the pain and the blood, again. Terrified, he thought maybe he had some sort of cancer. Could someone his age get cancer like this? He stopped drinking the leftover beer. But the blackouts happened anyway. Again and again. His suspicions went in a different direction, darker still. Until he finally stopped eating any food or drinks in the house, unless he’d brought it home himself, saved from the lunch he’d bought at school. But then he started losing weight.

  His uncle fussed at him, worried over Hector’s disappearing appetite. He gave him antacids when the vomiting started, too. Coaxed him with a new pair of sneakers if he’d just start eating again. Life got a little better.

  And the blackouts came back.

  Every morning after he had awoken, confused and nauseated, his uncle would be kind. So kind. So forgiving, and generous, and there would be gifts. A new video game, a new coat. And then inevitably, he’d stop being kind. The rage would return. And then the next blackout.

  The last one was two nights before he’d left for Isle Royale. This time, he wouldn’t be found. This time, he wouldn’t go back.

  My mind is murky with thoughts as he tells me this. I don’t understand what happened. I open my mouth to ask a simple question, then don’t. Does it matter? Does it matter beyond that it agonizes me, knowing there was pain and a violation of trust and an evil that’s so awful that Hector won’t say exactly what he thinks happened? So instead, I ask another question.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone, Hector?” I whisper.

  “Because I couldn’t remember anything. I had no proof. And I was…” He tries to control his breathing, which is coming low and jagged. His hands are shaking so hard that he’s an earthquake against my skin. “Anda. I was so ashamed.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault.”

  Hector is far taller than I am. Heavier, too. But he starts to wither away from me, pushing me off his lap. I turn and capture him before he can flee, and he crumples into my lap and soaks my nightgown as his angular shoulders shake. I know what he would say. That nothing I can do matters, because I can’t change the past. I can’t make any of it go away.

  So this is why he ran. He ran away from terror, and I run toward it, every November. How can two such people belong together? How will we survive?

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he finally says, pulling himself up and messily mopping his face and nose. “We don’t have much time. I want to know more about you. I want to know everything. How you do it. When. I want…” He takes a deep breath, about to burst.

  I understand. He wants to fill up with anything else, so full that there isn’t room for nightmares. This is how I know he’s so fractured inside, that even a nightmare like me is a relief in comparison. If I can banish the viciousness of his memories, I’ll try. Because I can’t make them not real.

  You could. You could take him down to the depths. And then there would be no more pain. There would be no more feeling.

  I turn and hiss. “Ssss…I won’t!”

  “Why not?” Hector asks, visibly hurt.

  I turn back, and remorse melts the anger in my face. “Oh, Hector, no. No, no. I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Who, then?” Hector wipes his eyes. Then understanding lights his face. “Oh. You’re talking to her, aren’t you? Your mother?”

  “Yes,” I admit, extending my hand out and sweeping it around us. “She’s everywhere. The sky. The clouds. The water. The storm.”

  “What is she saying?” His curiosity is pushing away his sadness. It’s already working.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes. Everything.”

  “But it’s not pleasant.”

  He laughs ruefully. “You know my secrets now. Tell me yours. I don’t care how awful. I want to know.”

  “You won’t like me anymore.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  I try again. “You’ll be afraid of me.”

  “I already am.”

  This time, it’s my turn to be hurt by words. “You are?”

  “Well, wait. Not afraid. But I respect what you are. What you can do.” He thinks for a moment. “And what you haven’t done.”

  He’s thinking about Agatha, and himself. I am capable of restraint. Or at least I was, once.

  I stand up and offer my hands to pull him up, which he allows, gamely. He doesn’t need me to stand. We look westward, where a low cloud is coming quickly to meet us, so drooping that it almost seems like a fog falling from the sky. Already, heavy drops are pelting us and splattering the dry rocks around our feet. Hector hunches his shoulders and looks ready to bolt back to the lighthouse.

  “Rain’s here,” I say. Not so much to announce the obvious, but more as an introduction.

  And this is Hector, I would say. So please be nice.

  He is owed to me, and to you. You know this.

  I ignore her words. She’s been saying and hinting at such since the first day he we
nt into the water.

  “Should we go back? Do you want to listen to the weather radio?” he asks.

  “No.” I turn to him. “I don’t need it to tell me what’s here, or what’s coming. This won’t be bad.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ll make sure it’s not bad,” I say firmly, speaking more to Mother than to Hector. Usually I’d come out to the shore and welcome it with mouth open to the sky, ready to drink it in. But I don’t want it. Not now, not yet. “Don’t touch me for a minute or so, okay?”

  Hector nods and steps away, his face replete with careful fascination.

  “Oh, and don’t touch anything metal,” I advise him. “And don’t touch the lake water.”

  “Okay.”

  Now he sounds truly scared, but it will all be better soon. I close my eyes and feel the depth and fullness of the cloud. Yes, it’s low. Nimbostratus. Not a big one, not a dangerous one, but substantial enough to cause rain for a while and promise swells enough to make boating a choppy affair. I stretch out my fingers and sense the intentions of the cloud. It wants to stay for days. I could wind it tighter, coax it into inviting in a cold front and turn it into the storm predicted by the radio yesterday, but I won’t let it. I carefully pull it out taut, like a tablecloth being smoothed of its wrinkles. I push the cold front back, keeping it at bay.

  The pressure rises. The storm would mew complacently if it could.

  When I open my eyes, the gray above isn’t as dark and the rain is smaller caliber, soft and gentle.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Hector says, his palms out and collecting the light drops on his skin. “That was amazing.”

  The word—“amazing”—sloshes around inside my belly. Astonishing. Surprising. Stupefying. “You say it as though it were a positive thing.”

  “It is.”

  “But I can do things that are worse. Far worse.”

  “I know.” Hector takes my hand in his. “I could do amazing things, too. Horrible things, if I wanted.” A grimace passes over his face, and for a split second, I see what he could do. Translate his own pain into horrors for others. I wonder how many people have this inside them, this whispered potential for violence. Those with enough reason to do so, but choosing humanity over nourishing that destruction. Hector shakes it off, so splendidly. He squeezes my hand, and I look at our fingers clasped together. Twenty fingers. All able to do such damage.