The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “She won’t understand. You tell her.”

  I try to yell at him to stay, to let me get on his goddamned boat, to make sense. But Mr. Selkirk drives the boat at full throttle toward the two warring elements—the mother, the daughter; the lake and the storm. He becomes a smaller spot of white and silver on the sine-like waves, appearing and disappearing between swells. He drives the boat—which wasn’t small but now looks like a tiny white dash—right between them. Anda is still just a smudge of coal in the sky, her arms conducting the air and water around her, fighting to keep her mother from sending me to my death at the bottom of the lake, where her mother believes I deserve to be.

  I don’t think they even register that Mr. Selkirk is right there until it’s too late. He drives between two sailboat wrecks climbing the column of water on Anda’s mother. The angle is impossibly steep, and the boat too large to turn quickly. Anda and her mother suddenly become aware of him at the same moment.

  But it’s either too late, or Mr. Selkirk knows exactly what he’s doing. The boat can’t handle the pitch of the wave, and I watch with horror as the bow of the boat climbs, climbs, climbs—until it can’t go any farther. It hesitates and begins its descent in reverse, before flipping over. Mr. Selkirk’s dot of a body falls through the air as the wall of water collapses on top of him and the craft.

  Mr. Selkirk is gone.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  ANDA

  There is a rift torn into us.

  Mother and I see it as it happens—the extinguishing of this tiny life between us, that sparks so brightly even we are blinded. A life that even we have no power to return to this world. Ever with the power to kill, neither of us has possessed the immeasurable force of sacrifice.

  He has eclipsed us.

  Father.

  Gone.

  Mother, the tower of water and swirling cloud, the shipwrecks still rotating about her in homage, shudders, as if the molecules of her being have forgotten why they clung together in the first place.

  The thousands of tons of flotsam and wreckage begin to sink, forming huge eddies and whirlpools as they displace the lake water beneath them. The mountain-sized cone of water simply falls, at first in slow motion, then with the speed dictated by reality. A huge wave pushes outward in a ring, almost thirty feet high.

  Mother doesn’t weep. She has only ever taken when she needed to take, has only ever given when she needed to give. And her need is so great that this offering makes no sense—in a way that makes no sense in her order of the universe, when things happen according to the seasons, and the rotations of the sun, for survival and survival only. It tears her open.

  Even as my own grief paralyzes me, I sense what happens deep beneath the waters. Mother has gone to Father’s corpse. She’s forgotten all about us. That is what she has always done—crash from one passion to another, leaving behind things of beauty and brokenness, like cracked agates on the shoreline. And sometimes, a baby.

  But I know she’ll eventually understand that sometimes, there are gifts. There can be these inscrutable items of beauty and horror outside the rules dictated by nature. But to me, it doesn’t feel like a gift. It feels like robbery, like Father has committed a crime against those he loved. Father is gone. He is gone.

  Mother envelops Father’s slackened body with her watery arms. She will rejoice over the flowers that will grow from his corpse. She will fall in love, heartlessly, with the blooms, before bringing the icy winds of winter next year to kill them. An encore of death. And the cycle will continue. Her joy and mourning will be reborn again and again. She would have it no other way.

  The huge wave of Mother’s receding form reaches Hector, whose body is limp and tired, held above the waterline by a soaked, bobbing life vest. But even he can’t handle the power of the wave that comes, larger than the Three Sisters, larger than anything I’ve ever made, because this is born of the fury of Mother and her retreat. Its bitterness reaches him, turns him over and over, forces him down so low in the waters that even I fear I might not be able to bring him back in time.

  But I find him.

  And I find that I can’t touch him anymore. Not like this. Not like I am.

  I push the water hard, below him, forcing him upward as fast as I can. As he breaks the surface, he gasps and flails, though his life vest will do the job of keeping him afloat and alive. More than I can right now.

  Hector sees me, and in the glassy, perfect surface of his exquisite brown eyes, I see what he sees. A creature with darkness in her blood, sewn into her very bones, in so much of what she touches. Faintly, I know that the clouds have run from me as I’ve bidden, that a helicopter is in the air already. That the Coast Guard has launched three boats for the one that they lost contact with over an hour ago. They will search for the bodies that they hope are still alive in this world. They will find Hector, close to death, but still mercilessly, mercifully alive.

  I look at Hector, and everything he has to live for. I think of Father, and his absence gnaws at my marrow.

  I see myself, and there is no beauty in what I behold.

  The water begins to envelop me and I recede into the depths, to a place he can’t follow.

  “Anda—” he begins. He’s barely conscious now. This struggle and the cold have been too much for his body.

  But I don’t listen to him. He calls for the Anda he knew.

  I sink back into the water. It’s time to say my final good-byes.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  HECTOR

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  ANDA

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  HECTOR

  Death sucks ass.

  That’s what I had thought when I first woke up in the ICU. Every bone, joint, and inch of skin suffered its own brand of misery. Sharp things bored into my wrists, my neck. I choked on objects that burrowed down my throat and into my chest, gagging me into silence. My brain was a mixture of cotton balls and sand, and my thoughts were a gluey mess. The drug dreams were too freaky to be enjoyable.

  But then I got better. My breathing tube was pulled. I got to sit up in bed and eat vanilla pudding and green bean puree, which I’ve discovered is a type of hell in food form.

  For a long time, I didn’t ask how I got there. I spent my recovery just thinking about everything that happened, up until the last moments in the lake. Someone says my dad visited, but I don’t believe it. He wasn’t here when I woke up. I didn’t watch the news or read the paper. Every time a doctor, or nurse, or psychologist, or physical therapist came into my room, they’d meekly ask, “Do you have any questions?” I knew what they were asking. They wanted to know if I wanted to know.

  Finally, I couldn’t avoid it any more. Actually, it was the housekeeping dude who told me. He was dumping out the garbage in my hospital room late at night. I was busy coughing up a half pound of very nasty-flavored snot from my right lung.

  “You’re that kid, right?”

  I gave him the shifty eye. “I don’t know. Am I?”

  “The runaway. The one who almost drowned in the lake.”

  I nod, looking for yet another tissue to spit into.

  “Well. Hope you recover fast. Your uncle, too.”

  That’s how I found out that my uncle survived.

  And I wept.

  At first, I was angry with Anda. She had come this close to being with me when she changed to save me. But she couldn’t fix everything—and then I realized it wasn’t her responsibility to solve my problems. Or kill them, either. I wouldn’t want anyone I loved to carry that burden. Hell, I didn’t want it myself.

  If he’d died, life would be different. But he’d still be around, in my thoughts and memories. I spent so much time running away that without him, I’d feel a little unmoored. But now I have a reason to get better. I could have a trajectory that doesn’t involve disappearing.

  That week I found out about my uncle, I couldn’t keep away from the news. I inhaled it all, as best as my feeble, fluid-swelled l
ungs could handle. They said that three people died. The captain’s body was never recovered. One of the officers suffered a heart attack during the rescue and died three days later in the hospital. The other one went home already. And then there was Anda’s father.

  Mr. Selkirk’s body was also never found. I shiver to think of where it could be, on the bottom of the lake. I wonder if Anda’s mother—Gracie—is keeping him as some sort of macabre consolation prize, or just using his bones as a toothpick. One day, the nurse was taking my blood pressure and temperature when she noticed me muttering as I scanned the paper.

  “Gracie?” she said. “Who’s that? A girlfriend?”

  She was trying to be nice, but I winced at her comment. “Nothing.”

  “Aw, c’mon.” She had that irritating tone of voice that said Not leaving unless you tell me!

  “Well,” I admitted, “I heard somebody call Lake Superior that.”

  “Gitche Gumee.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s an Ojibwa phrase for Lake Superior. Didn’t you learn that in school?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I’d totally forgotten, of course.

  I looked it up later. “Gitche Gumee” means “Great Sea” in Ojibwa.

  Great Sea.

  Gracie.

  I find that my thoughts spiral around Mr. Selkirk, the moment he asked me to explain things to Anda. I try to remember them hard, play them back like a movie. That’s where he lives now, in memory, and I’m sad that he’s gone—and sadder that Anda’s lost her dad. I feel terrible for her. Jealous, even, that she had a parent worth mourning.

  I think of the captain and that other guy, too. It’s a strange feeling, to be forever linked to death. The guilt weighs me down like an anchor. I know that much of this all happened because of me. Anda isn’t completely to blame.

  I wonder what she’s thinking or feeling right now. Or if she feels anything at all. I wish I could go to the lake and just touch the water, but I’m also terrified of it. Would her mother try to swallow me into the depths and drown me again, right there and then? Are we in a cease-fire? Would Anda know I was there? Maybe nothing would happen. But as long as I’m trapped in the hospital, none of these thoughts matter.

  I search for news about Isle Royale. But I find zero search results about a girl hiding on Menagerie Island. There’s plenty of stuff about how I hid there for longer than they thought a kid could manage, and how the Park Service is going to ensure that this never, ever happens again. There’s even an article about how Mr. Selkirk, a park volunteer, died trying to save the capsized passengers of the boat that sank. But not a word that he left a daughter behind.

  I’m surrounded by endings, but even Anda knew she wasn’t capable of finishing this story for me. Not the easy way. Not the wrong way.

  It had to be me.

  It took a few days to decide what to do. While my lungs continued to clear out the muck from being near-drowned, I thought and thought. It felt like a jail term in my hospital room, knowing what I had to do but resisting. I thought about Anda, and how she could have done what was easy for her and obvious, but didn’t. She didn’t let me live just so I could keep hiding. Years of fear made it hard to even lift my stupid finger to the red buzzer tethered to my hospital bed rail. But I finally did it.

  The nurse’s voice commed in. My finger was still shaking from pressing the button.

  “Yes? May I help you?”

  I swallowed and forced the words out. “I need to speak to the social worker.”

  I remember him walking into the room an hour later. I’d never had a guy social worker, and I’d never had a Black social worker either. I didn’t even understand who he was at first. He looked for a place to sit down and I ignored him, adjusting the plastic oxygen tubing prongs in my nose. It was annoying as hell, but kept me from gasping all the time.

  “I understand you wanted to talk to me?” He straightened out his plaid tie and sat by my bedside while I finished looping the tubing over my ears.

  “Uh. Who are you?”

  “The hospital social worker. I’ve been assigned to you.”

  “What happened to Pam?” I asked warily.

  “Vacation. I’m covering.” He extended his hand. “Jim Barton.”

  I didn’t shake it. “You’re a guy,” I said, only realizing too late how stupid that sounded.

  “Yeah. That happens sometimes.” He smiled at me, but not too brightly. He took his hand back and picked up a pen. “So how can I help?”

  I clamped my mouth shut. I was a little too freaked, and the idea of telling a guy, a stranger—I just couldn’t do it. After a half hour of silence (this guy played chicken really well), I realized Pam wasn’t going to magically show up. If I wanted to make things happen, I’d have to talk.

  “I don’t want to live with my uncle again,” I blurted out. Even if it was only going to be for another few months until I turned eighteen, there was no way. Jim nodded and waited. And finally, it all came out. I told him everything. Even the parts about how I felt like I was confessing, though I’d done nothing wrong. He wrote it all down. He tried to keep a straight face. A professional face, even as he scanned the burns on my arms that I confessed were my own. But once in a while, I saw a flash of anger. I’ve never been more relieved to see an angry person in my life.

  Someone was upset about what had happened to me. Someone, not Anda, finally knew.

  He called CPS. The police got involved. The ball was rolling.

  Living in the center of this juggernaut, my world will be pretty rocky for a while. But it won’t be the world I knew before Isle Royale. Never again.

  Jim comes in on a Sunday to tell me that my dad is on his way.

  “Really?” I ask, blank-faced.

  “Well, he was here before. Apparently, he stayed with you while you were unconscious in the ICU. He had to go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska to make arrangements for a transfer to the U.S. Looks like you two may be moving to Omaha. He said he’d be back tomorrow.”

  “Tell him not to bother. He hasn’t been my guardian for years.”

  “But—”

  “He didn’t even call me. I’ve been awake for three days.”

  “Hector—”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  He gives me a knowing look. It’s a friendly look, but still. “The doctors say you may be able to leave the hospital in a few days. Can’t stay here forever. You have to go with your dad. He’s not your uncle, right?”

  “I don’t want to. Look, most of the time, I took care of myself anyway. I wrote the checks for the bills. I bought the groceries. I held down a job and kept up a B-plus average in high school. Can’t I just…live by myself?”

  I wait for the no. I don’t even know why I asked, since there’s no way, but Jim started jotting down a few things.

  “You have no support system. No other family around. I can’t promise anything, but let me look into it.” When I give him a surprised look, he continues. “There may a slim chance you could become an emancipated minor. But don’t get your hopes up.”

  An emancipated minor? How could I have not known about this? Oh, of course. I was too busy focusing on actual physical escape to even consider talking to a lawyer. And my social worker never mentioned it existed.

  After a lot of calls, my mother is willing to wire some money to get me started. It turns out, my mother has been trying for years to get my contact information, but my father kept blocking her. The fucker. Soon after, she invites me to come and visit Seoul for a while, but I say no. I can’t move to another country when I can’t even handle living in the one I’m already in. But we speak on the phone once. I cry the whole time, like a kid, because she’s so happy to finally speak to me. It’s amazing how much Korean I still remember.

  Na-neun neo-reul sa-rang-hae. Na-neun ne-ga geu-rip-go bo-go-sip-gu-na. Na-ui sa-rang-seu-reo-un a-deu-ra.

  I love you. I miss you and wish to see you. My beloved son.

  Jim starts
the paperwork for emancipation and says a judge will have to get involved. It’s all starting to happen, even before my dad arrives in two days.

  “You’ll have to tell him,” Jim warns me.

  “I’ll send him a letter.”

  It’s going to be an epic letter, let me tell you.

  ...

  Anda haunts my now non-medicated dreams every night. I see her standing in her fluttering white nightgown, up to her calves in lake water. She’s beautiful, and terrible, staring out at the surface of the lake and beyond. She never says a word to me. I think it’s because she’s waiting for me to say something first. After all, she had dealt the last hand.

  I’m still alive. So is my uncle.

  Nothing changed.

  Everything changed.

  The first ferry back to Isle Royale is on May 3, 7:30 a.m. Right now, it’s almost December. If everything goes okay, I might be taking extra classes to make up for my lost months of school so I can actually graduate on time. One of my doctors asked me what I want to be when I graduate. Of course, the only thing that occupies my mind, 24-7, is the island. How the island, in its own way, needed taking care of. I like that, being needed by something so powerful as nature. I also liked being away from buildings and crowds of people and knowing that I could take care of myself without so many human trappings. So when the doctor asks me again, the freakiest answer comes out of this city boy’s mouth.

  “A park ranger.”

  The doctor chuckled at me. “Oh, I get it. You’re joking, right?”

  “Right,” I say, but I’m not.

  I spend too much time thinking. I’ve seen things in this last month that were never meant to be seen. Some days, I’m not even sure that I didn’t just imagine everything. Like, maybe I accidentally ate some weird mushroom my first week there and tripped the whole time.

  Anda is something that wasn’t meant to live in my world. I know exactly what she’s capable of and it’s no fairy tale, despite my wishing. I don’t know if I can reconcile the Anda that spent the night with me in the lighthouse, the Anda that saved my life, and the Anda that could decimate a ship full of lives. Like that.