by Diana Renn
Mom patted Aunt Jackie’s arm. “It’s healthy. I think this simple ceremony will bring you some sense of closure. And it will let us participate, too.”
A vein pulsed at Aunt Jackie’s temple. “It’s nice you’re here, Kitsie, but it doesn’t make up for your not coming to the funeral. I have to tell you, that really hurt.”
Aunt Jackie’s voice was calm and even, but Mom instantly sat up straight, her eyes blazing. “I told you, I wanted to come. But we were having a family crisis at the exact same time. The whole month of May was a nightmare.”
“I wasn’t living a nightmare here?”
“It’s complicated, Jackie. I had to deal with Marcus’s scandal. And the other stuff. You don’t have a teenager. You don’t know what it’s like.” She looked at me, biting her lip.
“Don’t even,” I interjected. “Don’t blame me. Dad and I both told you to go to the funeral. Remember?”
“How could I leave?” Mom burst out. “Every time I turned around, you were sneaking out! Or swiping stuff! Your dad was AWOL. I couldn’t put that burden on your grandparents.”
“Oh, great, so I’m a burden?” I said.
I glanced in Sage’s direction, suddenly wondering if she was witnessing all this. She had set her book down and was draping a gauzy blue scarf over her shoulders as a makeshift cover-up. She didn’t look our way, but she must have heard us. My cheeks burned. Not even in Turkey could I escape my crazy, drama-filled family and the unwanted attention they brought me.
Orhan came up to us with bottled water and a nervous grin. “Everyone is enjoying themselves, yes?”
I took the bottles and gave him a thumbs-up sign while my mom and aunt glowered at each other. “We’re doing awesome,” I said.
“Then I am glad,” Orhan said, though he cast a doubtful look at Mom and Aunt Jackie before hurrying back to the kitchen.
Sage yawned and stretched, then stood up and let the blue scarf slide off her shoulders. She padded over to the side of the boat and climbed down the swim ladder.
Mom stood up. “Sage has a good idea. I’m going for a swim too. I think I need to cool off. I did not pay all this money to bicker on the Turkish Riviera. Are either of you joining me?”
“I’m good,” said Aunt Jackie, putting the urn back into her tote bag and picking up her book once more.
“Me too,” I said, reaching for my Lonely Planet and my pen.
“Fine. Great.” Mom peeled off her maxi dress and stood in her matching blue bathing suit for a moment, hands on her hips, glaring at us. “You two are about as fun as a car full of clowns,” she said. “Remind me not to invite either of you to Disney World.” She turned on her heel and disappeared over the swim ladder.
“She gets like that,” I said to Aunt Jackie. “She’s super sensitive lately.”
“You don’t have to apologize for her, Zan,” said Aunt Jackie, watching Mom breaststroke slowly toward the beach. “Don’t ever apologize for other people. It’s not worth it. The fact is, your mom’s a little broken right now. I mean, life as she’s known it has ended.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. She’s been publicly embarrassed. She’s lost her power position as the wife of a man in high office, and all the perks that brought her. She would have made a great governor’s wife, and she knows it. Believe it or not, that’s a job. It’s the end of an era for her.”
“She could get her old job back, doing corporate event planning,” I said. “She’s really good at that. She just gave up that job to focus on Dad’s campaign.”
“Maybe she’ll go back to that. Maybe not. Either way, she’s still going to have to figure out who she is and what the next part of her life looks like. Same as me,” added Aunt Jackie with a wry smile. “I suppose I’m a little broken, too. So I’m trying to be patient with her. We’re all a little broken. I forget that sometimes.”
So here we were, then. Three chipped shards from some lost era, floating on the Mediterranean Sea. Three broken shards that did not fit together at all. We didn’t even seem as if we were from the same family.
I didn’t want to be all emotional about it, though. I flipped back to the Notes section of Lonely Planet and tried to look like I was busy. I didn’t know what to write, so I scribbled a “You Are Here” entry. It was a trick my English teacher had taught us when we had to keep journals for a class and we didn’t know what to write. “Just write about where you are now,” she’d said. “Look up. Look around you. Capture the moment. It might seem boring to you at the time, but you might look back again later and find that it was actually interesting.”
The pen felt heavy in my hand, but I wrote:
I am here. On a boat where I fit in nowhere. Sun, blazing hot. Mom, blazing mad, is following Sage’s lead and cooling off with a swim. Aunt Jackie is eating ginger candy and reading her book.
As soon as I wrote those last words, Aunt Jackie glanced at Mom, who was swimming laps around the boat. She set down her book, reached into her bag once more, pulled out a small stack of newspaper articles, and riffled through them. Some were in Turkish, others in English. I caught one headline: “Crime on the Rise in Cappadocia.” Then she took out a bright orange pen, lowered her sunglasses, and began to read, highlighting just about every sentence.
The rocking movement of the boat made me start to nod off after a while. I startled as Aunt Jackie patted my arm. “I’m sorry, by the way,” she said. “I forgot to say that. You’ve had a loss, too. All that stuff with your dad. It’s the end of an era for you as well.”
“I’ll live.”
“Your mom said your friends weren’t really there for you, when it all went down. That must have felt awful. Do you want to talk about it? I mean, I know we don’t know each other all that well, but I’m a pretty good listener.”
“That’s okay. I’m fine.” I really didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about it made me feel like crying. Talking about it made my stomach seize. And I did not like mushy heart-to-heart talks, on principle, with anyone.
Aunt Jackie raised her sunglasses and looked at me. “You’re fine?”
I lifted my chin and nodded.
“Well, good then,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re fine.”
6
After lunch, Captain Mehmet motored the gulet away from the cove, striking out for new waters. We all gathered at the stern, in the shade of the awning and around the table, seeking relief from the sun.
As we ventured farther out into the bay, away from land, the wind whipped up. Hard. It tossed Maeve’s paperback overboard, and scattered Fiona and Alice’s playing cards all over the deck. For a few minutes, we all worked together to try to collect the swirling cards. Then we stumbled into seats as the waves became choppier. The red Turkish flag snapped and hissed on its pole. Halyards and winch handles clattered and banged.
Sitting on a wicker chair, I squeezed my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around myself. My stomach sloshed.
“Watch the horizon line if you’re queasy,” advised Nils.
I tried to lock my gaze on the retreating horizon. But glancing at the other passengers, I saw they all looked uncomfortable too. Sage sat across from me on a cushioned seat, perched on her books to keep the pages from flapping, and tied her hair back more securely in a bun. Then she wrapped the pretty blue scarf with white stars over her head, tying it under her chin to keep her hair from whipping around. Clearly she wasn’t immune to the boat’s movements either, because she kept her gaze held fast to that horizon line.
She caught my eye at one point, and flashed me the barest of smiles—signaling sympathy or misery, I couldn’t tell which. But the smile was friendly. I managed a startled smile back just before she turned away. Then I noticed a spray of brown freckles on her pale face, and all up and down her arms. She was like the opposite of me, in a way. I felt something shift inside me a
nd connect to her.
Maybe I was so starved for friends I was just looking for an excuse to break down her snobbishness, and my shyness, and talk to her.
Or maybe I was just incredibly bored.
“Where do you suppose the captain is taking us?” Alice, the older British lady, wondered aloud. “Seems we’re getting a bit far from shore. I’d hate to miss the ruins.”
“We’re trusting the crew to follow the archaeological itinerary, even without our guide,” said Ingrid, “but I’ve heard routes can change, depending on the weather.” Then, as if realizing what she’d just said about our lack of a guide, she glanced worriedly at Aunt Jackie and pressed her lips together. Aunt Jackie frowned but said nothing.
“Routes can change depending on the captain’s whims, too,” added Fiona, Alice’s daughter. “I read these cabin charter itineraries aren’t as fixed as they promise.”
“The captain is making a special stop to a quiet inlet near Dalyan,” announced Orhan, poking his head out of the galley kitchen window. “Lycian Tours has arranged for a shore excursion to Dalyan and a guide there. You may also be lucky enough to see loggerhead turtles resting on the beach. I think you will enjoy this place. It is very beautiful.” His eyes lingered on Mom a moment longer before he ducked back into the kitchen.
“Well, well. Somebody fancies you,” Maeve teased her.
Mom shook her head. “He’s just friendly,” she insisted. But I noticed her cheeks were no longer as pale, and I caught her smoothing her maxi dress.
Dalyan. I liked the sound of that. What kind of place was it? I took out my Lonely Planet and scanned the index. It was hard to read, or even hold the book steady, as the boat bounced over the waves, but eventually I found the page and read about the Lycian rock tombs that were visible on the eastern cliffs.
Cliffs! My heart beat a little faster. Maybe I could climb something. Whenever I felt totally out of control, climbing reset everything for me. The feeling of rock beneath my hands—even the fake rock of a gym wall—anchored me.
“Excuse me, everyone,” said Aunt Jackie, rising unsteadily to her feet. “This chop is really getting to me. I think I’d better head below.” She headed below deck and the rest of us could hear her retching.
“Poor dear,” murmured Alice. “She’s got no stomach for the sea.”
Minutes later, Captain Mehmet turned the boat back toward land. Golden pine-studded hills that reminded me of brown sugar came into sight again. The waves calmed, the wind lessened, and the sun beat down once more. About thirty yards away from an inlet beach, Selim and Mehmet cranked the winch and lowered the anchor with a splash.
I sucked in my breath as I looked from the starboard side to the port side. A large yacht was moored there, about twenty yards away from us. It was the fancy boat with the couple on it: the Gulet Anilar.
“There they are,” I heard Milton mutter as he too noticed the boat. “The lovebirds. Rich bastards. Hope they’re enjoying all that space.”
The tanned, fit-looking couple radiated joy, even from a distance. They stood close together at the prow, taking in the landscape together. The man stroked the woman’s blonde hair.
“They seem happy, don’t they,” said Mom, sounding a little wistful. Or bitter, I couldn’t tell. “This setting is made for romance. No wonder Berk proposed to Jackie around here.”
My eyes scanned for the hot first mate on the Anilar. It was a fun coincidence that our boats had ended up in the same place, even though we’d taken different paths. Maybe I’d dare myself to catch his eye. Back when I had friends, we used to hang out at local cafés and “fish” for boys, trying to get them to look at us without ever going up to them or saying a word. We tried to exert some kind of magnetic pull, willing them to turn around, and gave ourselves points if they noticed us within a certain amount of time.
But suddenly what caught my eye were rocks. Large, carved brown rocks, rounded at the top and perfectly smooth, jutted out here and there around the inlet,.
“Doesn’t it make you want to go in?” Mom nudged me and gave me a knowing look.
I ran down to our cabin and quickly changed into my swim tights and long-sleeved rash guard. From down the hall I could hear puking sounds. After I changed and locked up my suitcase, I paused at Aunt Jackie’s door and knocked softly.
She opened it, looking pale and drawn, her hair a mess.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked her. “Water, maybe?”
She shook her head. “No thanks. I’m fine. I’ll be up in a bit.”
“Should I get my mom? You don’t look so good.”
“No need,” she said. “Your mom’s a worrier. Really, I’m fine.”
She seemed anxious to be alone, closing the door midsentence, so I ran back upstairs and lowered myself down the ladder into the clear, cold water. Then I let go. In a second, the water had warmed to the temperature of a cool bath. I breaststroked to the nearest rock, taking care not to let my head go underwater and wash my makeup off. Just in case the hot first mate from the Anilar happened to look my way. The makeup was supposed to be waterproof, but past experience had taught me that the packaging lied.
I reached out and put my hand on the rock. It felt as smooth as sand.
“Hey,” said a girl’s voice.
I started and turned around to see Sage treading water right behind me.
Her curly red hair had come out of its bun and now spread out around her on the water.
“Quite a ride over here, huh?” she asked, grinning.
It took me a moment to find my words. I couldn’t figure out why I was so nervous around her, but I was grateful she’d decided I was worth talking to after all. “Oh, yeah, choppy water. I thought I was going to yurk.”
“Me too,” she said. “Anyway, I’m surprised to see you in the water. Everyone’s been saying you can’t swim.”
I’m surprised to see you in the water, too, talking to me, I wanted to say, but I stopped myself. It was incredible to be talking to someone near my own age at last; I didn’t want to blow it. “No, I can swim. I just usually choose not to. I have, um . . . highly sensitive skin.”
“Well, then let’s not waste any time! Come on. Let’s check out those rocks over there.” She flipped underwater and pushed off with her feet on the base of the rock. She glided several yards away before coming up for air.
I swam after her, keeping my head up to avoid Catastrophic Makeup Failure. The next rock we found had a large base and a ledge jutting out that was just wide enough for two people to perch on. Sage pulled herself onto it.
I glanced at the Anilar, where that hot first mate was oiling the deck. I hoped he didn’t see me. Sage looked like a voluptuous mermaid, her legs tucked up beneath her, hair tumbling over one shoulder. I looked more like a harbor seal. Or a drowned rat.
“Look.” Sage pointed to some cliffs. High up, they were honey-combed with windows and doorways. Some had columns sculpted on either sides of the doors. “The Lycian rock tombs.”
“Can we swim to the beach and climb them?” I asked eagerly.
Sage shook her head. “They’re fenced off. But there’s supposed to be more in Fethiye, and those tombs you can actually hike to.”
“Seems kind of wrong, doesn’t it, to hike around people’s graves?” I said as I clambered up beside her. It’s funny, I usually felt entitled to go anywhere—even stores after hours, or into locked rooms—but the tombs seemed different, despite the open doorways. The tombs seemed like they actually belonged to people. Which was almost funny, because it’s not like the people who occupied them could protest my being there.
Sage shrugged. “No different from a stroll through a cemetery. It’s just life moving on, right? Besides, any time you walk anywhere in Turkey, you’re walking on graves. There are centuries of buried civilizations here, layers and layers of them. Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Romans,
Byzantines, and more. One of my teachers at my international school liked to say that we’re always walking over the dead in Turkey.” She gave me a small smile, as if embarrassed by what she’d just said. “I’m so sorry, by the way.”
“For what?”
“About your uncle.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“How’d he die?”
“Hiking accident.” I was tempted to share Aunt Jackie’s theory, but I didn’t want rumors to fly around the boat. I knew what it was like to have people whisper behind your back. So I gave Sage the official story. “About six weeks ago, he went out to Cappadocia for a job interview. And he went hiking. Alone. He missed a sign that said a trail was closed for erosion. Lost his footing and fell forty feet. Broke his neck.”
Sage listened, then looked down, quiet for a few moments. “Jesus, that’s horrible,” she said. “I had an older brother who died,” she added, in a quieter but matter-of-fact voice.
“Wow, really? What happened?”
“Drug overdose.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah. It was pretty much a nightmare,” she said, after an awkward pause. “I was only in sixth grade. He was in high school. My parents kind of freaked out. For two years my mom spent every evening sitting in his room. She kept it the way it was, like he might come back any day. My dad spent more and time out of the house. When he was home, it was like he was gone anyway. You’d talk to him and he wouldn’t hear you.”
“Wow.” I nodded, taking in her painful story, unsure of how to show sympathy or how she might take it. “So was your brother into drugs for a long time?”
Sage shrugged. “Who knows. I think he was in pain for a long time. Depressed or something. He spent a lot of time in his room, I remember, starting around freshman year. I think drugs became his bigger escape at some point.”
I hugged my knees close to my chest. I may have drunk a lot, and smoked a little weed on occasion, but I’d always stopped short of doing any serious drugs, even though they sometimes showed up at parties. I had enough escape hatches when my life got to be too much to handle. Or did I? Maybe ending up like Sage’s brother could happen faster than you thought.
