Ascension

by Sophia Sharp

  Dave, of course, was my father, who snuck a surreptitious wink at me when mom wasn’t looking. “Of course, dear,” he replied with only the barest hint of sarcasm. “Although, I have a feeling that Tracy’s going to do just fine with the boys no matter what her habits are.” I smiled to myself. Dad always had a very inflated opinion of his one and only daughter. If he knew just how much of a struggle it was for me to be able to say two coherent words to a boy that I liked, well… shell-shocked wouldn’t be too strong of a word. Still, he always had a way of making me feel better every time I came home after school with any type of problem, big or small. That would be one thing I would definitely miss at my new home.

  I shook my head. It was strange thinking of this place I was going to, this seemingly otherworldly institute located far from my Washington home as could possibly be, as, well, home. But that faraway place would be home for the next two years of my life. I was headed for a very small, very prestigious, private school, located on a small island just off the coast of Maine. I emphasize the word prestigious because, while it is not something I would ever use, it is what nearly everybody else said about the place when they found out I had been accepted.

  Truth be told, I had had my sights set on the boarding school – Oliver Academy – for a very long time. It had been my goal ever since I had finished elementary school and took my first class in the neighboring high school, actually. I wanted to get into a good college. Doing so from a no-name junior high in the back hills of Tacoma would have been a herculean task. I’m not sure exactly where the desire to go to university came from, but I had a pretty strong suspicion it was because my dad once attended Harvard as an undergrad. And I say “attended” because he was one of those students who never graduated. It is quite a romantic story, actually, and perhaps worth its own in-depth look at a later time, but I’d be remiss if I failed to give the bullet points now. Essentially, in the summer between his junior and senior year, my father decided to backpack through the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies. Somewhere along the way, he stumbled upon a girl: a girl he liked very much, actually, and one to whom he proposed after having known her for only a few weeks. She said yes, of course, and the rest, as they say, is history. Because she was studying to be a doctor at a fairly obscure Canadian school, my dad dropped everything he had to move in with her, putting his own studies on hold. A few years later, I was born, and this Oldsmobile came soon after. And now, I was staring at the back of that girl’s frizzled sun-colored hair while she looked on through the side window at the trees passing us on the side of the road.

  I sighed, and tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position on the hard seat. Both my legs were beyond asleep at this point. Try as I would I couldn’t actually feel my toes. The entire lower half of me, in fact, was absolutely numb – which was why I was so surprised at how cheerful my mother sounded earlier. She had been in this car as long as I had, and while the front seat was a little more spacious, it could hardly be called comfortable.

  I tried to drown out my thoughts in the midst of the alt-rock tunes playing softly from the radio. Over a week of travelling, a family road trip, and – as my mom just told me – it was twenty miles from finally coming to an end. Even after being cooped up with both my parents for the better part of seven days, I realized just now how much I would miss seeing them. It was a strange sensation, leaving behind a fairly full life of family and friends and moving away from the place you grew up in and called home. But it was what I wanted to do, and I knew it was exactly what I expected from the moment I filled out that first blank line in the application papers.

  To say I was excited when I found out I had gotten in would be an understatement. I was absolutely ecstatic. I felt like I was on top of the world, in a place where nothing could get in my way. But now, I was caught up in those sad emotions that always came with saying good-bye. They temporarily eclipsed my excitement over the upcoming year. At least, I hoped this melancholy feeling was temporary. I assumed my regrets would all fade soon after I said the final goodbye to my parents and watched them drive back home from the yard outside my new room.

  “I’m going to miss you, honey,” I heard my mom say softly, and realized with a start that her voice was quivering. She wasn’t crying, was she? No – I knew she was stronger than that. “The house is going to feel so empty without you.” She was crying! Although she was obviously trying her best to cover it up.

  “Don’t worry,” I said quickly, trying to get a grasp of my new role as emotional psychologist, “I’ll be back before you know it. Winter break is over a month here, and everybody goes home then. You’ll see me soon.”

  “I know,” my mom answered, “but I’m still going to miss you.” She reached back with her hand to squeeze my knee lovingly, and then took it away. I smiled sadly. We weren’t even saying goodbye yet, and already I was feeling a little rough.

  “I’ll miss you too, kiddo,” my dad said in a much less grave tone than my mom had just used, “but we’re not saying goodbye quite yet, are we?” Again, he looked back to shoot me a quick smile. “After all, we’ve got to get to the school, first. And besides, this is an exciting time for you—and for us, too, really. Our only daughter, entering an entirely new stage of her life, and we won’t even be around to see it…” he trailed off, then shook his head roughly, “…er, that’s not how it was meant to come out.”

  My mom reached over and put a hand on my dad’s shoulder. They both turned and smiled at one another. I let the familiar melody from the stereo drift soothingly into my head, replacing my jumbled thoughts.

  The rest of the drive was spent in silence. I must have drifted off, because I didn’t realize we were off the main road until the car suddenly skidded to a halt, sending me flying forward unceremoniously. Only the seatbelt wrapped around my shoulder, saved my face from being mashed right into the back of my mom’s seat.

  Before I had the time to orient myself to my surroundings, I heard my dad speak. “Something’s wrong,” he said seriously.

  “What is it?” I asked, jerking myself to full attention. I looked through the windshield to find us stopped in a vacant and somewhat creepy looking parking lot. About forty feet ahead, the asphalt abruptly gave way to a roiling body of water. A deep fog stood as solid as a wall. It was impossible to see through, and impossible to see how far the water extended.

  “This is the ferry terminal we’re supposed to be at,” he said slowly, “but I don’t see any ferry big enough to have a loading dock for cars.”

  I frowned slightly, not immediately understanding the implication of his words. Oliver Academy was on its own private island, a few miles off the coast of Maine. The only way to get there was by ferry, which is what we were supposed to do. Scanning the edge of the water, I saw a small, decrepit-looking ship – more like a tugboat, actually –bobbing roughly on the waves. I thought there was a light inside the main cabin, although it was difficult to tell since there was still enough sunlight to dim out the effect. I looked past that boat, to either side. The rest of the terminal was empty. We were the only ones there.

  My eyes returned to the single, floating boat. Right on cue, the door to the main cabin swung open. Out stepped the most peculiar man I had ever seen. He was short, likely no higher than my shoulder (and I was not ever known as particularly tall), and had a belly that seemed as wide as he was tall jutting out from the splitting seems of a dark trench coat. A thick, curly beard hid half his face. This contrasted strangely with the top of his bald head. I watched, strangely entranced, as the man scanned the area in front of him. His eyes settling on our car, he jumped onto the plank and started walking toward us.

  “Um, dad…?” I began unsteadily. “That man is walking right to us!”

  My dad nodded in reply. “Maybe he can tell us where we need to go. The directions I have told me to come here for the ferry over. Perhaps I misread one of the road signs on the way.”

  “He doesn’t look very friendly, dad.”

  M
y dad barked a laugh. “What, you’re not intimidated by him now, are you? Come now! He’s half your size!” He laughed again, although I thought he sounded like he was trying to convince himself that there was nothing to fear.

  My dad started the engine, and put the car in reverse. Backing up a few dozen feet, he turned the wheel so he could angle the front of the car toward the man who was still walking right at us. My dad shifted gears, and drove up slowly toward him. A look of recognition dawned on the sailor’s face when we started moving toward him. He stopped and waved us over.

  The next thing I knew, we had driven up right beside the strange man, and my dad was rolling down the window.

  “Excuse me,” my dad began, “but we were looking for a ferry terminal that can take us to Traven Island?” Traven Island was the small island owned by my new boarding school, and was where the entire campus was stationed. “I followed the directions I was given, but it seems I must have taken a wrong turn, somewhere. Could you direct us?”

  The man looked at my father for a second, seeming to consider him. From close up, I realized he had a single toothpick stuck between his teeth. He shifted it in his mouth with his tongue. Finally, he jerked a thumb toward the back of the car – toward me.

  “That yer girl back there?” he asked in a very rough, very crude foreign accent. He sounded like he was eastern European, maybe, or even Russian.

  “Yes,” my dad replied slowly, surely as confused as I was about why the man was asking that. I heard the locks on the doors click shut, and saw my mom’s hand on the control for that.

  “Tracy?” the man asked my dad. “Tracy Bachman?”

  “That’s right,” my dad replied cautiously, and my jaw dropped open. How did this man know my name?

  “Ah. Good. Well, I’d been expectin’ her fer quite some time.”

  “Excuse me?” My mother spoke up this time, and she sounded absolutely incredulous. “What do you mean?”

  “She be the one goin’ to Oliver Academy,” he said. “Ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” my dad answered. “…and you are?”

  “Name’s Vlad,” the man said unceremoniously, “and I’m the captain of that there boat. Now, if you don’t mind me rushin’, we’d better hurry up and get Miss Tracy on board. We were supposed’t sail half an hour ago.”

  “Wait a minute,” my dad broke in. “Are you telling me you’re the one who’s going to be taking us to Oliver Academy today?”

  Vlad frowned, and hefted the pick in his mouth from side to side. Then he looked back at my dad. “I beg yer pardon, but nobody said anything about you comin’. All I was told was to expect one.” He shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less about the implications of what he was saying. “I was told one, and that means I’ll only take one. That’s all I’ve got room fer, anyway.”

  My mom instantly looked back at me. She looked just as much at a loss for words as I was. My dad had no such problem, however.

  “What do you mean you’ll only take one?” he roared, loud enough to cause Vlad to jump back. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he swung the door open, got out, and slammed it shut. But Vlad had had enough time to regroup. He now looked completely unfazed.

  “I was told I’d be takin’ one over,” I heard him say, “and that’s all I’m supposed t’do. Can’t have whole families making the trip, else everybody’s family would want to be there.” The way his tone inflected as he said that made it seem as if he thought that was the most ludicrous thing in the entire world. “I just do what I’m told, and, meanin’ no disrespect, it’s the only way things ‘ave ever been done ‘round here. Now, I don’t know where yer from, exactly. To be honest, I don’t much care. You brought yer girl here late, and it’s going to be me who takes the blame at Oliver Academy. So you’d better help get your girl’s stuff on board so we can set sail.”

  “Nobody’s setting sail without me,” my dad said evenly. “Who’s in charge of this place? I’d like to talk to them.”

  “That’d be me,” Vlad replied, sticking a thumb to his chest, “and I know exactly what yer goin’ t’say. But rules is rules. I can’t make exceptions.”

  “Well, then who’s in charge of you?” my dad asked. “At Oliver Academy, or wherever your supervisor is.”

  “That’d be the headmaster,” Vlad said, and shifted his weight back to his heels. After that momentary spurt of emotion, he looked completely nonplussed. “You’d be free to call ‘im up, though I’m not sure how much good it’d do you.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” my dad said, reaching into his pocket to pull out his cell phone. He turned his head toward me for a brief moment and gave me a reassuring smile. I realized just then that my heart was beating loudly in my chest – louder than it should in most circumstances, louder than it should right now. The implications of what Vlad was saying had finally struck home. If nothing changed, I’d be boarding that ship alone. Yet, somehow, I felt that my dad would make it all better. “What’s the number?”

  Vlad recited a number I didn’t quite catch, and my dad punched it quickly into the phone. He brought the phone up to his ear, and while he waited for the ringtone to start looked back at me again and smiled. I smiled back, trying my best not to look as petrified as I felt. I wondered why we were just finding out now that I was the only one Vlad was supposed to take over to Traven Island. None of the information I had received in the acceptance package mentioned that. It was something so simple, so presumably ordinary, that I think my parents and I all just assumed it wasn’t even worthy of mention in the papers we received.

  “Yes, hello? This is Dave Bachman, father of…” I twisted around in my seat just in time to see my dad start to move away from the car, phone held at his ear. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, because he had taken to pacing some distance away from the car. Arms crossed above his protruding belly, Vlad was alternating looks from my dad, to the car, and back to my dad.

  “Don’t you worry, honey,” my mom soothed. “Your dad will make this all better. You’ll see.” She smiled encouragingly. But I could see the worry in her eyes. I sighed and hoped what she said was true.

  I turned my attention back to my dad. He was speaking right into the phone and he was pretty animated about it. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but by the way his brow furrowed I doubted that the conversation was going well.

  Suddenly he started shaking his head. His lips were pressed tight. He obviously didn’t like what he was hearing. He kept shaking his head, the movement growing stronger and stronger with each shake. Finally, in what seemed like complete exasperation, he started to open his mouth to say something – and stopped in mid-sentence. He took the phone away from his ear, and looked at it in shock. I saw him mouth the word, “Hello?” as if in question. The light on his phone had already gone out. Whoever he had been speaking to had hung up.

  Frowning, my dad twisted the phone in his hand a few times, not taking his eyes away from it. Then, slowly, he looked up to me, and, with an unreadable expression, started walking over.

  “It doesn’t look good, mom,” I said as my dad approached us.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” my mom replied briskly. But there was an edge to her voice that betrayed her show of confidence.

  “Does that look like someone who’s coming over with good news?” I quipped, immediately regretting my words. I remembered that my mom was in an unusually fragile mood today. I didn’t want to upset her even more by starting a fight. “I mean, let’s just see what he says, right?”

  “Right.”

  Instead of coming right to us, however, my dad angled toward Vlad. When he was close, he said something too low for me to hear. The short man nodded gruffly and started off toward his boat. A feeling of dread and apprehension washed over me.

  My dad walked the short distance to the car, and came over to open the rear door. Bending in, he moved one of the boxes so that I could see his face.

  “So?” I asked him. “What did the headmast
er tell you?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not what any of us wanted to hear, Tracy,” my dad said solemnly.

  I gaped. “Do you mean…?”

  He nodded. “Yes. What Vlad told us earlier was true. Apparently, your Oliver Academy has very strict rules about any visitors, especially parents.”

  “But you’re not visiting!” I protested quickly. “You’re coming to help me move in!”

  “That’s exactly what I said as well, honey. But the headmaster… he said that there was no leniency in the policy. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing I could do.”

  “Well, there must be something!” my mother exclaimed. “They can’t just expect us to leave our daughter with some creepy looking captain to take her to her new home!”

  “Mom,” I said slowly, building up the strength to say what I needed to say, “I don’t think it will be that bad. I’m sure there will be people to welcome me there. And besides, we spent the entire last week together.” As much as I wanted my parents to come with me, I could tell that things were lining up in such a way as to make that impossible at this point. There was only one possible resolution. I would have to continue from here without my parents. I nodded to my dad. “I’m ready.”

  “You’re not just going to let that man take her there by herself, are you?” my mom interjected, in a voice that was both terrified and incredulous. “Not my little girl?”

  “I… I don’t know what to tell you. I talked to the headmaster on the phone, and he made it very clear,” my father stumbled.

  “Let me talk to him,” my mom burst in. “I can’t believe that this is an actual issue. Dropping our daughter off – we shouldn’t be barred from seeing her go!”

  “It’s okay, mom…” I began. But she shook her head gruffly.

  “No, it’s not! I can’t believe they just expect us to abandon you here, like some sort of unwanted dog! Our daughter deserves better than that, Dave, and you know it.”