by Luanne Rice
“Kind of a shock,” Billy said, watching me carefully.
“Kind of,” I said. The whole thing was so ridiculous and surreal, I started to crack up, laugh uncontrollably.
Billy grabbed my shoulder to steady me. “Don’t lose it on me now.”
“I’m not. It’s honestly funny, don’t you think?”
“Not really,” he said. He had a question behind his eyes. “Should we go back home, to Connecticut? Now that you’ve seen your mother? Because I don’t think staying here is going to work out.”
“You’re totally right about that. But we’re not going back there. Sand dollar,” I said.
“Sand dollar,” he said. That finally got him to smile.
I glanced over my shoulder, down the quay, expecting my mother to come barreling after us. The last thing I wanted was to return to her house, to have her try to explain everything again, or in a different way. “Let’s get away from the harbor till Atik comes back.”
“Okay,” Billy said.
And he was good at this: getting us out of a place we didn’t want to be. There was no one better. We ducked behind a boat shed and angled up a pine-needle-strewn path. We headed west toward the late-day sun, still high enough in the sky to paint the bay and the treetops the same shade of butterscotch.
We were traveling light, considering we’d left our stuff on my mother’s boat. But I felt light in other ways, too. The top of my head felt as if it might float off. At the top of the path we stood in the coastal forest that rose behind the town. Tall pines spiked around us. I felt if we walked another hour we’d be far enough away, and we could just keep going—just as Billy had wanted to do in the first place.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Heaven and back,” I said. “Except not back.”
“That sounds good,” he said.
Around the next bend we came to an open hill leading down to a few houses—the kind of hill that, if covered in snow, would have been perfect for sledding. A wooden ladder was attached to the trunk of a tall tree, but even better—a swing hung from one of its rambling, crooked branches.
The swing’s wide seat was made of a splintery plank. It looked old, as if it had been there forever. I wondered if kids in the houses below still used it. Billy tested the long ropes, tugging on them to make sure they were safe.
“Get on,” he said.
“We’re too old for swinging,” I said. “I wonder what’s up that ladder.”
“Get on,” he said again.
So I did. He pushed me, softly at first. Tap, his hand on the small of my back, tap, and I’d lazily drift out and back. The out part was okay, but back was best because I loved feeling his fingers touch my back. Tap, a little harder, and I went out a little farther. From here I saw the inn’s red roof from above, and the harbor spreading out into the Saint Lawrence River.
Billy’s taps turned into solid pushes, both hands on my waist every time I came back. And I swung farther up and out, too. The river reminded me of where we’d come from, all the way east. It reminded me of the reserve and there—I saw it returning to the bay, its wake rippling in a frothy white V behind it—was Wolf.
“Atik’s on his way in,” I said.
“Good,” Billy said. But instead of me getting off so we could head down to the quay, Billy held the swing steady and eased himself onto the board beside me. We barely fit. He held both ropes, one arm around me, and his legs moved us forward, then back, until we were swinging. Not as high up as I’d gone before, but still getting air.
I glanced up at him. His freckles seemed to be standing out more than ever, and his eyes fixed on me; he was smiling a funny, lopsided smile.
“This is it,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Something you always look for but never know when it’s going to happen.”
“Finding a splintery old swing way above a little town in Canada?”
“Exactly,” he said. “What I’ve always dreamed of.”
“Seriously, what?”
We went back and forth, back and forth, another minute. The sun turned orange and went down a little more, glancing off the fjord’s high rock walls, making the bay look like fire.
“The best moment of my life,” he said.
“This, right now?”
“Yeah,” he said and kissed me. His lips were soft, and the kiss was gentle, but I felt energy pouring off him, as if he wanted to fly, or run a million miles, or swim across the river. Or maybe that energy was coming from me.
“It’s a good moment, true,” I said when we stopped kissing. “But there are going to be better ones. They’ll be so much better. Away from here, away from her.”
He listened to me, and I wasn’t sure why he didn’t agree out loud. I could hear his thoughts, the way he could hear lobsters singing, and he was planning our route, our escape. All those days on the lam with his father had taught him so much. He’d proven it on our trip so far—even today, finding the path up this hill to this swing.
“Where will we go next?” I asked. “We’ll have to sneak onto her boat and get our things. Even if she locked it, that’s okay. She always uses the same combination, 1-9-0-7, the year Rachel Carson was born. But after that, what? Back to the reserve with Atik?”
“You liked it there, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I loved it,” I said. “If we hadn’t had to come here, I would have wanted to stay. Did you?”
“It was good,” he said.
“We could work there. Go to school where Atik went and kick the butts of all those bullies.”
Billy smiled. “My tough girl Maia.”
“So tough,” I said, glowing because he’d said “my.” My tough girl Maia.
“I think we should head down now,” he said. “Before it gets too dark.”
“Okay,” I said, and we began to walk. The way down seemed steeper, the pine needles underfoot more slippery than they had been on the climb up. Billy and I held hands, making sure we didn’t fall. That was our way: looking out for each other. I felt exhilarated; he was right: We were living the best moment of our lives.
So far, I told myself. Imagine the rest of our lives. We’d always be together, we had to, and life would get better and better from here.
“Do you think they planned it all along?” I asked.
“Who?”
“My mother and Drake,” I said. “Ha-ha.”
“What do you mean, ‘ha-ha’?”
“Just, it’s funny to think about. She’s known him so many years and she just happens to wind up here, in the same town where he lives? It’s so far from Connecticut, so far from anywhere. She didn’t just leave my father and me—she left us for him. Don’t you think?”
“It occurred to me,” he said.
We had to concentrate, scrambling down a scree of rocks—boulders, really, much bigger than they had seemed going up, when the light was better.
“I feel sorry for Merie,” I said. “If Mom could do this to me, she’ll do it to her. That’s the worst. She’s that kind of a person.”
Billy didn’t answer. I could tell he was concentrating on getting us both safely down the rocky part. There was a slight cliff edge I hadn’t noticed, an almost sheer twenty-foot drop. My dizziness came back. I half swooned. I wasn’t sure I could make it the rest of the way down.
“We’re exactly alike, you and I,” I said. I clutched his hand.
“You know it,” he said.
“Even more than I knew.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “I didn’t think more was possible.”
“We both have bad parents. I mean, really bad. Your father, what he did to your mother. And my mother …”
“At least she didn’t kill anyone,” Billy said.
I heard the words in my mind: missing, waiting, child, song.
They weren’t for me, they weren’t even for the whales: They were for my mother’s new child. They were for Merie. The four words were for my mother’s other
daughter.
Everything inside me broke. All my bones and organs crashed into one another. My heart exploded. My body collapsed, and I crouched to the ground, feeling my blood stop in my veins.
Then I heard a voice echoing off the fjord’s rock walls, the cliffs rising and falling around us, the wide-open water. The voice was keening, weeping, loud, and insane. The voice was screaming, and it was mine.
“Yes, she did, Billy! She killed me, she killed me, my mother doesn’t love me, she killed me!”
Well, that was embarrassing,” I said the next morning. Billy had gotten me down the hill to Atik’s boat. I didn’t remember my feet moving. I think he might have carried me. I couldn’t stop crying, so he and Atik had tucked me into bed—the single bunk down below—and Billy had watched me all night. I didn’t exactly fall asleep—I passed out.
And now, still lying there with Billy sitting beside me, I was trying to sound normal, carefree, as if a girl howling into a crevice, having to be put to bed by her boyfriend, was the most normal thing in the world.
But I knew I was in that place again: the real depression, the black hole.
Billy had left me on Wolf with Atik and gone to my mother’s boat to get our things. Just as I’d suspected, her combination was the same: 1907. He’d returned with our duffel bags, and I dug through them and found my medication. I knew I wasn’t supposed to take the pills all at once, to make up for all the days I’d missed, but I popped four, hoping they would work fast, deliver serotonin to the receptors and make me well right away.
Atik’s bunk was narrow, but Billy perched on the edge beside me, holding my hand. I was smiling, but my lips quivered with the effort, and tears leaked from my eyes.
“I’m so sorry I acted that way.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“No, it’s horrible. It’ll get better. The meds will kick in. I shouldn’t have stopped …”
“You went off them? Maia.”
“I know,” I said. “I was stupid.” And it had been stupid to hide them from him in the first place.
He said nothing to that, making me think he agreed with me. That hurt. Everything did.
“Did you see her? My mother?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Or Drake?”
He shook his head. “Atik said they came by last night, right about the time I was on board your mother’s boat, but he told them he hadn’t seen us. He gave them the idea we’d gone off on our own.”
“I’m surprised they even looked.”
“You’re still her daughter.”
“Whatever that means,” I said. “I feel bad for Merie.” It was easier to think of my curly-haired baby half sister than to think of myself. My mother had killed me. Or she might as well have.
It was a trauma reaction. I’d learned about them in Turner. When something hurts or shocks you terribly, you check out of yourself. You have another part living inside you, and it takes over. Memories of what happened are slippery or even wiped out. One part, stronger than the others, deals with the pain, anger, or sorrow, protecting the more fragile part.
That’s how I felt in the bunk: scraps and seconds of yesterday, of last night, my mother’s revelations, Merie staring into my eyes, my voice screaming on the mountainside, floated in and out of my mind. But the whole picture was too hard to deal with.
It was easier to sleep, so I did.
I don’t know how much time went by. It was one of those sleeps of drifting in and out, dreaming and then realizing my eyes were open, closing them and going through the same cycle. In every dream I was struggling. Hiding with mythological winged beasts, driving at high speed down a mountain, fighting with a woman in a mask.
I woke up again. The boat had been rocking gently on the waves and tide, but suddenly it thrashed, bobbing, as if someone had stepped heavily aboard.
“Maia?”
I heard someone call my name.
The voice was very familiar, but I wouldn’t let myself face it.
Ten seconds later, my father climbed down the ladder and crouched beside my bunk. I lay there, feeling like stone.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go,” he said.
I wouldn’t move.
But then he held my hand as if I were six years old, and I very slowly pushed myself out of bed and went up on deck with him. The bright sun blinded me and hurt my eyes, and I blinked at shadows standing there in silhouette.
Once my eyes adjusted, I saw my mother, Drake, Astrid, and Billy standing on the quay. Atik stood off to the side with a man I assumed was his uncle. My father and I climbed the long, steep dock up to them.
Billy broke free of the group, came to me. He put his arms around my shoulders, and I buried my face in his chest.
“See what I mean?” my mother said. “It’s as if she’s brainwashed. She’s given him all her power. And he has a criminal record, I’d like to have him arrested, I can’t stand that she’s done this, I raised her to be strong, independent …”
“Gillian,” my father said.
“Andrew, if you’d been paying attention you wouldn’t have let this happen,” my mother said. “You and Astrid, too wrapped up in each other to notice your daughter is so miserable she has to take up with …”
“Enough,” my father said, more loudly.
I expected Astrid to jump in and defend herself and my father, but she stood there, uncharacteristically silent.
“Let’s give Maia a chance to talk,” Astrid finally said.
I felt furious at her for intruding. What business did she have even being here? This was the first time my parents and I had been together in years, I thought. Only we weren’t together—not really. Not at all.
“I don’t want to talk,” I said. “I just want to get out of here. Billy …”
“Hey, guys,” Atik said. “I gotta get back to the reserve.”
“Take us with you,” I said.
“We can’t go with him, Maia,” Billy said.
“I’ll see you,” Atik said.
I tried to pull Billy so we could go after Atik. I watched as he and his uncle untied the lines, hopped into the boat, and drove east. Billy held me tighter. I wanted us to escape, the way we had been doing for so long. We had run away from my house, away from my mother, and now I wanted to get away from everyone here. I felt as if we’d missed our best chance, fleeing with Atik. I couldn’t stand what my mother was saying about Billy.
“Get your hands off her,” my mother said, coming closer.
“Gillian,” Drake said. “Let’s stay calm. It’s all going to work out.”
“So help me,” my mother said, glaring at Billy.
“Why are you blaming him?” I asked. “I’m the one who started this. I wanted to find you. That’s the whole reason we came here. Yesterday you were saying how great it was, how we were so resourceful to have made it here …”
“Frankly, Maia,” Drake said, “your mother didn’t know what to think or say to you. She was concerned about your instability and wanted to make sure you didn’t bolt.”
“You could have told me about Merie,” I said, staring into my mother’s eyes. “Before I got here.”
“Maia, I was afraid how you would take it. I could have done it better, but I was afraid you couldn’t handle all this,” my mother said. And she was already vindicated because clearly I couldn’t.
“Where is she now?” I asked. “Are you going to abandon her, too?”
“She’s with the nanny,” Drake said.
“I didn’t even know she existed!” I said. “You had a baby a year ago, and I didn’t know!”
“Okay,” my mother said. “You’ve said that.”
“I think Maia deserved to know she has a half sister,” my father said.
“You stay out of this, Andrew! What goes on between Maia and me has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s the same as ever, the two of you, you’re always fighting,” I said, my voice rising. I felt the panic, hysteria b
uilding, just like on the cliff path.
I pressed even tighter against Billy, took deep breaths to calm down. I wished we could just disappear. I reached into my pocket and felt the sand dollar—when he’d gone to get our things, he’d wrapped it in tissue and put it on the pillow next to me, where I’d find it when I woke up. I held it now, as if it were a magic talisman and could transport us somewhere else.
“Please, get us out of here,” I whispered to Billy.
“Maia, I can’t,” he whispered back.
I handed him the sand dollar. He let go of me long enough to unwrap it, look at it.
“Our promise,” I said. “We’re not returning.”
“Oh, Maia,” my father said, sounding sad.
“Andrew, it’s time, you’re all going to miss your flight,” Mom said.
“You called him,” I said, wheeling toward her, my face turning red. “You couldn’t wait to get rid of me. You just couldn’t wait.”
“That’s not true,” my mother said.
“It is,” I said. “I felt it the whole time, how much trouble I was to you. And all you did was lie to me about everything. Nothing I’ve believed about you is true! And now you just want to get rid of me, so you called Dad, and …”
“She didn’t,” Billy said.
“What?” I asked, looking up at him, into his green eyes. “How do you know?”
“Because I called him,” he said.
“No!” I couldn’t believe it. In that second, I thought I would die. He held both my hands. The sand dollar was pressed between our palms. Tears blurred my eyes. Billy’s betrayal filled my whole body like poison. “Why?” I asked. It was all I could manage.
“Because I was so worried,” he said. “When we were on the cliff, and you started screaming, I was so afraid for you. And when we got back to the boat, and all you could do was sleep … there was nothing I could do.”
“I’m getting better,” I said. “The medication will start working again.”
“I hope so, I want it to,” Billy said. “But I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t watch you suffer that way. You need help, Maia. More than I could give.”
“Well, there’s something,” my mother said to Billy. “You did the sensible thing, but you also brought her to this point. She wouldn’t have taken this trip if you hadn’t been encouraging her. When this is all over, I want you to stay away from—”
