“Do you have any wahoo?” I ask, because according to Mrs. Fairfield, this is most likely the kind of fish we caught and ate on Island. She showed me a picture of one, and I nodded, telling her that yes, she was right. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. She also showed me pictures of rabbits and wallabies, and tried to convince me that I had them confused, that it was not rabbit we always ate and wore on Island, but wallaby. I don’t know.
“Wahoo?” the man repeats. I nod. “Let me check in the back.” He opens a wide door and yells, “Hey, Lucas, any wahoo come in today?”
Not River. Lucas.
All this time, he’s been so close? Not at the ocean. At the fish market? Of course.
Mrs. Fairfield showed me the words in the newspaper, too. Lucas. Megan. And my mother, who they and my grandmother referred to as Angela, not Petal. Only Helmut seemed to be Helmut both in California and on Island.
“Lucas,” the man yells again.
I feel a cry rising in my throat, and I think I hold it back, except I must not, because Ben reaches for my shoulder. “Sky,” he whispers. “You okay?”
I shake my head.
“Hey, Lucas,” the man calls one more time. I hold my ear tight for the answer, the sound of his voice. If I could just hear it. Skyblue.
“He’s still out on the boat,” another voice calls, a man. Not River.
“Any wahoo back there?”
I don’t hear what the man says. My entire body feels tight, soaking in the still fish air. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
“If you try back in the morning, we might have some,” the man behind the window is saying now.
Ben steps forward and takes the twenty dollars from my hand. “We’ll just take what you have, then,” I hear him say. “The halibut, and maybe some of the mahi.”
“She all right?” the man asks.
“Yeah, sure,” Ben says. “She’s fine.”
I feel the fish man’s eyes on me, cold and still. I squirm a little, uncomfortable with him staring so closely. “She that girl from the paper?” he asks Ben.
“No,” Ben says quickly. He stands up a little straighter and shoves the twenty dollars across the window. “Can you just hurry up with the fish? Please.” His voice trembles.
Finally the man hands the brown package across the window, and Ben grabs it, then grabs me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, pulling me tightly to him, as if he’s trying to hide me in his side.
We get into the SUV quickly, and then we sit there for a moment, not saying anything. Ben puts his hands on the wheel, and I notice they’re shaking.
Hey, Lucas. He’s here. So close.
“Shit,” Ben says now.
“Shit,” I echo back.
“Oh no, don’t. Don’t say that one in front of Alice. It’s not a good word.”
“Okay,” I say. But how am I supposed to know the difference? How are there good words and bad ones, useful ones and empty ones? I’m supposed to echo. But I’m not. I’m Sky but I’m Megan. I’m neither one. Or I’m both.
River is here. Or Lucas is. I’ve found him. Even if he didn’t want to be found.
And now that I know where he is, all I have to do is come back and talk to him, and convince him to go back to Island with me.
Chapter 23
Instead of going right back to my grandmother’s house, Ben pulls into the garage at the next house over, his house, first. “You wanna come in for a little bit?” he asks as he turns off the car.
I nod because I’m not ready to go back to my grandmother’s house yet. But as I follow him inside, I am not really paying much attention to what he’s saying to me. I am still imagining him, my River, inside the fish market, on a boat, catching fish, almost as he always was. So close to here.
“My mom’s at work,” I realize Ben is saying now as I follow him into his kitchen. “That’s why it’s so quiet.” His mom is almost always at work, this place where Mrs. Fairfield tells me people get money. My grandmother doesn’t work, but somehow she still seems to have money. Ben’s mother works a lot, and yet he mentioned in the car how he’d drive a different one if he had more money. It really is confusing. But I get tired of asking questions. And besides, it is hard to concentrate on worrying about this world now when my mind is flooding with my old one. River.
I haven’t been in Ben’s house before now, and as he puts the fish in his silver fridge to keep it good, I notice the inside of his house is nearly the same as my grandmother’s in the shapes and placement of the rooms, but everything else about the house seems different. In my grandmother’s house, every room has its color, mostly a very bright one, and most of the rooms have carpet. In Ben’s house, the walls are white, and the floors are tile, like my grandmother’s kitchen and bathrooms.
I follow Ben up the tiled stairs, which are smooth and cool against the bottoms of my feet, and I notice his bedroom is the same one as mine, second door past the stairs, only inside his room, his walls are white and covered with pictures. Not fake oceans, like in my room, but people—drawings, like the ones River and I used to make in the sand, only Ben’s are much better, more detailed, more real-looking, almost like the pictures in the newspaper but not quite.
“Did you make these?” I ask. He nods. “They’re really nice,” I say. “Especially this one.” I run my finger across one that looks a lot like me. And by that, I mean Sky-me, the girl in the rabbit pelt who lived on Island and smiled and knew everything there was to know, not Megan-me, the girl with the jeans and flip-flops who doesn’t know much. The girl in this drawing is smiling. I’m not sure if I’ve smiled since coming to California.
“They’re all right,” Ben says, shrugging and sitting down on his bed. But I stare at the picture a minute longer, noticing two words underneath.
“What does this say?” I ask him.
“Island Girl,” he says, and he shrugs. I remember how I got mad at him that day when he called me that, how, at first, I thought he was laughing at me. But now I can see from the picture that he wasn’t. That by nickname, he really did mean something nice. Ben sees me, I think. He actually sees me. I don’t understand why it’s so much different for him than for my grandmother or Mrs. Fairfield, or even Dr. Banks. But it is, and he’s my favorite one in California, the only one I really find myself liking, wanting to talk to and spend time with. And maybe it’s because he draws me the way I am, rather than trying to change me. To make me normal. I have the sudden sense that I might miss him when River and I go back to Island, but then I quickly push the thought away because it makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t need anyone else, I remind myself. River and me. Me and River. Shelter and Falls. The sky and the stars. Ocean and Fishing Cove. That is all I need. All I am.
Ben sits down on his bed and pats the space next to him, so I sit down, too. He lies back against a pillow, and I echo him and do the same. The white ceiling above us is covered with fake, too-large yellow stars. And suddenly I feel sad for him. It does not seem like any kind of life, sleeping this way, with fake stars shining up above your head.
Ben has a big bed and there’s space between us now, not like the way River and I always lay so close on the rabbit pelt mats. But suddenly I’m aware that Ben and I are sharing a space and that we could be closer if we each moved just a little bit. Though we don’t.
Maybe Ben notices, too, because he rolls over, away from me, to pick up his iPod from the table, and he turns on music. This is part of making me normal, him teaching me about this stuff. I like music, the way it sounds, the way it can change from one moment to the next, the way you can just push a button and make the way you’re feeling surround you, without even having to say anything at all. I wonder if there would be a way for me to take an iPod with me back to Island, to listen to music there still, but then I realize that thought is ridiculous.
“You’ll like this song,” Ben says now. “It’s a blues song. Nina Simone.” He grins, and a thick low voice fills the room, singing about birds and sun and feeling go
od. I felt that once not so long ago, didn’t I? All of that. On Island, my birthday, the sun on my face as River held out his catch, spanning the width of his arms. I’ll feel that again soon. Once I find River at the fish market and we figure out our way back.
“All this nature stuff—you like this, right?” Ben asks.
I nod, but I like the sound of her voice more than what she’s saying to me. It is clear and deep and sweet, like my mother’s. “So this is what normal people our age listen to in California?” I ask Ben.
“Nope.” He laughs. “Total throwback song from probably Alice’s teenage years.” He shrugs. “I told you I suck at this normal stuff.”
“But how do you know so much about this not-normal music?” I ask.
He grins again. “My father is a jazz drummer in a band—a drummer, you know that, right?” I shake my head, and he taps with his fingers against the table. “The person in the band who keeps the beat. At least, he was. I mean, I guess he still is.” He pauses. “Anyway, when I was younger, he used to play me records, teach me about all this stuff.”
“And now?” I ask, and I think it’s strange no one around me has mentioned Ben’s father up until this moment.
“Now … I don’t know. He left for a gig one night when I was seven, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“My father died before I was born,” I tell Ben, and he nods as if maybe he already knows this. “Where did your father go?”
Ben shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “But he’s sure as hell not here.”
“Maybe he’s on an island,” I say.
“Are you making a joke?” he says. I shrug because I’m not sure what I’m doing. I don’t really think his father is on an island, though maybe. Mrs. Fairfield showed me many other islands on her maps, but they all had strange names I’d never heard of or would’ve never imagined existing before now. I never understood before that Island was not the only one, that we were not the only ones. And I’m still not sure I understand or believe it. Maps are just drawings on paper. Nothing more. I looked out over Ocean nearly my entire life, and the only thing I saw was blue water meets blue sky.
“Dude, I don’t know how it happened, but you are totally becoming normal,” Ben says now. “And so not funny, by the way.” Still, he laughs a little as he reaches across the bed and pokes me in the ribs.
“Ow!” I protest, but it doesn’t hurt, and I realize I’m smiling, actually smiling, the way I did when River would tease me sometimes, when he would chase me around Beach threatening to pull me under into Ocean if I wouldn’t go wash my rabbit pelt in Falls, already. I think that’s what Ben is doing now, poking me in the ribs, and then I remember how close River is, just out on a boat and soon back at the fish market, and something a little uneasy twists in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not smiling anymore. Because his father is lost, and so am I.
“You don’t need to be sorry for making a joke,” Ben says. “That’s what people do.”
“No,” I say. “I mean about your father.”
He nods, but he doesn’t say anything else, and we listen to Nina for a few more minutes, not saying anything.
Just as Nina seems to be making a big finish, Ben sits up and looks at me. “Can I ask you something?” he says. “What happened back there at the fish market? Why did you freak out?”
“Freak out?” I echo him. “I don’t know.” I feel strange talking to Ben about River. The spot where Ben poked me in the ribs doesn’t hurt, but it feels a little warm, as if my body, my senses, are more awake now.
“Yeah, you do,” he says softly. “You just don’t want to tell me.”
I realize he’s right. That I’ve lied to him. That in my short time in California, I’ve already become a liar. And maybe it’s only a matter of time before I’m cold and broken. A skeleton. “Lucas,” I say. “The man asked for Lucas.”
“And you thought of your Lucas?”
I nod, though I wonder if there is any way he is mine anymore. River was mine. Lucas, this strange person he might have become here in California—he doesn’t even feel like mine at all.
“What happened between the two of you, anyway?” Ben asks. “You were together all that time on your island, right?” I nod. “And you were friends?”
I nod again, though I don’t know if friends is the right word. In California, there’s so much to learn and watch and understand. But on Island, it was simple, River and I ending every day in Shelter, back to back. River was everything to me, and I was everything to him. At least, I thought I was.
“So what happened?” Ben pushes.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He didn’t want to be friends with me here, I guess.” I don’t say it out loud, but I think if I could just talk to him again … see him again, I could change his mind. I would, I know it. Or maybe I would tell him he could bring his mother with us, that if she is as good and perfect as he remembered her, then she will love Island, as we do.
“That sucks,” Ben says. “He kind of sounds like a dick.”
“He’s not,” I say, though I don’t really know what that is. It just doesn’t sound nice, and there’s nothing about River that wasn’t nice. Lucas, maybe. River, no.
I feel tears in my eyes. I want to stop them from coming, but I can’t, and Ben sits up and puts his hand to my cheek, the way River once did, to wipe them away. “Well, I say you’re better off without him,” he says. “Alice hates him. And she’s a pretty good judge of character.”
The thought that my grandmother feels that much, that she has hate for River, makes me mad. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “She’s never even met him. You can’t hate someone you’ve never met.”
“I don’t know,” he says, but he looks away from me as he says it, so I can’t see in his eyes what he might be thinking. He picks up the iPod and turns on a new song. “R.E.M.,” he tells me. “‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It.’ ”
I listen to the words, and it’s like they’re talking to me, like Ben is talking to me through them. The world has ended, and the R.E.M.’s are still feeling fine. I don’t feel fine at all, and Ben’s words still echo uneasily in my head. Alice hates him, he said of River. And she’s a pretty good judge of character. But that doesn’t even make any sense. Is Ben lying? Is he a skeleton, just like all the rest of them?
I stand up quickly. The bed shakes, and Ben startles and turns the music off.
“I think I should go back now,” I say. Maybe I have been wrong to trust him, to come here with him, and I want to get back to Pink Bedroom, to come up with a plan to get back to the fish market, to River.
Ben opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but then he seems to change his mind because he says nothing. He nods and stands up, and then we walk back to my grandmother’s house in silence.
Chapter 24
“I have a question for you,” I tell Dr. Banks a few nights later. She has come after dinner tonight, and darkness floods past the window, the moon bloated again, nearly full. From the next room, I hear the noises of the television box, unfamiliar voices, shouting.
“Yes, Megan,” Dr. Banks says. “What’s that?” She smiles her silly this-is-your-safe-space smile, and a part of me wants to reach across her face and hit her now just to make the smile go away. I wouldn’t have hit anyone on Island, ever. My mother, Helmut, they wouldn’t have allowed it. And besides that, I never wanted to. But Dr. Banks’s lips are a terrible shade of pink—lipstick—I know, because my grandmother showed me how to put it on and asked me if I wanted to try some of hers. But honestly, I just don’t see the point.
“Well,” I say now, looking away from her so I don’t have to see that awful pink smile. I hear the sound of tiny footsteps in the other room—my grandmother’s—and I guess she’s listening to us while trying to pretend that she’s watching the television box. “We all had different names on Island,” I say. “I am Sky. Lucas was River. My mother, Angela”—the name still feels funny on my tongue—“was
Petal. But Helmut was Helmut.” I remember what Ben told me that first night, that he’d learned about Helmut from the Google, that Helmut had done some bad things. But all the newspapers Mrs. Fairfield has shown me have made little, if any, mention of Helmut, and I don’t know if that’s because the stuff Ben told me was wrong or if it was that Mrs. Fairfield has been leaving pieces out.
“That’s an interesting question, Megan.” Dr. Banks draws her pink lips together in a line. “But first let’s address something else. You said, ‘I am Sky.’ Not ‘I was Sky.’ ”
“So?” I say, suddenly wishing I hadn’t asked anything at all.
“So you have trouble being called Megan, don’t you?”
I sigh. “Maybe.”
“And why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I say because I am not going to tell her the truth, that soon I will be back on Island, with River, and I will be Sky again, always. That I am Sky. No matter what.
Dr. Banks does that annoying thing where she just stares at me. She stares and stares and stares until I say something else. “My mother called me Sky,” I say. “That’s what she told me my name was.”
“She called you Megan once, too.”
“I don’t remember that,” I say, though I think about the last moment my mother spoke to me, when she might have said Megan.
She nods. “But why do you think you get so angry when people who do remember that call you Megan?”
“I don’t,” I say, but even as I say it I realize that, actually, I do.
“All right.” She holds up her hands. “But you don’t like it, do you?”
“Not really,” I admit. “Everything is different here. I don’t know anything anymore.” I have not meant to be honest with her, but the words have escaped me before I can stop them. And it feels good to say them out loud. I know nothing here. I am nothing here.
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