Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  “What do you want to do?” he asks carefully.

  “I don’t know.” I lean my head back against the headrest. “How should I know? It’s all so messed up. I’ve messed it all up and I don’t know how to make it right. I want to be … somewhere else for a while.”

  “You’ve got to call your mom,” he says. “I won’t help you unless you call her and tell her you’re okay.”

  I nod. Yes, I need to call Mom, but now I’ve smashed my cell phone and what on earth do I tell her? What can I say?

  “Then what?” I say. “I call her and then what?”

  “I’ll take you where you want to go.”

  “The island,” I say immediately. “I want to go to your island.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I wake screaming and Jason is saying, “Whoa, Erin, it’s okay, you’re okay. I’m right here.”

  I look at him blankly, not at all sure where I am for a moment. I’m still deep in my dream where I come home and Mom is sitting at the table drinking a glass of water, but when she turns to look at me she’s a corpse. Rotting flesh peeling away from her skull, the hand holding the glass just bones.

  “Erin?” Jason gently shakes my leg, trying to bring me back.

  I remember then, where I am, and what I’ve done. I lean my head against the seat.

  “We’re almost there,” Jason says.

  I nod. I’m trying not to think of my phone conversation with my mother. Right outside of Alachua, Jason found a pay phone, and I felt like everyone was looking at me as I dialed my home number collect. Mom cried when she heard my voice. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” I kept saying. “I just need some time. A couple days, okay? Tell them I’m okay. Tell them to call off the search. Can you do that? I’ll be home in a couple of days. I’m safe, I promise. I just need … a little time.”

  “You need to turn yourself in,” she said, which made my blood turn icy and shivery. “Everyone is looking for you.”

  “Mom, I can’t come back right now. I just can’t. But I’m safe, I’m with a … a friend. Tell them … tell them I’ll come back in a few days. Tell them that, okay?”

  “I don’t know if I can, Erin. This is pretty serious. I don’t know if they’ll stop looking just because I ask them to. Can’t you just come home now?”

  “I can’t, Momma, I just … can’t.”

  It didn’t end there, of course, but after a while I told her I needed to go.

  “See you later, alligator,” she said, and her breath hitched as she said it.

  “After a while, crocodile,” I said and hung up, shaking.

  I think about how hard it was to be apart from her when I was six and scared she would die while I was at school.

  Being apart from her right now? It feels like an amputation. Painful, but vital to my survival.

  Jason is driving through a small town, colorful cottages clinging to the edge of the road, the water all around. He’s humming along to the radio. I can see the side of his face, and I watch him, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror, his lips moving as he mouths a few words. Jason is big and tanned and freckled across his nose. The slanted sun glows in the golden fuzz on his cheek and his long eyelashes sweep the sweet spot under his eyes. I’m sure a lot of girls think he’s cute, but judging from his threadbare T-shirt and his careless, tangled hair, he doesn’t care what people think. Trina would say, He’s, like, a magnificently messy nature boy. Yum.

  And then I miss Trina fiercely, and I put her voice out of my mind.

  We go over a bridge, and the rest is a blur until we stop in front of some tall green bushes.

  I’m numb. My brain is thick and slow, like it got a big shot of novocaine.

  “Come on,” he says and I obediently get out. We pass a large yellowish rock with some sort of plaque on it, and go down a path through bushes to a tiny muddy beach. The water is out and birds are hopping along stabbing at unseen things in the mud.

  “Down this way.” When I don’t move right off, he takes my hand and I marvel at how big his hand is compared with mine. His fingers dwarf mine. He leads me to the far end of the tiny stretch of sand and gently pushes me down.

  “I’ve got to go get some supplies. I’ll be back in a little while,” he says. “In a boat. Look for me, because you’re going to have to walk out in the water to me. Erin? I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll be back.”

  I nod and he hesitates, looking down at me. He tucks my hair behind my ear, a swift, gentle brush, and then moves off down the beach.

  I watch him until he is out of sight.

  It might have been fifteen minutes, it might have been two hours, but he isn’t back. The sun has dropped to where it is shining directly in my eyes. I squeeze them tight, but the golden sunbursts still shatter the darkness, and heat presses against my eyelids. I open them again because he said he would come back.

  And there he is, a tall boy in a small boat, his golden mane in a ponytail.

  I look around. A few people came out to the beach while I waited, but they have left and now the beach is empty. I stand and start walking out to him. It occurs to me I should probably take off my shoes and roll up my jeans but I don’t. The water is warm against my calves and is over my knees by the time I get to the edge of the boat.

  Jason helps me in and hands me a life jacket. I look at it and after a moment he puts it on me, moving my arms like I’m a doll. He ties the straps and I notice again the smattering of freckles across his nose and his long, blond eyelashes. He meets my gaze and I see his eyes are an unbelievable mixture of blues and greens and gold. I’m not sure why I hadn’t noticed them before.

  “You have incredible eyes,” I say.

  He blinks and then laughs. It’s relieved laughter as if maybe he wasn’t quite sure of ol’ Erin’s state of mind, as if maybe he thought Erin might be taking a long walk off a short plank to la-la land.

  “Yours are pretty cool too.”

  “Like grapes,” I say.

  He frowns, studying my eyes through my glasses. “Hell no, not like grapes. Like bruised violets, all dark blue and purple. Nice.”

  Bruised violets. I smile and cherish that.

  Jason gets up and starts the motor and suddenly we’re zipping across the shallow waves. The bow of the boat slides through the smooth, untouched water, leaving a froth of destruction in our wake. The water is clear and brown, and schools of tiny fish veer away from us, flashing like miniature silver missiles. The sun is dropping and the sky glows soft blue and orange. Small islands dot the water, some of them draped with thousands of white birds, and even over the noise of the engine I can hear their screeching. I turn my face into the wind and close my eyes.

  “There it is,” Jason says after a while.

  I open my eyes and look at the island we’re approaching. A thin crescent of white sand rings wild, green masses of bushes and a few palm trees. Jason motors around to the back of the island, into a deep cove that goes deeper and deeper into the island, crowded by thick bushes with roots like skeleton fingers dipping down into the water. He slides the boat up onto a small, muddy embankment and looks at me.

  “Home sweet home,” he says.

  He ties the boat to a tree and helps me out. He piles my arms with a sleeping bag and a few grocery bags and leads me up the embankment to a narrow shell path that twists through bushes and abandons me in the middle of a large clearing. It’s empty except for the remains of a campfire and several large logs pulled up around the dead fire.

  “You should be safe here,” Jason says, looking around.

  Safe. Safe. I don’t know what that word means anymore.

  We bring up several more bags and Jason quickly erects a small tent and uses a battery-operated pump to blow up an air mattress. I sit on one of the logs and watch him. He lays out the sleeping bag on the air mattress.

  “Darn, I forgot the pillow,” he says.

  I don’t say anything. My head is buzzing and I’m concentrating on a lizard sitting on a nearby rock. I
t’s bobbing its head up and down and blowing out a tiny red balloon at the base of its throat. I watch, fascinated.

  Jason stands up, looks around at the pile of bags and coolers still scattered around the campsite, and seems to make a decision.

  “I know what you need,” he says, and holds out a hand to me. “Come on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I stand and he takes my hand and leads me back down the path toward the boat. But instead of going down to the boat, he takes a right-hand path running beside the little cove and we walk for a while in silence. Small lizards skitter away in front of us and a squirrel chatters from a tree. The air is shaded green and sparkles and shimmies with water diamonds, splashing right through me. The path ends at a small beach and I see we’re down the cove from his boat. It is just a patch of random sand among all that wild green, but I smile when I see it.

  “Go in,” he says. “The water always makes everything better.”

  I look at him. Then down at my clothes.

  “I brought you some of my sister’s shirts and shorts, but I couldn’t find a bathing suit,” he says apologetically. “I’ll turn my back and you can go in your bra and underwear. Naked, if you want, the water feels better that way.” This is said so matter-of-factly it doesn’t even seem creepy. I cannot imagine any situation when I would be comfortable stripping in front of Michael, but I also can’t imagine a guy so unlike Michael as Jason. Michael was dark and stormy and dangerous; Jason is clean sunshine and laughter with no dark corners in his soul.

  “Are there any sharks?” I ask, staring at the brown water.

  He shakes his head. “No sharks here.”

  He turns his back and I kick off my sopping-wet tennis shoes and unbutton my jeans. I push them down my hips and wriggle out of the wet denim and pull my T-shirt over my head. I look down at my bra and underwear and then leave them on.

  I walk into the water, and it’s shallow and sandy at first and then it drops off some. I dive in and when I come back up, Jason has disappeared.

  I float in the light-drenched water and my head is a black vacuum, echoing and blank. I think of nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  I float on my back for a long time. I see Jason on his boat, fishing. He looks my way and waves, and I wave back. I do not think he can see anything from where he is, but it’s hard to care. I feel safer knowing he is nearby.

  I close my eyes, and the sun flickers across my body through the shadow of leaves, striping me with heat. My ears are underwater as I float, and sound is muted and watery. The water feels creamy and luxurious on my skin, silky and sweet. After a while I wade to the shallows and sit, my feet buried in sand soft as pudding. The setting sun is still warm, and I lift my face to it, letting it seep into me. I am not thinking about anything but now.

  “Some people like the mountains, some people love the ocean, but I’ve figured out I’m an island person,” Jason says from behind me. I didn’t hear him come up. I have my back to the beach so I cannot see him, but his voice wraps around me like a cottony sheet.

  “Why?” I ask after a while, talking to the water.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I love the water. But being on an island makes me feel like I’m in a castle surrounded by a moat. The bad stuff can’t get in.”

  “I need to be on this island right now,” I say softly.

  “You need to make yourself an island, all placid and calm inside while outside everything rages,” Jason says seriously.

  “I don’t know how to do that.” The water is starting to get cold now and quivery chills race along my arms.

  He doesn’t say anything and I think maybe he has left, gone back to fishing. Then, real quiet, he says, “You’re going to be okay. Nothing else might be okay, but you’re going to be okay.”

  “I don’t know—” I say, “I don’t know … I don’t know if I can live without her!” I’m crying, big heaving sobs, and he wades into the water and lifts me out. He wraps his arms around me and holds me while I cry. I can’t seem to stop, but he doesn’t seem to care, so we stand knee-deep in the water until the sobs drain out of me and I’m hiccuping. He leans back and looks at me.

  “Better?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. Ready to get back?”

  He waits with his back turned while I put on my shirt. I look down at my wet, sandy jeans and wrinkle my nose. My T-shirt comes down to mid-thigh and at this point what does it matter? I pick them up and my shoes and follow after him.

  I must have been swimming for longer than I realized, because he has been back to the campsite. A small fire flickers in the fire pit and two camp chairs are set up with a cooler between them to serve as a table.

  “Let me grab you a towel and clothes.” He ducks into the tent and comes out with a duffel bag. I follow him to the side of the clearing, behind some bushes, where he has set up a small shower, basically a bag of water with a hose hung on a tree branch. He shows me how it works and leaves. I can still see him through the bushes, but he is rummaging in the cooler and doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to me. I feel better knowing he’s right there.

  I strip and look in the bag. Towel, soap, shampoo, razor, deodorant, and toothpaste. The shampoo and deodorant look girly and I think he probably pilfered them from his mom or the real Ashley. It all looks heavenly, and I take a long shower, not even caring the water isn’t warm. When I’m done, and have pretty much depleted the water bag, I pull on one of the T-shirts and a pair of shorts. They fit, though Ashley is clearly skinnier than me.

  I take a deep breath and then go back to the fire. Jason is grilling hot dogs and I realize I am ravenous.

  I sit in a camp chair, and before long he has piled my plate with a hot dog, leftover mac and cheese out of a plastic container, and sliced tomatoes. I eat it all, stuffing my face like I haven’t eaten in years.

  When I look up he is watching me. He smiles, slowly, like he’s pleased. But then his expression darkens. “I have to get home. It’s getting late, and I have a final tomorrow,” he says. “I graduate next weekend.”

  “Leave?” Panic buzzes through my veins. “You’re leaving?”

  He hesitates and then comes over to me. He kneels on the ground in front of me and puts his hands on my knees. He tilts my chin with one finger so I’m looking into his beautiful eyes. “I can take you to my house if you want but I can’t stay here. This is what you wanted, right?”

  I think about it. It is, isn’t it? I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be on the island where none of the bad stuff could touch me.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  His face is serious as he looks at me. “I will be back. I promise.” He seems to know this is what I need to hear. I will be back, I will not die and leave you alone, I will be here for you as long as you need me. Things my mom really can’t promise me anymore.

  I start crying, and he draws me to him in a hug. His body is warm and hard and male and I cling to him. After a while, I stop crying and he pushes me back gently by the shoulders so he can look at my face. He uses one finger to wipe the tears from under my eyes.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he says.

  I’m not sure I believe him, but I nod anyway, because I know that’s what he wants me to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  That night is the scariest of my life.

  I’m not a city girl, exactly, but I’ve lived my whole life in the suburbs of Atlanta. It’s not like I’ve never seen a bird or anything, but the only time I’ve slept in a tent was with Trina in my backyard when we were ten and Trina thought she might want to be a park ranger. We lasted all of two hours, and then we ran inside and Mom made us hot cocoa.

  Up until now, the scariest places I’ve ever been are the creepy-ass buildings Chaz and Michael love so much.

  They seem like child’s play now.

  I am all by myself. On a deserted island.

  And it is dark.

  At first after Jason leaves, I sit by the fi
re and stare into the flames, watching the air darken and the sparks float high into the sky. The mosquitoes come out, and other small biting bugs, but I find some of the bug spray Jason left, and I continue to sit and stare. As the fire dies, I begin to hear sounds.

  Big sounds and little sounds.

  Small rustling in the bushes, the roar of a faraway boat motor. From the nearby cove comes a cascade of splashes, like a handful of giant silver coins dashed across the surface of the water.

  Then I hear something crash through the bushes—close—and I begin to think serious bear thoughts, or … an alligator!? The thought of a monstrous lizard slithering its way out of the bushes sends me scurrying into the tent. I have a flashlight and a battery lantern and I turn them both on. I don’t have a book. Reading at night has always been my way to keep the demons at bay. All I can do is huddle in the sleeping bag and listen so hard it makes my ears hurt. A few mosquitoes have followed me into the tent and they drone around so loudly I want to scream.

  The hours pass excruciatingly slowly. I lie awake shaking, every new noise almost sending me over the edge. Shadows move and writhe on the tent walls and I hope they are branches but deep down I know it is the dark trying to get in.

  I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep even though it is the one thing I want most in the world because the thoughts in my head are almost unbearable.

  I must have dozed off, because Jason is leaning over me when I open my eyes. The light is pearly and gray and even the chirping birds sound sleepy.

  “Hey,” he says softly. I wonder how long he has been watching me sleep.

  “Hey.” I am curled up in a tight little ball hugging my knees. For a minute we look at each other and without speaking he leaves the tent. I get up. It’s a little chilly, gauzy pink fog stealing through the trees, and I drag the sleeping bag out with me. He is stoking the fire and I sit in one of the camp chairs.