by Wendy Mills
“I brought coffee,” he says without turning around. “And a sausage biscuit.”
I pick up the thermos and sip. The coffee is hot and black and bitter and tastes wonderful.
“Are there alligators on the island?” I ask. “Something big was outside the tent last night.” I shudder just thinking about it.
He laughs. “Raccoons,” he says, pointing at the trash bag with its contents strewn everywhere. “I should have hung it up in the tree but I forgot.”
“Oh.” Raccoons made all that noise? What, are the raccoons in Florida the size of small cars?
“I can’t stay long, I’ve got to get to school, but I wanted to come check on you,” he says. He’s got the fire burning nicely now and I stretch my bare feet out to it. He sits on the log facing me.
“How was the night? Do you want to leave? I didn’t tell my parents you’re here. They wouldn’t approve of you being out here all by yourself, but if you want to come back to my house, I’m sure they would be happy to have you—”
I shake my head immediately. Even with the scary noises, and the living, breathing darkness, I do not want to leave. Not yet.
“I want to stay.” I lean forward and put my hand on his arm. He looks up. “Thank you,” I say.
He smiles, but it’s a small smile, and his eyes are troubled.
“I’ll be back this afternoon. I brought you some more food, and a couple of my books. I know you like to read. Are you going to be okay? Say the word and I’ll take you home.”
“I’m good here.” But I’m crying again, tears slipping down my cheeks.
He nods and stands up. He looks down at me and cups my wet cheek with his palm and then he’s gone.
I’m not sure what to do with myself. I can’t remember when I’d ever been away from the TV, my computer, or my phone for any length of time. It feels odd, and at first I’m antsy. Then I decide to go for a walk and follow one of the trails leading out of the back of the campsite. It leads me to the bigger beach I saw when we came in, overlooking the open water. I wish I had a camera. I sit for a while and watch the sun rise and the boats skim across the water. My tears seem disconnected from me, like a soft summer rain falling gently in the background. A pelican, with a blond Mohawk and startlingly human blue eyes, lands with a splish-splash and comes up with a fish in its pouch. I watch in fascination as it gulps down the squirming creature.
I see a fin in the water, and I tense, but then I see the gray back of a dolphin as it porpoises to the surface.
Not a shark.
I think about what Jason said in one of his e-mails, about watching dolphins jump for joy. Does she think about death? Do animals feel joy because they don’t think about death or because they live with it every day?
After a while I get up and follow the beach around the island. I climb over fallen trees and look at pilings out in the water. Someone used to live here, someone used to call this home. I walk until the sun is high in the sky and the sun is burning my arms, and then I turn back. I am still crying. I can’t seem to stop and I have given up trying.
I wonder about my mom, what she is doing right now, and if she’s okay, and then I start running to make myself stop thinking about it. But even then, pictures of her drawn, worried face leak into my head.
I make my way back to the private little beach. I take off all my clothes except for my bra and underwear and lie in the warm water until it creeps away with the tide and only muddy sand and crabs remain, and still I lie there. I’m shriveled up like a prune when I get out, feeling as tender and weak as a newborn. I put the towel under the shade of a bush and go to sleep.
When I wake, the towel is soaked with my tears. I can’t remember my dream, not really, but bits of it flash in my head. Trina dressed up like the Statue of Liberty saying, “Michael is looking for you, everyone is looking for you, where are you, Erin?” and then being in a department store with my mom, mortally embarrassed about going bra shopping for the first time.
I stretch, realizing the sun is going down and that I must have slept for hours. Jason still hasn’t arrived, and that scares me. Why hasn’t he come back?
I make my way to the campsite, and it is darker among the trees and bushes, and I tremble, even though it’s not cold. The fire is dead, and I have to go find some firewood, venturing into the shadowy, whispering bushes. I come back at a dead run with the logs in my arms. I’m already frightened, and the sun isn’t even down yet. I am all alone, and no one but Jason knows I am here. What if something happened to him, what if he leaves me here all by myself?
I try to get the fire lit with the long lighter Jason used this morning, but the big logs don’t want to light. I sit back on my heels. Eventually I curl up on the blanket in as tight a ball as I can manage, with the flashlight clenched in my fist, and stare at the flameless logs.
Chapter Thirty
It’s fully dark by the time I hear the soft putt-putt of Jason’s boat and hear him walk up the path. I cannot seem to move, and I hear him hesitate at the edge of the clearing as he sees me.
“Erin?” he says softly.
“I need to stop the thoughts,” I say, “but they won’t stop. I can’t make them stop.”
He comes and pulls me into his arms and rocks with me as the tears slide down my face. I’m aware of his body against mine, warm and big and safe.
“Have you eaten?” he asks when I’m done crying.
I shake my head. I watch while he finds some leaves to put under the logs and lights them. Flames start licking at the logs. He puts some hamburgers on the grill and after a while hands me a plate and I eat.
His eyes are on me.
“Erin,” he says.
I look at him, sideways.
“I’ve got something to show you. Will you come with me?”
It seems an oddly formal invitation, as if this is something important to him.
I hesitate. No, not really, I don’t want to do anything but sit here and maybe if I try hard enough I’ll disappear and I won’t have to think about anything anymore, ever.
He takes my hand gently, pulls me to my feet, and leads me into the darkness.
Somehow, with my hand in his, it’s bearable.
We walk through the dark green murmur of bushes. The moon cannot find its way completely into this place, and only dribbles and splats of light mark the ripple of our passage. We pass my small beach and walk farther. The bushes are thick here, dark, tangled, menacing, and I clutch Jason’s hand.
I see a silver gleam, like the sheen off a frozen winter pond, a moment before we emerge beside a small lagoon. It is a pool of still, radiant light, ringed by the quiet, watching bushes. Jason tosses a shell into the water and shards of light dance across the surface. The luminescent flickers shimmer and shake until finally fading into the silent shine of a looking glass.
“It’s—it’s unbelievable.” My voice feels rusty and unused, as if I have not spoken for days. After I speak, I wish I hadn’t, because it feels wrong to speak in the hallowed sanctuary of this place.
“Isn’t it, though?” Jason says back, easily. He pulls me down onto a log beside the water. “They’ll come soon.”
“They will?” Who will?
“When I was fifteen,” Jason says, “my mom found out she had breast cancer. My grandmother already had it, and it seemed too surreal that my mother had it too. At first, before my grandmother got bad, my mom spent every moment she wasn’t in treatment painting. That’s what she does. That’s her secret place she goes when it’s all too much. I was trying so hard to be strong for her, but sometimes it got too hard, being strong. I didn’t feel strong inside, you know? So, I would come here. I would come and camp for a few days and it was like … it was like when I broke my finger playing basketball. It hurt like crap, and I realized the only thing I could do is fix it. So I yanked on it, twice, and the bone slipped back into place. Even though it still hurt, it felt whole, the way it should. That’s how it is when I come here. Everything can be sc
rewed up and broken, but when I come here, everything clicks back to where it should be. Does that make sense?”
He sounds a little shy and I turn to look at him. He’s watching me, his eyes dark and vulnerable. I get that he needs me to understand what he’s saying, and how important this place is to him. It’s important to him that I feel it too.
“I get it,” I say softly.
He twines his fingers in mine, and I hear a sound, and smell the fragrant odor of grass and mud and the faintly sour smell of digestion. Two cavernous nostrils poke up and gust out a wind of exhalation, and disappear. The casual flip of a tail splashes an expanding ring of moon-sparkles. A head pokes up, large, dark eyes curious and bulbous, a wrinkled face sporting friendly whiskers and a permanently sad expression. Another one surfaces, and another.
“Manatees,” Jason says.
I look at the massive creatures, some as long as twelve feet and pushing two tons. I’ve heard of them, but never seen one. About all I know is that people are trying to save them from extinction.
“One of their closest relatives is actually the elephant,” Jason says quietly. “They’re so big they have to eat constantly, sometimes up to one hundred pounds of grass a day.”
The manatees’ skin even looks like an elephant’s, except that it is spotted with barnacles. Ignoring us now, they begin turning over one another, splashing with their flat tails and churning the water.
“Look, they’re playing!”
“They’re mating. There’s one female, and she’s in heat. The males will follow her around for three weeks or so, and they mate constantly.”
Jason won’t look at me as he says this, and when I look at him, even in the moonlight I can see his face is a little red.
My face feels hot. I watch the big sea creatures in silence. Though I cannot see any overtly sexual activity, somehow the knowledge I am watching a mating dance makes me fidgety, but I’m filled with moonlight and am content not to speak.
Time passes, I don’t know how long. The angle of the moon’s light has changed when the manatees subside, only appearing when they languidly surface for slow, briny breaths. I’m exhausted all of a sudden and shiver in the cool, wet air.
“Are you cold? Here.” Jason pulls off his jacket and helps me put it on. He crouches down to zip it up, his face intent as he concentrates on fitting the zipper together and pulling it up to my chin as if I am a little kid.
“Why does it feel like I’ve known you forever?” I ask. “You don’t feel like a guy. You feel like … I don’t know.”
Safe. You feel safe.
“Thanks,” he says wryly. “Just the words every guy longs to hear. Believe me, though, I’m a guy.” His hands are on my knees, and he stares at me for a long moment, and suddenly I don’t feel so safe. Suddenly I think he might kiss me, and I feel hot and cold and my skin sparks to the touch of his hands.
But he rises to his feet in one smooth movement and leads me back through the dark. The bushes rustle mysteriously and my nose is full of a spicy brew of secret green zest and salty mud.
We don’t say anything else, but his hand on mine makes me forget that I should be scared.
Chapter Thirty-One
The next day is better. I am numb, but I am no longer crying. Jason brings me a notebook and pen and I spend the day writing, pouring my thoughts and feelings out on paper. Something hard and cold has broken, like there’s a whirlpool inside me, one of the great salty, warm maelstroms they found in the Arctic Ocean, dragging up life and muck from an unknowable depth and spinning it out into all that cold, ice-blocked surface water.
I am dreading the night, though. Even at home, my nights were full of dark, swirling thoughts that chased me into sleep. Here, it’s like those demon thoughts take shape and crackle the bushes and shake the tent. I’m not sure which are more terrifying: the thoughts in my head or the unseen things that shudder and yowl in the night.
That afternoon, Jason comes to the island and I am fishing in the cove. He left me a pole, but I’m still not exactly sure how to use it.
“Getting the hang of it?” Jason calls as he pulls the boat up on shore.
“I caught a small one.” I reel in my line. “But getting it off the line was not fun.”
“We’ll make a fishing ace out of you yet,” he says.
“No, you’re the fishing ace,” I say.
Jason told me he is already working as a fishing guide on the weekends, and has even won some big fishing tournaments. This is what he plans to do when he graduates from high school. I envy his calm certainty of what his life will be like, his belief he can shape his future.
“Hey, I have an idea,” he says. “Do you want to go fish for something bigger?”
Honestly, I’m not happy about leaving the island. But he looks so excited to be showing me something new that I smile and agree.
“Look at the sun out there on the edge of the ocean.” I point at the sky, which is full of oranges, reds, and yellows, like the setting sun is a fiery paintball splattered across the horizon.
“The gulf.” Jason is concentrating on a bucket he is tying to the back of the boat, letting it trail behind as we drift. Chum he told me when I asked.
I look at him in surprise. “It’s the gulf? Like the Gulf of Mexico?”
Now it is his turn to look at me in surprise. “Where did you think we were?”
I shrug. It doesn’t really matter where I am. It matters where I’m not.
On the island, nestled like a green jewel in the clear, brown backwater, I’m safe. Out here, the vastness of the water weighs on me, crushes me into something small and insignificant.
Jason doesn’t say anything else. A couple of other boats float in the pass, and men with thick poles scan the water. Some of them are drinking beer, but none of them seem to notice the slow destruction of the sun.
We are in a wide, watery pass between two islands. Colorful houses crowd the beach on one island, but the other beach is empty. Both islands are far prettier than my little island (it feels like mine now), with sugary beaches lapped by water the color of Jason’s eyes. Even though these islands are prettier, I still prefer my secret haven.
Jason works on putting bait on a line and drops it down into the water. He hands me the pole and we sit in silence. I do not feel the need to speak.
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” The line from one of Jason’s books drifts through my mind. I’d never read Thoreau before I met Jason and I see why he likes him. Then I start thinking about whether I need to pump up the air mattress a little more tonight, and if we’ll eat fish this evening. It’s as if I am floating on the uncomplicated, lovely surface of the sea, and as long as I don’t go too deep, I am fine. Monsters swim in the dark depths of my mind.
“Uh … hey! Hey! I got something,” I say as my pole jerks and the line starts zinging out. “It’s heavy!”
“Pull back slowly,” Jason says, “and sit down.”
I sit abruptly, pulling back on the pole and reeling when the fish gets closer, holding on for dear life when it decides to go the other way. Jason motors the boat slowly in the direction the fish is going and coaches me to “Pull back, reel, no, don’t yank! Slow and steady, pull back, reel” and it seems like forever I’m doing this. As the fish gets closer, Jason tells me I can stand up, and I do. I am concentrating so fiercely I’m surprised when Jason comes up behind me, his stomach against my back, his arms cradling mine.
“You’re getting tired,” he says, “but this is where it’s about to get fun.”
He helps me reel, and I see the shadow under the surface of the green water and it is big.
“What is that?”
“You’ll see,” he says, and the fish dives, trying to get under the boat. Jason’s strong arms move against me, and I try not to notice the way his body feels against mine, but suddenly I’m aware of blood thrilling just under the surface of my skin. He pulls me firmly against him, and I cannot tell if it’s becau
se he needs to or because he wants to.
The fish breaks through the water beside the boat and I’m so stunned I almost drop the pole.
“It’s a shark!”
“Yep.” Jason takes the pole from me, and maneuvers the shark so it’s lying right beside the boat. It’s about six feet long, brown, with a flat, wide head and a white underbelly. Its eyes roll back at me and I realize that a shark is looking at me.
“What … what do you do now? Kill it?” I ask, though that feels wrong.
“No, of course not. She’s a nurse shark, she doesn’t hurt anyone. Here, feel her.”
He takes my hand and draws it along the back of the shark, from head to tail. It feels smooth and silky.
“Now the other way,” he says.
I rub my hand the other way and am surprised that now its skin feels like sandpaper.
“It’s got little scales on its skin, kind of like teeth,” he says. “That’s why it’s prickly when you rub toward its head.”
“I can’t believe I’m touching a shark,” I say and Jason grins.
“Not so bad, is it?”
Somehow this reminds me one of Mr. Jarad’s silly sports analogies, and I smile.
With a gloved hand, Jason pulls the shark’s head out of the water by the line, and its eye rolls toward me as it thrashes around, splashing water into the boat. It opens its mouth, revealing crooked, yellow teeth, masses of them, and Jason uses a metal pliers-looking tool to grasp the hook, which I can see lodged in the shark’s mouth.
“Careful!” I say, because his hand is inches from those wicked-looking teeth.
He is focused on the shark, which is bending its body back and forth, trying to get away. Jason pulls the hook free and the shark drops into the water, splashing us one more time before it disappears beneath the waves.
