Just Like That

by Gary D. Schmidt

  “I would speak first to the New Girls of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy,” said Dr. Nora MacKnockater.

  And she did.

  She spoke about Obstacles that come to everyone in life. She spoke about the Resolution we need to face Obstacles. She spoke about how Resolution leads to Accomplishment. She spoke about the Accomplishments of the Students of St. Elene’s: Jennifer Dow currently had a still-life painting in a youth exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where Marian Elders had three art pots she had thrown during the summer also displayed. Stephanie DeLacy had two short stories published in a New England literary journal. And Elizabeth Koertge had won a science fair competition hosted by Harvard University for her project on light fibers.

  Meryl Lee thought, Light fibers? Harvard University?

  Then Dr. MacKnockater spoke about the Accomplishments of the Faculty of St. Elene’s: Mrs. Connolly and her new book of poems that Houghton Mifflin would publish next fall. Mrs. Mott and the acquisition of her most recent landscape painting by the Portland Art Museum. Mrs. Bellamy’s paper in Nature on new dissection techniques for earthworms, frogs, and fetal pigs. Mr. Wheelock’s conference presentation in Prague during which he had successfully disproved a theorem that mathematicians had accepted as axiomatic since it was proposed in 1927. At St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, said Dr. MacKnockater, we become our Best Selves, our most Accomplished Selves.

  And Meryl Lee began to feel—it was hard to find the word—a little filled. Maybe that was the word. Filled.

  Obstacles, and Resolution, and Accomplishment?

  Was it really possible?

  She could hardly remember what it felt like to live without the Blank.

  Could she be filled with Accomplishment?

  Dr. MacKnockater leaned toward them.

  “The girl who lives purposelessly, looking only to the past, lives a wasted life. And a wasted life honors no one and gilds no one’s memory. Girls of St. Elene’s, this year, what will your Resolution be?” Another long pause. “What will your Accomplishment be?”

  And Meryl Lee felt herself leaning toward Dr. MacKnockater, and she wondered, what would her Accomplishment be?

  “How will you become your Best Self?” said Dr. MacKnockater.

  And Meryl Lee, still leaning forward, wanted to know. She desperately wanted to know.

  “At the end of the year, where will you find—” Dr. MacKnockater stopped. Everyone looked at her. She swallowed and held herself still. Then, “Where will you be found?” she said, her voice not quite so strong.

  Ahead of her, Meryl Lee saw Ashley turn toward Jennifer, yawning. Maybe she had heard all this before. Maybe she had heard all this at the beginning of every school year for eight grades. But Meryl Lee had not, and still standing before the Awful Dignity of Dr. MacKnockater, still filled with the solemn moment, Meryl Lee felt that the Blank might be a little further away, and she was not far from tears.

  Then across the aisle from Meryl Lee, the girl whose skirt was too long hiccupped twice and threw up.

  Marian Elders, who was sitting directly in front of her, was the unfortunate full recipient of what the girl evacuated.

  Her pew evacuated too.

  Meryl Lee watched. She figured that most of the lower school at least would have run screaming from the chapel except they were probably terrified of Dr. MacKnockater.

  On cue, she sat down. She didn’t follow all of the next flurried moments, since suddenly she was trying to not throw up herself. But she saw Mrs. Kellogg lead the girl whose skirt was too long out of the chapel by a side door. And she saw Bettye, who had schlepped Meryl Lee’s luggage, appear with a very large towel, which she wrapped around Marian Elders, who was covered with . . . well . . . and who was now crying herself—with pretty good reason, thought Meryl Lee. Then Alethea appeared with a pail and mop.

  And though Mr. Lloyd C. Allen, chairman of the board of trustees, rose to speak his welcome to the girls of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy, and though he hurtled his voice toward the rows and pews as if he were speaking from the other side of the campus, he did not receive everyone’s full attention.

  Five

  At five o’clock in the morning on the day when Mrs. MacKnockater would greet the new girls of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for the first time, Matt Coffin was down below Harpswell, walking out onto the docks.

  In the purple light before dawn, Captain Willis Hurd of the lobster boat Affliction, his blue cap pulled down low, did not see him. The Captain had two dozen lobster traps to stow on board, and the day before, Jonathan Buckminster—his crew entire—had boarded a train down to Mississippi, of all places, drafted into the war. And now the Captain’s back was doing what it always did on cold mornings: seizing up like a broken piston. He stepped sideways into Affliction. Dang, how was he going to get all those traps aboard?

  Captain Hurd listened to the creaking of the mooring lines and the collapsing of the low waves. He closed his eyes and smelled the sea-washed boards and the tar of the dock and the piney breezes that came down from the ridges. He felt the give of Affliction as the tide began to urge inward.

  He thought of young Buckminster, just a boy, hefting the weight of a rifle. Aiming it at some other young boy who—

  He opened his eyes, and there was this scrawny kid on the dock, handing one of the traps down to him.

  Captain Hurd looked at the kid, grunted. Then he reached out and took the trap.

  And the next one.

  And the next.

  The kid was good. He kept up. Actually, Captain Hurd had to keep up with the kid, scrawny as he was.

  When it came to the last trap, the kid climbed aboard with it himself and stowed it. Then he looked at the Captain as if he expected something. And he did. Questions. Questions like “What do you want?” and “Where are you from?” and “How old are you?” and “Why aren’t you in school?”

  And “Where are your parents?”

  But Captain Hurd didn’t ask any of those questions. Instead, he asked, “Can you tie a buoy hitch?”

  Matt nodded.

  The Captain looked at him a long time, then threw him a rope.

  “Show me,” he said.

  Matt did.

  The Captain nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll give you fifteen percent of the profits since it’s my boat. You can have one of the tuna fish sandwiches I made and I hope you like tomato and pickle and mayonnaise because I do. There’s some brownies but I made them too so don’t expect much and they don’t have any nuts because I hate nuts. I’m laying four six-trap strings down below where the New Meadows empties. Mile and a half out. Boots are over there. You tie up the traps on the way. After that, gloves are over there. No, over there. Pay attention. So that’s it. Come if you want to.”

  Captain Hurd fiddled with his cap and turned to the engine.

  Matt went over to put on the boots.

  “Take care of the stern line,” Captain Hurd called back.

  Matt took care of the stern line.

  “And the bow line.”

  Matt went forward and took care of the bow line.

  “Push off,” called Captain Hurd, but Matt was already pushing off the dock.

  And that was, pretty much, the last time they spoke until midmorning.

  Affliction sputtered along the coast as the sun was almost peeking. If Matt had looked up the ridge toward Mrs. MacKnockater’s house when they passed by, he might have seen the lights on and maybe Mrs. MacKnockater out on the porch with her binoculars, watching—but it was too dark, and she wouldn’t be able to make him out. Affliction chugged by with its neatly stowed traps, the engine missing occasionally—she was an old trawler. Matt tied hitches between the traps and the buoys, and they came past the end of the peninsula and out into the long swells of the Atlantic, where the air was cold and the spray sort of moderate. The sun was barely full up, and the water was blue-black.

  They worked as though they had been working together a
ll their lives. Matt tied the lines to each of the traps, and then he put on the yellow gloves and baited the traps with herring while the Captain slowed the trawler and brought her around to face into the breeze. When the Captain nodded, Matt made sure the buoy hitch was tight and slid the first of the traps over the stern, and then the second trap, and then the Captain came to help lay the next four as the sea pulled and the line got heavier. Back at the wheel, the Captain brought Affliction around and chugged out into the waves, turned her toward the breeze again, and they laid the next six-trap string.

  It was past ten o’clock when they finished, and the Captain came back to the stern, sat down, and stretched out his legs. “You know the bay?” he said.

  Matt nodded.

  The Captain drew his blue cap down low over his eyes. “Don’t hit anything. Take us around some.”

  And Matt did. Around Chebeague, and then up to Little French, and Bustin, and past the Sow and Pigs since it wasn’t yet high tide, and over to Upper Goose and then back out to sea past the Goslings, then the long stretch to Whaleboat Island, and then Stockman Island, the water so blue and the sky bluer, and if the Captain had raised his cap and seen Matt’s face, he would have seen something close to happiness.

  They anchored off the lee shore of Stockman and Affliction lay smoothly on the low swells. The Captain opened his cooler and took out the tuna fish sandwiches—Matt opened his and threw the tomato and pickle overboard, and he tasted right away that the Captain really did like mayonnaise. Afterward they shared the bottle of water—which Matt drank the most of because the brownies were pretty terrible, not at all like Mrs. MacKnockater’s.

  The thought stung him.

  And that was when they saw the whales.

  Or heard them, first.

  There were four, five, or maybe six. Seven. Swimming over toward Chebeague, riding the currents below the surface in long and slow curves, spouting their mist high into the air, as calm as if they were feeling the earth rotate slowly beneath them, as unconcerned as if there were nothing else on the planet except for this blue day, these green islands, those gray shores.

  They watched until the whales moved off around the island, then sank away, Matt leaning over the side of Affliction the whole time.

  He could have watched them for days.

  The Captain, too.

  “Only God sees them now,” said the Captain, as quiet as a ripple. Then, “Best get your gloves back on,” and the Captain headed the trawler around toward the first trap.

  But Matt kept his eyes on the ocean beneath which only God could see.

  He wished he could too. See what God could see, that is.

  Captain Hurd didn’t hurry. They rode the troughs that Matt might have skipped stones in—Matt and Mrs. MacKnockater. Another pang. They slowed as they passed each island, as if to enjoy the light glinting off the mica in the rocks. So they didn’t reach the buoy of the first string until around 2:30, and when they pulled them up, the traps were disappointing: no lobsters at all in the first four, three total in the last two. Matt banded the lobsters and dropped them into the live tank. The second string of traps had no lobsters at all. The third was better: four in one, three in another, all legals. But the fourth string! The fourth had five lobsters in the first trap! And all the others had three or four, all good size, all legals.

  “Guess we know now where we should have put all the strings,” said Captain Hurd.

  While Matt stowed the traps and ate the last of the terrible brownies, they headed back to the Harpswell docks.

  The sun was lower now, and the sky had begun to take on that yellow color that it takes in fall afternoons. Soon everything would be washed in gold—the rocks along the island shores, the high pines, the higher clouds, and even Mrs. MacKnockater’s house, where she was standing on the porch, looking out through her binoculars as the trawler was chugging past. She waved.

  Captain Hurd waved back.

  Matt did not.

  “Wave to Mrs. MacKnockater,” said the Captain.

  Matt looked at him.

  “Wave to her.”

  It had been a long time since Matt Coffin had done something that someone told him to do—except maybe Mrs. MacKnockater. He looked up at her. She was still waving, still watching through her binoculars.

  He guessed he might as well wave.

  “And that house there. Green shutters. Down the ridge from Mrs. MacKnockater’s? That’s mine. Just so you know if you need something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just so you know.”

  At the docks, Matt and the Captain tied Affliction securely, bow to stern. They unloaded the live tank and flushed out the seawater. They secured all the traps, washed down the bait bucket, stowed the buoys, and flushed the engine. It was almost suppertime, and Matt was hungry. Terrible brownies and one tuna fish sandwich with too much mayonnaise weren’t a whole lot.

  “I’ll get these weighed and sold,” said the Captain. “Be here tomorrow morning and you’ll get your fifteen percent. Meanwhile”—he reached into the swarm of banded lobsters—“take these two to Mrs. MacKnockater.”

  “Why?”

  “To apologize for being a rude jerk. Someone waves, you wave back. Maybe she’ll be in a forgiving mood and boil one up for you—but don’t count on it. I wouldn’t if I were her.”

  Matt took the two squirming lobsters, one in each hand.

  Not much later, Mrs. MacKnockater heard someone kicking at her back door. It was more than a little annoying, the kicking. So when she pulled open the door, she was ready to point out that even someone with quite low intelligence should be able to manipulate a doorbell, and there was Matt, with his two squirming lobsters.

  “From Captain Hurd,” he said.

  Mrs. MacKnockater nodded. “Come in,” she said. “I’ll put the water on to boil. They’ll be done in no time.”

  Matt looked at her. “No time?”

  “Poetic license,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, and turned to find her lobster pot.

  And it wasn’t no time, but Matt thumbed through the illustrations in Treasure Island, and when Mrs. MacKnockater told him to, he went and washed up, and she didn’t ask him anything about where he’d been—probably since she knew she shouldn’t—and she handled the lobsters as well as Captain Hurd did, in and out of the boiling pot, and onto the plates, and onto the table, a small pot of melted butter next to each of them.

  “It looks like you two must have had a good haul,” she said.

  Matt nodded.

  “He usually does,” she said.

  Matt nodded again and opened up the first claw.

  He ate quickly.

  He paused at his second claw. “You know the Captain?”

  Mrs. MacKnockater, halfway through her first claw, paused too. “We’ve known each other for quite a long while,” she said, and smiled when she turned back to her claw.

  Matt watched her.

  “I’ll go get some more butter,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, and she went into the kitchen.

  He wondered about Captain Hurd and Mrs. MacKnockater as he headed down the steps of Mrs. MacKnockater’s front porch that Friday night. He wondered as he walked the pathway down the ridge and into the dark pines. He wondered as he walked down toward the shore and Captain Cobb’s old fishing shack.

  He wondered as he got inside, and closed the door behind him, and lit the lantern, and lay down, so very alone.

  Six

  When Meryl Lee got back to Margaret B. Netley Dormitory after the opening ceremony, she found Jennifer combing Charlotte’s hair in her room, and Ashley sitting on the floor, and all of them laughing, laughing, laughing.

  Until she walked in.

  Then, quick silence.

  She looked at the suitcase she had left open on her mattress.

  Not everything in it was folded as neatly as it had been.

  “Is your name really Kowalski?” said Ashley.

  “Yes,” said Meryl Lee.

  “Really?
Because I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone from Eastern Europe.”

  “I’m from Long Island.”

  “Oh,” said Ashley.

  “Aren’t you going to unpack?” said Jennifer.

  Ashley stifling a laugh.

  Meryl Lee looked at the closet, filled with Jennifer’s blouses and dresses and regulation St. Elene’s Academy white shirts and green and gold plaid skirts and green and gold sweaters and green blazers with the gold St. Elene’s cross insignia—eight of each—all on their pink plush hangers, with lavender, pale yellow, and light blue sweaters on the shelf above.

  “Not just now,” Meryl Lee said.

  She decided to make up her bed, even though she hadn’t packed anything like a green satin duvet. She put her suitcase on the floor and took the bedclothes out of one of the shopping bags, and while she stretched the slightly damp sheets over the mattress, Jennifer and Ashley and Charlotte talked about Stephanie, about how wonderful Stephanie was, about how Stephanie knew everyone and had even once met Ringo like Jennifer had, about how Stephanie always knew exactly what to wear and how she had the nicest clothes and how she would never be caught dead in a public school sweatshirt like some girls wore, about how they wished Stephanie was back from Budapest.

  Meryl Lee tried to come up with some smart and beautiful and wonderful thing to say. Something like how someday soon she was going to Budapest and she would do the same things in Budapest that Stephanie was doing, whatever they were. But she couldn’t come up with anything smart and beautiful and wonderful to say, and she wasn’t going to Budapest anytime soon, and she did have a public school sweatshirt in her suitcase, and it was her favorite thing to wear mostly because she’d worn it when she and Holling . . .

  She took a long time making her bed while Jennifer and Ashley and Charlotte talked about Stephanie, who had been to Brussels with Jennifer twice, and how they had shopped all around La Grand-Place and how maybe next summer they would go to London together after Stephanie got home from Budapest because they loved going to Europe together.

  Meryl Lee tucked in the corners. She thought about the lunch counter at Woolworth’s. She pushed away the Blank.