Runaway Storm

by Dawne Knobbe

  “Flight attendants, prepare for landing,” the pilot announced.

  Nate tightened his seatbelt and lifted the window shade to watch their descent. He knew that on its approach the plane would fly directly over the islands. Anticipation surged through him like an electrical current as the clouds melted to reveal the islands, sparkling like scattered emeralds in a silver sea.

  The first islands were the San Juans, a part of the States. Somewhere in the ocean passages lay an invisible line that severed the chain into two countries. The Gulf Islands on the Canadian side looked no different, and Nate wondered who had drawn that line down a map slicing them in two.

  A few houses dotted the shorelines, but the islands were mostly peopled by trees. His father had told him stories about smuggling during prohibition when liquor was illegal in the States. Nate conjured up a motley crew of rumrunners slipping their liquor-filled boats among the hidden coves under the cover of darkness. Even now it would be easy to travel the watery corridors undetected. There were so many tiny islets that a person could hide for years, a fact that had fueled more than one rumor about American fugitives living among unsuspecting Canadian islanders.

  Down below, the islands took on familiar shapes. Pender, Mayne, Galiano. He longed to be paddling among them, alone and free to do as he pleased.

  The islands slipped away as they flew over the Strait of Georgia. Nate could see the mainland ahead, the Rocky Mountains forming an impressive backdrop to a city otherwise surrounded by ocean. As the wheels of the plane bumped onto the runway, Nate’s stomach spun into whirlpools. He was home.

  3

  When the plane halted at the gate, a flight attendant whisked Nate off before the other passengers could deplane. He trudged after her obediently, staring at the heels of her black pumps.

  She hovered like a mother bird as he searched for his suitcase on the baggage carousel, then led him through customs and into the main arrival area.

  A sea of people crowded at the doors, watching for arriving passengers. Nate peered through the faces till his eyes landed on a thin, wiry body clinging halfway up a pillar on the other side of the terminal.

  “Hey, Monkey!” Nate hollered as he waved.

  Monkey Mike Watson made a quick salute in Nate’s direction and shimmied down. The ocean of colored shirts instantly swallowed his five-foot two-inch frame, but his shock of bright red hair bobbed into view every few yards. Seconds later, Mike sprang from the crowd right in front of Nate and made a quick grab for his neck, yanking him down into a wrestling hold.

  “Hey, buddy,” Nate said, twisting loose and slapping him on the back. Mike’s eighteen-year-old, much taller brother Eric sauntered up, oversized jeans dragging the floor, a lazy grin slanting across his face.

  He poked a long, bony finger into Nate’s side. “Where’d you pick up the spare tire?”

  “Lay off, ya big bully,” Nate said, knocking off Eric’s baseball cap. Mike slid in for the catch, grabbed the hat, and tossed it over his shoulder back to Nate.

  Nate waved the cap like a red cape before a bull. “I’ve been storing up my energy to give you a hard time.”

  Eric grabbed Nate by the arm, twisted it behind his back, retrieved his hat, and turned Nate toward the forgotten flight attendant, all in one fluid motion.

  “Now say thank you and I’m sorry to the nice lady. She’s beginning to think we’re delinquents.”

  Nate had forgotten the woman who’d been clucking over him. He turned on his charm, sweeping into a low bow.

  The attendant smiled at Eric, amusement lighting her eyes. “I’ll just need some ID, then sign this release form and he’s all yours.”

  Eric showed the woman his driver’s license and reached for the clipboard she extended.

  “Sure you don’t want to keep him?” he asked, signing the form.

  “Have fun,” she said, placing her pen back in her uniform pocket. “And behave yourselves.”

  “She must have a couple of hoodlums at home just like you two,” Eric said. He clamped a hand on each of their necks. “Come along, children,” he said, pushing them toward the door.

  Eric threw Nate’s bag into the back of his old blue pickup, and they piled into the cab.

  “You finally get to ride in the stink bomb,” Mike said, twisting to avoid an elbow jab from his brother.

  “Don’t call my Bella Bambina a stink bomb,” Eric said, caressing the dash. “There, there. Uncle Mikey didn’t mean it.”

  Eric turned the key, and the truck choked.

  “She’s temperamental. See what you’ve done?” Eric covered his eyes in mock distress and then draped himself over the wheel. “Mike, apologize to Bella and hope she’ll forgive you. Otherwise, we’ll be walking home.”

  Mike threw his whole body toward the dash, arms wide. “Bella, Bella, forgive me,” he crooned, stroking the cracked black vinyl.

  “That’s more like it!” Eric straightened up and turned the key. The engine sputtered to life. “Oh, yeah, you’re coming to dinner, Nate. Mom said I can run you home when your dad gets back.”

  Mike flashed Nate a glance. He was the only other person besides Sam who knew the plan.

  “Sounds good,” Nate said, casually avoiding Mike’s eyes, “I haven’t had a home-cooked meal since Christmas.”

  “Your mother doesn’t cook anymore?” Mike asked.

  “Not much.” Nate shrugged.

  Eric took one hand off the wheel and pinched Nate’s middle. “Doesn’t look like you’re suffering from malnutrition.”

  Nate swatted his hand away and patted his own belly. “You, too, can develop this fabulous physique with a steady diet of frozen macaroni and cheese dinners and a healthy supply of potato chips.”

  “What, no meatloaf?” Mike asked. “No corn on the cob? Horror of horrors . . . not a single Brussels sprout?”

  “Not a morsel.” Nate sighed. He twisted his mouth, attempting a look of neglected deprivation, but couldn’t erase his smile.

  It was good to be home—at least for the moment.

  4

  Dinner at the Watsons’ was always bustling. Mouthwatering aromas drifted from the oven to mingle with bubbling scents from the pots on the stove. Nate sniffed appreciatively as he carried a large stack of dishes to the table. Sara, eleven, hadn’t stopped following Nate since he stepped into the house, but Nate tried to be kind. He remembered following Mike’s older sister around not many years ago, probably with the same adoring look. Puppy love, he thought, feeling mature and amused. He’d also wanted to be adopted into the Watson clan.

  Eric came into the kitchen bouncing three-year-old Freddie in his arms. Freddie reached for his mother, who transferred him to her hip. He snuggled in, eyeing Nate suspiciously.

  He doesn’t remember me, thought Nate sadly, suddenly feeling as though he’d been gone a lot longer than the school year. “Hi, Freddie,” he said softly, holding his arms out toward the toddler.

  Mike looked up from slicing a loaf of bread. “Watch your fingers,” he warned. He put down the bread knife and peeled Freddie away from his mother. He tickled the little boy affectionately under the chin. “He’s a cannibal.”

  Freddie stuck his tiny fingers in his mouth, gave Nate the once over, then surprised everyone by holding out his arms to him.

  Flattered, Nate sat at the table and took Freddie onto his lap.

  “He must remember you, Nate,” Mrs. Watson said over her shoulder, as if she had read his mind. “He won’t go to just anybody.”

  Just then Mr. Watson lumbered through the back door, yanked off his work boots, and proclaimed that he was hungry enough to eat a hippo. By the time they sat for dinner, a cloud of steam hovered over the table. A bowl of string beans dripping in butter, a platter of roast chicken, and a dish teeming with mashed potatoes circled more than once. Nate didn’t have room for the blackberry crumble Mrs. Watson pulled from the oven and topped with vanilla ice cream, but he couldn’t resist.

  The Watsons weren’t rich,
but nobody in their house ever went hungry. Nate looked at his overstuffed midriff and wondered how they could all stay so skinny. Of course, the whole family always seemed to be in constant motion.

  After dinner Eric offered to give Nate a lift home.

  Nate shook his head. “Thanks, but I need to walk off that amazing dinner.”

  “I’ll help him carry his stuff,” Mike piped in, leaping from the table.

  Now that they were well fed, he and Mike were itching to get out the door.

  Nate said his thanks and patted a pouting Sara on the shoulder.

  Mike dragged Nate’s suitcase down the outside stairs as Nate shrugged into his knapsack, breathing a sigh of relief. Secrets were hard to keep in the Watson household, so they didn’t dare say a word until they were halfway down the street.

  “So you’re really gonna do it?” Mike asked. “Man, I didn’t think you’d make it even this far.”

  Nate heard the admiration in Mike’s voice, and it shored up his confidence. He’d been having flashes of panic since his arrival at Mike’s house.

  Everyone had been so welcoming and so trusting. They made him feel like one of the family, and he knew they would feel betrayed if the truth came out. When it came out.

  Somewhere in the back of Nate’s mind, he knew his adventure would be discovered eventually; he just hoped it wouldn’t end before it began.

  At first he had thought he could sneak off, kayak for two weeks, and get back before his dad returned, but now it didn’t seem possible. He had to get organized and figure out how to get his kayak on and off the Gulf Island ferry, not to mention back home again. It was going to be difficult. He wasn’t prepared, hadn’t thought things through well enough.

  “How are you gonna get your kayak to the ferry?” Mike asked, as if he’d tuned in to his friend’s thoughts.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  “You gonna swipe your dad’s car too?”

  “I’m not a thief!” But the idea had crossed his mind. How far would he go, he wondered, to make this plan work?

  “Where does your dad think you are, by the way?”

  Nate scoffed. “Hell, aka my Aunt Martha’s pig farm in New Jersey.”

  It was 7:30 and still light as the boys rounded the corner at Adera Street. Nate breathed in the familiar scents of the street where he’d lived most of his life. He could smell Mrs. Hansen’s roses half a block before they passed her house. The mossy trunks of the maple trees gave off a familiar earthy scent, and the smell of steaks grilling in someone’s backyard wafted around them.

  The houses on Nate’s street were newer than on the block where Mike lived—newer and larger and with more expensive cars in the driveways. While Mike’s neighborhood had relaxed into a comfortable shabbiness, like the worn jeans of its blue-collar residents, Nate’s had a jacket-and-tie look, its manicured lawns and perfectly bordered flower beds mirroring the look of the resident accountants and retired doctors who never seemed to loosen up, even on the weekends. There weren’t as many children on Nate’s block either, and the neighbors, though friendly, kept mostly to themselves.

  Except for nosy old Mr. Briggs, Nate thought, eyeing the house across the street as he opened his father’s front gate. Since his retirement two years ago, Mr. Briggs had appointed himself neighborhood “Watch Captain,” and Nate figured his arrival would not go unnoticed. He dug in his pocket for his house key, slipped it quickly into the lock, twisted the knob, and pushed open the door. A loud buzzing filled the night air.

  “Shit,” Nate said, stumbling over his bag. “Quick. Shut the door, Mike.”

  He knew the alarm code; it was his Dad’s birthday. At least it used to be. His heart thumped as he reached for the control panel, fingers flying over the buttons: 11, 12, 55.

  The buzzer screamed on. If he couldn’t punch the right code in the next twenty seconds, they were toast. 12, 11, 55.

  Nate held his breath even after the buzzing had mercifully stopped.

  “Man,” Mike said, looking more fidgety than usual. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, ’cause you’re gonna be in big trouble if you get caught.”

  Nate flicked on the hall light. “Don’t forget; you’re my accomplice.” He headed to the kitchen out of habit, opened the refrigerator, and peered inside. It was spotless and pretty much empty. The whole place reeked of hospital disinfectant. It was as if his dad had scrubbed every last reminder of the family out of the place.

  “It stinks in here,” Mike said, scrunching up his nose.

  “It smells clean. You’re just not used to that.”

  Mike tried to wallop him over the head, but Nate blocked him and tore into the family room, where he dove onto the only couch.

  “You probably will get in trouble for helping me, you know,” he said.

  Mike plopped into an armchair, picked up the TV remote, and clicked it on. “Hey, what are friends for?” he joked as he switched from channel to channel.

  “Thanks,” Nate said.

  “I couldn’t let you rot away on some aunt’s pig farm all summer. Besides,” Mike said, clicking off the TV and throwing the remote onto the table, “if I could’ve figured out how, I’d be going with you.”

  “I won’t take you near a kayak till you learn to swim better,” Nate said. He’d never forget how he dragged a spluttering Mike up from the bottom of the community center pool the summer before.

  “What can I say? I owe you my life,” Mike said. He leaned forward and drummed a morbid tune on the edge of the coffee table.

  Nate swatted at Mike’s hands. “Quit fidgeting for one second. Is that why you’re helping me? ’Cause I saved you from drowning?”

  Mike took up the beat again. “Maybe. But next time pick a land adventure and I’ll tag along.”

  Nate relaxed back onto the couch. “Sure, we can be grounded for life together.”

  “I figure that as your accomplice, I’ll get off with a month of no TV, and besides, I hate what Eric and Dad watch. You, on the other hand, may be grounded across two countries for a year.”

  “That wouldn’t be much different. Maybe I can get off with time served.”

  “Ha,” Mike snorted. “Do me one favor though, buddy,” he said, a line creasing his forehead. “Call me once in a while. It freaks me that I’m the only one who’ll know you’re out there.”

  Nate realized he was putting his friend in a lousy spot. “Not the only one,” he said. “This was Sam’s idea.”

  Mike rolled his eyes. “That lizard-brained idiot. I didn’t think he even qualified as a friend.”

  “We both decided to take control of the summer. He should be halfway to California by now.”

  “Whatever.” Mike quit drumming. “Let’s check out your kayak; see if it’s still seaworthy after a year on sawhorses.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve gotta write down everything I need to pack,” Nate said as they headed to the garage. “I’ve gotta have a game plan.”

  “Face it, Nate. Planning is like studying, and that’s never been your greatest talent.”

  The garage was as tidy as the house, everything stacked neatly on shelves. White plastic sheeting covered almost everything else. Tools lined one wall, suspended from metal hooks. His father had outlined each one on the pegboard. That was new and not at all the kind of thing Nate had ever known his father to do.

  Mike hunkered down, sweeping his hand across the freshly painted white floor.

  “Man, you could eat off this,” he said. “Last year we couldn’t walk through here without tripping over some piece of junk. Your dad must be bored out of his tree.”

  “My parents are getting weirder by the day,” Nate said. “Be thankful you have such a normal family.”

  “Normal? You’re calling my family normal? Man, you were out in New York way too long.”

  Nate wanted to talk to Mike about his parents, about how cold they had acted toward each other before New York, how his mother was halfway to Paris with another man. He wanted
to smoke a cigarette and curse about how pissed he was with his dad for not fighting for both he and his mom to stay in Vancouver.

  Nate mindlessly pulled at one of the plastic sheets, revealing a pair of red kayaks lying side by side. The boats had once belonged to a tour outfit, and Nate’s father had proudly picked them up for next to nothing. After three seasons in the family, both were seaworthy but worn.

  Nate ran his hand fondly down the roughened side of his boat. In his eyes, she was a beauty, but he couldn’t entirely ignore the tiny stress cracks creeping around the hull fittings. That was the problem with plastic kayaks; the sun would eventually fry them.

  On a shelf next to the kayaks, Nate found all of their camping and kayaking gear neatly stacked. He opened the lid of a small dry box, revealing a first aid kit. Another box contained fishhooks and a few tools. There were new heavy-duty dry bags, designed to keep the weather and the sea out of their gear. Maybe his dad really had been looking forward to their trip.

  No matter. When it had come down to it, his choice was not to be with me, Nate thought. Not now and not all year.

  Still, he mentally thanked his dad for taking most of the challenge out of packing.

  Mike let out a long low whistle. He was peering under the corner of another large white tarp.

  “Hey, Nate,” Mike said, a grin racing across his face, “better come take a look at this. Buddy, are you ever in trouble now!”

  Nate dropped the dry bag he’d been packing. “Well?”

  Mike handed him a corner of the sheet. “See for yourself.”

  Rolling his eyes, Nate tugged obligingly. The sheet slid off smoothly.

  Nate’s jaw dropped, but the rest of his body froze. Before him lay the most beautiful kayak he had ever seen. It was about seventeen feet long, with a bright yellow deck and a shiny white hull. A long black stripe circled the boat where the deck and the hull came together.

  Nate knew instantly that it was no plastic boat popped out of a mold. The airtight hatches on the bow and stern were also black, along with the deck lines that crisscrossed in front of the cockpit and behind it. The only thing marring the sleek line of the boat was a large red ribbon stuck to an envelope taped to the top of the seat.