Runaway Storm

by Dawne Knobbe

  She held out the bar to him.

  He took it and tore off the wrapping. “I’m Nate, by the way. Is Kat your full name?”

  “It’s Katrina, but everyone calls me Kat—for obvious reasons.”

  She arched her eyebrows and swiped at the air in front of his face, her black fingernails curled into feline-like claws. She let out a long hiss that sounded exactly like a pissed-off cat.

  He almost choked on the chocolate. “I’ll remember that,” he said, leaning away.

  Her snarling features melted back into an impish grin. “Good,” she said. “I’m hungry; let’s pool our supplies. You get the crab, and I’ll dig out something that doesn’t come from the sea to go with it.”

  “Sounds good to me.” He picked up his mask and headed to the beach, savoring each bite of chocolate.

  Hot dogs. He could smell them all the way to the beach. It reminded him of Joey scarfing down waterlogged hot dogs with Nate the day they had met on the beach. Nate walked into camp and threw the crab trap down by the chimney. Three large crabs clicked angrily and waved their claws. He ignored them in favor of focusing on the hot dog Kat held on a stick and slipped expertly into a bun.

  “Man,” he said, “I never thought a hot dog could smell so good.”

  He closed his eyes and opened his mouth. It didn’t taste quite like he remembered. It was softer than he expected and had a slightly different flavor, but he still wolfed it down. “It’s been so long since I ate a hot dog that this one tastes kind of weird to me,” he said.

  She placed another into a bun and bit in. “You’re probably used to those gross scrap-meat hot dogs,” she said through her mouthful. “These are healthy dogs, made with tofu.”

  “Yuk.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind while you were eating it.”

  She stabbed a raw hot dog with the whittled end of a stick and handed it to him to roast.

  He held it over the fire. “Well, it isn’t fish,” he said, shrugging.

  Five hot dogs later, Nate leaned against a tree and watched Kat devour two freshly steamed crabs. Tofu or not, his belly was full. He watched her lick crab juice from her fingers. She was enjoying it as much as he’d enjoyed the dogs. Fair trade, he thought.

  “What island did you come here from?” Kat asked as she picked crab from a claw with a small stick.

  “Salt Spring.”

  “Salt Spring? Wow, you really did get blown around in that storm. How long have you been here? Won’t your parents be worried sick, thinking you disappeared in the middle of a storm?”

  “My parents didn’t know I was in the storm. How far is Salt Spring from here, by the way?”

  “Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not in Canada anymore. San Juan is part of the American chain. They’re called the San Juan Islands.”

  “Where’s the border?”

  “Dunno; somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I just know that if you go from a Canadian island to an American one, you’re supposed to stop at one of the customs stations.”

  “Oops,” he said.

  “So where are you from?”

  “I grew up in Vancouver, but I’ve been living in New York for the past year.”

  “With your parents?”

  “My mom.”

  “Your parents divorced?”

  “No. Not yet. I don’t know. You sure ask a lot of questions.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m nosy.” She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans. “It’s gonna be dark soon. Show me your shipwreck.”

  Nate led Kat to the bushes that concealed Solace’s carcass. Kat knelt beside the kayak, running her hands gently over the smooth yellow deck and across the shattered white-painted hull.

  “She really did take a beating. Think you can fix her?”

  “Not likely. Maybe my dad could. He’s pissed off I took her in the first place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s mine. Well, she was going to be mine. Birthday present.”

  She stared at him. “You’re a runaway? You swiped the kayak and took off?”

  Nate jumped up. “It’s getting dark; we should get back to camp.” He hurried down the trail, listening to Kat stumble behind, but he didn’t slow.

  “Does anyone know where you are? Your parents must be totally freaked.”

  “Leave it alone, Kat.”

  “No. I wanna know. Do your parents have any idea that you’re out here?”

  “Yes, they found out I was in the Gulf Islands, but they don’t know I was out in the storm.” He turned and faced her, sneering. “Let’s just drop it, okay? Besides, what’s your story? You cruise over here dressed like some kind of Gothic mortician.” He guffawed. “Or maybe a witch’s cat. What kind of a statement are you trying to make, huh?”

  “You’re the one hissing,” she said.

  They had reached camp. Nate immediately marched over to the fire and stabbed at it with a big stick. He had to duck to avoid the amber sparks that flew at his face.

  Kat sat on the ground near the fire, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. For a while the crackle of the fire was the only sound.

  “You want to borrow a sweater?” Nate asked at last, noticing her shiver. He didn’t know why he felt an urge to take care of her when she’d just ticked him off.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  He sank down beside her. “So, what is your story?” he asked again, this time being careful not to let hostility color his voice.

  She sighed. “It’s a little melodramatic. You know, long and sordid.”

  Nate leaned against the chimney. “I’ve got all night.”

  “Oh, all right. My grandfather lives on San Juan Island. I visit him as often as I can ’cause it’s the only place I’m really happy. The rest of the time I live with my dad in Seattle.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “Dead. Killed herself when I was a baby. The doctors blamed it on postpartum depression, but most of her family blames my dad. I’ve heard stories when they didn’t think I was around.”

  “What stories?”

  “Man, you’re as nosy as I am!”

  “You can’t leave me hanging on the edge of that cliff,” Nate pleaded.

  “They say my mom got pregnant during her first year of college. She was madly in love with my dad and thought they would do the happily ever after thing, only he totally freaked out. He refused to have anything to do with her. She hoped he’d change his mind after I was born. He didn’t and swore to his parents that I wasn’t his. My father’s parents are okay, but they’re kind of hoity-toity.”

  “What does ‘hoity-toity’ mean?”

  “Snobby. I mean, they’re good to me now, but I guess at that time they didn’t approve of my mother. She was the hippy-artsy type. They were the country-club type. The way I’ve pieced the story together, my mom left me on her parents’ doorstep one night, rang the bell, and disappeared.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “I think she came up here and walked into the ocean. Probably swam straight out to sea.”

  “Shit! Who took care of you?”

  “My grandfather, my mom’s dad, wanted to, but my dad’s parents insisted on a paternity test. When it came back proving I was their flesh and blood, they didn’t want to give me up.” She hesitated for a moment, brushing her long black hair away from face. “I think my dad really did love my mother, he was just scared of his parents. Anyway, Dad and I lived with his parents until I was almost seven and he’d finished school; then we got our own place.”

  “What’s he like? Your dad, I mean.”

  “He’s okay. He never married, and his girlfriends get younger every year, but I try to ignore them and do my own thing.”

  “None of them last long?”

  Kat stood and stretched. “I’m tired and cold,” she said. “You can finish your interrogation tomorrow.”

  “Sorry.”

 
; “For what?”

  “All the stuff you went through,” he said.

  She shrugged, her lips splitting into a weak grin. “Shit happens.”

  “Yeah,” Nate answered, “in every family.”

  They turned away from each other and headed toward their tents.

  Inside, Nate turned on his flashlight and opened his journal. He hesitated. How could he describe the day and Kat’s arrival?

  Day 11

  Island invaded by Goth Girl—good/bad

  I remembered how to talk, eventually—good

  Pushy girl, wants to know everything—bad

  She brought lots of fresh water—good

  Nosy as hell—bad

  Her story—sad

  I think I feel this weird kind of connection with her. Not exactly sorry she is here . . . specially because she has water. Okay, that’s not exactly true, but maybe I was slightly closer to extreme dehydration than I thought. Maybe I’m just glad to have someone, anyone, to talk to. Still, she kind of reminds me of somebody.

  He closed the book and tucked it away hoping sleep would hurry up and knock him unconscious. Kat had brought the real world with her, and that meant too many thoughts about what he had done.

  17

  Nate woke to the smell of coffee. It drifted through the flap of his tent before he had opened his eyes. He sniffed the air and thought about New York, remembering mornings when he awoke to the fading glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, the smell of brewing coffee, and the sound of his mother rummaging through the kitchen cupboards or getting ready for work.

  Mom. He missed her. He felt it in the bottom of his stomach, a small uncomfortable gnawing.

  He thought about what Kat had said. Did his mother think he’d been out in the storm? Could his parents really be thinking he was dead? How did Kat feel not having a mother at all? Even if his mother did piss him off from time to time, he couldn’t imagine not knowing she was out there somewhere.

  He still wore the smashed watch. Somehow, he didn’t feel right without it. He remembered how his mom’s face had lit up when she’d handed him the small wrapped box. She wanted him to love it.

  Uncomfortable with his own thoughts, Nate stumbled out of the tent, following the coffee aroma.

  Kat wasn’t around, but a metal coffee pot bubbled away on the chimney grate. He’d never been a coffee drinker, but this summer a lot of things were changing. He filled a cup then wandered slowly toward the beach, stopping occasionally to savor a swallow of the strong hot liquid that warmed his insides.

  Nate saw Kat in the bay and sunk onto a log to watch her play. She disappeared and resurfaced, making barely a ripple, her hair drifting around her like a mass of gold-red kelp. On her final dive she flipped her legs against the water like a mermaid’s tail, then broke the glassy surface closer to shore. Rising in the shallows on human legs, she waded toward him, smiling.

  It was Kat, but not quite the Kat he remembered. The black makeup had been washed away, along with the black hair. She was wearing a copper-colored bathing suit that blended perfectly with her stunning mane. How would he describe her in his journal? She looked like a lion goddess illuminated by the rising sun. The only remaining smudge of black on Kat was chipped polish on her fingernails.

  Nate sat frozen, fixated on her, his coffee cooling in his hands.

  “What?” she asked, sticking her tongue out at him as she reached for her towel. “It’s rude to stare, you know!”

  His fantasy-vision snapped back into the real Kat. “You look like you rose from the watery depths,” he said, then clamped his tongue painfully between his teeth. The last thing he’d meant to do was insult her, much less upset her after hearing about how she lost her mom.

  She stared at him hard as she rubbed the towel through her hair. “Did you get up on the wrong side of the tent, or are you always this pleasant in the morning?”

  “It wasn’t an insult. I mean, it wasn’t meant to be a comment about your mom or anything.” He stumbled over his words. “That is, you look great with all the black washed off.”

  “Yeah, now if we can just do something with your hair, we might seem half civilized,” she teased.

  Nate ran his hand through what remained of his hair. He’d forgotten about his hack job.

  “Guess I could use a little cleanup too,” he said, grinning. “Been a while since I had a shower.”

  “No kidding,” Kat said. “I can’t do anything about your smell, but I do have the right clippers to deal with your wild-man mane.”

  Back at camp, Kat sat Nate at the table and pulled out a small craft box filled with wires, scissors, and other odds and ends.

  “What’s all that stuff?”

  “Remember I told you that I come here to collect shells and stuff? Well, I make sea mobiles, and sometimes I assemble a few while I’m on this island. It’s quiet here, usually, and I can get my creativity flowing.”

  She ran a comb through his hair, then started trimming at the top. “Geez, who gave you this horrible hack job?”

  “Self-inflicted, I’m afraid.”

  “You hate yourself this much?”

  “All I had was a broken mirror and a Swiss army knife. So, what’s the deal with all the black? Or should I ask, why has the black suddenly disappeared?”

  She snipped away at the hair behind his ears before answering. “Kind of a side effect of swimming. Besides, I don’t need my armor right now. The enemy and his chickweed, as I fondly refer to her, have canceled their plans to invade this weekend.”

  “Can you translate that?” Nate asked.

  “My dad and his latest girlfriend are not dropping in on me and Gramps this weekend.”

  “How do you know? You have ESP or something?”

  “No,” she said, dangling over his shoulder a cell phone with a shiny black faceplate, “I have one of these.”

  “Holy shit!” Nate said.

  Kat held it in front of him. “Wanna call home?” she taunted.

  Nate folded his arms across his chest. “Just finish the haircut,” he said, clenching his teeth.

  18

  Nate waded through the shallows and padded up the beach to where Kat sat cross-legged on a large log. The past few nights he’d continued journaling about Kat, but his good/bad list had slipped into something more complicated. “She’s all contrasts,” he had written. “Light and funny then dark and serious, strong and ferocious then soft and sort of vulnerable, brutally blunt then painfully oversensitive.” Oh, God, he thought, were all girls this complicated?

  “Can you use any of these?” he asked, depositing a handful of small oyster shells in front of her.

  She put down the driftwood she’d been threading. “They’re beautiful,” she said running her hand over the inside of a shell. The ocean had polished the surface, revealing shimmering blue and pink tones.

  “Mother of pearl, that’s what they call this. Isn’t it a beautiful name for a shell?” Picking up a needle-nose screwdriver, she positioned it against the shell and tapped the end of the tool gently with a rock. Nate watched her intently.

  “I don’t know how you do that without breaking the whole thing.”

  “Practice. Believe me, I’ve shattered quite a few beauties.”

  Lying with his back against the log, Nate let the sun dry him. The past three days had been hot and muggy, without a breath of wind. They had spent most of their time cooling off in the bay or hiding under the shady cover of the trees.

  Nate kept one eye half open, noting Kat’s progress as the sun baked him into drowsiness. They had pretty much shared their entire life histories over their first two days together and were now comfortable lounging in silence. At least, he felt comfortable. It was amazing how much talking a person could do without the distraction of TVs, computers, or the intrusion of the rest of the world.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Kat said without glancing up from her work.

  Nate bolted upright, wide awake. “Why?”

&nb
sp; “Practical reasons, like, my cell phone’s almost dead. And we’re running out of food and water, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Will you come back?”

  Kat set down the mobile and locked her eyes on his. “I was hoping you’d come with me,” she said. “You can’t stay here forever.”

  “Why not?” He sounded grouchy even to himself.

  “For one thing, you’ll have no water, unless you can get that still to produce more than a few tablespoons a day. Besides, tomorrow’s the last day of July. It’ll be time get ready for school before we know it. Face it, Nate, you have to go home sometime, and without me, how will you get off this rock?”

  Nate lay against the log, staring out at the still water. “I’ll think about it.”

  A large blue and white sailboat rounded the mouth of the bay, and even though Nate was staring, it didn’t register in his brain. The sputtering motor caught his attention as it choked into silence. A man dropped anchor over the bow, and he watched the ripple reverberate all the way to shore.

  “Our Shangri-La’s being invaded,” Nate said as the man spotted them and waved. The man and two women clambered into a small rowboat and paddled for shore.

  “Ahoy there, mateys,” the man called, leaping into the water as the boat ran onto the sand. Nate helped run it further up the beach while the two young women, still perched inside it, gave him the once over. He could feel his face heating up as he let go of the boat.

  One of the women stood and held her hand out to Nate. She was darkly tanned, well oiled, and wearing a skimpy white bikini with a large orange flower positioned over each breast. Nate tried not to look as he helped her out of the boat, although he was sure she could’ve managed just fine on her own. He wondered how old she was. Maybe twenty-three. The other woman, in a hot pink bikini, giggled and smiled and giggled some more as she purposely lost her balance and leaned against him. He spied the tattoo peaking out from under her low-cut top. Nate didn’t know how to handle women like these. He’d seen a few in New York—there were two of everything in New York—but he’d certainly never met any before.

  The man caught Nate’s embarrassed look and winked as he held out his hand. “I’m Jimmy. Meet Tanya and Stef.”