Alexander appears like he’s revving up to say something, but doesn’t want to stammer, wants to get it exactly right. He starts his sentence twice: “I think— It seems—” But he pauses again, repositioning more gravel with his boot. Finally his gaze snaps up, and he meets my eyes. “It’s not a perfect comparison, your sea monster and this puffer fish, but it seems to me that if it’s a mathematical possibility for this fish to, I don’t know, be this fish, do what this fish does, then what’s wrong with believing other things? For everything impossible, there is something possible . . . right?” He breaks eye contact and tilts his head back to the milky sky. “Christ, this was such a cock-up. I’m so sorry, Quinn.”
“What? None of this was your—”
“It was. I told Hana we should do something . . . nice . . . for you. You seemed upset yesterday at school, and Hana mentioned your boat . . . that something didn’t work, and I . . . I’m sorry. I feel like the world’s biggest numpty.”
Whoa. I don’t know what to respond to first: that he’s the one who orchestrated this day, that he knew I was upset and he tried to cheer me up, or that he used the word numpty. Contextually, I get the gist, but—ha! That has to be a British thing, or a Greek thing? “The boat was fine,” I settle for, voice low. “It was me who didn’t work.”
“Oh,” he says, more embarrassment stumbling into his face. I think he has an idea of what I mean. That vein in his neck flitters some more. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “You don’t need to keep apologizing. Or . . . being so nervous. Not around me.”
The wind covers most of it, but I swear I hear him say, “Especially around you,” before trudging just as nervously onward. “In London, it’s easier to blend in, be really silent on the Tube; in a city you can disappear, and I’ve . . . I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be the least inconvenience to my parents, being quiet . . . but here, I’m the new kid, and I don’t have a choice but to . . . er, you know, speak.”
I’m still focusing on the especially around you. Suddenly he’s examining me just as intensely as I’m examining him.
“I’m glad you moved here,” I finally say.
“Yes,” he says after a windblown moment. “Me, too.”
And that’s when Hana comes bursting out of the museum, followed closely by Elliot, Hana saying, “Oh my gosh, Quinn, I wasn’t even thinking. I totally wasn’t thinking,” and I tell her it’s okay, don’t worry, even though I could be the only monster is still floating around my brain.
We ice-skate for a whole hour, Alexander standing around the perimeter of the rink like a newborn deer, wobbling on skates, and during the car ride back, I take one of the back seats next to him, thinking that, out of everything that went wrong today, a little bit of something went incredibly right.
December
Isabella Cogsworth III
When I wake up that Friday, the whole world is white. White trees in glass cases, white cabins peeking into a white sky. There must be four feet of fresh snow in some places. And the animals! Holy crap, the animals. Even from my bed, I spot at least three different species out the window: two turkey vultures carefully picking their way across the ground, a wobbly white-tailed deer by the tree house, a snowshoe hare scrambling through the dead remains of our purple pumpkin patch.
Must be a blizzard.
I’ve learned to listen for the foghorn on Winship Bay: one blow means school starts late, but three means school’s canceled for the day.
Wait for it. . . . Wait for it. . . .
Three. Beautiful. Blows.
Yes, yes, yes. But ugh, as soon as I jump out of bed, I have to dive right back under the covers. It’s intensely cold, what I’d imagine living in a wildling hut would feel like—way, way north of the wall in Game of Thrones. The central heating must be out—we’ll have to make do with our wood-burning stove in the living room.
When we had a whiteout last year, the six of us played a seven-hour game of Monopoly (Dad even broke out the monocle he bought at a yard sale for exactly that occasion), and Reed and I climbed out the second-story window into a twelve-foot mound of snow, where we sank inch by inch like pebbles in the cove. But this year Fern is just complaining that her hair straightener won’t turn on.
“Someone call the National Guard,” I mumble under my breath at the breakfast table, after the woodstove’s fired up.
“Heard that,” Nana says quietly by my side.
Luckily I remembered to charge my phone last night. Hana texts me a Photoshopped picture of our school, that icy monster from Frozen crunching its fist into the roof. It’s actually really impressive.
Mad skills.
I’m putting my education to good use.
Doing the teachers running and screaming away now. Too much?
Maybe a bit much.
Alexander texts me as well:
SNOW SO MUCH SNOW. I went outside for two minutes and my nostrils froze together.
Welcome to the Maine club.
Because of the storm, it takes an eternity for my text to go through, but eventually I receive a reply:
It’s that easy? I don’t need to wrestle a bear or anything?
Except for texting, Alexander and I have never talked on the phone. Frankly, I’ve barely talked to anyone on the phone unless physically forced, but that night at the Laundromat and those moments outside the museum are fluttering through my mind, as is my epic boating fail and my I could be the only monster revelation, and I kind of want to . . . hear his bumbling voice? Is that bad?
I press call, but the cell phone won’t connect. Stupid storm. On top of our fridge is an old-school phone book, which I haul down and flip through, dialing Ms. Atwood’s landline. I hope the number’s still the same.
Alexander picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Bear wrestling is optional,” I say. “For advanced membership only.”
“Oh, hello . . . Right, I said hello already.”
“Yep.”
A pause. “You called the landline.”
“You answered the landline.”
“True. That is true.”
It comes out before I know it’s going to: “You busy?”
“Er . . . if you mean, am I sitting here in a cold dark house, wrapped in a blanket and three pairs of trousers, contemplating what I’m supposed to do for the next seventeen hours, then yes, I am incredibly busy.”
Nana must have a my granddaughter’s smiling radar. As soon as a grin crosses my lips, she’s hovering over me with a pot of tea, whisper-shouting, “Is it Alexander? Is it? Say hello! Say hello!”
I oblige her. “Nana says hello.”
“Hello back.”
“So do you want to hang out or something? It looks like it’s about to stop snowing.”
“Uh . . . sure. Yes. Absolutely. Give me half an hour?”
“Okay, meet by the cabins?”
He says, “Great,” and we both hang up the phone.
I rummage through the hall closet, find my favorite furry hat from sophomore year, and then scramble to brush my teeth. Throwing on a nonpuffy pair of snow pants, I yell into the kitchen, “I’m going out for a bit!”
“In a blizzard?” Nana yells back.
“It just stopped snowing!”
“Wear socks!”
“Why would I not wear socks, Nana?”
“Beats me!”
I laugh, roll my eyes, and head out the door. The white sky’s splintering, yellow cracks of sun filtering through the white mist. The turkey vultures scatter when they see me, but there are more snowshoe hares now; they simply stand up on their back legs, twitch their little black noses. In the yard, the frigidness makes my eyes tear. The snow’s up to my kneecaps; I have to semiwalk, semiwade toward the cabins, where Alexander meets me in that jet-black parka.
“Ever seen snow like this?” I ask immediately. “Do you even get snow in London?”
“A little. Not like this. . . . Am I being daft, or are t
here an incredible number of animals in your yard?”
“Last year, we got black bears and coyotes, too. Something about the blizzard—they all run here.”
Alexander gulps. “There aren’t any . . . bears or anything . . . now?”
“We’re probably fine,” I say. “Have you ever made a snow angel?”
Looking nervous and unconvinced, he shakes his head, takes off his black beanie, and messes with his hair. “Afraid not.”
So I motion for him to follow me.
The thinnest blanket of snow is between the mess hall and the frozen-flat wildflower meadow. “Best place,” I tell him, stopping there and raising my hands into a T. “Scientifically tested for maximum snow-angel-ing. The easiest thing to do is fall into it.”
“Like a trust exercise with the ground.”
“Except the ground is more likely to catch you.”
I sink flat into the snow. He mirrors me—falling as I fall—and the coldness envelops us like a hug, twenty inches of white swallowing us on both sides as we swish, swish our arms. A few snowflakes land on my eyelashes.
“Now, very carefully, raise your—”
“Can we just lie here for a minute?” he asks.
“If you want.”
“It’s kind of nice.”
“You won’t think so after we get so cold that we become White Walkers.” I blink, looking up at the mist filtering down from the sky. He’s right, though. It is nice.
A memory sifts in. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Er . . . sure.”
“On Halloween, why’d you come out onto the porch?”
His shoulders shrug in the snow. “I suppose I was coming to talk to you.”
“And say what?”
“‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father—’”
I finish the line of The Princess Bride for him: “‘Prepare to die.’”
He lets out a solitary laugh. “I don’t know, really. It just . . . seemed like a sign? The night before my first day at a new school, you and Hana showing up in my yard. . . . I don’t know.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”
“I told you I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Ghosts, signs. Kind of all the same, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he says. “You’re right—it’s bloody freezing.”
“Told you.” Carefully, carefully, I ab-crunch myself upward and, like the expert I am, swiftly rise to a stand. “Now give me your hands.”
He does. I pull him upward, and we step back, gazing down. On the ground where our bodies were, the snow dips inward, silhouetting us. Human Alexander surveys Angel Alexander and, after much intense study, declares, “Yours is better.”
I tell him, “Thank you.”
We decide that hot chocolate is definitely in order and wander toward his house.
In his foyer, I kick off my boots and make my way to the kitchen—and it feels strange, how comfortable I am here, with Alexander. He keeps his coat on, and I can smell the winter all over him, like the snowflakes have soaked deep, deep in.
The power’s back on. He opens the fridge, light blinking. “Would you like something to eat as well?”
“Sure.”
Selecting what appear to be miniature pies from the top shelf, he closes the fridge and says, “For you, Madame.”
“Why, thank you, Monsieur.” I’m not sure when we started addressing each other like French diplomats. “What are they?”
“Mince pies.” I stare at him blankly. “You’ve never had mince pies?”
“Are they English?”
“As English as it gets.” After pouring milk and powdered chocolate into a pot on the stove, he plops two pies onto a microwavable plate, heats them up, and grabs a can of whipped cream. “Prepare for a religious experience.”
We settle on the couch in the den, warm plate and hot chocolate between us. I notice that Ms. Atwood’s boxes are dwindling—fewer cardboard tentacles creeping across the lengths of rooms. I say as much.
“Which reminds me,” Alexander adds after dousing the pies with a thick layer of cream. “My yaya has an early Christmas present for you.”
“Really?”
“Hold on a second.” He disappears upstairs and I hear him speaking with his yaya in Greek. He returns a minute later with a manila envelope, handing it to me. “Happy Christmas.”
“Can I open it now?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Unsealing the envelope, I delicately slide its contents onto my lap—and suddenly my siblings are gazing up at me. And there’s Nana, my parents. Me: a happy blur, jutting up from the porch just as the flash snaps. I’m about seven, visibly carefree, in my favorite turquoise bathing suit, wrapping my arms around Fern. Reed is still gangly, elbows for miles. Even in the black-and-white photo, I can tell that the tips of all our noses are sunburned. There’s a note, written in light pencil on the outer edge: Cut from the same cloth. I shoot a lot of families, but never siblings so close.
It makes sense, I guess—that Ms. Atwood photographed us. The camp’s practically next door.
“She thought you might want it,” Alexander explains.
Do I?
“Is that okay?” he says, seeing my falling expression. “Did I . . . uh . . . did I just mess something up again?”
“No.” I slap a small smile back on my face. “It’s great. Thank you.”
He blinks at me for a long moment. “You know, I had a thought about your boat and . . . launching it.” Pink spreads into his cheeks. “Would you like a superhero team?”
I match his blinks. “What?”
“A superhero team. Every superhero needs a team. Hana, your Nana, plus Elliot and me—we can launch all together, if you want.” His eyes are shining like it’s the world’s most brilliant idea.
It’s not.
But it isn’t a bad idea, either.
At noon that Saturday, I’m in the same spot—on the dock, jittery.
Except this time, I have my superhero team, and they’re debating the name of the boat.
“Isabella,” Hana says, teeth chattering, hair feathering from her shoulders with wind. She raises the furry hood on her coat and tightens the straps on her life jacket. “Like the explorer Isabella Bird.”
“Isn’t that a bit . . . Twilight?” Elliot says tentatively. “Bella Swan, Isabella Bird? How about something dignified like . . . Cogsworth?”
Alexander chimes in. “Uh, isn’t that the name of the clock in Beauty and the Beast?”
“Yeah,” Elliot says. “I love that little guy.”
“I suppose if you want dignified,” Alexander muses, “you just need to add ‘Jr.’ or ‘III.’”
“Done,” I say, because all this waiting around is ratcheting up my nerves. A flock of scared birds is trying to escape my rib cage; I’m already afraid of chickening out, and I haven’t even tried to step inside the Chris-Craft. “Isabella Cogsworth III it is.”
Hana twists her lips. “But that’s a horrible name.”
“We can change it later,” I tell her, motioning inside the boat, where Nana’s behind the steering wheel. “Should we . . . ?” The rest of the words get tied up in painful knots, because this is it. This is really it.
No panicking. Absolutely none. Do not panic. Do not think about that night or the seaweed or the sloshing sound of the waves. Do not think about how you’ve failed before. Don’t even think, period. Just move. Prove that this boat isn’t the only thing that can be fixed.
Elliot embarks first, then Alexander, and then Hana—who offers me her hand. My superhero team looks back at me as my throat quivers and panic settles in my heart. I didn’t think it would help having them all here . . . but it does. It really does. The polar air rushes a little slower in my lungs. I grip Hana’s fingers harder than I mean to, but she grips back just as tight. We can do this, she says with her eyes. We can do this.
Who says survival—who says that l
iving—means fighting alone?
From the earliest days of this boat, Nana was there. And Hana was there. And now Elliot’s here and Alexander’s here and we can do this.
My first step is an uneasy one, because this feeling is so familiar: like boarding an air mattress with sand at the bottom. And there are the same smells and the same sounds. The same salt and the same sea.
But.
I’m out on the water.
Even though my skin doesn’t feel quite like skin, even though my pulse is a jackrabbit, I am out on the water. We’ve done it. Oh my God, we’ve done it! For a moment, all the monster leaks right out of me, and I’m just this girl with superhero friends who’s accomplished something good.
Hana squeezes my hand once more. “Ready to take her for a test run?”
“Yeah,” I say, because I mostly am.
Then the motor begins churning a bass chorus on the waves, the wind ruffling everyone’s life vests and jackets. It’s bitter cold, but I couldn’t care less. I try not to care about anything except this one good thing. I obviously don’t expect to spot the sea monster today . . . or maybe ever. No, no, you will. You will. As we coast at four knots per hour farther and farther along the Atlantic shoreline, I still grab a pair of binoculars from the helm, just in case.
A thousand feet outside the cove overlooking Winship Middle School, Nana cuts off the engine and suggests that we float awhile, take a break from the wind. The water around us is mostly still—a whitecap here and there from yesterday’s storm. Stony blue light’s raining down between scraggly clouds, and my breath’s coming easier and easier.
Hana pulls her otter hat farther down over her ears, then reaches for the portable FM radio wedged in a compartment with the extra life jackets. She flips it to Nana’s favorite Motown station, the one we listened to while we worked on the Chris-Craft, and music’s suddenly flying into the freezing air: The Temptations’ “My Girl.”
Wild Blue Wonder Page 18
