Wild Blue Wonder

by Carlie Sorosiak

  Back in Winship around six o’clock, I say goodbye to Hana and, as per custom, Nana sets out her manger on the dining room table—three wise women instead of men, all wearing tie-dye robes—and Reed places the star on top of our Christmas tree. Galileo almost immediately scurries up its branches, knocking off more than one ornament in his undying quest for that glittery star. We can’t even put on lights anymore, in case he accidentally strangles himself. Dad gets the dustpan, swearing, while Mom begins arranging a variety of cheeses onto wooden platters. I don’t know who started the cheese tradition, but Christmas Eve has basically become an opportunity to stuff our faces with Gouda and Brie.

  Mom’s cutting up carrots as well.

  “I can’t believe you’re still doing that,” I say.

  “Just because you’ve stopped believing,” she says, “doesn’t mean that the reindeer have stopped getting hungry.” Although she and Nana like to comment about the male patriarchy and the preposterousness of an old white guy representing the most joyous day of the year, she’s always made a big show about standing in the yard and chucking carrots onto the roof—for “our hooved friends,” she says, but ostensibly there are just a bunch of carrot sticks decomposing on our roof, getting picked off by birds. Still, I like it. The tradition, the silliness of it.

  After tossing the carrots, all of us make our way back inside to begin the argument over what movie to watch. Nana likes those old claymation films, so she can pretend she’s the reindeer—learning to walk one foot in front of the other across the flo-oo-or—while Fern and I prefer Love Actually. Predictably, Reed and Mom argue for Elf, and all hell breaks loose. Dad’s always the decider, because he chooses differently every year, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Usually, right before the movie, he’s putting the finishing touches on his Polish coffee cake, which has about a half ton of brown sugar crumbled on top.

  Mom calls up the stairwell, “Henry?” Then again: “Sweetheart?”

  He descends the stairs. “Well, what do you think?”

  The five of us openly gape at him.

  “No one’s saying anything,” he says.

  “You know those YouTube videos,” I begin, “where babies can no longer recognize their fathers? It feels like that.”

  He rubs the soft sheet of skin on his face where his beard once was. “I just thought it was time for a change. I don’t look that different, do I?”

  Fern actually chimes in. “It’s pretty drastic, yeah.”

  “I think it looks lovely, dear,” Nana says. “Maybe you won’t scare off children anymore.”

  Dad blanches. “When did I scare off children?”

  Mom jumps in: “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Love Actually, or the cinematic magic of Elf?”

  “I don’t scare children, do I?”

  “Focus, Henry.”

  In the end, we drop our choices into a hat and—shockingly—Love Actually wins. Maybe Nana changed her mind, because Dad definitely didn’t vote for it. Those naked scenes are always exceptionally cringey with him around. At the sight of TV boobs, he feigns a cough and a desperate need for water in the kitchen, far away from the sight of his offspring watching fake movie sex.

  We all settle in, Nana and me sharing a blanket on the couch. I try just to be in the moment, but near the ending of Love Actually, when that guy shows up to visually serenade Keira Knightley’s character with cue cards, vowing that his wasted heart will love her until she is skeletal and long dead, I’m praying for a knock at the front door. A tap at the window. A something signaling that Alexander’s outside, freezing his ass of just to deliver a Christmas message: You are invincible, and you are good.

  “All right?” Nana says, clapping a hand on my back after the movie, as I’m picking at the dregs of the cheese plate. Somehow, pomegranate seeds have weaseled their way into the Stilton and blech.

  “Yeah,” I say, because I half am.

  “You want me to fix you a plate of Christmas cookies, Cookie?” She laughs. “Cookies for Cookie?”

  I smile, separating the seed invaders from their cheesy opponent. “Thanks, but I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

  “Saving room for the great feast tomorrow—good thinking. Night-night, sweetheart.”

  I kiss her on the cheek, tuck myself in, and fall almost immediately to sleep.

  It’s after midnight when I hear a noise like a . . . can opener?

  At first I think: Santa? And then I think: Stupid.

  Fern’s not in bed. I hope the noise is coming from her—that she hasn’t sneaked out on Christmas.

  I sweep through the darkness of the house, checking the living room. Underneath the Christmas tree, Galileo is alternating between destroying his kill (i.e., his Christmas bow) and eating a tin of salmon, which someone has left open for him on the floor. When he sees me in the doorway, he runs in my direction and rams his head into my shin.

  And there’s Fern in the blue, blinking light of the tree—knees to chest, wrapped in a blanket on the couch.

  “Hey,” she whispers, brightness and shadow equal on her face. “Did I wake you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s fine.”

  Taking a chance, I sit next to her on the couch. Fern breathes in deeply. I can almost see her lungs expanding, like a butterfly opening its wings.

  We are silent for seconds that seem to stretch into hours.

  If I don’t fix this now, then when?

  “You know,” I tell her slowly, “we might have the world’s ugliest Christmas tree.”

  She glances across the room—at its eleven and a half branches, the star lopsided on the top. “You’re right,” she says, just as slow. “It’s hideous.”

  “Really sad.”

  “Terrible.”

  We look at each other. I see the smile creeping up her face as surely as she sees mine—and then we burst out into laughter, like we should’ve at Mousam River. This tree is hilariously bad. And we can’t stop giggling.

  “Oh my gosh,” Fern says between breaths. “I think I’m going to pee myself.”

  Which makes us laugh even harder.

  “Okay, okay,” I manage. “I feel like my stomach is about to burst.”

  “Same. I ate so much cheese tonight. I think my body might actually be made of cheese.”

  “Like the Cheese Woman.” When Fern cocks her head, I say, “You don’t remember? That story Nana used to read us? She gave you the book for Christmas.”

  “I feel like I should have a memory of this but somehow I don’t? I do remember when she gave Reed that ashtray, though.”

  “Because she thought it was a coin holder?”

  “Yeah. Or that canteen she got at the thrift store that still had, like, apple juice in it from its previous owner?”

  “The best worst gift giver around,” I conclude.

  “Speaking of gifts . . .” Indicating the glittery snowflake stickers by the corner of her eyes, she says, “Harper gave these to me and kind of pressed them on my face. Makes it hard to blink.” She bats her eyelids superslowly to prove the point.

  I laugh again.

  Between us, Galileo elegantly stretches out his paws and purrs.

  “He’s got it so easy,” Fern says, petting him on the belly. “Don’t you wish you were a cat sometimes? The worst thing he worries about is porcupines.”

  “Fern?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  And there it is. There it is again, for the thousandth time. Usually she’d stuff it right back down my throat, but tonight, she pauses. Tonight, she pulls a tiny piece of paper from the pocket of her pajamas. “Read it.”

  I peer at the paper, which says in Fern’s loopy handwriting, I wish things were better.

  A paper wish—like the campers write.

  “I know it’s not specific,” she says. “But I also know that things can’t be the same. I know that I’ve been horrible, and I’ve been angry, and you’ve done things and . . . I’ve said things.”

  �
�The monster thing,” I whisper.

  Her eyebrows scrunch together. “The what?”

  “After the hospital, when you were on the porch, and you kept mouthing monster? Calling me a monster?”

  Both of her eyes spring entirely open. “I wasn’t calling you a monster. I was saying I didn’t believe in the monster. I thought you made the whole thing up, because you were . . . you know, making out with Dylan in the water or something, and you wanted an excuse.”

  What? No. No. “That’s—”

  “I know. . . . It sounds so strange when I hear it out loud. This is exactly what I mean! We can’t get back there. Not to where we were. But that doesn’t mean . . . Maybe that doesn’t mean we have to give up on everything.”

  I shake my head, hair falling into my eyes. I’m still processing. Or rather, not processing. “But you were right—even if you didn’t mean to call me a monster, you were right. I knew how you felt about him, that you’d be really hurt, and I still took him out on that boat, which I knew was unsafe. I betrayed you, Fern. You kissed him, and that meant something.”

  “Just not to him.”

  “He loved you. He loved all of us.”

  “Yeah. I know. Really, I do.” She runs a finger over her bottom lip, thoughtful. “Reed and I talked.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Mmm-hmm. This morning, when you and Hana took Galileo to see Santa. He told me . . . everything he told you, I think. And . . . and I realized how much I’ve missed him. How much I’ve missed you both.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Duh.” I smile. “So . . . where do we go from here?”

  Fern raises a knowing eyebrow at me. “Up.” A minute later, when we return to our room, she pauses by her bed. “Quinn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The floor is lava.”

  July

  Not as Much as I’ll Miss You

  Dylan, there’s one moment, three days before you died, that I will never let go of.

  And it’s simple.

  It’s you, me, Fern, and Reed, lying in the meadow on a Sunday afternoon. It’s sweating soda bottles and grilled cheese sandwiches and yellow sun on our eyelids. Maybe I wouldn’t have remembered it if not for the accident. It would’ve swirled with a million other tiny memories, just like this.

  I nudged you. “Hey, loser.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You know we’re going to miss you, right?”

  You stretched your hands above your head, sighed. “Not as much as I’ll miss you all, Sawyer. Not as much as I’ll miss you.”

  December

  The Fall and Rise of The Hundreds

  The first thing I do Christmas morning is turn on my phone.

  Fern’s sleeping next to me, Galileo curled around her head, Russian-hat style, so I turn down the volume as text messages blast in one after the other. Hana has sent me, inexplicably, ten dozen poo emojis. I text her a series of question marks, and her response is:

  It’s 7 AM. Why are you AWAKE?

  Then:

  Oops. Note to self: Never let your little brother anywhere near your phone.

  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

  AND HAPPY QUINN-TURNED-HER-PHONE-BACK-ON DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

  CELEBRATION!!!!!! (Merry Christmas. Love you.)

  xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

  Seven other texts sit in my messages. One is from Ruby’s Pizza, advertising the specials. And the rest are from Alexander over a space of three days.

  I’m really sorry. Really really sorry.

  Can we talk?

  Please.

  This is killing me.

  Not KILLING me. That was insensitive. Christ, I’m sorry.

  And then in the last fifteen minutes:

  Happy Christmas, Quinn.

  So maybe he doesn’t hate me after all?

  I hold the phone to my chest and stare unblinkingly up at the ceiling. And what pops into my head is that cue card guy in Love Actually, how his wasted heart will continue to love, and I think about how deeply and profoundly sad that is, to have a wasted heart. I think about Charlie and Reed—that kiss in the cemetery parking lot.

  What I feel for Alexander is . . . scary. But maybe it’s only scary because it’s unknown, like yet-to-be-explored areas of the ocean floor. I remind myself that for every wolf eel, there is also a little blue puffer fish plowing mathematically perfect designs into the sand. Scary things and amazing things coexist.

  The world is full of wildness and wonder.

  And a lot of it is good.

  Masked by the sound of Fern’s and Galileo’s soft snores, I wiggle out of the blanket and slide on my boots. If I hang around any longer, Mom and Dad will wake up, and I’ll surely get roped into the festivities—present unwrapping, Apples to Apples, consuming obscene amounts of Polish coffee cake. Don’t get me wrong; those things are great. But later. Not now.

  Now I have somewhere I need to be.

  I text Alexander:

  Can you meet me at The Hundreds’ cove?

  His response is immediate.

  Yes. Now?

  Yes.

  Still in my dolphin-print pajamas, I’m greeted by a billion blazing lights outside. Dad must’ve kept them on all night. It’s absolutely freezing, but I don’t care. I take the long way through the woods, trekking through the wild, a bird chorus erupting in the sky, three crows in a nearby tree chattering at me. Everything’s a bit of a blur. I haven’t planned exactly what I want to say, only that I need to say something, explain to him how loving and losing were so tied up in my mind. How I thought of myself as a monster but not anymore.

  As expected, I’m the first one here. The cove’s bright for seven a.m.—fingers of sunlight stretching over the water—and I do my best to breathe in everything: the sea-spray saltiness, the crispness of the air. I step a little closer to the ripples as white foam burbles onto the grainy sand. In my coat pocket, there’s a stick of spearmint gum, and I chew nervously for about a minute before Alexander appears, coming out of the woods in a ridiculous paper Santa hat, elastic string tucked under his chin.

  “I . . . uh . . . brought you one, too,” he says when he’s close enough, pulling a second hat from a large canvas bag. His expression is unfathomable. Anxious? Sad? “Yaya thought today needed a little something extrafestive.”

  I take it from him, my own face surely flipping through a book of emotions. I strap the elastic beneath my chin. “How does it look?”

  He breathes out. “Perfect.”

  I say, “Look, I wanted to—” At the same time he blurts, “I realized—”

  We look at each other self-consciously.

  “You first,” I say.

  “Okay.” Shifting in his boots, digging farther and farther into the sand, he sucks that breath right back in. “I realized that I was coming on too strong. The truth is, well, in all honesty, I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but I do understand pain. I mean, it’s Christmas and I’m not even sure that my parents are going to call . . . so I get the risks of . . . this. Why it’s scary. And if you don’t like me, then I . . . I understand that, too.”

  To my right, the waves are dragging infinitesimally back, back—and I see us floating there: Dylan and me, the night of the party. I see us kissing. I see him—

  I am not a monster.

  I have to repeat it in my mind.

  I am not a monster.

  “I really like you,” I say gently.

  “You do?” he says, looking nervous still.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I really like you, too.”

  We’re silent for a moment—only the soft sound of the sea, the blood thrumming in my ears.

  “So . . . ,” I say, feeling a bit awkward, “what’s in the bag?”

  A smile breaks through his nerves. He pulls from the bag a series of bound pages. Blue ink. Across the cover in his spiky handwriting is The Fall and Rise of The Hundreds. “I finished it,” he says blushing
ly, passing it to me. “A few weeks ago, I came up with this idea that superhero you was protecting the camp with her nautical powers, and some of the sketches are still a bit rough because my wrist started cramping at about two this morning and I couldn’t—”

  I close my eyes and stop his mouth with my lips. His mouth is surprised but soft, his bare hands finding their way to my cheeks and drawing me closer. On this beach, the moment is equally beautiful and strange—like every wonder in the world.

  “Wow,” he says as I pull away and open my eyes. “I didn’t even need to bring mistletoe.”

  I shove him gently, then kiss him again. I don’t realize how close I’m standing to the water until the heels of my boots are literally in the sea.

  “So should I read it now?” I ask of the novel in my hand.

  “Later,” he says, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “Spoiler alert, though: you win.”

  Next June

  Wild Blue Sea

  According to the new episode of The Sunshine Hypothesis, scientists discovered the yeti crab nine hundred miles south of Easter Island, about a mile and a half beneath the dark sea—so far away from humans that they weren’t even sure if life was possible. If anything could survive.

  But there it was, like a blueberry bush flourishing in winter.

  There it was, in all its wonder.

  “Can you promise me something?” Fern asks. She’s cut her hair short like I did last winter. Mine’s growing out—past my shoulders now, the ends bleached from pool chlorine. Today we’re floating in Isabella Cogsworth III in the still part of The Hundreds’ cove, and she’s flipping through an NYU admissions guide.

  “Anything,” I say.

  She holds up a dog-eared page. On it is a sampling of their photography program—a few images of sticks positioned artfully in mud. “If I ever produce anything like this, just shoot me. You have my permission.”

  “Oh, please. If you apply there, a year from now, you’ll have one of those fantastic New York City apartments—and by fantastic, I mean absolute shit, but you’ll start taking pictures of pigeons in the park and saying things like They really speak to my aesthetic.”