This Is the Story of You

by Beth Kephart

  It was a story. Eva’s story. It came forward twisted. Shift and Eva. Eva and Shift. When the storm began, she said, she was alone. When the storm got worse, she called his phone. Told him to meet her out by the lighthouse, that she wanted to show him the world, that he had lost something, that she could give something back, that Eva, with her eyes, could show him.

  “Unvanishing,” she said.

  Unvanishing.

  It was hard to follow. It wasn’t making sense. We let her talk. Let her ride the stories around in circles, show us what she really meant, which is that she loved this boy, believed in him, could see beyond the shadows of his hoodie. As if she had known him all her life, Eva said, and then a tear broke from her eye, and it stayed there, on her face, until Deni wiped it dry.

  “You don’t—” Deni said again.

  “No,” Eva said. “I do.”

  Out in the distance help was on its way. We could hear shouting from the shore, horns on the boats, scatterings of applause, loud jewelry ringing. But in triage it was just the three of us, and our Cinnamon Nose and our Sterling. Eva was trying so hard to talk. We told her to rest. She wouldn’t.

  “They said the storm was blowing out to sea,” she started again, a bare whisper. “They said it, didn’t they, Deni?”

  “Shhhh,” Deni said. “They did.”

  She closed her eyes, and I imagined—Eva and Shift by the lighthouse and the storm blowing in, the wind in Eva’s hair. They must have stayed out there late, must have planned to stay all night. It was Eva’s choice. Not his. Maybe she was telling him things about the cities out there—lost and buried, sea and time, Atlantis and Port Royal. Maybe he was telling her something, too, or looking through her binoculars, but I’ll never know, because Shift was gone. Shift is gone. Eva said it. Then she closed her eyes and sobbed. There was no middle to her story. There was just wind, coming from nowhere, wind that knocked a lantern down, knocked Shift down, that’s what Eva was saying, trying to say; it was so hard to understand.

  “What is it, Eva?” Deni finally asked.

  “Knocked,” Eva whispered. “To the sea. I was standing right beside him.”

  She said other things after that, but they, too, were hard to follow. The bang of a fallen lantern against Shift’s head. The boy unconscious and falling. The sea right there, below the cliff where the two of them had been standing. And then Eva herself was jumping in, but the sea was growing stronger. It was knocking Eva around with its strength, and Shift was already dead.

  I thought of the starfish leg, the pale fishbones, the knots in Eva’s hair. I thought of the waves crashing and her bones snapping, and I didn’t know how she’d saved herself, how she was still here, with us.

  “You went after him?” Deni said. “In the sea? In the storm?”

  “You would have done it, too,” Eva said. To Deni, and to me. “You would have.”

  And she was right.

  She was crying harder, saddest sound I ever heard. I let Sterling to the ground and hugged Eva tight. Deni leaned in, too, the exact same time, and we were invisible cities and sea monsters and each of us shoring the other one up.

  “Johnny Carpenter,” Eva said. “I lost him.”

  And that’s when I understood it worse than I had.

  When all the pieces fit.

  When I understood who Johnny was—the shift he’d brought to us.

  I thought the waves would rise up, toss down, rinse clean, and that I would still be standing here, solid.

  I thought I knew all the monsters of the sea, but there are not words enough for naming.

  I thought I knew what family was, but it fits no category.

  I was wrong about almost everything, and some things: They do crumble.

  Still:

  We are here.

  We are Year-Round.

  We are rebuilding Haven.

  We are remembering.

  Tamra Tuller, we love the sea, we live through storms, we are like sisters, like family. Thank you. Taylor Norman, you are a dear and necessary part of the process—careful, witty, diligent and utterly there when I need you. Ginee Seo, for the conversations and the faith, for the words, I thank you. Sally Kim, Jaime Wong, Lara Morris Starr, Jennifer Tolo Pierce, Daria Harper, Jen Graham, Claire Fletcher, and Marie Oishi, you do your jobs so reliably well, and I am grateful. Debbie DeFord Minerva, copyeditor supreme and friend, you bent your ear toward my odd rhythms and you improved them. Thank you.

  Amy Rennert: You always know when to call and what matters most. Twenty books in, I’m still grateful.

  Stephen Fried, Nancy Bowden, Tom Boulden, Jessica Shoffel, and Deborah C. Whitcraft of the NJ Maritime Museum—thank you for telling me your storm stories.

  Sean Banul: I gave Mira your last name with your permission. Every time I typed those five letters, I thought of your convictions and strength, of your cat with its hopeful paw raised. Reverend Agnes Norfleet: Deni’s steadfast wisdom is inspired by you. Many others will find their names in these pages, and none of that is accidental. The community of us in the story of us.

  Alyson Hagy, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Kelly Simmons, thank you for the conversations along the way. A.S. King, Debbie Levy, and Ruta Sepetys, my thanks for all you do. Great gratitude as well to the teachers and the librarians and the booksellers and the bloggers who find or make homes for the stories we write. The list is long. The heart is full.

  Finally, and always, my son, Jeremy, who loves the beach as I love the beach and who cares about the work I do, and my husband, Bill, who joined me by the seaside during those off-seasons of near and lovely isolation.

  Among the books I read while writing this book: Surviving Sandy: Long Beach Island and the Greatest Storm of the Jersey Shore by Scott Mazzella, Foreword by Margaret Thomas Buchholz, Introduction by Larry Savadove; Great Storms of the Jersey Shore by Larry Savadove and Margaret Thomas Buchholz, Foreword by Senator Bill Bradley; Sandy: The Jersey Shore in the Eye of the Storm, presented by The Asbury Park Press; The Rising Sea by Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young; The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change, edited by Bill McKibben; The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert; Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert; A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder by Dr. Gary Greenberg, Foreword by Stacy Keach; and The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary by Caspar Henderson.

  Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of twenty-one books for readers of all ages, including You Are My Only, Small Damages, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, Going Over, and One Thing Stolen. A lifelong lover of the sea, she seeks it out in the off-season—riding her bike on empty paths, photographing sand dunes, waiting for dolphins. She teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania.