by Trish Doller
Willa stretches out on her stomach, propping her chin on her hand. “Have you gotten your housing assignment yet?”
“They’re supposed to be out in the next couple of weeks,” Taylor says. “What about you?”
“Not yet, but I haven’t checked my mail since Oswego, so . . .”
“You don’t sound very excited.”
Willa shrugs. “I guess I am.”
“But you’ve been working your whole life for this.”
“That’s kind of the problem.” Willa stands and slips her feet back into her shoes. “We should take the subway when we go back to the boat.”
Taylor wonders why Willa doesn’t want to talk about college, why she’s not more excited about being accepted into one of the best colleges in Ohio. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to Taylor about these things. Maybe it only seemed like their friendship was starting to have legs.
“Definitely,” Taylor says. “But we’re not done with Central Park yet.”
As they continue, their pace is slower. Ambling. They pause to watch the little kids playing in the playground. The clank of baseballs against metal bats rings out as they pass the ball fields. They stop to ride the carousel, where Taylor chooses a tawny horse with a wheat-colored mane and Willa climbs astride a brown horse wearing battle armor. Taylor snaps an instant shot and hands the photo to her as the carousel begins to turn. “Willa Rose Ryan, First of her Name, Queen of Goodwill, Seducer of Coasties, Conqueror of Thunderstorms.”
Willa laughs. “Okay, give me that camera.”
She takes a picture of Taylor and hands it back. “Taylor Marie Nicholson, First of her Name, Chronicler of Watery Road Trips, Vanquisher of Locks, Ruler of the Mosh Pit.”
Taylor looks down at the image of a girl on a horse whose mane matches her own, then smiles at Willa. “Those are good titles. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
They visit the John Lennon Memorial, where Taylor takes a photo of them lying on the ground with the word IMAGINE above their heads. They take turns sitting beside Hans Christian Andersen and scaling the Alice in Wonderland statue. When she runs out of instant film, Taylor switches to the camera on her phone. They stop at a gift shop to buy a New York City snow globe to go with the one from Niagara Falls. Finally, they end up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they sit on the steps and people-watch until the sun begins to fade.
“This has been an awesome day,” Willa says as they ride the subway back to the mooring field. “I needed it. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Taylor considers telling her about Vanessa. Maybe she can trust Willa with this secret. She sits up a little taller in her seat, summoning her courage. She can almost taste the words in her mouth. Then Willa’s eyes flutter closed and Taylor loses her nerve. In the end, she swallows what she was going to say and looks out the window into the subterranean darkness.
Willa
TAYLOR IS STILL ASLEEP WHEN Willa fires up the engine and unties the boat from its mooring. They hadn’t planned on leaving New York City this early, but she woke before dawn with anticipation fizzing in her chest. The ocean is so close that the yearning for the feel of salt air on her skin is almost more than Willa can bear. When the boat is clear of the mooring field, she turns it into the wind, shifts the engine to neutral, and climbs on deck to raise the mainsail.
Willa is sailing past the Statue of Liberty when Taylor emerges from the cabin, still wearing her pajamas. Her eyes bug out and she dives back through the companionway, returning with both of her cameras—and her cell phone. After Taylor snaps dozens of shots of the statue, she settles on the cockpit bench with her phone. Willa watches the way she smiles at the screen, wondering if Taylor is texting the girl from the concert. She looks happier than she has in a long time. Certainly since before Finley died.
New York Harbor reminds Willa of a huge-scale version of Sandusky Bay—more tankers, more ferries, more skyline—and as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot skims across the water, she is proud of how far they’ve come. She smiles to herself, thinking, I’ve got this.
Except when they sail beyond the mouth of the harbor into the Atlantic Ocean, everything changes. The protective arms of New York and New Jersey are gone. The ocean waves are higher and more rolling than anything she’s ever experienced. The boat pounds through the crests and valleys, and Willa is eleven years old again, afraid to sail a dinghy to Kelleys Island. But this time she doesn’t have Finley to reassure her that she can do it.
Taylor drops her phone and grabs for the bucket, retching into it. Down in the cabin, Pumpkin leaps into the sink.
“I’m so sorry,” Willa says. “I don’t know what to do to make this easier for you. I guess I could put a reef in the main to reduce the sail area. . . .” She stops because at this point she’s just spouting words. The truth is that Willa is afraid to climb on deck on an unpredictable sea. If she’s thrown into the ocean, Taylor wouldn’t know how to rescue her. Even worse, Willa is embarrassed by her fear. She’s supposed to be a sailor. “Maybe we should call your dad.”
Taylor hands over her phone and throws up as Willa hits the speed dial for Mr. Nicholson.
“We’ve just sailed into the Atlantic and it’s pounding out here,” she explains. “I thought maybe I could reef the main—”
“Turn on the engine and motor sail,” he interrupts. “It’ll keep the boat more stable through the waves.”
“That feels like cheating.”
Taylor’s dad chuckles a little, but it’s the laugh of someone who has forgotten more about sailing than Willa will probably ever know. “Unless you’re racing, there’s no reason to torture yourself. Use the engine and save the sailing for a better day.”
Being given his blessing to be a fair-weather sailor is a relief to Willa. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Mr. Nicholson says. “Put Taylor on the line, okay?”
Willa hands the phone to Taylor, then starts the engine and rolls in the jib. Doing these things doesn’t change the nature of the wind and waves, but the boat stops pounding so hard and she feels more in control.
Taylor disconnects the call and offers her a grim smile.
“Everything okay?” Willa asks.
“My mom looked at her credit card statement,” Taylor says. “And she saw the charge for the room in Niagara Falls.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. She basically cut off the card, so if we have an actual emergency, she’ll handle it.”
“Is she really pissed?”
“Disappointed.”
Willa winces. “God, that’s the worst, isn’t it?”
“At least when they’re mad you know it won’t last forever,” Taylor says.
Willa wants to ask her why she did it, why Taylor would book a hotel room overlooking Niagara Falls when she knew her parents would be disappointed. But Willa is pretty sure she knows why and doesn’t know how to say thank you, so she says, “They love you, Taylor. Their disappointment won’t last forever.”
After eight hours of sailing, both girls have found their sea legs. Taylor has been fortified by a steady stream of saltines and ginger ale, and Willa has lost her fear of the waves. Even Pumpkin has ventured out of the sink to sit on Taylor’s lap. They reach Manasquan Inlet after lunch.
“Maybe we could keep going,” Taylor says, flipping through the pages of the Captain Norm book. “I haven’t gotten sick since this morning, and the book says it’s only fifty-two miles to Atlantic City.”
“That’s only another ten or eleven hours,” Willa points out. “We’d have to sail all night.”
“Captain Norm says if we stay offshore, there are no obstacles to worry about. We can break the night into shifts so you don’t have to do all the work.”
Willa’s eyebrows hitch up at Taylor’s sudden faith in the advice of an elderly Looper who published his own book. “Are you absolutely sure about this? Because once we commit, turning back would be a huge waste of time.”
Taylor closes the book. “Let’s do it.”
Willa unfurls the jib and kills the motor on her first watch, and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot finds a six-knot groove, soaring down the Atlantic coast. The rush of the waves along the length of the boat is music. This has always been Willa’s favorite part of sailing, when wind and water come together like a song. Her heart aches that Finley is not here for this. She aches for everything Finley has missed and all that she’ll miss as Willa’s life goes on without her. Ever since Finley’s leukemia returned, ever since she died, Willa has kept a lock on her emotions. She wants to howl and rage, scream and cry, and she knows it’s not healthy to keep it bottled up. But she’s afraid if she lets her emotions out, she’ll never be able to put them back in the bottle again.
Taylor comes out on deck wearing her inflatable life vest and seasickness bands on each wrist—just in case. She salutes Willa. “Nicholson reporting for duty.”
Willa laughs. “Ms. Nicholson, you have the con.”
She crashes out in her bunk, and when she wakes, she’s confused because through the companionway she can see the sky behind Taylor—and it’s blue. Daytime blue. Willa climbs out on deck and looks around. Stretched along the Jersey shore are high-rise buildings, including one that’s mirrored to reflect the sky. “Where— Is that . . . Atlantic City?”
Taylor’s smile stretches wide as she nods. “Yep.”
“Wait. You sailed all night?”
“Well, Pumpkin and I motor-sailed all night.”
“Taylor! This is huge!” Willa jumps down into the cabin and grabs Taylor’s instant. She snaps a picture of Taylor holding both the tiller and her cat with Atlantic City over her shoulder.
“I’m adding this to your list of titles,” Willa says. “Sailor of the Darkened Seas.”
She didn’t know Taylor’s smile could get wider than it already is, but it does. Then Taylor says quietly, “I didn’t think I could be a sailor.”
“Well, let me be the first to tell you,” Willa says, as the instant photo blooms into focus. “You are.”
39.3643° N, 74.4229° W
Make your own luck.
Taylor
“DO YOU THINK FINLEY MEANT for us to gamble?” Taylor asks as she and Willa pedal their bikes down New Hampshire Avenue. There are no casinos yet, just rows of newer-looking town houses, churches, and corner shops. When Taylor thought about Atlantic City, she never considered garbage trucks or nail salons, never considered that there are people who actually live there.
“Maybe,” Willa says, as they ramp up onto the wooden boardwalk. It’s still early, so there aren’t many tourists out yet. Only power walkers, a couple of homeless men, and a handful of other people on bikes. “I mean ‘Make your own luck’ seems pretty obvious in a town full of casinos.”
“I can see her wanting to sneak in, even for just one pull on a slot machine.”
“We have the fake IDs,” Willa says. “Do you think we should try?”
Taylor has always had to be coaxed into Finley’s more reckless schemes—jumping off the Cedar Point Causeway Bridge comes to mind—and now she sometimes wonders if that made her the boring friend. Willa and Finley came back from regattas with tales about how they “borrowed” an FJ at two in the morning so they could night sail on Indian Lake. Or how they had to drink water out of an old sailing boot as their initiation into the junior race team. The whole ordeal had made Willa vomit, but they’d still laughed like it was the coolest thing that had ever happened. The thing is, they’d never been caught, prompting Taylor to believe Finley was charmed and her good luck surrounded them like a bubble. Now that Finley is dead, Taylor can’t be sure she’s still protected.
“I don’t know,” she says finally.
They ride past a stretch of abandoned casinos, including the huge glass structure that seems to melt into the sky and the one that resembles the Taj Mahal, which strikes Taylor as odd, considering the real thing is a mausoleum. This end of the boardwalk creeps her out, and Taylor is relieved when they start seeing shops that are open and casinos lit up and ready for action.
Now the boardwalk reminds her of a permanent carnival midway with restaurants, souvenir stands, psychics, tattoo parlors, art galleries, and strip clubs (gross). There are shops selling “world-famous” fudge and saltwater taffy, and three piers jut out into the ocean—one with amusement park rides, one with arcade games, and even one with a shopping mall. Everything on the boardwalk is layered with age and wear, but through the lens of Taylor’s camera it’s all beautiful.
“You’re really good,” Willa says, watching a shot of the grand carousel develop.
“It’s the instant. The old-school border makes everything special.”
“Stop,” Willa says. “You have a good eye.”
Taylor’s cheeks warm at the compliment. Her parents are always heaping praise on her work and they have a couple of framed shots hanging in the living room. But they brought her into the world, so they’re predisposed to love everything she does. From Willa, it feels earned. “Thanks.”
She could spend the whole day taking pictures, but Taylor can tell Willa is getting restless to do something else. “Should we go on some of the rides?”
“Everything is so expensive.” Willa tugs at her lower lip as they look at the admission prices. The rides are priced by tickets, and some of the more thrilling rides cost seven tickets or more. “I left most of my money on the boat, and I don’t really want to pay ten bucks to ride one thing.”
“We could go to the beach. That’s free.”
They chain their bikes to a nearby rack and claim a bit of real estate on the Atlantic City Beach, where they lounge on the sand for a couple of hours. Taylor takes photos of the surf, a few seagulls, and she and Willa take turns posing beside the Atlantic City Beach lifeguard boat. Taylor scrolls through their Instagram feed from the beginning of the trip, watching their tans grow darker and their faces more relaxed. Taylor still wishes Finley were here, but spending the summer with Willa hasn’t been as bad as she’d expected.
A Frisbee skids into the sand beside her towel, and Taylor looks up to see a boy wearing red swim trunks approaching fast. He looks to be around her age. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s no problem,” Taylor says.
Beside her, Willa lifts her head and shades her eyes to get a look at him. His white skin is starting to turn pink in the sun and his bony shoulders are crowded with freckles. He sweeps his floppy hair off his forehead and smiles with teeth too big for his mouth, first at Taylor, then at Willa.
“I’m Jake, and over there is Peyton and Dale.” He gestures toward two white boys standing with their hands on their hips as they wait for Jake to fetch the Frisbee. “Want to play?”
Taylor swings a glance at Willa, who is already pushing off the towel to stand. “Sure.”
“So, we road-tripped down from Philly,” he says as they walk across the sand toward the others. “Are you from around here?”
“Actually, we sailed from Ohio,” Taylor says.
Jake spins the disc upward into the air and catches it on the way down. “With your family or something?”
“No, just us,” Willa says. “We’re on our way to Key West.”
“Really?”
Taylor nods. “Yep.”
“I’m impressed,” he says. “And now our hour-long road trip seems super weak. So thanks for that.”
“Our pleasure,” Willa says, making him laugh.
Jake introduces them to Dale—blond hair, named after a race car driver—and Peyton—also blond hair, definitely not named after a quarterback—and the five form a circle on the beach. For a while they throw the Frisbee to one another randomly and without warning. Then they play a rowdy game called JackPot in which Willa, Peyton, Jake, and Taylor bunch up and compete to catch Dale’s throws, not unlike bridesmaids at a wedding. The game ends when Jake and Peyton accidentally knock heads, sending both of them sprawling on the sand in pain.
When the sun is high and scorching—especially on poor Jake’s milky skin—they take refuge in the shops. They scavenger hunt for the funniest T-shirt on the boardwalk—tie-dyed with a pug wearing sunglasses and a hoodie that says PUG LIFE—which Jake is obligated to buy and wear. They take pictures of themselves pretending to do shots from I ATLANTIC CITY glasses. Willa buys a postcard for her mom and Taylor considers a snow globe, but she doesn’t want to buy it in front of the boys. They stop to watch the pulling machine as it stretches saltwater taffy and they take more than their share of the free samples. Peyton springs for corn dogs, which they eat sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean, arguing over whether ketchup or mustard is the best condiment for corn dogs. Taylor and Willa both vote for ketchup, but mustard wins.
Dale is the first to finish eating. He lets out a long, rolling burp, then, “Okay. Now it’s time to hit the casino.”
“Dude, you have to be twenty-one,” Jake says.
And from Peyton, “Don’t they card at the door?”
“I have it on good authority that they do not,” Dale says. “Casinos are busy places. They won’t even know we’re there.”
Peyton pulls a skeptical face. “Who’s your good authority?”
“My cousin Jeff.”
Jake leans into Taylor and whispers, “Jeff is an ass.”
“Come on, you guys,” Dale says. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We go to jail,” Willa says.
“We’d probably just get kicked out,” Peyton says. “The police department is too busy for small-time shit like that.”
“Look,” Dale says, “the whole point of Atlantic City is gambling, so are we doing this or not?”
