A Frenzy of Sparks: A Novel

by Kristin Fields

  This time she didn’t care if her feet made a sound on the sticks and trash. It stank of piss and wasted time, people, the same way a doctor’s office stank of germs after the last patient. She fought back the nausea rising in her throat, the sudden urge to be home again at the kitchen table, listening to spoons ding against cereal bowls and Rice Krispies snapping in milk, to wash this place off with enough soap to leave a shield on her skin. Soon, her brain promised.

  “Leo.” He was sitting against the wall, his clothes touching the crumpled tissues and napkins on the floor inside, the strap still around the pulsing blue vein in his arm. His eyes opened and settled on her. He didn’t ask why she was here or why she wasn’t in school. For a second, Gia wondered whether she was real, in this disgusting place, or if Leo saw something different.

  “Leo, I want to take the boat out. Dad said I can’t go without you.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Right now.” She glanced behind her, terrified the weeds would rustle and another pair of feet would crash through, but it was quiet. Just the wind. Birds. The call of traffic in the distance.

  “The boat’s ready. I just need you to come with me.”

  Her heart pounded in her ears. The whole plan depended on getting him to the island. Leo fumbled in the dirt for solid ground. So slow, clumsy. His eyes stretched to their widest with the effort of making the world make physical sense. It was irritating. Gia crossed her arms and waited for him to get it together, realizing the walk to the boat would be slow and labored, making it more likely someone would see them.

  “Come on,” she said, following the path back the way they’d come, the urge to reach the street as strong as the need to breathe.

  Leo ran his hands over the same weeds Gia tried not to touch.

  “To the boat,” she said. “For a ride. It’s a nice day. The sun is out. I cleaned the boat up real nice and brought Moon Pies and Oatmeal Pies, you know, the ones with the cream in the middle? I couldn’t find pumpkin faces.”

  The ones they used to smash into balls and pop into their mouths whole, cinnamon melting on their tongues with the taste of fall and leaves and Halloween and fresh notebooks. The memory was so surprising she tripped a little on the uneven path.

  The sound of her own voice was soothing, if too loud. She didn’t have to turn back to make sure he was there. He was crashing through, breaking sticks underfoot, making a trail even the dumbest tracker could follow.

  “I have candy too. Snickers and Milky Ways. You like those, right? Milky Ways?”

  Leo made a sound Gia guessed was a yes.

  “And Kit Kats. And Oreos. And Fritos.” The sidewalk was up ahead. Gia could’ve kissed it, scooped a handful of it and let it run between her fingers as the wind took it. That was how beautiful that sparkling concrete was, crackled and riddled with mugwort and lady’s thumb, paths leading to houses and people. She walked faster to leave this place behind; a part of her felt unclean for knowing it existed. It ruined the world a little. How could she ever listen to music and flip through magazines, talking about this movie or that one, knowing disgusting places like this existed? A washed-out sun was scribbled on the concrete in sidewalk chalk. A child’s drawing, done where his mother could see him from the kitchen window, and just a little farther into the weeds, that place. She thought of Lorraine suddenly and whatever had happened to her that night, how little Lorraine left the house now, and Gia understood. Gia swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “I know how to do everything on the boat. You don’t have to help. You can just enjoy the sun and the water and the seagulls, the breeze. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see osprey.”

  Please, she prayed to her marsh, thinking of light sparkling on the water, the marsh grass green and tall and reaching for the sun, anchored into the soft earth with a web of roots, wash it away.

  They crossed the footbridge. Leo stopped, put his hands on the concrete wall, and heaved over the side. Nothing came up, but the retching cut through Gia, echoed through the quiet canal. He leaned over a little farther, and for the first time, Gia wondered if she was making a terrible mistake, if he could fend for himself. She imagined the tide washing in while he was in his tent. Had she put it too close to the water? Or a storm surging through the thin tent walls, floating everything inside, sinking the island. Was there even enough high ground that wouldn’t flood completely? And if that happened, they wouldn’t be able to take the boat out and get there in time to help. What would her mother say then?

  Gia’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her head lifted from her shoulders, and everything broke into salt and pepper. She put her hand on the same warm concrete wall to steady her, but it was sticky with bird shit and made her skin feel inside out, like rubbery chicken skin pulled off a thigh. Leo retched. It floated in the canal below. They were contaminated, him and her. Their whole family. That was what people thought of the two kids on the footbridge, two contaminants meant to be kept away from.

  “Come on,” she called, losing her nerve. If they didn’t get to the boat soon, she wasn’t sure she could do it at all.

  At the dock, Gia dipped her hands in the canal as Leo climbed into the boat. It wasn’t clean water, but it was cold, washing that place off, chilling the blood at the pulse point in her wrists until her head cleared and the frazzled feeling passed. She untied the rope from the dock, coiled it into the boat. Someone was walking a dog on the other side of the canal, smoking a cigarette in a housedress and rollers. Gia shoved off the dock, started the motor. There weren’t any other boats, so she cut out of the canal faster than usual because they had to get to the island. Leo sat between the metal seats, threw his arms out to either side, like the crucifix on the wall above her parents’ bed. Only Leo was not a saint. And he deserved this island. And she was finally fixing something her parents couldn’t, or Leo, or Ray, or anyone, because he’d done enough to hurt them and couldn’t help himself. She hardened. Like eels or crabs or anything else dumb enough to take bait from a trap. Those were the ones that didn’t deserve to pass on their genes. They were not the strongest or the smartest or the most adaptive.

  Waves crashed at the boat. It bounced over whitecaps. Her father would’ve turned back, but Gia revved the motor. Leo looked green. Even Gia’s stomach rolled, but she was too determined. Laughing gulls screeched overhead. The water was a dull gray. A pencil-point color. Her island came into view. The tent was still there, the flap zipped as she’d left it, bottles of water piled behind. Her heart was pounding. This was the part she hadn’t planned: getting Leo off the boat. She coasted to a stop and let the boat drift, rubbed her temples, wishing he were small enough for seagulls to scoop up and carry off, dropping him at shore.

  “Let’s take a walk.” She stuck the oar into the sand. Two feet or so. She could get them a little closer. Leo didn’t budge, didn’t even acknowledge having heard. He opened and closed his fist.

  “Hey, stand up,” she said. “Stand up. I need to get the oar.”

  She nudged his shoulder. He knelt. Then stood, looking out at the marsh, fighting the urge to hang in half. She hated that most—the dangling.

  Low man wins. One of Leo’s old peewee football sayings. He was never good at following formations or moving in the clunky gear.

  Gia stood behind him on the bench so she’d be taller, then hopped down. Closed her eyes as heat welled behind them. She had seconds before he turned around and the whole thing was over. Think, she begged her brain. Your room. Ray. Your money. That thermos on the seat between her and her father. Her mother washing the puke bucket. Lorraine’s shoes disappearing under the flooded street . . .

  Her hands shot forward, pushed at the small of his back, shoved him hard enough to make him lose whatever balance he had, then shoved again until he was over the side of the boat. Then she scrambled back to the motor, forcing distance between them as he flailed, standing, pulling his wet shirt away from his skin.

  “I’m sorry, Leo.” She stretche
d her voice over the wind, over the swallowing water. “There’s a tent with food and water and clothes and blankets. I don’t . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and she stared up at the clouds: white, storybook puffy, out of place.

  “Just go to the tent.”

  But Leo just stood there, knee deep in water, the tie still hanging from his neck, his face twisted, trying to work it all out. His mouth was moving, but Gia couldn’t hear him or didn’t want to. She looked away, past the water, past the marsh, where Manhattan was hazy in the distance, full of people in dress pants and collared shirts like her brother was now, only they weren’t standing in water, hadn’t just been pushed off a boat by a thirteen-year-old girl who thought she could save Leo with an island and Moon Pies. It was too much. He trudged toward her in the water. She started the motor and took off, the boat crashing less through the water now, the wind pushing at the front of the boat, forcing it back when the canal and the dock and her house were forward, away from the island, the tent, and her brother.

  At dinner, she shrugged when her father asked where Leo was, if she’d seen him, if he’d gone to school. She didn’t say anything when her father took his keys from the hall table and went for a ride.

  But at night, she stared at the ceiling and thought about him in the water, wondering if he’d changed into clean clothes or if raccoons had gotten to the food first and if there were enough blankets, as she pulled her own under her chin, then over her head, dark as an island without lights, hoping to drown out the echo of wind. She couldn’t sleep and doubted Leo could either.

  She was the only one who knew where he was, holding the other end of a tin can on a string, only the line buzzed with wind and waves and laughing gulls. She would go back first thing tomorrow and keep the secret from her parents a little longer, because if he came back in a week, cold and tired but fixed, it would be worth it.

  The “why” of it nagged at her because she couldn’t think of one honest reason for doing this, only that it seemed fitting and fair, but certainly not to the boy in the water—or who he used to be—or the girl in her bed with a secret too heavy to settle. It bounced inside her all night, landing in strange places—a sudden memory of a boy throwing a Ping-Pong ball to win a goldfish, wrapping a girl in toilet paper at a birthday party, letting her hold the reins on a sled down a hill, kicking the broken shell of a robin’s egg into the gutter—until she couldn’t remember what was real and what was imagined.

  The first morning, Leo threw rocks at the boat and shouted things the wind carried away. When the first rock hit her squarely in the thigh, Gia motored off. Clearly, he was fine. She slept a lot better that night.

  But on the second morning, her father had worked an overnight tour and slept for a few hours in uniform on the couch, shoes and all, before going out to ride around. Her mother took the big yellow phone book from the hall closet and dialed every hospital listed, describing Leo over and over again until Gia wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just tell them he was trapped on an island—if that wouldn’t be a relief. But Gia said nothing, and on the last call, Agnes rubbed her temples in small circles, straightened, and forced a smile.

  “Your birthday is coming up,” she said. “What would you like for your birthday dinner?”

  Had she ever been asked, or had the usual trays of lasagna and eggplant parm and meatballs just shown up every year along with Aunt Ida and Uncle Frank, Ray and Tommy, and Lorraine? It was her first birthday without them, and it made the whole thing sadder, more permanent.

  “Eggplant,” Gia said. “And an ice cream cake with cookie crumbs in the middle.”

  “Not one from the bakery?” Agnes suggested, rubbing the space between her index finger and her thumb like she always did when a headache was coming on, and Gia noticed the time, three p.m. Her mother should’ve been at work but wasn’t. How many days had there been like this because of Leo now? All those hours were money and bills.

  “Oh,” Gia said. “I can ask Lou.”

  “Forget it.” Agnes pressed her hands to the table and sprang up. “I’ll get you an ice cream cake if that’s what you really want. Vanilla and chocolate?”

  Gia nodded, surprised by the raw emotion in her mother’s voice, the change of heart. Agnes paused by the doorframe, where the telephone cord was still swinging.

  “You deserve it,” she said, looking at Gia. She must’ve grown a little, because she was nearly eye level with Agnes now. When had that happened?

  Agnes slipped the phone book back into the hall closet, and it made Gia pray all the more that whatever she was doing on this island would work.

  Leo never knew her birthday until someone reminded him, at which point he’d show up for dinner without a card or present, sing for candles, mumble a happy birthday, and disappear when it was time to clear the table. She was a first-frost baby, starting as nature closed down for winter, but now as she ferried another boatload of food, water, and toilet paper to the island, she felt older, alone on her boat, doing something brave and important without adults.

  She cut the motor as the island came into view. Sister Island. She coasted down a shallow slope to land, waves carrying the boat the rest of the way before it dragged to a stop. She hopped out, salt water splashing against her knees, and pulled the boat farther in. Leaving supplies in a new spot meant he’d have to crawl out of the tent and find them to survive. Everything was gone each day. Even the playing cards, thermos of hot chocolate, T-shirts. It was working. She unloaded the boat, sidestepping the three-pronged sandpiper print and bits of frayed rope littering the beach. The flashlight glowed in the tent in the distance, wasting batteries. She would call out to his zipped tent when she left. At least he was here.

  Tonight, she would tell her parents about Sister Island. She imagined they would stare at her in silence, processing that she, Gia, had figured out something that worked. Her father would raise one proud eyebrow. Her mother would bring out the pots and pans and make spaghetti, and Gia wouldn’t mind if Agnes asked her to bring some to Leo. She would point to Sister Island on the nautical map near the kitchen phone where the tide charts were taped to the wall, and the small green dot on the island would stand out above the others.

  The sun rounded to the horizon, where the ocean would swallow each day, however many days it took. Maybe one night after dinner, he’d thank her, and there’d be a little gift on her birthday. A scallop seashell with a hole to thread a cord through. She carried the last water jug to the sand and heaved the boat back into the water.

  On the last shove, the water rippled behind her. A single splash like a fish jumping from a wave, airborne, then disappearing beneath, only this time it pressed a cold finger down her spine that numbed her toes.

  Leo was behind her, knee deep in the water, leaning on a long stick, the kind that would pop a hole in a hull, damage an outboard. His face was greasy, his hair at every angle.

  “Hey, Gia.” He forced a smile, but he was looking past her at the boat.

  She tightened her grip.

  “Thank you for taking me here. It worked, you know. I’m clean now. All better. And I’m thinking I’d like to go home. See Mom and Dad because they’re probably worried. Go back to school again. And maybe, because you did this to me, we could go to New Park, because you love New Park. The salt on the crust is your favorite, right? Or how they burn the bottom a little bit? We could get a whole pie and split it.”

  But there was a desperation in his careful words that cut right through her. And his grip on the stick unnerved her. The boat rocked into her shoulder. She pushed it away. The water was getting deeper. It was the same desperation of forcing a part that didn’t fit, jamming it again and again until it snapped.

  “So I’m thinking I can ride back with you. We can get the tent another time.”

  He took a step toward the boat.

  “One more day, Leo.” Gia swallowed. “Just one. They know you’re here,” she lied. “And they’re really happy it’s working, so just o
ne more . . .”

  Something flashed across his face before he wiped the slate, started over, but it was enough to dry the words on Gia’s tongue. The boat rocked harder. She was losing her footing in the sand, and the water was deeper now. She wouldn’t be able to hop in as fast. Not with him inching her deeper.

  Leo opened his arms. Maybe for a hug. But it was Leo. She tugged at the boat, jumped, but Leo cracked her with that stick. Right against her spine. He lifted her by under her arms and tossed her aside. She splashed face-first, gasping a mouthful of salt water, eyes stinging, ears fogging, fumbling in the moving water. Her hand darted for the boat. But the water was suddenly cloudy. Too cloudy to see. She couldn’t lose the boat. There was no air. Waves washed at her, forcing her out, forcing her in.

  The first breath broke through her lungs, making her dizzy, as Leo caught the boat. She was soaked through, cold to the bone. Leo lifted himself into the boat. It tipped as he tumbled inside, the bottom filling with water before it righted. He dropped the outboard and started the engine.

  “Wait—” But there wasn’t enough air in her lungs.

  She crawled to shore, shells scratching her palms, and tried to stand but fell over with the weight of her wet clothes, the pain down her spine. He couldn’t come to shore with the outboard down. Seagulls laughed overhead, and the sound cut through her. Already she was shivering.

  “Wait,” she tried again. The sound disappeared in the wind, lost under the motor’s hum. Her motor. Her hum. He was filthy, his wet clothes hanging all wrong as the boat left the island behind. “Backstabber. Bastard. Rat bastard.” The words exploded from her mouth. She shouted and shouted, but Leo didn’t turn back. The boat crashed through whitecaps, cutting toward land. A broken oar floated at the water’s edge. Her eyes teared. She was his sister. And he’d left her for dead.

  The rules she’d trusted broke inside her. Gia crawled toward the patchy marsh grass, wet clothes gathering sand, her father’s words about always knowing where she was echoing. She lay flat, taking the weight off her spine, lessening the tingling in her fingers and toes, then sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, wishing she were a buoy rocking in the water and crying in the wind as boats returned on the right, passed on the left. It would get dark and cold. As a buoy, she’d be anchored. As Gia, she was not. The water jugs and soda crackers wouldn’t last long. Think, she begged her brain.