Fractured Tide

by Leslie Lutz

  I looked at the stars, breathing in the scent of seaweed and wood smoke, and told myself I would look for her tomorrow. She was somewhere on the other side of the island. I knew it.

  The salt breeze shifted, turned rotten, and a chill spread through me. I turned my head toward the ocean, its immense darkness. A faint green glow appeared, about fifty yards offshore. I watched it, breathlessly, for a long time. Or maybe it was watching me. I kept my eyes on the water until the glow faded, and the creature slipped back into the deep.

  ENTRY 14

  THAT NIGHT I DREAMED of my grandmother.

  We sat on the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs, like we used to do when I was little, watching the Easter fireworks. Bursts of color bloomed in the sky, scattering light on the waves, like shook tinfoil.

  Out of the dark came red comets, shooting above the faint silhouettes of sails clustered in their slips. A golden willow next, curving like the moving skin of a jellyfish. Then pink chrysanthemum and a green dragon’s egg, and when each burst faded to black, the fireworks left bits burning in my irises.

  Yiayia turned to me, looking just like she had in the pictures she’d showed me long ago, images of her when she was only fifteen and still dove the waters off of Kalymnos. But pictures and memories and reality and dreams are all the same here on the island. When you find this journal, maybe you’ll be the one to figure out which world is real.

  “There,” she said, pointing across the river, where the fireworks fell into the sea and turned into candles, floating on the water toward us. “That’s where the others are.”

  “What others?” I asked.

  She put her fingers to her lips and her eyes sparkled, as if she were holding back a joke.

  Yiayia handed me the end of a leash. At the other end was a black cormorant, its neck slender and serpentine, its eyes wild with fear. A snare circled its throat, and I felt sorry for it.

  “Let it go, Tasia,” Yiayia said, and I released it. The bird flew off, a rush of feather over black water. A burst of fireworks lit up the night again. Fire on water.

  It dove and came up with a gorgeous fish. The narrow snare around the bird’s neck kept it from swallowing, forcing him to save it for us.

  I reeled it in.

  “Cormorants won’t fish for you if they aren’t hungry,” she said. “So you keep them that way and let the hunger milk the world of one more morsel.” She took the fish from the cormorant’s mouth. “What vanity this is, to think we are above them.”

  The bird’s eyes rolled and glinted in the firelight. A knot tightened around my throat. The ring. So tight I’d never be able to swallow. A burst of green lit the air, a stunning peony, falling into the sea to become candles on the water, the glow changing into phosphorus, into the beast, rising from the dark water just off the docks—and somehow, in my dream, I didn’t care that it was coming. Because I was hungry, hungry in a way only my grandmother could understand.

  “Sia, wake up!”

  The voice came from the fireworks. And then I did wake.

  The smell of brine. The beach, not the docks. The soft breeze coming up from the waves breaking not far away. The moon had slipped into the ocean hours ago, so I couldn’t see much.

  “Sia!” A hushed whisper. Ben, kneeling beside me, a shadow in the dark. Something in his voice made me sit up.

  “Look,” he said, pointing out to sea. “Look at the water.”

  At first I saw nothing, still caught in the funk of my strange dream. Night had swallowed the world, except the stars. I felt so tiny under the big show. The ocean swelled in the dark, whooshed back out to sea. The wind moved through the palm trees, sounding a crackle from the dry underbrush in the forest, as if the world were on fire.

  Ben’s hand was tight on my arm, so tight it hurt. “Get up. Come on.” He led me to the water’s edge. “Watch.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said, and I wasn’t whispering.

  His other hand in darkness, on my shoulder. “Shh!” A harsh whisper. “I don’t want to wake Felix. I don’t know how to explain. Just. Look.”

  And there it was. A flash in the distance. Orange. Then white. Like an explosion at sea. But without sound, as if God had pressed the mute button on the world.

  “What on earth is that?”

  Another explosion, and the flames lit up the shape of the thing in the water. It was a ship. Had to be. And not a little scuba charter like ours. Bigger than something the Coast Guard would send.

  I covered my mouth to keep my insides from spilling out. Along with my crushed hope.

  The fire burned so far out to sea that if I held up my hand, I’d snuff out the light with my palm. I watched it burn. And then it winked out.

  “Was that what I think it was?”

  “If you think it’s a ship exploding, then yes.”

  I stood listening to the swell, staring into the dark, and I couldn’t breathe. “Well, there goes our glorious rescue.”

  He whispered something, but I wasn’t listening. I walked knee-deep into the surf, useless rage filling my chest until I wanted to hurl something into the ocean. I was about two inches from an ugly cry, and I’ve never needed an audience for that.

  I couldn’t see him, but I could hear Ben come into the waves to stand next to me. “Wait, Sia,” he said. “Watch the horizon.”

  Still fuming over our near rescue, I didn’t even try to understand what he wanted me to see. A minute passed in silence, until my heartbreak disintegrated into a feeling of uselessness, focused on the absolute hopelessness of our situation. Felix, Mom—we were all done for. Ben stood so close I could feel his warmth, and before I could think about it I was searching in the dark for him, feeling through the air. I grasped two fingers and a thumb, and his hand fumbled awkwardly into mine. I remembered you saying the sea brings us together. And that thought, of you, your voice, made the tears come.

  We could’ve been on board in a few hours, drinking sodas and eating roast chicken and rice and strawberry Pop-Tarts. They probably didn’t have any of those things, just simple rations, but it was my fantasy.

  “Just wait,” he said, his voice low and full of a sort of awe. “It’s better if you see.”

  I sniffed in the darkness and wiped my face with the back of my hand, embarrassed I had lost it in front of him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Wait and watch.”

  “Why didn’t you wake up Steph for this?”

  “You understand weird better than she does.”

  Something in his voice made the hair rise on the back of my neck. “What’s going on?”

  “Sia, in the last two hours, I’ve watched that ship explode and sink five times.”

  “You mean five boats have come for us, and the thing got all of them?” I imagined the Coast Guard mobilizing a whole armada to find us. It figured. No one would cry much over me and Felix and Mom. But the science boat? Twenty teenagers? That’s a lot of panicked parents on the mainland calling Florida senators.

  I put a hand over my mouth. “Oh God, Ben. All those people.”

  “No, Sia,” he said, his voice a strange sort of whisper, as if he were having trouble convincing himself. “It was the exact same light show five times. Same explosions. Same seconds between the flares. I counted. That’s what I’ve been doing for hours. I was watching the water, looking for that thing to light up, seeing if it knew where we are, what it did at night, wondering if that was the best time to trap it and kill it, when we could see its glow. And then it started, and”—Ben’s words ran into one another—“it’s the same event over and over.”

  I stood on the wet sand, shivering in the cool breeze. Ben had to be hallucinating from hunger. We weren’t on a loop, over and over; it would be like the same wave hitting the beach. And that just didn’t happen.

  He pointed into the dark. “There,” he whispered. “It’s beginning again.”

  An orange light lit the horizon.

  And we watched a ship out on the black water, o
ur only hope. The vessel flared as if hit by a torpedo. An explosion. Over the next minute, the fire slowly shrank until it winked out of existence.

  It wasn’t the same, I told myself.

  You told me once the mind is an ocean, and most of us live on the surface. But the currents beneath, that’s what moves everything around. The currents make the boats shift position in the night, push the waves against the shore just so. And you told me most people are so foolish they actually think they’re in control of who they are and where they’re going.

  That’s why I couldn’t believe, in the beginning, what I was seeing. Because I’ve got a current in me that’s all about denial. This is not happening. Dad’s not in prison. Mom loves me unconditionally. Felix is safe. Everything will be okay from now on. If I just close my eyes and believe it.

  We watched the whole thing start up again, and again, until my theories all went out like candles on the water. That current within me pushed a few more times and then stilled.

  I took Ben’s hand again, leaning close to him for warmth, and watched it over and over, until dawn approached and the fires melted into the day.

  Once the sun had risen enough to wake the others, Steph wandered off with Felix to scavenge, and Ben limped down to the water with Felix’s notebook and a golf pencil. He sat a few feet into the wet sand, his bad leg stretched out, his curious gaze on the horizon. Hunting for Moby Dick, I guess.

  I watched him for a while, his back to me, his arms wrapped around the knee of his good leg. My face burned hot just thinking about the night before, crying like that in front of someone. You always taught me to keep breakdowns private. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started building a pile of “things Dad was wrong about.” That crappy piece of advice belongs on top, consumed by flames. Still, old habits are hard to ditch.

  I wandered down to the surf to rinse my face and mouth with seawater, and he caught sight of me and waved me over before I could scurry back to the fire.

  I covered the distance slowly and stopped a few feet away, keeping my toes in the water. The cool rush over my feet calmed me, as it always does. “Good morning,” I said, and started to put my hands in my pockets. Then I remembered a bikini and rash guard don’t have pockets.

  Ben didn’t seem to notice my mood. He pointed northeast, out to sea. “It surfaced over there about an hour ago.”

  “What did it do?”

  “Ate a bird.”

  “Well, that’s fun.”

  “It’s helpful.”

  “I’m sorry about last night.”

  I started to add, “For falling apart like that,” but stopped myself. I already sounded awkward enough. If I could have reeled my words back in like a fish on a line, I would have. Because he acted like I hadn’t said anything.

  The notebook was open and flapping in the breeze. I sat beside him in the sand and flipped through a few pages, my face burning.

  FIELD NOTES: MAY 19 (20?)

  7:00 a.m. (approx.) began observations of northeast side of island, one-kilometer strip.

  7:15 a.m. Creature consumed a fairy tern. Encounter lasted approximately 5 seconds.

  “A fairy tern’s a real thing?” I asked.

  He flipped the page and pointed to a small pencil sketch he’d made. “It’s a type of seabird. A new one for me. Number eighty-seven.”

  “It had a number on it?”

  “No, that’s the eighty-seventh bird species I’ve seen.”

  “You’re keeping a list?”

  He shrugged, but I could see how excited he was, which was pretty cute, I had to admit.

  “And it’s not supposed to be out here,” he said. “Usually lives about halfway around the world. Maybe introduced somehow? I don’t remember reading about that, though.”

  “And you know ALL the birds.”

  “Yeah,” he said, matter-of-fact, not catching my tone.

  He started rambling on about the weight of the bird, how it paddles its feet in the surf, where it’s likely to do most of its floating, and my eyes did actually start to glaze over a little. Which lack of sleep and a lecture on birds will do to a girl. “Ben, that’s great. Really. But how does this help us? We already know that thing’s a meat eater.” At the sound of my last words, my stomach turned. Meat. That’s what we were to that thing.

  “Now we know it can detect really small things, not just boats and”—he gestured to me awkwardly—“people. Which means . . .”

  He looked at me as if expecting me to finish the sentence.

  “That it’s . . . really hungry?”

  “No, that if we set a trap, it won’t be that hard to draw it where we want it.”

  I thought about yesterday. “Yeah, I already knew that.”

  We fell into silence, watching for more terns. I pretended interest, pointing out random feathery things as they landed in the water, searching for minnows in the shallows. After it was too awkward to bear, I turned to go, but Ben’s voice stopped me.

  “I’m the one who needs to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “That conversation about your dad.”

  Oh God. That. “It’s no big deal.”

  “I was curious, but I . . .” He looked down at his hands, which were resting on his knees, then he settled his gaze back on me. “I shouldn’t have pushed. And I’m sorry you feel like you have to apologize for something you didn’t do.”

  “We were all out of it. Tired and hungry. I didn’t take it to heart.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, and I felt a strange vibe, like he knew a secret about me, even though we’d just met. “You’re made of titanium, right?”

  I blushed and looked away. The palm leaves rustled in the ocean breeze, filling the space between us.

  “And thank you,” Ben finally said.

  “I get an apology and a thank you. Wow.”

  “What you did to get us food, it was really brave.” He turned to me, his brown eyes warm. “You’re pretty awesome. Especially with this survival stuff.” He quickly glanced down at his leg. “Usually I am too.”

  I shrugged and forced myself to meet his eyes. “My dad taught me everything I know.”

  Ben’s mouth curved into a slow smile. “Sounds like he did a good job.”

  Maybe you’ll think it strange, but that was it for me. The moment I trusted him for real. The moment the crush became something more.

  I stood and brushed the sand off my bikini bottoms, smoothed my hair back behind my ears, suddenly self-conscious.

  He held out a hand. “Here, help me up. My leg’s stiff.”

  When I took his hand, I had a weird feeling—that I’d known him all my life. Or maybe that I would know him for the rest of my life. A sense about us that went beyond just me getting an apology I really needed. As he steadied himself, his other hand on my shoulder, something brightened in his eyes. Maybe he felt it too.

  “You want to walk down the beach with me?” I asked. “Watch us fish?”

  He tilted his head, like we were both in on the same joke. “Us?”

  “Just wait and see. I’m gonna get her into the water.”

  “Good luck.” He looked out into the waves. “Nah, I’ll stay here. See what else happens.”

  “Have fun . . . watching for birds.” I made it only a few steps down the beach before he called me back.

  “Sia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not tell her about last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “What we saw.” He tilted his head to the ocean. “She wouldn’t understand.”

  I held his gaze and nodded, thinking about apologies and how it wouldn’t hurt to give in, tell her I’m sorry. Again that pulse hit me, the kind that comes when you push through a wall you didn’t even know was there until it’s gone.

  When I found Steph, she was dismantling the canopy of the Last Chance for some mysterious reason. As soon as I reminded her it was her turn to go in, she clutched her stomach. Gave me the whole “I’m too s
ick to go in” routine. I told her to get into the water. Her response—a dramatic dry heave into the crook of her arm. Then she gave me the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. Looked at me like a blobfish caught in a tuna net.

  Still feeling like a jerk from the night before and my famous non-apology, I left without trying to bully or shame her. Truth was I wanted to be in the water, to get me out of my head. But her playing hooky wasn’t cool, and I would find a way to make her eat her excuses. No way I was going to dangle myself like fish bits for that thing because Steph thought she wasn’t built for this kind of work. Total BS anyway. We are what we’re taught to be. And you may have your faults, Dad, but letting fear control you was never one of them.

  As I swam out, I started my count. I had ten minutes—that’s what we’d agreed to. To distract myself from the fear, I planned a conversation, thinking about how you would handle Steph’s weak excuse. Necessity, sweetheart. That’s what you would say. After all, we’d all agreed. No one wanted to go out, but better a quick death from a beast in the ocean than a slow death from hunger on land.

  I thought about Felix hearing my planned speech. Reminded myself to send him on an errand first.

  The water was cool, the air salt-scented and fresh, and the sun low on the horizon. I took a breath and went under, the world below dim, the ocean at sunrise; the time for sharks to cruise and feed, the time we nudge tourists from, just in case. I kicked my way to the white sand bottom, fear rising in me, and hit the sweet spot—that place between wanting to head back to shore and swim farther out. You know what I chose. Your voice, always in my head. Necessity, sweetheart.

  I stayed on the shallow side of the reef, surfacing a few times to check topside for disturbances in the water. I stayed out too long, but the lobster was worth it. Medium-size. Dragging his claws under some orange coral growing on the side of the black rocks. I snagged it and swam to shore. With each stroke, I imagined the sting of a jellyfish on my ankle. The rope wrapping around my calf and pulling me under.

  By the time the fear had worked its way through me and bled out into the water, I was mad again. So pissed at Steph that when I came up from the surf, I was ready to bust. Steph stood with her back to me, talking to Felix. A miraculous recovery. Why had I felt bad for her and her sad little birthday gone wrong? A few feet away was the sun shelter of the Last Chance, in pieces. A beach towel lay on the sand, torn into strips and partially knotted together. The beginnings of a net. A really crappy one. A colossal waste of time and resources.