Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  The marina is a ruin.

  The dock is littered with suitcases and bags. More than one case has been broken open, spilling out a trail of clothes and cans of food and kitchen utensils and books and even some fine, if now dirty, lingerie.

  They collect up cans as they walk. Here and there, she sees evidence of violence. A smear of blood. A broken plank of wood. Bloody footsteps. Traces of violence. Each picture is a story. An equation. And every equation has its X.

  Only four boats, the least seaworthy, remain. Eva’s father’s yacht is not among them. “Oh dear,” says Eva. “This might be a problem.”

  “So which one do we steal?” Dany asks.

  Eva walks along the dock, looking over their options, and Dany follows.

  “There, let’s take that one,” Eva says finally and nods at the boat before her.

  Dany’s eyes come to rest on a rusted old tug. The word Dogpatch has been painted in homespun letters on its side. The thing floats, that much can be said. Dany stares at the rusty blue vessel Eva has pinned their hopes on. It’s salty and barnacled in the soft light of day.

  Dany looks from her friend to the boat. “It’ll do,” she says.

  “The Dogpatch,” Eva says and smiles.

  Antoine, she sees, is staring at the pair of them, watching them – and there’s a weird look on his face. The kind of cold and calculating look people get when they’re doing math. Only Antoine doesn’t do math with numbers. He does math with people’s lives.

  “C’mon,” Eva says. “Let’s find the manual!”

  “I’ll catch up in a bit,” Dany tells her. “I got to take care of something first.”

  Her eyes slide over to Faraday. Aunt Norah has left her teacher roughly balanced on a milk crate. He’s shaking it rough today. His eyes are half closed and his posture’s got a lean to it. Every few minutes, he startles, before setting himself straight.

  Dany raises her hand to him, in a wave. But he doesn’t seem to see her.

  Dany rifles through every last abandoned suitcase, every sodden cardboard box. Eventually, she finds what she needs – or close enough. By the time she’s done, she’s found not just amoxicillin, but half a bottle of erythromycin, too. The bottle was in a bag with a breast pump, and Dany doesn’t want to think about who the antibiotics belonged to, or what it means, that they got left behind.

  She’s been aware of Antoine for a while now.

  He’s got his pipe out, but he’s all out of tobacco. Eyes on Dany, he absently pats at his pipe bowl. It’s an old and familiar gesture, one as much a part of him as his arm itself. Finally, shaking his head, he puts the empty pipe back in his pocket and approaches.

  “You know what you have to do?” he asks.

  Dany shrugs, but doesn’t answer. There’s an obvious answer to this question – and it involves giving the antibiotics to Faraday and stowing her backpack on the Dogpatch – but she’s pretty sure that’s not what he means. So she waits him out.

  “How long?” he asks.

  Dany’s heart skips a beat, races. He knows, she thinks. He knows. “I’m careful,” she says quietly. It’s a generic phrase – and it could mean anything.

  “Yeah? How long before something goes wrong with that?”

  “I’m, I’m –”

  “Careful, yes. I heard you,” Antoine says.

  “I’m not coming,” she says, but the words don’t come out as a statement, they come out as a question.

  Antoine shakes his head. “No,” he says, “you’re not.”

  Dany takes in Antoine’s expression and, for the first time, understands him. Gets him. She knows who and what he is. Her father has a hardness in him, a willingness to do hard things, so long as he thinks they’re right. He’s willing to make sacrifices, too. And yet again, Dany is the sacrifice that Antoine is willing to make.

  “I don’t hate you,” she says, and Antoine’s eyes shift to hers. There’s a softness in his eyes, for a moment. A hope. But then Dany finishes her thought. “I don’t anything you,” she says. “I don’t love you or hate you or anything. I look at you and … nothing.”

  Antoine doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t get angry. But she sees something close off in his eyes, like a door being shut. And she’s on the outside again. Alone.

  Dany looks out across the dock, sees her aunt talking to Eva. But when her aunt sees Dany, she looks guilty. Her aunt meets Dany’s gaze for a moment, and then lowers that gaze to the dock.

  All at once Dany knows. Norah and Antoine have already talked this out. Worked it all out. Without her. Antoine and Aunt Norah have already made the decision and this is not a negotiation – it’s her final notice.

  “I’ll be fine,” Dany says and looks up to meet Antoine’s eyes. But what she sees is his back. Because he’s already walking away from her.

  On the deck of the Dogpatch, Eva, oblivious, grins and waves her over.

  After Dany tells her friend, she watches the play of emotion on Eva’s face. First, there is denial, then understanding, and finally, Eva just looks sad. Impossibly, inconsolably sad.

  “They can’t do this to you,” Eva is saying. “They can’t.”

  Dany shrugs. “They are.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Eva says.

  Dany rolls her eyes. “What, you want to donate your body to medical science?”

  “Okay,” she says, straightening her shoulders. “I will if you will.”

  “You only do that after you’re dead,” Dany reminds her.

  “No,” Eva says. “Let’s not do that.”

  “I don’t plan on it.”

  “It’s funny,” Eva says. “It’s odd, but suddenly, I’m not feeling very much like me. Isn’t that weird? I always feel so much like me. But right now, I don’t think I’m me. I’m not me at all. Are you you?”

  “Yeah, I’m me,” Dany tells her, and she means it. “I’m like Dany version 2.0. I mean, Antoine’s right, I guess. I still hate him though.”

  Dany unfolds the map in her hand, the one that Mac drew. The lines her little sister sketched out with pencil crayons. The Emerald Island. Once more, she finds herself staring at the small sea monster. Carefully, she tears the monster from the map. Because if Dany stays behind, then the monster stays with her.

  She presses the map into Eva’s jeans pocket. “Here,” she tells her. “You’ll need this.”

  Eva nods and asks, “Is it safe to hug you?”

  Dany traces the seal of her mask. “No,” she says and shrugs. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Just, like, I wish,” Eva says.

  “Me too,” Dany says and looks at her hands. Eva looks at the ring on Dany’s finger, and touches the stone, gently, and there is another picture in her head, one it won’t hurt too much to remember.

  “I wanted to tell you something,” Eva says. But her voice breaks on the last word.

  “I wanted to tell you something, too,” Dany says quietly.

  “And then this whole end of the world thing sort of happened,” Eva goes on.

  “Which sucks,” Dany says.

  “Definitely.”

  “So, like, do we talk about that stuff later?”

  “When the world’s not ending,” Eva says, “and you’re not completely screwed. You call Isobel, she cures you, and then you come to the island and we talk. We finally talk.”

  Dany blinks at Eva. Because Eva doesn’t get it. She really doesn’t. But some lies are easier. “Yeah. We’ll finally talk when I’m cured,” Dany says. And the lie might be easier, but it feels a lot worse. She looks down at her feet.

  “You want me to come,” Eva says and this time, it isn’t a question.

  Dany looks at Eva’s beautiful face – and that act of subtraction, that quiet “no” – it is so much harder than anything she’s ever done before.

 
; Dany looks at the mood ring on her finger. Pulls it off.

  “This is the ring my mom used to let me wear,” she tells her. “Phil told me that when you wore the ring, you could be brave. It always made me feel better. If I give it to you, can you tell Mac? About Phil, about her ring, so Mac can be brave too. She knows about the ring already, I’m sure I told her, but kids …”

  Dany places the ring on Eva’s palm.

  “I won’t let her forget,” Eva promises.

  “She can wear it on a necklace, til her hands get bigger,” Dany says, folding the ring into Eva’s hand. “Or not. I mean, she can forget about it too, if she needs to.”

  Dany says goodbye to her teacher, too. Sort of.

  Before Faraday gets on the tug, she asks him to lift the edge of the bandage. Already, the wound has begun to heal. The small black hole has been stitched up into a frown. It’s a bit red, and Dany’s glad she found the medicine.

  “I think you got lucky,” she says to Faraday’s shoulder. “See ya,” she adds.

  She tucks the two bottles of antibiotics into his jacket pocket. And he looks at her, and again, it’s as if Dany is a knot that he doesn’t know how to untie.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 47

  Somehow, she can’t say goodbye to ­Mac. She just can’t.

  When the last chain has been unmoored from the salty old tug, ­Dany is standing on the dock, ­Antoine beside her. He’s put his hand on her shoulder – but it doesn’t feel like he’s reassuring her. No, it’s more like he doesn’t trust her not to jump on board at the last second, and so he’s standing here, holding her down. The engine is rumbling, and the little tug is ready to go. In a moment, she figures, ­Antoine will jump onto the deck and then she’ll be truly and entirely alone.

  ­Norah stands on the tug’s deck, by the door to the small cabin, looking down at her and her dad. Aunt ­Norah’s eyes are wet. Big fat tears roll down her cheeks.

  “It’s not too late,” her aunt calls out. “Come with us.”

  Hope flares in ­Dany’s chest – and she looks up at her aunt. But then she sees. Her aunt is not looking at her. She’s looking at ­Antoine. And a moment later, the little tug chugs forward into the sea.

  ­Dany turns, looks at the old man, not understanding. “What are you doing?” she asks him.

  But ­Antoine doesn’t answer. He just rests his arm on ­Dany’s shoulder.

  Her eyes find the deck of the tug, where ­Norah and ­Mac stand. As ­Dany watches, ­Norah leans down, whispers into the kid’s ear.

  And then she sees it. There, on ­Mac’s little nose, the kid’s wearing the nose plug that ­Dany gave her. The gift from an imaginary mermaid. It’s like the kid thinks it’s better than a life jacket. The kid reaches up, touches the plug, glances at the sea and then looks at ­Dany. Then she holds up the palm of her hand – and her eyes meet her sister’s.

  ­Dany’s lip trembles.

  She mirrors her little sister back. Reaching up, she touches her own nose. Then she, too, holds up her hand. If somebody drew this moment on a piece of paper, ­Dany thinks, and then folded the page in half, her and ­Mac’s hands would touch.

  Half an hour later, ­Dany is still on the dock, watching the people she loves most grow small as a speck in the sea. She keeps her eyes on the smallest of the dots until, at last, she disappears from sight.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 48

  Dany’s mind is an old bookstore, crammed floor to ceiling with old almanacs and books. All of everything is in there, she’s sure of it. But try finding a particular book – try finding a passage – Jesus, it might take years.

  Dany sorts through the mess, combing through the memories closest to the surface. She calls up a picture of her aunt and Eva and her sister. Then she adds Faraday at the edge of the group, a human afterthought. She tries to picture them landing on the shore. But it’s impossible. Already, the image she once held of the faces of those she loves has begun to fade.

  When Antoine is done with the door to the marina clubhouse, it’s hanging from one hinge.

  “Think we can get in now?” she asks dryly.

  Antoine nods. “Oui, bien sûr,” he says and chuckles.

  In the front lobby, Dany finds an ancient pay phone. She and Antoine both search their pockets, but neither has a quarter. She finds herself laughing – there’s an edge of hysteria to the sound. The two of them have gotten this far, done all this, but neither of them thought to borrow a stupid quarter.

  Antoine solves the dilemma. Taking hold of a fire ­extinguisher he smashes a vending machine. Three brutal blows and the glass shatters. A few hits more and an explosion of glass sparkles up from the carpet. While Antoine fills his pockets with loose change, Dany scoops up junk food, stuffing her backpack with Doritos and Cheetos and corn chips.

  Every apocalypse has its silver lining, as Liz would say.

  “You ready?” he asks, and holds out a single quarter.

  “No,” she says. “No.” But her hand reaches out and she takes the coin.

  Dany makes the call to the Ministry of Disease Control. As she fills them in, her eyes are on a little display case, its hundreds of glossy brochures. One of them, she’s surprised to see, is for D’Arcy Island.

  When Dany is done for, when the phone is hung on its cradle, she picks up the glossy little pamphlet and looks at the image of the shoreline.

  “Do you think they got there okay?” Dany asks.

  “I imagine, by now, they’ve got a fire going,” Antoine says.

  Dany looks down at the brochure. Among the images of D’Arcy Island is a picture of a plaque. The fourteen names on the old brass marker are like sounds from a song, one that hasn’t been heard in a very long time. Maybe her kid sister will find the plaque, there, at the site of the old colony. Fourteen names are listed. There are other names, too, she knows, but they’re lost to time.

  The thought of that, of winding down to dust and of forgetting and being forgotten, it’s not so bad. It’s weirdly comforting.

  Dany stares at the picture of the shoreline. She wants to imagine Eva there, taking little Mac by the hand, and leading her to the fire. And she can almost do it. First, she pictures a trace of smoke, the beginnings of a cook fire, a place for a little kid to warm her hands. But when it comes down to it, she can’t put people in the picture. It’s like, in her memory, the people she loves have all turned their backs on her.

  But then she’s tired, impossibly tired.

  And maybe she should simply go back to the dock. She could lie down on the dock, the sun hot on her face, the boards warming her back. And looking up, she could empty her mind like the sky.

  As they wait for the ministry, Dany and Antoine sit on the dock, watching the sun lower itself into the ocean, and the last of the day’s sun gives itself over to night. And then she sees it, emerging in the waves by the shore, a strange blue-green aura. Otherworldly. A glowing curtain of fluorescence filtering up from the depths in shimmering waves. The luminescent sea is ethereal, unreal, and steals her breath away.

  “And they were very sorry to leave her,” Dany says to the waves.

  Antoine looks up, takes in his daughter. Asks the question with a nod of his chin.

  But Dany just shakes her head, because there’s no explaining. And, for a long time, the two are quiet. Antoine, in his own thoughts, and Dany, like the Scarecrow.

  But now, looking at the glow of the sea, her mind makes a subtle connection. From The Wizard of Oz to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

  Like the Scarecrow, Gilgamesh tried to pole himself across.

  Grieving, he made his pole into a mast, his rotting clothes into a sail, and he drifted alone. The death of the man he loved, so much like a kid brother, left its mark on Gilgamesh, he was a man divided.

  Is this what the virus is doing to her mind, Dany wonders, a kind of division? Her mom was di
vided, and their family was divided, and in a way, she figures, all of that is of a piece, all of everything is of a piece, and she sees it now.

  Life’s basic truth. Life is the patterns we make of the noise.

  “Do you think we’ll ever see them again?” Dany asks. Her voice is so very small.

  Antoine looks at his daughter. And she sees it. She sees that he is here, sees what he has given up to be here. Sees that maybe he even loves her a little bit.

  “Without question,” Antoine says. “We will all meet again.”

  And in his words, she sees something else. That maybe he even loves her enough to lie to her. Still, his words are almost beli­evable, and Dany wants to believe.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asks.

  “No,” Dany says, but she nods.

  As they wait for the ministry, Dany makes a strange geometry out of Antoine’s coins – stacks and stacks of shiny silver quarters and dimes. Dany is just finishing up when they hear the truck. The engine cuts out, doors open and slam shut, and voices cut the night air.

  Her hand flies to Antoine’s, and she shakes her head, no.

  Because she’s not ready, not ready at all.

  She can hear voices calling out for her – but they’ve come too soon. All at once, she knows that she isn’t done. Her grip on Antoine’s hand is so tight she’s sure her nails are digging into his skin.

  “Tout va bien, c’est bon,” Antoine says quietly, reassuring her under his breath.

  She leans forward, her eyes fixed on the first sliver of the moon as it slowly rises over the horizon, and her mind reaches out across an ocean of distance.

  Is Mac looking out on the ocean like this?

  When Mac looks from the night sky to the ocean, does she, too, see the way that the stars themselves have taken root in the water?

  From her side of the ocean, does Mac see the same sea? But of course she doesn’t. Her sea will be both the same and impossibly different.

  “Stay down,” Antoine tells her. “Stay quiet. Let me get a closer look at these soldiers.”