When no one responded to Sully, he sighed. “At the ship. Look around you at the Meg. I’ve heard every one of you grumble about how cramped she is on at least one occasion—some of you more than once,” he muttered, staring pointedly at Jenny. “Go ahead, take a look. I’ll wait.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.
Everyone made a big show of looking from port to starboard, from bow to stern. “Now what?” asked Adam from B Watch.
“Now imagine you’re a young man from Nantucket—”
“I know there’s a limerick in there somewhere,” quipped Steve.
“There are several,” said Sully, “but we’re in history class now, not literature. So again, imagine you’re a young lad—sorry, ladies—from Nantucket in the early 1800s. You’re in your mid-teens, and it’s past time for you to start earning your keep. Perhaps there’s even a young lady you have your eye on. But to ask her father for her hand in marriage, you need money. What would be your best legal option?”
“Signing on to a whaling vessel?” said Jenny.
Sully beamed. “Correct! Did you know that the average whaling vessel in the 1820s was around the same size or smaller than the Meg? Can you imagine going to sea for three years on a ship smaller than this? Those guys were in some of the most remote parts of the Pacific Ocean, at sea for months at a time without making port. And let’s not forget that when they killed a whale, the decks would have been covered in blood and reeking to the high heavens with the stench of burning blubber.”
“It’s making my stomach turn just thinking about it,” I said. No joke.
“Sorry, Ari. Anyway, it was schooners like this one that revolutionized the whaling industry, which is the topic of today’s history discussion, as well as this afternoon’s literature class…”
After class, I sat in the sun, reading In the Heart of the Sea, the award-winning true account of the whaleship Essex, which was rammed by a sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific in the early 1800s. Melville had based Moby Dick on that story, and I could see why. It was fascinating and horrifying to read about how the crew, split among three small boats after the ship sank, endured horror after horror in their attempt to make it home.
I finished the book and set it aside, wiping the tears from my eyes—and found myself staring at my scar. My shorts had ridden up, but I had been holding the book in my lap and hadn’t noticed. I quickly tugged down the hem.
“What is that? Did you cut yourself?” I jerked my head up to see Kevin standing there, staring at my leg.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “What’s up?”
He sat down beside me. “I wanted to see how you were doing. You haven’t been yourself since yesterday. Did something happen with the dive? Do I need to beat up MacDuff?”
“MacDuff? What are you talking about?”
“You know, Tristan. I call him MacDuff. In my head, of course, since he can kick my ass from here to Connecticut.”
I snorted at the image. “True. And no, you don’t have to beat him up. Everything is fine. But thanks for asking.”
“Is it your brother? Not to sound like your mom, but maybe you should call him when we get to port.”
I bristled at that. “What? Where did that come from?”
He held up his hands. “I’m just saying that whatever’s between you two is clearly weighing on you, and maybe you should—”
I got to my feet. “You don’t know anything about it, Kevin. Maybe you should focus your attention on Jenny and stay out of my business.”
I grabbed my book and stalked toward the hatch to go down below, furious with Kevin for bringing up the subject of my brother, and also with myself for lashing out at him, when I knew he was just trying to help. This was why I didn’t tell people about it.
I was waylaid by Jenny before I reached the ladder. “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed.
Oh, so we were back to Old Jenny, not the relatively nice one that had replaced her after she and Kevin started dancing around each other. “Not now, Jenny, I’m really not in the mood.” I tried to sidle past her, but she grabbed my arm.
“You just shouted at your best friend on this ship. What did he say that was so terrible? That you should call your brother? How awful of him,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You don’t know me or my brother, so butt out.” I looked pointedly at her hand on my arm.
“You’re right. I don’t know you or him. But I do know that you’re lucky enough to have a brother who would want you to call him and try to work things out. Some of us aren’t so lucky. We all have our shit to deal with, Ari. Sometimes things are out of our control and we can’t fix them, no matter how hard we try. And then there are people like you, who don’t even try.” She dropped my arm and walked away, leaving me staring after her, feeling lower than a slug.
She was obviously speaking from personal experience. I hoped she was growing close enough with Kevin to confide in him, but in the meantime, she was right. I needed to fix this, now.
Kevin was standing by the starboard rail, gazing at the sea. He looked over as I approached, his face devoid of his usual smile. Knowing that I’d caused that grim look on his face made me feel even worse.
“I’m so sorry, Kev. I know you were just trying to help, and I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. It’s just a really difficult thing for me to talk about—with anyone.” Tears welled in my eyes, and I reached up to brush them away.
Because he was Kevin, he pulled me into his arms without hesitation. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said anything. I know family stuff can be tough and I had no right to butt in.” I laid my head on his chest and let myself be comforted for a moment, relieved that he wasn’t mad at me.
He pulled back and glanced over my shoulder. “Shit. MacDuff’s right over there. No, don’t look yet.” He brushed the tears from my cheeks and tucked some loose hairs into my braid. “Laugh, like I said something hilarious.”
“Kevin, what the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t want him to think I made you cry. He looks like he’s gonna pulverize that mug.”
“You’re such a goof.” I turned to look over my shoulder and froze mid-turn. Tristan stared at us, his hands clenched around a mug of coffee as if he was indeed going to crush it. Because he thought Kevin had made me cry?
“I may be a goof, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say that guy was jealous that I was hugging you and he wasn’t.”
That evening, after watch ended, I stopped Jenny before she went below deck. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She turned to face me, and even in the darkness, I could see the attitude on her face. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”
I rolled my eyes. “Privately.”
“Fine.” She followed me to a spot along the starboard rail. “So talk.”
“I…wanted to say thank you.”
She cocked her head to one side in surprise. “For what?”
“For what you said before. I shouldn’t have lashed out at Kevin for bringing up a…difficult subject.”
“Your brother.”
“Yeah. Kevin was trying to be a good friend, and instead I was a total bitch to him. Thank you for making me get my head out of my ass and apologize.”
“I’m glad you did. Kevin’s the best guy I’ve ever met, and he would do anything for you.”
“I know he would. Listen, Jenny, what you said to me…I want you to know that the thing with my brother is a constant weight on my shoulders, and my biggest hope is that I can find it within myself to make it right. I don’t want you to think that I’m not speaking to him on a whim or something.”
“Why do you care what I think? It’s not like we’re friends.”
Two weeks ago, I would have bristled at that remark and stalked away. But now I knew that her attitude was her armor. “I do care. Because you reminded me that we all have shit to deal with, including you. And I hope you’re a better person than me a
nd are talking to someone—Kevin, maybe—about whatever you’re going through, so you don’t have to bear it alone. And you’re right, we haven’t been friends. But maybe we can be.”
She was silent long enough for me to feel uncomfortable, and I turned to walk away. Then I heard her quiet voice behind me. “Maybe we can.”
It was a start.
…
I stood at the helm the next night, loosely holding the smooth wooden spokes of the wheel. It was what we liked to call “oh-dark-hundred,” sometime near the end of the midnight-to-0400 watch.
It was almost completely silent on deck. We’d had a big navigation assignment, so anyone who was on standby was down in the salon, working on it until they were needed on deck. They’d strung a curtain across the doorway into the salon so the light wouldn’t disturb the helmsman’s night vision.
We were on a port tack, the steady wind filling the sails as we made our way southeast. I squinted at the compass, its red light faintly illuminating my heading: 150º. I grinned. Perfectly on course.
I was trying to steer by the stars instead of the compass. We’d gone over it in navigation class that afternoon, and this was my first time trying it. All I needed to do, once I’d used the compass to determine that I was on course, was look up into the rigging, where the ratlines made a sort of grid, choose a star, and then steer so that the star stayed in the same position relative to the grid.
Sounds easy—and in theory, it was easy, but it was nerve-wracking to tear my eyes away from the compass and focus instead on staring at a single star. I’d done it, though.
I was standing alone at the helm, under full sails and a glittering sky, guiding the ship unerringly across the endless black sea with only the stars to guide me, like the sailors of old. It was amazing. This was why I was here, why I’d gone ahead with this semester at sea, even after everything that had happened. Because I loved the sea and wanted it to be a part of my life.
I returned my gaze upward, focusing on my guide star.
“‘And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’”
The low voice came out of nowhere. I spun to the right, where I could just make out the vague outline of someone leaning against the stanchion that held Speedy the motorboat suspended at the stern.
“Tristan?” As soon as the question left my mouth, I rolled my eyes in the darkness. Of course it was him.
“Aye, it’s me.”
“How long have you been standing there?” I hissed. “And where the hell did you come from?” I’d been at the helm for at least half an hour, and I knew he hadn’t been there the whole time.
There was a flash of white in the darkness as he grinned. “I’ve been here for about five minutes. You were so focused on staring up at the stars that you didn’t see me. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“So instead, you just lurked in the dark until you could scare the hell out of me. Makes sense,” I muttered, trying not to be too thrilled that he’d chosen to hang out up here with me. “What was it that you said, anyway?”
“It’s from a poem. The full verse is:
“‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.’”
His lilting accent gave the lines a musical quality, and a shiver ran down my spine. “It’s beautiful,” I said, “and perfectly describes the way I feel. You didn’t write that, did you?” Because it would be supremely unfair for him to be kind, gorgeous, athletic, musically brilliant, and a poet, too.
“Hell no,” he said with a laugh. “I wish. It’s called Sea-Fever, by John Masefield. My mum’s favorite.” He cleared his throat. “So you’re sailing by the stars tonight. How’s it going?”
Again, there was that hesitation when he spoke of his mother. But I could hardly fault him for having things he didn’t like to talk about. I glanced at the compass. “It’s going great. I’ve been doing it for my entire shift at the helm, and stayed on course the whole time.”
“That’s terrific. I told you that you’d get the hang of sailing once you ditched the seasickness.”
“I’m glad you were right.”
“Hey, is everything all right with you and Kevin? It looked a little…tense…earlier.”
His tone was casual, but I remembered the look on his face when he saw Kevin hugging me. “Everything is fine. I snapped at him, then apologized, and we hugged it out.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad you patched things up. He’s a good guy.”
“The best.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. The ship was silent, but for the low murmur of voices down in the salon and the creak of the rigging. I steered the ship on her course through the dark and silent sea, my mind wandering, as it tended to do when I was by myself.
“What are you thinkin’ about, Red?” he asked suddenly. He’d been so quiet, perhaps lost in his own thoughts, and I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“I was thinking about how brave sailors were back in the day. They stepped onto their ships and sailed into a complete unknown. We have GPS and all sorts of other technology, so we always know where we are. We know that we’re within days of land. We know that we have enough food and water to last us until our next port-of-call.
“We were discussing the Nantucket whalers today. I hate how they decimated the whale populations, but I can’t help but respect them. Those guys—barely older than children—went to sea for years at a time on ships no bigger than this one. They faced the worst of what Mother Nature had in her arsenal: starvation, storms, angry whales—and some of them never returned.
“But they went anyway. They bid their loved ones farewell, not knowing when or if they would ever see them again, and stepped onto their ships.”
I looked up at the sparkling sky. “I wonder if they stared at the constellations and took comfort in the thought that thousands of miles away, their families back home were looking up at the same stars.”
I licked my lips, feeling more than a little foolish after my monologue. “Um, so anyway, that’s what I was thinking.” He was quiet for a moment, and my face burned. Why did I always seem to say such stupid things around him? “I’m kind of a dork.”
“Nah, you’re not a dork,” he said. “Maybe a bit of a nerd,” he added, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “But definitely not a dork.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, tearing my gaze from the heavens to peer at him in the dark.
He grinned. “Because I’ve wondered that myself sometimes, standing out here in the wee hours of the night, under the stars. So if you’re a dork, then that makes me one, too. And clearly, I’m not a dork.”
I burst out laughing, though something inside me twisted. Because Tristan MacDougall was starting to become a problem…of the worst and best kind.
Chapter Fourteen
A few days later, I was eating breakfast with Kevin on the foredeck. He was being his usual wise-cracking self, and he said something that made me laugh hysterically, to the point where I was nearly sobbing. It had been a long time since I’d laughed that hard—since I’d had a reason to.
“I think MacDuff is really into you, Ari,” he said suddenly.
I couldn’t help the little thrill that ran through me. “What do you mean?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder to see Tristan by the staysail sheet. He unwound the line from its pin, gave it a few sharp tugs, then made it fast once more, briskly coiling and hanging the excess line, then moved to the jib sheets to do the same.
“He may seem busy, but when you were laughing just now, the way he was looking at you…the way he always looks at you…”
“Looks at me how?” I said, louder than I meant to.
“Whoa! I didn’t mean to stir shit up,” he said. “He looks at you like—” He paused, clearly un
comfortable.
“Like…?”
He sighed. “Like a guy looks at a girl he wishes he could…um…get with,” he said, his face turning pink. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m pretty sure I just broke the guy code. So, how are things with you?”
Though I wanted more of his male insight into Tristan, I had to smile at his discomfort. “Lame attempt to change the subject. How about we talk about you and Jenny? Where is she, by the way?”
“Still sleeping, I think.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh? Did you keep her up late?”
He smiled. “Maybe a little.”
“Wait, really?” I had been joking. I didn’t think they’d gotten past flirting.
“Not in the way you think. We were mostly just talking.”
“I’m glad she has someone to talk to.”
“And I’m glad you guys are being nice to each other. Anyway, back to you and MacDuff. Let’s think about this. He was super protective of you with those jerks in Puerto Plata. He held your hair while you puked and told you funny stories to cheer you up. He asked you to dive with him. And the look on his face just now…first it was shock at hearing you laugh like that, and then it was…”
“It was what?”
“Longing. Like he was looking at something he desperately wanted but couldn’t have.”
My heart pounded with excitement—and then sank just as quickly. It was exactly how I felt about Tristan. First it had just been a physical attraction, but then I started to see him as a friend after our late-night conversations on deck, and then it was a bit of hero worship after the Puerto Plata incident and the dive. Now, even though it would lead only to disappointment, I knew that it was much more than that. I wanted him, more than anything. But I couldn’t have him.
A Star to Steer Her By Page 11