I glance around at the woods. No other houses, no other lights. The Dip feels like the most remote place on earth.
“Have you heard of the baby man?” Jared is looking at me.
Emory starts shaking his head and going “Dude, dude” under his breath.
Wednesday says, “Don’t tell that one, Jared. That one freaks me out. Like, seriously freaks me out. It’s worse than, I don’t know, the guy with the hook or whatever that stupid urban legend is.”
Jared leans forward, his voice low and measured. “The baby man is this kind of humanoid thing, with, like, a baby face and old-man hair. He says mama a lot. And if you say it back, he’ll come closer and try to get you.”
And then of course we fall into silence, and I am listening for mama over the sound of the rain. Except for the rattling on the roof and the music coming from inside the house, it’s amazing how still the night is. As if the island is holding its breath, the trees frozen in mid-reach.
And then I hear it: “Mama,” so quiet and high-pitched that for a second I think it’s the actual baby man. Wednesday and I jump, and she knocks Jared right off the porch.
He gets up, straightens his glasses, brushes himself off, and sits back down as if nothing happened.
“Shit,” Emory says. Nervous laughter all around.
We gradually fall quiet, and then Wednesday turns to me. “Is that your real hair color?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your astrological sign?”
“Aries.”
“Do you have any pets?”
“A cat and a dog.” I don’t mention that Bradbury is back in Ohio.
“If you had the choice between this island and Patagonia, which would you choose? Don’t think, just pick one.”
“Neither. I’d choose California.”
She says, “What’s your favorite breakup song?”
“Currently? Or all-time?”
“All-time.”
I say the first song that comes into my head. “ ‘Irreplaceable’ by Beyoncé.”
She nods a kind of grudging approval. “So what’s your story?”
I think, I don’t have one fucking clue what my story is, thank you very much.
I say, “I don’t have one.” Not yet, at least, unless you count being the girl whose entire world blew up days before she graduated from high school.
Wednesday smiles at me like she knows better.
I smile at her. “Do you always ask so many questions?”
“I’m a very curious person.”
“Who doesn’t have a filter,” adds Emory.
I say, “I’m here because my mom’s working on a project. What’s your story?”
“I love Greek mythology, zodiac signs, and makeup. I’m learning Japanese. I have a Chihuahua named Teddy who’s the love of my life. I’ve been playing guitar since I was twelve.” She sighs. “More than anything, I want to sing. Professionally. But my family, they think that’s something you do in the car or in the shower. They don’t get it.” She takes a drink. Sets her bottle down. “We couldn’t afford college, so two years ago I ran away from home.” She says it matter-of-factly. I study her in the light of the porch, and even though she apparently loves makeup, she’s no-makeup pretty. She looks like she was born outdoors, probably in the branches of one of these fairy-tale oaks, or like she came out of the sea and now here she is, some sort of land mermaid, a little damp but not sweating down her face like I am. “I’m here year-round like Jared.”
“Is Wednesday your real name?”
“When I left home, I renamed myself. After Wednesday Addams.” She tugs at a braid. She doesn’t offer her real name.
I say, “Does your family know where you are?”
“They do now.” But I’m not sure I believe her.
I look at Jared. “Why did you come here?”
“I grew up nearby, a little town outside of Jacksonville. Summer before college, I was planning on going to the Philippines to visit my dad’s family. You know, learn about that part of my culture, but then…” He holds up his arm, the one with the tattoo. “My friend died. Suicide. He was my person. Honestly, the only one who’s ever really known me. And it pretty much turned the world upside down.”
This immediately gets me thinking about Saz. Even though she’s still here on this earth, it feels like she’s somewhere else, somewhere much farther away than Ohio.
Jared says, “It’s been almost three years, but I still miss him. You have to make the most of it, you know. Life lessons. I always thought I’d go to, I don’t know, Atlanta or New York or somewhere bigger. But then I heard about the job here and it seemed more manageable, more what I wanted. Not so far away. Not so big and loud and in your face.”
“Life lessons,” I echo.
“It’s something I tell myself.”
“Does it help?” I want him to say, Yes, it helps. The mere act of saying it chases all the sadness and anger away forever.
“Not really.” He seems to think this over. “Maybe sometimes. A little.”
Wednesday hooks her arm around Jared and lets it rest there for a minute.
“What about you?” I say to Emory. “What made you come here?”
He stares out into the night as if he’s looking for the answer. “I could tell you it’s because I always dreamed of being a nature guide, that I’ve always been fascinated by this island. Both true.” He shrugs and looks back at me. “But mostly? It’s just far enough away from home.”
We sit. We drink. I wonder if they also feel the night closing in.
After a minute, Jared says, very low, “It can get kind of nerve-racking when you realize how isolated you are from the actual world here. But all the scary stuff doesn’t really compare to getting lost in your own mind.”
And somehow this, more than anything else, chills me.
* * *
—
Another beer later, the rain has stopped, and I’m dry and cozy and tucked into the couch of the living room of the dorm-type house that they share with the other staffers. There is music playing and there are about a dozen people of various ages, most around twenty-one or twenty-two. Wednesday is dancing and singing, and she sounds just like Adele. She pulls me up so I’m dancing too. I don’t know the song, but it feels good to move. There’s a line that says something about feeling homeless or hopeless, or maybe both. And I love this line. I love it more than any lyric I’ve ever heard in my life.
“That’s me,” I say to no one and everyone. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
Someone hands me another beer, and I drink it fast. And I feel lighter and freer, like I’m shedding the past four weeks—as if it was a skin—right onto the floor. I’m singing along with Wednesday and the music, and she and Jared and Emory and I are jumping and dancing and spinning, and I’m completely, utterly free.
When the song ends, I fall back into the couch and there’s this boy with a messy shock of white hair and too many skull rings. The boy from the ferry.
He points to himself. “Grady.”
I point to myself. “Claude.”
“Claude.” He nods like he approves. “What’s that short for?”
“Claudette.” It isn’t, of course, but I like the sound of it.
He rests his arm on the back of the couch, and he smells intoxicating. Not like weed and incense but something else. Hair wax, maybe. Pine needles. Something Christmasy. He’s talking, but the music’s too loud and I don’t hear him. And then Wednesday is pulling me to my feet again and someone cranks the music up louder.
At some point Jeremiah Crew walks in. At first I think it’s a mirage, but no, it’s him, arms folded, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, talking to Jared and some of the others who live here. He’s wearing jeans. A dark V-neck T-shirt. No shoes. He catches me stari
ng at him and keeps right on talking the whole time he’s looking at me.
“Oh shit, your face,” Wednesday yells over the song.
“What?”
“You like Miah.” She looks at me through cat eyes.
“I don’t even know him.”
“Hmm,” she says.
The song changes and it’s some country tune I don’t know, slow and croony. I watch Miah as he stands there. As he talks to people. As he takes a handful of chips and eats them. As he walks away from everyone. As he walks right past Wednesday, who’s practically burning a hole in him with her eyes. As he offers me his hand and does this kind of exaggerated bow like I’m royalty.
“Dance?”
I pretend to think this over. I look around the room like I’m weighing my options.
Finally, I shrug. “I guess.”
He pulls me close and wraps his other arm around my waist. We dance for a few beats like this, and then I look up and he’s staring down at me.
“Your hair is shorter. Like, really short. Is that why you tried to drown yourself?”
“I wasn’t trying to drown myself. And it was like this when you interrupted my swim.”
“I was too busy saving your life to notice.”
“You didn’t save my life….”
“I mean, it isn’t horrible.” He stares at my head. “It’ll grow back. Eventually.”
“Okay.”
“I may actually like it better.”
“Great. Thanks. And thanks for the bug spray.”
“You were beginning to look like a plague victim.”
“Well.”
“I also heard you were asking about me.”
“Only because I felt like I needed to clear something up about yesterday.”
“The fact that you gave me your phone number?”
“No.”
“And then I returned it?”
“No. I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t drowning and I wasn’t trying to drown. I’m sorry it seemed that way and that you felt you had to save me.”
He says, “You looked like you were drowning.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“Okay. Good for you. And you’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“Saving your life.”
“You didn’t save my life.”
“I kinda did.”
“Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.”
Over his shoulder, Wednesday gives me this arch, smirky look and walks away. And maybe I should walk away too, but I don’t. I don’t want to. It’s good to feel hands on me. It cuts the loneliness in half.
Then he goes, “Yeah, this makes sense.”
“What?”
“You like to lead.”
“No I don’t.”
“You do. It’s okay. I’ll learn ya.”
“That is so incredibly sexist.”
“No it’s not. I’m not talking a man-woman thing here. Sometimes you got to let go and let other people lead for a while. I’m guessing that’s a problem for you.”
A flash of dimples and my stomach goes quivery. I tell it, Don’t get so worked up. They’re literally dents in his face, just little hollow pits at the corners of his mouth that mean nothing.
I say, “Can we just dance without talking?”
“Of course.”
He pulls me in and my head brushes his cheek, and for a few seconds it’s just the music and his hands on my back. Then I feel his breath in my ear and he says into it, “Why so mad at the island? Or is it the entire world that’s pissing you off?”
I pull back and look at him. His mouth is serious, but his eyes are grinning down at me like I’m the funniest thing he’s ever seen.
“I’m not pissed off. I’m great. I love it here. It’s amazing.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.” To prove it, I smile at him. My best smile, the one I’ve been perfecting for the past few weeks.
“I don’t believe you.”
“No, it’s true. I can’t think of another place I’d rather be. Even if this isn’t where I’m supposed to be right now. Even if I was never supposed to be here. Even if I was supposed to be in Ohio. At Kayla Rosenthal’s party, as a matter of fact. Drinking vodka with Saz and my other friends and making out with Wyatt Jones and getting ready for the road trip of a lifetime and going home and sleeping in the bed I’ve slept in since I was ten. Even though I never wanted a canopy bed, but my dad thought it must be something little girls like, and so he surprised me, which was really sweet. But that was back when he wanted us. And even though I’m now sleeping in a bed that doesn’t belong to me, staring at a photograph of a dead boy who will always be twelve years old. No matter what. So if I put you out yesterday because I was upset, well, I’m sorry. But I wasn’t drowning. Not literally. I didn’t ask you to save me. Because I can save myself. Not that I need saving. But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I actually don’t know what any of that means.”
My chest is tight and I’m wishing I had another beer to drown out the noise in my head. The song bleeds into another and he doesn’t let go, so I stay there. And when that song ends, before he can pull away, I say, “Do you want to get out of here?”
DAY 3
(PART THREE)
We ride through the night in his old black truck with the windows down. There’s a collection of sand dollars and other shells on the dash. A camera propped on the center console. A pocketknife and some coins and a can of Off! in one of the cup holders. A bottle of water in the other, which he offers me now.
I drink and then hand it back to him.
“You should probably have some more.”
“I’m not drunk.”
But I drink it anyway, spilling some down my shirt as the truck bumps over the road.
He says, “So tell me. If you weren’t trying to drown yourself and you weren’t drowning, what were you doing out there?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. You’ve been yelling and talking every time I’ve seen you.”
I almost say nothing. But the thing is, I do want to talk about it. And he’s here. And he’s asking. And he’s not about to run off, at least not while he’s driving. Besides, I don’t have to say much. He doesn’t know my family or me, so it’s not as if I’m giving our secrets away.
“It’s my parents. My dad, actually.”
His smile flickers out like a candle flame just extinguished. You can still see the trace of it, but it’s turned to smoke. “Dads.” And in that moment, I see it—he’s got his own dad story.
“They’re separated. Like, just separated.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.” And then, like an idiot, I start to cry.
Under his breath he goes, “Shit.”
In a minute I feel the truck roll to a stop, and he’s reaching for me across the seat and wrapping me in his arms. He doesn’t say anything, just lets me cry. At first I let myself go, mostly because I can’t stop. My face is pressed into his shirt, and one of his arms is around me and the other is stroking my hair, and this makes me cry harder, so hard that I’m worried I won’t ever be able to quit. Into his shirt I say, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” But it comes out muffled and garbled because I’m crying so hard. And then I think, Oh my God, what if I never stop? What if we’re still sitting here in August? Because that’s how many tears I have inside me.
But I have to stop because I don’t know this person and he doesn’t know me, and people don’t like you to cry or talk about things that are hard or upsetting. They like you to smile and say everything’s fine, which is why I gather all the pieces of me and put them back together enough that I can sit there, hiccupping and shaking, and say, “
I’m okay. Just being stupid. Sorry. Maybe I had more to drink than I thought.” And wipe my face dry and sit straight as a board, not touching him, all on my own like a big girl.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because I haven’t seen a flood like that since the last hurricane.”
“Nope. I’m good.”
He kind of pats the side of my head, and then he drives on, one hand on the wheel, the other on the window, eyes on the road.
In a minute he goes, “How you doing over there?”
“I’m okay.”
I manage to keep my head up, even though it weighs a hundred pounds, and smile at him so he can see it’s true.
I say, “I thought you weren’t allowed to have vehicles on the island.”
“Park Service, the inn, and residents. I bought the truck off my friends Bram and Shirley.”
“Do you live here?”
“Only during summer, but I’ve been coming here since I was thirteen.”
“Because even if you do leave, you end up coming back?”
He glances at me, eyebrows raised. “Actually, yeah.”
“Jared told me that.”
He nods. “I thought maybe we’d won you over.”
“Yeah, no. So why here?”
“It was either this or juvie. I haven’t always been the clean, upstanding citizen you see before you.”
I glance at his bare feet on the pedals. At the way his elbow is draped on the open window, his hand resting there, perfectly at home.
“Are you ever serious?” It comes out before I can stop myself.
“Sometimes.”
He shoots me a smile, which flashes in the dark of the cab like a firefly.
I say, “I don’t want to go back to the house yet.”
“What about your mom? Won’t you be missed?”
I lie. “No. She’s asleep by now.”
* * *
—
He leads me toward a place called Little Blackwood Beach. Just past the dunes, he sits down and gestures for me to do the same.
Breathless Page 11