Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

“What are we doing?” I whisper because there’s something stealthy and secretive about it all.

  “We’re waiting.” Out here in the night, under the moon, his own voice is soft and blurred.

  I want to ask him what we’re waiting for, but his energy is like my mom’s. Calming and soothing and warm like a campfire. My head spins a bit from the beer and the night and him.

  We sit and wait.

  And wait.

  I’ve stopped crying, but I can still feel it in my eyes and my nose and my entire body, as if the tears were blood, and now that they’re gone, I’m empty.

  Finally I say, “What are we waiting for?”

  “Loggerhead turtles. They swim hundreds of miles to give birth here. Most years—between May and August, sometimes September—they return to nest on the same beaches where they were born. They’ve been around since the dinosaurs.” He falls quiet and then speaks again, his voice coming and going like the waves of the ocean. In and out. In and out. “A female can lay as many as two hundred eggs. Two months later, if the nest survives, the hatchlings will claw their way out and head for the ocean. Most of them won’t make it.”

  And now I’m picturing these baby turtles, no mother there to help them.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “We help how we can—we mark and date the nests, cover them with netting to protect from coyotes and raccoons—but at some point you have to let nature do its thing.”

  I think about the effort—the mother fighting to get back to the beach where she was born, to make a nest for her babies, and then leaving them there to fend for themselves.

  “Why doesn’t she stay?”

  “She does what she can for them and then she has to go. I don’t know why, exactly.”

  Then he rests his hand on my arm, and suddenly it’s the only thing I can think about. His hand on my flesh. My whole arm has gone warm and now the warmth is spreading to my other arm and out into the rest of me.

  Then he takes the hand that was on my arm and runs it through his hair. I look at him and he looks at me and for the first time in weeks I feel almost okay. I remember something I learned in science class—about the weight of water. How one gallon weighs 8.34 pounds. I probably cried at least three gallons in Miah’s truck, which has left me feeling lighter, as if I could float away over the earth and up into the sky.

  He says, “So what happened with your parents?”

  And maybe it’s this strange, magical night or the way his voice has gone soft or the flash of his smile in the dark or his bare feet, but for whatever reason, I do something I haven’t done in weeks. I open my mouth and talk.

  I tell him without editing.

  And he listens.

  And listens. And as he listens, he glances at me from time to time, and then back at the ocean. Back at me, back at the ocean. After I’m finished, I immediately want to gather all the words I’ve just spoken and stuff them back inside me. It’s the alcohol, I tell myself. Don’t drink so much next time.

  Finally he says, “So just like that? I mean, that’s all he said—I love you, but I gotta go?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Huh.”

  “I knew I was going to have to say goodbye this summer, but not like this. Not this kind of goodbye. I just…I don’t know. I was supposed to have more time.”

  “We’re always supposed to have more time. Look, if it makes you feel any better, it could be worse. You could have one parent who can barely function and sometimes can’t get out of bed. And then you have to make your own birthday cake, and let’s face it, you suck in the kitchen. So then you’re like, Maybe if I steal a birthday cake from the store…But stores don’t like that.”

  “Did that really happen?”

  “There’s a pretty good chance.”

  “I just keep thinking I should have seen it coming. And I could have been a better daughter.”

  “I don’t know your dad, but I do know something about dads who leave, and I’m pretty sure this doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “I’m kind of torn between hating him—really hating him—and missing him. I want him to fix this and make it better and make it so it never happened. I’m angry at my mom for not doing something to stop it, and I’m angry at myself. Basically I’m angry.” It’s the first time I’ve said any of this out loud.

  I feel his arm brush mine, and the feel of it reminds me that I’m not actually the only person left on earth. I take a breath. Let it out. I tell myself, You’ve talked enough for one night.

  “I get that,” he says. “Remember when I said you remind me of someone? I was talking about me. I was angry for a long time. I used to get into fights. I hated anyone who was different from me. I thought I was better than everyone else. I was a real asshole. I got caught smoking weed on school property, and maybe I sold an ounce or two, but never to kids. Always over at the college, and the money went to my mom and groceries for the family. In my mind, I was a kind of drug-dealing Robin Hood. The first time I came here, it was because the judge gave me a choice: spend a summer camping with a bunch of aspiring criminals or spend a summer on a juvenile-detention work farm with a bunch of aspiring criminals. Camping sounded better, so I came here through this group called Outward Bound—heard of it?” I nod. “And I cleaned up the beaches and cleared trails, all the shit nobody else wanted to do. Man, I hated it. I fucking hated it.”

  “So what changed?”

  “My dad left for good right after I got home. I woke up one morning and he was gone. No explanation, at least nothing Mom would ever tell us. She’s always been good at making excuses for him while telling me what an asshole he is. I haven’t seen him since, which is honestly no great loss, but it’s made things harder for my sisters. My brother was serving his first tour in Afghanistan by then, but they were so young when it happened. Mackenzie and Lila were ten and nine, Ally was seven, and Channy was only five.”

  I sit there beside him, thinking about fathers, his and mine.

  “Did you know he was going to leave?”

  He shakes his head and kind of grins at me. “See, the thing about my dad is that he doesn’t like to talk much. That includes not telling your wife when you’re going on a bender for a night or two, and not saying goodbye to your family when you plan to leave them forever.”

  “So just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “No more floor,” I say. “It was yanked out from under you.”

  He squints up at the moon, considering this. “Yeah. Except in my case, I don’t think there ever really was a floor.” He shifts, his arm brushing mine again, and I suddenly have a bird’s-eye view of the two of us, side by side on this vast beach, looking out over this vast ocean. “You know, all my life I knew my parents were shitty. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have the perfect family and then have it obliterated.”

  I look at him and he looks at me, and in that moment I feel like he knows me better than anyone.

  “Moonlight suits you, Captain.”

  “ ‘Captain’?”

  His eyes go to my hat.

  I say, “It’s a fisherman’s cap.”

  “ ‘Fisherman’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

  “What happened to ‘Lady Blackwood’?”

  “ ‘Captain’ is better.”

  Our eyes stay locked. I say, “What do you do here? On the island?”

  “I save reckless girls from drowning.”

  He smiles.

  I smile.

  And then this red-lipped, short-haired island Claude takes a breath and, without overthinking or thinking at all, reaches out and traces the freckles on his arms—a faint sprinkling, faint remnants from another summer or maybe brand-new from this one.

  He watches my face as I do, and then he ta
kes my hand and slowly twines his fingers through mine. There’s another tattoo on the inside of one wrist: an anchor. And on the other: Joy. I feel this pang because Joy might be a girl he loves, but then I tell myself, Don’t think.

  I say, “I want to kiss you now. I hope that’s okay.” The exact words I said to Wyatt before leaving Ohio.

  His eyes start dancing and a smile lingers on his lips. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  He shrugs. “I mean, yeah. Why not?” He sounds all whatever, but his eyes are laughing.

  I lean over and kiss him.

  For a second I’m worried he’s not going to kiss me back.

  But then his lips are on mine just as much as mine are on his, soft and searching, little sparks everywhere. There is a pinch on my ankle—the tiniest bug—but I barely feel it. I lean into him.

  And then his hand is on my face and I like the feeling of it there, strong and warm and pulling me in, not pushing me away. I open my mouth and his tongue finds mine, and I’m tasting him and he tastes sweet and also dangerous, and I move in closer and he pulls me closer and I’m kissing him and he’s kissing me, and this isn’t any Claude I know. This is some girl with short hair who makes out with strange boys on strange beaches. And she likes it, this girl. She likes him. She’s not thinking about what comes next or what could happen. She’s not making him someone he’s not or wishing he would be the one. She’s not overthinking him or herself. She’s just here with him, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue. Let him think I’m a girl who makes out on beaches or anywhere else she wants to. As far as he knows, this is exactly who I am. And then my hands are all over him and his hands are on my waist, and I want this moment to last forever because in it I don’t have to think or be the me I used to know, the one who was sent away without a choice.

  But suddenly he pulls away, and it takes me a minute to come down to earth, back to this beach. And he’s smiling at me like I’m a kid and not the woman who’s just been kissing him senseless for the past couple of minutes.

  “Wow,” he says.

  And I think, Yeah. Wow.

  “You really want me.”

  I push him away.

  He laughs. “How old are you again?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Just being sure.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen. I’ll be nineteen in November.”

  And then I’m Claude Henry again, making out with some strange boy on a strange beach in my jeans and light blue hoodie, the one with the grape-juice stain on the hem, covered in sand, skin freckled and burned a bright, painful pink from the Georgia sun, and being bitten everywhere by unseen Georgia bugs.

  He says, “The sand gnats are out. You’re getting eaten alive.”

  * * *

  —

  Jeremiah Crew parks the truck in the drive and walks me to the house. There’s only the sound of us cutting through the grass and, somewhere in the distance, cicadas doing this rise and fall, loud and then soft, like a chorus.

  We climb onto the porch and come to a stop in front of the door. The lights are on inside, and moths bat at the windows, trying to get in.

  He stands, hands in pockets, looking down at me.

  “How did you get all the way out to the Dip anyway?”

  “I walked.”

  “You know you can borrow the island bikes, right?”

  “I actually don’t know how to ride one.”

  I expect him to make some big exclamation like everyone else when I tell them this, but instead he says, “I guess I’ll have to teach you then.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He nods his head a little, mouth hitched up, one dimple just starting to appear. Then he glances at the moths fluttering against the windows, at the porch ceiling. “So Addy’s your cousin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which means you’re a Blackwood.”

  I jut out my chin. Bat my eyes. “So you were asking about me?”

  The other dimple appears. “Your mom may have mentioned it the day you got here.”

  “I’m named for Claudine Blackwood. Of Rosecroft. But I’m not a Blackwood. Not ‘Her Ladyship.’ More like whatever the opposite of that is.”

  “It fits, though.”

  “What?”

  “Strong woman. I mean, from what I hear, the Blackwoods had their issues, but weak women wasn’t one of them.”

  “That’s what my mom says.” I think of Claudine’s portrait, fierce and fearless. “All I know is, I don’t feel so strong right now.”

  For a few seconds, our eyes stay locked. In that moment, I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again, and for some reason this makes my stomach flip and my throat go dry. I cough. “Do you own any shoes?”

  His face goes blank and then he laughs. “Not really.” He gives me a little salute. “Good night, Captain.”

  “Good night.”

  The cicadas are no longer humming. They are buzzing—so full and loud that the air is heavy and warm. A sultry summer night. The porch light casts a glow onto the grass in front of the house, but beyond it is nothing but blackness, as if the whole world just ends. He doesn’t kiss me again, even though I want him to, maybe because I want him to. He just walks down the steps and down the path, and I watch as he’s swallowed by the dark.

  DAY 3

  (PART FOUR)

  I slip off my shoes and close the front door so, so carefully, pretending I’m a burglar and my life depends on not getting caught. I creep past the kitchen, even though I’m dying of thirst, and past Dandelion, who hops down from the window seat to rub on my legs. “Shoo, Dandy,” I whisper. I walk on actual tiptoe to the bathroom, and that’s when a voice from my mom’s room says, “It’s after one.”

  I freeze.

  “Claude.” She appears, dressed in pajamas, holding a book, her finger marking the page.

  “Mom.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Where were you?”

  “It’s not like I could call or text, and I was kind of far away.”

  “I know you’re eighteen, but as long as we’re sharing a roof, you need to let me know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You can stay out all night when you’re at Columbia, though please don’t tell me if you do. But I’m not exactly thrilled about you doing that here.”

  “Because there’s so much trouble I can get into?”

  “Actually, yes. I’m thinking specifically of poisonous snakes and alligators.”

  “I just lost track of time.”

  “So let’s set some ground rules. Back by one a.m., no later. And you let me know what you’re doing.”

  “Fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  We stand in the hallway looking at each other. This is the most I’ve ever talked back to my mother in my life, and my heart is beating fast and loud.

  She says in this quiet voice, “I worry about you.”

  “I worry about you, too.”

  “You know I’m here and you can talk to me. I’m still your mom. I found a therapist on the mainland who seems good. I thought we could go over once a week and get you started with him. You need to talk to someone.”

  Right now she sounds like a therapist, or like an adult trying to reason with an angry child. Her quiet, quiet voice is making my skin crawl. I stand perfectly still, but I can feel the storm brewing inside me, gathering fast and dark. I fold my arms to keep it there, in my chest, in my lungs, but I know she can see it in my eyes and feel it in the air around us. “Now you’re telling me I need to talk about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because one minute you say I can’t talk to anyone, so I don’t. I left my best friend without saying a word. So I’m here, cast away on this island where there’s zero cell
service, and now you’re telling me that I need to talk about it, now that I’m finally used to not talking. You need to make up your mind.”

  All at once, everything collapses—her shoulders, her face. She shakes her head. “I know. And I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry. I should never have gone along with that.”

  There’s more I could say, but I don’t. Because as angry as I am, I love her. And she feels bad enough. The two of us stand there, and the only sound is the tick-tick-tick of the old-fashioned clock on the wall in the living room.

  A minute later, she says, “You know, Aunt Claudine never had children, but when her niece, your grandmother, was old enough to visit, Claudine traveled to the mainland to pick her up and then traveled back again to see her off on the train. Claudine was hard of hearing, so she couldn’t hear the train until it was close by, but she could feel its vibrations from miles away. Apparently she stood there for a long time after the train had left until she couldn’t feel it anymore.”

  “How does that relate to me?”

  She smiles. “I’m always here, no matter what I’m going through, even when you’re not in front of me or when I’m off in my own head or over at the museum or trying to sleep. You can talk to me.”

  And she hugs me and I hug her back, but I can feel it there—the divide between us.

  * * *

  —

  I shut my bedroom door.

  Lean against it.

  Him, I think.

  Not Wyatt Jones.

  Jeremiah Crew.

  There’s something about this person who knows nothing about me other than that I’m here right now, that my name is Claude and I have red lips and I kiss boys on beaches. Him. Jeremiah. I kissed him on the beach.

  This person who, after one night, actually knows more about me than anyone right now, more than Shane Waller ever knew about me after two months. There’s nothing to lose and I don’t have anything to prove and there is no expectation of me, of him, of us ever being an us. There’s no expectation at all.

  I won’t be losing anything. Or giving anything up. Or letting anyone take something from me.