Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  “Hilarious.”

  He’s running his fingers along the frame of the door and pulling, and it’s not budging. I’m watching him tug at it, and it’s dawning on me that, Oh hell, maybe we really are locked in here, way down deep in the bowels of Rosecroft. With a ghost. A shiver runs through me.

  And then Miah turns to look at me and goes, “We’re locked in.”

  “You’re not just doing this for dramatic effect? Or to, you know, make a move on me?”

  “I’m not that smooth.”

  And part of me thinks, Too bad.

  “It’s locked from the outside. Try for yourself.”

  I give the door a tug and it doesn’t budge.

  “Welcome to the island, Captain,” he says, and in that moment I think, Maybe there are worse places to be.

  I wait for him to take me right then and there, but no, he starts digging around in all the relics that surround us, clearly hunting for something.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to find a crowbar or knife or anything we can use to pry the door open.”

  I help him search, and as I search, I’m thinking that all these discarded, forgotten things—this umbrella, this comb, this empty bottle of perfume, this bowler hat—were once picked out and purchased and brought to this house and used by the people who lived here.

  Suddenly we hear a voice from upstairs. “Hello?”

  I jump as if it’s Tillie herself, back from the dead.

  Miah lays a hand on my arm like, There, there, it’s okay. Only the heat from his palm has the opposite effect on my skin.

  “Jeremiah? That better not be you.”

  He calls out, “It’s me. We’re in the basement.”

  “What are you doing in the basement?”

  “Making out with this hot girl I found down here. But now you’ve locked us in.” And he lets go of me so that he can walk toward her voice.

  “You should have found me and told me you were coming.”

  “I was too busy making out.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m up here.”

  And on like this until he says, “Where’d that come from?”

  We go up a narrow, dark staircase—not the outside staircase that we took to get in here, but one that leads into the house itself. Cobwebs are brushing me on the cheeks and the shoulders, and I’m batting them off. At the top of the stairs stands a tall, broad African American woman who must be Shirley. Behind her, the sky is a brilliant blue and the house is once again in ruins. We come up and out onto the first floor, into a hallway with walls and no roof.

  “Jeremiah Crew.” The woman’s hands are on her hips and she is shaking her head.

  But you can tell she loves him.

  * * *

  —

  Shirley and her husband, Bram, are originally from the island, but now they split their time between here and out west, leading Outward Bound groups. They were Miah’s guides when he was in Outward Bound and they’re the parents he wishes he had, the ones who refused to give up on him when everyone else did.

  We stand in the hot sun. A white Park Service truck comes rolling up the drive, loaded with inn guests. Shirley says to me, “I’ve known this boy since he was thirteen years old. Be glad you didn’t know him then. I can blame him for every gray hair on this head of mine.” But she laughs.

  He give me this sheepish look, holding up his hands like, It’s true.

  “Can I trust you with these ruins?” she says to him.

  “Probably not.”

  “You two come up to the house for dinner one night. I know Bram would love to see you.”

  As they talk, there’s this tiny, rattled feeling in my chest that makes me want to run away until I’m on the other side of the wall I’ve been forging since the beginning of summer. Like the fact that these people love him somehow makes me more alone in the world, as if their loving him has anything to do with me.

  * * *

  —

  He drives me to Addy’s and once again walks me to my door. I say, “I hope you’re not going to get too crazy about me. I’m leaving in a few weeks and I’d hate to break your heart.”

  He stares down at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m pretty sure I’m willing to risk it.”

  I wait for him to kiss me. When he doesn’t, I move in close to him, so close we’re almost touching, and I can feel his breath on my cheek. The heat is coming off us as he takes my face in his hands, as he looks into my eyes. As a strange look comes over him. As he whispers, “Stay still.”

  With one hand, he turns my head so that I’m staring away from him, and then I feel a sharp and terrible pinch on the side of my neck.

  I jump back and my hands are checking for blood. “What the hell?”

  “That was me saving your life again.” And he holds something up so I can see it in the light—a tick. “Shoe, please.”

  “What?”

  “Give me your shoe.”

  I slip one off, hand it to him.

  He sets the tick on the porch and crushes it with my sandal. “I’d check yourself all over when you get inside, just to make sure that’s it.”

  And then he goes sauntering down the path, no kiss goodbye, no mention of other adventures or when he might see me again.

  * * *

  —

  I take the world’s longest shower and scour my entire body for ticks. Even though I don’t find any others, I can feel them crawling on me.

  Back in my room, I open one of the notebooks that hold my novel. I flip through, reading random passages and pages. Some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, and most of it is somewhere in between, but it all seems overwrought and overwritten, and none of it rings true. Mostly it just feels long ago, as if it was written by another person in another lifetime. Someone who thought she knew about life and love and clearly didn’t.

  I slam it closed and bury the novel in a drawer where I won’t have to look at it. And then I search the house for an empty notebook. I find an old blank one in the office, on a shelf: yellowed pages, battered blue cover. I sit down at the desk and write—not about Claudine, but about Tillie Blackwood, who died too soon, and the man who loved her. How she was here, and then she wasn’t.

  Sometime later, I hear the front door open and close and my mom’s voice calling me. The screen door slams behind her, and this is the island slam, and I know this because maybe I’m not feeling like such a stranger here after all.

  DAY 5

  The next morning, I am up earlier than usual. After my mom leaves for the museum, I do my best to style my hair so it’s more Jean Seberg than Christmas elf, and I paint my lips red. Outside, the day is blindingly bright, a few puffs of clouds hugging the horizon. I wander the sandy roads, the ruins, and then the beach, but there is no sign of Jeremiah Crew. I spend the day swimming and sunning myself and reading my book, and trying not to be disappointed.

  * * *

  —

  After changing for dinner, I tell my mom how pretty she looks and walk with her to the inn. She glances down at our linked arms and raises an eyebrow, and then she tells me about Blackbeard Point, at the northeast tip of the island, where the notorious pirate Edward Teach—better known as Blackbeard—supposedly buried his treasure. I listen and ask questions, and as we climb the steps to the broad front porch, she says, “Thank you,” and gives my arm a squeeze.

  “For what?”

  “You know what. Thank you for trying.”

  I bend down and pull a cactus spur off my shoe, hating that she feels the need to call attention to it because this is how self-absorbed I’ve been. “You’re welcome,” I mumble to the wood of the porch.

  During cocktails, when she gets into a discussion with the Nashville photographer, I excuse
myself and wander into the library, where I find an old volume on loggerhead turtles. I sit reading till dinner, doing my best to concentrate on the words rather than the memory of Miah’s lips on mine as we stood on the beach two nights ago. This is what I learn:

  The largest turtles can weigh as much as 375 pounds.

  Every two to three years, they return to nest on the same beaches where they were born.

  Just one in four thousand baby turtles will live to adulthood.

  Turtles are air breathers, although they can stay underwater for hours. But too often they become entangled in fishing nets, and when they struggle to break free, they can quickly use up their oxygen and lose the fight.

  There is something called a false crawl, when a turtle comes ashore to nest but for whatever reason doesn’t lay her eggs before returning to the sea.

  A turtle produces numerous offspring, which she leaves alone to fend for themselves—unlike, say, a horse, which has only a single foal and stays around to protect it until it’s grown and ready to be on its own or until she is pregnant again. But it’s turtles—not horses—that have been around since the days of dinosaurs.

  So clearly there’s something in having to fend for yourself. Like me, I think. And in some strange way this gives me hope.

  * * *

  —

  After the meal, Mom and I sit on the porch. I lean back in my chair and stare at the moon, my eyes heavy.

  “You’ve gone quiet since we’ve been here.” And at first I think she means since we’ve been here on this porch, but no, she means here on this island.

  “So have you.”

  She leans forward, crossing her legs, one foot swinging. “So I’ll tell you something and you tell me something.”

  “You go first.”

  “Okay.” She takes a breath. Lets it out. “You know, I didn’t expect there to be much firsthand material from Aunt Claudine, but she actually left a journal and boxes of letters. As far as I can see, she documented everything. It’s her mother who seems to be the enigma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So far I haven’t found a single thing from Tillie Blackwood. No diary, no letters, not even a grocery list. But there’s a lot of other material from other Blackwoods. I mean a lot. And I’m thinking there’s a book here. Claudine. Her mother. All the women who’ve lived and loved and died on this island.”

  “Is it a historical novel or nonfiction? Do you know what the story is?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll find it. After all, the writing can save you. And I could use some saving right now.” Her voice is bright and strong, the voice of Wonder Mom, but something wavers in her eyes. She’s said this for years—how, when life is upside down, the writing can save you.

  “You’ll find it,” I echo, and that’s so much of what I do with her these days—echo things she says because it’s easier than saying how I really feel.

  She asks, “How’s your own writing? Are you working on anything?”

  “Not really.” I’ve written a few things down about Tillie and Claudine, but they’re just interesting stories, things I want to remember.

  “Okay.” She shifts a little. “What else can I tell you?” She thinks this over. “The photographer asked me to join him for a drink.”

  “The one you were talking to?”

  “That one.”

  Asshole. “What did you say?”

  “Thank you, but no thank you. It’s way too soon. I’m not ready. I may never be ready. But it was lovely to be asked.”

  There are moments, and this is one of them, when I can actually see her heartache. She carries it not just in her heart but in her arms and on her shoulders and in her face. I think about Tillie’s husband burying her in the front yard and cutting off a lock of her hair and wonder if my parents ever loved each other like that or thought they did. Why do some love stories have a shelf life and others last forever? And suddenly I feel bad for being just an echo and talking to my mom from behind the wall in my chest.

  She says, “Now you. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I try to push away the image of my mom with the photographer, this strange younger man who is not my dad. I want to ask if she and my dad are talking. If they’re trying to work on their marriage or if this is it, the way it will be from now on.

  But instead I say, “I’m not sure Saz and I will be friends forever. I always thought we would be, but we’re moving away from each other. I can feel it. It’s not just me coming here. She’s moving on too.”

  “You’re having a season,” Mom says. “Moving on can suck, but it’s normal. Growing pains. When you get through this, you’ll find each other again, stronger than ever. And if you’re worried about it, let her know you miss her.”

  I can feel what she’s not saying: Like I miss you.

  * * *

  —

  At some point I feel a bump on my arm and Jared is standing over me. He hands me a note. My first thought is, Why is Jared writing me a note? But then he gives me the biggest grin and a wink so obvious you can see it from Mars.

  “Thanks,” I tell him.

  “Oh, you’re welcome.” He goes grinning away. I turn the note over in my hand.

  “Who’s that from?” Mom says, her voice sleepy from the food and the day.

  “I don’t know.” But I do know. I hope I know.

  Meet me outside your house at 10:30 p.m.

  “Is there a boy?”

  Yes, I think.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  DAY 5

  (PART TWO)

  The truck bumps down the lane and around past the inn, and once we’re under the sprawling oaks, he switches off the headlights and keeps driving.

  I reach for my seat belt.

  “When you get in the truck and don’t go for your seat belt, Captain, that’s when you know you’re an islander.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be an islander.” But I let the seat belt go. “You could turn the lights back on so we don’t go crashing to our deaths.”

  “The first summer I was here, Shirley wouldn’t let me have a flashlight. She told me I could see in the dark. I just had to have patience and let my eyes adjust. Think you can do that, Captain? Have patience?” He glances at me, giving me this half smile that tells me he’s not just talking about seeing in the dark.

  My stomach flips. The butterflies stir. I half smile back at him. “Maybe.”

  The air sparks around us. Like that, we vanish into the island. Anyone watching us would think we were ghosts. Now we’re here; now we’re gone. At first I can barely make out the white of the road. It appears in front of us a foot at a time. The trees are walls of black on either side, and I want to tell him to turn on the lights before we run over something or someone. I think, I don’t care what Shirley says. My eyes will never adjust.

  But gradually the road grows a little whiter, the trees a little more three-dimensional. Pinpricks of light flash across the path and in the forest.

  “Lightning bugs,” he says.

  And suddenly our way is lit by them. They are in the trees and on the path and in the canopy. Little blinking stars brightening the way for us. I catch my breath. I know in my bones that this is one of those deathbed moments, one I will always remember. I look down at his hand, broad and tanned, over the steering wheel, at his bare foot on the gas pedal.

  It’s a wild ride through the darkness, the fireflies twinkling like fairy lanterns. I try to hold on to the moment because I don’t want it to end. I want to spend forever driving through the night with Jeremiah Crew.

  I don’t have any idea if we’re heading north or south, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know. I close my eyes and feel the warm breeze on my face and arms. I want to throw my arms up into the air like I’m on a roller
coaster because this is how free I feel. Instead I hang an arm out the window, as if I can catch the night, which is humming and twinkling and whooshing by, and we are part of it.

  And then we are slowing a little and I open my eyes. Miah pulls to a stop and we get out, doors banging shut one after the other, a sound that seems to carry for miles. As he rummages for something in the truck bed, I wait, completely here on this road, the trees behind me, the beach in front of me. Whatever happens, I’m here right now. There is a glow in the sky behind the dunes that must be the moon.

  Miah comes around to where I’m standing, with a backpack and a blanket, as if he’s planning to be gone a long time. I try not to concentrate on the blanket and the image I have of Miah laying me down on it. Then I look at him more closely and he’s wearing these super-short shorts, the kind my mom and dad wore in gym class back in the 1980s.

  “What in the world?”

  He shines his flashlight on them and now I can see they’re a dark camouflage green. “Official shorts of the US Army Rangers. Military grade. Basically, only badasses wear them.”

  “And you.” I smile.

  “Including me.” He smiles. “My work shorts. Better to climb trees with. Better to clear trails with, especially in this heat. Easier to pull off when skinny-dipping.” And then he drops his eyes and lets them linger on my mouth, which causes my heart to do an extra thump-thump. His eyes meet mine again. “Let’s go.”

  Yes, let’s go. Let’s go right now. Let’s go back inside this truck so you can kiss me all over my body or let’s go to the beach and lay that blanket down on the sand….But now he’s walking, and what do you know, the shorts are starting to grow on me.

  We pick our way across the dunes in darkness. When we come to a pool of water that floods our path, reaching up into the long grass on either side, Miah says, “Just a little water left over from the storm. Jump on.” He turns around.