The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  But now I’ve taken a step off the path. It is terrifying, this wilderness. And yet I’m not as lost as I thought I would be.

  You will regret this.

  Like you regret Father? Like you regret me? I ask.

  She doesn’t answer.

  I’ve stopped kissing Hector, and he puts his hand behind my neck. “Are you all right?” he whispers.

  I don’t answer right away. His hand is warm, spare, and steady.

  I want to stay here awhile. I want to stay.

  So I ignore her and answer Hector’s question by pulling the belt loops of his pants toward me. His body, though lighter and thinner now, is still taut and solid. I pull him close until we are hip to hip and his chest covers mine. I want the weight of him on me. It’s such a delicious alternative to the heaviness of the airy sky on my shoulders. Atlas never was so burdened as I have been. It is one thing to hold up the heavens, another thing to resist their alluring call in November.

  He stops kissing me long enough to complain. “I’m squashing you.”

  “Yes,” I say, seeking out his earlobe to live between my lips. Perhaps for a few decades.

  We kiss for hours, it seems. Hector envelops me in his arms as if I might disappear, and I appreciate feeling so precious. I am used to using my other senses—pressure, and temperature, and the rise and fall of the living beings on this island and lake. They’re fine-tuned instruments in my body, though I don’t understand how they work. They simply do.

  So there’s a relief—almost a guilty simplicity—in letting my human form explore this tangled knot we’ve become. My bare legs entwine with his. I pull his shirt over his head so my hands can touch his scars, the ridged and erratic turns on his skin. There are collarbones and gently pulsating carotid arteries nestled between the ropes of neck muscle. Acres of skin I’ve wanted to sense, but hadn’t. And there is his mouth. He is endlessly thirsty for me, and it is astonishing, being needed in such a way.

  Sometime when the moon has arced away from the window and the cabin has become pitch dark, and we’ve stained ourselves with hearth ashes from our tumbling, Hector pushes against the floor, creating space between our bodies. I frown.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  My lips are swollen and I’m half drunk on something that can’t be bottled. I nod.

  “Hungry?”

  I shake my head. It’s a partial lie; I can’t bring myself to put words to what I am.

  “Are you tired?” I ask, in return.

  “No. Are you?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t need to sleep.” His eyes crinkle in puzzlement, and I add, “But I should like to sleep every night if I could sleep with you.”

  He smiles. It’s so genuine and unrehearsed, like some I’ve seen on the island. A slight panic rises within me, a fear that something might blight that smile forever. Something has tried to wrest his happiness away before. He hides whatever it is, though it’s lurking there. I’ve seen it. And I don’t wish for it to return, not yet.

  A strange urge wriggles in my center. I have the oddest desire to give him something. A gift. For the first time in my world, I am worried. Perhaps he won’t like what I have to offer. And the wriggling turns to fear.

  Anda, this is a mistake. You don’t really know what fear is. Don’t invite it in.

  I deliberately turn away from the window and the sky. “I want to take you somewhere.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. Where do you want to go?” He pulls me up but immediately places his hands around my waist. I like them there. “Can you stop time?” he says. His smile is disappearing. “I wouldn’t mind if this night went a little slower.”

  Slower. I don’t really understand, but then again, time has always been on my side. I think to myself, where could I take him, where time stands still?

  This is a mistake.

  I pull him toward the door, leaving her warnings behind us. “I know where we can go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  HECTOR

  This is the last thing I ever expected. I came to this island to survive until my eighteenth birthday. To get away from my uncle and Dad. To not die.

  And I’ve just spent the last few hours rolling around with a girl I can’t keep my hands off. Who I can’t stop kissing. I swear to God, I’m not even the kissing type. Lord knows, I’ve had as much romance in my life as highway asphalt. But I get it now. The stupid songs, and Valentine’s Day, and those idiot kids in the hallway mooning over each other and swallowing each other’s faces between classes.

  I’ve become one of the idiots. And I like it.

  I put on my jacket and boots, and Anda pulls me out the door. She doesn’t think of putting on boots or anything, so I have to reel her back in and remind her. She looks at me wonderingly as I choose an oversize man’s down coat from a hook by the door.

  “Is this your dad’s coat?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  She nods again.

  Anger curls inside my stomach. What kind of father would let his teenage daughter stay on an island alone like this? Especially one like Anda, who isn’t exactly the most practical person in the world (she insists on wearing only a nightgown under the coat).

  Anda looks up at me. “Does your father know you’re here?”

  “No,” I say flatly. I turn to the door to open it. I don’t want to think of her dad, or my dad, for that matter. Not tonight. She seems to be happy dropping the subject of absentee fathers, and steps ahead of me into the darkness. We go down the stone steps and onto the path by the house.

  “Don’t we need a flashlight or something?” I ask.

  “I can see everything,” she tells me.

  She guides me with such assurance that I believe her. We stay on the path by the house but soon take a turn into the untrodden depths of the woods. To our left, between the tree trunks, I see water—it must be Washington Harbor. If I have my bearings right, we’re heading farther west, to the tip of the island. We crunch over dead leaves, pine needles, twigs. Low shrubbery brushes against our legs, and we duck under branches. Anda seems to know this path well. Not once do we detour around any obstacles.

  After a mile or so, I ask her, “Where are we going?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Say something.” Still nothing. “Anything,” I add. The only noise is the sound of our feet crunching on the ground. Normally, I live in silence. It’s a second skin to me. But after being so close to Anda these last few hours, the silence between us is alienating.

  After what feels like five minutes, she starts to talk. “One-point-two billion years ago in the Precambrian Era, extrusive igneous rock formed when lava rapidly cooled after seeping up through the Superior Basin.” She waits for a second, as if the history of this land requires rest, respect, and space. “This basalt formed the bedrock of the area, and through geologic syncline, the rock layers folded, forming the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale.”

  I reach for her hand, and she squeezes it. Her hand is remarkably strong. She goes on to talk about glaciers and pressure, melting ice and lake formation. Geology never sounded so epic as when it came from her lips. Plus, it’s calming. It isn’t about politics or human drama. It’s so beyond everything in my life, it’s soothing.

  We walk on and on. Must be miles, and I’m growing tired. After all, we’ve been up all night long. Dawn starts to break on the horizon, and blue begins to seep into the indigo. The sound of water lapping on the shore is a little louder. Suddenly, the land ends. There’s no rocky beach here. The trees grow almost to the edge of a rounded point of land.

  “There.” Anda points to the water.

  In the growing light of dawn, a white cylinder sticks up out of the water, maybe two hundred feet from shore.

  “What’s under there?” I ask.

  “The America. Born in 1898. It was a steamship and sank in 1928.” She says this wistfully, as if it’s a long-lost friend or part of
a memory that makes her happy.

  “Wow. It’s pretty close.”

  “Let’s get closer,” Anda says, squeezing my hand. She has a slightly feral look in her eye, like she’s suddenly very, very hungry.

  She raises her foot, as if ready to step directly into the water, when I blurt out a protest. “Anda, we don’t have a boat.”

  “Oh.” She plants her booted foot back on the damp shore. “Oh.”

  I wonder how long we’ll stare at that cylinder—I guess it’s a buoy—when the water splashes a little louder far off to our right. There’s a walloping sound of water hitting water, like someone just emptied a barrelful into the lake.

  “What was that?” Waves ripple toward our feet. Thirty feet away, there’s a big log by the shore that wasn’t there before. Or maybe I didn’t notice it. It has a smooth, pointy tip, and then I realize it’s probably not a log.

  “Is that a…”

  “Maybe it is.” She leads me along the shoreline. It turns out to be a really old rowboat. It looks like it used to be painted metal, but rust has taken over and it’s covered with algae. It’s dripping wet. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the lake just spit it out onto the shore. Nearby, a single paddle floats in the water. The handle end is broken, and the shaft is shorter now.

  “You don’t want to actually get in this thing, do you? It doesn’t look very seaworthy.” I’m trying to be all casual, but my spine has gone stiff with worry.

  “It’s fine. I promise.”

  “But—”

  “We’re not going very far out. And the water is so calm.” She gestures out to the lake, and it’s true. It’s glassily serene. By the dim morning light, I can see where the lake bed goes from brown to green to blue as the water deepens farther from shore.

  I figure we can go in the boat and if it’s not safe, we can jump out right away and only risk getting our legs drenched. I push it into the water and Anda sits in the middle, chin high and posture like a stately queen. The broken paddle is hard to use, but it works to get us closer to the little buoy. It’s ridiculously easy to paddle us forward. Anda must weigh nothing, and the boat has no drag. Soon, she’s able to tether a waterlogged rope from the boat to what I now realize is a shipwreck marker for divers. Painted on one side of the cylindrical buoy is the word “WRECK” with an orange diamond underneath.

  “Here she is,” Anda says softly. “One hundred and eighty-four feet long, with a gross tonnage of four hundred and eighty-six tons. Rather accident-prone, she was.”

  The morning light is stronger now. Without any turbulence in the water, we can see several feet down. A greenish bow is only a few feet below the surface, eerily receding into the depths beyond where the lake bed falls away. The surface of the boat is nubbly and irregular, with feathery algae attached, wafting in the mild current. It’s a big boat, which shouldn’t surprise me, but does.

  I’ve never seen a shipwreck before. There was the St. Anne, but I hadn’t seen that one up close. I’ve only seen wrecks in pictures, and they’ve all been of the Titanic when we studied it in history class. But this one is so close, and seeing its bones beneath the water chills me. I think of the people on the ship and how they must have felt when it sank. My spine goes rigid once again, imagining swallowing and choking on gallons of water.

  I stare at the hull. “What was the name of the ship again?”

  “The America.” She smiles faintly.

  “Did anyone die from the sinking?”

  “No humans,” Anda tells me. “A dog was tied to the stern. They didn’t realize it until it was too late.”

  How depressing. I should be happy that lives weren’t lost, but the dog’s death and the ship’s death make me want to crawl under a blanket and hide from everything.

  “Why are you sad?” She climbs over her seat to sit next to me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You wanted to see time stop.”

  “I did. But this isn’t…” I can’t finish my thought.

  “The ship is sad, too,” she says. “She misses her captain. She misses docking at Snug Harbor. She misses her duty.” Anda stops talking to chew on her hangnails. Her eyes are on the hull of the submerged ship. She seems on edge now.

  I turn to her. “Are you clairvoyant or something?”

  She stops biting and twists her head to stare at me. The hangnails on her right fingers are raw and smeared with pink. “If I was, would that be okay?”

  “Fuck, yes.” I say it seriously, then grin widely.

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” I sigh. “I could dig a fairy tale right now. Lord knows I’ve never lived in one.”

  “I’ll tell you one sometime. And you can tell me if you like it.”

  Silence hangs between us for a few moments. And then a wave bumps the boat. More like the water pitches under us. We bobble unsteadily.

  “What the—” I start saying. I have to hold on to the side of the rowboat to keep from tipping out of it. Anda’s eyes grow wide, and she bares her teeth like a dog. Waves seem to be rising straight out from under us. There are no other boats making a wake. I don’t understand what’s happening.

  And then I do. Under the water, the America is moving. Metal groans and screeches against bedrock as it shifts, the bow rising steadily until the algae-covered metal breaks the surface of the water. It nearly hits the side of our little rowboat.

  “What the fuck!” I yell.

  Anda quickly unties the rope from the buoy that is now slack on its chain. She glares at the America, as if it were a misbehaving child. What good that will do, I don’t know, because some sort of earthquake must be happening. I shove the broken paddle into the water and start digging toward shore. Anda keeps glaring, and the earthquake or whatever must be over, because the boat sinks right back down. A sonorous thump jangles my bones as the wreck hits the lake bed, and the resulting huge wake nearly tips us over one last time. I’m covered in sweat, and my stomach is lurching. My heart thumps a frantic tattoo. “Holy shit, what was that?”

  Anda doesn’t answer. She’s clenching her jaw and looks pissed as all hell, as if the seismic event was an insult of some sort.

  “Did you see how the wreck rose up?” I need to calm down. I’m breathing really fast, but Anda still says nothing. Her lack of reaction dumbfounds me. “Anda? Are you okay?”

  Her eyes swivel in a split second to meet mine. She could be made of marble but for the glistening eyes. “No.” Her voice is dead cold and her words, deliberate. “I’m not okay.”

  I try to push down my fear and think. I’ve been keeping track of all the weird shit that’s been happening around her, but there’s been a million excuses to brush them away. I mean, look at her. She’s just a girl. She’s only human. A really weird human with a really messed-up dad.

  I don’t know what to say, so I just row back to shore. This time, she sits in the bow of the boat and looks back toward where the wreck is. She gazes with that unnerving, unblinking stare. The reflection of morning light in her dark eyes moves, like oil on water. When we land, I toss the paddle firmly inland, so it won’t float away. My pants are wet from the splashing. Anda is still chewing on her fingertips and starts walking back toward home, as if she’s totally forgotten that I exist. The shipwreck and the quake have completely changed her mood. She doesn’t seem like the same person who was kissing me for hours only a little while ago, or tugging on my hand like an impatient child.

  I pull the boat a little farther ashore so it’s solidly on land. That’s when I see the gash in the corner, near the stern.

  There was a huge hole in the boat, and I’d never noticed.

  My sweat feels like ice water now.

  I always thought I’d be in danger on this island, because of the cold and the weather, and simple, natural problems, like finding food and water. But it’s the unnatural things here that are going to be the death of me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ANDA

  Seeing the Amer
ica was not a good idea.

  I did not expect Mother to threaten him in such a way, to threaten me through Hector. She’s angry. But I’m angrier. I only wish more than ever to safeguard this precious thing we have, that I have remade for myself. Inside, a ferocity has arisen that I didn’t know was there.

  And I like it.

  I think of Hector, and our kisses, and the scent of his skin that still rises from me, a perfume I’ve never worn before. I wanted to share with him something beyond beauty and time. Something near and dear to my faulty, human heart.

  But there is a problem. The forlorn cries of the drowned ship did nothing but whet my appetite. It’s November 1 now. How could I have lost track of the date? The sinking of the St. Anne was already too long ago. I find that I’m famished again, and the emptiness is consuming me. And Mother’s actions have occupied my mind.

  On the way back to the cabin, I forget several times that I’m with Hector. He calls out to me and clasps my hand. I remember for a moment who and where I am. He steals a kiss and I give it to him, but the haze of his presence is wearing thin—not from irritation, but from a larger presence grinding away at my existence. Like sand and grit against a boulder, it will eventually thin me out until I can’t resist any longer.

  You knew this would happen. You can’t ignore what matters. You can’t ignore me.

  Her voice is clearer now than before, and she’s attempting to sound dulcet, not angry. I’ve been trying not to listen, but there are other things that force me to notice them. The creeping juniper that ought to be evergreen is browning. The old man’s beard lichens, usually hanging aloft in the pines, have fallen in irregular tufts and blow along the trail closer to the cabin.

  But then I think of how the America’s bones saddened Hector. How he sees death with an opposite polarity that I can’t understand. All I only know is that Hector nourishes a side of me that has slept since birth. And I don’t want Hector to hurt.