by Lydia Kang
Oh. Sometimes, I’m too good at what I do. I loosen my fist, ever so gently. The wind picks up immediately and brings with it the real temperature I’ve kept at bay, somewhere around thirty degrees of good, late October Isle weather. It hits Hector square in the back and he shivers violently.
“Whoa. Brrrr. Holy cheezits, where did that come from?”
I open the door to the tent a little wider and smile. “Come in. There’s just enough room for the two of us.”
Wicked witch, I am.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
HECTOR
She can’t possibly be inviting me in for that. Memories issue forth, as if they happened a million years ago—from the first night we kissed. A lot of kissing. Is this what she’s inviting me in for? Turns out, what she wants is way more intimate.
She wants me to talk.
She’d asked me about my dad while we were walking. And now that we’re squished in side by side, she asks again. “Tell me about your father.”
I don’t know why she cares. All I know is that the reason I’m here is so that I can leave him, my uncle, and my mother behind. Far, far behind. I can choose to talk about them on my own terms, or never ever again. Which is why I’m pissed that she’s insisting on this. I don’t want to be the thing that distracts her from herself. I don’t want to be the magical, broken boy who heals all her own problems. Maybe it’d be better to be in the freezing cold out there.
I stare at the tent seams, being puffed tight by the wind outside. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” she says, which is also infuriating. Satisfying her idle curiosity is not my responsibility. I already told her enough as it is, about how I’m constantly feeling torn by who and what I am. I cross my arms and close my eyes, hoping she’ll drop it, when she says, “No, I do know. Because you’re wearing this thing, like a cloak. It’s so heavy. Sometimes, it looks like you can’t even breathe.”
Silence, and then…
I exhale loudly.
The silence cracks with hoots and laughs, from both of us. After we catch our breaths, she sighs.
“I won’t hurt you.” She pauses and thinks. “I won’t hurt you like that,” she adds. God. What does she mean? That she won’t tear me to pieces or drown me in my sleep? Or psychologize me to death? She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve no right to ask. I’ve no right.” She turns onto her side to face me, and the curve of her hip makes her sleeping bag rise in the middle. She uses her hands, palms together, as a pillow. Just like a child. “Good night, Hector.”
“Good night, Anda.”
Her breathing becomes regular, and I feel the warmth of her body next to mine, while the bitter cold seeps in through the wall of the tent on the other side. A weird gradient of death and life.
And in the middle of it is me. One guy, trapped on an island with a beautiful girl who’s willingly one millimeter away, and he’s just given her the emotional Heisman for the night.
I suck.
...
“Come with me.”
“Wha—?”
I only now realize I finally did fall asleep. It’s still dark out. Pitch-black. Anda is nudging my ribs insistently and tugging at my wrist.
“Come,” she says again. “The clouds are leaving. I want to show you something.”
My body feels like it’s been squashed by a Mack truck. My legs are sore, and I’m still so exhausted. After all, I’m barely over being sick, and we just hiked all day. But Anda won’t take no for an answer. She tugs and tugs, and I wipe my sleep-heavy eyes and crawl out of the tent, groaning. She leads me slightly out of the campground to a higher elevation. She’s taking me to the peak of Sugar Mountain at what, midnight?
“Look,” she says. Her head is back and she’s gazing at the sky. I look, too, but it’s still wispy with a film of gray.
“It’s cloudy.”
“Oh, wait.”
She sweeps her arm overhead, as if she were polishing the sky with her palm. When I look up again, it’s clear. Holy shit, not just clear.
A wave of incandescent green and purple is smeared across the sky in a thick ribbon.
“Is that…?”
“Yes. The aurora borealis. It’s caused by a collision of solar wind and magnetospheric-charged particles in the thermosphere.”
“Right. That.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once,” I say. “When I was a kid.”
We just stare at the unearthly color for a long, long time. She slips her fingers into mine, and I tighten my grip on her hand. It’s so small, so thin. She shivers a little, and I pull her closer. Seeing this thing reminds me of how alone I am. Of how alone I could be, if I wanted.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the aurora shift. It reaches the horizon, and the ribbon of color changes just so. It looks like a figure, standing on the edge of the universe.
It’s absolutely stunning.
I glance at Anda, wide-eyed, giving her an Are you seeing what I’m seeing look.
Anda sees it. She frowns. It’s not beautiful to her, whatever it is. When I look back, it’s just the same thick ribbon of light in the sky again. I rub my eyes. What the hell?
“Did you—” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“It’s getting colder. You’re tired. We should go back.”
We crawl back into the tent. It doesn’t seem quite as cold now, so we lie on top of our sleeping bags. Anda throws her leg casually over mine and closes her eyes, once again using her sandwiched hands as a pillow. I watch her until her breaths come shallow and regular. She’s dead asleep.
I wait for what feels like another ten or fifteen minutes, just watching her. Her eyelashes are a dark fringe, and her eyeballs zigzag occasionally as her slumber deepens. I wonder what she dreams of. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.
I take a few huge, deep breaths. And then I whisper, “My father is six feet, four inches tall. He loves sportfishing, building model airplanes, and criticizing Hollywood war movies.” I lower my voice. “And he hates that I was ever born.”
Anda doesn’t move. She’s still unconscious, and I don’t know whether to be glad or sad that she didn’t hear me. But just as I start to drift off, I take one last sleepy glance at her face and see something shiny.
A wet streak on her face. And yet she’s still sleeping. How odd.
I don’t wake her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ANDA
Something in him broke open that night. I felt it as I slept. As we continue to hike the Greenstone Ridge that day, we barter back and forth. I tossed him the first morsel, climbing the dirt trail flanked by browning ferns. Casual as it seemed, I had aimed with a sure hand.
“My father was born in Canada, of Scottish and Spanish descendants. He came to the Isle in his forties. He met my mother and fell in love.”
And then Hector, tentative at first, offered this.
“He sends me one letter every six months. He always uses a fountain pen with blue ink.”
Every taste of information, I swallow whole. I start to know the seams of his life, the scents and textures of what it means to be cinched into his skin. His favorite cigarettes (Pall Mall, because they were always at the corner store near his mother’s apartment in Seoul). How he thinks macaroni and cheese has the unfortunate texture of glue. How he hates his thick, unruly curly hair.
The only things he seems to like are those most likely to kill him. I neglect to say that the things I like are the ones most likely to kill everyone else.
Sometimes the truths we shared were half hidden. Like mine.
“Father’s fingernails are always dirty. He hates to kill fish. He always forgives me.” But I don’t tell him what I’m being forgiven for. And Hector hides, too.
“He refuses to discipline me.”
Then who does?
“He trusts my uncle.”
But Hector doesn’t.
“He thinks he’s a good parent.”
He’s ruined this boy.
In Hector, there is something bitter, oily, and bubbling deeper below. A poison that he hasn’t mentioned yet. Neglect only partly injures; it’s what takes its place and fills the void that defines the impact. It has bloomed in the scars of his arms. I’m afraid to touch them, because I fear the familiarity. There’s a darkness that simmers deep within me, too.
Three days into our hike, Hector fishes in one of the streams off the trail. I think of his scars. In the shade of some spindly red oaks, I watch him cast and bring in our lunch. He motions for me to wait, so I squat under the shade and regard the knife he left there with his other tackle.
It is a large blade, with a jagged, toothy edge near the hilt for sawing branches. The tip is getting a little dull from usage. Perhaps it isn’t sharp enough. I push my palm against the edge to test it.
“Stop!” Hector rushes up to me, his face distraught. He’s tossed the fish and gear behind him. “What are you doing?”
This upsets Hector. I should stop. I move to drop the blade, but in standing up, the jagged edge skitters against my wrist by accident.
The pain is sharp, almost an itching sensation. I watch the red seep through the thin line, brighter than the bunchberry clusters by the trails in the summer. It’s beautiful, the scarlet against my smudged skin. Life, rising up against all odds. It is destruction and creation, all at once. And then I understand something that I didn’t understand before. I drop the knife to the moss. Hector kneels at my side.
“It’s only a shallow cut. It’ll heal okay,” he says.
“I know.”
He rinses the cut with clean water from his bottle, which stings. Hector stays quiet afterward. He’s troubled by my small wound.
It makes him think of himself.
Hector and I don’t speak of my cut for the rest of our trip. We’ve been dancing around the darkness of ourselves this whole time, like fingertips over a flame, promising a burn but always just out of reach. But not for long.
I’m learning this now. The less of myself exerted on the lake and the island, the more they fill the void—asking, needing, wanting. And lately, acting. The next morning, I sit down after breakfast and tune in to the NOAA weather station on the little radio.
Temperatures dropping to thirty degrees or less
Storm-force winds are expected, with winds forty knots or above
Very high seas on the coastal waters
I did not know about this storm coming within two days. It’s a big one. And it frightens me that I’m being kept in the dark now. I’ve seen other signs, too, that Hector’s all-too-human eyes haven’t. Ruddy Russula mushrooms sprouting monstrously from a dead fox that was perfectly healthy and shouldn’t be dead. Blue flag irises growing when the temperature is dropping. Splashes of warm summer rain in the middle of a night with freezing temperatures. And a murder of ravens—bare-fleshed, tangled in the skeletons of black ash trees.
This is all my fault. But this is what I wanted. It is what I chose, isn’t it?
“I guess we better hike a little faster,” Hector comments casually, but concern fills his eyes. The sky is thankfully still benign, with a loose, stippled pattern of clouds in the troposphere. “Those don’t look very dangerous,” he says, pointing.
Mother enjoys making these for me. She knows how I love them.
“Altocumulus stratiformis translucidus undulatus,” I tell him.
“Gesundheit? I’m sorry, what?”
I smile. “You’re right. Those clouds won’t bother us.” Though the sky is everywhere, I can’t help but feel like it’s trying to sneak up on me.
Hector and I don’t need to be told that a flimsy tent is not much shelter in a storm. At night, we cling to each other for very unsentimental reasons. He hasn’t kissed me since before his illness. We have, however, been chilled to the bone. Over the last two days, the cold has been seeping in through the protective wall I keep around us. Like water dripping inevitably between the crevices of a cupped hand, it finds its way through.
I know now that it is the inevitable result of being more human. There is so much less under my control. How do humans stand being tossed about so by nature, like ants in a deluge? And here I am, becoming one of those ants now.
It would be better if I could speak to Mother about this, but we’d both know what I was asking for. Bargaining. You can’t bargain with such things. Trees and clouds and lakes make no exceptions, ever, for anyone.
Finally, we are only hours away from reaching Rock Harbor, our destination. Hiking along Tobin Harbor’s rocky trail, we’re filthy, hungry, and exhausted. Our limbs have hardened from the walking but are slimmer and sparer, like spindly, strong moose legs.
“I can’t wait to find out what the camp store there has,” Hector comments. “I’d be happy if I never saw another roasted fish for the rest of my life. But I guess we’ll find enough packaged food to last until May.”
“Why May?”
“That’s when I turn eighteen. It’s when the first ferry comes back here. No one will be looking for me then. My uncle can’t claim me as his foster kid anymore. I’ll be an adult. I’ll be free.”
He says it so simply, without restraint. He’s forgotten that he never told me this plan. The world shrinks down and becomes very, very small. It takes Hector a full minute to realize that I’ve stopped walking.
He jogs back to me and searches my face. “Hey. Hey. Are you okay?”
I look up. “You’re leaving the island.”
“Well, yeah. I can’t live here forever. Neither can you. We’re barely surviving, and we could be arrested if they find us here, anyway. I’m leaving as soon as I can catch a ferry back to the mainland.” He adds, only too late, “We can go together. If you want.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Sure you can.”
“My father…” I gesture helplessly. “The island…” I add, which doesn’t help.
“Well, how old are you? Do you have to stay with him?” And then it arrives, the question he’s been holding carefully, ever since I first saw him on the island. “What are you doing here?”
How do I answer this, if at all? It takes a monumental effort to push the air past my throat, shape the words like clay through my teeth, under my soft palate. I should be thankful he didn’t stop at what are you.
“I have to be here.”
“Why?”
“This is where I belong.”
“But you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” His hands form fists. “You can fight it, what you are. You already are.”
“But you didn’t fight. You ran away.” I cover my mouth, shocked at the venom in my words.
He freezes, all but his face, which contorts with anger. “What the hell, Anda! You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”
I stop myself from the obvious reply: You don’t understand what it’s like to be me, either. But all that comes out is a muffled cry of discontent. The wind rises to meet my cry. It revels in my misery.
Be upset, Anda. Be unhappy.
“I don’t need this,” Hector says. “I’ve been punished enough.”
“No.” No, no, no. It’s me. It’s only ever been me who deserves punishment. But even now, I can’t say it out loud. I raise my eyes to him. His hair is so thick and curly, his dirtied face hurt and filled with exasperation. Off the right of the dirt trail, Tobin Harbor lies quietly, listening with quiet acceptance over my unsaid transgressions.
Something white reflects the sun. A boat in the harbor.
“Oh!” I exclaim.
Hector reels around, looking for what’s startled me. In the harbor, the boat is cruising a hundred meters away. A forty-one-foot Hatteras. My mouth waters.
They are looking for Hector. I know it.
“They must be searching for you, Anda,” Hector says. “Why else would they be here?”
“Looking for you?”
“I didn’t leave a trail here.”
“Everyo
ne leaves a trail,” I say, and he withers at my words, like I’ve struck him, backhanded. I try to settle myself down. Reason. I need reason. “Anyway, researchers come by sometimes to count the moose and wolves, or examine any dead animals. They go to Mott Island, or stay in Windigo. Maybe it’s them.”
He still stays silent. Finally, he starts down the dirt trail, letting his words find me in his wake.
“Well, we have no food left. We can hide off-trail when we get closer to Rock Harbor and see if they’re looking for us. Maybe you’re right. Maybe they’re just researchers.”
“Yes. Just researchers.” I love how easy it is to say the words that don’t tell the truth.
The truth is, it is November fifteenth.
The truth is, I’m struggling to live within Hector’s reality, as it has been on the island. I’ve forced and fit myself into his world. But more people means more realities smothering me. I don’t know if I can conform into their neat categories. The boxes, as Hector calls them.
I know who is on the boat.
And I know what else is coming.
I’ve felt the cracking of my edges. A craving has been boiling just under the surface, after being shushed like a dog at her master’s feet. So as Hector walks quietly ahead of me, I close my eyes for a moment and listen to the voice I’ve been desperately trying to shut out. The air around me caresses my cheeks, telling me to do what I must.
Yes, yes. Come back to Mother, Anda.
And my father would fear me. As he always has. Fear is tiring.
So is deceit.
Stop trying so hard, Anda.
Anda Selkirk doesn’t exist. At least, not in their world.
I trot to catch up to Hector, who’s already so far ahead, I can barely see him for the trees.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
HECTOR
We hide in a grove of trees fifty yards away from the Rock Harbor main dock. The buildings stand there quiet and deserted, and the white boat we’d seen is now moored. At first, there’s no one in sight. Anda is acting twitchy and weird, and I remember our recent conversation with a sinking feeling. I don’t know what she’s running from, but I shouldn’t have been so hard on her. I don’t need her explanations. I never did. I don’t know why I demanded them.