The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  No, I understand. It’s because I feel the noose tightening. We both do.

  Anda is biting her nails and not even facing the harbor. I hear voices and clanking noises. A dark head pops out of the door that goes to the interior of the vessel. It’s a tall guy. Middle-aged, and big.

  No.

  “I think my uncle is on that boat! Shit,” I hiss.

  Anda just gnaws her nails and stares into a small shrub at her knees, as if it were a crystal ball. “There are two men. They’re looking for us.”

  “You’re not even looking.” She turns to catch my eye with that unnerving, unblinking stare. The reflection of light in her smoky pupils glimmers with an odd iridescence. “Right. Never mind.”

  Soon, she starts working on her fingernails again, clicking on them with her teeth, and she bites off little bits here and there. She goes back to staring at the bush. She actually cocks her head toward it, as if it were transmitting a radio broadcast only she can hear.

  Suddenly, the boat’s engine groans back to life and water bubbles beneath the propellers. The guy who I think is my uncle starts the engine.

  Wait. My uncle doesn’t know how to drive a boat. I shield the sun from my eyes for a better look. This guy standing on the dock has a white beard and glasses. It’s not him, and I sigh so loudly that Anda flinches.

  The bearded guy undoes the lines tethering the boat. He’s got a large backpack with him and a thick winter parka. Two other bags lean against his legs. A fisherman’s knit hat covers his head, but there’s gray hair peeking out of the edges. The boat purrs louder and quickly leaves the dock, trailing a white vee of foamy wake behind it. The bearded man watches it for several minutes as it grows smaller and smaller in the distance.

  “Who is this guy?” I whisper to Anda. “He doesn’t look like police or anything. You think he’s one of those park researchers?”

  Anda removes her raw fingertips from between her lips and looks back over her shoulder. She suddenly jumps to her feet and her mouth drops open.

  “Father!” she cries.

  ...

  I stay in the shadows. Anda runs right out and gallops down the shore, pebbles spitting out from her quick footsteps. She sprints straight to the dock, her feet thumping the planks. Her father doesn’t freak out. Like it’s the most normal thing in the world to encounter your extremely unnatural daughter staying illegally on a deserted island. No exclamations of joy or yells of anger. As she closes the distance the last few feet, he reels back, as if hit by a wall of air. She stops and they just regard each other.

  I hold my breath.

  Thank God the boat is far away now, which means hopefully they can’t see Anda. I watch them talking a little, and her dad leans over to look where I’m squatting in the trees. My heart pumps a little faster. I’ve never met any girl’s father, and this is not ever how I imagined the circumstances would be. Anda turns around and motions for me to come out.

  There’s no running away now. I have to trust her.

  So I force myself to stand up and start moving my legs.

  As I walk along the shore to the dock, I notice that Anda is shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like she’s standing on a red-hot grill or something. She’s not smiling. Neither is her dad. Ah, shit. He stands there and watches me approach. He’s got that white hair like Anda’s, but more wiry. His face is weathered and reddish, with deep lines in his forehead. He looks like he could be her grandfather, rather than a dad. And he’s got those tiny circular wire-rimmed glasses that people from old-fashioned movies used to wear. As my boots creak against the dry boards of the dock, Anda comes to stand by my side.

  “This is my father, Jakob Selkirk.” She gestures awkwardly to him, like she’s only just met him recently.

  I extend my hand to shake his, but he doesn’t take it. He stares at my hand for a moment, like he’s not sure I’m altogether here. I clear my throat. “My name is Hector.”

  “I don’t need to know your name.” His voice sounds like gravel and burning coals mixed together.

  Anda and I immediately exchange glances. This is not good. He looks at me, not unkindly, and rubs his white beard. “You’re not supposed to be here. Your parents and the police are probably looking for you. You need to leave this island, and you need to leave my daughter alone.”

  My stomach bottoms out and lands somewhere on the other side of the world.

  Parents.

  Uncle.

  No.

  I drop my eyes to the dock. God. It’s suddenly oppressively stuffy, like I’m in a coffin, which can’t be possible, surrounded by all the water and trees and sky. He’s going to turn me in. I’m going to have to go back soon. I’ve been here for almost a month. Hungry. Cold. Sick as a dog. Confused as hell, particularly when it comes to Anda. But it’s been paradise.

  I don’t want to go back.

  Don’t make me go back.

  But I don’t have the balls to say it out loud, or to beg. To everyone in the world, I’m just a brat teen who ran away from a generous family member who’s taken me in. There’s no evidence that he’s hurt me. In school, with my social worker, with my foster agency, with Dad—I’m always the bad guy. I’m ungrateful trash.

  Mr. Selkirk turns to his daughter, his eyes taking in her hiking clothing and her newly shorn, mud-caked hair. Worry melts into resignation, and he sighs. It’s like he’s already given up, but I’ve no idea about what.

  “Come on. You both look half starved and dirty as hell. Get your bags.”

  After I run back to get Anda’s backpack she left in the trees, he sets up this portable hanging shower thing so Anda and I can take turns washing off the grime from a week of camping. I guess we’re funky enough that he won’t even get in a boat with us yet. It’s icy cold, but I don’t care. It’s not as bad as diving into the lake, and I’ve done that too many times. Afterward, we walk to the dock.

  “I’ve got food with me,” Mr. Selkirk tells us. “We have to get Anda someplace safe. There’s another boat I can use.”

  We make our way to a smaller boat docked alongside several others farther down shore. After several tries, the engine grumbles to life and he makes me—not Anda—wear a life jacket of blinding fluorescent orange. He steers us out of the bay, then turns up the engine. We hang on to the sides of the boat as the coastline zips by and the lake water sprays our face with an unrelenting, chilled mist.

  Only after we leave the harbor far, far behind, do I realize my mistake: Mr. Selkirk said nothing about keeping me safe.

  Chapter Forty

  ANDA

  The water’s been tempting me, electrifying my skin and inviting me in with an irresistible welcome that’s hard to ignore. But I can’t. Not yet.

  I don’t know what to tell Father. He’s full of questions—I can see it in the wrinkles of his face, driven deeper by concern. But how do I explain it? How do I explain me?

  I could let Mother explain. But she never shows herself to him anymore. She is a memory to Father.

  Luckily, Hector asks questions while I cling to the side of the boat.

  “Where are we going?” he hollers over the engine drone and splashing.

  “Menagerie Island. It’s one of the smaller islands around Isle Royale. The Isle Royale Lighthouse is there, but the house itself has been abandoned for decades. People aren’t allowed to visit. It’s private and out of the way. No one will find you.”

  “When you say ‘you,’ you mean only Anda. Right?”

  “Right,” he hollers. But he doesn’t glance at Hector when he speaks. Father’s eyes meet mine, and I know what he’s thinking. No one sees me, usually. But because of Hector, everything is uncertain. All the rules about me may have changed. Father is afraid. After an hour of the boat bumping us up and down endlessly, I gather my courage. I have to shout my words.

  “Why have you come early?”

  “I heard about the Jenny. One survived.” He clamps his mouth shut, afraid to speak within earshot of Hector. />
  “He knows,” I tell him.

  Father’s shoulders slump. I may have given him the worst news of all. He finally looks at me, his eyes almost hurt.

  “You never leave a survivor on a wreck that small. Never. Something was wrong. I came as soon as the Coast Guard cleared out and the news died down. He has to leave, Anda. He’s a distraction, and he’s dangerous.”

  Dangerous. Father doesn’t mean that Hector might hurt me with a knife or a slap. He’s worried about a different kind of danger. Visitors and park people are on the island half the year when I’m there, and it’s never a problem. They’ve never really seen me. But I have never, ever had meaningful interactions with any human except for Father. I have never been emotionally…compromised.

  Father knows how to be around me. But he can’t know how Hector’s been, or how I’ll react. And by react, he means possibly creating a glacier in a lake that hasn’t seen one for ten thousand years. Or killing an island full of vacationers if I suddenly weep in June.

  “He has to leave,” Father says again.

  Hector doesn’t even try to fight Father’s wishes. He turns away from both me and my father, and stares instead at the shoreline in silence. He’s already miles and miles away.

  It takes almost another full hour before our destination comes into view. By then, I’m boat-weary and my arms are jelly from holding on to the rails for so long.

  Menagerie Island is a small, isolated sliver of bedrock. The jagged, reddish rise is sparsely decorated with a handful of stubborn evergreen trees. An octagonal whitewashed lighthouse proudly juts into the graying sky, next to a two-story brick house.

  Lighthouses make my skin crawl.

  I wonder at why my father brought me here. There are lots of lone islands sprinkled around Isle Royale. Perhaps he chose Menagerie Island because of its particular remoteness, knowing that no one comes here anymore. You even need a telephoto lens to see it from the nearest passing ferry. Or…maybe my father is trying to punish me somehow. He knows how lighthouses and I get along. Which is to say, we don’t.

  “Why Menagerie Island?” I ask him.

  Father quiets the motor and we drift over shallow aqua water in the gathering dusk. The water is so clear, you can see the architecture of stone beneath it, solid and unchangeable after a millennium. The boat bottom scrapes against stone as Father heaves a plow-shaped anchor overboard.

  I climb out onto a stony beach only fifteen feet long, flanked by boulders coming straight out of the lake bed along the edges of the island. Hector and I carry our bags and climb the hill up to the red house, only twenty feet away. While Hector carefully steps back down to help my father with the rest of his satchels, I introduce myself to the buildings.

  The lighthouse is still working. I know this, because I’ve seen its bright beam penetrating ten miles into the night’s darkness. No lighthouse keeper is needed anymore; the weather and isolation successfully pushed them away. No hearts beat here to keep ships from crashing. Only a solar-charged battery. But this doesn’t quell my bad feeling. The lighthouse itself is a mighty force. After all, good intentions were mixed into the mortar and laid with each red sandstone brick.

  When I tread around its base carefully, I repeatedly trip on nothing. And when I touch the painted brick, a thin curl of peeling paint tries to slice my fingertip. It’s unhappy with my presence. It doesn’t care that I’ve kept things alive on Isle Royale for much of the year. It only knows what I’ve done in November, what my sisters have done. To the lighthouse, I am the enemy.

  “Let’s go inside,” my father says as he and Hector carry the bulk of our bags with them. For a moment, Father stands silhouetted against the setting sun, a melting, oozing yolk around his shoulders. He sees me hesitating. “Don’t worry, Anda. The house won’t bite.”

  Ha. Don’t be so sure, I want to say.

  Before I step forward, he looks over his shoulder to make sure Hector has rounded the corner. He drops his voice.

  “Are you okay, Anda?”

  I blink. I don’t know how to answer that.

  “Did he harm you?”

  My eyes flicker up and I study Father’s face. There are visions in his head that I can’t get to, but I sense the sick, unchaste thoughts that worry him. I don’t have words for them, but whatever they are, those particular evils have not touched my skin. As if Hector were even capable of such things. As if anyone had that kind of power over me. “Of course not.”

  But I wait for the rest of his question, fearful. Anda, did you harm him? But he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t care, perhaps. I’m relieved that I don’t need to answer.

  We round the house on the east side. A metal shack rests against the narrow passageway from the house to the lighthouse, where the acetylene used to be stored, back when the lights burned on fuel. Half the windows are covered up with white-painted metal, and the house looks like one of those old-timey cartoon characters, with dead white circles for eyes, all agog as we attempt to break in.

  “How are we going to get inside?” Hector asks. “I have a knife. We can use a rock, maybe, to knock off the doorknob.”

  “Or we could use the key,” Father says dully, and fishes a ring of keys from his pocket.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask quietly.

  “This island belongs to Isle Royale. The park management keeps a set of keys for emergencies, and I volunteer for them every year. I took it from the office safe.”

  He unlocks the door and opens it with a creak. The smell of dust and dampness frowns upon us, and Father leans down to turn on a portable lamp. Dim light shows we are in a hallway that leads to four small rooms. Dust is strewn over thick, warped wooden floorboards underfoot. None of the rooms is furnished, and the bare brick walls ooze with coldness and anger.

  Keeping my hands and arms close to my body (I’m afraid I’ll get nipped if I reach out too far), I find the only staircase. I take a few tentative steps up to see the half story above, claustrophobic beneath the gabled roof. I don’t like it, and scoot back downstairs quickly.

  “C’mon. Sun’s going to set soon. We should try to eat and then go to sleep.”

  “And then?” Hector asks.

  “Right now, you’re the last person who should be asking questions,” he says gruffly, and shuts the door behind us, encasing us in gloom.

  ...

  There’s a working fireplace, so we put the tiny cooking apparatus there and Hector gets to work making a pot of reconstituted beef stew, while I make sweet tea for everyone with the first pot of boiled water. Father watches me set the enamel plates and pour the tea—not too bitter, not too light. He seems shocked at the things I’ve learned in such a short period of time. Almost hurt.

  When I hand him a steaming cup, he says, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say back, pleased at my good manners. And once again, Father stares like he doesn’t recognize me.

  At first, nobody speaks the questions we all have. We know the answers will come in time, but I’m terrified of them. Of what Hector might learn about me. We sit around the fireplace for a long time.

  The truth is—I’m not really that hungry. Not for food. But I want my actions to soothe Hector with normalcy, and I want my father to see what I can become. Acting is a respite, somehow. Not having to be myself. I’m trying to convince anybody that I can be like this, or stay like this. The truth is—I don’t know what I want.

  I do.

  “Shhh…” I say.

  “What is it?” Hector asks, reaching to put a hand on my back. Father sees every movement we make, even in the low light of the flaming cooking fuel.

  “It’s the wind. It’s rising.”

  From outside, it begins as a low, shuddering moan. It shivers through the eaves of the roof, winds its way down the chimney and curls around my feet, like a lost kitten. It’s missed me, as I’ve missed it.

  Now that I’m no longer in the interior of the island, now that I’m sitting on nothing but a rise of rock in the
lake, it’s become impossible to ignore Mother. My vision blurs a little. I can’t concentrate and be the Anda I’ve been lately with Hector. There is insistent buzzing in my ears. I shake my head, but it refuses to be ignored.

  Father cocks his head, listening to the rising wind. “I think there’s a draft coming in from the roof. We should try to fix it, in case a storm comes.” He clears his throat. “Anda, I would love some more tea. Maybe you could make us some, while Hector and I check it out?”

  I nod, my eyes wide with understanding. As they exit the room and their footsteps creak up the groaning staircase, I wrap my arms around myself. My teeth chatter uncontrollably.

  I know what’s coming. Father is going to tell Hector everything. Hector will tell Father everything, too.

  And then I’ll lose them both.

  Chapter Forty-One

  HECTOR

  When I follow Mr. Selkirk upstairs, I know it’s going to be bad.

  What I want to hear and what I’m going to hear will be so different. The fact that I’m not already with the police is a good sign, but reality has been slowly shoving itself under my fingernails, forcing me to notice. Mr. Selkirk knows I’m here. And time is not on my side. Nothing is ever on my side. Every day that goes by could be the day the police figure out where I am, a day that my uncle will have me under his thumb again. I think of Anda, but how long can all this last? I already know the answer. And it makes me greedy for every single minute I have before it’s all gone.

  The upper floor has an annoyingly low ceiling, and cobwebs shroud the beams above, undulating from an unseen force. I hunch over to avoid smacking my head on the beams and put my hand out to feel the air current.

  “There’s definitely a draft here,” I say. Because I have to say something.

  “Yes. It’s an old, old house. Built in eighteen seventy-five. Good bones, though.” He walks to the window, barred with metal, and runs his thick, scarred fingertips against the welded edges. “Like many things on Isle Royale, it will outlive us all.”