The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “What things?” I ask, warily.

  But it’s a long time before he answers me. “Tomorrow, I’m going to clean up the mess that you two left on the island. I’ll take the blame for any damage or stolen goods. Anda will stay here, just in case. And then you’ll go back to your parents.”

  “I don’t have parents.” The lie is easier than the truth, and it has the same effect anyway. Pity.

  “You must have left someone behind.”

  “My uncle,” I say, without looking him in the eye.

  “Your uncle, then. He must be missing you.”

  I bite my tongue, hard enough to feel pain in the core of my stomach.

  The month my dad arranged for me to live with him, my uncle sat me down and patted me on the back. This was when I was easier to take care of, when he was easier to love. Before.

  “We’re alike, you and me.”

  My English wasn’t too good then. I just stared, wide-eyed, at how a guy who could pass for white could be anything like me. He’d told me about his white mom, who’d died of diabetes a few years ago. How amazing my grandpa was, though a stroke wiped him out around the same time. How weird it was, sometimes, to be half one thing, half another, and neither at the same time.

  “Half, half,” I’d said.

  “Yeah. Two halves don’t always make a whole.”

  I didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. He never brought it up again. I wish he had. It might have offset his tirades about my mother. The more problems I caused, the more he’d curse her for doing such a shit job of being a mother and dumping me on him. He never said anything about Dad being at fault. I always thought it was because he loved his brother.

  I don’t think it had anything to do with love.

  “Hector? Did you hear what I said?” Mr. Selkirk asks.

  I remember where I am. “Sorry. What?”

  “I can’t risk someone finding out a person is hiding here.”

  My shoulders sag. “I can’t go back to my uncle.” How can I say why, without having to actually say it? After almost five minutes of silence, all I can manage is, “I can’t go back.”

  His boot digs at the planks by the wall, but he’s been listening intently to my silence. He sighs. “Where are you from?”

  “Duluth.” I don’t have the heart to lie this time.

  “I’ll take you to Michigan instead.” He points at me. “That’s all I can offer. If anyone asks me, I’ll say I thought you were an adult. I have to make sure they don’t find Anda.”

  “Then why did you leave her here?” I shoot back.

  He spins around. “I didn’t leave her here. She chose to stay.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her!” I almost yell, before I realize that Anda is probably listening through the floorboards.

  “Let her? She chose this. And you chose to stay on the island, too.”

  “I had no choice!”

  “Neither did I,” he growls back.

  “That’s pure and utter bullshit.”

  Mr. Selkirk rounds on me and for a second, he’s absolutely terrifying. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. I would do anything to protect her. Anything. If that means dragging you back to Duluth and handing you to the police, then I’ll do it. So don’t push me. I may not know how best to care for her. God knows, I’ve tried. But I know some things. And I know you have to leave.”

  “But—”

  “Stop!” Mr. Selkirk points at me. “God in heaven, you don’t understand. It’s not just about her. I’m protecting you, too. Don’t you see? She isn’t the only thing on this island—on this lake—that can kill you.”

  What am I not seeing? What is he not telling me? He starts to descend the stairs when I call out. “Wait. Tell me, then.”

  “No.”

  As he takes the rest of the stairs down, I realize his words don’t quite fit together in my head.

  I think of the visions of things I’ve seen, but not seen. The figure in the aurora borealis. The skull in the water.

  I think of the wind pelting me with rocks ever since I stepped on the island. The fact that Anda seems to be listening to someone else all the time, and it’s not me.

  The air is even colder in the stairwell as I run down the steps. Wind is rattling the shutters. Anda squats by the fire, her eyes huge and fixed on the flames. She looks terrified. She must have heard everything. Her father is sitting in the corner on an overturned storage box, watching the shadows from the flames dance across the floor.

  I head for the door and open it.

  “Where are you going?” Mr. Selkirk barks at me.

  Anda’s eyes take me in and she inhales, as if to capture a breath to last a lifetime.

  The wildest theory pings around in my head. Maybe all the starvation has made my brain malfunction. But if this is the only way I’m going to get answers, then so be it. And if I end up on Michigan’s shoreline, maybe that’s meant to be, too.

  I run out the door and down to the rocky shore of Menagerie Island, while Anda’s father yells at me to come back, what am I doing, have I lost my mind?

  Anda says nothing.

  The boat is right where we’ve left it. I pull the anchor in with a huge swing of metal and clanking chain, and turn on the engine. I don’t know a thing about boats, but I’m going to learn.

  Right now.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ANDA

  I know exactly what he’s going to do.

  It’s a test. An offering.

  He’s looking for the truth beyond us alone. He’s searching for Mother.

  Ah, take it, Anda. Take it, or I will. How can you say no, when it’s bestowed so willingly?

  Father runs out the door and brings the lamp. I move to follow him and he stops me with an outstretched hand.

  I gaze at him with my eyes wide open, seeing everything. Knowing everything. “Don’t pretend to stop me. You know you cannot,” I remind him.

  Father shrinks in my presence. The terror that he always hides behind his eyes comes forth, a watery, soft energy that’s far too easy to push aside. I step past him and into the dark. I hear the boat motoring away. Hector is no sailor; he hasn’t turned on the navigation lights so there is nothing but darkness and sound in his wake. Father can no longer see him.

  Mother, however, knows exactly where he is.

  And I know, too.

  I’ve stayed away from the water for so long that the lure of the boat is almost too much to endure. The buzzing in my ear that bothered me before clears as I turn my full attention to the water. The lake is alive with life, pulsing in hearts afloat, all scattered across 31,700 square miles of Lake Superior. My blood hums with the purity of knowing.

  Winds at twenty knots. Eight-foot seas on the coastline.

  Twenty boats are alive on the lake. Two tugs. Three lake freighters holding forty thousand tons of goods between them—two lakers and one saltie. The rest are crumbs, little powerboats and sailboats taking a foolish night ride to enjoy the stars on the lake.

  Romantics. Easier for the taking.

  That’s my girl.

  But I don’t want them.

  I want Hector.

  I know exactly where he is. The small powerboat is tantalizingly close by. He’s running away yet again.

  He doesn’t know exactly where to go, except away from the spinning beam of our lighthouse. He has no idea what risk he’s put himself in.

  Even now, he’s already thinking his own decisions that brought him to the island were wrong, and hasty, and everything the matter with his life has come to this. Testing a girl and the greater unknown, using his life as bait. He’s realizing how much he doesn’t value what he owns, the very lifeblood that pulses like syrup through his wind-chilled limbs.

  He knows, Anda. He suspects all. So sink him, or I shall do it myself. He’s only a pebble in your shoe.

  I nod. I know what I must do. He’s looking for Mother, for answers, and she’ll do worse than reveal herself if I do
n’t stop him. I could stop him, too. I could end this boy, end everything that brought him here. Like blinking in the sun, it would be too easy. I take a deep breath of the November air. There’s incoming rain skulking across North Dakota, gaining momentum. The shoreline comes to meet me as I step down toward the ink-black water slapping against the rocks under my feet.

  I splay my fingers out and feel the current thrumming in my arms. I can make an undertow with a kiss on the wind. This has to stop, because he knows.

  Father has always said that he’s the only one who can carry the burden of the truth. Anyone else wouldn’t understand. They’d try to hurt me. They’d try to destroy me. People always destroy what they fear. But Hector isn’t doing that; he’s trying to hurt himself. I remember when he was sick, so sick, that everything that came out of his mouth was a puzzle.

  “Pain is so easy. It’s what we do best.”

  Hector hurts himself. I hurt others. But pain doesn’t have to be the only thing we are capable of creating. It cannot be.

  Mother is pulling him out farther, trying to keep him out of my reach. She has stalled the motor, and Hector curses with despair more than anger. He looks around to the dark void, the lighthouse winking too far away in the distance. Rapidly, she tows it. Now the boat is moving on its own accord, away from me, and away from the safety of land. Mother pulls downward at the same time, and gallons of icy water pitch into the boat, half flooding it.

  Hector is terrified.

  He gave himself. It’s over, Anda. There is no choice.

  Choice.

  It’s what humans possess, and buy, and sell in both vast and minuscule quantities. And nature? A tree doesn’t choose to be burned, nor does it choose to fall and kill the life beneath it in an instant.

  There are no choices in nature.

  But half of me is born of my father.

  I raise my hands, palms up. Extending my fingers just a little, I reach far, far into the lake water and try to force the cold air away from him, but something’s wrong. The air around him stays too cold. Mother’s watery fist is curled around the boat’s bow, but I try to slither under her grip to take the boat for my own. She tightens her hold and pulls the craft away from me, too easily.

  Anda, don’t.

  I don’t understand. I can’t seem to get any sort of purchase on the boat, and it’s filling rapidly with water. My eyes shut, squeezing tight with concentration. It takes every muscle of my body, tensed, to grip the waterlogged vessel. Even so, panting with exertion, I feel like I’m on the cusp of it slipping away.

  I twist the tide into a rope to help me. But where I was once a conductor in such a scenario, it’s as if I must play all the instruments now, simultaneously, and it’s exhausting. I’m still so weak; the hiking and food and Hector have changed me, so much. But not for the better, and not forever. It’s only introduced new ways to weaken me.

  Anda, don’t!

  But there’s enough of my old self to firm my grip and pull him the final hundred yards to shore. She can’t fight what I’ve already won, though barely. When the waterlogged craft lands with a crested wave onto a flat stone of the beach, my father hollers. This is enough to free him from his fear, and he carries the lamp with him as Hector trips and falls out of the boat onto dry land.

  He just kneels there, gasping. He’s been hyperventilating since the motor stalled, and with good reason. Triangles of light through the punched tin partitions of the lamp mark his wet skin and soaked pants. He shivers violently. After a few minutes, he stands up and refuses Father’s offer to help him up.

  He won’t look at either of us. We stand there, a trio on the brink of something that will change everything, waiting for his sentence to ring out.

  “I’ll go back to the mainland without a fight,” he whispers. “I promise. If you swear you’ll tell me everything.”

  Mother brings a soft breeze that caresses us all.

  Do you understand the worst thing about making choices? There are consequences.

  ...

  I wait outside while Hector and my father go in the house. I think of the ordinary tasks that must happen. They comfort me, almost as much as a soothing low barometric pressure.

  He’s changing out of his cold clothes.

  Father puts on water to boil for a hot drink.

  They find two crates to sit on, flanking the fire.

  But that’s all I can imagine. These are the limitations I have; the bit of normal life I’ve had only carries me so far. Want and need grate at my heart, making it beat erratically. It’s not in tatters, not yet. But it’s growing more ragged by the hour. What do I want? Still, even now, I’m not fully sure.

  But I do know that I’m not capable of hurting Hector.

  That’s a lie. Now you’re capable of more hurt than you can even begin to fathom.

  I stare out at the darkness of the water, the oily black sky. I know she isn’t trying to upset me. She only tells me truths that I need to hear.

  After a stretch of fifteen long minutes, I knock on the door. It creaks open, and Hector’s face meets mine.

  “May I come in now?”

  “He wants to talk to me, alone. We’re going to the lighthouse for a while. We’ll be back soon.”

  Of course. No one could explain it better than Father. He was there in the beginning, before there was an Anda of flesh. He can tell the whole story, without me and my clumsy attempts at kneading words into useful sentences. And it makes perfect sense to go to the lighthouse—the one place on this island that I’m loath to follow. It hurts my teeth just to know they’ll be climbing that iron staircase soon.

  I wait another hour. Then I open the door to the house. They’ve already gone. The room inside is empty, and the light from the camp stove is dead.

  I shed the boots and the clothing that were never anything but a disguise. I find a white eyelet nightgown in my bag—one of my favorites, with the hem so frayed and worn that its softness lulls me with familiar comfort.

  And then I walk to the lake. It’s been too long. Any energy I had, I used bringing Hector to shore. I’ve never been so drained. The jealousy of the wind and air has settled into neutrality that relieves me. They’ll let me pass without more bickering. The coming storm hasn’t arrived yet, but there’s enough energy in the depths to nourish me just a little. I’ve spent entire weeks in the water in November, but during this month, I’ve never spent so much time on land before. It has taken a toll.

  And I’m finding that it’s a toll I simply can’t pay.

  I’ve been trying to ignore the consequences of turning away from my witch side. But the island tugs and heaves with rot where there ought not be decay, wheezes in unblinking awakeness when it should be resting. And my own hunger is becoming something I’m terrified will be uncontrollable. Around Hector or Father, I might commit something so monstrous, it would fracture me forever.

  I have to be one Anda. I cannot live in halves or quarters or broken pieces. How? How am I going to do this?

  Come to me, Anda.

  I hate her. I love her.

  But I cannot say no, not right now. And so, with water in my eyes, I answer the call.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  HECTOR

  Teeth chattering, I change into a spare set of clothes. Mr. Selkirk unzips my sleeping bag so I can wear it as a blanket around my shoulders. He pours out two steaming enamel mugs of hot tea and hands one to me. When I stop shivering, he grabs the lamp and tilts his head to the darkened corridor. “Let’s go.”

  I follow him through the house to the back. A narrow covered passageway leads to the door of the lighthouse. Inside, a metal spiral staircase climbs the interior of the octagonal walls. As I start up the steps, my hand goes to touch the sandstone bricks. Two crowded windows of thick glass reveal nothing outside.

  “How tall is this thing?” I ask, wanting to say something. Anything.

  “About sixty feet or so. Walls are double-built. Pretty solid.”

  We’ve
only gone about ten steps, but my legs are already fatigued from climbing. The lack of food has taken a toll. I try to hide my huffing and puffing once we’re halfway up. The staircase spirals narrower and narrower as we climb, and it’s just as cold in here as it is outside. Must be barely forty degrees.

  “Seems like a miserable place to live,” I comment between heavy breaths.

  “Yes, well. The second lighthouse keeper was warned it was lonely, so he got himself a wife before he started working here. Stayed on from May till December for thirty-two years. Had eleven or twelve kids, too.”

  What a life that must have been. I can’t tease out if I’m jealous of that lighthouse keeper, or glad that wasn’t my life. But I’m no one to judge.

  We finally reach the top and it’s open to the air, with nothing but an iron railing to keep us from falling sixty feet down. At the center is the light, pulsing into the darkness. It’s housed in an octagonal chamber built of iron and fitted with glass. The thing inside is blindingly bright as it goes on and off. I have to shield my eyes from the flashes.

  “God. This thing is on every night, all year long?”

  “Yes. Runs on solar. It changes its own lightbulbs when they burn out. It’s not even glass.”

  “How far out can you see it?”

  “Eh? Maybe ten miles or so.” But Anda’s dad doesn’t seem to want to talk about the light anymore. He invites me to sit down with my back to the powerful beams. We stay silent for a long time, and the sound of the water hitting the shore rises up to us. It’s windy and freezing cold, but I’m not budging until I hear what I need to know.

  Mr. Selkirk fishes around in his pockets for something. “Did you mean what you said? That you’ll go home, without a fight?”

  “I said I’d go. I didn’t say I’d go home.” I won’t meet Mr. Selkirk’s eyes. “But I’ll be off the island, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  The truth is, I don’t want to hurt Anda. And if my presence means she might get in trouble, or something…else…can hurt her, then I’ll go, come what may. The idea of regular people trying to make Anda do anything she didn’t want to—it freaks me out and makes me want to hit things at the same time. “So…you said before that I had no idea what Anda was. You didn’t say ‘who.’ You said ‘what.’”