by Lauren Kate
25
LOST AT SEA
Early Saturday morning, the twins bounded into Eureka’s room.
“Wake up!” Claire bounced onto the bed. “We’re spending the day with you!”
“That’s great.” Eureka rubbed her eyes and checked her phone for the time. Her browser was still open to the Google search “Yuki Blavatsky,” which she’d been refreshing continually, hoping for a story on the murder.
Nothing had come up. All Eureka got was an old yellow pages listing for Blavatsky’s business, which she alone seemed to know was out of business. She had driven by the strip mall on Tuesday after an unbearably long day at school, but at the turn into the empty parking lot, she’d lost her nerve and sped up, until the unlit neon palm sign was no long visible in her rearview mirror.
Haunted by the lack of obvious police presence, by thoughts of Madame Blavatsky decaying alone in the studio, Eureka had driven to the university. Setting off the fire alarm clearly had not been enough, so she sat down at one of the free student union computers and filled out an anonymous crime report form online. It was safer to do it there, in the middle of the bustling student union, than to have the police Web page on her laptop’s browser history at home.
She kept her report simple, providing the name and address of the deceased woman. She left blank the fields asking for information on suspects, though Eureka was inexplicably certain she could pick Madame Blavatsky’s murderer out of a lineup.
When she’d driven by Blavatsky’s storefront again on Wednesday, yellow crime-scene tape barred the front door and cop cars crammed the lot. The shock and grief she’d refused to feel in the presence of Madame Blavatsky’s body had washed over Eureka, a rogue wave of crippling guilt. It had been three days since then, and she’d heard nothing on the radio or TV news, online, or in the paper. The silence was driving her crazy.
She’d suppressed the urge to confide in Ander, because she couldn’t share what had happened with anyone, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know how to find him. Eureka was on her own.
“Why are you wearing water wings?” She squeezed William’s inflatable orange muscle as he wiggled under her covers.
“Mom said you’d take us to the pool!”
Wait. Today was the day Eureka had agreed to sail with Brooks.
It is your destiny, Madame Blavatsky had said, piquing Eureka’s curiosity. She wasn’t eager to spend time with Brooks, but she was at least ready to face him. She wanted to do what little she could to honor the old woman’s memory.
“We’ll go to the pool another day.” Eureka scooted William aside so she could climb out of bed. “I forgot I have to—”
“Don’t tell me you forgot you were watching the twins?” Rhoda appeared in the doorway wearing a red crepe dress. She worked a bobby pin into her tightly coiffed hair. “Your dad’s at work and I’m delivering the keynote at the dean’s luncheon.”
“I made plans with Brooks.”
“Rearrange them.” Rhoda tilted her head and frowned. “We were doing so well.”
She meant that Eureka had been going to school, had suffered through her hour of hell with Dr. Landry Tuesday afternoon. Eureka had forked over the last three twenties she owned, then dumped out onto Landry’s coffee table a battered sack of nickels, dimes, and pennies amounting to the extra fifteen dollars she needed to pay for the session. She had no idea how she would afford to suffer again next week, but at the rate the past few days had crawled, Tuesday was an eternity away.
“Fine. I’ll watch the twins.”
She didn’t have to tell Rhoda what they’d be doing while she watched them. She texted Brooks, the first communication she’d initiated since Never-Ever: Okay if I bring the twins?
Absolutely! His response was immediate. Was going to suggest that myself.
“Eureka,” Rhoda said. “The sheriff called this morning. Do you know a woman named Mrs. Blavatsky?”
“What?” Eureka’s voice died in her throat. “Why?”
She imagined her fingerprints on the papers on Madame Blavatsky’s desk. Her shoes unknowingly dipping into the woman’s blood, screaming out proof of her visit.
“Evidently she’s … missing.” Rhoda lied badly. The police would have told her Madame Blavatsky was dead. Rhoda must not have thought Eureka could handle hearing about another death. She didn’t know one percent of what Eureka was handling. “For some reason, the police think you know each other.”
There was no indictment in Rhoda’s voice, which meant the cops weren’t treating Eureka as a suspect—yet.
“Cat and I went to her storefront once.” Eureka tried not to say anything that was a lie. “She’s a fortune-teller.”
“That junk is a waste of money, you know that. The sheriff is going to call back later. I said you’d answer some questions.” Rhoda leaned over the bed and kissed the twins. “I’m almost late. Don’t take any chances today, Eureka.”
Eureka nodded as her phone buzzed in her palm with a text from Cat. The freaking sheriff called my house about Blavatsky. WHAT HAPPENED?
No clue, Eureka responded, feeling dizzy. They called here, too.
What about your book? Cat typed back, but Eureka didn’t have an answer, only a heavy weight in her chest.
Sunlight glittered on the water as Eureka and the twins walked the long cedar planks to the edge of Brooks’s Cypremort Point dock. His lean silhouette bent forward, checking the halyards that would raise the sails once the boat was in the bay.
The family sloop was christened Ariel. It was a long-seasoned, weather-stained, beautiful forty-foot sailboat with a deep hull and a square stern. It had been in the family for decades. Today its bare mast stood up stiffly, cutting the dome of the sky like a knife. A pelican sat on the line that tethered the boat to the dock.
Brooks was barefoot, in cutoffs and a green Tulane sweatshirt. He wore his father’s old army baseball cap. For a moment Eureka forgot she was mourning Madame Blavatsky. She even forgot she was mad at Brooks. As she and the twins approached the boat, she enjoyed his simple movements—how familiar he was with every inch of the boat, the strength he displayed tightening the sheets. Then she heard his voice.
He was shouting as he moved from the cockpit to the main deck. He leaned down the stairs, head level with the galley below. “You don’t know me and you never will, so stop trying.”
Eureka stopped short on the dock, holding the twins’ stiff hands. They were used to Eureka shouting at home, but they’d never seen Brooks like this.
He looked up and saw her. His posture loosened. His face lit up.
“Eureka.” He grinned. “You look terrific.”
She squinted toward the galley, wondering whom Brooks had been yelling at. “Is everything okay?”
“Never better. Top of the morning, Harrington-Boudreauxs!” Brooks lifted his cap at the twins. “Are you ready to be my double first mates?”
The twins jumped into Brooks’s arms, forgetting how scary he’d just been. Eureka heard someone climbing from the galley to the deck. The silver crown of Brooks’s mother’s head appeared. Eureka was stunned that he would say what he’d said to Aileen. She stood on the gangway and held out a hand to help Aileen up the steep, slightly rocking steps.
Aileen offered Eureka a weary smile and held out her arms for a hug. Her eyes were wet. “I loaded up the galley with lunch.” She straightened the collar of her striped jersey dress. “There are plenty of brownies, baked fresh last night.”
Eureka imagined Aileen wearing a flour-dusted apron at three in the morning, baking her anxiety into sweet-smelling steam that carried the secret of the change in Brooks. He wasn’t just wearing Eureka down. His mother seemed like a smaller, faded version of herself.
Aileen slipped off her kitten heels and held them in her hands. She turned her deep brown eyes on Eureka; they were the same color as her son’s. She lowered her voice. “Have you noticed anything strange about him recently?”
If only Eureka could open up to
Aileen, hear what she’d been going through, too. But Brooks came and stood between them, putting an arm around each of them. “My two favorite ladies,” he said. And then, before Eureka could register Aileen’s reaction, Brooks removed his arms and walked to the helm. “You ready to do this, Cuttlefish?”
I haven’t forgiven you, she wanted to say, though she had read all sixteen groveling text messages he’d sent this week, and the two letters he’d left in her locker. She was here because of Madame Blavatsky, because something told her that destiny mattered. Eureka was trying to replace her final image of Blavatsky dead in her studio with the memory of the woman at peace under the willow tree by the bayou, the one who’d seemed convinced there was good reason for Eureka to sail with Brooks today.
What you do once you’re there is up to you.
But then Eureka thought about Ander, who insisted Brooks was dangerous. The scar on Brooks’s forehead was half hidden under the shadow of his baseball cap. It looked like an ordinary scar, not some ancient hieroglyph—and for a moment Eureka felt crazy for thinking that the scar might be evidence of something sinister. She looked down at the thunderstone, flipping it over. The rings were barely visible in the sun. She’d been acting like a conspiracy theorist who’d spent too many days cooped up with only the Internet to talk to. She needed to relax and get some sun.
“Thanks for lunch,” Eureka said to Aileen, who’d been chatting with the twins from the gangplank. She stepped closer and lowered her voice so that Aileen alone could hear. “About Brooks.” She shrugged, attempting lightness. “Just boys, you know. I’m sure William will grow up to terrorize Rhoda someday.” She tousled her brother’s hair. “Means he loves you.”
Aileen looked out at the water again. “Children grow up so fast. I guess sometimes they forget to forgive us. Well”—she looked back at Eureka, forced a smile—“you kids have fun. And if there’s any weather, turn back right away.”
Brooks held out his arms and looked up at the sky, which was blue and immense and cloudless but for an innocent cotton puff in the east just underneath the sun. “What could possibly go wrong?”
The breeze rustling Eureka’s ponytail became bracing as Brooks started Ariel’s engine and steered away from the dock. The twins squealed, looking cute in their life jackets. They balled their hands into excited fists at the first jolt of the boat. The tide was soft and steady, the air perfectly briny. The shore was lined with cypress trees and family camps.
When Eureka rose from her bench to see if Brooks needed help, he waved for her to sit down. “Everything’s under control. You just relax.”
Though anyone else would say that Brooks was trying to make amends and that the bay today was serene—a sun-blasted sky making the waves glisten, the smallest shimmer of pale fog lazing on the distant horizon—Eureka was uneasy. She saw the sea and Brooks as capable of the same dark surprise: out of nowhere they could morph into knives and stab you in the heart.
She thought she’d hit the bottom at the Trejean party the other night, but since then Eureka had lost both The Book of Love and the only person who could help her understand it. Worse, she believed that the people who killed Madame Blavatsky were the same ones hunting her. She really could have used a friend—and yet she found it nearly impossible to smile at Brooks across the deck.
The deck was made of treated cedar, dimpled by a million dents from cocktail-partiers’ stilettos. Diana used to go to Aileen’s parties on this boat. Any of these marks could have been made by the single pair of high heels she’d owned. Eureka imagined using her mother’s dents to clone her back to life, to put her on the deck right now, dancing to no music in daylight. She imagined that the surface of her own heart probably looked like this deck. Love was a dance floor, where everyone you lost left a mark behind.
Bare feet slapped the deck as the twins ran around, shouting “Goodbye!” or “We’re sailing!” to every camp they passed. The sun warmed Eureka’s shoulders and reminded her to show her siblings a beautiful time. She wished Dad were here to see their faces. With her phone, she snapped a picture and texted it to him. Brooks grinned at her. She nodded back.
They glided past two men in mesh baseball caps fishing from an aluminum canoe. Brooks greeted each of them by name. They watched a crabbing boat coast by. The water was rich blue opal. It smelled like Eureka’s childhood, much of which had been spent on this boat with Brooks’s uncle Jack at the helm. Now Brooks was steering the ship with easy confidence. His brother, Seth, always said that Brooks was born to sail, that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brooks became an admiral in the navy or a tour guide in the Galápagos. Whatever kept Brooks on the water was likely what Brooks would do.
It wasn’t long before Ariel left behind the camp houses and trailers, rounding a bend to face broad, shallow Vermilion Bay.
Eureka gripped the whitewashed bench beneath her at the sight of the small man-made beach. She hadn’t been back since the day Brooks had almost drowned here—the day they had kissed. She felt a mix of nerves and embarrassment, and she couldn’t look at him. He was busy anyway, cutting the engine and hoisting the mainsail from the cockpit; then he raised the jib up the forestay.
He handed William and Claire the jib and asked them to tug the corners, making them feel they were helping to bring the sails aloft. They squealed when the crisp white sail slid up the mast, locked into place, and filled with wind.
The sails billowed, then grew taut with the strong eastern breeze. They started on a close haul course, at forty-five degrees to the wind, and then Brooks maneuvered the boat into a comfortable broad reach, easing the sails appropriately. Ariel was majestic with the wind at its back. Water split across its bow, sending smothers of foam splashing softly onto the deck. Black frigate birds swooped in grand circles overhead, keeping pace with the leeward glide of the sails. Flying fish soared above waves like shooting stars. Brooks let the kids stand with him at the helm as the boat clipped west past the bay.
Eureka brought juice boxes and two of Aileen’s sandwiches up from the galley for the twins. The kids chewed quietly, sharing a lounge chair in the shady corner of the deck. Eureka stood next to Brooks. The sun bore down on her shoulders and she squinted ahead at a long, flat stretch of low-lying land overgrown with pale green reeds in the distance.
“Still mad at me?” he asked.
She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk about anything that might scratch her brittle surface and expose every secret she held inside.
“Is that Marsh Island?” She knew it was. The barrier island kept the heavier waves from breaking in the bay. “We should stay to the north of it. Right?”
Brooks patted the broad wooden wheel. “You don’t think Ariel can handle the open seas?” His voice was playful, but his eyes had narrowed. “Or is it me you’re worried about?”
Eureka breathed in a gust of briny air, certain she could see whitecaps beyond the island. “It’s rough out there. It might be too much for the twins.”
“We want to go out far!” Claire shouted between gulps of grape juice.
“I do this all the time.” Brooks moved the wheel slightly east so they’d be able to slide around the edge of the approaching island.
“We didn’t go out that far in May.” It was the last time they’d sailed together. She remembered because she’d counted the four circles they’d made around the bay.
“Sure we did.” Brooks stared past her at the water. “You’ve got to admit your memory has become disorganized since—”
“Don’t do that,” Eureka snapped. She looked back in the direction they’d come. Gray clouds had joined the softer pink clouds near the horizon. She watched the sun slip behind one, its rays frisking the cloud’s dark coat. She wanted to turn back. “I don’t want to go out there, Brooks. This shouldn’t be a fight.”
The boat swayed and they stepped on each other’s feet. She closed her eyes and let the rocking slow her breathing.
“Let’s take it easy,” he said. “This
is an important day.”
Her eyes flashed open. “Why?”
“Because I can’t have you mad at me. I messed up. I let your sadness scare me and I lashed out when I should have supported you. It doesn’t change how I feel. I’m here for you. Even if more bad things happen, even if you get sadder.”
Eureka shrugged his hands away. “Rhoda doesn’t know I brought the twins. If anything happens …”
She heard Rhoda’s voice: Don’t take any chances, Eureka.
Brooks rubbed his jaw, clearly annoyed. He cranked one of the levers on the mainsail. He was going past Marsh Island. “Don’t be paranoid,” he said harshly. “Life is one long surprise.”
“Some surprises can be avoided.”
“Everybody’s mother dies, Eureka.”
“That’s very supportive, thank you.”
“Look, maybe you’re special. Maybe nothing bad will ever happen to you or anyone you love again,” he said, which made Eureka laugh bitterly. “All I meant was I’m sorry. I broke your trust last week. I’m here to earn it back.”
He was waiting for her forgiveness, but she turned and gazed at the waves, which were the color of another pair of eyes. She thought about Ander asking her to trust him. She still didn’t know if she did. Could a dry thunderstone open a portal to trust as quickly as Brooks had closed one? Did it even matter? She hadn’t seen or heard from Ander since that rainy night’s experiment. She didn’t even know how to look for him.
“Eureka, please,” Brooks whispered. “Say you trust me.”
“You’re my oldest friend.” Her voice was rough. She didn’t look at him. “I trust that we’ll get over this.”
“Good.” She heard a smile in his voice.
The sky dimmed. The sun had gone behind a cloud shaped strangely like an eye. A beam of light shot through its center, illuminating a circle of sea in front of the boat. Somber clouds rolled toward them like smoke.
They had sailed past Marsh Island. The waves were rolling in quick succession. One rocked the boat so violently that Eureka stumbled. The kids rolled around on the deck, shrieking with laughter, not scared at all.