by Wendy Wunder
She grabbed her big yellow saltwater bucket with one hand and then tugged at the handle of the basement’s sliding glass door with the other. It wouldn’t budge. She yanked again without looking up and then gasped. The door flew open a couple feet, nearly tossing her onto the ground. Asher stood on the other side of the glass with his hand on the door handle. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He helped her heave the heavy door open the rest of the way as it scraped on the rust and pebbles of the track. “I need to grease that,” he said, combing a hand through his wavy hair. He had caramel-colored skin and eyes that were amber and brown. His nose was the round triangular shape of one of those plastic noses that hang from the gag disguise glasses you get in the joke shop. But smaller and in perfect proportion with the rest of his face.
“How do you do that?” asked Cam.
“Just some WD-40. Not a big deal.”
“No. I mean, how do you appear in moments of need like a brave knight for a damsel in distress?”
Asher shrugged and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, revealing a perfectly flat, tan stripe of belly between his too-short T-shirt and the waistband of his underwear. Cam found herself wanting to slide her finger across it, which was not like her at all. She was a realist and did not engage in fantasy. Asher would never want anything to do with her. From what she’d been able to piece together from snippets of overheard conversations between him and the fawning Perry during their daily chess game, he was the town’s humble football star. And he was, as the saying goes, seriously out of her league.
On their drive in, signs at business after business congratulated the regional high school’s win in the state football championship. Cam couldn’t get over how pathetic that was. A whole county glorifying a little boys’ game. Girls never got the chance to be celebrated like that. To be made into demigods. First they made girls go to church to learn how to worship a male god, and then they made mere boys into mini-gods for girls to worship here on Earth. She vowed that one night, she would drive out in Cumulus and change all the signs to read CONGRATULATIONS, LADY LOBSTERS FIELD HOCKEY: THIRD PLACE!
“Do you need help with that?” Asher asked, pointing to the bucket.
“What? Um, no. No, I can handle it,” she said, finally looking away from Asher’s stomach. She blushed.
Asher went back to the carriage house, and Cam walked across the lawn and down the steep rocky path to the house’s own private beach. The beach was so rocky you couldn’t walk on it with bare feet. Cam plodded along in her black Chuck Taylors and waded into the water with them still on. The water was so cold, she swore it had to be part of the Arctic Ocean. She could actually feel the blood vessels in her legs start to constrict and throb like a big bruise. She didn’t know how Perry and all her newfound friends could scamper around in it all day long. She squatted for a moment on a rock and watched the waves wash in, suck up rocks, and then spit them back onto the regurgitated shore.
Her new skinny body, wracked as it was from disease, was so accessible to her sometimes. She could squat there for hours with her knees bent up beside her like the tiny poisonous frogs they saw at the National Aquarium in Baltimore on their way up the coast. She could never have done that when she was “heavy.”
She looked down into a little tide pool and saw a starfish stuck to a rock. She had a window on an entire world. The starfish, the kelp waving back and forth, a snail, some sea worms, plankton, grains of sand, molecules of grains of sand, atoms in molecules of grains of sand, protons, neutrons, and spinning electrons.
Infinity fascinated her. How systems and universes could keep getting infinitely smaller in one direction and infinitely larger in another. How the shape of an atom so precisely mimicked the shape of the solar system. How there wasn’t an end to anything. Except her own life, she guessed. That was going to end pretty soon, but everything else was going to keep spinning without her. It gave her a sense of vertigo to think about it, and she stood up so she wouldn’t topple over.
“Crazy how nothing stops, isn’t it?” Asher was standing about ten feet away, where the bluff slammed perpendicularly into the beach. There was nothing gradual about the topography of this place. No sloping hills or molded dunes. One thing just fell into another at steep angles.
“Would you please stop sneaking up on me? That’s something that can stop right now.”
“Shhh. Look!” Asher pointed out at the middle of the whitecapped waves.
“Did you just shush me?”
“Look,” he insisted, lifting his chiseled, tan, and perfectly veined throwing arm. Cam’s eyes caught on a yellow piece of plastic around his wrist. Was he wearing a rubber Livestrong bracelet? He was. Please don’t tell me it says Jesus on it, thought Cam.
She looked out to sea. And that’s when she saw it. She actually heard it first. A pregnant silence. And then whoosh. A mother orca and her baby leaped ten feet out of the bay at the exact same time.
“Holy Shamu, Batman,” said Cam. The rest of the bay maintained its workaday bayness. A lobster boat chugged slowly back to the dock. A few dinghies remained moored to their buoys as they rocked back and forth. A seagull sat motionless on her nest atop some wooden pilings. And the sun began its everlasting gobstopper descent behind the lighthouse. No one even seemed to notice that two whales had just performed a circus trick that people paid top dollar to see in Orlando.
“Watch. They’ll do it again.”
“How do you know?”
“They do it every night at sunset. Animals are creatures of habit.”
And sure enough, the whales circled around and leapt up into the air again, shiny and black, like a mismatched pair of patent leather shoes.
“Amazing.”
“The sun rises and sets on this place,” said Asher as he picked up a flat gray rock and skipped it seven times across the water.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t take it for granted. You do own a piece of the ocean, which is pretty obnoxious,” Cam said, even though Asher was anything but obnoxious. He owned a beach. Girls threw themselves at his feet. And yet he seemed so pensive and alone.
“No, I mean the sun literally rises and sets in the same place,” Asher explained. “Behind Archibald Light. The lighthouse. Haven’t you noticed?”
“That’s impossible,” Cam replied automatically, but then she thought about it and realized that it seemed true. She was able to watch the sunrise and sunset from the same window of the widow’s walk.
“It’s probably caused by pollution,” she reasoned. “My grandmother says that the sunsets off the New Jersey Turnpike are caused by gasses rising from the landfills. That’s probably the deal here too. It looks like the sun setting, but it’s just some extra methane wafting up from all those cows in Vermont.”
“That’s a lot of methane,” Asher said as he skipped another rock. Why must boys always throw things? wondered Cam.
“Cows eat a lot of grass. And they’re making a hole in the ozone.”
“So you’re saying our sunset is a big cow fart?”
“I am.”
“That’s a bold assertion.” Asher smirked.
“There’s an explanation for everything,” said Cam.
“Right,” said Asher. But from his tone, Cam could tell he didn’t agree.
“It’s past my bedtime,” she said, and she walked with her big bucket sloshing behind her, back to the house. She was tired and cold and looking forward to snuggling up in the widow’s walk and watching the movies she bribed Perry to get her from the town library. Maybe someday she would take Asher on an expedition and show him where the sun was really setting. In the woods behind the house. A place called the west.
Up in her glass roost, the pinks and purples of the sunset began to sink and bleed around her like watercolors into a paper sky. Cam layered every long-sleeved thing she owned on top of one another and put on two pairs of socks. She popped in Disturbing Behavior, a Katie Holmes classic about an impossibly p
erfect clique of teenagers who turned out to be zombie-alien-monster things, and waited for the familiar movie-watching calm to come over her as the opening credits began.
“Cam!”
Cam could hear Perry’s big feet inadvertently stomping toward the stairs. Poor little bastard. Literally.
Cam was proud of how Perry handled her bastardy, actually. She took it in stride, never questioning her self-worth. She seemed to know it wasn’t her fault that her parents were impulsive fools. Cam wondered, though, if the day would come when Perry would set off in search of her pale father in the dark hinterlands of Norwegia. (That’s what Perry called it when she was three and they told her she was Norwegian). Cam pictured a determined twenty-year-old Perry trudging through the tundra in her snowshoes and rucksack, knocking on the doors of Norwegian villagers. Too bad Cam wouldn’t be around to see that.
Perry’s rosy cheeks popped up through the floor of the cupola where the staircase ended. The Maine cold was good for her arctic blood.
“Cam!” Perry was excited.
“What?!” Cam feigned sarcastic excitement back at her.
“There’s a party!”
“So?” said Cam.
“So you have to go,” said Perry.
“Why?”
“You need to meet people. It’s a summer solstice party. On the island of the lighthouse. You have to take a zip line to get to it. Everyone will be there. There will be a bonfire and everything. You like fire.”
“Who’s ‘everyone’?”
“Everyone. Asher will be there.”
“So what?”
“Agh. Campbell, please?” Perry came all the way upstairs and sat on Cam’s bed.
“Why do you care so much that I go to this party?” Cam grabbed one of Perry’s silky ponytails and looped it around her finger.
“Because I want to go and I can’t, and if I can’t go, you should go. I’m sick of seeing you moping around up here. It’s depressing. This place is really amazing. You should start exploring. We came all this way.”
“When’s the party?” Cam asked, toying with her.
“Tonight.”
“Nope, sorry. I have an appointment tonight with Katie Holmes and her Disturbing Behavior.”
“Campbell, you are so lame. Are you ever going to leave the house?
“No.”
“Pathetic.” Cam heard Perry clomp down the stairs as she whipped out her phone and complained to some Hannah Montana on the other end.
Fine, so she was pathetic. Cam had agreed to come to Maine, but she hadn’t agreed to parties. She felt safe and comfortable in her aloneness. Maybe it was a stage of dying.
When the movie ended, Cam could hear the sounds of gathering voices echoing off the bay, so she knew the party was starting. Could she really sit up here listening to it all night? She wondered if she were pulling some kind of passive-aggressive moping stunt just to get people’s attention. She knew she wasn’t, but just to prove it to herself, she might go.
At eleven o’clock, Cam snuck down the stairs. She didn’t want to give Perry the satisfaction of knowing she was going, though, so she tiptoed through the living room. As she passed Tweety’s cage, he started flitting around and chirping his head off, threatening to blow her cover. He was still mad at her for not giving him credit for his miracle.
“Shh. Tweets. Tweety,” Cam whispered. “Calm down,” she said, peeking underneath the canvas cage cover. “You of all creatures should know the deal, Tweets. I’m very proud of you, okay? But I can’t believe in miracles.”
“Chirp?” asked Tweety.
“Because. Just because, okay?”
Because she had to be prepared for the inevitable. The very real thing that was happening to her. It made no sense to get her hopes up.
THIRTEEN
THE WHOLE SKY TURNED TO INDIGO AND THE STARS BLINKED ON, slowly at first, and then all at once, blanketing the sky with pixie dust.
Cam walked around the U shape of the bay until she got to the park on the peninsula. She recognized Asher’s car in the parking lot and followed the sounds of voices through the ghostly playground, stopping at the edge of a three-story cliff. Below her, a twenty-foot-wide channel of waves bounced wildly off the rocks on either shore. The current seemed angry and trapped, not knowing which way to get out. On the other side of the channel stood the lighthouse, like an enormous birthday candle shoved carelessly into the giant island cake.
“Campbell! Over here! So glad you could make it!” Asher called, cupping his hands around his mouth so she could hear him over the waves. He waved at her from the island down below, where he was manning the landing of the zip line.
“Yeah, thanks for inviting me,” Cam said sarcastically, but she knew he couldn’t hear her.
Standing next to her at the top of the zip line was a broad-chested guy with curly brown hair. He wore a striped, preppy orange and gray sweater with holes in the cuffs and elbows. These people could have stepped right out of a Land’s End catalog. She bet they had names like catalog colors too, like Logan or Sage or Persimmon or Russet.
“What’s your name?” she asked the boy.
“Royal,” he said.
See, thought Cam.
Royal handed her a set of rusty, upside-down bicycle handlebars with pink streamers coming out of the ends. The handlebars were attached to a pulley, which was threaded through with some taut nylon rope. The rope was tied at one end to a tree branch on the mainland, and on the other, to a lamppost on the island down below.
Next to the “zip line” was a little funicular cart contraption that the sensible lighthouse keeper used. It, too, hung on a pulley, but in the cart, you could pull yourself slowly, hand over hand, along a thick wire.
“Why can’t I use that?” Cam screamed down to Asher.
“We’re not supposed to touch it,” he replied.
“We’re not supposed to be here at all, are we?”
“This is more fun. Come on. Try it,” he coaxed.
“You just sort of lean back and then lift up your feet,” Royal said helpfully.
In his right hand, Royal held on to another, thinner, slacker rope attached to the handlebars, so that he could haul them back to the launching pad for the next customer.
Cam got set up. “Wait. Safety first,” said Royal. He gave her a bright orange life vest.
“What’s this for?”
“In case you fall in.”
“Won’t I be dead if I fall in?”
“Not necessarily. Here.”
“Why is it wet?” Cam asked. Had someone else already fallen in?
“You’ll be fine. Really,” said Royal.
Cam was beginning to sweat in spite of having to wear the freezing cold life vest. It was so strange how her body still went through the motions of being afraid, when really, why should it? If she was going to die soon anyway, it shouldn’t matter if it was by jumping off a cliff or lying in some horrible hospital bed.
Here goes, Cam thought, and she leaned back and lifted her feet.
The wind rushed and whistled by her ears so she couldn’t hear anything else. It felt more like falling than flying. She felt completely out of control. Her whole body was rubbery from fear, in a good way. Asher caught her at the other end, his big hands wrapping around either side of her life vest.
Her hand slipped down to cover his. She felt his knuckles like knots in a tree branch, covered in the same soft downy hair he had on his legs. He was strong and gentle, and for just a millisecond Cam felt safe. A feeling she hadn’t had in a long time.
“See what I mean about the damsel-in-distress thing?” said Cam. “I think it’s a problem for you. You’re like a help-a-holic,” she said, catching her breath as he hoisted her to shore and made sure she got her footing.
“You loved it, didn’t you?”
“It was all right,” said Cam. She didn’t want to seem overly excited.
Suddenly she asked, “Hey, how do we get back?” The zip line obviously went o
nly one way.
“Sometimes we use the cart,” said Asher. “Or kayaks.”
Kayaks? thought Cam. The few parties she’d been to in Florida consisted of lounging around the pool in bikinis while the boys played some stupid drinking game and prowled around hoping for a nipple slip. These Maine kids were ambitious.
“The party’s over there,” said Asher. “Just follow the sounds of drumming.”
Normally walking into a party alone would have freaked Cam out, but she was riding high from her trip on the zip line. She climbed over some huge boulders and looked over to the beach where kids, mostly boys, were seated in a circle playing different percussion instruments, while others, mostly girls, danced barefoot in twirling circles in the sand. In the center was a fire. Cam wouldn’t call it a bonfire exactly, but it was a fire. Above them, to the left, loomed the lighthouse painted with broad red and white stripes.
She looked around for the keg, but there didn’t seem to be one. Everyone must have reached an altered state from the drumming and dancing, because she didn’t see any drinking. It reminded Cam of the time her mom found some absurd post on a parenting blog that warned of girls getting secretly drunk by soaking their tampons in vodka.
“Campbell, do you do this?” she’d asked.
“Yes, Mom, I am constantly tamped with vodka,” Cam had said, proud of herself for suddenly discovering the etymology of tampon.
She hadn’t had the energy to tell her mom that parents’ imaginations were so much worse than anything teenagers could dream up by themselves. No one she knew was weird enough to soak her tampon in vodka. Unless that was how these twirling girls were rolling.
Cam found a through-line around the boulders and hopped down to the beach. It was warmer near the fire. She sat on a rock and watched for a while. She let herself drift into the rhythms of the drums, closed her eyes, and rocked back and forth.
After a minute, she was startled by someone’s rough, spindly fingers slipping into her hand and yanking her off the rock.