The Starboard Sea: A Novel

by Amber Dermont

  Tazewell wore a tight blue R.E.M. concert T-shirt. I could hear Michael Stipe’s plaintive wail. Stipe sang like a man in need of someone’s arms around him.

  I said, “I’m impressed you like those guys.”

  “My favorite band,” Taze said. “Have you heard their new album?

  Fucking inspired.” Tazewell promised to play some songs for me later. Kriffo stumbled by in a large white tent of a shirt with the ques

  tion, who’s that girl? printed on his chest in purple pastel script.

  Before I had a chance to ask, Kriffo explained in his soft voice, “My

  housekeeper went to a Madonna concert. As a joke, I told her to get

  me a T-shirt. Had to pay her sixty bucks for this thing.”

  “Guess the joke was on you.” I said.

  “We should go see the Butthole Surfers,” Tazewell said. “We’ll buy a

  T-shirt for your housekeeper and make her pony up some cash.” Tazewell snatched the burger from my plate. “We’ve been deputized.” He

  took a bite, chewing and speaking. “Jason, you want to go play hero?” Raleigh Windsor, in his reckless wisdom, had decided that it would be okay to allow Yazid to tool around campus in his father’s shiny black

  machine. Tazewell wanted to join in the fun and asked to ride along. “Why don’t you boys help clean up some of this debris.” Windsor

  ordered the groundskeepers to use the other tractors but gave Yazid

  the green light to help out any way he saw fit.

  Yazid didn’t have the requisite skills for operating the tractor’s controls, but it didn’t stop him from driving all of us over to the Athletic

  Center. Taze, Kriffo, and I rode on the footboard of the tractor, balancing and holding on like we were circus acrobats. We set our sights

  on removing the pitch pines from in front of the blocked entrance.

  Yazid had a clawlike device on the back of his tractor, a “ripper,” he

  called it, and demonstrated how it worked, attacking the trees, shoveling them off the ground and piling them over onto the middle of the

  parking lot, digging up the asphalt in the pro cess. When it was my

  turn, I sat up in the dozer’s bucket seat, the open cab rumbling and

  bucking as I practiced shifting backward and forward, then finally

  pushing the blade on the bulldozer through the needles and branches,

  the gasoline exhaust mixing with the fresh fragrance of pine. Once

  the entrance was unblocked, Tazewell disappeared inside the Athletic

  Center.

  Since there wasn’t much room on Yazid’s bulldozer, Stuyvie had

  been forced to drive over in a green golf cart. He had on a Bellingham

  polo shirt and was pretending to be in charge. “We can’t just leave the

  trees in the parking lot.” Stuyvie stood with his hands on his hips.

  “Windsor wouldn’t like it and neither would my dad.”

  Yazid and Kriffo jumped off the bulldozer. Stuyvie had turned

  their fun into a chore. Yazid and Kriffo weren’t interested in actual

  manual labor. Playing with the dozers ceased being fun.

  The Athletic Center’s double doors flashed open and Tazewell

  busted through dressed in a vintage leather football helmet and shoulder pads. I recognized the gear from one of the trophy cases that lined the

  gym’s hallway. The helmet and pads had been worn in some long-ago

  Bellingham championship. Tazewell tossed an old pigskin in the air. “Enough with the groundskeeping. Let’s play hurricane ball.” Taze snapped the football to Kriffo, then led us all into the dark Athletic

  Center.

  Light streamed in from the high windows. The building smelled

  of bleach and ripe teenage bodies. I felt the wreckage of sharp broken

  glass under my feet.

  “Found these cases smashed,” Tazewell said. “The wind pressure

  from the storm must have done it. Might as well take advantage.” Several trophy cases had been shattered open. Silver bowls and

  bronze cups tipped on their sides. The wind an unlikely perpetrator. I

  imagined Taze was probably to blame.

  The trophy cases held retired jerseys from nearly every decade.

  Taze wanted to play football but he didn’t want to get his R.E.M.

  T-shirt dirty. He was too lazy to walk back to the dorm and change.

  “Pick out your own gear,” Taze ordered.

  Once dressed, we looked like a time line of football history. Tazewell modeled an old-school Walter Camp lace-up blouse. Kriffo was

  all Knute Rockne in his knitted wool sweater, a gold Bellingham “B”

  budding on his chest. Short and stocky, every shirt Stuyvie put on was

  too big. “You look like that Hail Mary midget, Doug Flutie,” Kriffo

  snarked. Though he claimed never to have seen a game, Yazid donned

  a classic maroon silk jersey and threw perfect spirals channeling the

  golden arm of Johnny Unitas. And me, in my polyester vest, I wanted

  to be Joe Montana talking trash and delivering the goods. Back outside, Tazewell split us up into teams. “Me and Kriffo against

  Jason and Yazid.”

  “What about me?” Stuyvie asked.

  I noticed that Stuyvie had a trail of scratches along his left cheek, as

  though a cat had swiped his face.

  “You can referee.” Kriffo laughed.

  “Touch or tackle?” Stuyvie asked. “What are the rules?” “There are no rules.”

  That about summed up our afternoon. Our friendly game of touch

  turned quickly into a high- stakes war of tackle. The four of us carved

  up the wet turf into rough zigzagged furrows, doing more damage than

  any storm could have imagined. We played full force, drilling the ball, talking smack, shouting “ass clown” and “d-bag.” Every time Stuyvie

  made a call against us, Yazid instructed Stuyvie to “Unfuck yourself.” “What does that even mean?” Stuyvie finally asked.

  “Americans are born stupid,” Yazid said. “You tell one another to

  go fuck yourselves like that’s a bad thing. Most people enjoy fucking

  themselves.”

  “I dig it,” Tazewell said. “But then I have dual citizenship.” Though all of us were primed to unfuck one another, it turned out

  that hurricane ball was my game. After making the first touchdown

  for either side, I fielded an interception and scored once again. When

  Kriffo finally caught a pass and raced toward the goal line, I galloped

  toward him, dove, and grabbed his knees. The giant fell, blasting the

  earth, spraying mud. For just a brief moment, I held Kriffo’s legs, warm

  and pulsing beneath me. Felt my strength connected to his defeat. “Prosper nailed you,” Stuyvie hooted. “I’ve never seen anyone take

  the Big Man down.”

  That was all Kriffo needed to hear. He stayed on me for the rest of

  the game. Bearing down. Riding me hard. Throwing elbows and stiff

  arms, taunting me in his little-girl voice. Calling me his bitch. I told

  him that I dreamed about being his bitch, then sprinted down the

  field, jumped up, and cradled one of Yazid’s long bombs. I was faster

  than Kriffo. He couldn’t catch me, couldn’t tackle me.

  Tazewell decided to cover me instead. I ran a bootleg on a fake to

  Yazid only to have Taze blitz. Hoping to save the play, I tossed a lateral to Prince Yaz right before Taze swept my legs, sending me flying.

  As I landed on my back, my jaw snapped down and I bit my tongue.

  The blood salty in my mouth. For a moment, I couldn’t feel my arms. I stayed on the grass, spitting blood, until Kriffo came over and offered me his hand. He pulled me up, then reach
ed down and tapped

  my sack. I doubled over. “Just making sure you didn’t lose your balls.”

  Kriffo smiled.

  I smiled back.

  When Riegel claimed that there had been rumors about Cal and

  me, I began to fear for my future. I was afraid that Tazewell had heard

  the gossip and was waiting to spring some charge or accusation. The minute Kriffo swatted my balls, I stopped worrying. There was no way someone like Kriffo would touch another guy if he suspected the

  dude was anything other than straight.

  It was always weird to me that guys played grab ass or snapped

  towels in the shower as a way of saying hello. Tapping testicles struck

  me as just plain creepy. But here was the funny thing: Right after Kriffo

  helped me to my feet, I noticed a bulge in his shorts. Kriffo had an

  erection. Watching Tazewell tackle me had done something to him.

  Though I briefly considered taunting him, no one said a word as Kriffo

  reached down into his pants to calm his excitement.

  Finally Yazid broke the silence and asked, “Who’s winning?”

  The anarchy of the day took my mind off of my parents and their troubles. I was grateful for this, happy to be raising hell with my friends. This was a raw physical kind of plea sure, the kind I hadn’t experienced in ages. Not since Cal and I had ripped up the golf course at Kensington with his stolen Triumph. The only thing that might have bothered me at that moment was if Aidan had seen me. Allowing myself to have a good time with these guys made me feel like I was betraying her somehow. I planned on keeping our scrimmage a secret.

  After a particularly brutal hit from Kriffo, Yazid called it quits. His woolly hair a crown of wild spirals. Stuyvie had done a shitty job of keeping score and no one could agree on a winner.

  “What should we do with the tractor?” Stuyvie asked.

  “Just leave it. I’m sure someone will clean up the mess.” Yazid saluted us good-bye.

  “But I never got my turn to drive one.” Stuyvie ran his hand along the tractor’s body, tracing the gold Arabic letters.

  We watched Yazid walk off, his stolen jersey tossed over his shoulder.

  “I don’t get it,” Tazewell said. “How do you make a fortune off of tractors? Are there like lots of farms in Saudi Arabia?”

  I said, “There’s lots of sand and oil.”

  “So?” said Kriffo.

  “So,” I said, “you’ve got to move a lot of sand to get to that oil.” We weren’t sure what to do with the dirty jerseys and were going to abandon them on the field when Stuyvie offered to put them in his family’s wash and sneak them back into the trophy case. Stuyvie and I seemed to be the only two concerned about the broken glass in the Athletic Center, the messy pile of tree branches, and the torn-up asphalt in the parking lot.

  Walking back to Whitehall, I asked Tazewell and Kriffo about Race’s party, whether it had been a memorable blowout.

  “Not especially.” Taze stuck a finger in his ear and dug around. “It was kind of lame, if you want the truth. Not much of a turnout. A lot of kids went home yesterday. Guess their parents were worried about the storm.” He pulled his finger out of his ear wiped his nail on Kriffo’s arm.

  Kriffo reacted quickly, smearing mud on Tazewell’s back. The two began to tussle, slapping each other. They’d perfected this kind of mock-violence, playful, almost friendly.

  “Was Race pissed I didn’t come?”

  “He definitely noticed you weren’t there.” Taze gave Kriffo one last slap.

  “I had this family thing I had to do and it took longer than I expected.” I was disappointed but relieved that no one really seemed to care about my absence.

  Kriffo asked, “Think we’ll have classes tomorrow?”

  Stuyvie came scampering up behind us. “No way,” he said. “My dad told me we won’t have classes until the power comes back on and even then it will take awhile for things to get back to normal.”

  The power wouldn’t be restored until early Thursday morning, but by Tuesday night phone ser vice was back and I waited in the hallway for a chance to dial my mother on the pay phone. I had zero interest in calling Dad, but I wanted Mom to know that I was all right. I needed to find out how she was handling the divorce. “Would you like me to come home?” I asked.

  “Yes. Return to me so we can run away together.”

  I played along. “Where should we escape to?”

  “The islands. Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia,” Mom said. “You can sail us into Marigot Bay. Like Doctor Doolittle on his giant pink snail.”

  “Dad will go crazy,” I said.

  “Your father’s busy hiding his assets. Silly man. In St. Lucia, we can visit our cacao plantation.”

  “We own a plantation?”

  “I own a plantation. Don’t tell your father.” Mom described the rain forest in St. Lucia. The smell of cacao being roasted and ground into chocolate. “Real chocolate isn’t sweet. Most people don’t know that, but then again most people don’t know anything. My grandfather left me the farm. Among other trea sures.”

  I asked Mom how Max was doing. “Max who?” she asked.

  “Max, our doorman.”

  “Which one is he? Is he the chubby one, or is that Freddy?”

  My mother called all of the doormen in our building Freddy. None of the doormen in our building were named Freddy. “You like Max,” I said. “He’s your favorite. You should date Max and make Dad jealous.”

  “You may be joking, but come Christmas, those doormen make a king’s ransom in tips. I’m sure Max could keep us all afloat.”

  Mom and I plotted our escape to the Caribbean. She waxed on about the turquoise waters and coral beaches. We both preferred the pink sand to the rough black volcanic rocks. I told her a story about Cal. Once when we were sailing, Cal asked me why the water didn’t stay light blue when he cupped it in his hands. “It gets all clear. The blue just goes away.” It was the kind of question a child would ask. Cal must have been fifteen at the time, but he wasn’t embarrassed. He trusted me. Knew I wouldn’t make fun of him. I explained that it was the white sand reflecting the sunlight that gave the water its color, not the water itself. “But the sand’s not blue,” Cal said. “That can’t be right.”

  “How funny,” Mom said. “Cal was such a sweet boy. It’s good to hear you talk about him. We should talk about him more often.”

  Mom was still friends with Cal’s mother, Caroline, but she never mentioned her to me. We joked a little more about running away together and beginning a new life. To cheer my mother up, I gossiped about Ginger’s pregnancy, lied about Miriam’s appearance—“She looked sick”—and exaggerated the hard times that had befallen the Thatcher estate. I also mentioned that I was worried about Riegel. “He’s up to no good.”

  “Spare me your brother’s details,” Mom insisted. “You need to learn that you shouldn’t tell your parents everything.”

  We ended our phone call with my mother telling me that she wished my father would simply keel over. “I’d prefer to be a widow,” she said. “Widows are much more glamorous than divorcees. I suppose I shouldn’t say all of this to you, but I have no one else. You’re the only one who listens.”

  Talking to my mom left me a little depressed, exhausted. I decided to sneak out of the dorm late that night and visit Aidan. We hadn’t seen each other since Saturday morning, and the passing days had made me less and less certain of where we stood. Maybe Nadia hadn’t bothered to convey my message, or perhaps Aidan was avoiding me. I’d gotten so antsy that I’d actually called the pay phone in Aidan’s hallway asking to speak with her. I didn’t recognize the voice that answered and the voice that answered checked and informed me that Aidan wasn’t in her room.

  There was the slight possibility that Aidan had gone home with someone. Since the Academic Center was a mess and since so many parents had brought their kids home, Windsor had canceled class
es for the week. We were free to stay on campus, but Windsor had joked, “Try not to catch Cholera.” I hadn’t seen Diana either and knew there was a chance the two of them had run off to New York together.

  I’d wandered around campus on Monday and Tuesday just looking for Aidan, hoping she was hiding out in our library. When she wasn’t there, I worried that she was sick. I’d felt myself coming down with a cold and thought that maybe she was in bed nursing a fever. I sat in the library and played piano, amusing myself with my best Joe Cocker rendition of “You Are So Beautiful.” I realized that I’d never given Aidan any real compliment. Never told her she was beautiful, though she’d heard me call Cal beautiful. That night on the Swan we’d promised each other that we’d have some sort of romance. Something unprecedented. “We don’t have to be like other people,” she’d said, and I’d believed her.

  Coach Tripp had handed out slender metal flashlights to all of the guys in the dorm, a practical keepsake commemorating the Great Blackout of ’87. I waited until after curfew before tucking my new flashlight into my belt and scaling quickly down the fire escape. When I hit the bottom of the fire escape, I paused in front of Coach Tripp’s window, wondering if he’d heard me. That afternoon I’d helped him squeegee water from the ground floor of Whitehall, and Coach had nearly cried over the lost Swan. “I loved that little yacht,” he said. “Completely irreplaceable.” He’d also extended another offer for me to sail in the spring. “No pressure,” he promised. “We’ll make it fun for you.” I told him I’d think about it.

  Scuttling like a crab across the grounds and past the harbor, I noticed light shining from within the water. The storm had warmed the Atlantic, agitating a bloom of plankton. The entire bay lit up with phosphorescence, the water glowing from within, a blazing grand ballroom. With every lapping wave the light pulsed turquoise, then emerald. I loved this trick. Wanted to swim in the phosphorescence, even though I knew this par ticu lar type of plankton was toxic. By day the shore would be covered in a poisonous red tide. For the moment, though, it was as if the ocean had swallowed a swarm of fireflies. I felt Aidan’s kiss on my mouth.

  Quietly, I inched up Aidan’s fire escape, realizing that I’d spent the better part of my adolescence sneaking in and out of windows. I feared Aidan might be asleep, that she might not hear me knock on the glass, but when I reached the top her window was open.