“People can tell you things without making a sound,” Talley told me. “Pay attention to the details.”
But I couldn’t tell a thing about Adam. He finished reading Talley’s list and moved to give it back.
There was a coffee cup sitting in the holder between our two seats. Adam swept his arm toward me and knocked it over.
“Oh, the list!” I cried, grabbing it.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,” Adam said. “Shit, your pants are soaking. I think I have napkins.”
I didn’t care about my pants. I was holding the list above my head like I was trying to keep it from drowning. A corner of the paper had torn off when I’d grabbed it. It didn’t have any writing on it, but still, where was it? Every inch of that piece of paper mattered to me, and I wondered if Adam had done it on purpose. Had he been aiming for the list instead of my left leg? If so, why? Was he mad at Talley, or was he trying to punish me?
“Here,” he said, holding out a fistful of napkins. “I really am very sorry.”
I put the list between the pages of my notebook again, and back in my bag. Only when it was safely out of his reach did I take the napkins and pat down my thigh.
“We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” he said. “If, you know, the flag is too upsetting.”
“No,” I said. “This is fine.” I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of the car, and Adam followed my lead.
Chapter Seventeen
ADAM HAD THE KIND OF CAR THAT RAN ON ELECTRICITY instead of gas. I didn’t realize that until he walked around to plug it into a charging station. I’d never been in an electric car before, and I was curious about it, but I didn’t ask any questions. That wasn’t the kind of information gathering I was here for.
“Are you starving?” Adam asked. “We could check out the boats, if you want. But if you’re starving, we can eat first.”
“I’m not starving,” I said. The last time I’d been starving had been before Talley died.
The breeze kicked up and I folded my arms across my chest. “I really am very sorry about your pants,” he said. “Are you cold?”
“I’m fine.” As long as the list was fine, I was fine. But I still felt shaky from the near miss of it. Lamination was happening as soon as this lunch was over. I couldn’t take any more chances.
We walked across the parking lot to a pathway that led to the docks. There were rows and rows of docks, and a couple dozen boats tied up in each row, swaying in the breeze. Had Adam done this same walk with Talley? What did she think about it?
Since she’d died, I’d tried to look at things the way she would’ve, tried to see things Talley’s way.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that this place is called Grizzly Cove?” Adam said, breaking the silence that had grown between us. “Grizzlies aren’t exactly aquatic animals.”
In my googling of California grizzlies, I’d seen pictures of them wading into the water, spearing fish with their bare hands. “Bear hands,” Talley would’ve said, enjoying my accidental pun. And she would’ve teased me, saying how else were they supposed to catch fish? With fishing rods and tackle?
“Do you want to know why?” Adam asked me.
“Sure.”
“I should warn you, it’s a pretty intense story.”
“Duly warned,” I said. “Go on.”
“Okay. So. Legend has it that about a hundred years ago, a California grizzly attacked a guy named Terrance J. Tenterhook, right here on this property.”
“Oh, God, really?” I asked. A chill moved up my spine. I’d already crossed my arms to the cold, but now I pulled them tighter. Maybe a walk on the dock had been a bad idea. California grizzlies are extinct, I reminded myself.
“Apparently Terrance thought it was possible to befriend a bear. But bears are bears, and humans are—well, to bears, humans are just lunch. Or dinner, depending on the time of day.”
“God, that’s awful,” I said. “Why didn’t they name this place after the human who was killed instead of the bear who did the killing?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Adam said. “But it may be because I just made the story up. I wanted to make you laugh. You’re not the only one who likes making up stories.”
“You thought I’d laugh at a story about a guy being mauled by a bear?”
“So it was a misguided story,” Adam said. “But at least Terrance J. Tenterhook still lives!”
“I should’ve known from the name,” I said. “Tenterhook.”
“Yeah. I was trying to be clever.”
Adam and I had walked to the end of the dock, and I turned to head back, but he stopped me. “Wait, you can’t leave before you see what we came here for.”
“What’d we come here for?”
“The view of the Bay Bridge,” he said. I looked where he was pointing. The bridge was far away enough that it looked like a toy bridge, like it could be a bridge in Eddy’s Lego collection.
“The Bay Bridge goes to Oakland,” Adam told me. “And the Golden Gate goes to Marin County—to wine country. It gets all the attention, but you get more bang for your buck on the Bay Bridge. It cost more to build and it’s much longer, but the tolls are the same amount.” He paused, then added, “And that’s a real story, not a bullshit story. We did a bridge project in fourth grade. It’s funny—I remember so much more of what I learned in elementary school than what I learned last year.”
“Our brains are more plastic the younger we are,” I said. “It makes it easier to take on new information.”
“And how do you know that? Did you do a fourth grade project on brains?”
“No. Talley told me,” I said.
We turned to walk back the length of the dock. Adam bent down and pulled on the rope that was mooring one of the boats. The name Cara’s Joy was written on the back ledge (the “stern,” Adam said it was called). When he’d pulled the boat close enough, he stepped onto it. “Are you allowed to do that?” I asked.
“I know the owners,” he said.
“Who’s Cara?”
He shrugged. “When you buy a used boat, you keep the name that it comes with, otherwise it’s bad luck. Though I gotta tell you, I think this particular family is beyond whatever help they can get from obeying some stupid boat-naming superstition.”
“What happened to them?”
“That’s a long story,” Adam said. I understood that was code for: I’m not going to tell you. I didn’t press the point, because it didn’t have anything to do with Talley. “Wanna come aboard?” he asked.
Cara’s Joy was swaying back and forth in the water, a little closer to the dock, then a little farther away. A little closer, and then much farther away. If I didn’t time my step right, I’d end up in the water.
I shook my head.
“Don’t be afraid,” Adam said.
“I’m not,” I told him. “I’m just getting hungry.”
“All right, then.” He hopped off the boat. “Let’s go eat.”
Chapter Eighteen
UNLIKE THE EL CAMINO DINER, THE RESTAURANT AT the Grizzly Cove marina did not have a sign up front saying, Please Seat Yourself. The hostess had stepped away from the desk to seat another party. I could see her at the far end of the room, holding a pair of menus like a briefcase under her arm.
Adam didn’t wait for her to return. Instead he started walking toward a window table. He gave a little shoulder bump to a waiter at the far end of the room wearing a name tag that said Marco.
“Hey, man!” Marco said. “Back so soon?”
“My friend Sloane is visiting from Minnesota,” Adam said, nodding toward me.
Marco extended a hand. “Well, hey. Any friend of Adam’s—”
“Is someone you’re immediately suspicious of,” Adam finished.
“Ah, man. You said it. I didn’t.” He turned back to me. “It’s nice to meet you, Sloane. What brings you here?”
“My sister was here,” I said. “I wonder if you ever met h
er—Talley Weber?”
Marco shook his head. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Her real name is Natalie,” I said “I’ll show you her picture.”
I flashed my cell phone toward Marco, and he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “You guys sit wherever you want.”
Adam said it was up to me. I picked a table by the window, where we could see the Bay Bridge. Marco brought over the menus. The offerings were very seafood heavy. I ran my finger down the line of items. There was a chicken-and-seafood paella; I wondered if I could order it without the seafood part. And without the rice. And without anything besides chicken, including spices. Probably not.
There were a number of side dishes that looked all right—I could order a side of french fries, and a side of mashed potatoes, though Adam would probably think I was weird. (Did it matter to me if he thought I was weird? Not necessarily, but would he be more likely to divulge information if he thought I was a perfectly normal girl? Maybe.)
At the bottom of the second page, there was a kids’ menu. Food for the Skippers-in-Training (10 and under), it said.
When Marco came back to take our order, I asked if I could order the grilled cheese. I’ve tried ordering off kids’ menus before, and sometimes it’s no problem. But sometimes restaurants are really strict about it.
“Sloane is actually ten years old,” Adam told Marco. “She just looks old for her age. She’s pretty self-conscious about it. Don’t tell her I told you.”
“I won’t,” Marco said. “Grilled cheese it is.”
“Sorry to be high maintenance,” I said.
“Grilled cheese does not count as high maintenance. You have no idea some of the high-maintenance requests I’ve had to fill.” He turned to Adam. “And you, sir? Any high-maintenance requests?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Today I’ll stick to the menu. Fish tacos.”
Marco made a note on his pad. “Your wish is my command.”
After Marco walked away, Adam turned back to me. “So. Tell me something interesting about yourself, Sloane Weber.”
“Something interesting?”
“Yeah, we’re here, and I don’t really know that much about you.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. The only thing about me that I considered at all interesting was that I was Talley’s sister. “I can’t think of anything to say.”
“I’ll make this easy on you—I’ll ask the questions, and all you have to do is answer. First question: What’s your middle name?”
“Marian,” I said. “And yours?”
“Oh no. I’m the interviewer right now.”
“But I’ll get a turn, right?”
“Sure. You’ll get a turn. So . . . you said you like making up stories.”
“I do . . . I mean, I used to.”
“Do you write them down?”
“Yes.”
“What kinds of stories are your specialty?”
“Realistic fiction, mostly,” I said.
“Like, if aliens invaded, here’s a story about how it would go?”
“I said realistic.”
“So you don’t believe in aliens? Out of the entire universe, you think our planet is the only one with intelligent life?”
“No, that’s not what I said. But as far as we know, we’ve never encountered them here on earth.”
“As soon as aliens land, I guess the category changes from sci-fi to realistic.”
“I never thought of it that way before.”
“Good thing you met me,” he said. “Now back to the interview. Any pets?”
“Nope.”
“Nope as in never, or nope as in not right now?”
“Both,” I said. “Although, actually, now that I think about it—we did have pet chickens for a little while.”
“Not the answer I was expecting,” Adam said. “So I guess my next question is pretty obvious.”
“Uh . . . what’s your next question?”
“Do you live on a farm?”
“No, we have a regular house. When Talley was about thirteen years old, she found some stray chickens.”
Looking back, I couldn’t remember exactly where Talley’d found them, or how she got them home without Dad driving her.
“At first she hid them in the bathroom we shared,” I told Adam. “They unraveled the toilet paper and made a nest behind the toilet.”
“It’s like they always say—you can take the chicken out of the coop, but you can’t take the coop out of the chicken,” Adam said.
“I guess not, because the rooster started crowing.”
“As in, cock-a-doodle-doo?”
“Yep,” I said. “My dad heard it and he went bananas. He told Talley she needed to rehome them pronto. But pronto took a couple weeks. Meanwhile, Talley moved them to the backyard and she named them. She named one after me. She was kind of a badass.”
“You may be the first person to ever describe a chicken as a badass.”
“Talley called her a badass,” I said. “I was only eight years old. It was probably the first time I heard the word. But it was an apt description for this chicken. She was smaller than the others, but she’d peck her way to the front of the food bowl. Talley should’ve named her after herself, don’t you think?”
I was hoping to catch Adam off guard, and have him say, Oh yeah, that sounds like Talley. And then I’d say, Gotcha! I knew that you knew her!
But, instead, he said, “I suspect you’re more badass than you let on.”
“Hardly.”
“And the other chickens?” he asked. “What were their names?”
“The rooster was Philip. And the hens, let’s see—she had Lola and Cassandra and . . . Shoot. I’m blanking on the last one.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I can’t remember the fifth chicken name.” The only person to ask would’ve been Talley, which meant the answer was gone for good, just like she was.
Marco arrived with our food. The grilled cheese was on fancy bread—not plain white bread. But at least it wasn’t too grainy. Adam took a bite of one of his fish tacos, chewed, and swallowed. “Thank goodness I didn’t pick the chicken paella,” he said. “I can eat this guilt-free.”
“Talley also rescued stray codfish,” I said.
“Really? How did she—wait. You’re kidding, right?”
“I am.”
“Not bad,” he said. “So what happened to Sloane the chicken and her feathered friends? Did your mom step in and let Talley keep them?”
“No,” I said. I paused, then added, “She died when I was really young.”
“Oh, God, Sloane,” Adam said. “I’m so sorry. How did she—sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“It was a car accident,” I said. “She skidded on black ice and hit a tree.”
Juno’d actually driven me to the spot where it happened just a couple weeks after Talley died. Years had passed since Mom had died, and it looked like an ordinary place on an ordinary street. There were no markings on any of the trees. I couldn’t tell which tree was the tree. Maybe the offending tree wasn’t even there anymore. Maybe the force of the car hurling into it had knocked it down, or at least damaged it badly enough that it had to be chopped down, carted away, turned into firewood. Logs from that tree could’ve kept other families warm on cold Minnesota nights.
“That’s awful,” Adam said.
“It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”
“That’s what people say when they want to make other people feel better about something shitty.”
In the silence that followed, Adam and I each took bites of our respective meals. I felt oddly guilty, because I’d made things awkward. As if it were my fault for having a dead mom.
It was only my fault that I had a dead sister.
The bite in my mouth seemed to be growing as I chewed and chewed and chewed. It was too big to swallow. I was afraid I’d have to spit it out, but instead I reached for my glass of water. I took a thin sip and somehow I was ab
le to swallow my food down.
“Are you and your dad close?” Adam asked.
“Not really. We just don’t see eye to eye these days. It’s funny, Talley once told me there’s a ‘leap second’ inserted every four years into Coordinated Universal Time. Even with different countries having different leaders, and sometimes being at war with each other, the powers that be got together and decided that. Meanwhile my dad and I, who are related, and who live in the same house, and who are missing the same person—we can’t agree on what needs to be done now. My dad thinks I need to move on. And I can’t. Not when there are so many unanswered questions.”
“I’m sure your dad is devastated in his own way,” Adam said. “I once heard my parents talking about this. There’s a word if you lose a spouse. You’re a widow or a widower. But for all the words there are in the English language, and there must be like a million of them—”
“Just under two hundred thousand,” I interjected. “My English teacher has all twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary.”
“Fine. Not as many as I thought, but still a lot. And for all those words, there’s no word in the English language for when a parent loses a child. It’s like the people in charge of coming up with new words decided, ‘Nope. No word can capture that.’ That’s what my parents said.”
“Do they know someone whose child died?”
Adam shrugged. “My dad probably meets a lot of people who have lost a child, given his line of work.”
Had the doctor who came to tell us Talley had died gone home to her family that night and discussed how there was no word in the English language for what Dad had become, a parent who’d lost a child? What would she have said about me?
“There’s a word for losing your parents,” I said. “You’re an orphan. But when you lose a sibling—there isn’t a word for that, either.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“You know those chickens I was talking about?” Adam nodded. “They might still be alive. When Talley first brought them home, they had all sorts of problems, like mites between their toes. Talley soaked their feet in oil. She nursed them back to health. And now—chickens can live up to a decade, even longer sometimes. It seems weird that Talley saved them and she died, and the chickens don’t even know it. I feel like I should find them and tell them what happened. Not that chickens would care, or even understand. It wouldn’t have any meaning to them. It’s ridiculous.”
The Survival List Page 10