Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  I met Finch and Neely in the kitchen. Neely handed me a cup of espresso, and Finch gave me a red plate with a shiny poached egg wobbling to and fro on a piece of buttered toast.

  “Never had them poached before,” Finch said, and he seemed both amused and a bit scornful. “Only scrambled and fried and boiled. I guess this is how the city people eat their city eggs. They certainly take a lot more work.”

  But I caught a glimmer of a smile when Finch sliced through the egg and the orange-yellow yolk spilled out. He dipped a piece of toast into the yolk and took a bite. Another smile glimmer.

  I looked between him and Neely while I ate, and enjoyed the view.

  Finch didn’t have freckles, like Jack, but his cheeks had a ruddy hue that matched his hair. He sat in a shaft of the morning sun, the sea in the background, the clean, fresh air making his red cheeks all the redder.

  I turned to Neely.

  Neely’s clear, even skin and Kennedy-esque side-parted hair and strong jaw all said I come from generations of blue blood–ery. His laughing, fired-up blue eyes—they were all his own, though. And they were my favorite part. He smiled at me over his cup of coffee, and my cheeks went hot, damn it all to hell.

  Canto still hadn’t returned by the time we finished breakfast, so we decided to go into the little town and get some coffee, and the lay of the land. I wanted to see if any of the Carollie people were acting . . . strange. I wanted to know what we were up against. And Neely did too, based on the way his eyes went smart and dark when I suggested it.

  We saw the horses again when we stepped out of Captain Nemo, only two of them, running and playing with each other, and it was a joy to watch. It really was.

  I thought about the night before, Neely beside me, his warm calves heating up my cold toes, and the horses, and the wild, and the freedom, and the strange dreams I had, and all of it.

  We walked down the main street and I found the coffee shop that I’d spotted the night before. A sign hung above the door that said The Green Salmon. We went in and let ourselves be caught up in the clamor of people needing joe. It was ten in the morning and all ages were present: kids still on their Christmas holiday and elderly people who had already been up for hours and fishermen in thick plaid shirts.

  Carollie seemed like any nice small town with its own urban legend and café and hollering waves . . . except it was fresh and new and unexplored and clean-slated. And, therefore, exotic.

  Until.

  Until we were standing on Carollie’s main street, breathing in the salty air, drinking the Green Salmon’s special of the day, coconut milk lattes with cinnamon. We watched a small town go about its small-town life, batting our eyes against the bright sun. My gaze danced down the row of buildings, the little post office, the closed-for-the-season French restaurant, the chocolate store, the used bookstore, the knickknack store . . .

  Nothing was wrong with this place. Not a thing. Canto had been meeting a boy in the night—probably one of those Greek god boys from the Hag’s Shack. Perhaps she had to do it in secret because . . . because their fathers hated each other and were in the middle of a fishermen’s feud with no chance to reconcile, and . . .

  Finch saw it first. The poster on the telephone pole.

  A boy.

  A boy our age.

  Missing.

  He looked familiar. The dark hair, the tilt of his chin, the smile that went ear to ear . . .

  I’d seen him. Recently.

  Or someone who looked just like him.

  Two brothers, both with the same hair and tilt and smiles . . .

  A pretty woman in her early forties walked by. She caught us staring at the poster and stopped walking. She had long eyelashes and round shoulders and she held three sweet-looking greyhounds on a leash.

  “Roman’s been missing for weeks now,” she said as her dogs rubbed their noses into our palms. “Some people are saying he ran off to the mainland, chasing a girl. He’s one of the Finnfolk boys, fisher family, dark-eyed and rowdy, all of them, catching Carollie hearts as easily as they catch fish.” The woman’s face fell and she looked older all of a sudden. “Even the island crones go soft-eyed,” she added, after a second, “whenever they catch sight of the Finnfolk boys hauling in the nets. And Roman there was the worst of the lot. Or the best, depending on your view . . .”

  The woman trailed off. She wasn’t looking at the poster anymore. She was looking at Canto, walking toward us, raven-haired and red-lipped and chipper in the morning sun.

  “Hey, you three.” Canto waved, smiled. “Fancy meeting you here. What are you all looking at?”

  The woman turned, quick, and moved off down the street, her dogs loping behind.

  Canto watched her go, her brow twisted up, smile gone.

  None of us said anything. After all, boys went missing all the time, didn’t they? Even rowdy, dark-eyed fisher boys with hearts on their sleeves.

  Canto spun around, and saw the poster. She stared, blinked, and then turned her back to it. “What do you say we head home and get some work done?” she asked. She smiled again, but it was different this time. Stiff. Strained.

  I opened my mouth to ask, saw the sharp look in her eyes, and shut it again.

  Back at Captain Nemo, Neely helped Canto make more clam chowder and lemon crème fraiche sauce for the Hag’s Shack. I cleaned things and dusted things and felt useful and wondered why the hell I didn’t do this kind of thing back home, in the Citizen. Finch found a broom and swept sand into piles, and then swept those piles out into the sea.

  A few hours later I finished cleaning. I stepped outside, onto one of Captain Nemo’s worn decks. I breathed in the air, deep, deep, and then went down to the beach and sat in the cold sand and watched the waves. I thought about my parents and Jack and Luke and Sunshine and Freddie and Citizen Kane . . .

  And Pine and Aggie and Inn’s End and Finch . . .

  And Neely and Brodie and River . . .

  I got to my feet and started walking down the beach, going nowhere in particular.

  It was faint at first. Just a whisper that seemed to float in on the waves.

  Violet.

  I stopped walking. I shut my eyes.

  I heard it again. Closer.

  Violet.

  And the next time was right in my damn ear . . .

  Violet . . .

  . . . Like he was beside me, his body inches away, his lips on my neck . . .

  I opened my eyes. Spun around.

  There was nothing. No one. A long stretch of sand without a single soul, silent except for the lapping of the waves at my toes.

  River. He’d called out my name, plain as day. I’d heard it right over the roaring of the sea.

  I shivered, hugged my chest, and waited for it to happen again.

  But nothing.

  I ran all the way back to Captain Nemo, the sea wind combing through my hair, sweeping in and out of my lungs. I went up the steps and inside and stood still in the doorway, catching my breath.

  Quiet. Where was everyone? I called out names. No one answered.

  The air was thick with the smell of the sea. Fish and sand and salt. It was overpowering suddenly, hovering like a cloud, clinging to my skin and my hair like I’d rolled in it, soaked it up, let it drench my pores.

  Something about the smell, the lovely, familiar smell, felt odd to me.

  Wrong.

  Bad.

  I went through the house, opening door after door, until I finally pushed through into a pipe-smoke-smelling study with a worn carpet and dark walls filled with water-warped books on fishing and sea-ing.

  I turned, and there they were, in the far corner, in the shadows.

  Canto’s black curls meshing into Finch’s straight red.

  Her fingertips in his hair and her palms on his cheeks.

  His body
pressing into hers and his hands spread out across her lower back.

  I didn’t watch.

  I only watched for a second.

  Finch seemed to be holding back and Canto seemed to be pushing forward and it was personal, so personal. I backed out of the room and . . .

  . . . and the next thing I knew I was sitting on Captain Nemo’s front wooden deck, facing the great blue sea and trying to figure out why the hell I was crying. It was Neely who found me. He sat down and wrapped me up in his long arms until I didn’t know where he ended and I began. His head was buried in my neck and he didn’t laugh and he didn’t talk. He didn’t say one word until I was done.

  “What happened?” he whispered. “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, because I didn’t. “I stumbled onto Canto and Finch kissing in the study . . .”

  “Canto and Finch? Already? That was fast,” Neely said, and laughed.

  And then I was laughing too, even though my cheeks were still red from crying my damn eyes out for no reason.

  “I’m not a crier,” I said. “This doesn’t make me a crier.”

  Neely nodded. “I know.”

  We both just sat and listened to the sea roar out its feelings for a while.

  “I think I’m going mad,” I said, after a bit. “Neely, how do you know if you’re going mad?”

  Neely raised his eyebrows at me. “People like you don’t go mad, Vi. They’re quiet on the outside and loud on the inside and sane as the day is long.”

  I shook my head. “I went for a walk on the beach and I heard River say my name. Three times. Clear as a bell, as if he were standing right next to me. How the hell do you explain this?”

  Neely shrugged. “The sea will make you hear all sorts of things. It’s tricksy and spiteful.” He put his hand to his ear, and leaned forward. “Right now the waves are telling me to take off all my clothes and tap-dance down the shore. See? That’s not good advice. I’m not doing that.” He put his hand back down. “As I said, tricksy and spiteful.”

  I laughed.

  And then Neely cupped my head with his hand and I tilted right back into his palm, chin in the air, natural as breathing. And when he brought his face down, down toward mine, my insides went soaring up, up . . .

  His lips touched mine, light and soft as snowflakes melting on my skin . . .

  I closed my eyes . . .

  . . . and started hearing the sea, louder now, like I was in it, under it, the bellow and the blast and the tides and the crash . . .

  Neely’s fingers slipped from my hair.

  I opened my eyes.

  Cornelius Redding was on his feet, looking down on me, his blues meeting mine. “I’m so sorry, Vi,” was all he said.

  And then he just walked back inside. And I was alone.

  ≈≈≈

  Neely and me never did get to the Lillian Hut. Night fell fast and we all went along with Canto to help feed the Hag’s Shack crowd. We met her regulars and everyone was cheerful and easy to talk to. It felt like we’d been on the island for months, not hours.

  “I could live here,” Finch said, decisive and brooking no refusal. We were walking back to the rambling Nemo after shutting up shop. Finch and Canto walked side by side, the wind whipping their clothes about their bodies and their hair about their faces. “I like being able to see. The forest was dark. Close. I’m done with it, for now. I like the openness of this island. I like seeing forever.”

  Canto looked up into his face, and he looked down into hers, and suddenly they were looking at each other, deep, like they were all alone, and Canto’s eyes were alert and dark and her face said You’ll do, forest boy, and Finch’s face said I didn’t know how much I needed this, and he looked kind of happy and mysterious underneath the caged and wild.

  Neely’s hand slipped into mine and I let it. Back and forth with him, back and forth. I held his hand tight under a sky full of stars and understood everything about him, right then.

  That night by the fire I told Canto about Citizen Kane, and Luke, and Sunshine, and Jack, and my parents. She asked interested questions about art and Echo, and the conversation flowed like the hot caramel milk we couldn’t stop drinking.

  Canto talked about her seafaring father, and she seemed to idolize him and loathe him at the same time. She thought he had another family, somewhere in the South Pacific maybe, but she didn’t have proof. Yet. She said that Captain Nemo had a ghost, a curly-haired boy who was killed in a storm at the turn of the century. She said she was a casual prophet, and that the prophesizing blood came from her mother’s side. She said she’d dreamed of Finch and recognized him the first night we arrived. And we listened and laughed and believed some of it and not the rest.

  She didn’t talk about the boy on the poster. The Finnfolk boy. Roman. And I didn’t ask.

  River, I don’t want this to end. Any of it, anything that has started here in another house on the sea with a red-haired orphan and a complicated, missing-parent girl and one Violet White and one Redding boy.

  Chapter 13

  I WAS RUNNING across the beach again, feet sinking into the wet sand.

  I looked over my shoulder at Captain Nemo, nothing but one long, angular shadow reaching into the dark velvet sky. Finch was standing on the top deck, pale face and red hair and moonlight streaming down behind him. He was watching me. But he didn’t wave, or call out, so neither did I. I kept running.

  Running.

  Running.

  I saw it.

  The Lillian Hut.

  Small. Tattered. Little square windows. Peeling paint. Long wooden deck. Pointed roof. Stilts in the sand.

  Something pitch-black beat its wings against the dark sky. A raven. It flew down and landed on the edge of the roof.

  Silence, except for the sea and the cawing of the big black bird.

  My wrists hurt. The harsh sea wind bit at my tender, scarred skin. I tugged my sleeves down.

  I climbed the rotting steps.

  Rusted knob.

  Weather-beaten door.

  I went in.

  And there he was. Sleeping on a pile of nets in the corner, one naked arm thrown over his head. His eyes were closed and his expression was soft and moonlight was shooting through one of the windows and he looked like a damn angel, a damn Titian angel.

  I’d found him.

  I’d found River.

  After all that, after all the wondering and worrying and Devil hunting, here he was.

  He was thin. So thin. Lean muscles, taut and tense like they were about to snap. Long dirty hair, down to his chin. Expensive linen pants, torn and ragged and tied with a rope around his waist and still hanging half off his skinny body. No shirt in the cold. Nothing from the waist up. No shoes. Black dirt under his fingernails. White, sea-salt crust on his skin.

  I took a deep breath.

  The room smelled like fish and salty sea air.

  I turned my head.

  Rods and reels and other fishing things. Old nets and dried seaweed. A small wooden table with black grime ground into its cracks. A short, dirty knife next to a pile of oyster shells and one small cup filled with dirty water.

  This, this was how River was living.

  River, who made sweet-potato fries and eggs in a frame and bought expensive dark chocolate. River, who needed espresso six times a day and hated thunderstorms but loved Casablanca and whose skin and hair had always smelled so clean, like fresh cold air.

  Rustling in the corner.

  River’s eyes were open.

  “Hi, Violet,” he said. Just like that. Just like it was nothing.

  “Hi, River,” I said.

  He sat up. He gestured to the pile of nets beneath him. “Very different from the old days, back in the snug guesthouse, huh, Vi? I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.”


  “You have nightmares,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “I have nightmares.” He paused. “Vi, do you remember when you used to crawl in bed next to me? You kept the nightmares away. Do you remember?”

  “I do.”

  He smiled the crooked smile at me.

  And suddenly he didn’t look thin and gaunt and rangy anymore. He was sleek and svelte and sinewy like the very first day I saw him, walking up to the steps of Citizen Kane.

  My heart filled.

  Sizzling, steaming, blood-red joy.

  “River, we’ve been so worried,” I said, words as fast as my beating heart. “We thought you teamed up with Brodie . . . we thought you were a devil-boy in Virginia . . . we thought you were a sea god . . .”

  River was on his feet now. His arms went around me and my arms went around him. My eyes closed and my face pressed into his neck. I smelled salt and fish and sea, though. Not River. Not leaves and autumn and midnight.

  He kissed me. Thumb under my chin, his lips separating mine, my head tilting back, his hands underneath my sweater, and down the front of my wool skirt, and my fingertips dragging across his naked back, and the nails filling with salt, and my mind went blank, and I wanted to die with joy, and I wanted to live forever, and I heard nothing, nothing but water hitting rocks, and ships hitting ice, and whales singing, and someone drowning, and I was starting to drown too, sink down, below the waves, give up my breath, let it go, go, go, down to the deep, down past the horses, down where I couldn’t see the kicking and the swinging, down in the black . . .

  River leaned into my ear and whispered something. Something I knew was important, very important. But I couldn’t hear his voice over the roaring, spitting sea, couldn’t hear it at all—

  “Violet, are you awake?”

  Neely.

  I blinked my eyes. Opened them. I was sitting on the window seat, knees tucked under my chin, cheek against the cold, slick glass. I’d fallen asleep here, waiting for him. I’d been having another nightmare. Another River nightmare. I was shivering, covered in goose bumps, and my hands were ice—I put them to my head and my hair was in wet strings and my skin was coated with sand. I jumped off the window seat and grabbed a towel and began to rub and squeeze and try to get it all, get it all off.