Searching for Sky

by Jillian Cantor

  My toes curl against the sand, the way they have every morning. Ocean calls to me, wide and blue and green, and it’s not until I notice the strange, large white thing—the boat—farther down Beach that it really hits me that we’re leaving. That River and I are walking down Beach together in a different way than we ever have.

  Still, I walk with River, as if in a dream, as if my legs know nothing else but sinking in the sand and following these strange men to this strange boat. When we reach the edge of Beach, just by the water and not too far from Fishing Cove, the boat looms large and white in front of us, like a sea monster, and my legs stop moving; my feet plant themselves in the sand.

  “Come on,” River says, tugging on my hand, but his voice falters a little. Maybe he’s changed his mind.

  “We could still stay,” I say. But he shakes his head.

  “Come on aboard, kids,” Roger is calling. He moves the round leaf and wipes the top of his head with his hand, and I see he really doesn’t have any hair.

  We walk up a small, flat hill, and then we are on this thing, this boat. It’s so large and so white, the space of it much bigger than Shelter. I put my hand against the side as I hear Roger say he’s getting ready to “start the engine,” and the boat side feels so hard. Harder than anything I have ever felt, even rocks.

  I hear a giant roar, and the boat moves beneath my feet. I hold on tight to the side to steady myself, and I watch as suddenly Island moves away. River stands behind me, holding on tightly to my shoulders. I feel his breath against my neck as we both stare at the water, swirling out below us, Island moving quickly away from us. At first it looks just the way it did when we swam past Rocks yesterday. It’s behind us, but I can still see Fishing Cove and the path back to Shelter. But then the water moves beneath the boat, faster and faster, and Island grows smaller and smaller. Beach starts to disappear, and I can’t tell Fishing Cove from the rest of it. Island turns green, and becomes the size of a rock.

  I watch the water swirl beneath the boat, and suddenly, I can’t breathe. What am I doing here? I can’t leave Island.

  I shake River’s arms off my shoulders, and I climb up the side of the boat and I jump.

  I hit the water hard, and Ocean rushes in my ears, pulling me under, stinging my skin so that my entire body feels numb. I try to lift my head up, to swim back toward Island, but the current from the boat is strong and pulls me tightly, trying to force me underwater.

  “Sky!” I hear River’s voice, rising and falling against the pull of the waves. The noise of the boat suddenly quiets, and I hear what I think is Roger’s voice saying, “Oh holy hell. She jumped.”

  Island bobs ahead of me as my head falls in and out of the waves. It’s so small now, a green pebble. I’m not sure I can swim to it. But I want to. I have to.

  If I just close my eyes, maybe the water will take me there, back, the way it must’ve once when my mother and Helmut first came here. Ocean is all powerful. It knows things and it does things. It takes and it gives. Once Helmut put the remains of a rotted fish into the water, and the next morning Ocean brought it back, ten-fold, with a pile of fresh fish left for us on Beach. It was as if Ocean knew we were starving, we needed something. And I think now, even as it’s pulling me under, it will know where I need to go, where I belong.

  But then I hear a splash, and I feel big arms around my shoulders, pulling me, holding on to me. “What are you doing?” River whispers in my ear.

  “I don’t want to go,” I tell him, and I struggle to get out of his grip, to move toward Island. The water pulls me under again, but River pulls me up, harder. I’m crying, coughing, choking on water.

  “I’m afraid, too, Sky,” River says over the bob of the waves.

  My rabbit pelt is drenched, and I’m shivering once River and I are back on the boat. Jeremy offers me a big yellow thing he calls a poncho. I don’t answer him, but he throws it over my shoulders anyway. It sticks to my skin, but I’m too tired to protest now. Roger makes the boat roar again, and the water churns beneath us. I stare out in the distance, as Island grows smaller and smaller, and eventually all I can see, everywhere, is blue water meets blue sky.

  “Hey, kids,” Jeremy says after a little while. He comes up behind us, and I jump when I hear his voice. His eyes are still hidden by small black shells, and I get that same nervous feeling around him that I got when River swam out past Rocks yesterday. “We should be back at port by tomorrow morning, all right?”

  River nods, as if he already knows this, and I wonder if it’s something he and Jeremy and Roger discussed while I was hiding at Falls last night.

  “Roger radioed the Coast Guard, and they’re going to send someone to get you two back to the States.”

  “The States?” I ask.

  “California,” Jeremy says. “That’s where you all were from before you got stranded here.” River glances at me and shrugs guiltily, and I think that he knew about California, too, even though we’ve never really talked about it before.

  “Why don’t you get some rest below board?” Jeremy says. “You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.” I shake my head, but River tugs on my arm. I’m so angry with him. I hate him. I really do, but I don’t want to stand by the edge of the boat, all alone with only Jeremy and his strange, covered eyes.

  I follow River, who follows Jeremy down a hill of smooth, sharp rocks. “There you go,” Jeremy says when we reach the bottom, pointing to two large boxes. “Nothing fancy, but a bed for each of you.” He pauses. “I’ll be just up the stairs if you need anything. Oh, and there’s food in the fridge if you get hungry.” He points to a small black box in the corner. It buzzes and hums, as if it is full of insects, and I know I won’t be hungry enough to eat what’s inside, no matter how much my stomach rumbles. “You need anything else?” Jeremy asks.

  “Bathroom Tree,” I say because I feel the urge pressing there, in my belly, and I have no idea how people on boats do this sort of thing. If they do this sort of thing.

  “Over there.” Jeremy points next to the humming black thing. I don’t see a tree or a hole, but Jeremy walks past us, pulls on something, and part of the boat tears away, revealing a tiny, dark cave. “Toilet’s in here, all right?”

  River nods, and I just stare. Jeremy frowns and lifts the shells from his eyes, and now I can see his eyes are silver gray, the color of the skin of the fish River caught for my birthday. I don’t think you can trust eyes that color; there is something about them so animallike, so fishlike, skeleton-like, that my belly aches.

  Jeremy walks back toward the coming-in place that brought us down here. “The American Official should be here first thing in the morning, all right?” We don’t say anything, and he shakes his head, looking right at River. “Holy hell, kid,” he says, “Helmut Almstedt. It’s like you’re a bloody ghost.”

  He climbs back up the rocks, and I wonder what he means, and who Almstedt is, but only for a second, because I now really, really need to pee. I stand and run to what Jeremy called Toilet, which is a large white circular hole coming up from the ground on top of some kind of tree stump. At Bathroom Tree there are two holes in the ground, well hidden from view and easy to squat over, but this hole seems too tall for me to squat. “River,” I whisper, holding my legs together and twisting. “How do I use this?”

  River examines it, lifting pieces, taking something from the top that looks like a thick white piece of rectangle wood. “I think you sit up here,” River says, and now that the top is gone, I see water flows underneath, down and into the circle. “And you must put your feet on this circle part.” He points to the rim around the circular hole.

  I don’t know if he’s right or what the point is of peeing into water, but I have to go really bad, so I push him out of the way and do as he says. “Don’t look,” I whisper again as I sit on the high part of Toilet and rest my feet on the circle below. The sound of my pee hitting the water is so loud, I’m embarrassed that River can hear it, but he pretends not to notice, an
d when I’m finished he takes a turn, then replaces the rectangle piece where he found it.

  It seems so dirty not to wash my hands in Falls when I’m finished, but Falls is very far away now, I remind myself, and the only water I see is inside this thing, Toilet, and I’m not about to touch that now.

  River walks to the boxes Jeremy called Bed and pulls the rabbit pelts from the top. He hands one to me, and it is not nearly as soft as our rabbit pelts. River puts his on the ground, and I do the same. We lie there, back to back, and close our eyes, as the ground sways beneath us.

  “You told them about California,” I whisper.

  “I told you, they knew my father,” he answers. “They already knew.”

  For a quick second I wonder if Roger and Jeremy could be The Others Who We Never Met, who my mother and Helmut would sometimes speak of in hushed tones when they discussed The Accident. I always thought these were the people who came on the boat with my mother and Helmut in the beginning, but that they had drowned in Ocean on the way to Island. But every time I asked my mother, she just told me it didn’t matter now. That they were gone. Dead. So they couldn’t be Roger and Jeremy, unless Ocean had brought them back to Island after all this time.

  “I think maybe Roger even thought that I was him, at first. That he was calling me Helmut,” River says now, as if this is just occurring to him. “They said I look like him.” He pauses. “Or him a long time ago, anyway.” He clears his throat, and I understand that by a long time ago, he means before Island. And this is a weight, unspoken between us until now, this other life my mother and Helmut had, in California. I wonder if there are other people out there in California, aside from Roger and Jeremy, who once knew Helmut, my mother. And then for the first time I wonder whether there could be anyone else out there who knew me. But I remember nothing except my mother, Helmut, River, Island, and so I’m not sure I believe that anything else can be real.

  “You do look like him,” I say to River. But then I add, “Sort of.” Because despite their similar looks, there’s something about River that is so unmistakably different from Helmut. They have the same blond hair, wide cheeks, broad forehead and shoulders, but where Helmut’s expression looked tough and worn, River’s is soft, kind. Helmut was practical. River is a dreamer. And you can see this in the lines around their eyes: River’s smile; Helmut’s frown. “I don’t like this,” I say softly. “I really want to go back.”

  “We can’t go back,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “Sky,” he says my name. “Skyblue.”

  I don’t say anything for a little while. I close my eyes, and I lean into the feel of his back against mine. The yellow poncho sticks to my skin, hard enough so it hurts. The ground is uncomfortable against my side, and my leg aches where I scraped it last night.

  “What have you done?” I finally whisper.

  I’m not sure if River is asleep now or if he’s only pretending, but he doesn’t answer.

  Chapter 6

  I hear the sound of voices, and I open my eyes, expecting to see the familiar shapes of Shelter surrounding me, the voices of my mother and Helmut, but it is so dark, a darkness I have never known, and no matter how many times I blink, I can’t get my eyes to see. “River,” I yell, feeling around for him, my hand searching desperately in the darkness. “River.”

  “I’m here,” River’s voice comes across the black, and then his hand reaches around until he finds mine.

  “Hard to believe they were living there all this time,” an unfamiliar voice says from somewhere above us. The voice of a skeleton, I think, and I shiver.

  “That must be The American Official,” River says. And then I remember where we are: Below Board, the boat. River and I left Island with Roger and Jeremy.

  I am shaking, the enormity of what we have done hitting me fresh all over again. River tries to steady my hand in his. But I am torn between being mad at him still and wanting to pull away, and being so afraid that I want to hold on to him for comfort.

  I don’t pull away. My tongue feels thick, and my head aches. “River,” I whisper into the darkness. He squeezes my hand in response.

  I didn’t sleep well on the uncomfortable rabbit pelt. All night I tossed and turned and dreamed of skeletons.

  I’ve seen skeletons before: the bones of fish, the bones of rabbits, the bones of the green birds that cry even in the night. But in my dream, the skeletons looked like Jeremy and Roger, bones the size of men, with black shells hiding their eyes.

  “I couldn’t believe it myself when I came face-to-face with the boy,” I hear Roger saying now from just above us. I’m guessing now at the top of the rock hill. “I thought it was Helmut Almstedt at first, and it scared the bloody hell out of me.” One of them laughs. Roger, I think.

  “Are they agitated?” The American Official says.

  “Aw, no, mate. They’re just a couple of scared kids,” Roger says. “The girl’s a little wild, but the boy—he might look like Helmut, but he’s not too bad.”

  “Unbelievable …,” The American Official says. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got the call. But I came prepared.”

  We hear the sound of footsteps coming down the rocks, coming toward us. River pulls me closer to him, and I can hear his heart, so loud it’s as if it’s beating in my ear.

  Suddenly there is a bright sun above us, and it is so bright I can’t see anything for a moment. Then I see Roger. His no-hair is hidden again, and his face is red and shining with sweat.

  “Hey there, kids,” he says, his voice softening. “This here is Mr. Sawyer.”

  “Sergeant Sawyer,” the man says as he steps around Roger. He is not too tall, but his entire body is covered in a green that reminds me of the trees shrouding Shelter. The only thing I can see is his face, and his skin is dark, darker than mine and River’s, the color of the rocks in the deeper, cooler middle part of the body of water that shares River’s name.

  “He’s come to take you kids home,” Roger says.

  “Home?” I ask, thinking again of Island, of my rabbit pelt mat back at Shelter and my bracelet. My bracelet. How could I have left it there when I went to the boat with River? I was so stunned I wasn’t thinking clearly. My mother gave me that bracelet, and now it’s the only thing left of her, the pale pink shells to decorate my wrist.

  “California,” Sergeant Sawyer is saying.

  I let go of River’s hand, and I stand up. I shake my head. No. That’s not home. Island is home. My bracelet is there. I have to go back. I have to get it. “Take me back to Island.” I look at Roger, asking him directly, pleading with him, because I think he’s the one I trust the most. His eyes are blue, like my mother’s were.

  “Sky.” River stands, too, and says my name softly. He tries to pull me close to him. But I shake him off.

  “I need to go back,” I say.

  Roger shakes his head. “But you’ve been rescued now, sweetheart.”

  Sergeant Sawyer pushes Roger out of the way. “Let me handle this,” he says. Then he turns to stare at me and River. “So you both understand and speak English?”

  River nods, though I don’t know whether we do or not.

  I peer beyond Sergeant Sawyer, calculating the distance between here and the top of the boat, the water. There’s enough space between the two men for me to push my way through, like the distance between the two palm trees where my favorite and most trusted rabbit trap lies. And maybe if I can make it past them, I can jump into the water and the water will know me; it will hold me close, take me to the place I belong. Or maybe I can even convince Jeremy to take me if I stare into his silver fish eyes and beg him to do it.

  “And you do believe yourselves to be American citizens?”

  “I …,” River stumbles, and though we are not as close together now, I can still hear his heart beating, loud and wild.

  I edge away from him, and I know I need to run, to get back to Island somehow. I rush toward the men, the rock hill, holding my arms o
ut to push past them. “Sky,” River is shouting. “Stop. What are you doing?”

  I make it up the rocks, and above me, the sky is close and Ocean seems far. Beach is in front of us but it is not like I have ever known it. It seems to be made of palm wood, like our traps, and there are people there. So many of them, and they are wearing strange things. Skeleton men and women everywhere. I can still hear River calling for me as my eyes search desperately for a way into Ocean that won’t make me walk on this strange wood with all these skeletons. I feel tears running down my cheeks, but I don’t stop to wipe them away.

  Suddenly, Sergeant Sawyer catches my wrist with his hand. I struggle to pull away, but he holds on too tightly. Still, I fight him with everything I have, and I kick his legs until he stumbles a little back down the rocks. He catches his balance, and I notice he’s holding a thin white stick between his teeth now, grabbing onto it with his other hand, and then he jabs it hard into my arm, through the flesh of the poncho.

  I feel like I’ve been stung by the biggest and worst insect I have ever felt, but I am still trying to run. “Where the hell does she think she’s going?” I hear Sergeant Sawyer say.

  And then the entire world goes still.

  Chapter 7

  I open my eyes and the world is white.

  Not white like the sand that danced just beyond the edge of Beach in tiny pure dunes. Or even white like the full, puffy clouds hanging low in the cool blue sky, filled with rain. No. Now the white is all wrong. Everything around me is that color, and the world is a square, the whiteness of it so bright it hurts my eyes. I blink, and then I notice there’s the sound of something I don’t recognize. A strange kind of bird, close and regular, chirping in my ear.

  I sit up, and I realize I am in a box. Bed. Like the one that was in Below Board on the boat. The boat? River?

  “River.” I call his name softly at first, then louder. “River. River.” He doesn’t answer, and my voice sounds strange in this white place, different.