A Thousand Shades of Blue

by Robin Stevenson

  He’d been a mess last night, crying over his rusty rollerblades. What was it he’d said? I thought this trip would change things, but it hasn’t at all.

  For the first time, I feel a sharp pang of fear. What if Tim real y isn’t okay?

  163

  Twenty-Three

  I’m lying down, but I can’t sleep. My ankle is throbbing, and my thoughts are crashing around, from Tim, to Col, to Dad and Mom and Wil .

  Everything’s coming apart.

  It’s almost two in the morning when I finally hear someone coming up the ladder. I sit up and listen for Tim’s voice.

  Instead I hear Will’s drawl. “How about Sheila and I stay? We can keep an eye on Rachel while you and Laura keep looking for Tim.”

  So they haven’t found him. Sheila pokes her head down below and shines her flashlight at me.

  “She’s still here, Mitch.”

  “Good.” That’s Dad, sounding relieved that I haven’t snuck off again.

  “Thank God she’s okay.” That’s Mom. I can tell from her voice she’s been crying.

  “Hello?” I say. “I can actual y hear you, you know.”

  “Don’t be smart,” Dad says. He climbs down into 164

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  the cabin. “Rachel…Do you have any idea where Tim would have gone? Any idea at all?”

  I shrug. “Have you talked to Mango?”

  “Mango? No. We didn’t see him at the bar.”

  “But have you checked on his boat?”

  They all stare at me like I’m nuts. “You think Tim would go to his boat?”

  Duh. “He’s his best friend here.”

  “Goddamn it.” Dad is looking at Will. “Maybe you’d better come with me. If Tim’s there—”

  I can see where this is going. “Mango’s a good guy,”

  I say. “If Tim’s with him, you don’t need to worry. That’s the best place he could be, probably.”

  Mom interrupts me. “I’ll go with you, Mitch. Will and Sheila can stay with Rachel.”

  Great. But at least she’s not jumping on the idea that Mango is a pervert.

  “Fine,” Dad says. He switches on the cabin lights. “And Rachel, you can keep your opinions to yourself. I don’t want to get into this now, but you’re obviously not the best judge of character.”

  Jesus. He’s one to talk. “I’m sorry,” I say for the tenth time. “Okay? I am sorry. If I’d known Tim was going to run away, obviously I wouldn’t have taken off.”

  Dad shakes his head. “That makes it all worse, but I’m not blaming you for that. What I’m upset about is that you promised to come home and you didn’t. And you lied to us about where you were—no, worse than that. You left Tim to do the lying for you.”

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  Unbelievable. He actually thinks this is a good time for a lecture. What’s the point? It’s not like I could feel any worse than I already do. I stare down at my fingernails and suck on my bottom lip.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Dad asks.

  “I already said sorry, okay? What do you want me to say?”

  “I want to know what is going on with you.

  These last couple of weeks you’ve been completely impossible.”

  I look up at Dad standing in the cabin, the others all waiting in the cockpit. Maybe I should just tell him the truth. Jeez, Dad, I’ve been feeling a bit upset since I saw Mom screwing around with your buddy Wil . Yeah, there’s a good option. I suck harder on my lip until it starts to hurt. “I don’t know,” I say when the silence becomes unbearable.

  He shakes his head. “We worry about you, you know. About your safety. I’d like to trust your judgement, but obviously I can’t.”

  “You can,” I say sulkily. “There’s nothing wrong with my judgement. It’s a lot better than some other people’s.” Like yours or Mom’s, for example.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he says coldly.

  My heart is beating so hard I feel like it might explode. I want to scream. Punch the walls. Break something. But instead I force myself to lie back down and pretend to sleep as my parents leave and Sheila and Will make themselves at home in the cockpit.

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  Maybe ten minutes later, I hear someone coming up the ladder and then Sheila’s breathless voice. “Tim! Oh my goodness, we’ve all been so worried.”

  I jump out of bed and almost fal as my weight lands on my sore ankle. I catch my breath and hobble to the companionway stairs. “Tim?”

  He climbs over the rail into the cockpit and looks right at me. “What are they doing here?”

  I start to laugh. “You’re okay?”

  “Fine.” His face is pale though, and his voice is strained.

  “Where have you been?” Will asks sternly. “Your parents have been worried sick.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Taken the dinghy to Mango’s boat,” I tell him. “I thought you might be there.”

  He shakes his head. Ignoring Will and Sheila, he climbs down to join me in the cabin.

  “Rachel? Tim?” Will starts to follow, sticking his head through the companionway and flashing us a guidance-counselor smile. “Can we come down? We should call your parents; Mitch took the handheld.”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. I pick up the mike and hail them.

  Our dinghy’s called Shared Blessings, but I just say Mom’s name. To hell with radio etiquette. “Mom. It’s Rachel.”

  “Rachel?”

  “Tim’s home,” I say flatly. “He’s fine.” Then I turn the radio off before she can answer. Sheila has poked her 167

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  head into the companionway beside Will’s, and they’re both looking down at me expectantly. I guess they’re waiting to be invited in for a cozy little reunion chat. If there is anything that could make this night even worse, it is having Will on the boat with us.

  “Thanks for coming,” I say, “but Tim and I would real y prefer to be alone now.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Sheila says. “We were happy to come.”

  “I’m not being sil y,” I say flatly.

  Her long hair falls forward, half covering her face, and she tucks it back behind her ear. She looks uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she says. “I just…

  wel , I don’t think you two should be on your own.”

  I think she’s the kind of person who enjoys a crisis, the kind who likes to come to the rescue. I wonder if that’s why she got stuck with a loser like Will. I feel bad that she’s so bewildered by our unfriendliness, but not so bad that I’m going to let her stay. “We don’t mind,” I say.

  I look right past her at Will’s stupid grinning face. “We want to be left alone.”

  Sheila turns to Will. “We promised Mitch and Laura we would take care of them.”

  “Mom and Dad will be back soon,” I say. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”

  Will’s not smiling anymore. His face is turning red.

  “Look, I don’t know why you don’t want us here but—”

  “I think you do know,” I say steadily. “I think you know exactly why I don’t want you here.”

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  Our eyes lock for a moment, and then Will looks away.

  “Come on,” he mutters to Sheila. “If they real y want to be alone, maybe we should go.”

  “What did she mean?” I can hear Sheila asking as they climb down the ladder. “What was she talking about?”

  Will mutters something about “goddamn teenagers,”

  and then they’re gone. Tim and I are alone.

  He looks at me, wide-eyed. “Wow.”

  I giggle, and then despite everything, or maybe because of everything, we both start to laugh uncontrol ably.

  “It’s not funny,” I gasp.

  “No.” Tim looks at me. “I think you do know,” he mimic
s. Then he starts cracking up again.

  I think we’re actual y getting a bit hysterical or something, and maybe I’m still stoned though I don’t real y feel like I am. I sit back down on the berth. “Jeez, the look on his face…”

  “Classic.”

  Even in the light of the cabin, I can see that Tim’s eyes are pink-rimmed and bloodshot. I stop laughing abruptly.

  “Tim? Why’d you take off tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” He’s quiet for a moment. “No good reason, real y. You know.”

  I do know. Only people like Dad believe that everyone always has a reason for the things they do. Like we’re these rational, mechanical beings. Like life isn’t more random than that.

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  “Yeah,” I say. “Everything has pretty much sucked lately.”

  Tim sits down beside me on the berth. “I went to look for Mango. I just needed to talk to someone. He’s usual y pretty good to talk to.” He glances at me, his eyes flicking my way for a millisecond. “He listens anyway. He doesn’t give lectures or say anything stupid.”

  I figure we’re both thinking about Dad. “So, what happened? You couldn’t find him?”

  It’s so quiet that I can actual y hear him swallow.

  “I found him,” he says. “He was at Eddie’s. But he was drunk. He was wandering around with a bottle of rum in his hand, getting in stupid fights. And then he sort of…

  passed out.”

  “Ohhh…”

  “Yeah. Some of the guys pulled him in the back to sleep it off.” He flicks his eyes toward me again. “I guess he actual y sleeps back there a lot.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes flick my way again. “So, I guess we’re both in big trouble, huh? You and that guy…are you, you know…”

  “None of your business.” I stand up and gasp as pain shoots through my ankle again. “Oh, oh. Ow.” I glance down at the tensor bandage, and for a moment my stomach tightens. I can almost feel Col’s cool hands holding my foot.

  Tim follows my gaze. “Hey. What did you do?”

  “Just a twist,” I say. “Do you think there’s any Tylenol around here?”

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  “First-aid kit,” Tim says. “No, actual y, wait a sec. Mom has some.” He ducks into the V-berth and starts rumma-ging through her bedside table, then her purse. He pul s out a piece of paper and unfolds it. “It’s a letter.”

  “Are you snooping again?” I ask. “The binoculars thing wasn’t bad enough?”

  He flushes and starts to put the paper back in her purse. “I wasn’t real y thinking.”

  We look at each other for a minute. “Is it to Will?”

  I ask at last.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t even read anything yet.”

  There is a long pause, and then I say, “Okay. Hand it over. I’ll read it.”

  Tim passes me the paper. I open it up and see a whole page of small tidy writing. “It’s to Emma,” I say, surprised.

  He frowns. “That’s weird.”

  It is weird. Mom writes to Emma every week, but usually just short postcards with bright pictures on the front. Not long letters like this. Emma can’t read and doesn’t have the attention span to listen to more than a few sentences.

  “Are you going to read it?” Tim asks.

  I already am. “Okay. This doesn’t make sense…I mean, Emma wouldn’t understand any of this…”

  He sits down beside me and reads over my shoulder as I start to read out loud.

  “Dear Emma, Lately I’ve been thinking that being a mother is all about hearing what isn’t said: reading the 171

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  silences, noticing the absences. If a mother is vigilant enough, maybe she can reach out across the ever-growing gaps before they become too wide. Maybe she can grasp the last threads of childhood and hold on tightly. I forgot to be vigilant once. I let my attention lapse for a second and your life was forever changed.

  And now I feel like Rachel and Tim are slipping away too. Maybe this trip was a bad idea. Or maybe we just left it too late.”

  I stop reading because my voice is starting to shake.

  I look up at Tim.

  “We shouldn’t be reading this,” he says. His eyes are wide and shocked.

  I shove the letter back into Mom’s purse. My hand is shaking. “She wasn’t really going to send it to Emma, was she?”

  He shakes his head. “No, it’s like…it’s more like a journal or something. Only she writes it like she’s talking to Emma.”

  “Not our Emma.”

  “No.” He hesitates. “Maybe…maybe it’s an imaginary Emma. Like, you know, who Emma might have been.”

  I swallow hard. “Do you real y remember the accident?

  Or was that just something you made up?”

  Tim looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know. You know when you look at an old picture a lot of times, say of a place you’ve been? And then after a while you can’t tel if you remember the place itself or just the picture?”

  I nod.

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  “Well, it’s like that. I have these things that feel like memories, but I don’t know if they real y are.”

  Anxiety is buzzing inside me like electricity, a low crackling hum in my bones. I’m wondering whether it’s total y stupid to ask Tim if he knows why Emma stepped back into the road, when we hear Mom and Dad coming.

  173

  Twenty-Four

  “I don’t want to have to talk to them,” Tim says. “You know. About tonight.”

  “Me neither.” I feel trapped.

  “Let’s pretend we’re asleep.”

  “As if.” But I switch off the light and hop into my bed anyway. Tim ducks into the aft cabin. Our berths are only a few feet apart. We lie there in the darkness, waiting, and I hear Tim start to cry. His breath comes in little gasps.

  I’ve been a lousy big sister to him.

  “Tim?” I whisper. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t let you talk to me about Mom and Wil . About what we saw. You know.”

  I can hear his crying slowing down, his breathing getting calmer.

  “It’s okay,” he says at last. “I didn’t want it to be real either.”

  I open my eyes, but I can’t see his face in the darkness.

  Mom and Dad are climbing up the ladder, but I ask him anyway. “How did you know that’s why I didn’t want to talk about it?”

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  His whisper is so soft I can barely make out his words.

  “That’s what we all do, right? If we don’t talk about something, it isn’t real.”

  We hear steps into the cockpit outside.

  “Kids?” Mom cal s softly. “Are you there?”

  They both climb down the ladder. “Where the hel are Will and Sheila?” Dad mutters.

  Despite the seriousness of it al , and the knowledge that I’m probably about to be grounded forever, I almost giggle.

  Seeing that stupid, fake grin wiped off Wil ’s face…

  The light switches on and I sit up, blinking.

  Mom looks like absolute hel . Her hair’s blown all over the place, her thin face is al puffy and her eyes are swol en from crying. She looks about ten years older than she did this morning.

  “Mom?” I feel a sickening stab of guilt. I didn’t mean to do this.

  She gives me a quick hug; then she turns and bends down to hug Tim. His eyes are open, but he’s still lying there, all stiff, like he’s not sure whether to keep faking sleep.

  Dad steps closer to me and for a second, I think he might hug me too—even though he almost never does—

  but instead he bends closer and sniffs. When he speaks, his voice is practical y dripping disgust. “Christ. You’ve been smoking pot, haven’t you.”

  It’s not a question, the way he says it
, so I don’t answer.

  I clamp my mouth shut. If I let myself say anything at al , I’m going to tell him to fuck off. And that’s probably a bad idea.

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  “Mitch, how about we leave it for now? They’re both exhausted. We’re upset…” Mom trails off and puts her hand on his shoulder.

  He shrugs it off like it’s a fly that’s just landed there.

  “Family meeting,” he says. “First thing tomorrow.”

  Z

  I’m woken in the morning by the sound of Will’s voice blasting over the vhf. I guess first thing means after the cruiser’s net. Dad wouldn’t let a little family crisis disrupt the morning routine. Not him. No, it’s like his life depends on all his rules and schedules. If he let them slip, chaos and randomness would take over.

  “Good morning, Georgetown!” Will is saying. He sounds just as phoney and cheery as always, although he can’t have had much sleep.

  I hope he had none at al . I hope he was up all night wondering how much I knew and whether I’d tell Sheila.

  She probably has no idea he cheats on her. I sit up slowly.

  My throat is dry and scratchy, and my mouth tastes sour.

  I wiggle my foot tentatively. My ankle still hurts, but not like it did last night.

  Mom and Dad are already up, sitting side by side in the cockpit. I squint my eyes against the sun and watch them.

  From this angle, I can see only their legs and the lower part of their bodies. Dad’s expanding beer gut. I wonder what it’s like for Mom, sitting there with Dad and listening to Wil ’s voice.

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  I wonder if she’s in love with Wil .

  I stand up, careful not to put too much weight on my bad ankle, and turn off the radio. “Do we have to listen to this?”

  “Turn that back on,” Dad snaps.

  Usually, we all tiptoe around Dad’s rules. I wonder what he’d say if he knew he was insisting on listening to the man his wife is having an affair with. It occurs to me that I could just open my mouth and tell him, just like that.

  The thought makes me dizzy. “I don’t want to listen to it,” I say.

  Dad sticks his head through the companionway door and stares at me. “I think we’ve noticed that it all seems to be about what you want lately. I’ve had about enough of your selfishness, Rachel. I’ve had it up to here with your attitude.”