by Неизвестный
“Interesting theory,” he said, smiling.
“How long before I come back to see you? A month or so?”
“We'll see.” The smile left his face, and Opal felt a chill in the air. She zipped up her hoodie and leaned her head back on the headrest.
The sun set, and she nodded off.
* * *
Opal awoke in a motionless car. The car was parked in a gravelly parking lot, and her grandfather was out of the vehicle, talking to a huge man with a black beard. Was he asking for directions to his imaginary island? She wondered for a moment if he hadn't lost his marbles.
She pulled out her phone, but found no signal. They'd driven for at least three hours, and by the looks of what little she could see outside in the moonlight, they were at a fishing dock.
Her grandfather and the man waved at her and walked over to the car.
“I'm Jeremiah,” the bearded man said, offering her an enormous paw to shake. She stuck her hand through the open window and gingerly shook it. Gruffly, he said, “I don't have room on the boat for the entire car, so you'll have to get out if you're going.”
She stepped out of the car and asked if she might have a moment alone with her grandfather. The big man said to take five minutes, and he left, marching down the creaking wood dock with her suitcase, his big boots clomping.
“You didn't pack anything,” she said to her grandfather.
“I'm not going.”
“You're not serious, are you? There's no way I'm getting on a boat, alone, with that huge dude. Do you not watch the news? If he doesn't kill me himself, he'll sell me to someone who will.”
“Not Jeremiah. He's Bonded.”
“What do you mean Bonded? Like a bounty hunter?”
“Not exactly. Listen, Opal, you're the light of my life. I wouldn't send you if it wasn't for the best. You need to be with family, not left to fend for yourself after I'm gone. There's no other option. Do you trust me?”
She looked into his eyes, still bright, even in just the moonlight, and felt him fading away. He would die, and she wouldn't even be there. This was goodbye.
“I won't leave you,” she said, falling into his arms.
He squeezed her tight. “You are my light. You are always with me, and I with you.”
She looked up at him and pleaded, “Don't make me go.”
He pulled back and took her hand in his soft, wrinkled palm. Smiling, he said, “Come see the boat. It's a lovely old thing.”
In that moment, she stopped fighting. Going away was what he wanted, so she would go. For him, she would go.
* * *
The boat was a charming old vessel, the interior filled with bits of wood that had been rubbed smooth over the years. The entire thing smelled of fish, but diluted by the scent of the ocean.
She said goodbye, fighting back tears.
Then they were off, just her and Jeremiah, on the old fishing boat.
Opal huddled in a blanket on the boat's deck and watched the shoreline disappear.
Soon her grandfather was just a smudge, his arm waving from where he stood on the dock. She blinked, and he was gone, merged with the dark, blurry shoreline.
They sailed for at least an hour, and she was exhausted from the day, but too anxious to sleep.
She pulled the campfire-scented blanket tighter and checked her phone again, mainly for the time. It connected with a signal, briefly, and she received an invitation from Katy to go to a house party.
She wrote back: Can't. I'm on a boat with a big beard-y dude and we're sailing to an imaginary magic island.
Katy returned: Wow. Just wow. Sarcasm much? Fine, I'll go without you.
The cell phone lost connection.
Opal was tucking the phone back into her jacket pocket when Jeremiah walked up to where she was huddled on the deck and offered her a cigarette.
“No thanks, I don't smoke,” she said, though she'd been flattered by the offer, in the manner of all fifteen-year-old girls when someone thinks they're older.
He lit a wooden match, cupping the tiny flame against the wind, and his face flared orange. Only then did Opal realize how dark it was out at sea, away from the city lights. After a drag, he blew smoke out his large nostrils and said, “How's your swimming?”
She laughed nervously and glanced out at the inky waves. “I can swim a few laps, but I'm more about track and field.”
“Did Warren tell you about the suitcase? About how you need to hold on to it?”
They both turned to look at the suitcase, which sat on the deck next to her, between them.
He leaned against the railing and drew hard upon the cigarette, the red end glowing in the night. She swore she could hear the tobacco sizzle. All was silent, except the thrumming of the old fishing boat's motor, deep below. Jeremiah flicked the half-used cigarette into the ocean.
“Now's as good a time as any,” he said.
Jeremiah grabbed her suitcase and tossed it overboard.
Opal jumped to her feet and held her fists up in front of her, purely on instinct. Her mind raced, planning escape routes and remembering where she might have seen life jackets, or weapons. There was something that looked like a gun inside, though it was probably just a flare gun.
“I'm sorry I have to do this,” Jeremiah said, “but most first-timers won't go on their own.”
“My grandfather knows I'm here,” she said, backing away.
He moved faster than she thought possible for such a big guy, lunging and grabbing her around the middle. She fought and screamed, tangled up in the blanket he'd loaned her so graciously not hours before.
And then he tossed her overboard.
Chapter Two
Opal hit the ocean hard, face first, mouth open. The coldness of the water made her gasp in even more of it. She struggled, thinking Jeremiah had dove in after her and was holding her arms down, but the restriction was the blanket clinging to her.
With her head underwater, she fought to stay calm and wriggle out of the blanket. She undulated like a panicked mermaid, and some instinct she didn't know she had urged her in the right direction, up. She had air on her face. Air.
Jeremiah was shouting down at her, but her ears were ringing, and the sound of the motor was louder down here.
The boat moved steadily away, so she began to swim after it, looking for anything to climb up or hang on to.
He was still yelling, and pointing. “You have to hold on to the suitcase! The suitcase!”
“What? You're crazy!”
“You won't catch the boat, Opal. Grab the suitcase.”
She could swim, yes, but not as fast as the boat. Indeed, it was getting further and further away with each stroke she took.
“You're a murderer!” she yelled back at the boat with all her fury.
“Turn back, Opal! You must hold on to the suitcase!”
She tread water and looked around her. The ocean moved, rocking, but the weather wasn't rough or stormy, at least. Bobbing not far away was the brown suitcase.
Jeremiah yelled again, “Have faith!”
When she reached the suitcase and threw one exhausted arm over it, she fully expected it to sink under the extra weight, but it did not.
At least she had a flotation device.
Holding the suitcase, she swam in the opposite direction the boat was heading, back toward the shore, though it was miles away.
Her body became warm. There's the hypothermia kicking in, she thought.
* * *
Some time later, maybe minutes, maybe hours, Opal shook her head and slapped her cheek to make sure she was awake. She'd stopped kicking, yet she was still moving, which she could tell by the pull of her clothes.
She wasn't dead, and she wasn't cold. The suitcase pulled her, moving steadily, like a big, brown sea turtle, swimming somewhere and taking her with it.
She let go of the suitcase and tread water for a moment without touching it. The chill returned, as cold as the shower in an old apartment when s
omeone flushes the toilet. The suitcase stopped moving and simply bobbed, waiting for her.
This time, she grabbed the suitcase with both arms and hoisted part of her body on it, careful to observe buoyancy. Surprisingly, this action seemed to make the suitcase even more buoyant, plus the surface was as pleasantly hot as a sun-soaked black pebble.
She hugged the suitcase as it started moving again, then she kissed it tenderly on a buckle. “Giddyup, little turtle,” the girl said to her swimming suitcase, in the middle of a dark ocean.
Giddyup to where, though?
Jeremiah's fishing boat was long gone, and she couldn't remember what direction it had been heading, or where it had come from. Inky sky and black water stretched out in every direction. Even if she knew where the mainland was, generally, the journey would be an hour or more by boat, and heaven knew how many hours by suitcase, presuming the thing didn't run out of gas or electricity or whatever it ran on. Magic, she thought with a shiver.
She squinted to make her eyes work better. She didn't need glasses, but the optometrist had said her eyesight wasn't perfect. Even if she'd had glasses, though, they would have gotten knocked to the bottom of the ocean when the giant dude tossed her off a boat in the middle of nowhere.
She might have jumped over voluntarily, had he simply explained how the voyage would work. Opal considered how that hypothetical conversation might have gone and concluded that, actually, no, she wouldn't have jumped.
The moon shone down, not quite full.
She made a clicking sound with her mouth, the kind of sound you'd give a horse to speed up. The suitcase sped up. She clicked again, but there was no change. Apparently, she was already at maximum suitcase velocity. She rested her chin on the top of the suitcase and thought about—of all things—her friend Katy, and the house party. Katy wanted to tell Mark she liked him, and it could be happening right now.
Katy probably thought that, between the two of them, she was having the more adventurous evening, what with the house party and all.
* * *
Opal dreamed of soft creatures, their feet slapping, a group of them circling around her. She dreamed of them climbing over her, waddling up and down every inch of her arms and legs with great interest.
When Opal awoke, she was no longer moving. In the instant before her eyes opened, she truly believed she was in the passenger seat of her grandfather's car. But she wasn't.
She cried out and grasped tightly to the suitcase, but she wasn't in the ocean anymore.
Her feet were still in the ocean, and when the wave came in, her legs were, but most of Opal was on a beach. Actually, due to the lack of soft sand and presence of hard rocks, the place was more of a shore than a beach.
Everything was tinged pink, and she assumed the ocean adventure had damaged her eyes, permanently, but she blinked a few more times and rubbed the gunk out of them. Her eyes were fine, and she was watching the sky brighten with sunrise. The sun was visible, so she was on the east coast of somewhere.
She sat up and looked around, finding nothing but a cliff face on one side and the ocean on the other, and in between, nothing but pebbles, and bits of white mixed in with the pebbles.
She picked up a piece of… broken shell.
Broken Shell Island.
The people in Flora Fritz's stories had used broken shells to cast votes, and incorporated them into good luck charms and jewelry.
“Cool. This place is real,” she said, but her happiness was quickly shattered by the realization she wasn't wearing any pants.
Her underwear, a rather sturdy pair purchased from a yoga studio, were still on, but gone were her socks, shoes, and the comfortable sweatpants she'd been wearing earlier, all kicked off or dragged off in the ocean.
She shivered. Despite the warm sunshine, her damp zip-up hoodie clung to her, so she took the jacket off and lay it over the rocks to dry.
The suitcase had cooled down to ambient temperature, and inside, the clothes she'd packed were miraculously dry and pleasantly warm, as though fresh from the dryer.
Looking around once again to make sure she was alone on the rocky shore, she slipped out of her damp underwear and put on new things, including sport sandals and a summer dress. With her damp clothes off, the air felt warm, and as the sun's orange rays poured down, the light felt wonderful on her sand-speckled skin. Her long, brown hair was mostly dry, and curlier than ever.
Unfortunately, her cell phone was long gone, lost to the ocean. If only she'd put it in her suitcase instead of her jacket pocket, it wouldn't be somewhere in the sea, along with her favorite sweatpants.
Silence.
She cocked her head and looked back at the cliff face behind her. There had been birds cawing and chirping a moment ago, and now they were not.
She considered sitting there and waiting for someone to come fetch her—surely they knew she was coming—but the eerie silence got her to her feet and moving.
To the north and south, the shore looked exactly the same. In the Broken Shell Island books, the kids had climbed staircases up cliffs, so she simply had to look for a staircase. She wished it hadn't been so many years since she'd read the stories. The smartest thing would have been to pack the books in her suitcase, but she had taken an extra pair of jeans instead, a choice she now regretted.
There were no steps or pathways up the cliff, not visible from where she was, so she picked up her suitcase and started walking south. Then, not trusting her instincts, she turned around and headed north instead.
As she walked, she thought about the many other things she wished she'd packed inside the suitcase: bottled water, food, sunglasses, or even a watch. She didn't own a wristwatch, but she wished she knew how long she'd been walking. Knowing something, even just the time, was better than knowing nothing.
She smacked herself on the forehead. She'd left her wet hoodie on the shore behind her, but she didn't want to turn back to get it, covering the same fruitless terrain.
After what she guessed was another hour, she rested on a driftwood log and watched the ocean, which was still calm. There were clouds in the sky, so the surface didn't glare. She wondered if Katy had gone to the house party and kissed Mark. She wondered if her grandfather was checking into the hospital for treatment today. She wondered if she was even on the correct island, because didn't all shores have broken shells on them?
She got up and continued walking, mindful to keep the cliff on her left and not get disoriented and head back the way she'd come.
When she saw something blue up ahead, her heart skipped, and she imagined herself coming upon her own blue hoodie, laid out on the rocks where she'd left it, confirming she'd circled the impenetrable island and would die of exposure, alone, in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, the blue was not her hoodie, but a tide pool reflecting the sky.
She peered down at the tide pool, at strange creatures she'd never seen before, not in all her trips to the shore of her home. A long, striped thing, probably a lizard, but purple, dove into the small pool, swam a lap, and jumped out at the same spot. When she tried to get a closer look, it flipped onto its back, showing a stomach that was patterned to look like the pebbles. She blinked, and it disappeared, perfectly camouflaged.
The other creatures in the tide pool were similar to the mussels and hermit crabs she was familiar with, but the mussels were larger, and the hermit crabs seemed smarter. They paused in their travels, their rounded, beady eyeballs facing her, as though they were watching her while she watched them.
Opal's friend Katy kept Ecuadorian crabs as pets, and Opal had been surprised, the first time she stayed over, that the crabs made squealing, chirping noises to communicate. Stranger still was people weren't sure how the crabs made the noises, as they didn't have voices, like people.
“Hey, crab,” Opal said. “Chirp, chirp? How's life here on the island?”
The crab ran off—sideways, of course.
A sound other than the waves of the ocean caught her attention—a sound like
sheets being whipped on a bed being made. Overhead, a flock of birds appeared from beyond the cliff. They formed the shape of an arrowhead above her, and then dove into the calm ocean.
Opal stared at the ocean.
Seconds passed and when the birds did not resurface, she concluded she was at the hallucination stage of whatever was happening to her. She licked her parched lips, only making them feel worse. Lip balm. She added lip balm to the list of things she wished were in her suitcase.
With great splashing and cawing, the birds emerged from the ocean. As they passed over her head, alarmingly close, drops of ocean water rained down, and she was pelted with something else—something red, that hurt, but not like rocks.
Opal ducked and huddled in a ball, holding her now-treasured suitcase over her head to protect herself from the onslaught.
When the pummeling stopped and the birds were gone, she looked around at what lay on the ground. Some were smashed and split open, but, assuming she wasn't hallucinating, the items appeared to be either plums or nectarines, or something in between.
Her hunger and thirst rose up convincingly. Poison or not, it would have taken great effort to stop herself from tasting this gift.
The first bite was juicy, sweet, and unquestionably the greatest thing she'd ever tasted, better than mango cheesecake with chocolate shavings. She ate seven of the least smashed-apart fruits, then moved on to the bits that were smithereens, smacking her fingers noisily.
After finishing the fruit she found on the rocky shoreline, she waded knee deep into the ocean, looking for the source, but found only seaweed swishing around her ankles. The thought of swimming out to where the birds had dove in, returning to the ocean, gave her the shivers. She wasn't that hungry.
She trudged back out, her wet sport sandals making squelchy little slapping noises, and took a seat on the suitcase, her chin in her hands. Her stomach gurgled and she did not feel well at all. Fresh water was what she needed, and quickly. Her mood dropped quickly and her face ached, her eyes squeezing out precious fluid in the form of two tears. Why had nobody come to meet her?