by Nick Courage
When she looped back toward Elliot a fourth time, he was gone.
Like he’d blown away with the coming storm.
The petrel floated on a warped plank of sun-whitened wood—once red, now barnacled and worn by the sea. Before it was his life raft, the driftwood had been the uppermost lip of an unnamed fishing boat. That changed in the early hours of the morning, when the swirling vortex of Megastorm Valerie passed overhead, lifting the modest boat a hundred feet above sea level and shattering it against a shallow reef.
What didn’t sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was already washing up on the shores of Port-de-Paix and Baracoa, two hundred miles of rough surf away. The little bird would have washed up with it, drowned and ragged, if the rolling plank hadn’t kept his head above the waves.
The petrel blinked.
His eyes were crusted with salt and he hadn’t eaten in days.
Below him, the turquoise water was brimming with life.
Neon damselfish darted through swarms of translucent jellies as spiny lobster scuttled across the seafloor, feeding on the detritus of the storm. If he had been able to fly, the little petrel could have eaten his fill.
But he couldn’t fly, not yet.
The wind had ripped through his feathers as it spit him into the upper atmosphere, like a rock through a window, and his muscles still burned from fighting the storm. The nightmare had been too much for the little bird to bear, and he’d lost consciousness as he plummeted toward the surf—tossed by the waves of fortune onto the rolling wreckage of the fishing boat.
It was a miracle that he was still alive.
A handful of seagulls wheeled overhead, laughing and chirping as the driftwood raft sloshed over swelling wavelets. The gulls hadn’t strayed far from shore. Their home was a small, private island called Ambergris Cay, just thirty short miles north. With the storm well on its way to the southern United States, the sky was clear and blue. If he’d been able to gather his strength, the petrel could have easily made it to the cay’s pillow-soft beaches.
If.
The petrel closed his eyes, breathing deeply as parrotfish chased the tips of his wings, which trailed in the surf behind him. Had he made it just a few more miles through the storm, he would have landed in the Gulf Stream. The warm, oceanic gyre would have ferried him up the eastern seaboard of the United States and across the Atlantic. All the way to Europe and back, as far from Valerie as you could get.
By happenstance, the petrel had crashed into a shortcut instead: a thin equatorial stream cutting all the way to Africa by way of Puerto Rico, four hundred miles away. If he could just keep on breathing, the little petrel would end up exactly where he’d started without having to move a feather.
If he could just keep on breathing…
The flight to the mainland had been surprisingly smooth, in large part because the second dose of Alejo’s painkillers had kicked in somewhere over the Florida Keys. As they approached the sprawling Mississippi River delta, a feeling of warmth and well-being had spread from the pit of his stomach to the tips of his fingers and toes. He’d watched the sky darken over the wetlands and—with the specter of Valerie clawing at their heels—rested his cheek against the double-paned glass.
He’d even surprised himself by falling asleep.
It was only when the plane’s wheels hit the crackling asphalt in Venice, Louisiana, that the glowing warmth turned to nausea. Alejo wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of the medication or the storm. The airstrip was nothing more than a thin band of weathered blacktop cutting through the wetlands, and the wind screamed across the tall grass that surrounded them, whipping it into waves that pitched and rolled but never crashed.
Alejo had felt seasick just looking at them.
He’d curled down into his seat, his eyes squeezed shut as he waited for the engines to start back up again. For the plane to fly them away from the storm. But the news crew wasn’t flying away from the storm, like the rest of the still-seated soldiers. They were rushing to meet it in New Orleans, and they were on a tight schedule: Valerie was so close that they had to sprint to outrun her. “Go time, kid,” the cameraman had said, tousling his hair as the rest of his crew climbed down to the tarmac. Alejo shielded his face when he joined them, the rain slicing at his good arm as he ran to the nearby helipad, pushing into the wind.
Soaking wet, again.
As soon as he climbed aboard the waiting helicopter, Alejo collapsed, shivering, onto the first empty seat he could find. The pilot had already initiated takeoff, so he strapped himself in as quickly as he could with one arm, then burrowed his head into the crook of his sling and tried to fall back to sleep. To just get through it. It should have been an easy trip—a half-hour hop on a good day—but the helicopter had other plans. It twitched and bounced as it cut through the rising jet streams, jerking fitfully into the path of least resistance.
Spinning like a weathervane.
Alejo could feel the vomit rising in his throat.
It burned at the back of his mouth even after the helicopter leveled out, and he didn’t dare open his eyes again until they began their descent into the city of New Orleans. When he finally felt safe enough to sneak a cautious peek at his surroundings, Alejo frowned so deeply that his ears popped from the pressure. The cameraman had inched his way to the very edge of the helicopter’s open door, looping his arm through a wall of reinforced nylon webbing so he could lean over the void. A splash of bile crept up past Alejo’s molars as the green canopy of a sprawling park rippled and swayed beneath the helicopter’s narrow skids.
He swallowed, cringing at the taste.
“It’s okay,” Alejo whispered, his stomach clenching as he checked the buckle on his seat belt for the third time. The quiver in his voice wasn’t reassuring, but he could barely hear himself over the roar of the rotors anyway.
“You’re okay,” he repeated, taking a deep breath, and then another.
But Alejo wasn’t okay.
His wrist had started to throb again—a dull pain pulsing from his palm to his elbow—and his head was swimming. He glanced around the cabin, praying for a quick landing, and accidentally locked eyes with the reporter, who smirked and looked down at his phone. Alejo grit his teeth and forced a smile. He didn’t stop smiling until they touched down amid the fire trucks and police cars below them, settling heavily onto the grass.
“Ready?”
The cameraman squeezed Alejo’s shoulder, not waiting for a response before he jumped confidently out of the cabin, his heavy boots crunching on twigs blown loose by the helicopter’s whirring blades. Alejo gulped. The cameraman’s grip had been strong, but not strong enough to reassure Alejo, who stayed buckled into his seat as the cabin emptied.
“C’mon, kid,” the cameraman shouted over his shoulder.
Alejo swallowed dryly as he unbuckled his seat belt.
It wasn’t easy to do with one hand, but the cameraman waited, checking his battery packs as the rest of the crew made their way through a web of haphazardly parked cars to the makeshift headquarters at their center. When Alejo finally joined him on the ground, the cameraman squatted—making a point of holding his camera at his side as he looked Alejo directly in the eyes. Alejo wanted to look away, to shrug his shoulders and climb back into the helicopter—but the cameraman was staring at him so intently that he felt pinned, like a butterfly on a corkboard.
“When we leave…,” the cameraman said, his voice rough and low, his breath thick with the stench of cigarettes. “When we leave, we’re going to leave running.” He spat into the grass, gathering his thoughts as the wind ripped through the green leaves overhead and a siren sounded in the distance.
“So stay close, okay?”
Alejo nodded, but when the cameraman turned to join the rest of the crew beneath a heavy canvas flap, he didn’t follow. He couldn’t. Instead, he stumble
d back behind the helicopter, trailing his good hand across the hoods of parked police cruisers until he finally fell to his knees between two fire trucks. His stomach was empty except for a can of diet cola, but it was a minor miracle that he hadn’t puked it onto the cameraman’s scuffed boots.
That he’d been able to hold it down as long as he had.
Hidden from view, Alejo retched onto the grass.
When he was finished, Alejo wiped the back of his good arm across his chin and headed straight for a water fountain he’d spotted on the far side of the tents. He walked slowly, his feet dragging in the dirt as he ran his tongue across his unbrushed teeth. All around him, people rushed back and forth between matte green tents, gathering in small groups where they talked in hushed voices and strode purposefully across the park, shouting into walkie-talkies. Alejo barely noticed them. All he needed was water, he told himself, to get the taste out of his mouth.
After that, he would be fine.
The stream from the fountain, when he finally reached it, was no more than a trickle. He had to press his lips against the spout to drink, and when he did, the water was hot and metallic. But Alejo drank for a full minute anyway, not stopping until he could feel his empty stomach stretching beneath his shirt. When he was done, he ran the fingers of his good hand across the burbling spout and splashed his cheeks.
“Está bien,” he said, surveying the park with slightly fresher eyes.
A heavy gust blew through the oaks, kicking up clouds of dust and pollen.
It had been a long day—and it was still only two o’clock in the afternoon. It was hard to believe that he’d been in San Juan just that morning, in the house he shared with Padrino Nando. Watching the waves wash La Perla out to sea. It was different from what Alejo had expected, stateside. He hadn’t seen much of the city, it was true. Just a gray and black patchwork of roofs—drab with rain—as they landed…and the park. But everything felt so much more spaced out than back home.
So much emptier.
Alejo rubbed an itch from his nose as a chorus of leaves sang overhead, joined by the deep baritone of giant wind chimes. He was only a five-minute walk from the tents, but it was so calm and quiet by the water fountain that he felt like he was on another planet. He wondered how far he was from New York City, now that he was in the States. How far he was from his mother. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t smell the sea—just dirt, wet and rich beneath his feet. Alejo took a deep breath, filling his lungs. If he didn’t know what was coming, he would have been tempted to run past the tree line, through the empty park and the maze of streets beyond it.
Instead, he scanned the sky—looking for birds.
“As long as there are birds in the waves,” Padrino Nando had said.
Alejo sighed, hoping that the storm hadn’t gone too far inland.
That his padrino was still safe, wherever he was.
In New Orleans, there wasn’t so much as a sparrow in the breeze. And it wasn’t just the birds. Not counting the emergency workers, the city had evacuated. Alejo could sense the absence all around him, in the stir of branches overhead and the shouts like whispers in the wind: quiet reminders that he was all alone again, on the precipice of the storm.
All alone except for the boy walking haltingly in the distance.
Alejo straightened, craning his neck as the boy lurched down an embankment toward the overgrown edge of a deep green lagoon. He expected the boy to stop when he reached the shoreline, but he kept going—trudging into the cattails and kicking his legs through the shallows. Alejo frowned as he watched him splash halfway to a small island in the middle of the water. He looked over his shoulder, hoping someone else was watching the boy, too.
That it wasn’t just him.
But, except for the boy, Alejo was still alone.
He turned back to the lagoon just in time to see the boy stumble and then fall, clutching his side. “No,” Alejo whispered as he disappeared beneath the glassy green water, but the lagoon was far enough away that he second-guessed what he had seen. The boy could have spotted something—a coin or a ring, the silver glint of metal in the mud. Anything. For a split second, Alejo stood motionless, not realizing that he was holding his breath.
Waiting for the boy to resurface.
As the ripples in the water began to fade, Alejo jumped into action.
“Hey!” he shouted, but there was nobody around to hear him. He pivoted toward the camp, looking for someone—for anyone—who could help. In the distance, he spotted police officers and firefighters milling around their vehicles, biding time until they were deployed. But the water fountain was so far away. Too far away for them to hear Alejo over the rising wind and too far away for Alejo to run back to the tents for help.
He didn’t have a choice.
His heart pounded as he sprinted toward the water.
“Hey!” Alejo shouted again, yelling at the top of his lungs.
Hoping his voice would carry.
“Help!”
A girl emerged—horror-struck—from the island’s shaggy brush as Alejo ripped his sling off, tossing it behind him as he ran. His swollen hand hung limply from his arm. It hurt worse and worse with every footfall, but the oversized sling slowed him down and there wasn’t any time to waste. The girl crashed through the tall grass, diving into the dark lagoon headfirst while Alejo splashed into the cold, wet muck. It was softer than he expected and it pulled at his shoes, tripping him into the water. Slowing him down to a sputtering stumble. By the time he reached the drowning boy, the girl was already struggling to keep his head above water.
Their faces were both spangled with duckweed.
Alejo’s was too.
He could feel it sticking in his hair and ears—tiny green clovers with long, wet roots. A goose honked from shore as Alejo stood in the waist-deep lagoon, dripping wet and thrusting both of his hands, good and bad, beneath the boy’s armpits. He tried to ignore the pain as he lifted, straining to drag the boy’s limp body from the water—but his wrist wouldn’t let him. He swore that he could feel a broken bone clicking in his arm and yelled, unable to contain himself.
Still, nobody heard him.
Nobody except the girl and the goose, who shuffled nervously back and forth on the shore, honking imperiously as the girl helped Alejo pull the boy into the reeds. The sky opened up almost as soon as he stepped out of the water, the rain hard enough to sting, but the girl didn’t follow him to shore. Instead, she stood in the downpour, shivering with shock, like she’d seen a ghost.
But the boy was still alive.
Even before he coughed himself awake, Alejo could see that. The bent reeds beneath him were smeared with blood, but the boy’s chest rose and fell gently beneath the trees while the sky shattered with lightning. The girl ran to the boy’s side as dirty water dripped down his chin, into the collar of his wrinkled shirt. She whispered his name over and over again, her voice lost beneath the rolling thunder. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she mumbled, her tears streaking the mud on her face as she cradled his head in her arms.
Alejo stepped toward the girl, to help her somehow, but the goose nipped protectively at his bare legs—chasing him back into deeper water. “Basta,” Alejo said, falling back into the mud. He blinked the rain from his eyes as the goose charged toward him, its chest puffed out to twice its normal size. “Stop it!” Alejo shouted, waving his good hand at the angry bird.
Startling the girl.
She looked up at Alejo as if she’d just noticed he was there.
“It’s okay,” she said, more to the goose than to Alejo.
The goose waddled happily toward the girl’s gentle voice, nuzzling its head against her outstretched hand as another bolt of lightning split the sky. It struck so close that Alejo could smell its sizzle. He jumped back to land as a crack of thunder rolled and rumbled through t
he darkening clouds. The thunder echoed across the empty city, heralding rain so heavy it came down in sheets and buckets. As if on cue, Alejo and the girl rushed to drag the boy farther ashore, pulling him through the reeds and the mud to a dense outcropping of trees. They propped him against a knotted trunk, beneath a layer of leaves so thick that even the megastorm couldn’t break through.
It hadn’t yet, anyway.
Sheltered by the twisted limbs and cocooned in a thick curtain of rain, the helicopter and the news crew might as well have been a thousand miles away. Alejo joined the girl, who was sitting cross-legged next to the boy, looking at his wound but not touching it. It was bad enough that he would need a doctor—that much was obvious. His shirt was stained with blood, and it had been hard enough getting him out of the lagoon. If they didn’t want him to drown again, they’d need more help to get him off the island.
“Is he okay?” Alejo asked.
The girl shook her head.
Her face was streaked with grime and tears, and as the storm raged around them, Alejo wondered who she was and how long she’d been camping there. Her hair was wet and plastered to her neck, and algae from the lagoon clung to her arms and legs. The goose settled down next to the girl, eyeing him suspiciously as it tucked its beak beneath its mangled wing. Alejo cradled his own hurt wing in his good arm as he balanced on a knobby root, staring at the girl and the boy and the goose.
Wondering what to do next.
“He’s my brother,” the girl said, not looking up. “Elliot. That’s his name.”
She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, then wiped her hand on the goose.
“He’s sick. He can’t be around germs or leave his room or…”
She trailed off and Alejo didn’t fill the silence.
His wrist, squeezed tightly into the warmth of his armpit, was throbbing—and the boy, Elliot, had started coughing again. Alejo watched him as he groaned back into consciousness, clutching at his stomach and doubling over into the dirt. It was painful to watch, and Alejo stepped toward the wall of rain, preparing to brave the lightning and the lagoon—to sprint back to the tents for help—when Elliot finally opened his eyes.