Maybe that’s too much to ask.
Maybe I should go have some fun with Craig.
* * *
I woke up with a jolt, jumping from the couch. It was still nighttime. At least, I thought it was. Who could tell in that pit?
But Aunt Agatha wasn’t bustling around yet, so it was probably still dark. For as long as I could remember, she’d risen with the sun and practiced her fiddle. That was her thing.
I’d fallen asleep in the work clothes Aunt Agatha had given me—a baggy blue man’s dress shirt and some kind of beat-up white pants that were also huge. The faint smell of paint remover coming from them was making me sick. I needed some air.
Once past my ring of light, I had to inch my way to the back door to avoid getting killed on some lurking hazard. I tried pulling the handle up slowly so as not to disturb Aunt Agatha, but it made a banging sound anyway. She didn’t wake up, though. I pushed through the door, slow, slow, trying not to let it creak. It did, but only a little.
I breathed in the cool night air and stared at the sky. The moon hung so low, it was like being close to the heavens. Like I could take a leap and be there.
The last thing you’d expect in Far Rockaway, Queens.
I identified with the moon. For one thing, it was my last name. But it was more than that. The moon looked translucent, and sometimes I felt like that, too. Not transparent, but not solid either—kind of halfway there. The dark water sloshed against the barge, rocking it gently. Ahead of me, the moon illuminated patches of ocean in spots, which looked like they were dancing.
For the first time, I relaxed. Just a little.
I turned to get my iPod so I could chill outside for a while, but suddenly there was this low, kind of haunting music coming from somewhere. It was deeper than a violin. Someone was playing a cello. A classical piece—don’t ask me what, because I couldn’t have told the difference between Bach and Beethoven if someone had held a gun to my head—whatever it was, it was nice. Soothing. It rolled over the waves, like the ocean was singing a love song. A sad love song.
Go figure. Two musicians in one hellhole.
I flicked my eyes across the dozens of boats floating on the waves. They stopped at the sailboat Perchance to Dream.
Two musicians—and a boy who looked like Jim Morrison.
5
Crybaby
The next morning, Aunt Agatha’s practicing did wake me up. I’d been dreaming about cello music, and then a violin broke in.
I slid off the couch and went to watch her. When I was little, she used to visit every week to give me a lesson. I hated it! She had to bribe me with loose change for every line I played. She finally gave up because I never practiced. Mom never pushed me on it; she was too busy in her own little world.
The violin was Aunt Agatha’s thing, but it wasn’t mine. It took her about five years to see that. And by then, she was paying me in dollars.
Today, my aunt was deep in concentration, focused on the sheet music open on her stand. Her bow perched near the bridge of her fiddle, and back and forth it went, never hesitating, never losing its balance. She was playing something I recognized.
I clapped when she finished.
She turned, surprised. “I didn’t see you there, Willow.”
“I remember that piece. Who wrote it?”
“Chopin. You always enjoyed Chopin.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” I don’t know why, but I felt embarrassed all of a sudden. I looked down at my feet.
“Dear heart, I want to talk with you.”
Her soft voice made me feel like bursting into tears.
“I didn’t know your mother wasn’t going to drive you here the other day. I would’ve picked you up.”
I studied an interesting diamond pattern in the steel floor.
“Willow, your mother loves you, you know. She just has problems.”
The tears were making circles over the diamonds.
“Willow, will you look at me?”
I shook my head no.
Her folding chair scraped against the floor. Then she wrapped my hand in hers: rough, wrinkly skin against mine.
“It’s not your fault, Willow.”
She squeezed tighter, tighter. “Your father couldn’t help her. He tried… . ”
I twisted my hand from her grasp and looked up. “I don’t want to hear about him.”
Licking at the tears that were dripping into my mouth, I hurried into the bathroom.
* * *
I came out when I felt the barge moving. Craig had arrived and was hacking at some wood—a sleazeball with a saw. He gave me a wave with it.
The barge lurched. “What’s going on?” I asked, unnerved.
Aunt Agatha looked up from the wood she was brushing stain onto. “A towboat’s moving us to a closer berth. I realized that if I didn’t pay for a spot right on the dock, you wouldn’t see land all summer.”
“No more plank?”
She smiled. “No more plank.”
“Gee, thanks.” I gave her a little smile back.
“You’re welcome, dear heart. Now go have breakfast. Did you have dinner last night?” She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Yeah.”
“Really? How many meals did you pack in that bag of yours?”
“I have these bars that you eat instead of regular food. They’re fine. They’re good.”
Craig was watching me from behind her. He didn’t have his shades on. Guess it wouldn’t be too cool to slice off a finger he couldn’t see.
Aunt Agatha frowned. “I don’t think you’re getting the proper nutrition. But we’ll talk about that later.” She turned back to her project.
“Listen, when we get to the new spot, would it be okay if I went for a walk?”
She swung her head to answer. “Of course. You’re not a captive here, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Remember that.”
“I could show ya around,” said Craig. “If ya wait ’til later,” he added, seeing the look on Aunt Agatha’s face. She didn’t like slacking, bless her.
“I like to go by myself,” I said. That was true, and it was also a lie.
* * *
Later, I sat on the couch and crunched on a carrot, trying to think about getting off the barge. But my mind went back to my dad. Why did Aunt Agatha have to bring up her no-good brother?
My father ran out on us when I was six. When he left, he told me he was sorry, but he just couldn’t take my mother anymore.
But he didn’t take me with him, either.
My mom’s reaction was to set off into a slew of insults, then and whenever Dad’s name came up: “Your father’s no good.” “A bastard.” “A piece of crap.”
I laid on my bed, pressing into my pillow and soaking it with tears, the lesson that my dad hadn’t wanted me sinking in deeper each time I thought about it. My dad was gone for good, and I was alone with Mom, who had a different personality for every day of the week.
And still does today, I thought as I clutched Aunt Agatha’s lumpy couch cushion against my stomach. A voice inside me said, You’re such a baby, Willow. Quit wallowing and go to sleep.
So I did.
* * *
After spending two days floating on the barge, it felt kind of weird to be walking on land again. There wasn’t much to see in the boatyard—just more of what I’d seen already. But it beat being on the barge with Mr. Conversation.
It sure was hot, though. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail, but I wished I had a stretchy thing to get my bangs off my face. All around the marina, red-faced men of varying ages endured the sun’s punishment as they hammered, sawed, or sanded away. Again, I was bombarded with whistles and insults as I walked.
“Hey, sexy.”
“A little more meat on that ass, and you could be a supermodel.”
Why is hurting someone such a popular sport?
I didn’t react or run. Instead, I put on my iPod headphones and listened to Jim sing �
��My Eyes Have Seen You” and thought of that boy on the boat.
I tramped around the boatyard, breathing in the salty air and checking out the boats on stilts. My white sneakers were soon speckled brown with dirt.
The shoreline overlooked the boats in the water, and I went to sit on a wooden bench facing the docks. Again, my eyes wandered over to that sailboat, Perchance to Dream.
I wondered if that boy on the boat was okay now. He’d looked so sad when I saw him the first time.
“Ahem.” Behind me, someone cleared their throat. “Excuse me, miss … ”
I turned around and faced a shrimpy guy wearing a red “Manny’s Groceries” cap and carting two bags of groceries, one in each hand. Looking like they might outweigh him, the bags seemed like they might slip from his grasp. The guy himself was wobbling a little, as if he couldn’t balance his body between the bags.
“Yes?” I asked him.
“Do you know where the … ” He stopped, maneuvering the bag in his left hand so that he could read the paper he clutched. “Do you know where the Ridge boat is?”
I shook my head no.
He squinted at the paper again. “Axel … Axel Ridge?”
“No, sorry.”
He sighed heavily and looked at the paper for a third time. “Perchance to Dream?” How about that? That’s the name of the boat this guy lives on.”
“Oh, yes, I do know,” I said. I pointed to the boat, and the delivery guy hobbled off, staggering under his load but somehow managing to keep the bags in his scrawny arms.
So now I knew the name of either the boy or his dad. Axel … interesting name.
“Yo.” I felt a sudden burst of hot breath on my neck.
Perfect. I spun around. “Hello, Craig.”
“There’s that rich dude,” he said, nodding toward the boat where the delivery guy was handing off the groceries to the boy who looked like Jim Morrison.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Naw, not personal or nothin’. Everyone talks about him ’round here, sayin’ that he’s loaded.”
“He lives on that boat with his parents?”
“Naw,” he said again. “He lives alone.”
“Alone? But he looks like a teenager.”
Craig shrugged. “His dad is this mega rich dude that owns a ton of them buildings in New York.”
I remembered the last name and took a guess: “Wade Ridge?”
“That’s the dude,” Craig agreed.
“But I don’t understand. Why would Wade Ridge’s son live here? He could afford to go anywhere he wants.”
“It’s wacked,” Craig agreed. “But the guy’s wacked, too. He never even gets off his boat.”
“Never?”
“I never seen him off of it. He gets food delivered to him; his clothes’re picked up and cleaned. Nice ta have bucks, huh?”
“I guess.”
Meanwhile, Craig had edged himself closer and closer, to the point where we were practically touching.
I took a step back. “Well, I’m going for a walk.”
“I gotta get some shit at the hardware store for Aggie.” He gave me a wink. “Catcha later.”
Not if I run fast enough.
Still thinking about the mysterious Axel, I rounded a corner past a big cabin cruiser, suspended in what looked like a huge sling, with the name Maritime Bliss painted in blue block letters on its rear. I couldn’t get Axel’s eyes out of my mind. Even from the distance between us when I’d first spotted him, I could almost see myself in those eyes.
That made me damn nervous.
But what did I have to worry about? I never went looking for people, that’s for sure.
So if Axel Ridge never got off his boat, I guessed I was never gonna meet him. There. That took a whole lot of pressure off.
That’s when he stepped into my path.
6
Stumbling Block
I walked right into him. Bam!—and fell on my butt into pebbly dirt, triggering dust clouds. I sat up, blinking at him through the haze, trying to look casual.
Hard to do, especially because the face in front of me was the face I’d stared at from my bed for the past two years. He was Jim Morrison’s double.
And then there was that other thing—what I’d felt when he’d first looked at me from his boat: that feeling of being beckoned… .
“Are you all right?” His voice was low and quick. He didn’t look right at me. It was more like somewhere off to the right of me.
I nodded dumbly. With a halfway glance, he offered me his hand, but I got myself up on my own. I was coated with sand. I probably looked like a giant breaded pork chop.
Not that it mattered what I looked like, because he now seemed fascinated with the ground. He kicked into it with his sneaker, creating smaller clouds than my butt had generated.
“I’m Axel,” he said, after a few moments of staring at dirt.
“I’m Willow,” I said, extending my hand kind of low, so he’d see it.
He took it and shook. A sensation passed through me when we touched, like static shock, yet somehow pleasant. He must have felt it, too, because he actually looked at me. There was still the same sadness in his green eyes that I’d seen before.
He didn’t say anything else.
Boy, we were in trouble if he was depending on me to start talking. But I gave it a shot.
“So what are you doing off your boat?” I asked.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cutoff jeans and looked back down. I’d said the wrong thing, apparently. How unusual.
More moments went by. Axel dug pebbles from the dirt with his feet and shifted from one foot to another.
I read his faded, frayed-sleeved T-shirt and wondered where “Midland Prep” was. And if they taught language skills there.
“I was looking for you,” he finally said.
“Me?” Just to clarify, as he might have been addressing the stones he was still admiring.
“Yeah. I … I wanted to know why … why you ran away from me yesterday.”
His words were a strange combination of hesitancy and speed. He ran his fingers through his disheveled brown hair and stuck some behind his ear.
I didn’t have an answer to his question. Not a rational one, anyway. “I just have poor people skills, I guess.”
He smiled briefly at that.
“Me, too.”
He scanned the sky, taking great interest in a passing plane overhead. This was some conversation. But I was afraid to try again, having tasted my foot once already.
Finally, he looked at me. And there it was again—that feeling of being pulled, like a metal shard to a magnet.
We looked at each other a little longer. He fidgeted a little, kicked his feet some more.
“Well, see you around, I guess,” he said.
“I guess.”
Head lowered, he walked away, disappearing between the boats.
I headed back to the barge, jostling a question around in my head.
What the hell is wrong with Axel Ridge?
* * *
When I climbed the new ladder back onto the barge—boy, I never thought I’d be so grateful for a ladder!—Craig was still mercifully absent. But Aunt Agatha had company.
She was sitting by the open side door, fiddle perched upright on her lap, the bottom pushing into her leg, the top clutched in her hand. She was telling five little boys—they all had to be around seven or eight years old—about the life of the composer Paganin.
“Paganini was probably the most popular and well-paid violinist of all time. People paid $300 a ticket to hear him. They thought he was either magical or possessed by the devil because his music was so marvelous and unlike anything they’d ever heard. He composed it himself, and it was very difficult to play. People have been struggling with it ever since—hence, my practicing today!”
The boys stared at her, wide-eyed. Aunt Agatha knew how to tell a story, for sure.
They finally headed
out in a row, clanging down the new steel ladder as each bounced behind the other.
“Hey, kiddo,” Aunt Agatha said, seeing me. “Looks like we’re going to have a lot more visitors now that our gangplank is history.”
She looked me up and down and asked with a twinkle, “Take a roll in the mud?”
“Not on purpose,” I answered. “Where’s the shower, anyway?”
“Shower?” she echoed, like the word was foreign. “Darling, we have no shower. This isn’t a resort, you know.”
Yeah, I got that.
“So how do I get this dirt off?”
“Soap and sponge, dear heart.”
She said the words so matter-of-factly. Two days ago, I would’ve flipped, but now I just accepted it. I guessed you could adapt to anything.
“All righty then,” I said, heading for the sink.
* * *
I sat on the couch, ready to slip on my iPod and listen to some Jim. I must’ve been awfully tired, because next thing I knew I was waking up in the middle of the night with drool dripping from the side of my mouth.
Again, I felt stifled.
Again, I needed air.
I did my inching and stumbling act again, heading to the back deck of the barge.
Once I was outside, the sounds of the cello summoned me, like a friend in trouble. The music was stormy this time, striking frenzied notes in my head. Clouds dashed across the moonless sky, almost as if they were keeping the frantic tempo.
I spotted a light on in one of the boats.
Suddenly, I had a crazy idea where the music was coming from. And I couldn’t wait ’til morning to find out if I was right.
7
Expedition
I skulked along the rocking dock to the boat and tried to see in a window. I wasn’t tall enough, so I stood on my toes. I still wasn’t tall enough, so I leaned against the boat, gripping its ledge to pull myself higher.
The boat moved.
“AHHHH!” I screamed, as I was pulled from the dock. I dangled from the ledge, helpless.
I tried to pull myself up. My muscles burned from the effort, but I failed.
Jumping back down looked impossible. If I fell into the water, I could be crushed between the dock and the boat. Besides, I couldn’t swim. How long could I hold on?
Saved By The Music Page 3