Wild Blue Wonder
Page 3
“Stop what?” she spits.
“Stop being such a delicate little snowflake.”
“Reed,” Mom warns.
“I will,” Fern counters, “when you stop being such an asshole.”
Mom again: “Fern.”
Pushing back her seat in a great burst of energy, my sister stands. “Look, we shouldn’t have to do the whole breakfast thing. We’re not six years old, okay? We don’t have to pretend we like each other.”
And with that, Fern flounces out of the room, Mom’s voice clipping at her heels: “Pea, there’s no need to . . .”
Everyone at the table collectively grunt-sighs.
(At least we’re doing something as one.)
For the next minute, Nana sheepishly sips her tea as Galileo rams his cone into my shins.
“Families shouldn’t act like this,” Mom finally says, cracking the silence like a spoon to an egg. She tosses her hands up into the air, silver bangles clinking together. “On top of everything else, I’m starting to think there’s a presence in this house.”
Nana concurs with a dramatic head nod, a pencil slipping from her hair.
Dad holds up his hands in protest. “Don’t jump to any conclusions—”
But Mom’s already halfway to the herb cabinet, shawl rippling behind her, and Dad’s words bounce right off it. (That shawl has magic powers.) When I was a kid, I genuinely thought that my mom was a witch—a good one, though, like a 1970s version of Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. Every once in a while, she senses a presence—a ghost, a spirit, a demon—and closets must be cleaned. Floors must be dusted with salt. Holly must be hung by each window. Even though we believed, Reed and I had a running joke about it.
This bread! I would exclaim as a slice popped from the toaster. This bread feels haunted!
It must be cleansed! he’d say. Cleansed with jam!
But all the sage smoke in the world won’t cleanse grief from the house. It’s not a demon Mom can exorcise with a dose of arrowroot. No salt water is going to save us.
Now it’s Reed who pushes back his chair, announcing that he’s going to take the Time Machine—our nickname for the camp’s ancient Chevy station wagon—to pick up Charlie. He doesn’t offer me a ride, and Mom doesn’t hear him; her head’s buried in the cabinet. Glass jars clink together.
And we slide farther apart.
At the bus stop, Fern and her new best friend, Harper, are both looking at me like they’re itching to plant a half ton of rancid salmon in my locker. Maybe it’s because I just told Harper that Pegasus (her Halloween costume) is definitely not pronounced Peg-ass-us: “There’s no exaggerated ass in the middle.”
Fern throws a supportive arm around Harper’s white wings. “Because you know everything? Quinn, you’re the ass. Just shut the hell up.”
I’m channeling mollusks, here. Or arthropods—anything with a protective shield, so no one will see the fleshy underside, how easily these words can spike right through.
I tug at my flannel shirt under my jacket. Although the temperature’s ten degrees or less, I’m boiling. Sticky with sweat. Stress will do that to you—along with an Antarctica parka that Mom bought half price from North Face.
“Know what?” I say. “I’ll just walk.”
“Suit yourself,” Fern says. Or maybe she says, I hope you drop dead in the snow, and they find you frozen like one of those mile-marker bodies on the ascent to Everest. Hard to tell—the tone says it could be either. Moons ago, we’d only bicker about little things: Which movie’s better, Fight Club or The Big Lebowski? Who’s hotter, that guy from the vampire show or Reed’s friend Spencer? No, it’s your turn to clean the litter box—remember?
“Your cat ears are on backward,” I tell her, slipping on my headphones and walking away.
The quickest route to school is actually through The Hundreds’ forest, past the outdoor stage and behind the set of cabins, looping around the high-ropes course dangling with icicles a foot long. Nana claims that, in the winter, the camp’s heartbeat speeds up—pulsing beneath layers of ice and snow—but today, it’s the opposite. Gleaming and beautiful and still.
I slow my steps. Why would I want to hurry to school?
I turn up The Sunshine Hypothesis. Out of all the animals in the world today, Indigo says, the most dangerous to humans are, in fact, other humans.
Ain’t that the truth.
Indigo laughs in my ears; the sound’s throaty and rich and warm. It’s kind of odd, isn’t it? We think these deep-sea animals are dangerous or scary because they’re “strange.” But how can we say that another creature is “strange,” when the real and imaginary so often blur? Maybe it’s more likely that, as humans, our knowledge is too limited—too confined and disjointed to fully appreciate the scope of what is possible in the world.
I stop.
Pull my headphones off.
Because the barn doors are open.
I’ve avoided stepping inside the barn—even going near the barn—for ninety-two days. It’s supposed to be bolted shut. It’s supposed to stay shut until summer. Taking a few steps closer in the snow, I shout, “Hello?” into the wind, and only the wind responds—clattering the doors against the siding, sending a shudder down my spine.
If no one’s there, I should . . . close the doors. Yes, very quickly close them. Very quickly—boots slapping against snow and grabbing the door and absolutely no peering inside, at dust spiraling through glacial blue light, at archery stands and broken aluminum easels and boxes of extra silverware for the mess hall.
And definitely, 100 percent, not looking at the boats.
I didn’t realize my parents had draped them—a blue tarp shrouding every boat. I feel like I’m walking into a graveyard for giants awaiting burial. It might be cool if it weren’t so creepy. I release a breath that smokes through the space, one part of me screaming: Leave!
Another part whispers: Stay.
My grandpa Michael had a thing for rescuing classic wooden Chris-Crafts—twenty- to thirty-six-foot-long recreational boats, all in cradles. Half of them have dry-rotted hulls, peeling varnish and bottom paint, dented bows and sterns. Grandpa was supposed to restore them when he retired from his real estate job, but he never actually got there.
Now, which one is it?
Do I really want to know?
Lifting up the tarp closest to me—nope. And the next one—nope.
The third one . . .
Anxiety blooms in my chest like a swarm of bees. I peel the tarp off completely, and yep, there she is: a 1950 Chris-Craft Sportsman U22. This boat was my grandfather’s favorite and mine, too: orangish varnish, original planking and upholstery, six-cylinder engine.
She’s also a mess.
“You and I have that in common,” I mutter to the boat, probably cementing my point—because jeez, I talk to boats now?
Those little voices are still competing—leave, stay, leave, STAY—so obviously I’m in the mood for some self-flagellation. I settle onto the ground, cross-legged, leaning back on the palms of my hands. And I stare at the Chris-Craft.
Stare, heart in throat.
Stare, until something wild and urgent is within me.
The first and last time I saw the sea monster, Dylan was in this boat, and I was in the water, and he was shouting, and—
An idea spins, spins, spins: pure motion in my blood, fast and desperate enough to drag me under. I’ve broken so many things. Some days it feels like I’ve ripped my family’s world into confetti and let it scatter ten thousand miles in the wind. But what if . . . what if I could gather a few of those pieces? What if I could restore something, put a few fragments of the world back together?
That would be . . .
I blink. That would be everything.
“My God,” I tell the Chris-Craft, pulse thudding in my ears. “I think I’m going to fix you.”
June
Seaweed & Sunscreen
My God, I thought when I woke up in Tupelo Cabin. I love this.
“Morning, sunshine,” I told her, hair draping in a curtain.
She rubbed a hand over her face, said hi, and peered up at me. Her eyes were this soft green that made you feel like you were lounging in some blissed-out meadow. Don’t know how she got green while Reed and I got blue: maybe it was because she absolutely despised the water. Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a land dweller, Nana declared, the first time Fern darted from the water on a family camping trip; she wouldn’t even dip her pinkie toe in the lake.
Not me. Even now, there was a paper sea floating over my head. Although our rest-of-the-year bedroom was only twenty acres away, we still decorated the wall space above our pillows. I had a picture of the Arctic Ocean and a marine animal chart. Fern had black-and-white photographs: the two of us after her first pointe ballet recital; Reed and Nana on a late-August fishing trip; a light-filled picture of Mom and Dad in the arts-and-crafts cabin, acrylic paint on the tips of their noses.
“I thought you were getting up early to swim?” Fern asked, and I noticed there were a few sunflower buttons and two purple ribbons tangled up in her sheets. Scrapbooking supplies. Our bedroom was chockablock full of them: mounds of colored paper and metallic boxes stuffed with stamps, foiled decoupage, and embossed stickers. I could always tell when she was up late, because in the morning there’d be a strip of plaid tape or glittery gold stars stuck to her pillow.
“I’m going now,” I said. “Do you think you can handle getting everyone to breakfast?”
“Yeah. I just have to make them brush their teeth, right?”
“And change out of their pajamas.”
Fern nodded. I swung my hand down to her level, she pressed her palm to my palm, and we wiggled our fingers—our version of a high five, or a “break!” in football. Around us, Tupelo girls, ages seven through nine, were rousing from bed—shrugging off sheets and yawning with arms above their heads. A few of them were in this cabin last year, but most faces were new.
In one of the shower stalls, I slipped into my favorite silver one-piece. I had to hide it under my pillow, because in Tupelo Cabin, favorite things disappeared: bracelets, letters home, worn copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And when something vanished, there was always a specific after-scent: vanilla or mint.
Tupelo ghost, I said.
Thieves with perfume, Fern said.
Opening the shower curtain, I saw my sister splashing water on her face by the sink. A sly grin crossed my mouth.
“Fern?” I said.
She poked her head up. “Yeah?”
“The floor is lava.”
“Nooooo,” she shrieked, because she knew the rules—five seconds for her feet to escape the ground. Reed, Fern, and I had played this game since I was seven: while we were in line for ice cream at Jimmy’s, rolling Skee-Balls at Fun-O-Mania, or shopping for Galileo’s cat treats at Hannaford. Once, Fern declared lava to Reed in the toilet paper aisle, and he had no choice but to dive headfirst into the lowest shelf of Charmin.
“Five,” I counted. “Four, three . . .”
Her hands were manic moths. Bat, bat, bat in the air, frantically picking up her feet, none of her usual ballerina grace. She finally decided to crawl onto the countertop between sinks, as two campers entered the bathroom and giggled. She blew out a long breath from her lips—“Made it.”
“Save me some maple French toast?” I asked, smiling.
“Always,” she said, doing a joyful leap down to the ground again. I was lucky. My siblings and I just got one another.
I closed the cabin’s screened door, trotting into the early-morning mist, the eight other cabins—all named after trees native to this area—just rising from sleep. The raspberry bushes between them were acting funny that year. In summer, they normally grew ultraslow, but since the beginning of July, they’d shot up eight incredible feet—green fingers grasping at the cabin windows, attempting to climb inside. You could hear them growing. They sounded like Nana when she hums.
I snatched a few raspberries and popped them right in my mouth, heading into the woods. The maples were extrachatty that morning: plenty of wind whispers and sharp exhales. Through the trees I spotted two white-tailed deer, who perked their ears and bolted when I stepped on a twig, a snap ringing out. Almost all at once, the milky mist cleared, and everything became sun washed, warm. By the boathouse, I kicked off my black Converse high tops and snapped on my swim cap and goggles, the sand ultragrainy, like rice beneath my toes. Of the three piers, two set the boundaries for lap lanes, and every summer I tracked my progress: how fast I could cut back and forth, up and down.
Faster,
faster,
faster,
until even my tendons burned, until there was a charging, white-hot hurricane inside my skin. To me, swimming was as natural as walking, as natural as breathing. After college, I wanted to swim the English Channel—and the Olympics weren’t completely out of the question. In my age bracket, I’d placed first in the nation for the two-hundred-meter butterfly. The only thing that sort of sucked was, at school, some guys talked about my muscles. Called me manly. As far as I was concerned, I was 100 percent girl. I was just a girl who would kick their asses in the water.
At the edge of the West Pier, I dove into the blue. Compared to the boil of summer, it was like the melted polar ice caps, but the water helped clear my head—and it definitely needed clearing. I couldn’t stop thinking: I have to unlove you, Dylan. Because how could I break that news to you? Hey, remember how we used to see how many donuts we could stuff in our mouths? Next time can I kiss you with my mouth instead?
No. No, no, no, no.
As I swam, long belts of seaweed kept fluttering through my hands.
I didn’t think anything of it.
But remembering it now, maybe it was the first little sign that everything was about to change.
Despite my head-clearing swim, I was still distracted during charades.
Around two o’clock every day, when the campers had “quiet time” to rest or write letters home, all available counselors would assemble on the lawn outside the cabins, just before the wildflower meadow: a blanket of black-eyed Susans and lupines and tiger lilies, goldenrod and touch-me-nots and Queen Anne’s lace. That summer, like every summer, the staff was awesome. You and Hana and my siblings. Tegan and Claire—two girls from my school swim team. The out-of-towners, like Doug Nation from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Nine of us were in high school, nine in college. And we all happened to love charades.
“Should we keep going in the standard rotation?” Fern asked, a camera around her neck.
“We could mix it up a bit,” Reed suggested, reclining in the grass.
This was so like them. Fern and her rules. Reed and his whatever, man. She was anxious sunshine, and he was a lazy river. She was going to worry her way into NYU’s dance program, while he soaked up knowledge about soil and tree culture and forest ecology, trying to save Maine’s wildlife habitats. When he was in elementary school, animals burst out of the woods just to lie down beside him. He was that calm, that patient, that kind.
Hana chimed in. “Quinn, why don’t you go next?”
“Okay.” In the middle of our cross-legged circle was my Red Sox cap, filled with slips of paper. The one I pulled read: MILKSHAKE. “Who did this?”
Reed grinned his sloth smile. Okay, maybe not that kind. “You just got mine. I’m sure of it. . . . Sixty seconds . . . Go!”
Uh. Um. Standing up, I traced cow udders in the air.
“A frowny face!” Hana burst. “With . . . teeth?”
I started milking the space in front of me. I shook my legs back and forth, waggling my hips. You
laughed your big belly laugh, Dylan, like the sun was rattling around in your stomach.
“Some sort of . . . dancer?” Tegan said, followed by Doug: “A leaf! It’s hanging off a tree branch and getting blown by the wind!”
“Seriously?” I said.
“No talking!” Fern reminded me.
For the next forty-five seconds, I did the only thing I could: udder, wiggle, repeat.
Five seconds before the buzzer, you leaped up and yelled, “MILKSHAKE!”
Fern snapped a picture of me at the exact moment I screamed, “YES!”
When you hugged me, you lifted me clear off the ground. I loved that. I loved how my head fit perfectly under your neck, how the smell of surfboard wax was always somewhere on your skin. On the basketball team, they called you Moose: broad, powerful—but easy to sink into.
My body went stiff, because I realized I could never tell you how I felt.
That night, after the open-mic talent show, Fern and I trailed back to Tupelo Cabin. She couldn’t stop giggling about you playing the maracas on your stomach onstage.
Cicadas sang their high-pitched ooo-eee-ooo-eee. The air smelled of coconut sunscreen. I lay in the top bunk, eyeing those yellow rafters, reaffirming the promise to myself: I would never say I love you, Dylan. As bad as I was at charades, you still got milkshake.
How could I jeopardize a friendship like that?
October
Certain Dark Things
There is an endless list of things you can learn from the internet: the location of the world’s largest artificial banana (you must be very proud, New South Wales), how to wax your legs at home (tried it, will never try it again), and the fact that—every unbelievable year—the Cap d’Agde village in France has up to forty thousand buck-naked people on its beaches. Maybe if my seventeenth summer had gone a bit more normally, I’d also be Googling universities scouting me for swimming: trying to decide if I’d prefer Ohio State’s Buckeye nation or the Carolina-blue skies of Chapel Hill.
Instead, I’m flicking through DIY boat repair websites on my iPhone, almost two hours late for school, a typhoon of sadness and determination spinning inside me. Absolutely Everything about Boats—Top Tips for Woodworking. At the Helm: Easy Repair for Busy People. The Self-Made Sailor. According to these websites, the restoration should take a few months if I work really, really quickly and I’m really, really motivated.