Wild Blue Wonder

by Carlie Sorosiak

  “Of course. Last week they all banded together to send me a postcard: ‘Come home, Douche Waffle.’”

  “And you like them?”

  “Love them.”

  Then why’d you move?

  I don’t push it. Instead, I lead him toward Dad’s maze of Virginia roses and elderberry bushes, and around the cabins; I point out the ropes course and say, “Watch for icicles.” At this, he gapes, openmouthed. And then we’re at the barn, which he already saw when he dropped off the meatballs.

  “Can we . . . ,” he begins. “Do you think we can go in?”

  “Um, why?”

  “Aren’t you working on a boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well”—nervously—“can I see it?”

  There isn’t a single explainable reason to tell him no.

  “Brilliant” is the first thing he says when we open the doors. The giants are particularly sleepy today, draped in blue, solemn in the fading light. “Are all of these for the camp?”

  “They’re my grandpa’s,” I say. “Or . . . were my grandpa’s, I guess.”

  “Which one are you working on?”

  We weave through the chilly space, and I unveil the Chris-Craft—blue tarp sailing to the ground, blood suddenly pounding in my ears. Can I explain why I’m fixing this boat without explaining everything?

  “It looks nicer than the last time I saw it.”

  “Well, the plan’s to launch the first full week of December. Nana thinks we can make it by then. We’re working really hard.”

  He points to the stepladder. “May I?”

  “Oh, um, sure.”

  Up, up, up he goes—then hoists himself into the boat, his scarf shivering with the movement. From the small crrrr noises, I can tell the newly epoxied boards are bending. “Care to join me?” he says.

  No.

  Not yet. I’m not ready. I’m not.

  Alexander backtracks slightly. “If it makes any difference, I . . . er . . . promise I won’t do the Jack and Rose thing. You know”—self-consciously raising his arms, as if knocked back by an invisible wind—“Titanic.”

  Act normal, act normal, act normal.

  “Darn,” I say. “I would’ve been totally into that, although I kind of hate Rose. There was room on that floating door.”

  Alexander looks at me. I look at him. We’re trapped in an are you coming into the boat or not? staring contest.

  So I just do it. If I’m going to find the sea monster, it has to happen sometime, right?

  As I climb the stepladder, my stomach tightens like an anchor-bend knot and I tell myself to breathe. This is not that night. We are not on the water. Nothing will happen on land. One foot steps inside the Chris-Craft, then the other. The electric current in my chest fizzles—but it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

  “Spectacular view,” Alexander says, and he’s not joking. Everyone thinks that the hillcrest—standing by the main house—affords the best view of The Hundreds. I may have to disagree. The sleeping giants are holding their own.

  Alexander plunges both hands into his coat pockets. “So . . . er . . . confession. I’m an abysmal swimmer.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve realized, but we’re not actually at sea.”

  “Very bloody funny.” He pauses. It seems like there are other words on the tip of his tongue. “You . . . used to be on the swim team.”

  The electric current ramps up again. “Yeah.”

  “But you . . . don’t swim anymore? I’m just . . . well, I’m just curious, I guess. Half the trophy case outside the scheduling office at school appears to be a monument to you. . . . How fast were you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “For which event?”

  “Er,” he says, “the long one?”

  “So you really do know nothing about swimming.”

  “One places their body in the water, moves their limbs, and somehow travels.”

  “Actually, that’s a pretty accurate description.” Silence prickles the space between us for several moments, and then: “I swam the one-hundred-meter butterfly, the two- and four-hundred-meter individual medley, the two-hundred-meter backstroke, and the two-hundred-meter freestyle. And I placed first in the nation for the two-hundred-meter butterfly.”

  He leans back against the boat railing. “Christ. That’s amazing.”

  But I wasn’t amazing enough.

  I need to change the subject. “So what are you always drawing in your sketchbook?”

  “Oh . . . uh . . . different things.”

  “Like?”

  Instead of just telling me, he peers around the boat. In one of the seats, Nana’s left a pencil and few pieces of scrap paper—filled with lists of items we need from Pete’s Hardware. But on the backs, the pages are blank.

  Alexander picks up the pencil and one of the papers. “Do you mind?”

  “Go for it.”

  So he draws, sitting down and pressing the sheet to his knee, dragging the pencil in light strokes across the page. A minute passes. Two minutes. Three. It would be weird . . . but it’s kind of cool? Watching an image take shape.

  Watching me take shape.

  Alexander sticks out the tip of his tongue in concentration, adding the final touches. Once he’s done, he pushes up his glasses, passes me the paper, and I’m . . . some kind of superhero? The image shows me hovering on top of the ocean, water gushing from my outstretched palms. I’m throwing my head back toward the sky, and arching above me are the words: And with all her power, she wouldn’t let it fall. The drawing’s good. Really, really good. Heavier shading mixed with careful details: the ocean looks full and deep, but there’s that freckle by the side of my nose, the gentle stitching on my coat.

  How’d he do this so quickly?

  And how’d he get this so right?

  “I like superheroes,” Alexander explains, voice strangely hoarse.

  I clear my throat. “It’s great.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah . . . but I think I should have a cape.”

  “Bollocks. Capes are so 1990s.”

  “No way. Capes are cool.” Pause. “And what about you? Do you have a superpower?”

  He runs a hand along the back of his neck, where his hair’s short and spiky. “I can . . . cook? Whisk anyone away?”

  I give him an exaggerated once-over. “That was really, really bad.”

  He laughs. I laugh.

  And at that moment, we really do start to feel like friends.

  July

  Candy Land

  Nana was convinced that affirmations were in order. Holding her hands in a yoga pose, she closed her eyes, swami-like. “Repeat after me.”

  “Nana,” Reed said, “this is a bit—”

  One eyelid flung open. “This is necessary.” Reed, Fern, and I didn’t have enough energy, Nana claimed. We didn’t have enough enthusiasm.

  “That’s because,” Fern said, crossing her arms, “I’m literally dressed as a woodchuck.”

  In my loon costume, complete with sleek blue feathers, I concurred. “These are kind of itchy, Nana.”

  As part of the Sunday closing ceremony, Nana was trying to incorporate a salute to Maine’s wildlife—and had spent the past two weeks constructing the costumes. Reed was dressed as a black bear. Hana was a spectacular coyote, and Dylan, you loved your moose antlers. Offstage, you were perfecting your Moose Call™. It was unwieldy. It was relentless. It scattered all the swallows from the trees.

  Auuuuuuuuurrrrrrgggghhhhhh.

  “You sound like you’re giving birth,” I said once you stopped, and Nana quipped, “Cookie, focus.”

  We repeated our affirmations. We are strong. We are happy. We are, we are, we are. And pranced onstage to the glee of the campers, who found the experience exponentially more entertaining than we did. Maybe you couldn’t see it, Dylan, but over the past couple of days, something had happened between my siblings and me. After the kiss, Reed was a bit distant with Fern, so Fern was a lot
distant with Reed—and I was loon in the middle.

  Candy Land made everything better . . . and worse.

  After I shed my feathers, the third batch of campers packed their duffel bags. You and I visited your mom and brought over a bag of carrots for your horse, Trouble. Near the end, your sister, Abby, came home with her newest boyfriend, but the four of us didn’t talk long—just enough to say hi and bye.

  On the way back to The Hundreds’ tree house, your index finger dimpled the skin on my shoulder. Because it was a Sunday afternoon, we could wear what we wanted. I’d settled on a plain white tank and a black choker necklace, my hair in a high ponytail. It wasn’t dressing up—but I’d put some thought into it, maybe for a moment like this.

  You said, “You got sunburned today.”

  And all I could think was, Touch me again.

  We climbed the tree house ladder up and up, like we did when we were kids, when this was our secret fort for very secret things: hidden stashes of Monopoly money and leftover KitKat bars from Halloween. Hana, Fern, and Reed were already circled together inside, arguing about Candy Land.

  “Do you mind if we choose another game?” Reed asked. He was in his favorite Chewbacca T-shirt, leaning lazily against the tree house wall. There was dirt on his fingertips, on his basketball shorts.

  “It’s a classic,” Fern shot back. As always, a camera lay around her neck. But her braid was a little messy. I did notice that.

  Hana said they should rock, paper, scissors for it, and when I settled in next to her, she whispered into my ear: “What is up with them?”

  Reed drew scissors while Fern threw a rock, so Candy Land it was. You settled in next to me, Dylan. We all picked players—me, yellow—and traveled into the Peppermint Forest, past the Gumdrop Mountains. On the spot, you made up a horrendous rap about Grandma Nutt:

  I live in acres of peanuts

  My dog loves ’em, he goes nuts . . .

  Hana did a quick beatbox as I questioned, “Did you just rhyme nuts with nuts?” Fern kept peering at you, like she couldn’t quite meet your eyes, but eventually even she was laughing, as you ended on the line, Things are so nutty here in Candy Land.

  We played on and on, until cicadas started singing and the sky became a deep charcoal.

  It was in the shadows that I felt your hand slipping into mine.

  We’d never done this, not even last Halloween, when you texted me Sawyer come outside NOW, and together we watched the Northern Lights dance across the sky.

  No one saw. But we stayed like that. Just for moment, your thumb tracing little circles on my skin.

  Out of all the things my siblings and I shared—beach towels and bedtime stories, our silver hair and sunburned noses—there was one thing we couldn’t. So here’s the question I asked myself, Dylan: What is scarier—loving you in the darkness, or the possibility of you loving me back?

  November

  If a Tree Falls in the Forest

  I’m learning that Alexander brings a symphony with him everywhere he goes. As soon as he swings open Theia’s front door on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, it’s: clip, clomp down the stairs, “Kaliméra, Quinn,” scarf swishing through the air, the snow-covered trees sighing like they’re greeting him. Then there are the discordant noises: the way he sort of slips on an icy patch, the bugger flying from his mouth.

  Up close, his house isn’t so spooky, so neglected. With its chipping white paint and tarnished hardware, it just seems love-worn. I’ve been waiting outside for him for the last five minutes, the wind whipping through the holes in my favorite black jeans, my ears hurting from the frostiness.

  “You’re early,” he says when we reach the end of his driveway.

  “I’m actually late.”

  “Oh . . . sorry. I think all our clocks are wrong. My yaya goes by Greek time. You can be two hours late and still be early.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. Movies here never start on time anyway. . . . So, you got a new coat.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Well, that other coat wasn’t . . . Maine.”

  “That’s a nice way of telling me I looked too European.”

  I smile. “No, you just looked cold.”

  He pats the arms of his jet-black North Face parka. “I thought I’d take up the local attire.”

  “Suits you.”

  I can’t tell if it’s from the stinging wind, or if blush is working its way into his cheeks. “Thank you.”

  It’s the afternoon before school gears up again—and last year that meant Boston creams with Reed at Locke’s Donuts. Instead, Hana invited me to the movies with her and Elliot, texting me this morning to ask: Do you wanna invite Alexander along?

  He and I trudge down Whippoorwill Avenue to the bus stop on Cormorant Road. The air’s raw. When it starts to sleet, we take out umbrellas that bat together like bumper cars. I’m not entirely sure how we get on the topic, but soon enough, we’re talking about Game of Thrones.

  “Who’s your favorite character?” he asks as the bus pulls up, sloshing frozen pellets against our ankles.

  “Khaleesi, hands down. And yours is Tyrion.”

  “Right . . . it is. How’d you know that?”

  “Because everyone loves Tyrion, Daenerys, or Jon Snow the best, and you strike me as a Tyrion.”

  “That’s miraculous.”

  “I have many gifts.”

  Within two minutes, we’re in the heart of downtown Winship, a true hotbed of excitement. It has not only two shops peddling ceramic sea creatures but also a Texaco station, a Laundromat, and the twenty-four-hour Waffle Mart, not to be confused with Waffle Palace, its vile corporate cousin that Winship’s council would never, ever allow in our quaint little town. I know this because there were several protests and one very long, very angry petition.

  Everything seems grayer in winter: even the pops of Cape Cod blue on the Ernie’s Shell Shack sign, the rolled-up emerald awning of the Rosebay Café. The town’s baseball field is suffocating under a thick layer of not-so-white snow. Everyone thinks snow is so idyllic when it’s falling—and for those few blessed hours of pristine white—but what no one really talks about is the bruised brown grossness the next day.

  We get off at the Winship Cinema stop. Inside, it’s a complete dive. Floor so sticky that it can wrench off your shoes. Stale popcorn. A water-stained screen that, every so often, peels off the wall. I had my first date here freshman year: an hour and a half of watching zombies eat each other’s faces, and that was the highlight. Jonathon, my date, had a world-record-holder-type tongue, the longest I’d come across in my two-month kissing history. I remember he smelled like apples—not natural ones but the synthetic kind you’d find in second-rate gum. And as he kissed me with that tongue, all I could think about was eels. And then apples. And then eels squirming out of apples.

  “What are we seeing?” Alexander asks in the lobby as we wait for Elliot and Hana.

  “Something with talking animals.”

  “Brilliant. Sure to be a cinematic masterpiece. There is a good possibility that we’ll need snacks.”

  “You’re not still full from Thanksgiving?”

  “I can always make room.”

  “Quick-fire question: popcorn with or without butter?”

  “Er, Americans butter their popcorn?” He thinks for a moment. “Of course they do.”

  “I mean, honestly, we butter everything. I think we’d butter our sweaters if it were socially acceptable. . . . So what kind of movies are you into? Like, what’s your favorite?”

  “Muppet Treasure Island,” he says without a moment’s pause.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s got everything you want, really: swashbuckling adventure, romance, and puppets.”

  “I still can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  He smiles crookedly, showing a bit of confidence. “You may never know.”

  Once Hana and Ell
iot arrive, the four of us grab some popcorn and take up residence in the last row, resting our now-gum-speckled shoes on the backs of the seats. Elliot’s sporting his very best sweater, which depicts reindeer riding reindeer; he’s just come from figure-skating practice, and he’s telling us that he’s sore. Apparently he has to lift someone into the air, while skating, which is equally unfathomable and awesome. The only other person in here is Mr. Bob—film buff and town fixture. He practically lives here; in fact, I’ve never seen a movie in Winship without his trench-coated self occupying a front-row seat.

  “Twizzlers?” Hana says, unzipping her coat, where the red candies are duct-taped to her sweater like a bomb.

  A laugh escapes me. “You know you don’t have to do that, right? They’re not going to prosecute you for bringing candy into a movie theater.”

  “Tell that to Anna White.”

  “That was a freak incident. If anything,” I add, “what you’re doing looks more suspicious.”

  “Do you want a Twizzler or not?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I offer one to Alexander as well.

  Stripping off his parka, he leans back into his seat, and you can kind of see the shape of his arm muscles through the white of his shirt. “Would you believe that I’ve never actually had one?”

  “Well, welcome to the dark side. Prepare for a sugar overload.”

  He takes a bite into the Twizzler at the exact moment Fern and her friend Harper enter the theater. It makes sense, I guess—we both love this crappy theater. But still. Alexander waves, Twizzler in hand. And Fern does a little half salute, like she’s wondering if we’re about to prank her. She and Harper settle into the third row, to the left of Mr. Bob. Neither of them looks back, but their heads are together—whispering, giggling.

  That used to be me and Fern is what I think, until I push the thought away.

  After the lights dim, an animated cat (who is a dictator plotting to take over the world) speeds across the screen, chasing the opening credits.

  Alexander angles his head toward mine. His breath smells like cherries. “You and your sister don’t seem to . . . sorry if this is intrusive, but you and your sister don’t seem to get along.”