Wild Blue Wonder

by Carlie Sorosiak

“She floats, at least,” Nana babbles as we move along the north dock, as wooden boards tremble beneath our feet. “So that’s a check off the list, right? A boat’s no good if it doesn’t float.”

  She seems nervous. Is she nervous, too?

  Holding my hand for stability, she steps from the dock into the boat, firing up the motor with a set of silver keys. Hana mirrors her, hopping into the boat with my help. My hair’s an icy tornado, practically spinning in the wind, but that’s nothing compared to my heart.

  “Okay, Cookie,” Nana says over the noise of the motor, the wind, the thumping in my blood. “Your turn.”

  It’s just a little step. One step after long, long weeks, cold afternoons and colder nights, scooping out the pores of this boat and putting it back together. Fixing it. Fixing something.

  So why do I feel like eels have replaced my intestines? The water’s calm, but suddenly it doesn’t seem like it. I imagine the slimy seaweed below, the churning waves that can change direction in a finger snap. And then I see everything: Dylan and me in this very boat, in this very cove. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When the time came, I was just supposed to get in the damn boat. I was just supposed to be brave and normal and—

  “Cookie?”

  But I’m petrifying like wood.

  Okay, breathe. I’m picturing last night at the Laundromat. Picturing me in a shiny red cape, happy and invincible in the parking lot. Where is that girl? Can she take my place—take one simple goddamn step?

  “Cookie, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  Except it’s not, it’s not, it’s not—working on this boat is one thing, but taking it out feels completely and totally different. Taking it out involves reliving that night. I realize it with a great big walloping wave of sadness: fixing the Chris-Craft was never going to fix me. Because there it is, floating in the water, gleaming and beautiful and new, and I’m still here on this fucking dock, broken—breaking all over again, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces until I finally float away like dust.

  Hana and Nana are on the dock again. When did that happen? And I’m . . . crouching on my knees, my face in my hands, and my hands are wet, and—

  “Know what we’ll do?” Nana says. “Let’s get some breakfast in you. Okay? That’s just the ticket.”

  “Yeah,” Hana says, voice small. “That would help.”

  Embarrassment. Disappointment. Horror. I don’t settle on one feeling but sink into a puddle of them all, my stomach sloshing like the ocean in a storm. Did I just waste the last few weeks? What the hell were they for, if I can’t force myself out on the water? How is it possible to keep sinking and sinking—even after you think you’ve found the lowest of the low?

  Hana helps me up, trembling slightly, and the three of us leave the Chris-Craft there, bumping against the dock in the brightness of a new day. It feels like I can hear it all the way back to the house—an insistent knocking that chips, chips, chips away at everything I have left.

  As I’m getting ready for school, after Hana goes home, I can hear them arguing. My waffles are still in the toaster, but there’s no way I’m going back into that kitchen.

  “Really, Mother?” Mom shouts. “You can’t tell me you think this is good for her!”

  Nana’s voice is scratchy. “Jade. Jade, listen to me. Just listen, okay? All I was trying to do—all I am trying to do—is help her.”

  Sliding out of my room and toward the noise, I wince as the floorboards creak.

  There’s an edge in Mom’s tone that could cut wire. The threads of her shawl are probably dancing behind her. “We’ve been over this. We’ve been going over this for a month. I’m concerned. I love you for helping her, and I know that’s what you think you’re doing—helping her. But I also think that your granddaughter has gone through something that no kid should. And you’re giving her so much hope in something that . . .”

  I tiptoe halfway down the hall, stopping just before the kitchen.

  “Something that what?” Nana says.

  There’s a muffled noise as Mom’s feet shift away from Nana. “Something that’s just rehashing the past. What if she doesn’t . . . I think it’s real, but what if . . . I just don’t want an even more crushed kid, okay?”

  “This is good for her. I promise you, sweetheart.”

  I can tell Mom’s pressing her lips together by the muffling of her words. “You shouldn’t promise things you can’t control.”

  Dad chimes in. I didn’t realize he was still in the kitchen. “Why don’t we let this cool for a little bit?” I’m not sure if he’s talking about the waffles or the conversation. “I know this is hard for everyone, but maybe we should talk about this later.”

  “Later,” Nana says. “It’s always later. But these kids need now.”

  Enough of this.

  Back in my room, I pack up my books, slip on my Antarctica parka, and put my headphones on, listening to Indigo Lawrence twist a tale of wolf eels and hagfish and monsters like me.

  The rest of the day is a bust. Any shred of concentration during my classes eludes me. In English, Alexander very quietly clears his throat and taps on my desk when Coach Miller’s writing on the board. “You okay?” he mouths, and I nod, because my nodding mechanism seems to be working even though my stepping-into-boat mechanism doesn’t. By five o’clock, it’s sleeting bullets, and around nine I crawl into bed and pull the covers way over my head, breathing into the blankets and focusing on the smell of the lilac detergent that Nana uses; the alternative is—to take a phrase from Mom’s repertoire—rehashing the past, and I’ve had enough rehashing for a lifetime.

  When I wake up the next morning, my body’s stiff from all the worry, and I realize that sometime during the night, Nana’s sneaked in to tuck Teddy—the brown stuffed animal bear I so creatively named at five—under my arm. I used to cuddle him whenever the sky split open with lightning. Now he smells exactly like our musty attic. I guess Nana thought I needed him, that he would improve my mood somehow.

  Honestly, he does, but only the tiniest fraction of a bit.

  I’m hurrying through breakfast (duck eggs, turkey bacon) when my phone lights up with a text from Hana: Hello! Morning! I’ll drive you to school today, k? There’s something fishy about the message. I can’t quite place it. But it’s . . . off somehow. What about her little brothers? She only picks me up when it’s prearranged.

  At the ice-crunching sound of her minivan pulling into The Hundreds, I hustle out the door, mildly nervous, especially when I catch a glimpse of her behind the steering wheel, smiling this oddly sly smile, like a fox that’s found a secret entrance to the henhouse. Since the back windows are tinted, I only see faint movements—Hwan, Seojun, and Young-soo?

  Or—

  Yanking opening the passenger’s side door, I’m greeted by Elliot’s gentle laughter in the back seat and some summery song on the radio that doesn’t match the cold-washed weather or my cold-washed mood, and Alexander is . . . Wait, Alexander? Also in the back seat, also throwing me a strangely mysterious smile—except it’s less fox, more nerves.

  What’s going on?

  “You’re letting all the hot air out,” Hana says quickly. So I get in, buckle up, and turn to her for an explanation. She automatically child-locks my door in response. “We’re kidnapping you.”

  I blink at her. “Um.”

  “Portland,” she says.

  “You’re kidnapping me and taking me to Portland,” I repeat, because it’s not entirely clicking. The why? forms on my lips but— Oh. Click. Oh, right. I gulp down the question, considering that the answer’s blindingly obvious: an escape. A way to forget about yesterday, to erase—just for a day—the monumentally crushing disappointment of panicking on the dock. And Portland’s cool. Portland has an art gallery! An observatory! The house where some famous poet lived! But does this mean that Elliot and Alexander know about my epic fail yesterday? Is that why they’re here, too?

  “Mini–road trip is a go!” Hana squeals.
>
  I sort of sink down in the seat, thankful but embarrassed, and within minutes the minivan’s making its way up I-95 north, brown slush under its tires. We hit the early-morning rush-hour traffic for the first twenty-five minutes, but once we cruise past Wells, the traffic lightens . . . and a warm feeling starts creeping in. Not just the heat—but the tiniest shred of well-being, that sense you get when you’re skipping school on a road trip with your friends, no matter the circumstances. Trees flutter past. Hana’s laughter flutters, too. She and Elliot spend most of the forty-five-minute drive discussing plans for their camping trip in Acadia National Park next summer, Alexander chiming in here and there (“This Beehive Trail you’re speaking of, what possible reason could you have to hike it?”), but mostly he and I are zipping our lips and—I’m assuming—taking in the scenery.

  Or he could be wondering why I’m so quiet.

  Or he could know why I’m so quiet.

  We park on Commercial Street near Hobson’s Wharf, right in front of Becky’s Diner—gray shingled, homey white porch. The wind bites. It’s blowing so hard that it’s almost ripping the flyers off the nearest telephone pole—flyers for, hey, cool, Indigo Lawrence and her band, Spark Nation. Escaping inside Becky’s, Hana declares this to be the best cheap restaurant in the city; she knows better than me. I’ve only been to Portland four times, each for a swim meet, when we grabbed pizza and scarfed it down on the team bus home.

  Inside it smells supernaturally mouthwatering: hash browns and French toast, butter and more butter and did I mention butter? I can’t help but smile. Touché, Hana. The fact that I’ve already had breakfast doesn’t deter me from, after we’re seated in a booth, ordering an impressively large and impressively delicious slice of blueberry cake with cream cheese frosting. Yes, it’s ten a.m., and no, I don’t care. Who says you can’t eat cake in the morning?

  I voice this aloud, and Alexander answers from the space next to me: “Doctors, most likely.” But he’s grinning sheepishly, and when I offer him a bite, he doesn’t resist—digging in with his fork and unleashing this low moan that I’ve never heard from him before. It’s sort of . . . I don’t know . . . primal? “Mm. I’m sorry to admit it. That beats the Funfetti.” That warm feeling inside me grows a bit warmer.

  We drink hot chocolate from heavy mugs.

  Warmer.

  We commiserate about our Moby-Dick assignments.

  Warmer.

  And after twenty minutes, our plates are clean, our stomachs are full, and yesterday is fading ever so slightly. Back outside, the sky’s broken into this crystalline blue, and Elliot’s suggesting that we go ice-skating at the Rink at Thompson’s Point. Hana’s making a case for the Winslow Homer exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art.

  “You ever been ice-skating?” I ask Alexander, while they battle it out.

  He frowns. “Does—er—slipping on black ice outside the high school count?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then no.”

  We decide, for the sake of Alexander’s Maine immersion treatment, that the Rink trumps Homer. He’s seen tons and tons of landscape paintings back in London, and what’s more Maine than spinning around on frozen ground, terrified of falling, the wind whipping your hair into your eyes?

  It’s about a seven-minute drive along the coastline, Elliot navigating the way half with a map on his phone, half from memory. There’s plenty of parking in a snow-covered gravel lot next to some tractor trailers. I know we’re still in the city, but boy, does this feel like the boonies: those trucks, a small cluster of buildings, and some telephone poles are the only indications we’re anywhere near civilization. The Fore River is by far the loudest sound—that and the wind.

  “You sure this place is open?” I ask Elliot, peering at the pavilion-like structure in the near distance. I wish I’d brought earmuffs.

  “That’s what the website says.”

  “Hey,” Hana murmurs, glancing in the other direction. Then, louder: “What is that?”

  Spinning around, I see it, too, about four hundred feet away. A wooden statue of . . . a bear? Or is that . . . ? Can’t be. No freaking way. Hana steps closer, picking up the pace, faster and faster, and suddenly we’re all trailing behind her, boots shuffling against frozen gravel. And yep, it is. It totally is.

  Bigfoot.

  Big ol’ wooden Bigfoot, standing guard at the entrance of the International Cryptozoology Museum, a brick-and-glass building practically in the middle of nowhere.

  I can’t—

  No. Really?

  Hana presses her nose against the window, peering inside. “No way, no way, no way. Tons of mask material in there. The universe is sending us a sign. Did you guys even know this existed?”

  Elliot shakes his head. Alexander recalls seeing it somewhere in his TripAdvisor research: the world’s only museum dedicated entirely to hidden creatures. My heart is sprinting wild circles. I did know this existed. My dad told me about it, a long time ago—something about a giant squid exhibit and information about komodo dragons and pandas mixed in with certifiably bonkers displays. Like trout with fur. And “jackalopes,” taxidermied rabbits with miniature antlers glued onto their heads. But I’d forgotten about the museum. I can’t believe I’d forgotten.

  When Hana says, “Can we go in pleeeaaaase,” I know she doesn’t understand what she’s walking me into.

  Elliot says, “I don’t see why not.”

  My still-thumping heart’s lurched out of my body and crossed somewhere over the Fore River by the time Elliot swings open the door. Alexander motions after you, and I gesture no, after you, and then we’re in museum’s reception, and there goes my heart again—all the way to Canada.

  Because inside are Bigfoot lunch boxes and yeti finger puppets, paintings of the Jersey Devil and the Feejee mermaid in a glass box, a “Maine Mystery Beast—The Terror of Lewiston!” tapestry, curio cabinets filled with casts of Bigfoot’s massive feet, a “Cryptids of Maine” map with multicolored pushpins representing sightings of mystery cats, specter moose, and yes, sea monsters. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot it: the mother of all cabinets, dedicated entirely to Wessie. Where’s Wessie? T-shirts and We <3 Wessie bumper stickers. Framed articles from the Winship Gazette. A painting of Wessie over stretched canvas—doe-eyed and dragon-like, as she appears on the WELCOME TO WINSHIP sign.

  There are two other people in the museum: a mom and kid in a bloated winter coat. The kid—no older than five—is stretching all ten fingers onto the glass covering the Wessie exhibit. And giggling. Giggling up a storm. The mom’s snickering, too, because look at this stuff. Look at this joke of a display in this joke of a museum.

  I feel sick.

  It occurs to me and my long-gone heart that Wessie is amid Creature from the Black Lagoon action figures and empty bottles of the Kraken Black Spiced Rum. Amid all this stupid, stupid make-believe. And if the Winship sea monster doesn’t exist, that makes the scariest moment of my life completely senseless.

  That makes me the only monster.

  I back up a step.

  I back up two more, funneling every ounce of self-control into not bolting from the spot—not leaping back outside like one of those startled deer in our yard. Hana and Elliot are buying tickets—too busy to scope out the museum—and Alexander’s saying to me, “Ten dollars for an entry fee? That’s rather steep, isn’t it?”

  Still backing up, here. “Yeah,” I croak out. Steady, voice. Steady. “Do you want to . . . maybe . . . just go to the skating rink and we’ll . . . um . . . meet them there?” Not so good on the steadiness. Not so good on the normalness.

  “Sure,” he says quietly, studying my face, which is probably flickering through a slide show of emotions. “Of course, sure.”

  And then I’m hustling out the door, leaving Alexander to tell Hana and Elliot see you at the rink. My breath’s a milky fog in front of me. My eyes sting—and it’s not just from the wind, from the Siberian weather.

  I could be the only monste
r?

  I could be the only monster.

  “Hey,” Alexander says. He seems really nervous suddenly. Like, more so than normal. A tiny vein in his neck is visibly pulsing. “I’m . . . Are you— Are you okay?”

  Instead of saying yes or no, I blurt out, “Did you know the greatest mountain range on Earth is under the sea?”

  He pauses, scrunches his eyebrows like he’s trying to solve for x. “I didn’t, no.”

  “Most of our planet’s in total and eternal darkness,” I continue, adrenaline spiking through me like thorns. “And there are all these things that we don’t know . . . all these things we haven’t seen. . . . That doesn’t make them any less true, any less real. But not like”—motioning toward the museum—“like that. Definitely not like that. Not Bigfoot and furry trout and jackalopes with their glued-on antlers, and I’m trying to find this sea monster . . . that’s what I’m doing with the boat. Well, partially. Mainly it was just to fix something, but it’s also very, very important to me that I find this sea monster, for . . . for reasons I can’t really say . . . but if it’s like everything else in there, if it’s . . .” I trail off. My mouth is sandpaper.

  “Come on,” Alexander says gently, placing a warm hand on my shoulder and leading me farther away from the museum. “Let’s walk.”

  We hug the coastline. The sky is ice and we’re chiseling through it. Our backs to the skating rink, we pause by the edge of the river, at the farthest part of Thompson’s Point.

  “What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in marine science?” Alexander asks me, kicking a piece of gravel with the toe of his brand-new boot.

  Wasn’t expecting that. Still, don’t even have to think about it. “The Japanese puffer fish.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it . . . it creates perfect things.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, it . . . When a male’s trying to get a female’s attention, he uses his fins to plow across the sand, making these deep grooves at the bottom of the ocean. Mathematically, it’s just incredible—like a crop circle. And this fish is so tiny, but it works twenty-four hours a day for a week on its art, so nothing destroys the design, and it even picks up these shells to make the ridges all fancy. It’s cool because people think of fish as simple, but it’s the most complex creation you’ll ever see an animal make.” I bury both hands in my pockets, feeling silly. I know he told me go on, but I really went on.