Pacifica

by Kristen Simmons

“I…” George rubbed at his chin, looking as if he’d gained ten years of age in the last ten minutes. “I know.”

  Ross wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but this simple affirmation made him feel a little better.

  “Mr. President,” started Roan. “I don’t know what your son’s been telling you, but he has crossed the line. Consorting with pirates? Kidnapping innocent people? I—”

  George Torres held up his hand, a hush falling over the team of security officers, patrolmen, and Armament.

  “Take her into custody. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  “Take me into custody? Me? Who do you think signs my paychecks, Mr. President?”

  George Torres’s head tilted forward.

  “I know who signs mine, Captain.” Luc raised his hands, bound together before him. Even with a bloodied face he maintained a pirate’s smile.

  “And if you kindly remove these cuffs,” he added. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Do not…” started Ross.

  “I won’t,” muttered the president.

  “Sir…” Roan began one more time, but Ross’s father had already turned toward the nearest security officer.

  “Keep her quiet,” said the president. “I need twenty-four hours.”

  With a “yes, sir,” the security officer spoke to the Armament, and soon Roan’s demands for her lawyer were punctuating the still air.

  Ross’s father stared after her.

  “Dad.”

  George Torres’s shoulder caved forward at Ross’s hand on his shoulder, as if the small move held the power to wither him.

  “In case it matters, I want you to know that this wasn’t an easy decision. I thought it was the only way. I thought … the sacrifice would save so many more.” He shook his head. “None of that makes it better. I let Roan convince me it was right.”

  The weight of what Ross had done settled between them. Soon there would be investigations. Maybe even jail. Their lives would never be the same.

  “I’m sorry,” Ross said.

  His father’s assistant was calling for him. It was time for the speech.

  For the first time in Ross’s life, the president raised his hand to hold off the rest of the world.

  He looked to Ross, and straightened.

  “Never be sorry for doing the right thing,” he said, and then called for the vice president.

  CHAPTER 35

  ROSS HAD asked her to come back with him above the cliffline. He’d find a place for her to stay, make sure she had food and anything else she needed, but she’d said no. Not because those things didn’t sound nice—they’d sounded more than nice—but because it was time to start over. She didn’t know where she’d go yet, but she knew she had to make her own way; otherwise this new land would never feel like home.

  Besides, Ross was facing a new storm—one she couldn’t help him through. His father and Adam’s were going to delay the launch until they could formally announce the failure of the Relocation Act. Roan and Luc would be kept in custody until they could be safely and discreetly questioned. The Armament would be sent to the oil rig, where they’d left the Señora and the other ship, to investigate, while another team would make way for Careytown and the Shoreling prisoners. She’d already heard whispers of the questions the president would face, and how the next weeks would be the hardest. She didn’t tell Ross, but she sort of hoped his dad had some time to think about things in prison.

  After Ross’s father made the announcement that there would be delays in the launching of the ocean liner, Ross had walked Marin to the back of the park, away from the crowds who gathered around the podium.

  “I owe you some money,” he said.

  She’d forgotten about that. The idea that he’d pay her for what they went through tainted it somehow.

  “Send some food down to the library in the docks,” she said. “We’ll call it even.”

  He nodded.

  She knew he’d make good on it.

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” he asked.

  It was cute that he asked, even when he knew better. It occurred to her, when he squeezed her hand, that he might be letting her go for her own protection, to keep her out of the spotlight that would surely fall upon his family. It wouldn’t have surprised her.

  But as they stood there facing each other, she wasn’t sure how to walk away.

  “So,” she said. “I guess this is it.”

  “I guess so.”

  A dozen memories crashed through her mind—eating moonfish in the dark, a game of I’ve never, his hand on her cheek in a storm. She’d sailed across the ocean for him, faced death with him, seen things she’d never thought she’d ever see—whales, and riots, and freedom from a life she’d only thought she wanted. Her course had changed since she’d met him, maybe because she had met him. Nothing would ever be the same.

  She swallowed a breath, the pressure building in her chest. It felt like drowning on land. It felt like saying goodbye.

  So she took a step forward, and rested her forehead against his chest, fisting his shirt in her hands. He was warm, and smelled like the sea, achingly familiar.

  He kissed her—once on the head, once on the cheek—and said, “I’ll find you, terreno.”

  She gave a quiet chuckle; she may have been trash-born, but she was one of his people now.

  He walked away standing tall, with the kind of strength she’d envied, right from the beginning.

  “Goodbye, Ross,” she whispered.

  EPILOGUE

  “I’LL BE back in three weeks to check in.” Marin refolded the towels on the shelf over the sink in the tiny one-room clinic. “You have enough food to make it to next weekend, but Seema said she’d be around in case you need something.” Her mother was down the street working in the kitchen at the motel, a job she’d taken as part of President Baker’s Reintegration Bill after being brought to the mainland with the other corsarios six months ago. Marin had reminded her three times to look out for Hiro when they’d said their goodbyes this morning.

  “I did manage to survive before you,” Hiro mused, pushing his glasses up his nose. He sat at the table, reading something on his tablet. “I know it must seem impossible.”

  She smiled to herself. No, it did not seem impossible. It was she who’d needed him more than the opposite. Though it had been almost a year, she still remembered, clear as a cloudless sky, the night she’d returned to his shop after leaving Ross at the harbor. How the old man had set up a blanket for her in the corner of his back room, and told her that if she was around in the morning, she could pay him back by cleaning up the shop.

  She’d stayed, telling herself it would only be one night. But soon it was two, and then a week. Though she’d visited Gloria, she’d come back every day, first fixing up things that had broken around the shop, then his screen on the wall, then his generator.

  One day he’d asked her if she thought she could fix people the way she fixed other things. That night, she’d begun assisting with the patients he brought behind the curtain.

  As the days passed, Hiro taught her to dress wounds and check a person’s pulse and blood pressure. She had strong, nimble fingers, and soon was suturing by herself, and knew what to give someone for a sour stomach or a migraine. People were not like machines—they were much more difficult to figure out—but she liked that. Each case became a puzzle she needed to figure out.

  But she never forgot who she’d been, or the boy she’d taken across the sea.

  Reaching for the envelope sitting atop the counter, she traced the scratchy letters of her name, knowing it had taken him time and care to get each letter right. She thought of him as she always did, with the wind in his hair, laughing and whooping into the night like they were the only people left in the world.

  The envelope had shown up last week, filled with a ticket for the nature preservation. The back talked about a new exhibit opening next month—an animal called a lionfish was going to be out on display. She was
n’t sure how that had come about, but she doubted it was pretty.

  Tucking the envelope into her pocket, she stifled the urge to check the contents of her bag one final time. For someone who’d spent so long blowing with the wind, it felt nearly impossible to remove herself from this tiny room.

  “I’m leaving a blade under the counter out front,” she told Hiro. “And another beneath the mattress.”

  “Ack.” He groaned, and waved a hand. “This is a safe place. I do not need blades.”

  “This is the docks,” she said, her meaning clear enough.

  “It’s better than it used to be.”

  Yes. That was true. One of President Baker’s various missions had been to appoint a Shoreling patrol chief, and since then, the faces of the officers on the streets had changed. They weren’t all kanshu now, they were Shorelings, too, and though it didn’t stop all the violence, it helped that la limpieza was gone.

  “Marin, you’ll miss your train if you don’t leave soon.”

  Brows pinched, she pulled the strap of her bag over her head.

  He stood, and when he beamed and rested his hands on her shoulders, she felt something loosen in her chest.

  “You will be a fine doctor,” he said.

  “I have a long way to go before then.” It was true. Through night classes and the help of a public education bill, she’d been accepted to a school on the northern coast, one with a refugee program where she could attend college classes as soon as she tested into them. They partnered with the same medical school Hiro had attended.

  It would take a lot of work, but one day she would return a doctor.

  “I’m very orgulloso,” he said. “Very, very proud.”

  She turned before he could see the way her eyes turned glassy with tears. Maybe it was a lie, but she told herself her father would have said the same thing.

  “Ah, Vancouver,” he said. “I hope you enjoy the nature preserve. It was my favorite place to think.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but a shiver of nerves worked through her chest. It had been a long time since she’d seen Ross Torres, but somehow the feelings she’d had for him had grown stronger, solidified in her bones, a permanent part of her body.

  “You’ve been going through my stuff,” she said.

  “Well,” he said with a guilty shrug. “It is a wonderful place.”

  Rolling her eyes, she kissed Hiro on the cheek, and said goodbye.

  * * *

  One week later, Marin stood outside the twisting silver trellis marking the entrance to the nature preservation. It was on the eastern side of Vancouver, away from the waterfront and her school, and it had taken half a day to get there by train.

  The first week of classes had been easier than she’d suspected—Hiro had prepared her well—but she still had homework. She’d tried to do it on the trip, but she found herself reading the same lines over and over again, able to focus on nothing but the beating wings of the butterflies in her stomach.

  For several minutes she waited, wondering if Ross was near. It occurred to her then that they’d never set a time to meet. He’d never even said he would come. This could have been just a gift for her, with no intent to reconnect.

  Disappointed, she fixed her long curls over the tattoo on her neck, presented her ticket to the clerk, and edged past the crowds. Vancouver was smaller than Noram, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell inside the preservation walls. People were packed in, bumping into each other as they talked or chased after children. They gathered around a glass enclosure, filled with water—a marine exhibit of some kind. Marin couldn’t see anything around the people in front of her, but from the sounds of it, the lionfish wasn’t a giant cat with gills, it was just a pretty fish.

  She searched every face, but there was no sign of Ross.

  Finally, she got past the throng of people oohing and ahhing over the mystical lionfish, and found the stone path before her much clearer. It cut between trees—real trees, she realized as she touched the leaves of a low-hanging branch and found them soft and supple. Plaques embedded in the ground beside each trunk detailed the name of each. White ash (Fraxinus americana) and Paper birch (Betula papyrifera). Those that followed held fruit. Oranges and lemons.

  The breeze ruffled the hem of her flowing top, and she smoothed it down over her flat belly, feeling, as always, the scar on the right side of her ribs. It had been a long time since she’d thought of the night she’d gotten it, but when she did now, it didn’t hurt like it once had. The past stayed in the past, a stone in her foundation, nothing more.

  Not all things stayed behind her, though. More than one night she’d stared out her window, and let her mind drift back to the sea, and her patchwork boat, and the broad-shouldered boy who’d made her skin grow thin with the way he’d looked at her, and her hands warm when he’d held them.

  The trees cleared and gave way to another exhibit, where an animal like a horse with black and white stripes grazed from a bucket of hay in the center of a dirt paddock.

  She blinked. And rubbed her eyes.

  “Zebra,” she read aloud from the description on the sign against the enclosure’s fence. She laughed so hard at how absurd the animal looked, the people on the other side of the exhibit lifted their chins to stare at her.

  She thought of the night Ross and she had seen a whale, and missed him even more.

  Moving to the next exhibit, she found an African elephant, and then an animal she’d thought was extinct—a long-necked, horselike animal called a “giraffe.”

  Laughing, she moved from exhibit to exhibit, jogging to get to the next section as fast as she could. Finally, she came to an oval-shaped pen, covered with a thin black web of netting. It was easy enough to see through, and when she came closer, her heart stuttered at the sight before her.

  Two large birds stood on rocks beside a small watering hole. Their faces were black as oil, their necks a shimmering blue like the water in her dreams. Long tails stretched out behind them, draping over the rocks like a cloak, a mirage of silky green and gold and blue.

  She moved closer to the fence, mesmerized, feeling her throat grow tight. Her fingers traced over the letters on the sign. INDIAN PEACOCK.

  “I’ve waited a long time to see you,” she said out loud.

  “I was going to say the same thing.”

  She turned sharply, finding someone sitting on a bench behind her. In her rush, she hadn’t seen him, but now she wondered how that was even possible. He was not subtle, his presence not quiet. He was the kind of person people noticed; long-legged, and wide across the chest, with a mess of dark curls that hung over the tips of his ears, and eyes as brilliant blue as the feathers of the birds behind her.

  She went absolutely still, the world around them falling out of focus as he unfolded himself from the bench and strode toward her. Her heart struck her ribs with hard, bruising strokes. This moment had played out a hundred different ways in her mind, and as much as she’d longed to see him again, she’d known it would hurt too. He had woven himself into the fibers of her history, linked to the girl she used to be, the one she’d forced herself to let go. When he appeared, so did the corsario she’d once been.

  “You’re here,” she said, a little breathlessly.

  He smirked down at his feet.

  “I live in the city now.”

  She was reminded how much she’d had to tilt her head to look up at him, and how deep the dimple was in his cheek when he smiled. His skin was darker than it had been when they’d first met. Bronzed, like he’d built a slow tolerance to the sun.

  He rolled his shoulders back, hands resting in the strap of his bag that crossed his chest. He was bigger than he’d been before, more defined, and she found herself staring at the cut lines of his forearms, and the swell of muscle in his biceps that peeked out beneath the sleeves of his shirt. It was hot out, and his neck was covered with a thin sheen of sweat.

  She’d forgotten what he’d said until he added, “It took a while
to find you. I came by a few times.” He smashed his lips to one side. “Hiro is very protective. He said if you wanted to find me, you would.”

  She wasn’t sure if she was more happy or shocked, but looking up at him, she felt the lines between the pirate and the girl she’d become blur. He’d been thinking of her while she’d been thinking of him.

  “I heard about everything with the Eighty-Six,” he said. “That’s incredible.”

  Her cheeks stretched with the smile. After the people from Careytown had been brought to the mainland, she’d found herself as a bridge between the terrenos and the corsarios—an ambassador of sorts, explaining to the government workers in the old hospital that pirates couldn’t be expected to live in interior apartments, that they needed a view of the sky or else they’d go crazy, and that they worked best with clear leadership as they had for captains. Many of them joined the other Shorelings in the oil field in the lower quadrant of the docks that President Baker had had cleared as part of his Revitalization Project, and found apartments he’d had refurnished just above the cliffline. The transition had not been easy for any of them, but they looked to her for guidance, and when her mother set the table for dinner, Marin sat at the head of it.

  All at once she was overcome with the need to tell him everything she’d done in the last ten months. How she’d started taking classes, and working as Hiro’s assistant. What it had felt like the first time she’d set a broken leg and the boy she’d worked on had thanked her. How she was here, going to school to become a doctor.

  She wanted him to know the woman she’d become, in part, because of him.

  But before she could start, he reached into his bag, and pulled out an orange, and the words were replaced by laughter.

  “If that’s not for me, you’d better hide it before I rip it from your hands, terreno.”

  She paused at the name, glancing up to make sure it was still okay after all this time.

  But he was beaming, and when he placed it in her hand, a smooth, orange globe, she bit her lip in anticipation.

  “Wait. You live here?” It had comforted her in Hiro’s shop, thinking of him just a few miles away.