by Julia Drake
“Please don’t apologize before I can, that’s the whole reason I’m here. Seriously. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Orion rubbed his forearm. I watched his tattoo disappear and reappear like magic. My first day at the aquarium felt like a lifetime ago.
“I got you a seafood-of-the-month club,” I blurted. “And shrimp! Well, not you. The rays. The guys at the seafood store thought I was the absolute weirdest. They don’t really do that, it turns out, but they wrote this down on a receipt for you….” I passed him the slip of paper that the cashier had written up for me and set the bag of shrimp at his feet, pathetically, like an offering.
“‘Fish for a Year’?” he read skeptically. “Are you trying to buy my friendship?”
“The rays’ friendship. You get an apology.”
Orion crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”
“We should have told you,” I said, sounding out the words the way I’d practiced. “We were careless with your feelings.”
“Yep,” he said. Well. He wasn’t going to make my job easy. Good thing I had more apology memorized.
“I’m not used to having friends,” I went on. “Good friends who are good people. People who sing to lobsters and pick up trash off the beach. Not that that’s an excuse. I’m just…out of practice. I think sometimes I come off flirtier than I intend, and I’m sorry if I led you on. But, I mean, that’s not even the problem. I’m sorry I kept you on the outside. I want you to know me.”
He waited. That was all I’d rehearsed.
“I didn’t set out to…I hope you don’t think I…”
“Used your dumb go-betweening shtick as a way to get to Liv?”
“Orion, God, no. I watched you both that first night, and you two were so close—and I’d just never been that close to someone. I wanted to be around you both, but I seriously thought you belonged together. Honestly I was kind of into Mariah, or I thought she was like the prettiest person I’d ever seen, at least, don’t tell her that, though. What happened with Liv and me took me completely by surprise.”
“Me too,” he said. “You could’ve told me, you know.”
“She didn’t want me to.”
“No. You could’ve told me about you. That you’re bisexual. I wouldn’t’ve cared, you know? I mean, I don’t care. You’re still you.”
“I know,” I said. I’d never liked that term for myself—but it seemed kind of a trivial point to argue in the face of Orion’s kindness. I’d school him on the nuances later. “Sometimes it, like, still surprises me. How hard it can be to tell people.”
“I get that,” he said, “though I’ve got to admit, I feel like an idiot.”
“You are not an idiot. You’re this jack of all trades! You build boats and play music and you understand thermohaline circulation….”
“Thermohaline circulation isn’t even complicated, Violet. Meanwhile, I fell for two girls who fell in love with each other.” He held up two fingers, and repeated himself, just in case I missed it. “Two.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re an idiot,” I said. “That means you have this incredible capacity for love. Not to mention excellent taste.”
“What a skill set.”
“It is! You wouldn’t be this good at music if you didn’t have it. And the rays wouldn’t be as well-fed, and the aquarium would be dead in the water—you care, and that’s so special, it’s like a gift. I have loved playing music with you this summer. No matter what happens with you and me. I want you to know that. It really, really mattered.”
I wanted Orion to get everything that he wanted in life: To go south on a boat and play his music. To find a girl who loved him, even if it took years. To be rewarded in some way, for his goodness.
“For me, too,” he said.
“And thermohaline circulation is complicated.”
He snorted. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Do you still want to do Cousteau!?” I asked.
“I think we should get rid of the exclamation point. I don’t know how to say it.”
“Sorry, nonnegotiable. Just throw in jazz hands if you need emphasis.”
“And I really think in the lyrics in the third stanza of ‘Calypso Tango’…”
“I’ll get rid of the joke about the three-way.”
“But I mean—the flyers are already up. People are coming. We should probably work on it. Now that you’re here, actually—I memorized the first song. Will you listen?”
“Yes,” I said. There was nothing I’d rather do more.
He took a deep breath, and I suddenly remembered.
“Wait!” I cried.
“You have a real problem with interrupting people, you know that?”
“I know. I know. Just. Do you know how we’re saving manatees? At the aquarium.”
“Violet, you worked there for two solid months.”
“I know…I just…”
“I’m so glad we didn’t pay you,” Orion said. “It’s not like it’s some great mystery. We donate to a wildlife rehab clinic in Florida. Like, for manatees who’ve been sliced up by propellers or tangled up in nets. Just a few dollars here and there, but…”
I finished the sentence for him. “Every little bit helps.”
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Felix asked. “Former thieves, come to repent?”
“We need your paranormal expertise,” I said, hardly believing what I was saying.
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” said Mariah.
“Fun,” Felix said. “Does this have to do with a haunted pocket watch?”
“Sort of,” Sam said.
We explained to Felix about the whale-song voice. We told him about the magic sandbar, and the Ghost Coast, and Septimus, and the presence of the wreck we both felt beneath the waves.
“Can you, like, séance Septimus using the watch and ask him if the wreck is really there?” I said.
“‘Séance him’?” said Felix.
“God, don’t make me ask again, Felix!”
Felix cracked the watch like a flip phone and held it to his ear. “‘Hey, Septimus, how’s ghost life, you still at that same wreck?’”
“You read my tea leaves from your phone! How is this any more ridiculous?!”
“I mean…” Mariah said. “I’m kind of curious, too. Don’t you want to know if the wreck is there?”
“Yes,” said Sam. “We both, like, sensed it. But who knows what we actually saw, the whole thing was so confusing.”
“Lack of depth perception will really fuck with you,” Felix agreed.
“But that voice. We both heard it.”
“That you could probably chalk up to stress,” said Mariah.
“I kind of agree with her,” said Felix. “The brain does weird things sometimes when it goes into survival mode. When I lost my eye, I like really, really thought I was dying, but I also knew I was going to live. I heard all sorts of shit. But maybe the voice was just you. Haven’t you ever heard a voice in your head that didn’t sound exactly like your own?”
Duh, said a voice. Shut up, said another.
“I can’t just call Septimus on a watch. First of all, maybe he’s on a ghost date, and second of all, I’m kind of scared to chat with the dead. I might get addicted.” He slid the pocket watch across the table.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “But is there a way—I know you think crystal balls are a racket, but there must be another way. We just want to know. Was the wreck there?”
Sam, Mariah, and I stared avidly at Felix, waiting while he considered.
“Do you want to know what I think, or what I think?” Felix said.
“Are those things different?” Sam asked.
“Well, I’m of, like, four minds, that’s kind of my point. Brain One says no wreck. Brain Two says yes wreck. Brain Three says I hope they found it, and Brain Four is thinking about whether I should have a hot dog for lunch. Who knows who’s right? I mean, Violet, do you think it’s there?”
“Som
etimes. Sometimes not.”
“See?” said Felix. “Maybe that’s your answer.”
“Schrōdinger’s cat is the answer?! That’s so shitty,” said Sam.
“Well, okay,” said Mariah. “Let’s say you found the wreck, and then you brought in a team of scientists, and they dredged it from the water with the crane, and you made it a houseboat and lived there. Then what?”
“I’m going to regret saying this, but she’s right,” said Felix.
Mariah threw her arms skyward and screamed, “I’ve waited my whole life for this day!”
“She didn’t even make a point,” said Sam.
“She did,” said Felix. “Finding it…that’s not where the story ends. I one hundred percent found a shipwreck, and…”
“And what?” said Sam.
Felix shrugged. “And I dunno. That’s what I’m trying to say. And it’s up to you.”
POETRY
My family had two August weeks together in Lyric. We barbecued and watched TV, we read books and picked blueberries and waded, but didn’t swim. Joan told me I could take August off, but I did half days. We petted the rays and Boris. Orion sang “Kelp!” for us, with Andy soloing on the tambourine. Sam and I walked along our coast in the afternoons, and in the morning, our parents did the same. They came up over the hill one morning, their hair damp with mist, and I saw they’d hooked their index fingers together.
Toby finished the puzzle and started a new one the very next day.
We talked, too. Not every conversation was a revelation. Sometimes we just talked about how delicious the asparagus was, or remarked on the weather. Sometimes we weren’t patient with each other. Sometimes we snapped. But none of our conversations had a sense of finality. If we snapped, we came back to apologize. We all were beginning to understand the importance of and.
And there was Liv.
A few days before we returned to New York, she and I were lying in the bed at her house while her parents were out.
“I don’t want you to go back to New York,” she said.
“I know. It feels like the beginning of Grease. Soon I’ll take up smoking and wear leather pants.”
“I’m serious. Don’t joke.”
“I don’t want to go back either,” I admitted. There was so much to be scared of: my mom had spent the morning placing calls to colleagues, making a list of therapists that specialized in family sessions. Getting help was the right thing to do, but the year ahead of us was going to be work. There wasn’t going to be magic healing; there’d be only a string of ands on which we’d thread our survival.
“I don’t want to be different on my own,” Liv said.
“You’re not on your own. You’re my anagram.” I reached for her hand, worrying her ring around her finger. “Do you remember that day with the tea leaves?”
“You think your future was leading toward me because I wear a purple ring?”
“No,” I said, thinking of Felix. “I think our futures intertwined because we wanted them to. Besides, that ring could have meant anything.”
“The moon,” Liv offered.
“The roundness of an apple.”
“Things coming full circle,” Liv said. “An end, and a beginning.”
“A whole note.”
“The world.”
I put my head on her chest and clung to her. I wrapped my legs around her like a barnacle. I pressed my skin to hers and felt woozy, drifting along on this feeling. I couldn’t be close enough. What would happen to us? I didn’t know. I fretted; I squeezed her closer; I didn’t want to leave, I was already mourning going—
“I love you, Violet,” she said, “have I told you that?”
She hadn’t, but I had a feeling. I loved her, too. I told her so.
“Promise me something?” I said.
“Anything.”
Cousteau! was an extremely well-attended fiasco. Joan had sent flyers to the penguin aquarium, and they’d promoted the shit out of it—organized tour buses, even, for loads of tourists, plus their whole staff. Andy’s parents came. Felix and Mariah, their parents, their siblings. Joan’s family, husband, three kids, and her sister. The librarian. A couple of kids from Lyric High, who Mariah was convinced were just there to heckle, but they didn’t.
We performed outside, and Orion, as Cousteau, nailed the opening number. He was the only one who memorized his lines, while me, Felix, Mariah, and Joan bumbled through with scripts in hand, all the songs and scenes nearly illegible with my last-minute notes. We gave Boris a shark fin and people loved that. Thankfully, between Orion and Boris, the overall impression was good, because by the third scene, the rain began: our cardboard submarine was a pulpy mess before we even got aboard.
We tried to do the show inside, but everyone was freezing and our props were soaked, and finally Boris lay down in the center of stage as if to say, Enough. The show must go on, but sometimes the show musn’t go on right now.
“Intermission,” Joan called. The reception, at least, was banging, catered by the Mola Mola and the Lyric Pub, dark and stormy mocktails and cocktails that were super easy to swipe, and an epic cake Toby made in the shape of an octopus, its tentacles wrapped around a tiny ship.
Liv brought me and Orion each a single rose. She tucked his rose behind his ear, and mine into my lapel.
“That was amazing,” she said.
“Spare us,” Orion said.
“You should try out for the musical this year,” Liv said. “Seriously.”
She twirled off toward Sam at the cake. Orion and I watched Sam feed Liv a bite of cake, and I didn’t think there was space in me for all the ways I was feeling.
“Well, we did it,” he said.
“Sort of.” I’d worn a spirit-gum mustache to play the first mate, and I ripped it off, seething through my teeth with pain and pressing my hand to my mouth. Later, bubbles would develop on my skin, allergic and raw.
“Ow,” Orion said. “You could try to be gentler with yourself, you know?”
I knew. But when he said that, I launched myself at him for the hardest, least-gentle hug I could muster, chest to chest, pressing so hard we might fall through one another. He was better than a magic whale: he had helped save me, and then he’d stuck around.
I’ve heard it said that love—good love—feels like finding your missing puzzle piece. Here’s the thing, though: I’m not sure the person who came up with that has done a lot of puzzles.
Take, for example, the most conventional jigsaw in the puzzleverse. A Ravensburger thousand-piece, picture on the box, kitschy drawing of Yosemite, maybe, or bicycles in Amsterdam, sunset nonnegotiable. Some lush jungle, fuchsia flowers, and birds of paradise soaring past a waterfall and dappled light on a shadowy ocelot’s coat, overwrought, bathetic.
One puzzle piece actually has four different ways to connect, not just two. That means four different ways to fit with someone else. Even if you’re a corner piece, so statistically very rare, a real fucking weirdo in this particular puzzle—you’re still going to connect in at least two places. Which means, theoretically, that as the special-est, strangest, rarest piece, you fit with not just one person, but two people.
What about one of those wooden puzzles my dad gives my mom for Christmas, the kind he claims are “actually very nice puzzles” but are actually just a huge pain in the ass? There aren’t any edges, and there’s no picture on the box to help, so you just have to start and hope for the best. Last year’s was circus-themed, acrobats and clowns and a lion tamer, tightrope walkers in red tutus, trapeze artists mid-flight, a seal balancing a ball on his nose.
The pieces were laser-cut in the WACKIEST shapes, like little countries, or bacteria. A bajillion different ways these pieces could connect to each other. It’s trial and error, your back aches and your eyes tear up from the work of hunting for that piece you think you need, the wooden pieces leach oil from your fingertips, each one thirsty for touch, and this puzzle is a freaking joke, it’s too hard, forget this, I quit.
Quit, for now.
Let yourself be stuck.
Stare out the window, maybe. What do you see? Inky darkness? Maybe it’s daytime. Maybe it’s hot, the hottest day of the year. Leave the puzzle. Go swimming. Bring a friend. And on your way home there’s salt on your skin and you’re sitting on one towel and your brother’s sitting on another. A big black dog leans out the window of a passing station wagon, his silky ears blowing back to reveal bunny-pink insides. Maybe he looks like a bat. Maybe he reminds you of being eight years old when you believed you could navigate by echolocation. You pitched tennis balls across the park and, with your eyes closed, listened for the sound when they landed.
Maybe, if you close your eyes now, you’ll remember the tennis ball’s Velcro fuzz and the lingering new-can smell. How your shoulder cracked when you hurled the ball across the lawn. Maybe you’ll even hear the muffled sound of the ball landing, even in New York City. The soft-but-sure sound that announced itself as your guide.
Days later, or ten minutes later, you’re back at it. Clarity. It’s always the last piece you think you need (of course it’s the last piece you try, because you don’t keep looking after you find it). Then it’s a cavalcade, hands moving before your brain gets there, Ouija board puzzling, muscle memory now, and all the hearts interlock with the spaces where hearts should be.
Except you’re missing a piece. You can’t find the seal’s face. He’s a faceless seal balancing a whole lot of nothing, a scoop taken out of the puzzle, an important one, too. It never won’t bother you, but that’s part of it.
The puzzle’s an incomplete circus, the pieces touching each other in all these ways, and there’s a hitch in your back from where you’ve hunched, but you’ve done it. You’ve put this thing together. Seams like veins pump blood through this cobbled-together catastrophe, this broken, beautiful mess.
STONES
Our last night in Lyric, Sam and I biked to get lobster rolls.
“Do you want to invite Liv?” he’d asked, buckling his helmet beneath his chin. “I don’t mind.”