A Swirl of Ocean

by Melissa Sarno

  But he was the only one we let into our family of two.

  Until now.

  Until Elder Glynn swept on through the restaurant Lindy waitresses at, sitting at the oyster counter, slurping down one oyster after the next, tired of living in an apartment in the city, a shoebox, he called it, so he came here to slow down for a while and work at the fish hatchery. Slowing down, screeching to a halt, onto our back porch, into the space between Lindy’s big brown eyes and the sky she’s gazing up at.

  I sigh and we both reach for our moon snail necklaces, because sometimes we do things like that, decide things in sync. I made hers from old rope and smooth purple moon snail shells. I made it to match mine. It’s the only thing I have from when she found me. The one link to my past. And I’ve extended it, over the years, with rope and twine, so it fits an older me. We fiddle with them all the time, but we never take them off.

  I sigh. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She knows what I’m saying without me having to explain. “He’s kind, Summer. And smart.”

  I scrunch up my nose. “I guess.”

  “You’ll still have your own room, and we’ll all be on our own schedules. Elder will still be working at the hatchery. And I’ll be at the restaurant. You’ll have school. And we’ll come and go like we always do, sharing the chores and dinner, like it’s always been.”

  “Right.” I force a smile.

  She frowns. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I guess I knew it couldn’t be forever. Just you and me.”

  She places her hands on both of my shoulders. “It’s always forever.”

  I nod and try to agree, but it gnaws at me, this feeling I sometimes get at the pit of me. That I’m not really hers. That she’s not really mine.

  Even if the adoption was final before I could make my own memories. Even if she laid out the papers as soon as I was old enough to understand so I could see it all. A set of unknown parents whose rights were terminated. Not a runaway or an orphan. A foundling in a case that reached dead end after dead end. And, even when I went through that phase, when I was a kid, like I was some Harriet the Spy, researching libraries and microfilms, interviewing everyone I could, in a town small enough for someone to maybe, maybe, know my own story before I did. Even when I found nothing. Even in a case as good as closed, I know there’s still a file in a cabinet somewhere.

  Someone left me behind.

  Couldn’t Lindy?

  I dismiss the thought as soon as I have it. She would never.

  Lindy stands up, and I follow. I can tell we’re both done with the day, and I leave a trail of ocean as we slip through the screen door and climb the narrow stairs together.

  In my room, there are piles of clothes, and books sit on their sides on the crooked shelves. Rows of my seashell collection line the knobby wooden desk where I do my jewelry-making. I’ve got a bunch of wicker baskets filled with their weathered, fanned-out shapes.

  She spins her arm around. “You should think of sorting through these.”

  “What for?” I ask.

  “One of these days I’m going to turn on the television and see you on one of those hoarding shows,” she teases.

  I go through a messy drawer, looking for an old tee to sleep in.

  Lindy’s eyes brighten. “Ooh, wear my favorite,” she urges.

  I rummage for the wrinkled blue cotton and hold it over my too-tight bathing suit. It has a faded coconut in a rocket ship and the word Coconaut.

  She giggles. “Gets me every time.”

  I stand a little shivery and roll my eyes. Then I slip it on over my suit. It’s not like I can strip right here in front of Lindy like I used to do when I was a little kid.

  I collapse to the bed, wrapping my arms up against my chest. She grabs a brush from my messy dresser and runs it through my tangled hair. Even if I’m old enough to brush my hair myself, it feels nice, like I could shed a worry away with each stroke.

  “Your bread’s on the kitchen counter,” Lindy reminds me. “It’s not doing a thing.”

  “Nope. Too many preservatives,” I groan.

  “We’re the only people I know wishing food would spoil faster.”

  “How long did it take for yours to grow mold?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I can’t remember. I remember the science fair in the auditorium. I remember getting a blue ribbon. I remember taking it home to my mother, who put it in a little tin box, a forever keepsake.” Her voice fades. I wish she’d say more. Lindy so rarely talks about her life before me. She always flicks away her past like it’s this unwanted thing.

  “Well, I don’t think one fuzzy green patch is too much to ask,” I say.

  “It’ll get there, kiddo. It’s got to. The little loaf that could.” She smiles, twirls the dry ends of my hair, and pats them in place on my back. Then she kisses my head and stands up. “No more night swimming,” she reminds me.

  I nod as she turns to leave, and I hear her patter on the steps.

  I stare at the ceiling, at the swirl of glow-in-the-dark stars Lindy and me stuck up there a few years ago. They’re losing their shine as the memory of light fades away.

  I turn to my desk. A half-made string of beaded shells sits unfinished. I should clasp it, end it, store it until I start selling again next summer. Instead, I feel heavy and sick as I watch the breeze nag at the curtains. The ocean I swallowed sits at the pit of my belly.

  I close my eyes. The pit of me gets wider and wider, and it fills up more and more. Ocean washes through me, and I scatter outside of it like a worried crab. Until I’m dreaming a dream so big, it takes over into the night. I dream a girl.

  Tink sat in a plastic chair. The ocean waves crashed and fell away, again and again, and her feet slid deeper and deeper into the sand. She closed her eyes.

  It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, and sparklers flickered across the beach. The kids streamed and swirled them against the darkening sky. But Tink didn’t want a dumb sparkler, didn’t want to listen to Kimmy Forrester all giggly and shrieking while Len chased after her with fire, didn’t want Alexis rolling her eyes at everything she said, acting like they weren’t even sisters, like Tink was some stray pet no one wanted to claim.

  All Tink wanted was to be alone.

  But Kimmy was already at her side, all breathy and laugh-y, her hand at Tink’s wrist as she slapped her bare feet in the wet sand. “They’re gonna start the fireworks,” Kimmy said. “Come on.”

  Tink let her wrist fall limp in Kimmy’s hands. She shook her head.

  “We’re gonna set ’em off ourselves,” Kimmy insisted.

  Tink sighed and opened her eyes to Kimmy’s wild hair, its frizz all soaked in moonlight. “Ourselves?” she asked.

  “Rockets,” said Kimmy. “You in?”

  “Who’s going to?” Tink asked.

  “Whoever wants to. The moms are fixing dessert back at the house. They won’t even notice. Come on.” Kimmy took off, darting across the beach to the bonfire, where everybody was set up on beach blankets holding soda cans wrapped in soft cozies. Alexis was there. Her hair fell like silk to her knees.

  Tink pulled the sleeves of her hoodie over her fingertips and stood up. There was no use in pretending nobody else existed. They had the rest of the summer to get through, on this one stretch of beach, which used to feel like magic to her but was now weirdly charged with Kimmy all gross and gooey over Len, and Alexis spending all her days with her not-quite-a boyfriend, but not-quite-not-a boyfriend, Coop, and working across the bay at the arcade.

  Tink couldn’t decide where to sit. Alexis was usually out somewhere. And when she was around, she was off to the side, twirling her hair, pretending she wasn’t part of an “us” anymore. But there she was, in the middle of things again, her eyes smiling.

  Tink to
ok her chance.

  She sat right next to Alexis so their knees were touching.

  Tink expected Alexis to scoot over quick, groan on about why she was always hanging all over her. Instead, Alexis slid her arm through hers, wrapped herself up with Tink, like they did every year watching their dad shoot off fireworks, and it felt, to Tink, like they were who they’d always been. Sisters, yes. But more than that, too. A secret, the two of them together, that no one else could get at.

  Len and his father were hanging by Tink and Alexis’s dad, so Kimmy was there, too—where else would she be? The four of them sorted through boxes of fireworks. The three moms were inside, like Kimmy said, and Tink could see them up at the house, at the window screen, laughing like the schoolgirl friends they liked to remind all the kids they used to be before they grew up, got families, and rented a house every summer in Barnes Bluff Bay.

  Tink settled in, Alexis’s arm still linked with hers. Maybe she wouldn’t have to disappear. Maybe they could sit this way forever.

  A firecracker shot up like a missile. It slurped toward the sky, then exploded into one sharp, angry cackle.

  Tink felt Alexis’s arm slip away from hers as she stood up. “Coop!” Alexis called.

  He made his way across the sand, and when he reached them, he leaned in for a kiss. Alexis let it brush one cheek, but Tink could see her smile, how it stayed plastered there, as she took his hand and curled into his chest.

  “Hey.” Coop nodded at Tink.

  “Hey.” Tink looked at the way his jeans stopped awkwardly at the tops of his too-white sneakers. She didn’t know what Alexis saw in him. He was so quiet.

  Len ran to them, breathless. “That was my cracker!” he shouted.

  “That was crazy!” Kimmy landed right behind him.

  “Try one,” Len urged Tink.

  Tink shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Alexis laughed against Coop’s shoulder. “It’s a rite of passage. Setting off firecrackers at Barnes Bluff.”

  “I’ll get my hand blown off,” Tink said.

  “You won’t,” Alexis argued. “You light it. You run. It’s no big deal, Tink. Really.”

  “Then why do it?” Tink asked.

  Alexis rolled her eyes. “If you have to ask, you’re already living a dead-end life. I can’t help you.”

  Tink stood up and brushed off her shorts. “Okay.”

  Alexis arched her eyebrows up in surprise, then she softened. “It’s fun. Right, Coop?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Come on.” Len was already off and running, his legs and arms all skinny and wiry, into the night.

  Tink followed with Kimmy yammering beside her. “It’s like lighting a candle. You stand back, and then you just run.”

  “You haven’t even done it,” said Tink.

  Kimmy groaned. “It’s not like I haven’t seen your dad do it a thousand times or anything.”

  Tink’s dad was sorting through the box of crackers, and Tink marched up like she knew what she was doing. “So what do we have here?” she asked, not really sure why she was talking like a grandpa all of a sudden.

  “Well, we’ve got some rockets.” Her dad pulled out a skinny wooden stick with a rocket-shaped, rainbow-colored thingy on top.

  “Can I shoot it?” she asked.

  “Under my supervision.”

  “Okay.” Tink wondered how hard it could be. It was just like lighting a birthday candle and running away from your wish.

  “Let’s find a good spot,” her dad suggested.

  “Where I did it,” Len chimed in, pointing to a patch of crumpled sand and a bunch of sticks and wrappers left behind.

  “Set it first,” her dad instructed. He was always dripping in sweat, no matter the temperature, breathing in like he had to catch his last breath. “Point it toward the water. Away from you.”

  Tink knelt in the sand, set it pointing out toward the ocean, lit by all the porches of each beach house, which were strung like lanterns across the shore.

  “We’ll use these.” He held out a box of long matches. They were the length of her forearm, and she pulled one out, realizing she’d never lit a match in her life, not even for a birthday candle.

  But she knew about the chalky strip on the box, the way the tip caught fire, then simmered.

  “Before you light it, test its stability.” He tugged at the rocket, making sure it was stuck real good in the sand, then wiped the bottom of his shirt across his forehead. “Now just light it, blow out the match quick, and stand back.” He pointed toward the beach grass, just beyond the house, and walked over there.

  Tink held the box in one hand, the match in the other. She struck it a few times before it caught fire. Then she quickly lit the rocket, watching the snip of flame.

  She blew out the match and ran.

  She listened to the rocket’s short whistle, her chest heaving. She turned back, looking for the trail of light, waiting for the cackle as it caught the wind and burst.

  But she didn’t see or hear any of it. Was it possible to have missed it, while turning her back?

  Len whooped and Kimmy laughed.

  Her dad ran his wrist across his sweaty cheeks. “Looks like you got yourself a dud, Tink.”

  She held the match in her clenched and clammy fist and looked at the rainbow rocket. It was face-first in the sand, smoldering. The waves settled closer and closer, until they lapped up the rainbow swirl and took it away.

  I feel myself taken away with the tide. It opens up and swallows me, and I flail inside, coughing and sputtering. I’m shaken, stirred, then tossed. The sand scrapes my skin, and I claw at it but it slips away.

  Then I open my eyes.

  I’m not at the shore. It’s not the Fourth of July. I’m not in the dream I dreamed. I’m in my bed, and it’s sticky hot, and my stomach is aching.

  Later that morning, I sit at the edge of the deck stairs. They lead their way to the dunes, and I watch the beach grass sway. Seeing it, my heart catches. I feel like I’m back in my dreams.

  But then I hear the shush of the sliding door, and the feeling passes. I remember I am where I am, where I’ve been for the past ten years, and I shake myself out of remembering the dream. Soon Lindy’s behind me, her hands at my shoulders. “You headed to Jeremiah’s?” she asks.

  “Yup,” I say.

  “Stop by the Shaky later,” she tells me. That’s what we call the Shaky Docks. I always eat there on Sundays. Lindy sneaks out clam strips, and we eat on the back steps during her break. “Elder’ll be there,” she says.

  It jolts me. Sundays at the Shaky is our thing. Lindy’s and mine.

  “Okay?” she asks.

  I nod fast, without thinking. “Okay.”

  Then I swallow hard and take off, wondering why she’s got to pair me and Elder together all the time. Isn’t it enough that I’m letting him into our house?

  “See you later,” she calls, and I can’t even look back to wave.

  The Shaky Docks was one of the first places Lindy took me after she found me. She tucked me in a booth sticky with ketchup. I fisted french fries, smashing them in my palms. I squeezed at Luss the line cook’s scratchy, unshaven cheeks. Lindy said I didn’t cry or fuss. I just fell into place, easy as the tides, a part of Barnes Bluff from day one.

  When I get to Jeremiah’s, Gramzy answers. The television’s blazing, and Jeremiah gives me a chin nod, while the light from the TV bobs and dances around the room.

  “Good, glad you’re here.” Gramzy’s hands are wrinkled but soft as she takes my wrist. “I need a girl’s opinion.”

  “On what?” I ask.

  “Curtains,” she says. “The boy’s no use.”

  I follow her around the house, into the kitchen, where she stands with swatches of fabric against the pale
yellow wall. “Bird’s-eye or calico?” she asks, barely looking up at me. Then she pulls out a third. “There’s also the pincheck, but I’m leaning away from it.”

  “I like flowers,” I say. “Flowers are nice.”

  Gramzy looks me over. At the creases of my hands caked in dirt and my knees black from kneeling in sand. Living next to Lindy and me all these years, she should know there’s nothing delicate about the two of us, nothing that knows the proper curtains for a home. Still, she smiles. “Flowers,” she repeats, tasting the word on her tongue. “Calico it is.” Then she repeats what she already told me. “The boy’s no use for these kinds of things.” She nods toward the living room. “Go on.”

  I guess she’s done with me, so I jump the little step from the kitchen into the living room and collapse onto Gramzy’s couch, which is covered in soft sheets because she’s got a thing about keeping it pristine. Usually she’s got the Home Shopping Network blaring at a supersonic volume, but Jeremiah’s watching a boat sail around the ocean, his brow furrowed, all focused.

  “Yoo-hoo, hello!” I shout.

  “Oh, sorry.” He fools with the remote. “I’m used to watching it at Gramzy levels.”

  “Whatcha watching?” I ask.

  “Some National Geographic thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “That old ship that sank. The Titanic. These scientists have all these tools to map the ocean. And they’ve got all this stuff they’re finding on the ocean floor. See those twisting arrows?” He points at a map on the screen.

  “The swirl?” I ask.

  “Yup. They track the path of the wreckage, and then they know exactly the path it took before it sank.”

  The swirling arrows flash again.

  “Pretty cool,” I tell him. And it is, this idea of the ocean holding on to an entire history, revealing itself all these years later.