A Swirl of Ocean

by Melissa Sarno

“I’m going over there,” I tell them.

  “Leave her alone,” Lindy says.

  “I just want to see.”

  She sighs, but she doesn’t argue. She’s leaning back into Elder, and his arm is draped around her, like they’re in some silly prom picture, and I take off before I have to see any more.

  The closer I get, the more I’m confused about the dumpsters, which are as wide and long as garbage trucks and filled to the brim. Can someone have that much junk in the house? Is there that much she’d be willing to leave behind and throw away?

  When I get to the dumpsters, though, the situation is stranger than I thought. I stand on my tippy toes and peer in. They’re not full of furniture or household items. They’re not packed with trash and crumpled-up old stuff.

  They’re full of books.

  So many books, tripping and toppling over one another. Yellowed pages splayed open. Spines cracked and split. Paperbacks curled up like they’ve been read and loved and read again. Their musty smell is stronger than any ocean. It’s a wonder the house could have held anything else.

  I remember my dream. Alexis’s cot pressed up against stacks full of books. They called her room the library.

  I slip down to my heels and feel my breath quicken.

  I look to the open door as some sweaty mover raises a lamp over his head and brings it to the moving truck.

  I run toward the truck. The mover’s head dips back; he’s guzzling a bottle of water, Adam’s apple pulsing in and out.

  “Is she in there?” I ask.

  He brings his chin down and looks puzzled. “Who?”

  “Turtle La—” I stop myself. “The owner.”

  He shakes his head. “Naw. We were told to take everything but the books.”

  So the lamp goes with her.

  The books don’t.

  “Can I take a look inside, just real quick?” I ask.

  “Can’t have no nobodies running around while we’re on the move, kid. We’re loading some heavy stuff in—”

  I take off on the walkway before he can say any more. I pass the old wooden door I’ve never seen open. The house is musty, and dust balls roll around like tumbleweed. The furniture’s older and more antique-y than anything even Gramzy has in her living room.

  I run to the center of the house. The stairs curl up to the second floor, and you can stand at the top and look over into the downstairs, just like I saw in my dream.

  I scan the room. All the furniture’s piled in the center. Against the walls are fishing nets. Fishing nets. I close my eyes.

  The framed fly-fishing feathers.

  I open my eyes and swirl around in a circle. There’s a set of glass frames against the far wall. The feathers are pressed against the glass, like patterned butterflies, fluorescent and bright and hanging from hooks.

  The yellowing periodic table.

  I spin around to the space between the two windows where we threw our pickles. And, there it is, a giant periodic table, just like we’ve got in science class, tacked to the wall like an old map.

  “I mean it, kid. We’ve got work going on.” The mover sets himself up to lift a giant box.

  “Just one more thing. I’ll be quick, I swear.” I don’t wait for his approval; I just run up the old staircase, into the first room I see, and it’s got floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, just like Alexis’s room.

  I stand at the door, my heartbeat slowing as I stare out, through the window, at the ocean below. I can almost see them. Tink and Alexis. Racing toward the night, knees slicing above the waves, collapsing back into the water as they stare up, breathless, toward the sky.

  This house is nothing like our house or like Gramzy’s or like anyone’s. It’s Turtle Lady’s.

  And I’ve never been in it.

  No one has.

  But I dreamed it whole.

  I know who needs to see this, and I take her to Turtle Lady’s just before dark, when I know the moving truck is gone and the house is empty and closed up.

  Tanvi wobbles on her bike as we turn each corner. She hates any physical activity beyond holding a book to her nose, but I convinced her it was worth the trip.

  “You shouldn’t have told him,” she scolds, gripping her handlebars like some old lady at the wheel of a car.

  “You’re right.”

  “It was insensitive.”

  “I know.”

  “I should get to tell someone I’m into them when I’m ready,” she barks. “Not when you’re trying to prove a point.”

  “So you would have told him?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought, with all the books you read, why wouldn’t you want a love story of your own?”

  “Do you know the statistical probability of a middle school relationship working out, Summer? It’s like…abysmal.”

  “So it has to work out?” I ask.

  “Isn’t that the idea?”

  I sigh. “What do I know?”

  We reach the dumpsters, and I stand on my bicycle pedals, peering in. The books sit all lumped together, still and breathless. Tanvi maneuvers around on her seat, trying to balance, and when she reaches my height, her big brown eyes grow twice their size.

  “She threw them out?” she marvels, shaking her head. Then she plops back onto her seat, gets off the bike, and puts the kickstand down. “Boost me,” she demands.

  “Boost you where?”

  “I’m going in.”

  “In?” I ask. But of course she is, and I know there’s no arguing it, so I get up off my bike and let it fall to the ground.

  It’s easy to lift Tanvi, who is pretty scrawny and latches on to the dumpster like a clawing cat. She props herself up and swings herself in, and there she is, floating on a pile of books with a big grin on her face.

  I guess this is pretty much her happy place. Tanvi in her sea of books.

  She rummages around, flipping them open, like she’s just browsing at the library or the bookstore or something, and not sitting on a dusty pile of old mildewed books in a big plastic dumpster.

  “Ugh. Nonfiction.” She scrunches her nose, eyes the front cover of each book, and tosses it behind her, digging for more. “You think the other dumpster is fiction?” she asks.

  I think of the sweaty mover guy guzzling water earlier today and shake my head. “I doubt there was any kind of sorting going on, Tanvi.”

  “Hmm.” She swings around, frustrated. “God, Science, and the Galapagos. Reef Fish Identification. Avian Diversity in Ecuador. Lame. Lame. And lamer.”

  “A Guide to Long Island’s Shores.” She’s about to toss that one behind when I stop her.

  “Let me see that.”

  She drops it over the edge of the dumpster. I pick it up and brush off the slim book. The cover is a block of letters and endless sand, with a bit of ocean pooling in the right-hand corner. The pages are frayed and yellow, and the back cover lists the contents. Shells. Brush. A Beachcomber’s Guide.

  I clutch it to my side. “No romance, I guess?”

  She shakes her head, disappointed. “What a waste.” Still, she doesn’t leave her nest of books. She crisscrosses her legs and settles in. “Maybe I’ll have a house of books someday,” she tells me. “Maybe I’ll move to Florida with a long-lost sister. Maybe I’ll do the opposite,” she continues. “Instead of taking all my furniture and stuff, I’ll just take the books.”

  “You could make a bed of them.” I play along.

  “And a desk.”

  “Keep them cold in the refrigerator,” I laugh.

  “They’ll be in sweaty Florida, after all.”

  Tanvi leans back into her books, not seeming to care about dirt and dust and faded mildew. “It’s strange. To not know anything about Turtle Lady after all these years. And to
be left with this.” She lifts her arms up into the air.

  “I met her,” I say. “I talked to her.”

  Tanvi’s eyes grow wide. “You talked to Turtle Lady?”

  I nod. “She’s taking care of the diamondback terrapins. She’s making sure they survive.”

  “So, she’s not a people person. She’s a turtle person.”

  I smile. “A Turtle Lady.”

  “I don’t blame her. People…” Her voice fades away. “Are hard,” she finishes.

  She folds her arms behind her head and looks up into the sky.

  “So, I think dreaming something is a little like living it,” I confess to her.

  “Told you.” She grins, satisfied.

  “But I also think you have to step out of your dreams every once in a while. So you can figure out what you want from them.”

  Tanvi looks like she’s thinking it over. “So, Ted Light really said that me liking him was a dream come true?”

  “His words. I swear.”

  “He’s ridiculous.”

  “He’s nice,” I say.

  Her voice is quiet. “He is.”

  I grip the side of the dumpster. “I have an idea. You could wait,” I offer.

  “For what?”

  “To be together. When the statistical probability of a relationship working out is better.”

  “True.” She smiles. “It’s best to set up for a happy ending.”

  With the night about to settle in, Tanvi and I part ways, her bicycle soaring off to the bay side of town and me wheeling up to the house. Elder’s pickup truck sits in the driveway and it blocks Lindy’s beat-up blue Civic, which means she’s pretty much trapped until he goes somewhere. All of Elder and his stuff have landed where they’re going to be.

  I don’t put my bike away. I let it fall to the lawn and look up to the house, with its rows of wraparound windows. The lights are on in every room but mine.

  As soon as I step in, I’ve got a dog nipping at my feet, her bark all screechy and frantic, hopping like some bunny all over my toes. She scratches my bare legs with her puny little paws.

  Elder comes rambling down the stairs. “Sit, Elsa, sit.”

  But Elsa boings like she’s on an automatic trampoline, and I try to wrangle myself around her. Lindy stands at the bottom of the steps, shaking her head and sighing. Her face doesn’t look as bright and pink as it did when they told me the news of Elder moving in. I wonder if she’s regretting the choice.

  I look around the cramped first floor. There are some boxes of things. A bag of golf clubs sit with their own little tripod to prop them up on the frayed rug. A bunch of appliances line the kitchen table. There’s a giant coffee maker and some red monstrosity with a spinning silver blade at the center. What little counter space we have is already crowded with weirdo empty Mason jars and lots of plastic Popsicle holders, which Elder sees me eyeing.

  I can barely hear him over Elsa’s yipping as he shouts, “I thought you might like Popsicles.” His smile is too bright and eager.

  “Oh.” Why does he have to try so hard all the time? I make my way to the fridge to grab whatever Styrofoam box of leftovers Lindy brought back from the Shaky. Fried fish and soggy french fries, which I decide to eat in my room to avoid Elsa and the rest of Elder’s things taking up space.

  I don’t bother to turn the light on. I let mine stay the only room in the dark. Elder rummages downstairs.

  The fish is cold and rubbery as I eat it on my unmade bed. I pick at it with my fingers, and the grease lingers at my palms. I wipe them across my jean shorts and try to feel as sorry for myself as I can, eyeing the room and all the buckets, the shells, homework papers stacked on the desk, my schoolbag slumped on the chair, shelves toppling with the junk of being a kid, like a big hair clip clawing the hair of an old Barbie I haven’t played with in ages.

  I move the takeout container from my lap and make my way to the shelf, removing the Barbie, whose hair I expect to be all silky, like I remember it, but it snags through my fingers like stiff horse hair. I toss it in the garbage and it hits the tin can with a clunk.

  Then I see the jar on my shelf. It’s supposed to be empty, but instead, it’s full of murky ocean. Before I can wonder how it got there, Lindy’s behind me saying, “I thought you might need it.”

  “Huh?”

  “The ocean. You emptied it the other day and I just thought…I don’t know. With everything changing around here. I don’t know,” she repeats. “Something steady.”

  “Thanks.” I do need it. I need it to get to the bottom of Tink’s story. “Have you ever been in Turtle Lady’s house?” I ask.

  “A long time ago.”

  “Really?”

  She nods. “A lifetime ago.”

  “Before me?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not even the books? She must have a billion,” I exaggerate.

  I thought she’d ask me a bunch more questions, the way she usually would, but she only stands at my shelf, running her fingers across an old music box. It’s a ceramic pond with little magnet swans that float and swim when the music plays. “Why are you so interested in Miss Ellis all of a sudden?”

  “I dreamed her house,” I say. “I dreamed it before I could know it, and I was right. And I think there’s something about me and the house and the people in it.” I’m about to tell her all about Tink and Kimmy and Len, Alexis’s cot in the library, and the painted boat near the bay, all of it, when Elder is at my door.

  “Sorry to interrupt the party,” he says, “but I’m looking for a screwdriver. A Phillips-head? I can’t remember where I packed my toolbox, and I can’t find one lying around the pickup,” he rambles. “I checked the junk drawer, but no such luck.”

  “We’ve got a little toolbox somewhere.” Lindy looks at me.

  I shrug, even though I know the screwdriver is sitting in the hall closet with the cleaning stuff. It’s in this monstrous, ancient-looking toolbox we never use because we just kind of let things fall apart around here unless the situation’s major. And then we just get Luss from the Shaky to fix it.

  “Hmm. Maybe the garage?” Lindy asks, and she’s already out the door and down the stairs, naming possibilities before I can finish what I was about to say.

  I lift up the jar of ocean and turn it upside down. The sand and bits of seaweed and algae slide through it, like a marker of time.

  I shut the door and let the room darken even more. I move without needing to see, closer to my pillow, and collapse on the bed with the jar in my lap. The Styrofoam container of leftovers squawks beneath my thighs, and I don’t worry about wearing my sweaty shorts and tank top from a day at Turtle Lady’s book dumpsters, the smell of fish fry, or the cold, sloppy meal settling into my stomach. I unscrew the lid of the jar, take a sip, and wait for sleep.

  “Then why’d you do it?” Tink asked, sitting in the sand, patting mounds of it into a bunch of domes. Not a castle or a pyramid or some fancy creation. Just humpbacks of sand for no other reason than she needed something to do with her hands.

  “I don’t know.” Len paced, kicking sand at her knees as he shuffled by. “To see what it was like?”

  She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have done that. She likes you, Len. She thinks you’re a couple now.”

  “I know. I know. I’m such an idiot.”

  “You are,” she agreed. Anyone who would spend twenty-six minutes kissing a girl he didn’t even like knowing full well she liked him was an idiot. “It also makes you kind of a jerk.”

  He stopped pacing, like he hadn’t even considered the idea.

  She rolled her eyes and dug deeper toward the wet, cool sand, grabbing another handful for her giant dome.

  Len plopped down next
to her, sitting cross-legged. His swim shorts were long enough to reach below his knees. He was so ghost pale he had to wear a T-shirt, and his neck and arms had a bright red farmer tan. “What should I do now?”

  Tink stopped. She looked him over and shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She stomped off, moving from underneath the striped umbrella to the bright sun. Her one-piece bathing suit with bright pink watermelons was all bunched up with sand, and she didn’t even care if she had a wedgie as she swung her arms and walked away.

  The day was so hot, she could hardly stand it. The air felt dead above her, and barely anyone had stepped foot on the beach. She was counting down the days until they’d all leave and head home and she could be free of Len and Kimmy, at least, and have a week or so by herself before school started up again.

  But Len had already caught up to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You act like I want to be a part of the Len and Kimmy soap opera. You act like I care. Have I looked like I cared? This entire summer? Have I?”

  “I don’t know.” Len shrugged. “It doesn’t look like you care about much of anything this summer.”

  Tink groaned. She wished she were swimming in the dark with Alexis. She wished she were standing in silence with Coop, pretending she knew how to smoke. She wished that everyone would just leave her alone so she could figure out what she was even supposed to care about.

  “It used to be the three of us,” Len said, and it seemed like he had a lot more to say, but he didn’t say any of it.

  “It used to be the three of us,” Tink repeated. “But then Kimmy went and got herself a crush. You went and got yourself an ego complex. And I…” She hesitated.

  “You became all weirdo loner.”

  “Weirdo loner?”

  He nodded. “Seemed like you wanted nothing to do with us.”

  “Well, isn’t that observant of you.” She stuck her chin up in the air and folded her arms.

  “It hasn’t been fun for me either, ya know.”

  Tink did not have enough eye roll left in her. “Spare me the sob story, Len. I’m sorry you had to endure the great love and total obsession of Kimmy all summer and then suffer through that epic make-out.”