Christina did not know what to do. She loathed soft eggs, and the sick horrid way the yellow spurted around, like blood. She hated onions, and she especially hated beets. As for leftover corned beef, it should be fed to the sea gulls, not gagged down by human beings. “Mrs. Shevvington,” said Christina as courteously as she knew how, “may I make myself a sandwich instead?”
Mrs. Shevvington looked truly shocked, as if Christina had done something quite rude and socially unacceptable. “Christina, common courtesy requires you to eat what is put before you.”
Christina flushed.
Michael and Benj, who were of the shovel school of eating, had already begun shoveling. Michael used the side of his fork to cut his helping into squares, which he put into his mouth as if he were laying tiles. Yellow egg yolk dripped off his fork.
Mrs. Shevvington smiled.
Christina swallowed to stop herself from gagging. She drank her milk.
It was whole milk. Christina hated whole milk; it was thick and disgusting. She drank only skim, which was like blue water, and thirst quenching. Her fingers tightened around the glass.
She said to herself, We are paying to be here. We are guests. Just like any other guests. And I hate egg yolks. I’ll throw up. She said, “Mrs. Shevvington, I’m sorry, and if we were going to be visiting for one night, I would eat anything with a smile, but we’re going to be here for a year. So we should get straight what we can and can’t eat.”
Mrs. Shevvington’s eyes lay in her head like the poached eggs on the hash. Rounded and glossy and soft.
“I don’t like corned beef and poached eggs,” said Christina.
“Christina, one reason you are here is to learn civilized behavior, get along with other people.”
“But I get along fine with other people,” Christina said. “The tourists are always taking my photograph, and — ”
“Christina! Boasting is the quickest way to make enemies. I hope you realize that island children, especially island girls, have a hard time getting along. You must try much harder than this, Christina. Your task is to make the island proud of you, not ashamed.”
Michael and Benj and Anya did not speak up. Was she really being horribly rude? Would Anya scream at her tonight, in that soft hissing rage she could drum up, saying, “Christina, what is the matter with you? Why can’t you behave?”
“Eat your eggs, Christina,” Mrs. Shevvington said. “In this house you eat what is put before you or go hungry.”
Christina looked at the yellow blood running over her plate. She set her fork back down on her napkin, linking her fingers together in her lap like chains. She felt as if they had just declared war, she and the principal’s wife.
Christina was so hungry. Breakfast at home had been a long time before and a long sea trip away. What was so terrible about making a sandwich?
Nobody talked. They ate seriously, as if it were a chore.
Christina’s mother never allowed silence, either at home or at her restaurant at mealtimes. If nobody talked Mrs. Romney interrogated them and made them contribute. I don’t actually want to be at war with her, thought Christina. How can I come home to runny yellow eggs every night? So I shall make friends. “Is running the Inne your full-time job, Mrs. Shevvington?” she asked politely.
A tiny yellow smile curled on her pie dough face. “No,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “This isn’t my only job. I am also the seventh-grade English teacher, Christina.”
They spent the afternoon unpacking. Anya hummed as she stacked neat little piles of bikini panties and lacy bras. Christina hated being neat.
It took so much effort and who cared? But obviously Anya cared, and they had to learn to live together. This was what being roommates was — stacking your panties if the other person stacked hers.
Christina finished first because she had fewer clothes, no accessories, and, according to Anya, lower standards of neatness. She sat cross-legged on her bed watching Anya. Anya finished. She too sat on her bed. But she rocked backwards, as if something were tipping her. “Christina, when did you put it up?” whispered Anya. “I thought — I thought you were going to throw it out.”
The poster of the sea was fastened to the wall over Christina’s bed.
“I didn’t touch it,” Christina said. She turned to look, but her neck felt stiff, it was hard to turn all the way. “Hey, Michael!” she yelled. “Benj! You come in here and put our poster up?”
“Why would we go in your room?” Michael yelled back.
Anya put her hands over her ears. “They’re talking to me,” she whispered, her eyes darting around like minnows. “I can hear them. Chrissie, can you hear them?”
The boys have the only roll of tape, Christina thought. They must have come in here to put it up. “Somebody put it up,” she said irritably.
“Chrissie,” whispered Anya, ‘It’s wet in here.”
Christina stared at her roommate. Anya’s thin graceful hands were arched toward the ceiling like a ballerina stretching toward the sky.
“They’re calling to me,” Anya whispered. Her breath came in spurts; she was panting. “Can you hear them, Chrissie?”
“No,” Christina said. “Anya, hold my hand.”
“I don’t want to swim,” Anya cried. “I hate the water, I hate boats, I hate the island.” Her hands weren’t graceful, they were frantic — pumping — reaching — struggling. “Pull me out, Chrissie, they’re touching me, I can feel their fingers, they almost have me — they — ”
Christina grabbed one of the wild arms. Anya stared past Christina’s face, her eyes huge. “The fingers,” she cried.
What fingers? Christina thought. She did not let go of Anya. Christina smelled mothballs as her face pressed into the blanket.
“All right!” Michael shouted. “Action!” The boys thudded into the room, jumped on top of Christina and Anya, and began wrestling, throwing pillows and lashing towels. Michael’s towel flicked with loud snaps against walls and skin. Christina grabbed the end of his towel and jerked him to the floor, where Anya, giggling, rolled him under the bed. Benj bounced on the bed like a trampoline. They were shouting and laughing when Mrs. Shevvington’s voice cut like a chain saw, buzzing and cruel.
“There will be no roughhousing here. There will be no fighting. You boys stay out of the girls’ room, do you hear me? There will be decent behavior at all times. Christina, did you start this?”
Night fell.
Christina’s first night away from her parents, her first night at Schooner Inne, her first night with a roommate.
Outside, the town ceased to move. It slept, cars silent, lights off.
There was no sound on the earth but the sound of the sea.
Long after midnight they were still awake.
They learned why nobody had built houses on Candle Cove — nobody but the sea captain, whose wife threw herself to her death among the tons of green water that leaped up to meet her.
Noise.
The children had grown up with the battering drum of surf and storm; their island had inured them to all sounds of the sea.
Or so they had thought.
Every six hours and thirteen minutes, there is a tide: Two low and two high tides occur every twenty-four hours and fifty-two minutes.
Tide began at one A.M. with an eerie slushing sound, like tires caught in snow. It woke all four of them up — Michael and Benj in their room by the road, and Anya and Christina over the Cove.
The slushy sound became louder, like violins tuning up. Michael and Benj came into the girls’ room. They sat on Christina’s bed under the poster. Like engines revving for the Indianapolis 500, the fury of the tide increased. Like rockets, the sea burst in, attacking the harbor in a tidal wave of fury, hitting the cliff below Schooner Inne with a slap so great it blocked their minds to anything but sound. The sounds did not stay outside, but came into the room; they were swimming in noise.
In fifteen minutes it was over.
The waves were just the waves
.
“How do we sleep through that?” Christina said. “And it will be different every night. Tomorrow it’ll start at one-thirteen, and the night after that at one twenty-six.”
Outside the window the ocean chuckled and slithered.
“Listen,” whispered Anya.
They listened.
Anya stood in the moonlight, a long thin white nightgown draping her slender body, her hair ruffling like dark ribbons in the night wind. “The sea can smack the rocks like a hand smacking a cheek. It can hiss or gurgle or even kiss. But when it wants, it can go quiet. And then,” said Anya Rothrock, “you can hear the voices of the drowned.”
The waves had settled into an irregular rhythm of rolls and crashes.
“The sea keeps count,” Anya whispered. “The sea is a mathematician. The sea wants one of us.”
Chapter 4
THEY WOKE EARLY.
Morning light poured through the eastern windows.
The sun lay scarlet-and-gold on the horizon like a jewel on pale blue velvet.
The temperature had dropped sharply. It was Maine again. Chilly and windy.
Christina got out of bed shivering, and went to the window. It was low tide. The rich smell of the sea rose to greet her. Far out in the water the motors of lobster boats buzzed. She could not see as far as Burning Fog, and it was not one of the mornings in which the fog burned. Only bright, tossing waves quivered against the sky.
On a rock not quite large enough to be called an island, cormorants were spreading their wings to dry. These birds soaked up water when they dove for fish, and, eventually, as they paddled, sank so low in the water they were in danger of drowning. Then they had to mount a rock and hold up their wings for the wind to blow them dry. Christina had always thought it must be a very tiring way to live.
Anya rolled over and over until she had mummified herself in the sheets. “I hate getting up,” she informed Christina. “Someday my life is going to begin mid-afternoon instead of dawn.”
Christina just smiled. She loved mornings. The sun rose as early on Burning Fog Isle as any other place in the United States. In her bedroom back home, she liked to think she was the first American to see the sun coming over the horizon.
Anya sat up slowly, arching like a gymnast, hair draping her back. She yawned and stretched. Goose bumps rose on her thin, white arms. “Oh, no,” she wailed. “It’s cold out! Now the clothes we picked are no good. They were for hot weather.”
The girls scrambled through their drawers, holding up sweaters, pants, and blouses, as if the correct choice would make or break the entire school year.
Christina settled for brand new jeans, a soft yellow shirt, and a cotton sweater with darker yellow cables. She tugged at the collar until she was satisfied with the way it poked up. So schoolgirl, she thought. She looked enviously at Anya, whose silver necklace and earrings glittered against the soft folds of her navy blue shirt.
Christina loved the way Anya’s white throat showed where the blouse opened, and how the silver rope lay carelessly, and how Anya’s cloud of black hair flowed over the clothing. Christina had never owned any jewelry to speak of. Now suddenly she wanted it — chains and ropes and bangles — a jewelry box that chimed when you opened the lid — blouses with open necks instead of T-shirts and crew sweaters.
Anya tied a long, dark cranberry red belt around her waist and adjusted the tulip flare of her long skirt. She looked like a magazine ad. She was every adjective: romantic, tailored, seductive, and scholarly all at one time.
They went to breakfast, remembering to walk down the stairs. No guests appeared, although it was just after Labor Day weekend, and Christina thought if there were any hope of winter guests, there would surely be early September guests.
Christina was used to a huge breakfast. Her mother generally rose at four A.M. to serve the fishermen going out for the day. Today a single piece of dry whole wheat toast, a small bowl of cold cereal onto which half a banana had been sliced, and a tiny glass of orange juice were laid in front of her.
Christina got up and poked around in the refrigerator for jam to spread on her toast. She was leaning way down inside to inspect the back of the bottom shelf when something hard and cold jabbed her in the middle of her back. It felt like the tip of a gun, or a knitting needle. It dug between two of her vertebrae. Christina straightened up slowly.
Mrs. Shevvington removed her long, thick fingernail from Christina’s spine, “Too much sugar is bad for you, Christina. Learn to eat your toast dry.”
Mrs. Shevvington was wearing a royal blue suit with a lacy blouse. It covered her thick body as if she had zipped it off a store mannequin and zipped herself back in. She hardly seemed to be wearing the suit; it was just hanging there: It could as easily have been hanging on a closet door. Mrs. Shevvington’s hand was still in midair, like a sea gull drifting on wind currents. The fingernail that had left a dent in her flesh was thick and hooked, like a hawk’s toe.
Fingers, thought Christina.
She tried to remember last night, and Anya, and the voices Anya had heard. But the memories were slippery, like seaweed.
She had had no supper. Now she was supposed to have dry toast. Christina had a large appetite. “We have lots of time,” she said, glancing at the clock. “I could make waffles. Who wants waffles?”
Mrs. Shevvington moved closer to the girl. Under the protection of her shirt and sweater, Christina shivered. If that fingernail had touched her bare skin, it would have slit her spinal cord.
Yarning, she thought, why am I yarning every minute now? I have to get a grip on myself. It’s only a fingernail, she’s only a seventh-grade teacher.
How could Christina have English with this woman? What could she ever write — what paragraph, what essay — that this woman would understand? What book would Mrs. Shevvington ever assign that Christina would want to read?
“Christina, I don’t hear the others complaining about a perfectly nutritious breakfast.”
Michael was crunching away at his cereal. He had dressed as carefully as the girls. He obviously wanted to look like Blake. He had untied the laces in his dock shoes, wound them in upright spirals, and gone sockless — this year’s way to establish style.
Anya, who never ate anyway, was sipping from a thimble of orange juice. This was her kind of meal.
Benj was eating Anya’s dry toast for her, having already wolfed down her cereal and banana.
“I’ll cook the waffles myself,” Christina said. “It wouldn’t be a bother to anybody. I’ll clean up, too. And I’m a very good cook. My mother taught me everything.”
“She did not teach you manners,” Mrs. Shevvington said. “It would be most unfortunate if, because of a bad attitude, you were not able to board here after all, and had to be moved alone to some other location.” She smiled at Christina. None of the others could have seen that smile. Christina wished she had never seen the smile, either. It was the war smile. Just try to oppose me, Christina, it said.
Board alone. What did that mean? Without Anya and Michael and Benj? Then she really would have no friends!
Christina tried to eat the toast dry. It crumbled in her throat. She tried to enjoy the banana. It was too ripe and slimy.
Michael said to her, “Now don’t let them get you crying. Those town kids like to pick on island kids.”
“I never cry,” said Christina, who was very close to it.
Anya gave her a queer, tight smile. “You might today,” she said.
“They can be mean,” Michael told her. “Everybody needs somebody to pick on.”
“Nobody picks on me,” Christina said.
“You mean nobody ever has picked on you, Chrissie,” Benj told her. “You haven’t experienced it yet. You’re going to experience it today. All week. All September.”
“Some of us,” said Anya, “experience it all year, year after year.”
People picked on Anya? How could anybody look at Anya and not feel a rush of pleasure in her beaut
y and her presence?
But there was one silver lining in this. Michael cared. For all his summer speeches about how if Christina tried to hold his hand he would flatten her, here he was, trying to give her courage.
“Now, you will need house keys,” said Mrs. Shevvington. She handed each of them a shiny new duplicate. “The front door is to be kept locked at all times.”
Christina held her key, feeling its unfiled edges, staring at the jagged profile. I’ll get home first, she thought, and open that huge green door myself. I’ll be the grown-up.
Mrs. Shevvington gave them instructions for cleaning up the kitchen. Then she made it clear that although Mr. Shevvington had a car (and had left much earlier) and although she too had a car (and was leaving now) the children were not going to be offered rides with either Shevvington. “You children have two choices. You may walk. It is only a quarter mile.” She filled her lungs with air, making an exercise out of it, as if she were doing push-ups. “Good for you. Brisk. Or you may go down Breakneck Hill and catch the school bus at its last stop by the Mobil gas station.” She waved good-bye as if she were a half mile from the children. “Have a satisfactory first day.” She walked out of the house.
“Satisfactory?” exclaimed Christina. “That’s the best wish she can give us? What happened to wonderful, terrific, friend-filled, or rewarding?”
The others did not pick up her lines. They neither joked nor contradicted. Was school so awful that Anya, Benj, and Michael already knew the best it could be was satisfactory?
Or were they on Mrs. Shevvington’s side? Did they, too, think Christina had a bad attitude?
The girls got light canvas jackets because it did not look as if the day would warm up; the boys scorned protection from the elements and sauntered outdoors in shirtsleeves. Anya had a lovely briefcase with her initials on it, and pockets for pens, pencils, and a calculator. Her purse was a tiny dark red leather bag on a long thin spaghetti strap, which exactly matched her belt. Christina had only a five-subject spiral notebook with a yellow cover, and two pencils crammed into the spiral. The boys carried nothing. “Wait for me,” Christina said. “I have to get my purse.”
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