“You’ll need this so you don’t get harmed.” He hands me the large metal helmet in his hand. I put the heavy mask on, the inside hot. I must look like a villain in a horror movie.
Mr. Jack has a similar helmet in his hand. “You don’t need it yet,” he says. “We need to do something more important first.”
I take the helmet off. “What?”
“You need to wash the tank, every square inch, so it doesn’t have any impurities on the surface of the metal. And we need to scrape off the old paint.” Mr. Jack is direct, which I appreciate, but I don’t want to wash the metal. I thought we would be doing something fun, like cutting through the sub.
“Don’t give me that look, girl. If we don’t wash it, you could find yourself at the mercy of the Bay. Get a bucket, soap, and a sponge.”
“Okay.” I try not to sound grumpy. I run into Ford’s cottage and get everything we need from the kitchen.
“What does he want you to do?” Ford asks, a coffee mug in his hand.
“Wash the tank. That doesn’t sound very STEM to me,” I complain.
“Trust me, it is. Cleanliness is next to . . . science-ness?” Ford laughs. “Just do it. He’s going to spend hours doing this for you, Miss Mary. For free. You can wash the vessel.” He shoos me back outside.
I wash the propane tank, my muscles aching under the sun. And then Mr. Jack makes me wash it again. The third time is apparently sufficient, because he finally lets me stop.
“Now I can get to work.” He works slowly, which I know is part of the process, and I stand there, in my heavy helmet, handing the man supplies. Sparks fly as he cuts away a hole for the hatch.
I stand there for hours, sweating, my hair stuck to my face. When Mr. Jack is done for the day, I thank him and give him back the protective gear. We have more work to do tomorrow. Welding is a lot slower than I thought. I tell Ford good-bye and ride my bike to Lydia’s.
One step closer to a voyage.
“Can’t we just watch the fireworks from your porch like we usually do?” I ask, grabbing a soda out of Lydia’s fridge.
“No, please?” Lydia whispers. “My parents never let me hang out with Omar unless it’s a group.” She salutes me as she talks. Her dad, the former military man, is strict. Well, not really strict, but Lydia thinks he is. “We’re going.”
I groan, and she flicks me in the shoulder. “But are you going to kiss Omar all night?” I ask. “Then I should definitely stay here.”
Lydia smiles. “Oh, like you don’t want to kiss Kip.”
I’m probably doing the eyebrow thing. I don’t know what I think about kissing. I’ve never done it before. I bite the inside of my cheek while we walk down to the beach for the fireworks. The third weekend of June is the Blessing of the Fleet. Father Mike says a prayer, the mayor smashes a bottle of champagne on a bow, and the whole island celebrates the boats.
We walk past crowds of people and find Omar with a bunch of Our Lady kids. Near the rock that juts out, separating the beach from the town, a ninth grader flattens a blanket, and Lydia and Omar sit. I smile at Omar putting his arm around her.
And panic a little too.
To relax, I look out at the water and think about silica gel, like the little packets that come in a shoebox. The gel helps control humidity, and in the sub, it will allow me to read the units on the controls.
The sun starts to set. It blazes fiercely over the Bay, desperately trying to stay in the sky. I take off my sandals and walk toward the water. Little girls splash off to our right, but no one is ahead. I wade. That’s all I do. I really am a terrible swimmer.
Based on what Ford said, a strong swimmer could swim across the Bay in about the same time as the sub, two to three hours. I laugh out loud. I figure that engineering my own submersible is ultimately easier than learning how to swim.
“Are you telling jokes over there?” I hear behind me. “To who? Yourself?”
I turn around. “Hi.”
As Kip walks closer, I watch his mouth. “Whatever the joke is, it can’t possibly be as funny as I am.”
“I’m funnier than you are.”
“According to who, Murph?” Kip takes another step closer, his hair bright. He’s really close to me now, our feet almost touching in the water. I pray there are no jellyfish. He grabs a lock of my hair, and I hold my breath. We seem alone, a lot more alone than when we actually are.
“Your hair’s pretty,” he says quietly. I’m still staring at his mouth. It’s nice.
“Yours too,” I say, exhaling. I don’t know what I’m doing. My heart pounds in my ears.
Kip grins. The gap in his teeth shows. I like that gap. Still holding a strand of my hair, he leans close to my face.
Oh Lord. I think we’re going to kiss. I don’t know if I want to, if I’m ready. What if I mess it up? What if it’s great? What if . . .so many possibilities. I take a step back. “I’ve never kissed anybody. Have you?”
“No.” His voice is soft. “Unless you count when Kathleen tackled me on the playground in second grade and kissed my eyeball.” He smiles, his eyes bright. “I have that effect on women.” Only Kip would make a joke. I smile even though he’s ridiculous.
“I don’t think I’m ready,” I say.
“Okay,” he says. He shrugs in his floppy way, and I’m relieved.
Boom! A loud crack fills the sky. Kip’s face lights up, and someone behind us whoops. The fireworks. Over on the blanket, the Our Lady kids have gathered. Omar gets up and runs over to us, grabbing Kip by the shoulders. He pulls him over to the blanket, and I follow.
We sit next to each other as magic fills the sky. Bright golds. Fizzing reds. Silver of fish scales. Happiness hums through me while Kip bumps my shoulder with his. “Glad I get to see you this summer, Mary Murphy. Never usually do.”
“Me too.”
At the end of the night, we all walk back together and drop off Omar first. Kip walks with me and Lydia to her house, the three of us weaving in and out of the crowds. People walk by singing loudly. When we get to Lydia’s house, she and I run up the porch and leave Kip at the bottom of the steps.
But I don’t want to leave him.
Feeling brave, I turn around and run back down. I grab him around the neck and hug him. His body is warm against mine, his T-shirt lightly touching my arm. He puts his hands on my waist. My cheek against his, I say, “I like you.”
I pull away quickly and wave, walking into the house with Lydia, even though I’d rather stay outside, hugging for hours and hours.
We get ready for bed in Lydia’s room, and I take my spot on the bed close to the wall. The air-conditioning blows against my face. I put my hand on my belly button and feel dizzy. I bet Joan never got to hug a boy in the dark.
“You like Kip Dwyer,” Lydia says.
“I know.”
“Like a lot.”
“I know.”
Lydia turns over and laughs, her face touching my pillow. “Remember when he hid those Halloween decorations in Miss Porter’s ceiling?”
“Ugh, yes. He’s so . . .” The ceiling kept cackling, and our fifth-grade teacher couldn’t figure out why.
“He’s liked you a long time.”
I fall asleep smiling.
The next afternoon, under heavy gray clouds thickening the sky, I go to Ford’s and see the cuts for the porthole and the hatch. I sprint over to Mr. Jack’s cottage and knock, impatient. He comes to the door grumbling, which I hear even before he opens the door.
“Can we install them today?” I ask.
“I guess,” he says. “Let me get all the tools. You’re helping this time. My wrist is acting up. Think it’s this weather.” He rotates his hand and grimaces.
“Yes, sir.”
“Stop standing around gawking, girl. Go get the hatch and the porthole.”
I sigh and run over to Ford’s for the pieces we got at the marine supply store up near the library. They’re used. I wonder what their stories are. What they were used for, w
hose boat, whose life, and how they made their way to mine.
For the rest of the afternoon, I do what he tells me. He yells at me at least five times, calls me “little girl,” but he can’t see me roll my eyes with the helmet on. The porthole doesn’t fit at first, so I have to use a tool that grinds down the metal. My arms are sore.
And then it looks like a real sub. When we pack up for the day, I thank him for teaching me. I crawl inside and look out through the porthole, a window to the water. Soon, I’ll be underwater in this contraption, all by myself in the Bay. I gulp. I’m gonna need all the luck I can get. All the nuns at school to pray for me too, hands clasped, words in unison, until I land on the far shore.
Three weeks into summer break, Betty hands me my first-ever income. She takes me to the bank after work, where we set up a savings account. Most of the money will go toward the sub, but I haven’t told Betty about what I’m building just yet. Ford and I have planned out a budget, and a used motor is next on the list.
She takes me out to eat to celebrate my first paycheck, and her wife, Alex, joins us. She wears silver bracelets that sound like music when they clang together. She smiles kindly when Betty rants about a man at the library who refused to pay an overdue fine for a book he swore he had never taken out. I like them both. They feel steady.
When I’m not at the library, I’m at Ford’s. And if I’m not at Ford’s, I’m at the library. I love it. I haven’t escaped to the Cliffs in a long time.
On Thursday during lunch, the phone Betty gave me rings in my backpack. She sips her grape soda and raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you going to answer that?”
I gave Ford my phone number. And Lydia. But I never asked Betty if that was okay. “Yes, ma’am,” I say, but I don’t move. I don’t know if she’s mad at me. I should have silenced it like I do at home. My dad would not like that Betty gave me a phone. He would say it was charity. My dad hates charity.
“It’s okay to use your phone, Mary.”
Ford is on the other end. He’s using his sweet, happy voice, which worries me. “Miss Mary! How are you? Are you at the library?” It sounds windy. Like he’s driving with windows down or walking outside.
“Yes.” I frown. Why is Ford calling me?
“I met someone today down at the marina. I bought a charger from Kip’s little sister. She is delightful, by the way. All those freckles on the Dwyers.” A horn honks. “I’m headed to Annapolis for the night. I’ve got some friends in town. You can keep working at the cottage if you want. Ask Mr. Jack to let you in. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon just like we planned.”
That’s why he called me? To tell me about the Dwyers and say he was going out of town?
“I met your father!” Ford says. “Mr. Dwyer introduced me.”
My stomach drops. “What?” I whisper. What did Ford tell him? What does my dad know?
Ford answers, but I can barely hear him. He’s talking too fast. He’s yelling over the wind, and I can’t focus. I never told Ford about my father. Never told him that my father doesn’t know about the sub. That he can’t know about the sub.
Then Ford tells me to bring Mr. Jack a bread he made and says good-bye, and I hang up. Panic fills me. What will my father do if he found out that I’m hiding the sub from him? That I’m working with Ford? Did Ford mention Kip?
I squeeze my eyes shut and sigh. This can’t be good.
When I look, Betty slides her glasses up her nose and doesn’t ask me anything. I clear my throat. Better come out with it.
“I’m making something.” I sigh. “I’m building a submarine.”
“You’re what? Where?” Betty leans over the table. “How?”
“I’m building a submersible, technically. With my friend Kip and a scientist who lives near the Cliffs.”
“Why do you sound embarrassed? You say it like you were communicating with aliens. This is exciting.” My aunt grins, folding her hands on the table.
For the rest of lunch, I tell Betty all about the sub, but with the heavy feeling in my chest that something is wrong.
After a successful campaign and crowning of Charles, Joan parted ways with the king, though the war wasn’t over. She disagreed with his advisers about how to completely free France from English rule. On her way to a reception in her honor, trapped outside the walls of a safe city, an entire line of enemy archers cornered Joan.
A man pulled her from her horse.
She knew she would die at their hand.
The Burgundians held Joan hostage for six months. When ransom negotiations with a bishop were met, Joan climbed her tower in an attempt to escape. Against the wishes of the saints, she flew like a bird through the clouds. And even though she survived the sixty-foot fall, she remained a hostage. Armed with fifty men, the enemies moved her to a new castle.
To be tried as a heretic.
England paid for the trial, and men of the Catholic Church questioned Joan for a year. For heresy—going against the church and government. For wearing men’s clothing to protect herself.
Though she was clever and smart with her answers, she was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. She signed a paper saying she would never commit the crimes again. But when the guards stole her feminine clothes, she was forced to again wear her battle garments.
The court declared this a relapse of heresy, and she was sentenced to death.
The next morning, they brought Joan to the public stake to be burned. The crowd cheered and called her a witch. Joan prayed and kissed a handmade cross. When they lit the wood below her feet, she called out for Jesus six times. That was it.
When it was over, her ashes drifted down the River Seine.
By the end of the day, it’s really hot, hovering at one hundred degrees when we leave the library. I watch the water out the car window, the sun making it white and sharp, and put my head against the door. I close my eyes. That heavy feeling never left me, not all afternoon.
“Mary, you should tell your mom what you’re doing,” Betty says. “She was enthralled with NASA and exploration when we were little and wanted to be an astronaut. She wanted to go to space camp. Maybe you two have more in common than you think.”
I doubt that. What if she tells my dad? What if she forces me to stop because I’m friends with Kip? “Maybe.” I keep my eyes on the road ahead of us. The pavement gives off little heat ripples.
“Talk to your mother. Tell her what you’re doing. Isn’t that easier?”
When Joan told her parents she wanted to join the military, her father threatened to throw her in the river. She couldn’t swim.
I think about it as we pull in front of Ford’s, my eyebrows pushed down. “I don’t know.” Maybe I’m just cautious. Maybe it’s because I have no idea how she’ll react. Maybe, and this is the worst thought of all, it’s because she won’t care.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Betty says.
When Betty pulls out of the driveway, I turn and look at the cottage. Everything looks normal on the outside, and I feel like if the cottage is fine, the sub should be fine. I know I’m wrong though.
A hollow feeling forms in my chest. I’ve felt this way before.
I don’t go to Mr. Jack’s. I don’t ask for a key. I step around the side of the cabin, the hollow feeling pooling, spilling around my feet like sloshing water.
I choke in air.
The sub is propped on its lift like usual, but the porthole has a crack down the center of the glass.
On top, the hatch is torn off and hanging awkwardly, barely connected. I press my hands to my chest, then fumble for my Joan card. I have no idea where it is. I haven’t thought about it in days. It might be in my room. It might be at Lydia’s. Where is it?
I pull out my phone and send a message. Can you come to Ford’s? Right now?
I crumple on the ground, the concrete cool despite the heat. I fold myself into a ball and close my eyes.
A few minutes, or maybe hours or days, later, I feel someone kneel next t
o me. “Murph? What’s going on?”
I sit up. Kip is warm, his shoulder touching mine. Like he carried the hot sun under the shade of the porch. My stomach lurches. I have to tell him.
“He did it,” I say. “He found out about the sub, and he wrecked it.” I say the words I wish weren’t true. They float out of me. Drift far away. Across the Bay. Across the world.
“Who?” Kip’s voice changes. “Your dad? Why would he do that?”
I raise my chin. “Because it was mine.” Because I was happy.
I try not to cry. Joan wouldn’t cry. My chest aches, and it comes from so far down in me, it terrifies me. “He did it before,” I say. “In third grade, before I went to stay with Betty, before the social worker came. The tires on my mom’s car went missing. All four of them just disappeared.” My eyes burn while I talk. “And she cried really hard on her bed, so I curled up next to her and cried too. But I didn’t really understand, because they were just tires.”
“But they weren’t just tires.”
“She was trying to leave.” Only, she couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” Kip says. And I believe him. “We can fix it,” he says gently. “We can replace the porthole and solder the hatch again. You can wear that helmet you hate so much.”
He’s trying to get me to laugh. But I can’t. My father stole my tires. I’m going to be just like my mother. I’ll be stuck here my whole life. I’ll never do anything. Certainly won’t pilot a sub.
“Should we call someone? The police? Ford?” he asks.
I shake my head. The police have never helped my mother once.
Kip stands up. “I hate him.” He goes over to Ford’s tools and pulls out a wrench. I watch him unhinge the hatch and remove the broken glass. He sweeps it into a dustpan and throws it in the garbage. I can’t move. I can only watch.
I am underwater.
And I am drowning.
Kip’s phone buzzes three times while he’s putting the hatch on top of a work bench. He sighs. “I gotta go. Everyone’s out on the water because of the heat.”
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