Walker
I can hear Didi and Isaac talking, and the sound of their voices over the whip of the wind lulls me into a feeling as close to peace as I’ve experienced since that day.
I close my eyes and feel the sun on my face and taste the salt spray on my lips. I didn’t realize how much I missed this, how much I was craving it, and to tell the truth I’m finding it hard to process everything—the feel of the hull cutting with speed through the waves, the snap of the sail when Isaac turns us against the wind, the sound of the gulls calling far above us. It’s all I can do to sit still, legs dangling over the side, arms thrown over the rail, and just absorb it. This is exactly what I needed and I didn’t even know it. I thought I’d never be able to sail again and I’d been forcing myself not to think about it, yet here I am, thanks to Didi.
The only downside to today is not being able to join in, though Isaac let me steer once we were out in open water. Now it’s Didi’s turn at the helm. A part of me is jealous that my brother’s the one getting to teach her, but I tamp it down. She did this for me. Somehow she found Isaac and plotted all this, and the thought astounds me. Miranda would never have done anything like this. Miranda didn’t even like boats. She used to moan about her hair going all frizzy with the salt air and getting seasick.
“Woah!” Didi yelps and suddenly comes crashing into me where I’m sitting at the prow of the boat. I put my arms out to catch her and she collapses down at my side, throwing her arm around my shoulders to steady herself.
“Careful,” I say. “I don’t want you going overboard.”
“This is amazing,” she says, leaning into me and kissing me on the cheek.
I nod, pulling her closer.
“Are you happy?” she asks.
I nod again. But the mention of happiness causes a stabbing feeling in my gut, like someone’s taken a piece of jagged glass and twisted it sharply into my side. The images of the boot, the twisted, smoking piece of shrapnel, Sanchez’s face streaked with blood, the flicker and blaze. It’s like a reflex action. Every time I think I might be happy, every time I let that spark of hope and possibility take hold inside me, the darkness comes along and snuffs it out, the screams in my head clamor louder and more insistently to be heard. It’s a sneak attack by my conscience, which keeps questioning my right to be happy, my right to enjoy moments like this one—face to the sun, girl at my side, laughter in my ear—when others are denied them.
“Where are you?”
“Huh?” I turn to face Didi.
“You went somewhere. I can tell by your expression.”
I force a smile. Nothing passes her by. “I’m here. Right here. With you,” I tell her.
She doesn’t buy it, but her hand squeezes mine and she rests her head on my shoulder. I kiss the top of her head.
“Why won’t you talk to me? I wish you’d let me in.”
I frown. She sighs.
“So you don’t mind me calling Isaac and arranging this?”
I shake my head, my lips still pressed to her hair. “No.”
“Because I know you guys fell out, so I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do,” she says.
I don’t answer her.
“He told me that he’d been wanting to visit you, but hadn’t known if you wanted him to. He said you hadn’t returned any of his calls.”
“I haven’t returned anyone’s calls,” I say. “My phone isn’t switched on.”
“What happened between you guys?” Didi asks. “You seem to get on so well.”
I turn my face into the wind. Where to begin?
“It probably sounds stupid,” I say with a sigh, because, truth be told, so much time has gone by that the details are fuzzy even to me now.
“I want to hear it anyway,” Didi says, brushing her hand through my hair.
I shrug. “He got kicked out of school, like I told you. He had a massive blowout with my dad and left home. We didn’t hear from him for a couple of years. I was so mad at him. He was my older brother. We did everything together, and then—just like that—he was gone, leaving me to deal with the fallout.”
“He told me. You know, I think he feels really bad about it.”
“Yeah?” I ask, frowning. Why can’t he tell me that himself?
“So what happened?” Didi asks.
“One day he just showed up. I was in my senior year of high school, was due to start at the Naval Academy in the fall. He’d found out about it and came back to stage what I guess he thought was some kind of intervention. He turned up to my high-school graduation ceremony and told me I didn’t need to do it, that I could come live with him in Florida, go to college there.”
“Why did he do that?”
I shrug. “Because I guess he felt like the fate he’d avoided had been dumped on me and that I was being pressured into it by my dad. Anyway, we argued. He left. I went to the Academy. We didn’t really speak after that. You know, different paths, different ideas . . . back then, anyway.”
“But that’s okay. I mean, to have different ideas. You don’t need to fall out over it.”
What I haven’t told Didi is that Isaac turned up high as a kite to my graduation, walked onto the stage where the principal was giving his speech, grabbed the mic and gave his own speech, in which he called me a coward, accused me of falling for establishment propaganda and of throwing my life away for a cause I couldn’t possibly believe in, and then to top it all called Miranda a stuck-up East Coast princess and my dad Stalin. When the principal and another teacher tried to wrestle the microphone from him, he took a wild swing at them and ended up falling off the stage and landing in the lap of the principal’s wife.
Remembering it now, I actually smile to myself. At the time I was mortified, as were my parents. All it did was make me even more determined not to let them down. Having one son embarrass them was enough. So his plan to rescue me backfired somewhat.
With the benefit of hindsight I can see that Isaac was only doing what he thought was best.
“I like him,” Didi says, nestling her head on my shoulder.
I laugh under my breath. Miranda hated him. She thought he was a loser because he wasn’t following the socio-economic pathway laid out for our peers, by which she meant he wasn’t going to Harvard Law or doing an MBA.
“He reminds me of you,” Didi says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Not too much, I hope.”
Suddenly a bolt of fear punches me right in the solar plexus. What if she sees Isaac as a nonfaulty version of me?
Didi leans in closer and I feel her lips press just below my jaw. “There’s only one Walker boy I want,” she whispers into my ear.
As always, she’s seen right through my fears and insecurities and addressed them without making me feel like an idiot. I turn my head and she kisses me, tugging on my bottom lip. Her words ring in my head. She wants me. She can’t possibly know how much I want her too.
“Hey, you two lovebirds, stop canoodling. I need my first mate,” Isaac yells, interrupting us.
“That’s me!” Didi says, jumping to her feet. I support her as she wobbles. She still hasn’t found her sea legs.
I listen as Isaac gives her instructions on what to do with the boom, and as Didi follows them I smile to myself. We’re at sea. And I have my brother and my girlfriend alongside me. And for this one moment there’s no past digging its claws into my back, there’s no future slamming its doors in my face, there’s just this.
Freedom.