Chapter Fifteen
HECTOR
I’m surprised. I swear she was ready to throw a knife at me. After all, I’m a strange guy in her house. She’s probably freaked out that I changed her clothes.
“I’m . . . hungry,” she says again, plaintively. Her eyes are large and innocent, and the gray of her irises sparkle. They don’t have that dead look like they did when she walked into the water. Whatever made her zone out is gone, leaving a thin, famished girl behind.
I nod. I’ve never fed another person in my whole life. I only know how to make cereal or microwave chicken potpies, for God’s sake. But she’s been sick, after all. Later I can ask her more about why she’s here.
I take a step forward and hold out the steaming mug in my hands. Her eyes grow rounder, as if I’m offering a cup of sweetened cyanide.
“It’s hot honey water. My mom used to make it for me when I was sick.”
I’m careful not to hand it to her. I just set it on the three-legged stool next to the cot as an offering. She watches it warily, like it’s going to bite.
Weird. So weird, this girl.
But I like her. Anyway, we’re not exactly strangers. We’ve been spying on each other for a few weeks now.
“I saw crackers in the kitchen,” I say. “I can get some for you. And then…when you’re feeling well enough, I’ll leave.”
“Well enough,” she echoes. She smiles shyly, and I back out of the room.
I root around in the kitchen cupboards for the crackers. The ancient box of saltines must be an artifact from the early 1980s, but the squeaky packets inside are thankfully unopened. I investigate the tiny box fridge and am greeted by an emerald-green high-heeled shoe. Uh. Okay. Perched in the door is a pot of strawberry jelly, sitting as far away as possible from a lonesome bottle of Gulden’s Mustard. A few pounds of butter occupy the lowest shelf, along with an empty egg carton.
It’s been a long time since I tried to make anything in a kitchen. I remember spending hours on a kitchen floor, making rolls of gimbap with my mom, getting more rice stuck in my hair than on the sheets of crisp, oiled seaweed. She never complained that my messy rolls were any worse than hers. I wonder if she still makes them.
I smear the jelly on the crackers, one by one, and arrange them in a circle on a china plate. It feels like some once-in-a-century ritual that I’ve never been included in before. And yet the whole time, I grin like a kid at a carnival. I can’t remember when I’ve smiled this much in my whole life.
...
It’s been a day.
At first, she stayed in bed. I gave her the plate of crackers and jam, and she picked the first one up delicately, nibbling the corners off, then the middle, bit by bit. She was less polite about the rest. Actually, that’s being nice; she shoved them down so voraciously, I was glad my fingers weren’t near her teeth.
After the third plate of crackers and jam, I realized sooner or later, I’d have to go fishing. Her cupboards had only a couple pounds of flour and sugar, and I’m no cook. I take the empty plate, licked clean of crumbs. She watches me with that unblinking way that freaks me out ever so slightly.
I have to ask. “Why did you do it?”
She drops her bottom lip. “Do what?”
I try not to roll my eyes. Does she need me to spell it out?
Her eyelids flutter and drop. “Oh. You mean the lake. Why I went into the lake.”
“Yeah, that.”
She says nothing, just plays the marble statue that she’s so good at. I’d fill the silence with a dozen explanations—seizures, maybe sleepwalking, I don’t know. Finally, she speaks. “Why did you come to the island?”
I swallow and touch the doorframe, ready to walk out of the room without an answer, but something roots me in place.
“I…” My eyes drop to the floor. “I needed to be here.”
“Me too,” she says in a whisper.
I turn around to leave. I can’t take this conversation, cryptic as it is. All I know is it’s enough for now.
While she was asleep, the storm finally ended. Looking out the window to the lake, there was an uncomfortable number of boats on the horizon. I found a pair of binoculars in one of the drawers, and they showed me exactly what I didn’t want to see. Coast Guard ships. At least half a dozen, plus a helicopter. Why were they out there? I watched for a good hour. Once, the helicopter and a large Coast Guard boat swept into the harbor here before leaving again. They’re searching for something. God, I hope it’s not for me. But then again, helicopters and ships don’t look for runaway Black boys. Never in this lifetime.
I kept watching on and off that day as the girl slept. But the activity didn’t lessen. Whatever they’re looking for, they haven’t found it. Maybe someone’s sailboat capsized or something. Who knows.
Now, not knowing what to do with myself, I crouch by the fireplace, crumpling balls of newspaper to make a fire. Not now. I couldn’t risk having that smoke attract the Coast Guard to this house. But maybe when whatever’s going on blows over out there, a fire would be nice.
“We mustn’t burn things.”
I turn around and there she is, in her blue nightgown, standing only a foot away. I want to yelp and jump a mile, but force myself not to.
“So how do you keep warm?”
“We mustn’t burn things,” she says again. And then, when I wonder if we’re somehow communicating in different languages, she points to the stove. Oh. It’s attached to a portable fuel tank outside the walls. I’d seen it when I walked around the house the other day. I forgot that they like to use fuel for camping and cooking on this island. It’s a nature preserve, after all. They can’t be burning down all the trees. Or cutting branches to make shelters. Whoops.
“You must be freezing in here,” I comment.
“You must be freezing out there.”
“I have been.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.”
We both hesitate. Because the next question is obvious. Why? Why are we here? But to say it out loud hurts more than knowing. Maybe she’s thinking the same thing, because she bites her lips together and stays quiet.
I guess we’ll sit on our secrets for a little longer.
“So…uh…there are a lot of Coast Guard ships out there.” I gesture to the window. “Any idea why?”
“They always come after a sinking.”
Sinking? So maybe someone did lose a boat after all. “How do you know?”
She opens her mouth to speak, then bites her lip again. Then opens her mouth. Like she’s fighting the urge to tell me bad news. The boats, the helicopter. I’ve driven past so many car crashes they seem ordinary now. A price you pay for being on the road, if you’re stupid or unlucky. But a ship sinking really freaks me out. After getting my head forced underwater at the public pool by meathead kids one too many times, drowning is one of my worst nightmares. Well, aside from the one I’ve been living.
“Do you have a radio?” I ask.
She nods and pads over to the fireplace, where a small battery-powered radio sits on a pillow, as if it were a pet dog. She hands it to me and I turn it on, twisting the dial until a crackling news station comes on.
“—still searching for survivors, though the chances…water temperatures are low…seven bodies recovered and identified…James Johnston and Casey Merrick have not been found…” There’s a lot of static, but I get the gist.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Seven people died?”
“Nine,” the girl says, matter-of-factly.
I sit on the floor, suddenly tired. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.”
She responds by staring out the window. The helicopter is doing another pass of the coastline.
“Man, I feel so sorry for them.”
“The twenty will get their chance, too,” she says, soothingly.
I look at her cockeyed. “What twenty?”
“The survivors. They’ll die, too, someday.”
This girl, she makes no sense. “I meant,” I say slowly, as if maybe English isn’t actually her first language, “that I feel sorry for the guys who died.”
“Why?”
This time, I’m the one who’s silent. What is wrong with her? “Uh, because dying is bad…especially if you don’t want it to happen yet. It’s just…bad.” I’m not able to hide the edge to my voice.
“It isn’t. Death doesn’t nullify life. It brings more of it.” Her lips pucker the smallest bit. She’s miffed at my argument. “The molecules of your body came from other things that died. You eat dead things, too.”
“Well, yeah, but—” I struggle for a moment, because what she says is true. Decomposition and fertilizer and Simba and the circle of life, whatever. I get it. I’m more than the fried fish I ate yesterday, but somehow it doesn’t seem worth saying. Finally, I say, “Life is still worth fighting for. That’s all.” I’m embarrassed at my simple words. I sound like a meme, and I’m a hypocrite. Life has beaten me down with brass knuckles, and here I am, running and hiding. I’m not the best lawyer for this argument.
The sound of the helicopter blades beating the air cuts into my thoughts. Reflexively, I hunch my shoulders and duck, though there’s no way they’d be able to see inside the house, let alone through the window.
“It will be like this for a week,” the girl says.
“Until they find the last two,” I add.
“They won’t find the last two,” she says with a confidence that makes my skin crawl.