Chapter Thirteen
HECTOR
Oh God. Where is she?
One second she was there, and the next, she was underwater. I surge toward the last place I saw her. The sky rumbles, and powerful wind spits lake water and stings my face. I squint, trying to protect my eyes.
My soaked clothes weigh a thousand pounds, and I hyperventilate reflexively from the gnawing cold. My sodden boots drag me down, and I can barely kick. Minutes go by, each one feeling like a century. Soon, the shoreline is frighteningly far away, and it’s an effort not to think, holy shit, I might actually drown today. It’s everything I can do to not panic. Drowning is everybody’s worst fear, but stupid Hector didn’t think of this before he dived in the water, of course.
The surface of the lake is prickling from raindrops. Swells that weren’t there before bob me up and down, and I swallow water once, twice. I spin around, kicking hard to stay afloat.
And then I see something. The tiniest smudge of white color pushing away the darkness, maybe about ten feet away, inches below the surface. Whatever it is, it’s sinking quickly. With a huge breath, I surge forward and kick, my muscles already burning. I reach forward, down, grabbing into the wet void at anything. My fingertips graze something soft. I lunge again, and burning skin meets my hand.
I grab wildly, and my hand closes around a thin limb—ankle or wrist, I’ve no idea. I yank and pull, trying desperately to bring her to the surface. I grab her small waist, jerking her up so her face stays above the water. Her eyes are shut. The lake splashes around us, and water pools in her open mouth. Oh no.
What’s more, I can’t seem to move her. Something’s snagged on her legs, as if she’s chained to the bottom of the lake. I kick harder, and a wave of water crashes over both our faces. I cough and sputter, fighting to drag her to shore. She’s still tethered somehow. With a massive grunt, I throw us both closer to shore, and something gives way beneath us. We’re loose now, our limbs flailing.
My muscles start to scream from effort as I kick my waterlogged boots and paddle with one hand. I end up flipping onto my back, arching my chest and kicking while towing her torso under one arm. It takes forever, we’re out so far from the shoreline. My feet finally touch the gravel bed of the lake and I drag her onto the narrow shore. I flip her onto her stomach to let the water empty out of her mouth. My heart is pounding so hard it’s going to bust out of my rib cage. I turn her onto her back, ready to do mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions, whatever it takes. Her eyes are partly open now, trancelike, but she’s breathing—miraculously. My cold fingers clumsily feel for a pulse in her neck. A tiny throbbing nudges stubbornly beneath my fingertips—her heart is beating. Her nightgown is sodden and clings to skin that burns beneath my fingers, hotter than cement in the summer.
She’s got a fever. She must be sick and delirious.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I hoist her into my arms. Before I head back to Windigo, I turn and stare at the lake’s horizon. That big freighter that was passing by is long gone, but its absence sends a chill down my spine.
I start carrying her back to Windigo. She’s a dead weight, and my heavy, wet clothes and the pounding rain don’t help. I’ve been eating barely half a fish a day for the last two weeks. I’ve lost a lot of muscle. So every footstep is an effort. My biceps and quads are screaming with pain when I finally make it to her little cottage.
As I reach for the back door, I’m sure it’s going to be locked. But the door is wide open, welcoming us.
The door is never, ever open.
I kick it farther open with a dripping boot. The cottage is really tiny. There’s a pair of old rubber boots and a collection of four skeletonized umbrellas by the door. Miniature piles of lake rocks—what are they called? cairns?—are piled here and there over the wide plank floors. A stone fireplace is dark and cold, facing a single lumpy couch and a braided rug. Just beyond, a cramped kitchen still smells of buttery fried things.
I heave her in my arms again and walk down the hallway, finding two closet-sized bedrooms. One is super tidy, with a single narrow cot topped with a neat plaid blanket. The other has no bed, just a little nest of twisted blankets, next to piles upon piles of animal bones, feathers, and more rock cairns.
I have a bad feeling that she sleeps in the nest of blankets, but decide instead to put her on the cot in the cleaner bedroom. Her body sags onto the thin mattress, soaking the bedding. Her eyes are still only at half-mast, seeing nothing. In the gloom of the cabin, I can’t see the difference between her pupils and her irises. Her eyes are all one stormy dark gray. And her skin is still burning hot.
After I withdraw my arms from her body, I hesitate. I miss holding her already, though my biceps are cursing from exhaustion. But that’s not why I’m hesitating.
I can’t let her sleep with these clothes, wet to the skin.
There is one chest of drawers in the room. The top three drawers contain men’s clothes for a guy built much heavier than me. But then in the bottom drawer, I find another nightgown, this one made of indigo cotton, with cotton lace at the neckline. There are also jeans and long-sleeve shirts that would fit a girl like her.
So she does actually live here? Why would she stay behind? Where’s the dude? If it’s her father (because she looks like my age, maybe younger) why the hell hasn’t he come back to get her?
I shake the questions away. I want to know, and I don’t. And anyway, someone needs to change her into dry clothes, and I’m the only somebody around. My heart starts tap-dancing inside my chest as I peel off my own wet jacket and kick off my boots so I don’t feel so weighed down. After carrying her for so long, my hands tremble from her absence.
I pick up the dry nightgown.
“I swear to God, I have the best intentions,” I tell her, nervously clearing my throat. The wind thrashes against the wall, and the metal shutters outside tap a Morse code against the window panes. “Okay.” I swallow and pick up the dry nightgown. “Here goes.”
It’s hard to unsee what I see when I change her clothing. Unblemished skin, dabs of deep pink on bronze, and the softest curves I’ve ever seen in real life. She’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s not just because I’ve never seen a girl naked before.
There was Carla. We’d worked at Walmart together two summers in a row and messed around a few times in her car after work. Carla was plump and pretty, with smooth white skin, brown eyes, and harsh black bangs that knifed across her forehead. And she didn’t go to my high school, which meant my low-caste reputation was unknown to her. She actually didn’t care that I wore regular shorts instead of swim trunks when we went to the public pool once. She’d make me sandwiches when I’d brought nothing for lunch, or had no money to buy anything.
“Tell me about it,” she’d say. She didn’t elaborate on what. That was obvious. She wanted to know everything. About the scars, the rickety bicycle I rode to work, how I spoke to no one but her. In fact, we didn’t talk much at all. One day, she just took my hand and pulled me into her car after closing, and I let her. That was how it started.
Her questions at first didn’t seem like a demand; more like an open door. At first, I gave her what she wanted. I told her the scars were mine; that my mother was still in Korea and no, she never called or wrote. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since she put me on the plane when I was six, because she actually thought I’d be more accepted here. My dad wasn’t happy to have what he hadn’t wanted to begin with. And my uncle, well, he needed the extra cash.
But eventually, after I’d stopped answering Carla’s questions, she stopped asking. Summer ended, and she didn’t ask for my phone number.
I didn’t miss her. You can’t miss what you never really had, can you?
And I don’t blame her for walking away. It’s not like she was giving and I was taking all the time. I wasn’t giving and I wasn’t taking anything. Ever. You can’t date a brick wall. It stops being mysterious and ends up just being…a wall.
But this island girl. She’s different. She gives, but there is nothing expected in return, really. She’s not trying to fix me, or heal me, or new-age me to death. She asks no questions. And I’ve asked none, either. It’s such a relief, not having to unearth things you don’t want to.
And what’s more—anyone who stays stranded on Isle Royale in the winter, on purpose, has problems by definition. Seriously bad side effects from living. Somehow, I know hers are a tsunami compared to mine. Maybe part of me thanks her for the perspective. To be the least fucked-up person on a whole island—well, that’s a gift, too. Even if there are only the two of us.
Finally, the girl is dressed in her clean nightgown. I’ve sweated inside my clammy, sodden clothes. Inside the narrow hallway closet, there are fresh sheets and another blanket. I carry her to the sofa and peel off the damp sheets of the cot, then cover them with dry bedding before bringing her back.
Soon, she’s tucked in, dry, and sleeping soundly.
I should go back to my cabin, but I don’t want to. My evergreen wall has been destroyed, after all. And I need to make sure she wakes up okay. The wind and rain outside shake the shutters again, and the chimney moans. I’ve never been more glad to have a reason to stay in place.
As I sit on the sofa and stare at the ashes in the fireplace, I feel distinctly odd. Emptied out, but not in a bad way. Even though I almost saw a girl drown, even though I nearly drowned myself, I don’t feel freaked out like I should. Looking around at this tiny cottage with its strange, unconscious occupant in the next room—I don’t feel like tearing off my skin. I don’t feel like fleeing, for the first time in years.
Huh. Imagine that.