It wasn’t just that she was unattractive; it was that she was conspicuously so. She was big, that was the main thing. Not fat, exactly, but tall-a good four inches taller than the next tallest in her year-and with a blocky form that fell from her wide shoulders straight down. Like a brick privy, she’d constantly heard herself described. The curves that had been promised her during her pubescence had yet to be delivered. And her face as well; blocky, jowly, with a prominent brow that buried her eyes in a squint, and a jutting jaw that gave her a permanent frown. She was constantly being picked out and victimised. She was like a celebrity in the school-an anticelebrity. If anyone thought of a clever new prank or needed the object of a dare, she was found at the butt of it. Always.
The girls were bad enough. She had finally, consciously given up on being fully accepted by the girls a little over two years ago. All they ever did was pass blame to her and use her as a scapegoat for their own insecurities and frustrations. She finally understood that and avoided them with some success.
But the boys’ cruelty stung. She didn’t know why; there was no real reason why it should. It wasn’t like she fancied any of them. Today there had been some sort of dare or initiation the popular group of boys had started. It involved coming up to her and asking her out on a date and seeing how long they could stay serious. The first time it happened, she had almost said yes. One of the group had broken away and come up to her and quietly asked if she wanted to see a movie over the weekend, his head slightly hung, his eyes steadily holding her gaze. She was just about to open her mouth when he burst into theatrical laughter and ran back over to his group, saying, “I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t keep a straight face!”
She shrugged and shook her head and carried on into the hall to eat her lunch, but then it happened again, and again, and again. Even boys who weren’t in the popular group came up to her just to laugh and guffaw in her face, so as not to be left out. It was a performance art to the benefit of their peers and the other girls in the school who sat around and coyly ate their own lunches, tittering at the spectacle. The teachers pretended not to notice.
Gretchen, flushed and fuming, eventually finished her sandwich and stormed off to the girls’ toilets. She hid for the next twenty minutes in one of the stalls until lunch was over. The rest of the day she buried her face in her books and notes, ignoring the laughs and whispers behind her.
After an eternity, school ended and she came here, a place most teens seemed to ignore. It took half a mile of tromping through tall grass to reach the sandy bowl of a bay. From her favourite spot atop one of the dunes above, she could look out at the sea and imagine all the places that weren’t here, and which one of them was her real home. Where was she meant to be? Where did all the big people live? She considered Sweden, the United States, even Germany, perhaps. But for some reason, she really liked the idea of Canada. She imagined living there in a cabin surrounded by forest, at the foot of a towering mountain.
She’d marry a big, rugged man who didn’t have to be goodlooking, so long as he had a big, bushy beard, and he’d teach her the ways of the wild, and she’d butcher and cure the elk and deer and wildlife that he’d manage to hunt and trap in the forest. Cooking them up for him at night, they’d sit across from each other at a rough wooden table and after grace he’d lean over, put his big, rugged hand over hers, and tell her he was the luckiest man in the world to be married to her. And she’d put her other hand on top of his and say with a smile, “You’re right.”
Some days she’d tell herself things would be great, if she could just wait for Canada. Other days, like today especially, she’d kick and slap herself for being so impractical and stupid. There was no place for her anywhere. Canada didn’t exist. Not her Canada.
She ducked down with a gasp when she realised someone was on the beach. She had been looking at an odd-looking, long piece of leathery flotsam that was lying against a rock when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Swimming up out of the ocean was a man.
At first she thought he was a seal by the way he raised his head above the waves and then dove back under, but as he drew farther and farther into the bay, she became certain that this wasn’t the case. Mostly because he was completely naked.
But not naked in a bad way, Gretchen reflected. His hair was jet black and shoulder length in an out-of-fashion sort of way, but it was slick and wavy, and would have looked good any way he wore it. His face, as much as she could tell from here, bore strong features and a square jaw. He had a slight, almost feminine figure, but the tautness in his legs, the bulkiness in his shoulders, was all male. From the side, he looked impossibly thin, but when he turned to face her, his outline began with very wide shoulders that tapered down to a narrow, flat waist, and then bloomed again to display two powerful legs.
He crossed to the rock and the long piece of leathery something that was blowing against it. He was carrying something silver in his mouth and his hands that he dropped at his feet, and then he crouched above them. Gretchen couldn’t quite see, with his form partially hidden by the rock, but presently some bluish wisps of smoke appeared and the man sat back, relaxed and satisfied. He had made a fire.
He raised his head to the dunes now, right to where she was, and Gretchen drew back slightly. She was lying on her stomach with her chin on her arms, trying to make as small a shape on the horizon as possible. She thought it highly unlikely that he would be able to see her at this distance, but then he raised his hand and waved at her.
She pulled back and looked around. Maybe he was waving to someone behind her.
There was no one else in sight. She peeked out over the edge of the dune again. The man raised a hand and beckoned for her to come down.
Something about him-besides the obvious, she told herself-made her want to obey, and so she stood up, brushed herself off, and awkwardly descended the slippery face of the white dune. The man stood, clearly relaxed and waiting for her to join him. She could tell she was blushing as she approached, and she swore at herself under her breath.
“Latha Math,” he said in Gaelic.
“Hello,” Gretchen replied. “What are you doing?”
“Fishing,” he said, again in Gaelic.
“In the ocean? By hand?”
The man shrugged and bent over the small fire he had made out of driftwood. He blew on it a few times and rearranged the wood. Gretchen took the opportunity to look him over a little more closely. His skin was hairless, white and gleaming, like something new from nature-an early spring sprout or a recently blossomed flower petal. It looked soft and luminous, tender and delicate.
She shook herself as she realised he had just said something. “What?”
“I asked if you’re hungry,” the man asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose so,” she said, not actually knowing if she was hungry or not.
The man reached across to what turned out to be a couple of midsized mackerel. He moved his strong hands quickly over them, running his thumbnail here, bending the head back there, sliding his fingers underneath here, and in a matter of seconds he had produced a small pile of offal and two glistening fillets. He tossed them into the fire on the face of a long, flat rock.
Gretchen had never seen anyone prepare food in this fashion, but he obviously knew what he was doing. And then she watched while he bent over the fire and licked his fingers, palms, and wrists clean of the scales and slime that cleaning the fish had left behind on him. It was slightly sickening but also, Gretchen felt with a terrible stir inside of her, an awful compulsion.
“Aren’t you. . cold?” she asked eventually, as the fish started to bubble merrily. “Swimming like. . that?”
“The sea is my true home. One’s true home is never cold,” he answered. “Ah, lovely,” he said, sliding a stick under one of the mackerel fillets and lifting it up. “Here you are, eat up,” he said, passing her the stick.