But it wasn’t until then, with my mother close enough to share my breath, that I realized keeping my license could ruin us in a worse way. It made me sick to think about that man going free. Getting to fish again. It was my fault Levi got shot. So getting justice for him, that was my responsibility. A cold, hard shell formed around me and I nodded.
“It’ll be all right, Ma,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She smoothed her hand against my cheek. Her steel peeled away to velvet, and she murmured, hushed, “Maybe you can go to college with Bailey.”
It was too much to think about right then. Every single thing I’d planned for myself was over. Trying to figure out what to do instead . . . I may as well have been planning to go live on the moon. Bumping my forehead against Mom’s, I squeezed her arms, then slipped away. “I’ll worry about that later.”
Drifting upstairs, I slid my shoulder along the wall. It hissed and filled my ears up with comforting white noise. It sounded like the wind on Jackson’s Rock, and falling into white sheets was like disappearing into the mist. An entire day had passed there in an hour, it seemed. As I slipped into a hard sleep, I couldn’t help but wonder: what would a hundred years feel like?
TEN
Grey
Sunlight breaks through my window, and that’s what wakes me. Last night, I left the fog to do as it willed, and today, it’s decided to dissipate.
The sky is unmarred, a perfect shot of blue. It’s so clear that at the horizon it reflects the ocean, just as the sea reflects the sky. The edge of the world is exquisite and endless. Everything gleams—the ashes and oaks aren’t cloaked in ordinary shades. Today, they’re scarlet and bronze, flickering and dancing on the wind.
Rushing my ritual, I dress, I shave. And today, I pull a grey ribbon from my armoire and pull back my hair. I loathe the length of it, not to mention the way it coils and snakes around my shoulders. I’m an albino Medusa, and scissors alone fail me.
For the whole of 1950, I sheared myself. Each morning, I shaved my scalp smooth. I was horrifying.
The first thing I’ll do when I’m free is get a proper haircut. Barbers are fine talkers; I’ll listen to anything. Reports of foreign wars or agricultural accountings. Complaints of lumbago, lies about fishing. It won’t matter. It will be another voice. Another face. A new place, so much better than this one.
I hurry down the stairs, nearly running. I move so fast, the enchantment lags. My music boxes glimmer, and I laugh—I laugh! Aloud!—when they melt away to reveal the high curtained walls of the dining room. Breakfast will be soft-boiled eggs and toast, sausage and biscuits. Orange juice, grits, and everything I need to know about Willa.
That’s what I wanted instead of gears and springs. I asked the air at bedtime: I wish to know her.
My plate is stacked high. Aside from breakfast, there’s a bounty. Unwrapped, this once—perhaps even magic has limits. It matters not.
Before me, I have two yearbooks from the Vandenbrook School. I flip through those impatiently, then set them aside. Too much searching. Beneath them lie better resources. Much better—photographs. Color photographs! They’re magnificent.
Willa’s so small in the first, buck teeth and a crooked collar. She stands next to a boy who resembles her little, but for the shocking shade of his hair.
They cling to the rail of a boat, the darkening sky behind them. In the shadows, I see a hint of my lighthouse, and when I flip the photo over, there’s handwriting. It’s inelegant, artless, but it tells me so much:
Levi & Willa, 4th of July.
I marvel over my bounty. Yellowed scraps of newspaper announce her birth, her second-place finish in a fishing contest, her survival of her grandparents. Grainy copies of photographs show her on that boat with her brother, with her father, with people gone unnamed. She holds a huge lobster over her head; she’s older, wearing a gingham apron, sitting on a front porch.
Spreading the bits and pieces, I find secrets. There’s a crumpled scrap of paper with a string of numbers written in one hand, and SETH!!!!! written in another beside it. Doodled boats sail the margins of a mathematics quiz.
There’s a list of words in her hand, I’m sure of it. Her letters slope, pencil slashes so pale they’re nearly shadow. They make no sense at first. Acionna, Mazu, Galene, Tiamat. But I recognize Amphitrite—Poseidon’s consort, a goddess of the depths. Then Thetis, one of the fifty Nereids, and I think the list is solved. Deities, every one, rising from the primordial sea.
I find a note from an instructor:
“Willa needs to participate more. Her interests seem limited to boats, fishing, and the ocean. She has so much potential. We’d like to see her try new things next semester.”
There’s another, mechanically printed, that ends with “All things considered, we feel the jewelry-craft class will be less emotionally demanding for her during this difficult time.”
As I clear my plate, it fills with breakfast. Between bites, I create a timeline. Trailing papers and pictures from one end of the table to the other, I study this recorded history. This proof of her, this trove of details to teach me the role to play with her.
When I finally step away from the table, I’m full with her. My head pulses, expanding to make room for Willa, whose last name is Dixon, whose birthday comes eight months after her parents’ anniversary. And who, according to an essay she wrote for ninth-grade English, wants to live and die on the water.
I can grant that wish.
ELEVEN
Willa
The only reason I went to school was to get served. I waited until the last minute and walked there alone. I kinda hoped they’d find me before first period. Partly to get it over with, partly because I didn’t want people talking about it. Looking at me. Whispering about me. Vandenbrook was tiny and full of people I didn’t want to see.
They fell in and out of my orbit, Seth in my English class, Nick with his locker near mine. I kept catching flickers of gold hair, Denny Ouelette floating through the halls a split second ahead of me.
The only person I wasn’t avoiding was Bailey, and she caught up with me between classes. She had her hardheaded look on. Usually, she broke it out when something had to get done. I think in another life, she was probably a drill sergeant. I wondered what she thought she needed to do with me.
Pulling out the Milky Way bracelet I made, I offered it to her. “It’s done. You can have it.” I didn’t give her the chance to say anything. If I talked fast and talked first, she wouldn’t get to lecture me. I was about tired of getting corrected. I was tired of everything, to be honest. “Or give it to Cait. You know. Whatever.”
Bailey frowned, rubbing the beads between her fingers. “I’ll keep it. Thanks.”
“I’m going to sit out front for lunch. You want to come?”
She fell into step with me, still bothering the bracelet as she walked. It was an absent touch, the same way she rubbed the hems of her sleeves when she was thinking. I threw the door open, walking into the crisp cold. The wind tasted clean, and it swept the extra heat from my skin.