When he reached six thousand feet, Jim leveled the plane and settled back for the short flight to Skin Island, hoping that in doing so, he wasn’t making a terrible mistake.
THREE SOPHIE
Sophie’s heart beat as rapidly as the propeller of the plane, as if it might saw right through her ribs and burst from her chest. She didn’t know which was stronger: her worry about her mother or her excitement to finally see the mysterious island which had stolen her mother from her. Her nails, which she’d had manicured just a week ago, were now bitten short, and she dug them into the denim of her jeans. As the plane clawed its way through the clouds, she had to force herself not to grind her teeth together, a habit various dentists had scolded her for on countless visits.
I’m going to Skin Island.
It hardly felt real.
But the plane around her certainly felt real; it jolted and shuddered worse than a subway train. When it bucked suddenly, throwing her against the seat belt, she reached out and grabbed Jim’s arm, her stomach and heart tangled in her throat.
“You okay?” His voice was muffled in her ears, the headset transmitting so much static she winced.
“Fine.” She let go of his arm, embarrassed by her jumpiness. He had only one hand on the yoke, and the other rested lightly on a knob on the center console. His amber eyes studied her sidelong from behind his dark aviators, and his lips quirked into a half smile.
“Scared of flying?” he asked. “We used to go up all the time with my dad, remember?”
“Not scared,” she replied quickly. “It’s just been a while since I was in such a small plane. I forgot how bumpy—ah!” The Cessna tilted to the right, and she clamped her teeth onto her lower lip and slammed a hand into the window to steady herself. Jim laughed.
“You’re doing great!” he shouted.
“I should have known you’d end up here,” she said. “You loved this when we were kids.”
He laughed again, and the knot of nerves in Sophie’s stomach slowly relaxed. There was something soothing in his easy confidence, the way his eyes lit up as the plane gained altitude. Compared to this Jim, the one she’d spoken to on the ground had been half asleep. She found herself staring at the line of his jaw, the way the corners of his lips continually twitched as if he were always on the verge of a smile. His thick, dark hair crested over his forehead in an unruly wave, and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to attack it with a pair of scissors or run her fingers through it. She was intrigued and a bit shy of this grown-up Jim, unsure of how much of the boy she’d once known still remained.
Realizing she was staring a bit too long, Sophie turned away and stared through the windshield. Above them stretched a ceiling of clouds, bending away to the horizon. She felt a flutter of claustrophobia in her gut—a strange feeling, considering I’m surrounded by the whole of the sky—and to distract herself, she reached out and ran a finger over the yoke in front of her, wondering how it worked. She gripped it with both hands and tried to imagine what it would be like to fly the plane. A string of white beads hung from the ceiling; they swayed with every movement of the plane. On each bead was carved a word in a language Sophie did not recognize. She reached up and took them in her fingers, running her thumb over the delicate letters. “What does it say?”
Jim glanced at the beads. For a moment he didn’t reply, and she peeked behind his sunglasses to see his eyes had a faraway look. “It’s a Chamorrita poem.”
Chamorrita. The call and response poetry sung by the Chamorro people, who were Guam’s original inhabitants.
She remembered sitting on Ginya’s lap as she sat on the porch with the other Chamorro women, braiding jewelry to sell to the tourists and singing intricate, clever verses back and forth, like freestyle rap, except sung by grandmothers. I forgot how much I loved this place.
“So what does it say?”
“It says, ‘There is no brightness without darkness. There is no body without its shadow.’”
She let go of the beads, and they swung back and forth hypnotically, the sunlight flashing off them. “Some kind of good luck charm?”
He drummed his fingers on the yoke, and his tongue darted across his lips. “So your mom moved out to Skin Island full time, huh?”
“Yeah. I don’t remember the details, and she doesn’t talk about it, but I think she was promoted or something and had to move closer to the lab out there. That’s when Dad and I moved to Boston. He teaches biology.”
“Remarried?”
“Yeah. Her name’s Karen. She has two kids, younger than me. What about your folks?”
“About the same as yours. Mom split three years ago, haven’t seen her since.”
Sophie stared at her hands in her lap. “Sucks.” “Yeah.” He shifted in his seat, lifted a hand to massage the back of his neck. “Have you been to Skin Island before?” “Never.” But not for lack of begging. Sophie leaned her head against the glass window, then sat up again when the vibration made her teeth rattle. “I see my mom three times a year at least, and she e-mails and calls a lot. We’ve stayed close, considering.” Considering the distance. Considering how much my dad hates every moment I spend with her. She’d never understood why her dad loathed her mom so much, or
what had severed them so severely apart all those years ago. Maybe Skin Island held the answers; it had certainly been a recurring topic of contention in their house when she was seven.
“We sure tore it up, didn’t we?” Jim asked, lightening the mood with a grin. “Back when we were kids.”
Sophie snorted and propped her elbow against the window, resting her head on her hand as she looked at him. “It’s lucky I did move, or you might’ve landed me in jail.” “Nah. You were too cute to get in trouble. It was me they always blamed.” He winked at her, and she rolled her eyes. “You were the one that deserved it!” She studied him thoughtfully. “So how have you been, anyway?”
“Oh. You know.” He shrugged. “Nothing changes here.
Same old faces, same old drama.”
“What about Ginya?”
“She left when I was about ten, to take care of her mom in Yigo. I’ll see her every now and then. She hasn’t changed a bit. You’d recognize her right off. She’s like, ageless or something.”
Sophie smiled, comforted by the idea that some people never changed, could always be depended on to be exactly the way they should.
“What about you?” he asked. “Boston, huh?”
“Ugh. It’s cold and dirty. I miss here.” She turned and looked down at the blue water below. “I miss the beaches and the never ending summer.”
He grimaced. “I’ll trade you. You know I’ve never been to the States? I’m a U.S. citizen but I’ve never once set foot on the continent of North America.”
“You have a deal,” she said. But it wasn’t Guam she wanted, not really. It was Skin Island. This was the argument that had her and her dad at each other’s throats lately.
With her senior year approaching, Sophie was ready to make college plans, and her goal was to get through med school as fast as possible and then get a job with her mom. She couldn’t imagine anything more worthwhile to do than find cures for the disorders and diseases of the world. Her mom was a hero, and all Sophie had ever wanted was to be by her side, helping her. But for reasons her dad never seemed able to articulate, he was dead set against her plan. Well, if anyone can back me up, it’ll be Mom. If her mom was okay. Anxiety fluttered in her stomach like a wounded bird, and the note in her pocket weighed like a brick. Dozens of possible explanations came and went through her thoughts, from the mundane to the impossible. A broken limb? An incurable disease? The island was out of toilet paper? Was she being held hostage by a tribe of island cannibals out of a nineteenth century adventure novel? Her imagination rampaged through a host of wild scenarios, and for the hundredth time she wished her mother’s e-mail had been more specific. This wasn’t 1860, when people sent messages by telegraph and had to pay by the letter.