A Thing As Good As Sunshine (8 page)

I slammed my hand against the hull of the boat, getting a wet thwack and
a stinging palm for my trouble. The pain grounded my panic, like when someone
asks you to pinch them, but my brain continued whirling in disbelief. Just when
I thought things were headed in the right direction, Laume had vanished and
taken my phamily with her. It was the only explanation.

"Laume!" I yelled at the sky. "You bitch. Where'd you
go?"

I was angrier than I ever remembered being in my life, so much so that
the lights on the fishing boat’s deck took on a red tinge. That inhuman bitch
had strong-armed me into blindly making an agreement and then she magically stole
away into the darkness with the only part of my life that made any sense, my
phamily.

Unless I had it wrong.

My skirt billowed around me as I plopped into the bottom of the boat,
ignoring the dirty rainwater, and considered the possibility that everything
I'd been through in the past three days had been a hallucination. A mad lie
built to cope with losing Maria and JoJo and Cooper and Paulo in a horrible
accident at sea.

Fixating on an empty oar lock, I tried to quiet the dervishes in my head
so I could think.

I had no proof they'd survived the yacht going down, or been in the
lifeboat at all. Starving and parched, it's possible I might have mixed some
things up in my head; imagined our conversations, pretended we’d been together.
I sure as hell couldn’t say with any conviction that an evil, Higher Power had
fallen from the sky as a ball of light, offered me a deal I couldn't refuse in
exchange for rescue, propelled our little lifeboat miles and miles across the
Gulf to one tiny little fishing boat, and then disappeared along with four
adults — three of them bigger than her — when I turned my back on her for two
seconds.

Even though I
felt
like it had all been real, I had nothing to
show any of it had actually happened. That cold fact slammed around inside my
brain, opening a crack into which Doubt invited itself to slither through and
make itself at home — the first step down a familiar but unwelcome path toward
some very bad times. The only two things left for me to cling to were a name,
Hannah
Faye Williams
(strange, I realized, we had the same middle name), and a
city,
Portland
,
Oregon
and I knew I couldn't have made either of those
up.

No. No, I had not hallucinated the past three days. Hot anger born of
self-doubt in my belly drove me to my feet to scream at the stars, "Laume,
you dog-cold bitch! Come back. What the hell did you do with my phamily?"

My yelling attracted the attention of the men on the shrimp boat and a
spotlight tracked across the water until it found me railing at the darkness
like a lunatic in my little lifeboat. They followed me with the light as I fell
back into their wake. A dozen men gathered along the aft railing, shouting in
Spanish until the big boat's engines cut off. Ropes and flotation donuts flew
through the air towards me as two men stripped down to their underwear and dove
into the water.

As they swam toward me I felt torn between wanting them to hurry up and
rescue me and not wanting to be saved without my phamily. How could I go home
without them? How could I explain what happened? I didn't give a rat's ass
about the record company's yacht; they could sue my ass and I’d work the rest
of my life to cover the cost of replacing it. But how could I look Paulo’s Mama
or JoJo’s sister in the eyes and tell them that all five of us had been just fine
for three days and then the four of them disappeared minutes before we were to
be rescued? I couldn’t lie and say I had been the only survivor; I was a bad
liar.

"
Then don't go home
," said a voice inside my head. At
first I thought it was my chicken-shit inner nature looking for an easy way
out, but then I realized it wasn’t my voice. It was Laume's voice, talking to
me from inside my own frickin' head.

Get out of my head!

"
Make me
," Laume said.

Not knowing how she'd gotten into my head in the first place — some Higher
Power mumbo jumbo that was way above my pay grade — I knew that I was unlikely
to just kick her out. I knew she knew it. As much as I hated the violation — my
skin crawled from the thought of having another being inside the only private
place I thought was guaranteed to me — I was powerless to stop it from
happening.

If I couldn't fight it, my desperation drove me to try to make use of it.
What did you do with my phamily?
I asked, silently.
I want them back.
Right. Goddamn. Now.

The pity of having a conversation inside my head was the bone-deep
knowledge that I couldn't hide the fear I felt. I was bluffing with my implied
ultimatum. And I knew she knew that, too. She brushed me off, laughing right
inside my brain, a sound more humiliating for its intimacy than any bully's
taunts could ever be.

"I need your promise that you are not going home. That you will
proceed directly to Portland to complete your task."

I have to go home first. I have to explain about...

"
No, you don't. No one on that boat knows who you are or where
you came from,"
Laume said, conveying absolute certainty
. "They
haven't seen news coverage of your missing yacht. They have no idea that there
were ever five miserable, half-drowned wretches aboard this lifeboat. As far as
those fishermen are concerned they are about to rescue
una muchacha muy
bonita
. You don't even have to speak with them, pretend you don't understand
Spanish
."

Her brazen disrespect for my situation tied my brain in knots, I couldn't
find a response that included anything but swear words. Laume mistook my inner
silence for agreement.

"
They will take you to shore; their vessel is ported out of a
small village called Santa Teresa. You will ride with their daily catch to Ciudad
Victoria and then take a bus north along the coast to Laredo, Texas. Your "
lost"
passport will be waiting for you at the
border
."

I knew she was full of shit because I'd never owned a passport.

You can stuff your bus trip and your fake passport up your skinny white
ass,
I yelled at Laume in my head, uncomfortable with being dictated to.
Where
is my phamily? You said you'd get them to safety.

"
They're safe as moonbeams, little darlin', and will remain so as
long as you execute your end of our bargain. It is in my best interest that you
arrive in Portland, as quickly as possible, unencumbered by unnecessary concerns,
so listen carefully. After crossing the border you will travel by bus again to
Dallas, to the place where airships port, and there you will wait for further
direction
."

How do I know they are safe? Where did you take them?

"
You'll have to trust me
," Laume said in my head.

Screw that
.
There wasn't a molecule in my body that trusted Laume.
She didn't even know airplanes and airports.

I don't. I don't have to and I don't want to. And I'm not going
anywhere until I know they're okay.
I thought this thought with all the
conviction I could muster. Laume had to know I wasn't shitting her on this. If
she wanted me to climb aboard some random Mexican fishing boat, much less run
off to the woods to save a little girl named Hannah, she had to give me
something to prove my bandmates were safe.

The two swimming fishermen had almost reached my little lifeboat and I
knew something had to give, and soon. Laume's plan sounded well thought out,
and given how easily she'd gotten the lifeboat to a rescue vessel I figured
arranging a little ground transportation from the shore to Dallas and then on
to Portland probably wouldn't be beyond her. But once I got onto that fishing
boat I'd be stuck on her path, I could be in an even worse situation — if that
were possible.

I wished I could at least talk to Maria about all of this. She was the
steady one in the group, the one who always took care of us when we needed it or
smacked us across the face with reality when our heads were too far up our own asses.
Maria would know whether I could trust Laume at least enough to get onto the
fishing boat, or whether I should tell her to kiss her own divine ass.

What do you say, Dolly?
That's how I would ask Maria's opinion had
she been there.

"
I think this babe's a schuckster, but don't let her rattle your
cage little darlin'
."

I startled. The voice in my head had changed, it sounded like Maria, not
just her voice but that's exactly what I'd expect her to say: pragmatic, level-headed
and direct.
Maria? Is that really you?

"
It's me, kitty-cat
.
"

You okay? Where are you? Are you all together? She said she’s taken
y’all somewhere safe.
I wanted to believe that it really was Maria in my
head and that she wasn't talking to me with a gun to her head, real or supernatural.

"
This Faery Bitch might be lighting up the tilt sign with most of
what she's dishing out, but for the moment we've got it made in the shade
.
Do
what you gotta do, kitty-cat. Don't you worry about us.
"

That had to be Maria, and most of what she said made sense in a 'billy
way. All except the part where she called Laume a Faery...that wasn’t 'billy shorthand
we tossed around in our circles.

What did you call her?
I asked Maria in my thoughts.

"She's Faery, magic, not human...you know, Tinkerbell gone wild."

But she's so big.

"
That's enough
," Laume butted in to my mental
conversation with Maria like she'd just taken her cell phone away. "
Your
dog-paddling saviors have arrived. You have a job to do.
"

My heart ached at being allowed to talk to Maria and then having her
yanked away like that. I believed in my gut that my phamily was alive, and not
in danger, for the moment. I had to believe Maria would have found some way to signal
me if that had been the case.

You'll keep them safe?
I asked silently.

I heard, "G
et it done
," and then Laume’s presence in my
mind evaporated, too. Whatever magical connection we'd used to have that odd
conversation had been severed. Violation ended.

I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Had I really just had a telepathic
conversation with my Faery-napped best friend while floating in a lifeboat,
awaiting rescue by a couple of Mexican fisherman? Was any of it real?

Assessing my new reality brought on a bloom of cold behind my breastbone,
loneliness. For the last twelve years I'd always had at least one of Billy's
Asylum Rats no further than a phone call away. Now it was just me and the crazy
voices in my head.

I looked in the direction of the shrimp boat and was surprised to see a muscular
young man with black hair and chocolate skin heave himself into the lifeboat,
rocking it violently. He lay panting in the bottom of the boat as the
searchlight did its best to stay on us. I hadn't heard his approach as he swam,
nor his kick against the water to propel his body into the boat, not even his
deep breaths as he lay a foot away from me in the bottom of the boat. The young
man yelled — or at least his lips moved — as he gestured for the other man to
swim over with the free end of the rope. But I couldn't hear his voice. Or the slosh
of the water. Or the voices of the other men.

I couldn't hear anything.

After a day of Impossibility stacked upon Impossibility, it seemed a
small thing to suddenly not be able to hear — but it was a huge thing. I'd
never had trouble with my hearing in my entire life; for the drummer in a rock
band, that said something.

As I opened my mouth to ask the universe
why the hell this was
happening
, nothing came out. Not a peep, not a syllable. When I touched my
throat with my hand I didn't feel any vibration, but I got a tickle on the
inside like I'd swallowed a handful of junebugs. I started to cough and
apparently that made a sound because the young fisherman looked at me with
concern before turning his attention back to his buddy arriving with the rope.

I panicked.

After what I'd been through over the previous three days there shouldn't
have been any adrenaline left to race through my body, but my heart pounded
fiercely all the same. I couldn't hear and I couldn't speak. Why couldn't I
hear? And what did that have to do with not being able to speak? Was this a
spell Laume concocted to keep me from messing up her well-laid plan to get me
to Portland? Was it punishment for my less-than-stellar manners? What kind of
monster takes away a person's ability to communicate? And at a time like this?

Pulsating motion of the lifeboat broke through my panic and I realized
the boys were pulling in the ropes, drawing us toward the hulking shrimper. We
quickly fell into the shadow at the stern of the larger boat and a rope ladder
unfurled. One of the young men held the lifeboat steady while the other held
the rope ladder for me and motioned for me to climb. He smiled and nodded,
looking serious and trustworthy, but I hesitated.

Crawling up that ladder and onto a strange boat under a usual
rescue-scenario like this would be daunting. But not being able to communicate
with my saviors made me feel awfully vulnerable as I counted the sixteen rope
rungs between the lifeboat and the deck. Suddenly, having a less than perfect
grasp of Spanish seemed like small potatoes, but it seemed I was out of options,
no choice to get on the boat, take a step onto Laume's path.

I stood up in the lifeboat carefully, my footing as unstable as smooth leather-soled
shoes on a freshly waxed dance floor, and reached between my legs to grab a
handful of the back of my polka-dotted skirt. After I had it pulled through my
legs and tucked it into the belt at the front of my dress, denying the boys a
free peek while they held the ladder for me, I made my way up one shoddy rung
at a time.