Mistwalker (12 page)

“When you get up there, you need to be broken. They’ve got to see you doing penance. I don’t want one mainlander on that jury thinking,
Well, what Terry Coyne did was a crime, but what she did was a sin
.”

It could happen. It
had
happened on Matinicus, just a couple of years ago. If I went to court and fought the citation, I might keep my license. They knew I worked the
Jenn-a-Lo
with my dad; they knew we couldn’t afford to lose the rest of the crew.

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

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

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.

Best of all, I couldn’t see Jackson’s Rock. I’d almost convinced myself that the boat, that Grey, was a vivid dream and nothing else. Seeing the lighthouse would ruin that; it was too real to ignore.

Sitting on the top step, Bailey dug into her backpack for her lunch. “I texted you about a million times yesterday.”

I took my place next to her and stole a stick of her celery. I had my own lunch, but for some reason, Bailey’s always tasted better to me. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. It was a messed-up day.”

“Mine too,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

Cracking open a plastic container, Bailey stirred her pasta salad with a fork, then sighed. “You have enough going on.”

“So? Talk to me.”

She hesitated. And I realized she was fighting with herself about this. That she had something eating at her and she didn’t want to say. I felt bad, because she was my best friend. She needed somebody to talk to, too, and I’d blown her off completely. Twisting around, I nudged her. “Bay.”

“Cait’s up and decided she’s going to apply to USC,” she said. She stabbed her pasta, then put the container aside hard.

Surprised, I said, “I thought you guys had a plan.”

“Yeah, me too.” The bitterness in her voice clung to her. Eyes flashing, she picked up her lunch again just to abandon it. “She says it’s a better school for what she wants to do. And I’m, like, why didn’t you say something before?”

“Why didn’t she?”

“She didn’t want to hold me back.”

Slinging my arm around her, I slid in close. “So you broke up?”

“No, but we’re going to.” Bailey swiped a knuckle across her cheek, then looked into the distance. She was so far away in her eyes, and she looked painfully small. “I’m not stupid. Three thousand miles apart is too much.”

“That’s a year and a half away, though.”

“It’s an expiration date.”

Uselessly hopeful, I said, “Maybe she won’t get in.”

Bailey paid that about as much attention as it deserved: none. Waving her hand, she said, “I can’t . . . It’s like saying, okay, I’ll love you for exactly this long, but then it stops.”

I leaned my head against hers. It’s not like she wasn’t making sense. But I grasped for her anyway. If everything was over for me, then that’s just the way it was. For Bailey, I could be the one who punched at the moon and expected to hit it. “You guys are happily ever after. It’s gonna work out.”

“And then they never saw each other again, the end. Some fairy tale.” She wiped away another tear, then stiffened. In an instant, she put herself back together. “There’s somebody coming.”

She had ears like a bat; she must have heard footsteps on the stone walk, because there wasn’t anything to see just yet. Though I tightened with anticipation, I kept my attention on Bailey. Since we didn’t know who was coming, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m not trying to talk you out of it, boo. I just hate it for you, you know?”

“You want to hear something stupid?” she whispered back.

“Always.”

Posed at attention, she watched the walk. “I wish you
could
talk me out of it. Stop everything at the bonfire, and stay there forever.”

That was the last place I wanted to spend my eternity, but I kept that to myself. The wind kicked up; it made the forest shiver around us. A dark figure finally appeared on the walk. A woman in a Statey uniform approached us, her hips heavy under her gun belt. I knew what she was after, so I stood up.

“What the . . . ?” Bailey murmured.

When the deputy saw us, she moved a little faster. She put a hand on her holster too. I wanted to snort because Bailey and I, we looked real dangerous with our backpacks and school books.

“Hey, ladies,” she said. “Know where I can find Willa Dixon?”

“That’s me.”

Without too much discussion, she checked my ID, then gave me a thick envelope. Since I knew what was inside, I shoved it in my back pocket. Like an idiot, I thanked her—like I was thrilled to get served and couldn’t wait to go to court. But inside, I felt empty, kind of a relief. The struggle was gone. Maybe it was shock, or maybe I was past caring.

“It’s just court stuff,” I told Bailey as the deputy disappeared down the path again.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” Reaching past her, I picked up her pasta salad and stole a couple of bites. “You wanna go sugar Cait’s tank?”

Bailey made a funny sound, amused and resigned. Shaking her head, she leaned back on her elbows instead of reclaiming her lunch. “I don’t know. Ask me after we break up.”

With a look over my shoulder, I asked, “You wanna let the air out of Seth’s tires, then?”

“No, dummy.” She kicked my foot. “Neither do you.”

“Yeah I do. Let’s see him go driving around with Denny on four flats.”

“He’ll just put her on the handles of his ten-speed.”

The mental picture that conjured actually made me laugh. The sound surprised me; it felt strange the way it echoed in my chest. We settled back. Cool wind washed over us again, and we sighed at the same time. We had an expiration date too, but we weren’t gonna discuss it.

Instead, after a long stretch of quiet, I said, “We could steal
her
brakes for your tru—”

“Shut it,” Bailey said, and squeezed my hand.

After school, I swung by the house to get my worm-digging gear. I tossed my copy of the summons on the table so Mom would know I got it, then headed right back out.

That junk heap in Milbridge was still for sale. It was gonna need a lot of expensive work. Rebuilding an engine wasn’t cheap. Neither was buying a new one outright.

The fog had lifted and the tide receded. Hunched backs lined the horizon, other diggers already at work. The mud closest to the shore was already raked to bits.

I had to hike out a ways to find a fresh patch, the mire doing its damnedest to pull off my boots. The cold cut right through the rubber, sending a chilled ache through my bones.

The lighthouse seemed to hover at the edge of my sight, but I refused to raise my head. It was finally a clear day, and I didn’t want to see Grey standing on the cliffs. If he was there without any mist in the air, I couldn’t call him a hallucination. I’d have to admit he was real. Somehow, it was easier to believe I was losing my mind.

A white boat drifted in the distance, probably my dad. I couldn’t make out the details that far away. I just had a feeling.