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“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Let’s go around the back.”

We made our way around to the rear yard. There was a

white arbor along the length of the house and a fenced garden

back there. A door on the second story that led to a deck was

propped open.

“Hello?” my father called.

No answer.

“That’s okay, we’ll come back,” I said.

“Grapes,” he pointed. “How the hell do you grow grapes here?”

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“Vegetables, too.” I pointed.

“That’s some kind of green thumb. Let’s wait a few minutes.”

My good mood was returning, and there was no reason why

we shouldn’t wait. There was nothing we had to do here anyway.

There was no school or work or room to clean. No friends to call

and meet for coffee, no concerts to go to, no movies to pick up at

Total Vid. No future to plan just yet. We’d agreed that I would tell

my friends we were traveling in Europe for Dad’s book research,

so no phoning or texting. No e-mail. We couldn’t chance letting

anyone know where we were. I didn’t even tell Shakti the truth. My

friends were on one planet, going out and taking last trips together

and packing for college, and I had dropped onto another planet,

where it was just us knocking around in this empty in-between,

this temporary new life. It was lonely and strange and liberating.

We walked over to the edge of the bluff. The ocean was wide,

wide around us; the white waves curved in a majestic arc around the

bay, and the sky tried to compete, showing off with bold stripes of

white clouds. The ocean roared and you heard a couple of seagulls

calling as they looped in circles above. Inside the house, a dog barked.

My father was quiet, for once. Suddenly quiet. His arms

were folded across his chest. His thoughts were a million miles

out to sea.

“Why don’t you like the water?” I asked.

He thought. He did an evasive word-dance. “I love the water.

You can’t not love the water. Seventy percent of our planet is water.

Seventy percent of our own
bodies
are water. It’s what we
are
.”

“We can dislike what we are.”

He ignored this.

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Deb Caletti

“You won’t go on boats . . .” I tried again.

“I’ve made peace with the water. I figured out how to love

certain parts while I hate other parts.”

“That doesn’t sound very peaceful.”

It was obviously something he didn’t want to talk about. He

probably didn’t know how to swim and was too embarrassed to

say. He looked at his watch. “If your new boss isn’t back here in

fifteen seconds, we’re heading out. I’m starved.”

“I can’t believe you’re hungry after this morning.”

He watched the second hand of his watch without speaking

for fifteen seconds exactly. “Sea air is famishing,” he said.

We headed to the grocery store to stock up on food, and then

we stopped at a shack near the beach that sold fresh fish. We

bought crab wrapped in newspapers, and later that evening we

unwrapped it and laid it right out on the table, cracking the legs

and dipping the sweet white meat into melted butter. The clouds

came in—we watched them approach from far off. After dinner,

Dad went for a walk, his pants rolled up to his shins, his shirttail

out. I went to my room and lay on my bed and started one of the

new books I’d gotten from the library.

I heard Dad’s heavy steps on the deck when he returned, then

the bottoms of his sandals being clapped together to free the sand.

The door slid open and shut, and then a moment later, open again.

A deck chair scraped against the wood. He was just sitting out

there, watching the sea. I set my book open at the edge of my bed

and got up.

“What’s he going to think when his good scotch is all gone?”

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I said. Dad’s feet were on the railing, knees up. He swirled a bit

of brown liquid and ice in his glass.

“I’ll buy him a new one,” he said. Defensive.

“Fine. Whatever.”

“If you’ve come to interrupt my peace with your parental

attitude, I do hope you’ll cease. In case you haven’t noticed lately,

I’m the father here.”

I sat down. “The new book’s not great,” I said. “Kind of shallow.”

“Mmm,” he said, and shook his head. “Too bad.” His regret

was sincere.

“I’m going to give it more of a chance.”

“There are so many that are
yours
just
waiting
. . .”

We always argued about this. I tended to give a book a chance

and another chance and another, sometimes seeing it all the way

to the end, still hoping for it to turn out different. Maybe I was

confused about what you owed a book. What you owed people, for

that matter, real or fictional.

He tinked those ice cubes in that glass. It was the second time

in one day I’d seen that look on his face.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yep.” He took a swallow. I once tasted that stuff, just to see

what it was like. It burns your throat like a lit match. He moved

his free hand in and then out, like the tide. “The ocean . . . It

gives, and then it takes. Gives. Takes.”

It made me uneasy. Maybe he was drunk. I never really saw

him drunk, even though I saw him drink often, often enough

that it seemed bad for his health. Health, you might guess, was

pretty important to me. I had no wish to be an orphan. But if I

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Deb Caletti

were being honest, I knew it wasn’t the alcohol that was bother-

ing me right then. It was something in his face, and the time

before, too, at the lighthouse. Something closed off and weighty.

It was a shut door, and shut doors meant things kept to yourself.

There were reasons you kept things to yourself, and they usually

weren’t good, happy, open-air sort of reasons. Still, I didn’t want

to see behind that door. You think you want to know everything

there is to know about everything there is to know. But you

don’t. Not really. I had pried the lid off of the dark places of

another person before, I had seen inside. Down deep. You don’t

want to look at what’s rotting there.

I left him to brood and went back to my room. My book had

fallen to the floor. It said something about where my mind was

right then that my first thought was that it had been moved. I

even looked around, just in case. I feel ashamed to admit it, but

I checked the closet, which only held boxes belonging to our

mystery host, labeled
Winter Clothes
. It’s what I used to do when

I was a kid, check the closet before I went to sleep. Making sure

there were no robbers there. I wasn’t a kid who believed in some

kind of monster.

I got into my p.j. shirt, brushed my teeth. I was suddenly

exhausted. I came back to my room and sat at the edge of the

bed, took that business card from my book, where I’d used it as

a bookmark.
Finn Bishop. Sailor
. I tried to make the simple typed

words tell me more that they did, but they just sat there without

giving. I couldn’t imagine his life or who he was beyond the kind

eyes and the strong hands.

And then the business card reminded me of another busi-

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ness card.
Jake Ritchee, Smith and Gray Auto
, because that’s how

it works after something terrible has happened. You know this is

true if something terrible has ever happened to you. A thousand

objects take on new meaning. Everything is a reminder of some-

thing else. A business card will never be just a business card. A

handful of change will not. A rope will not.

* 43 *

Chapter 5

Christian called me the next morning after that basket-

ball game, like I knew he would. I was sure of it. Every moment

from the time he kissed me, from the time he drove away in

his car after that basketball game—it felt like waiting. I think

even in sleep I was waiting, and he must have felt the same. My

phone rang at two minutes after nine, which probably meant he

had told himself not to call until then.

“It’s crazy, but I already miss you,” he said.

“I know. Me too. I could hardly sleep.”

“Your voice. Morning voice. Husky.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone yet,” I said. I was still in bed. I was

lying down, tucked into the covers.

“It’s sexy.”

I felt that way, talking there in bed. I felt like warm liquid,

Stay

languid.7* He was somewhere, who knew, but I was lying in bed,

and it felt intimate. “Where are you?”

“I’m at . . .” He paused. I imagined him looking up at the

street sign. “Ravenna and 15th. Several blocks from Mr. Hooper’s

house.”

“Mr. Hooper—wasn’t he on Sesame Street?” I smiled.

“He’s the old guy I work for. A few days a week I check in on

him. He’s in a wheelchair. Refuses to give up his home. I take him

for walks. Read to him. Listen to him complain about his nurse.”

God, he was a good person, too. “That’s so sweet.”

“Don’t tell anyone that. They’ll think less of me. Still, it

means I can’t see you until later.”

“That’s okay.” Later was forever from now.

“Can we meet? Do your parents lock you up on a Sunday night?”8*

“We can meet,” I said.

We made plans. I lay in bed for a long time just feeling deli-

cious anticipation. Then excitement hit. I got up. I had to move a

mountain or something.

7 The word languid is one of those words that sound perfect for what it is. Like prickly.

Or luminescence. See? Words are magical that way.

8 Telling people about your dead mother is always delicate. You have to be prepared

for them to spill their sympathy as if it happened yesterday. One math teacher, after

telling me how much she was looking forward to meeting my mother on open house

night and therefore forcing me to explain, grasped me in a long, heartfelt hug after I’d

told her. This is not to say I don’t feel my own grief, which can hit powerfully at unex-

pected times. It’s just that the telling does not automatically bring on my own upset, as

people assume. I deal more with their reaction than they do with mine, and so you have

to choose your timing.

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Deb Caletti

* * *

I told Dad that Shakti and me and our friends Kels and Cleo were

all getting sushi and doing our calculus together. Dad didn’t

believe in sushi. He believed in meat. I didn’t want to keep a

secret from him, and I knew I wouldn’t for long, but if love wasn’t

just yours first, it was like cutting up and handing out your birth-

day cake before you blew out the candles.

The drive in the car felt like it was miles and miles long

instead of just a few. We decided to meet in front of Denny Hall

on the University of Washington campus. Denny is the oldest

building there, all ancient stone and chiming bells. A long walk-

way under elms leads up to it, with carved benches on either side

marking the earliest graduating classes. There’s lawn there, too,

places to walk and sit and talk. I’d brought a blanket. I’d brought

small containers of juice so my breath could smell like raspber-

ries and pomegranates when we sat close.

There he was. He also had a blanket under his arm. I guess

we were thinking the same thing, then. The anticipation had been

so bright and sharp it almost hurt. My whole body was waiting.

I knew this, because when he leaned over and kissed my cheek

hello, I felt warm and electric, and the smell of him, that musky

deodorant or shampoo or soap, whatever it was—it burned itself

into that permanent place in my brain, the one that would make

sure that I would remember that smell when I was old and had

forgotten most other things.

I covered the hand he’d set on my face with my own. My face

felt hot. I moved his mouth over to mine. I’d never felt anything

like this, or had done anything like that, and I felt that sense

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again, power. He wanted me so badly, I could tell. He was trying

not to go there yet, but I was leading and he could only follow and

that made me feel like I could lift the sky with one hand.

The thing is, it can feel good to make someone lose all control.

I was holding a ball of fire in my hands, like a sorceress. He

was pulling at my shirt, pulling me down to the grass, and I went

with him. Forget the blankets. Tongues and mouths and hands

doing what tongues and mouths and hands were thinking of

doing from the first moment, probably.

I pulled back, then. I felt like I’d been abducted and sucked

into another world. I wasn’t even sure where I was for a minute.

I was breathless. There was a guy walking his dog right near us.

A pair of students with backpacks. But that world with Christian,

the one we had ended up in when we were kissing, that place—it

was the one I wanted to stay in.