Ascension (31 page)

“Yes, hello?  This is Dave Bachman, father of…” I twisted around in my seat just in time to see my dad start to move away from the car, phone held at his ear.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying, because he had taken to pacing some distance away from the car.  Arms crossed above his protruding belly, Vlad  was alternating looks from my dad, to the car, and back to my dad. 

“Don’t you worry, honey,” my mom soothed.  “Your dad will make this all better.  You’ll see.”  She smiled encouragingly.  But I could see the worry in her eyes.  I sighed and hoped what she said was true.

I turned my attention back to my dad.  He was speaking right into the phone and he was pretty animated about it.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but by the way his brow furrowed I doubted that the conversation was going well. 

Suddenly he started shaking his head.  His lips were pressed tight.  He obviously didn’t like what he was hearing.  He kept shaking his head, the movement growing stronger and stronger with each shake.  Finally, in what seemed like complete exasperation, he started to open his mouth to say something – and stopped in mid-sentence.  He took the phone away from his ear, and looked at it in shock.  I saw him mouth the word, “Hello?” as if in question.  The light on his phone had already gone out.  Whoever he had been speaking to had hung up.

Frowning, my dad twisted the phone in his hand a few times, not taking his eyes away from it.  Then, slowly, he looked up to me, and, with an unreadable expression, started walking over.

“It doesn’t look good, mom,” I said as my dad approached us. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mom replied briskly.  But there was an edge to her voice that betrayed her show of confidence.

“Does that look like someone who’s coming over with good news?” I quipped, immediately regretting my words.  I remembered that my mom was in an unusually fragile mood today.  I didn’t want to upset her even more by starting a fight.  “I mean, let’s just see what he says, right?”

“Right.”

Instead of coming right to us, however, my dad angled toward Vlad.  When he was close, he said something too low for me to hear.  The short man nodded gruffly and started off toward his boat.  A feeling of dread and apprehension washed over me.

My dad walked the short distance to the car, and came over to open the rear door.  Bending in, he moved one of the boxes so that I could see his face.

“So?” I asked him.  “What did the headmaster tell you?”

“I’m afraid it’s not what any of us wanted to hear, Tracy,” my dad said solemnly.

I gaped.  “Do you mean…?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  What Vlad told us earlier was true.  Apparently, your Oliver Academy has very strict rules about any visitors, especially parents.”

“But you’re not visiting!” I protested quickly.  “You’re coming to help me move in!”

“That’s exactly what I said as well, honey.  But the headmaster… he said that there was no leniency in the policy.  Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing I could do.”

“Well, there must be
something
!” my mother exclaimed.  “They can’t just expect us to leave our daughter with some creepy looking captain to take her to her new home!”

“Mom,” I said slowly, building up the strength to say what I needed to say, “I don’t think it will be that bad.  I’m sure there will be people to welcome me there.  And besides, we spent the entire last week together.”  As much as I wanted my parents to come with me, I could tell that things were lining up in such a way as to make that impossible at this point.  There was only one possible resolution.  I would have to continue from here without my parents.  I nodded to my dad.  “I’m ready.”

“You’re not just going to let that man take her there by herself, are you?” my mom interjected, in a voice that was both terrified and incredulous.  “Not my little girl?”

“I… I don’t know what to tell you.  I talked to the headmaster on the phone, and he made it very clear,” my father stumbled.

“Let
me
talk to him,” my mom burst in.  “I can’t believe that this is an actual
issue
.  Dropping our daughter off – we shouldn’t be
barred
from seeing her go!”

“It’s okay, mom…” I began.  But she shook her head gruffly.

“No, it’s not!  I can’t believe they just expect us to abandon you here, like some sort of unwanted dog!  Our daughter deserves better than that, Dave, and you know it.”

“I can’t think of what to tell you,” dad said.  My mom thrust her hand out toward him.

“Give me the phone,” she said, “I’ll talk to the headmaster myself.”

My dad gave her a look as if to warn her that it wouldn’t do any good.  Then he seemed to think better of it and handed her the phone.  She wrapped her fingers around it quickly and started working the keypad, presumably redialing the last number my dad had called.

While she was doing that, my dad looked over to me.  “Come outside,” he said.  “You’ll at least get to stretch your legs.”

I nodded, and jimmied my way out of the stuffed back seat of the car.  When my feet hit the ground outside, I wobbled for a moment before muscle memory kicked in and helped me catch my balance.  I had completely forgotten how entirely stiff my body was from the ride.  I rolled my head from side to side, stretching my neck.  Then, with a big yawn usually reserved for the morning after a good night’s sleep, I reached my arms out to the side to feel them move.  It was good to be out of the backseat.

I took my first deep breath of the ocean air.  It was wonderful, a pleasant mixture of humidity coupled with the faintest hint of sea salt.  It was strange to think, that from now on, every breath I would take at my new school would be of the same, tangy air – especially after having grown used to the relatively dry environment of my home town.

“So,” my dad said, breaking me out my spell.  I turned toward him, and found him standing right behind me.  “It looks like this is where we’ll be saying our goodbyes…”

“But mom’s talking to the headmaster,” I protested.  He shook his head.

“I doubt it’s going to do any good.  I talked to him already.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Just like I said.  He explained how it’s the school’s policy not to allow anybody but the students onto Traven Island.”

“But why?”

My dad shrugged.  “Beats me.  Although I suspect it has something to do with their sense of liabilities over the students’ welfare.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think it has to do with the way they run the school.  It’s on a very small island, after all.  If there were tourists or visitors always coming to check out the school grounds, well, it might take away from the students’ experience.”

“But you’re not
tourists
!” I emphasized.  “You’re my
parents
.”

“Even more to the point,” my dad replied stiffly.  “If they were to make an exception for us, well, they’d have to start making exceptions for everyone’s parents.  And pretty soon, the entire island would be overrun—especially during move-in week.  At least, that’s what the headmaster told me.”

“And you couldn’t tell him anything to change his mind?”

“Trust me, honey. I tried.  But, he was set on not allowing a single exception.”

“That’s why Vlad ran back to the boat, isn’t it?” I asked, that sinking feeling in my stomach returning.

“He’s starting the engines now,” dad said.  “That’s why I don’t think anything your mother says or does is going to influence the way things are turning out.”

“Although you have to applaud her for trying,” I said somewhat awkwardly, in a stiff attempt to make a joke.  My dad must have sensed my unease, because right at that moment he took a step forward and put his arms around me in a big hug. 

“I’m going to miss you when you go, Tracy.”

“I know, dad.”

Chapter Two – A Rocky Start

I stood at the back of the boat, my hands gripping the cold, metal railing.  In the distance were the shapes of both my parents, huddled against the outside of the car, waving enthusiastically to me.  For a few seconds, the uniform trail of the boat’s wake caught my eye.  When I looked back, my parents were gone, hidden by the cloud of fog that we had just steered into.

I shivered, and not because of the cold.  Leaving my parents at the shore was not how I expected to start my new life.  And yet here I was, more or less completely alone on an unfamiliar – not to mention rocky – boat.

I turned around to take in my surroundings.  The boat I was on was small, yes, but it was also old.  Every heave through the waves caused the entire hull to groan under the pressure.  It wasn’t a particularly reassuring sound.  Moreover, the way the thick fog blanketed everything more than twenty feet away did not help calm my nerves.

Vlad was inside the main cabin, steering the small boat toward Traven Island.  At least, that’s where I hoped he was going.  In this thick fog, I didn’t doubt that one could get very lost in these waters, especially if he didn’t know precisely where he was going.  But Vlad had apparently made this trip dozens of times, as he informed me, rather brusquely, when he was directing me where to put my luggage when I first climbed onboard.

I sighed, and walked the short distance to the cabin.  Opening the door, I slipped inside.  It was a small room.  A single light bulb hung from an otherwise bare ceiling, and two round windows were built into the side walls.  A circular staircase in one corner led to the second level, where all the steering equipment was.  From where I stood, I could hear the faint but staticky sounds of an AM radio talk show through the ceiling.  I couldn’t make out what the host was saying, but I had a slight suspicion that the host might be speaking in a different language.  It didn’t matter.  All that I wanted to focus on was getting to school, where I could settle in and forget about the misadventure that was the start of my new school year.

The boat heaved heavily to one side.  I yelped in surprise and nearly lost my footing.  Thankfully, I was able to catch a hold of the wall to prevent myself from falling over.  The boat leaned the other way, then righted itself slowly and kept moving forward.  I stared wide-eyed around the room.  If I had been outside, close to the railing, when that happened…

Shaking my head, I made my way cautiously to the plastic seats bolted to the side wall and sat down.  They were sturdy enough, and felt like they were built to withstand anything this small boat might steer into. 

Glumly, I looked at the two suitcases strapped to the handrail of the circular staircase.  After stuffing an SUV full with my belongings, those two suitcases were all I had been able to bring.  Vlad was in a hurry, and pointed out that, whatever I brought on board, I’d have to bring
off
board by myself, without any additional help, when we got to Oliver Academy.  And so, the idea of bringing even a quarter of everything that my parents and I had packed into the old car quickly fizzled out, to be replaced by the harsh reality that I could only take with me an amount equal to what I would pack for a two-day sleepover. 

So, those two suitcases represented everything I now possessed of my past life.  Inside were clothes, mostly, yet not enough for even a full week.  My laptop was also somewhere in there, as was my trusty iPod, which had been with me for more than five years.  Everything else I wanted to bring – sheets, pillows, notebooks, scrapbooks, pens, drawings, journals, books, posters, rugs, and whatever else I had deemed essential – was still in my parents’ car, waiting to make the long drive back home.  I sighed.  This was definitely not the auspicious start to a new school year that I had been hoping for.

“Little girl!” I heard Vlad yell from upstairs in his harsh accent.  That was what he had taken to calling me, for whatever reason, from the moment the boat left its mooring.  Not Tracy, not Miss Bachman, not anything else, but
little girl
.  It was patronizing and demeaning at the same time.  “Little girl, do you like some food?”

“Oh!  Uh… No, thank you,” I replied, caught off-guard by the unexpected question.

“What?” Vlad yelled back down.  “Speak up!  I barely hear ye from up here!”

“I said, no thank you!” I called back to him, louder this time.  I didn’t hear anything back for a few moments, and started to wonder if he had heard me at all…

“Suit yerself!” he called down to me.  “I’m jus’ the captain, and all I’m to do is bring ye there in one piece.  Not my fault if you starve before we get there.”

Starve
?  It’s not like we were taking a trip across the Atlantic, for crying out loud.  At that moment, however, my stomach rumbled loudly, almost as if it were mocking me for rejecting Vlad’s offer of nourishment.

“How much longer until we get to shore?” I called up.  Again, I had to wait a few moments before his response.

“What?  I can’t hear ye, girl.  You best come up here if you be makin’ conversation!”

I sighed, and pushed myself up.  I wanted to know how long I would have to endure the nauseating rocking of the boat.  Sitting by myself waiting for it to end seemed like one of the worst ways to spend my time.  If I knew how long this trip was, at least then I could start counting down the minutes to my arrival.