Nowhere Girl (13 page)

38

After that day, Mandy gradually becomes a part of our daily conversations. “You should read this—it was her favorite book,” the captain would say. Or, “That's just the sort of thing Mandy would do!” Or, “Well, my girl, as I told Mandy the first time she fell and scraped her knee …” To my surprise, I find I enjoy these little reminiscences; I like learning about this girl who, if she were alive, might not be too different from me. I've never had a friend my age, but some nights, alone in my stateroom, I imagine her sitting next to me, reading or talking or playing a game. It's almost as good as the real thing.

Mandy isn't the only thing we talk about, of course. The subject of computers fascinates Captain Jensen endlessly, and he devotes much time to trying to help me understand these complicated machines. It's no use. Computer is another language, and it's clear to me that I will never be fluent.

And so the captain sets his considerable energy into changing this, too.

Ten days into our journey, there is a loud clatter outside my cabin. I set aside the book I'm reading and open the door. Captain Jensen bursts in like a whirlwind, holding a flat silver machine in his outstretched arms. He sweeps over to my small desk and gets very busy with cords and cables, whirling around like the genie in the book I have just put down.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes of effort during which he neither stops talking nor says a single thing about his purpose, he turns to me and beams in triumph.

“There,” he says. “You're all set—right as rain.”

I look blankly at him.

“It's an ancient Dell—nearly six years old, I'm afraid, and slow as molasses. Can't get any of the crew to use it anymore. Been on the scrap heap since Christmas. But she runs—and she's all hooked up to the 'net, too. Come here, I'll show you how she purrs.”

The lid is up on the machine and the screen is alive with movement, words and colors and chirrups of sound. I am starting to understand what he is doing.

“Whatcha say?” he asks. “Your very first computer!”

What can I say? I am unable to form any words at all. But the good captain does not give me or my speechlessness any consideration. He sits me down in the chair and sets about enlightening me to the mysteries of the big spider's web called the Internet. All of his chattering about satellites, apparently, was leading toward this moment where, though we are in the middle of the ocean, the computer is able to link up with many others all around the world. The connection isn't fast, he assures me, but it is reliable. He's told me much of this information before, but now, looking at the screen and touching the keys with my own fingers, it begins to make slow sense.

By the time several hours have passed I am starting to understand how this machine works and what goes where and does what. Captain Jensen teaches me how to send letters by e-mail and how to find information with search engines, and a whole string of lightbulbs in my head goes off at once.

Suddenly, I cannot wait until he is gone. I begin to twitch with possibility, but the captain is still full of things to say. Another long hour passes before a knock at the door recalls him to his duties. He nods curtly at the intruding seaman, then beams at me. “Well, then, you're getting the hang of it, aren't you? I have to run along now—the navigation deck's probably come all apart with me being gone so long. You explore all you like. Who knows what you might find out there on the web?”

He winks and zips out, leaving me to my new typing machine, with dozens of little gray keys that talk to me, that tell me they are going to open doors for me, so many doors that I did not even know existed.

First I pull out the paper Kiet left me and begin to type him an e-mail. It is a brief note, and I feel awkward and embarrassed to be putting my thoughts out in such a public way. Could not anyone find the letter and read it? It takes me a long time to move the words from my mind to my fingers, but the more I do, the easier it gets. I decide not to tell Kiet about Chaluay's betrayal and why I ended up traveling by boat instead of by plane. Chaluay must find her own path, after all. I won't let her consume any more of mine. There is still plenty to say, and by the time I am happy with my note and hit
Send
, I feel a warm glow of satisfaction in my middle.

I realize that for the first time I have passed the start of lunch without noticing. I don't even feel hungry.

I close the e-mail window and see the search engine, left open from Captain Jensen's tutoring session. A name flashes through my mind, the name at the top of the letter I have read so often I could recite it from memory. I know what I need to do.

With quivering fingers and a hurricane in my chest, I tap out the letters and watch the blinking cursor form the words:
Mrs. Regina Finn.

Please wait
, the computer tells me, and I do. I know that it is not taking longer than normal, that it is only the slow connection the captain has described. But in my mind I imagine the invisible currents of wind striking bargains with the gods of information, deciding how much to parcel out, what to give and what to keep hidden away.

Another second passes and a torrent of information scrolls across my screen: 22,037 results. I force myself to breathe slowly. Then I get another idea. I return to the search window and type again. The more information, the better, right?

No more secrets.

Mrs. Regina Finn. 21 Stafford Circle. Brookline, Massachusetts.

I hold my breath.

Thirty-two results.

I click on the first one.

It opens up into a peach-and-lavender montage of photos and animation:
Welcome to the personal home page of Gina Finn.

39

It is almost too much to take in. When I finally creep into the dining room for lunch, Captain Jensen narrows his eyes and waves his fork at me. “Luchi, my girl—what's come over you? Something momentous, I know. Something big. Something superlative! Out with it. What's eating you? Some news? Some discovery?”

I just shake my head and slide into my seat.

But, of course, it all comes out soon enough. And the more the minutes tick away, the more excited I am with my discovery. I tell him about finding my grandmother's web page, about the photos I have seen and everything I have learned about this severe, smiling woman with the iron-gray hair and the steely eyes. It is a new experience, finding this window into an unknown world. The perspective sits on me like a gown that doesn't fit right, this one-way knowing that takes but doesn't give, that doesn't reach all the way to the person being known. I wonder if, today, sitting on the far side of the ocean, my grandmother might look into her computer screen and see, just for a moment, the reflection of my eyes studying hers.

The captain is delighted with my discovery and makes me repeat her name and address so he can write it down in the spiral notebook he carries in his shirt pocket. Then he caps his pen, stows his notebook, and tugs on one corner of his mustache. Elbows on the table, tapping both hands together over his dish of blueberry pie, he looks right in my eyes and asks the question.

“Have you tried to look up information about your mother?”

The question is like a gust of icy wind—cold, unexpected, taking my breath away.

He looks down. I suppose he can see how his words have affected me. In true form, he fills the awkwardness with more talk. “I know she was … er, gone away from home most of her life. Her adult life. But you never know what a search can turn up. There might be information about her … about the events that led to her being …”

For maybe the first time since we've met, Captain Jensen's words fail him. But they are enough for me. Why didn't I think of this myself? It should have been the first thing to enter my mind. I see that now. But somehow, I still can't quite believe it's possible. That it could be so easy.

I push back my half-empty soup bowl and stand up. The ship lurches and I steady myself on the table, try not to look like I'm stumbling around in panic, in anticipation—or maybe in joy. But why should I feel any of those emotions? Do I really think the answers to my life's secrets are so easy to find?

There's only one way to find out.

With a smile for the captain, I turn and bolt back out of the dining room, down the narrow ship's corridors, and into my room. I collapse at the keyboard and unload a flurry of strokes onto it. It takes a few tries to get the combination right, but I am improving.

The string of hits rolls down the page like a breaking ocean wave. Words jump out at me, stinging me with their sharp, pointed edges.
DISGRACE! SCANDAL! TRAGEDY!

And another word, a name I have heard before, one that I somehow knew would be at the heart of this mystery: Rupert Payne.

Taking a deep breath, I click on the first link. It is a small portion in the gossip column for some online periodical. Mama's name leaps out at me: “… young unknown named Helena Finn …”

I force my eyes back to the beginning of the article.

Word on the street is: the Battle for the Bachelor is
on
. This year's Most Eligible Bachelor and heir to Daddy's billion-dollar tech industry fortune, Rupert Payne Jr. has been linked to society's best and brightest. There were even whispers of an engagement to society princess Jocelyn Lennox as recently as last month.

But now there is a new player on the scene, digging in with sharp and allegedly fortune-hungry talons. The lady in question is a young unknown named Helena Finn, 20, of Brookline. Are the two a couple? Only time will tell. And oh … whatever will Daddy say to that?

My heart is pounding a marathon. The article moves on to other, juicier subjects, but I squint at a thumbnail-sized photograph on the screen. A tall, dark-haired man with flashing eyes and slicked-back hair poses for the camera. On his arm is a slender young woman. She has her head arced away from the camera, turned in toward the man's chest.

But her pose is unmistakable. I would know it anywhere, that look, that pulling away, that hand upraised to keep off scrutiny. It is a hand that will build a wall of secrets, that will run across the world to look for a hiding spot, that will see every last hope crumble around it and never concede defeat, never say: it is enough.

Around me, night has fallen. Under this comforting blanket of dark I have climbed to the watch spot on the uppermost deck. There is a narrow crawl space here, a thin brace of bars separating me from the world of nothingness that I cannot see.

I have left the computer in my stateroom, but the headlines are still looping crazy circles through my brain. They taunt me with all they say, and madden me with all they do not. The relationship of Rupert Payne Jr. and Helena Finn waltzed across the big tabloids, though the two seemed to do all they could to avoid the limelight. Whispered talks of marriage began to surface, all adamantly denied by the House of Payne.

And then the couple eloped. The scandal monopolized a month's worth of gossip columns, and the buzz contained little else. But Rupert and Helena were long gone, having left immediately on a whirlwind honeymoon tour of Asia.

Until disaster struck. Here, oddly, the news reports evaporate. At this, my most desperate point of interest, I could find only two or three online journals containing the bare facts. But even those facts shake the foundation of my world.

On a mild September morning, the cleaning staff at the Fitzroy-Balmoral in Kuala Lumpur entered the penthouse/honeymoon suite to find the young bridegroom facedown in the decorative koi pool.

Dead by drowning.

Of the new bride there was no sign, and some of the magazines speculated on the connection. Could she have murdered her husband? Why else would she make such a sudden—and suspicious—departure? Didn't she stand to inherit the Payne fortune after the hastily thrown-together nuptials?

Much was left unclear. But a few things are perfectly obvious to me now:

My father is dead.

My mother fled the scene rather than allow herself to be questioned. I know there is no way she could have been responsible for his death. But still she ran.

And then someone—someone with a long arm and a successful reach—hushed up almost all mention of the incident. It is almost as if the whole thing had never happened.

Almost as if my parents had never met at all.

I hang my head and, for long moments, sob out my longing for my father, for all that is left of him now—his memory. I let myself feel, really feel the pain, let it wash through me until there is nothing left but the sound of waves lapping against the side of the vessel and the grinding of the ship's motor.

At last I am spent. Alone in the dark, I drink in the silence like strong tea. I wonder if this is how Mama felt, so trapped that she needed to find a place where she could not see or be seen. Did being half-dead make it easier for her to live? Did she really think this was the better choice?

Because this is a choice I would never make. I am not at home in the darkness.

I think back to the cell where I grew up, and the comforting glow still hangs around it in my mind's eye—that knowing every step and corner of a place, that intimate bonding that comes from a life well lived and a small world fully explored.

But over it still drapes the shadow of hidden things, the gloom of secrets. It was still a prison. I have spent my life in the dark; now I am ready to step into the light.

In the distance, the sun cracks the horizon and begins to drive its pale wedge of light into the world. As I watch, the darkness is diluted, so that without realizing it I am beginning to see things around me—my hands, my knees, the bars on my lookout post, the deck of the ship far below, the tossing waves that support me on this final journey.

I turn my face into the early sun. And there, shadowed against the far horizon, I see a sight that makes me catch my breath.

It is far off still, so far that it's only a shadowed bulk in the pale almost-light. But it is there. A bar of land on the horizon.

My destination.

America.

Without thinking I reach up and clutch the railing next to me, knuckles white with tension. I feel a tear trickle down my cheek. I am almost there.

And the girl inside me glances back over her shoulder at the cell she has left behind, that world shrouded in darkness that she has pushed through and survived. It was far from perfect, that life of my childhood. For better or worse it did make me into who I am, and for this I can never fault it.

But never again will I belong to that world.

And more. Never again will I choose darkness when there can be light. Never again will I hide when there is a chance to fling wide my arms and
know.
Never again will I hold myself captive to the power of secrets.

In all these things, though perhaps without meaning to, Mama has taught me well.