Sadie Walker Is Stranded (7 page)

“You’re an illustrator,” he observed.

“
Was
an illustrator. Now I’m … I don’t know, a castaway? First mate?”

He shook his head. “You’ve rendered Miss Hewitt quite accurately,” Kellerman said. “Have you seen images of her?”

“No,” I replied honestly. “It was just a guess, and I had heard a few descriptions of her, rumors. I stopped following the blog after a while.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I had to focus on my own struggle,” I said. I don’t know why I went on, maybe because finding someone who knew about Allison made us instant allies. “It was just … depressing, realizing other cities weren’t any better, that there was no greener pasture. I stopped caring about what was happening in Philadelphia or Chicago when I was hardly eating. And then Shane dropped into my lap and I had to trade the laptop for vegetables.”

“Mm.”

That had been a bad day. I probably should’ve haggled harder and for more, but Shane and I were almost starving and suddenly that computer just didn’t matter like it used to. Pen and paper would have to suffice.

I blinked, suppressing those cold, unfriendly memories.

“And what does a Cassatt go for these days?” I asked, changing the topic. “Five hundred pounds of potatoes?”

“It was free, free with the understanding that I would take good care of it and see that it was safely stored until … Well, until it could be properly displayed again.”

A free Cassatt? This truly was a changed and frightening world. Carefully, I took the Polaroid from him. Allison beamed up at me, her hand around Kellerman’s slim waist, her smile genuine and free. So it was true. Suddenly, throwing my sketches overboard in a defiant and dramatic act of purification seemed pathetic, unthinkable.

As if reading my mind he said, “She would like to see these. Please don’t destroy them.”

Maybe Jason was wrong, the pudgy jerk. There might be an audience for the comic after all.

“So is that what you do?” I asked. No one had woken up from our conversation. We were lucky to be traveling with heavy sleepers. “You go around rescuing art? Captain Canvas?”

Kellerman began pulling more photos from his coat, handing them to me one at a time. A few of them I recognized, others were at least attention grabbing in that they were works of fine art. The water out around the boat squished against the hull, a rushing, breathing sound that made me simultaneously sleepy and energetic. For a moment, I wondered where we were going and whether or not Arturo had a destination in mind. Maybe we would drift forever. I frowned and tried to keep those thoughts at bay.

In the meantime, Polaroid photos of works by Julie Verhoeven and Piao Guangxie and others I couldn’t name piled up in my hand. It was an illustrator’s duty to know art, to steep in it, but it was impossible to know everything.

“I was a critic,” he said softly. That fit. “But I don’t do much criticizing anymore.”

He pointed to the photo lying at the top of a pile, a bizarre, modern canvas with very little paint and an excess of pretention. For once, I was glad I didn’t know the artist. He laughed fondly under his breath.

“Oh goodness. I called that one fatuous and desperate in
L’Hebdo,
” Kellerman said. He gave a little breathy laugh and shrugged, “But I nearly died getting it out of New York.”

I gave him a long look. “Fatuous
and
desperate? I hadn’t pegged you for a brainless leg-humper but even so, Moritz, that’s really harsh. Why risk your life for something so … so…” I struggled for the word. “… average. I mean, if it doesn’t qualify as art, why would you bother?”

Kellerman smiled, the same kind of smile he wore in his photo with Allison. I looked away, startled. “I can’t answer that. I’m not a critic anymore, I don’t know what to make of any of this,” he said, “and I think … I think all of the philosophers are dead.”

FOUR

“Does Uncle Arturo actually know where we’re going?”

The shore, the water, the steel-bottomed clouds … it all looked suspiciously similar to the day before. It would be easy to lose track of the days out here and that’s exactly what I became afraid of. Andrea wouldn’t let me go near Arturo. She said I annoyed him and he wasn’t fond of children either, which meant Shane couldn’t do much but silently count shipwrecked boats along the shore. That was fine with me, in a way, because he could do that from any point on the deck and he didn’t put up a fight when I insisted he stick to my side unless absolutely necessary.

Even I wasn’t paranoid enough to make him use the bathroom while I hovered.

“Of course he knows where we’re going,” Andrea replied, waving me away impatiently. Occasionally Shane would glance up at us, smiling wanly as if amused by the adult bickering. Before I could disturb her uncle, she cornered me against a railing where I kept one eye on her and one on Shane’s still head of curls.

“Great—would he mind sharing that information with the rest of us?”

Uncle Arturo was quiet, Zen Master quiet. The man needed his boat, the water and a healthy swig of port and he was happy as a clam. Fitting, considering getting his mouth to form words was like trying to force open an oyster shell with a polite written request. His perfect paradise did not involve talking and neither did his day to day routine.

“Can’t you just ask him for some details?”

Andrea was ignoring me.

“I trust him,” she said by way of explanation. “And you should too.”

At that moment, Arturo had lowered the main sail and kicked the outboard motor to life. He was using the motor as little as possible, worried about gas consumption. He had a fuel canister in the cockpit, but using the sail was safer for us. I watched, my hands clinging to the rail, as he eased the Ketch toward a small, shadowy inlet. The sun hovered behind a gray wall of clouds, typical for the region, and just warm enough to make being out in the windy air bearable. Noah stood behind Arturo, watching him maneuver the vessel. He seemed to be the only one of us Arturo could stand, maybe because the boy seemed to be genuinely fascinated by the whole sailing thing. The two men couldn’t be any more different. Noah was rail-thin, with white, peachy skin and a thick head of wavy hair. Arturo was stocky and paunchy and creased like a golden raisin.

“I was thinking…” I began, walking alongside Andrea as she went in search of soda. “We’ve got a decent supply of food for now, but we could use more. If we did some fishing we could dry what we catch, you know, in case later times are leaner. We wouldn’t have to land even … we could just, you know, float.” Lay anchor? Put in? Fuck it. Subway cars are more seaworthy than yours truly.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Andrea said. She turned to her uncle, calling to him in Portuguese. I knew a bit of Spanish and it was similar enough in spots that I could make out her suggesting the fishing thing. Arturo considered the idea, chewing on the end of his cigarette with one brow in the air. Then he called something back, trundling down into the cockpit.

“He has to bait the line, but I think he’s happy for an excuse to do something new.”

“It’ll be a nice change of pace,” I said lightly. “Instead of doing nothing on a slowly moving boat, we’ll do nothing on a completely motionless boat.”

“Have a drink,” Andrea suggested, straightening her ponytail. “Or is Auntie Flow paying Auntie Sadie a visit?”

“Language,” I hissed. Shane smiled, just a little, but enough to demonstrate the fact that he had clearly heard Andrea, and maybe even understood her. Damn it. The last thing I needed was those two making an unholy alliance.

I glanced at the water. It didn’t look
inviting
exactly, but it did have a certain allure about it, exclusively because we were all beginning to smell. “I could seriously use a bath,” I muttered, thinking aloud. “It’s not too choppy out there…”

“Go in,” Andrea said laughingly. “There are no sharks around these parts. Scout’s honor.”

“A fear of water is totally rational,” I said. She snorted. “Well, it
is
. There could be anything down there … like … like…”

“Fish? Seaweed?” She gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. “
Algae
?”

“Now you’re just trying to provoke me.” We would all have to wash up eventually, and who better to prove to Shane that there was nothing down there to fear than someone who had a totally normal and rational fear of drowning?

“You really think it’s safe?” I asked, peering over the edge of the boat at the water.

“Sure,” she replied, “but you know it’s going to be freezing cold, right? Just be fast. I’ll watch Shane and stay close to the edge in case you start to seize up.”

At that, my skin broke out in gooseflesh preemptively. Just glancing at the cobalt blue surface of the water made my limbs try to shrivel up and recede inside my body. The placid surface resembled one unbroken, glassy film of ice. Heavy pine branches like green furry arms hung over us as the boat came to a stop a dozen or so yards from the shore. The pebbly bank was empty, as dark as pitch with the thickness of trees. Shane got up and stood against the rail, both pudgy arms over his head as he grasped the bar and stared out at the dark gloaming of the forest.

“I’ll be quick,” I assured him. “Just in and then back on the boat.”

“Can I come in too?”

“Not yet. Let me test it out first. You can keep watch and make sure I’m safe. Then maybe we can go closer to shore where it’s shallow and you can have a try.”

I hated denying him, but I wasn’t about to let him paddle around in water this deep. Even I wasn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of going in. “It’s going to be super cold too,” I added. “And you don’t want to get sick…”

“What if you get sick?”

“Well … I won’t. I promise, how about that?”

“You can’t promise that,” he said reasonably.

“I guess not. How about … I’ll try really, really hard not to get sick and I’ll be in and out so fast the germs won’t even have a chance to catch me!”

Shane frowned, arching one quizzical eyebrow. “You don’t get germs from the cold.”

I really shouldn’t have let him read so many damn
books
.

“No, I suppose not, but they can weaken your immune system and then
other
germs can get you, right?” It was easier to argue with Andrea. She wasn’t nearly so perceptive.

“I guess that’s true. Okay. In and out.”

“Yup. You won’t even miss me.”

Easy, right? Right.

Andrea walked to the ocean-side railing of the boat and waited for me to jump in. The others had congregated to watch Arturo bait a line and drop it into the water. Even Cassandra perked up, standing a few feet off to examine the process. Arturo gave directions to Noah, who followed the old sailor’s lead and set up his own rig. I heard their lures splash over the side just as Andrea gave me a little nudge.

“Nobody’s watching, you pansy,” she said. “Go on, I’ve got your back. Shane is fine.”

I crouched down behind the cockpit and pulled off my sweater, T-shirt, jeans and thermal leggings. Those could use a good wash too. Since Arturo didn’t plan on telling us our destination, I figured it would be easier to wait and do the washing up once we stopped for good. Wearing sopping wet clothing at night was not my idea of a good time and I had no intention of compounding seasickness with chills. I smiled to myself as I looked over the edge of the railing into the water; it was kind of exhilarating not to know where we were going. Maybe when we got there I’d ask Cassandra if she’d like me to rinse her scrubs. I’d even let her borrow a shirt if she promised not to cry all over it.

“Come on,” Andrea muttered, “they won’t fish forever.”

“Doesn’t fishing take hours?”

“Get in!”

“I knew it. You just want to see me suffer,” I grunted, but she laughed and gave me a wolf whistle as I dropped into the ice-cold water.

A walk-in blast chiller on the polar fucking ice cap is probably more welcoming than Puget Sound before summer hits. The urge to panic was strong, but I remembered to breathe, to keep moving and make the blood pump hard through my legs and arms. At some point during my stalwart boycotting of the sea I had forgotten just how difficult it is to tread water. I held my breath and plunged beneath the surface for one second, half-terrified I wouldn’t come back up. But the cool rush of water over my head was worth it. This wasn’t grubby, industrial waste water just off the coast of a city; it was pure, refreshing and beautifully untouched. A silvery shape slipped by my side. A minnow, I thought, or something slightly bigger.

Odd, to think that there were still fish down there. Maybe the waterways were the last parts of the world to go on unchanged. Out of all the ways I could end up taking a swim in an unspoiled inlet in the middle of nowhere, international undead crisis was the least probable. But there I was. There was no denying it and no way to avoid the cliché. Something good and small was happening to me. And I didn’t look panicked, which may just convince Shane that being on a boat wasn’t so bad after all and that we might even return to some sense of normalcy.

Well, it was nice while it lasted anyway.

“Okay,” I said after less than a minute of splashing around, “I need to get out … preferably now, before the blood freezes in my veins.”

The railing above me was awfully quiet. I glanced up. Andrea was gone, nowhere to be found. She had taken Shane with her. “Son of a bitch,” I shouted. “This isn’t funny! Andrea! Andrea? Shane?”

There was a commotion on the other side of the boat, shrieking and screaming and the sound of arms beating the water. My heart sank like a lead ball to my numb little toes.

Something was in the water.

Idiot. Idiot! I was about to prove that the water was absolutely something to fear. Just add yet another bad example set by Shane’s poor excuse for a surrogate mum.

I turned a hasty circle. The side of the boat facing me was smooth, curved, with nothing to grab onto. A tiny rope ladder was curled against the railing, tied up and knotted. Theoretically I should have been on that ladder, joking with Andrea as she hauled me over the side, safely back onto the boat. The desire to panic rose again, too strong to fight this time. I scraped my hands against the side of the boat, trying to get purchase, my pulse coming as fast as my panicked breathing. There was nothing, not even a dent, and all the while I couldn’t fight the idea, burrowing its way into my brain, that I needed to get out of the water for more than one reason. It wasn’t just cold. It was suddenly very dangerous.