What the Waves Know (14 page)

The next morning, I woke at dawn to John Denver crooning “Sunshine on My Shoulders” through my alarm clock, but it was not sunshine I felt. It was something wet and stiff pricking at my skin in the spots where my hair had slipped beneath my shirt. With one hand, I gave Luke a shove from where he'd settled himself in to lap the remnants of honey from my hair. While Remy might be right about the moisturizing benefits of honey, it is not an easy thing to rid yourself of. After spending a good hour scrubbing and shampooing the night before, the humidity was still setting my curls into sticky clumps around my cheekbones.

I freed a pair of jeans from the bed covers and headed for the shower, intent on sneaking out of the house before my mother woke up.

I slipped into the steam, letting the water pelt my face until it branded small red streaks into my skin, and then
stuck my hair under the burning water. The sting ran down my spine in hot fingers, burning their way past my waist.

The thought of my mother all crumpled up the night before had kept me tossing and turning, with her words bouncing and echoing in my head.
She hates me
.
She wishes I would just go away
. I didn't know how I felt, but I knew that wasn't true. The very words sent shivers straight through me and I wanted to tell her they were wrong. I wanted to explain, but every time I felt the words creeping up my throat, the thought of my father walking out beat them to the starting line and the words fell back inside me like dead butterflies.

I picked up a cloth my mother had hung from the antique faucet, bit into it, and screamed and screamed until my voice had emptied itself into the fabric and washed away with the water. Even if I wanted to talk, wanted someone to take the secrets out of my hands and carry them away, I couldn't. I couldn't tell a soul—not ever. The idea of my mother thinking I blamed her set a flame of guilt burning inside me. She had no idea that it was my fault my father was gone.
I loved him first . . . I still love him.
I had done this to her, to all of us. And without even trying I was doing it again. She believed I wanted her to go. How many people can one girl send sailing off the planet? I didn't want to find out. I didn't want her to leave. . . . I wanted to disappear, wanted to follow my father into the wind and fly away. Taking the cloth from
my mouth, I scrubbed angrily at my skin, trying to swab myself into nothingness.

A year ago, Tuckertown was awash in shock when the high school's lead cheerleader, Harriett Gleason, disappeared. Just like that. One minute she was eating fried chicken and clam chowder down at Captain Joe's with her parents, celebrating her acceptance into Tufts University, and the next she was gone. The following day, the truth of things began to unfold like the blocks of a Jacob's ladder. After her parents had smiled themselves into a deep sleep, she had slipped out her window, hitched a ride to the Newport Bridge, climbed her way to the top, and jumped right off the planet. They'd found what was left of her tangled in the dingy pilings underneath the bridge. Nobody knew why she did it, but some days I imagined that I did. She was holding tight to a secret so heavy it crashed her into the waves and drowned her with the weight of it.

After two more rounds between a bottle of Prell and the residual honey, I gave up. I shook out my hair before pulling on an old sweatshirt and opening a small pouch tucked inside a case of sketching pencils to check on my Yemaya Stone. I didn't know if my father had had his with him when he left or not, but I had scoured our house looking for it and come up empty. Pulling the tiny satin strings until the mouth of the satchel puckered closed, I tucked it deep into the corner of my back pocket before stuffing Grandma Jo's map on top.

In the dining room, I cocked my head, listening for any
signs of life. When I was sure my mother and Grandma Jo were still fast asleep, I rummaged in my mother's purse, slithered two Merits into the pouch of my sweatshirt, and crept into the morning with Luke at my side.

I was just stepping off the front drive when Remy bounced down the lane toward me in Mr. O'Malley's taxi, maneuvering it into puddles so that sprays of mud splashed every which way from under the Purple Monster. With each splash, Luke barked, scurried out of the way, and then dove back in to nip at the droplets. I could not help but admire the way Remy played with the world without caring one hoot if anyone was looking or not. When she saw me, she cranked down the window and leaned through it.

“So, you came through last night still attached to your head.”

I nodded, giving her a shrug.

“Good, because I could really use you to help us get ready for the Yemaya Festival. There's a mountain of work left to do. That reminds me.” Remy stuck her head into the backseat and rummaged around before popping back into the day. “Here.” She stuck a folded flyer through the window. “The flyers came in for the festival. By the way, you're off the hook for cleaning up Herman's window today. Merchant's can't get the glass ready until the day after tomorrow, so Mr. Herman doesn't want to knock the pane out yet. Says the bugs will get through the boards.” Remy laughed, shaking her head. “But since you've found
yourself freed up for the day, maybe you have time to help me with apple pie baking later?”

I nodded again, sticking the flyer into my sweatshirt beside the cigarettes.

“It's sort of a family tradition. Right?” Remy glanced in the backseat as if speaking to someone. I ducked to glance in the back, too, but it was empty. “My mom and I have baked for the festival since I was toe high to a fiddler crab. Never missed a year yet.”

Standing back up, I drew my eyes across the backseat of the car but still came up empty.

“Maybe your grandma would like to come along. I've got to head down to Salva's Market soon as they open on a butter run. They're a little pricier than Herman's, but what I spend in pennies I'll save in aspirin.” I felt my cheeks warm with embarrassment. “Then I'll be back to drop that bike by.”

I nodded with a wave, stepping back as she gunned the accelerator, taking aim at another large mud puddle and roared toward it, sending Luke into another yapping fit. When I could no longer hear the great Purple Monster's muffler, I ducked down the path leading to Witch's Peak. A hundred yards down the path the peak pulled into view and I headed toward it before tripping over an irrigation pipe that nearly sent me face-first into the dirt. Settling under an apple tree, I wiggled the flyer and a Merit free from my pocket.

That people would be surprised I smoked was the
very thing I liked most about it. Sometimes it even surprised me. And I liked that, too. The habit came on when Libby and I were thirteen and got the idea to smoke our first cigarette after sneaking the remnants of a bottle of Smirnoff from the cabinet, intent on catching up with the rest of Tuckertown in one fast night. The act was not one of full-fledged rebellion, so much as a last-ditch effort not to be left behind by the normal kids. Or maybe we just wanted to feel normal for once. The alcohol didn't take, but the dizzying rush of inhaling too fast and deep was a feeling I'd warmed to. I drew hard on the filter, sending the cherry canoeing into the tobacco, and laid my head against a knot in the tree's root before unfolding the flyer from Remy. To my surprise, she'd used my sketch of Yemaya for the cover.

           
The Yemayan legend honors the goddess as keeper of the secrets of the universe. In Yorubian culture, each star is believed to hold the luck of a newborn child. It is said that many years ago a great storm broke the sky in two, sending the stars tumbling to Earth as a million small stones until the children of the world were buried beneath them. For a hundred years, Yemaya walked the four corners of Earth, balancing on her hip a kelp basket and gathering them back up. The legend claims she then cast the stones into the valleys of the world, burying them in water, and watched over them until their luck
was restored. This gave her the titles of the Great Mother and Mother of Seven Seas. To this very day, the Yoruba believe every time a sea stone washes to shore it is a gift of luck.

Not always, I corrected. Looking up at Witch's Peak, I dug into my back pocket, emptying it of Grandma Jo's map and the small velvet blue satchel with my stone inside. For a long minute, I turned the items over in my hand one at a time, stacking them into a messy pile of paper, fabric, and rock. I knew beyond doubt that the path to finding my father was caught up in the heap somewhere, that if I could just choose the right item I could find my way back to him and make everything right again. The problem was this—it could have been one just as easily as the other. Picking up the Yemaya Stone, I turned it over and over, tumbling it lightly it in my fingers. I carried it with me everywhere. It had never really brought me luck, but I kept it with me just in case. Studying the waves rolling in over the reef, I folded the stone inside the flyer and set it beside me. The eight o'clock ferry was just pointing its nose for the break in the rocks that led to open water.

The night my
father vanished, I remember thinking that I could not let him get back to the boat without me. After he'd left my mother and me upstairs with a bloody knee
and a kicked-in door, I'd run down the hall leaving the floorboards whispering
hurry, hurry, hurry
with every step, and grabbed my pink ballerina backpack, the one Grandma Jo had given me the Christmas before. The fact that nothing had been in it except Berta Big Bear and a pair of Bugs Bunny pajamas hadn't mattered to me. I had to catch him before he left and I would walk out in my underpants if I had to.

I'd dragged it thumping down the steps toward the front door, but my puny six-year-old legs would not move fast enough and somehow the strap on my backpack had snaked around the banister. Every tug to free it tightened the knot. The door was open and my father was already halfway through it when I'd called out for him to wait. But it was as though I had already disappeared from his sight. Even then I knew what was happening—he was leaving me behind.

Wait . . . wait . . . Take meee!
The scream had hit the air, chasing after him into the night until every last ounce of noise had run out of me, too.

The scream was loud; I know it was loud. My throat burned for weeks. But it was the soft
click
of the front door that had been deafening. The statement was poetic, almost, delivered without comma or exclamation point, just one big period chock-ful of silence. There was nothing more to say, and as things turned out it was a good thing, too. Because that was the precise moment my voice died—five years, eleven months, thirty days, and twenty-
three hours after it was born, as if those tears had simply washed all my syllables away.

In the background, my birthday cake lay uncut on the dining room table, six small burned candles melted into ugly pink puddles around my name.

Taking a final
drag from my cigarette, I crushed it into the dirt beneath the apple tree and shoved the memory back.

“What are you doing here?” The sound of another person on the ridge nearly caused me to leap clear out of my skin, only to find myself face-to-face with the boy who'd stood by and watched Mr. Herman nearly kill me.

Here? On the island? Under the tree?
It was hard to tell what he meant, but his tone was sharp enough to have meant the universe altogether. To be fair, I had turned that very question over in my head myself more than once. Riley was standing close enough for me to smell the mustiness of him, a muddled-up mix of sweat, salt, grease, and grass.

“You're Izabella Haywood.” He stated it as fact, leaving me wondering if I was supposed to answer.

I nodded.

“This isn't part of the Booth property.” His words were desert dry. “This is my grandfather's field. Does he know you're out here?”

Clearly, a stupid question, since I did not even know who his grandfather was.

“Uhg . . .” An ugly grunting sound tumbled out of my mouth. Surprised, I jammed my lips together, watching him.

“I thought you couldn't talk.” Riley flipped Luke's ear inside out, scruffing the soft underside just as Mr. O'Malley had. “You're not supposed to be up here.” He glared. “This ridge winds in and out all the way along these parts. It's plain idiotic to come around if you don't know the way. More than one person's disappeared over it.” There was a drawn-out pause and I swear I saw a flash spark in his eyes. “But I guess you already know that.”

I looked at him, stunned, wondering if maybe he was crazy.

With his free hand, he pushed the shag of bangs straight back over his head then shook them loose again. The gesture trembled something inside my gut, but before I had a chance to decipher what it was, he pointed back to the path and the tremble faded to embarrassment at being ordered out of his company like a small child. Had he not been staring at me with the very definition of dislike, he would have been deeply handsome in a rough, farm boy sort of way.

Turning down the path, I hurried toward Knockberry Lane with Luke romping beside me, my mind racing to figure out what Riley's problem was. For no good reason he seemed to hate me.

“You shouldn't have come back here!” he called, leaving me with the feeling that he was not just talking about the field.

If anyone had grounds to be mad, I decided, it was me. After all, wasn't he the one who could talk, but had stood right there saying not one peep while Mr. Herman blamed me for the whole thing with the stupid rock? As curious as I was, I didn't want to be alone with him five thousand feet up a cliff.

Safely back on the lane, I looked behind me in time to see a gull dive from sight, leaving the
ffffrrrreeee ffffreeeee
of its screech caught on the wind. Moments later, it swept back up with a crab in its beak and lighted on Witch's Peak. I remembered the look in my father's eyes on Anawan Cliffs that day.
Someday we're going to fly like that.