Fractured Tide Read online

  Felix’s face stiffened and he looked at his feet. He didn’t want to hear his least favorite phrase right now. Too little. Smaller than the other kids, smaller than you were at his age. Just small. He turned and walked down the beach.

  “Hey, Felix, I’m sorry,” I called after him. He didn’t turn or stop.

  Steph stretched out in the sand and rested the back of her hand against her forehead. “Real nice, Sia. Best big sister ever.”

  I started to tell her off, but the insult died in my mouth. You would have handled it better, told off Steph, ran after Felix to apologize, but suddenly all I could do was stare out at the water and think about what Steph and I had to do. Go out there and fish with that thing hunting us. Every day. And maybe what I’d seen earlier wasn’t a mirage, and the island would disappear again. And next time maybe I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “There’s another option,” Ben said, scratching his cheek and looking out into the waves.

  I held up a hand before he said it. “We can’t eat fiddler crabs. They’re practically all shell. And they’re salty.”

  “And NO insects,” Steph said and shuddered.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. What if—” Ben paused and searched the waves again. “What if we kill it? Then we’d have all the time in the world to fish the reef.”

  “Sure thing,” Steph said. “Let me just get on the SAT phone and call in an air strike.”

  Ben rubbed the top of his thigh, his expression looking more and more determined every second, his gaze on the sea.

  “Oh no,” Steph said, watching Ben.

  “What ‘oh no’?” I said.

  She pointed at his leg. “Ben’s going all Ahab on us. Wants revenge.”

  “I just want to eat,” he said, clearly irritated with her. But something in his face told me maybe Steph was right. And part of me was starting to like Ben’s idea.

  When he turned to me, a new spark lit his eyes, a side of him I hadn’t seen since we first met on the charter. “This is the plan. We study its behavior. Take our time, figure out its—”

  “Study it?” Steph said. “The thing eats everything it touches. Field study over.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It’s not mindless. It didn’t just grab everything that wasn’t nailed down. It has a purpose, and some intelligence.”

  “Look,” Ben said, “I know you’re still freaked out—”

  “You mean almost dying?” Steph stood and pointed to the Last Chance. “Did you see what it did to our boat? And you want to try to kill it. I’m sure that will go well.”

  Steph went quiet and splayed herself out in the sand like a surfer at the end of a good run. I had the feeling that after one day together on the island, she was giving up.

  Ben struggled to his feet and limped toward the water, like he could find the answers in the tumbling surf. I watched him for a while, wondering if he was right or just desperate. Then movement down the beach drew my eye. A group of birds pecked at a fiddler crab, fighting over it, the wind ruffling their feathers. I had a weird sense of déjà vu while watching them. Or maybe it was the lingering effects of my near-death experience.

  I tore my eyes away and joined Ben at the water’s edge, far enough from Steph. His chin was up, his shoulders set. He glanced at me, and a flash of hope lit his eyes. I don’t know why, but he needed this. So did I.

  “All right,” I said.

  “All right what?”

  “We should try to kill it.”

  That was all the permission Ben needed to launch into an eight-step plan that involved field research, reconnaissance, and beta testing several traps he’d already been thinking about.

  “You two will have to do most of the searching,” Ben said, “but I’ll take field notes. Make a clock with a stick in the sand. Where’s that notebook your brother has been doodling in?”

  I watched him slowly limp in a circle, scanning the beach for my little brother.

  “I just figured something out,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re the guy at school who asks for extra homework.”

  His only response was a smile, and the sight of it warmed me all the way to my toes. God, he has a beautiful smile. Then that weird feeling hit me again, full of teeth and scales and all the things that might be, knifing through that moment of warmth and light, darkening the sunshine bouncing off the crashing waves. I don’t know how I knew, but something terrible would happen to him. Soon.

  His smile started to fade as he took in my expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re upset. I mean, more than usual.”

  I sighed and pushed the hair out of my eyes, which the wind had turned into a black veil across my vision. “If we do come up with a plan, it’s just me and Steph putting it into action. No seven-year-old kid. No guy with a bad leg. That’s the deal.”

  The last of his smile faded. He turned away so fast I almost didn’t see it. A hint of shame there in his eyes, that he had to stay on the sidelines.

  “I’ll come up with a good plan, okay? Minimum risk,” Ben said.

  “We’ll come up with a plan.” I poked him in the shoulder with one finger. “You’re not in charge of the island.”

  “Okay, we.”

  I had a sudden urge to feel his hand on the small of my back, let him slip it around my waist and draw me in for a hug. And then his gaze caught mine, and for a second, I had this weird feeling he was thinking the same thing. I had to stop myself from reaching out, stop my hand halfway to his, let it fall by my side, palm empty. Funny how I spend most of the day with my hands empty, but suddenly I couldn’t stop feeling that nothing.

  I looked over my shoulder to find Steph watching us, her expression curious rather than angry. I guess the relationship was really over for her. So if Ben and I . . .

  I looked away quickly, a blush hot on my cheeks. What was I even thinking? There was no Ben and me.

  Ben kept his gaze on the horizon. “We’re going to get home. I can feel it. A few days from now, I’ll be back in my bedroom, watching TV, like none of this ever happened.”

  He took a breath and let it out, and I felt a part of me deflate as well. Ben didn’t really know me, and I didn’t know him, I reminded myself. It was just the island pushing us together.

  “Everything’s gonna be alright,” Ben said.

  “Thank you, Captain Matt.” I was surprised to hear my voice break on the last word. The Bob Marley song rose in my mind, along with Matt’s face, and the faces of the others I wouldn’t see again. And then my mother’s face, and then yours, and I had to hold my breath to keep from crying. God, maybe Ben wasn’t the only one who was desperate.

  I could have imagined it, while I watched the horizon for hints of a rescue or the thing that put us here, but I thought I felt Ben’s hand for a half second, touching mine. Then the warmth left, and he limped away in search of my brother and the notebook.

  Later, after the sun dipped into the sea and the island winked out, we ate the lobster’s legs too, crunching them like pretzel sticks. Licked the inside of the carapace. Salt and meat and, God, it tasted so good. Two days, and only two hundred calories each. For the first time in my life, I thought about your prison food, dropped like slop onto your divided tray, and my mouth watered. I thought about the homemade spanakopita Mom used to make, when she still cooked, when she didn’t have to go it all alone. And the baklava, dripping with the thyme honey she ordered from that little shop on Kalymnos, the one Yiayia used to talk about. How good it all was then.

  Steph wouldn’t meet my eyes; both of us knew we had a slim chance of killing that thing, and she knew I’d be asking her to go into the shallows in the morning. Nervous, biting her nails like she was trying to make an Olympic sport of it, watching the horizon for lights, for the Coast Guard to top the horizon like a freakin’ flock of Valkyries and save us all.

  Ben limped into the darkness near the palm forest to change the bandage on
his leg, probably because he didn’t want us to see him cry. When he came back, I was laid out by the fire, sucking on the remains of my last lobster leg, which was pretty much a straw now. The wind whistled through the skeleton.

  Ben settled in the sand and put his hands behind his head. “You know what I want?”

  “Food,” I said. “Just a guess.”

  “No, a movie.”

  Steph groaned. “I just want water that tastes like something other than a five-hundred-year-old Christmas ham.”

  “I feel ya.” Ben rolled onto his side, a hint of a smile on his face. “So here’s a question for you.”

  “Shoot,” I said, sucking on my lobster straw.

  “If you were trapped on a deserted island, and you had—”

  Steph held up a hand. “Oh please.”

  “—any movie, but just one, what would you pick?”

  We threw movie titles around for a while. Mean Girls for Steph (figures), Transformers for Felix (of course—his taste in movies sucks), Princess Mononoke for me (blank look from Steph), and anything Star Wars for Ben (so adorable). Then Steph had to go and ruin it all.

  “It just hit me. That is such a ridiculous question, what movie would you bring to a desert island.”

  “It’s fun,” Ben said. “Can’t a question just be fun? This is exactly why we broke up. You take everything too seriously.”

  “What three books would you take if you were trapped on deserted island?” Steph asked, an edge in her voice. “Hmmm. What tool, if you could have only one? What food, if it was the only thing you could eat?”

  “It’s just something to pass the time.”

  “It’s ridiculous because you don’t get to choose what you have on a deserted island. No one does. No movies. No books. No beachside resort full of tiki huts and margaritas.”

  I remembered that night again, her leaning against the bar at Nick’s Hula Hut with her fake ID between her fingers. We exchanged a glance, and I could see she was thinking about it too.

  “You know,” Steph said, turning to me. “Now would be a good time for an apology, since we’re stuck here, like, forever.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “For what you did to me at Nick’s Hula Hut.”

  Ben looked from her to me. “What did she—”

  She turned to him. “Remember my infamous grounding?”

  Ben’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah.” He turned to me. “No way. That was you?”

  The rock in my stomach grew an inch. “Steph, you were going to get the owner in trouble, make him lose his liquor license again.”

  “No, I wasn’t. How would the cops even know?”

  “They were watching him. Probably.”

  “Honestly, Steph,” Ben said, “you shouldn’t have done it anyway. You could’ve gotten an MIP, and then it would have ended up on social media, and then your chances at getting into a good—”

  Steph held up her hand, palm out. “Don’t lecture me. And if you’re wondering, that is the real reason we broke up, your ‘I know everything’ attitude, not me taking everything ‘too seriously.’” She turned to me. “What you did was humiliating. On my birthday.”

  “Oh, was it your birthday? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You’re really not going to apologize?”

  It would have been so easy to just say I was sorry, but something in her eyes made it almost impossible. “I’m sorry you decided to break the law at the same time my brother needed fish and chips. I’m sorry I ran into you that night. Really. But I was protecting a friend of the family, so no, I’m not apologizing for what I did.”

  We all fell silent. I picked up a rope and tied some of my favorite knots. Felix got up and wandered out of the fire’s light. Steph’s gaze followed him until he was too far to hear, the hurt in her expression showing.

  “I want to change my answer,” she said. “To the movie question.”

  Ben kept his gaze on the drawing he’d made in the sand. “I thought you didn’t like the game.”

  “Shawshank Redemption,” she said. “You know, the one about the guy who goes to prison.”

  My hand stilled on the rope. And I felt a little sick, because I knew where this was going.

  “What do you think, Sia?” Steph asked. “Have you seen that one?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Of course I had, and it had given me nightmares. About you.

  I tied a sheepshank, and the name reminded me of the movie, so I untied it. And I thought about Ben, what it must’ve sounded like when he told her about you. Probably recounted our first conversation on the charter. Spilled it all, while I was out getting them food so they would last another day. Hey, Steph, do you know how messed up she is? Listen to this. Such a mistake, telling him that night on the boat.

  Ben glanced at me. “Leave her alone.”

  “Why? Maybe it runs in the family. Maybe we should know what happened.”

  “Steph—”

  “That’s what you told me, right?” Steph asked.

  Ben wouldn’t look at me. The silence drew out between us, like the mooring line of a ship about to snap.

  “So you want to know, huh?” I asked him.

  He met my eyes. My shark-skin tone had hit a nerve.

  I picked up a piece of firewood and drew with it in the sand. The lie came to my lips, that you didn’t do it. Got thrown into the slammer anyway. Like a movie.

  “If you don’t want to tell us, that’s fine,” Ben said, but he kept his eyes on mine, the question still hanging between us. And I thought about all the times I covered for you, remembered all the excuses, a thousand of them. And for once in my life, I didn’t care about helping you save face.

  “Sometimes I say it was a white-collar thing,” I said. “You know, insider trading. Tax evasion. I’ve told that lie a couple of times.”

  Ben scratched his beard stubble, mulling over my answer. “If it hurts too much to talk about, you don’t—”

  “He killed somebody in a bar fight. Three years ago.”

  Ben’s expression froze. Steph had a glint in her eye. I could swear it was satisfaction.

  “Not with a knife or anything. He’s just strong. Used to carry one tank under each arm when loading the charter for a dive. When he taught me to swim, he could throw me so high above the waves, it was like being at a water park. Once, I saw him pick up the back end of a Volkswagen bug, held it a foot off the ground just to make Felix laugh.”

  Steph looked genuinely shocked. “He killed someone . . . with his hands?”

  “His fists, actually.”

  “Why?” Ben asked, and he looked sorry for me, which made everything worse.

  I thought about that night, standing outside the police tape, listening to the cops talk to Mom about you. How you didn’t mean to, how you usually took out your bad temper on things that couldn’t die—punching bags and walls and an occasional barstool. How you and alcohol didn’t get along. I started to tell Ben and Steph what your attorney said at trial, that it was an accident. Manslaughter isn’t the same as murder. People make mistakes. I’d repeated all these lines before, once to the boyfriend you don’t know about, the one I dated for a month last year. And I’d said those words to a friend I used to hang with down at the arcade, over my first and last cigarette, also something you don’t know about. Making excuses for you, that’s what I was doing. But instead of telling Ben and Steph my rehearsed lines, I peered into the fire and thought about what movie you would choose if you were here.

  Felix came back with Teague’s notebook and plopped down in the sand to draw. And it was as if someone had flicked a switch in the conversation. Steph started talking about her favorite theaters in Key Largo, and how much she missed buttered popcorn, and the three of them went on for the next two hours, the fire warm and yellow and crackling, Steph stoking it with wood to keep it high.

  Before the flames burned low, while we could still see, Steph made twelve little divots in the sand
and taught Felix how to play mancala. Ben fell asleep with his back to us. And I took Felix’s notebook, tore Teague’s snobby sticker off the front, and opened it to a fresh page. Maybe you’ll never read this, but I had to talk to you. Visiting hours, dear Daddy, are officially over.

  As I sharpened my golf pencil from time to time, Steph eyed my dive knife. I felt a little pulse of satisfaction, right in my sternum. One thing you’re good for: keeping people at a safe distance.

  The fire burned until the moon swung around the ceiling of our island and disappeared below the trees. Without it, we melted into the dark. When the pile of logs was nothing but coals, when I was the only one left awake, I felt civilization snuff out. Movie houses, schools, hospitals, and warehouses full of gadgets and air-conditioning units and faucets—they didn’t exist out here. As I drifted, the world became nothing but stars and the surf’s swell and release.

  The breeze shifted, became fresh and green again. I rolled over onto my back. Maybe civilization was an illusion, I thought, a piece of candy to suck on while we waited for the inevitable. In the end, someone would still be choosing the last outfit I would ever wear, no matter how many plastic insurance cards Mom had in her wallet. I thought about poor Mr. Marshall and his insurance card and what movie he liked the best. And then I thought about what I’d seen past the police tape the night you went away, the black plastic shroud and the hump of a shape underneath. And for that second, lying there by the fire, I felt closer to you than ever. Trapped with you on this island in solitary confinement. We were alike, I thought. Exactly the same.

  The tears came up out of nowhere.

  I let them wash everything away until I felt all wrung out, and Ben’s movie question popped up in my brain. Mom. She was alive. Somewhere on the island. I could feel it, as if there was a spider silk tether joining us. If Mom could bring only one movie to a deserted island, what would she bring? I drew a blank. I know what you would say. The Godfather. But Mom? Three years ago, she would have picked a Kiyoshi Kurosawa flick, something emotional and painful and hopeful. Maybe Tokyo Sonata. And now? I had no idea who she was anymore, and I wanted to find out. I had to.