Fractured Tide Read online

  He shifted gingerly until he lay flat on his back. “I’m not reliving this right now.”

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  And then I said something that rose up out of a memory. You and me, hunting beer cans in the woods, the day before you went into Pine Key Pen. Setting them up on stumps and blowing them to oblivion. You knocked can number sixteen off the log and gave me the gun to reload. And what you said, it’s always stayed with me.

  “When things get bad, you have to look at it, right in the face, and when you do . . .” I trailed off because as soon as Ben turned his head, your voice faded, drowned by the venom in his eyes.

  His next words came quiet, as if he were measuring them, one spoonful at a time. “You think because I dress dead people that I can handle this better than Steph? Than you? A bunch of my friends died yesterday. Prepping caskets for strangers isn’t the same as losing people you love.” He broke eye contact and passed a shaking hand over his face. “Why am I even talking to you about this? I mean, maybe this kind of thing happens to you all the time, seeing how your dad’s in prison. God knows what you’ve seen. But to me, this is a friggin’ nightmare. I need it to end.”

  And with that little punch to my gut, he stood with difficulty and limped down the beach. No “sorry about your mom” or “we’re all in this together.” He just disappeared into the darkness.

  The fire crackled. I sat in its heat, the smell of wood smoke making me dizzy and burning my eyes. Apparently, I wasn’t Ben’s first choice for desert island companion.

  I lay back in the sand, looked up at the sky, and tried to shrug it off. I didn’t need them, and I didn’t care about them.

  My eyes welled up anyway, tears pulling the pinprick stars into streaks until they reminded me of shore lights, the way they look through a mask when you’ve just surfaced from a night dive. I watched the stars waver and bleed. Felix snored a few feet away, and I imagined Mom on the other side of the island fashioning a spear out of driftwood to get us some fish. That thought pulled me apart, turned the sky into a pool of swimming light.

  I have this memory of Mom that I’m not sure is real. That once she was a mommy mom, all lemon bars and goodnight kisses filled with sugar. And then you went away, Dad. The sweetness in her dissolved until all that was left was: You hungry, Felix? Cut the food yourself. You bored? Entertain yourself with this cardboard box. You want a coloring book? Make your own.

  Basically, she took all your tough talk about independence and made it her new normal. Sink or swim, baby. Stand up for yourself. Fail and learn. Look fear in the face, and when you do, you make fear small. But she doesn’t soften it like you do, with a quick side hug, or a just-the-two-of-us fishing trip, or an ice cream at Amy’s. No way. She left her soft side on the courtroom floor three years ago.

  I guess Mom would say I don’t sound grateful, but I want you to know that I am. If I live through the next week, it’s because she made me a survivor. And survivors don’t need people like Ben and Steph.

  The tears washed the smoke out of my eyes, and I knew, just knew, Mom was close by, looking for me. I lay on my side and fell asleep, my back warmed by the fire, my mind drifting somewhere in the palm forest, where I was sure she was hunting wild boar and finding hidden springs.

  ENTRY 12

  I HAD A DREAM THAT NIGHT, I think. Or that’s the real world, and I’m having a dream right now. Sounds like some kind of delusion, I know, but you don’t understand this place, how the island gets inside your head, then shatters. So I wake most mornings with broken glass for thoughts.

  In my dream, if that’s what you want to call it, I stood on the roof deck of the Last Chance, white-knuckling the railing, a storm raging all around me. Gray clouds, rain hitting my face like a wet fist over and over. The Last Chance was floating out to sea, and it was sinking.

  A sting. On my ankle. I can still remember the white-hot, searing pain. Not like a dream at all.

  I reached down and grabbed the thick cord that had wrapped around my leg and pulled. The agony of that, oh God, it was like I’d pressed my fingers against the surface of an iron set on high.

  Captain Phil lay on the other side of the roof deck, his eyes wide open and staring. Gray filaments snaked over his face, his stomach, his purple muscle shirt. There was a gun in his hand, an old-fashioned pistol.

  I let go of the cord as the sound of my name rose up over the storm surge. My brother’s voice.

  Felix ran down the beach toward the water and me, past Ben, who lay on his side, clutching his stomach. Even in the lash of rain clouding my vision, I could see the blood pouring from between his fingers.

  My mind numbed, because it couldn’t be Ben. Not him.

  It was only when Felix reached the roaring surf that I realized what he was about to do. I yelled out to stop him, but he dove in anyway, to get to me, to save me.

  I reached for Phil’s gun, and before I could wrench it out of his death grip, pull it free and shoot into the sea, into the body of that thing that was about to kill me and my brother, another thick gray cord snaked around my arm. I can still feel it breaking through the skin, cutting through flesh until it hit the bone. What that felt like.

  One second. Two. Three. My eyes on the waves near the beach. Then Steph surfaced with Felix, and my heart leapt. And as the thing rose all around me, snaking over the edge of the ladder, over the railing—ten, eleven, twelve filaments, like slow-moving roots, pulsing in the gray light—my fear gave way to gratitude, that sometimes people do the right thing.

  That’s when an inferno rolled out from the center of the island, flattening the thick palm forest in a wave of light and sound.

  I woke, still seeing the image of my blood flowing over the roof deck of the Last Chance, the way your eyes hold on to the sun when you stare at it too long.

  I dragged myself out of my makeshift bed and cleaned up in the surf, trying to get the taste of blood out of my mouth. My flesh ached where the ropes had cut into me in my dream, which made no sense.

  I said nothing to Ben and the others about the “dream.” None of them looked like they’d had a good night’s sleep either.

  “I’m hungry,” Felix said.

  Steph looked toward the forest. “There’s gotta be some food in there.”

  “Finding food in the ocean’s a better bet,” I said.

  “What, with that thing lurking out there?” Ben said, and when I glanced at him, I stopped breathing. One second he was sitting on a piece of driftwood, his leg stretched out. Then came a shimmer, and a girl was there, right there, next to him. Someone I’d seen earlier on the roof of Matt’s charter, blond and thin, her arm in a sling. And then the shimmer faded, and she disappeared. A dream, I thought. I was still dreaming.

  “Sia?” Ben said, and waved a hand in front of my eyes. “You with me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, studying his face, the chin, the shape of his eyes. Seemed like him. Real. “You’re right. I’ll go with them into the forest.”

  As the three of us slipped into the shadows between the trees, leaving the blinding sun behind, I glanced over my shoulder at Ben, wondering about the girl I’d seen. A hallucination. Had to be. But as I took in all the details—him leaning against the driftwood with one forearm slung casually over a knee, and his serious expression as he watched the little flock of birds down the beach—all I could think about was how much I wanted to be sitting there beside him.

  Steph followed my gaze and gave a little snort. “He started a bird-watching club this year at school.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile. “One of the many reasons I broke up with him.”

  When I responded with a blank stare, she narrowed her eyes and moved a few paces ahead. I stopped in my tracks, because that expression finally did it. A fractured memory of who she really was flooded back.

  About a year ago, I’d just come off of a four-tank day and a night dive that didn’t go well, what with a new diver hyperventilating and then losing her fin, which Mom then
ordered me to find. The last thing I wanted to do was to go into Nick’s Hula Hut, on St. Patrick’s Day of all days, looking like I’d washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun. But Felix was starving, so in we went.

  The crowd was an ocean of green, bobbing and dancing and shouting. We made our way through the press, the air thick with the yeasty smell of spilled beer, the blaring “Margaritaville” following me all the way to the end of the bar. You know Nick, how extra sweet he’s been to us since you went away, adding an extra piece of fish to our order, or throwing in a side of fried pickles for free. How he always gives me a big side hug and ruffles Felix’s hair and calls him Nugget.

  That night was different, though. St. Patrick’s Day, Nick’s least favorite night of the year, the night he asks regulars to avoid. I didn’t get a “Hey, Sia!” or a side hug. Nothing but a quick chin nod before he turned to yell our regular order through the window.

  A redhead wearing a plastic “Birthday Girl” tiara, who had evidently been to the face painting booth given the slathered-on green starburst around one eye, leaned on the bar, ID held casually between two fingers. She watched Nick pour tequila into a silver shaker, her big beauty queen smile lighting up the room. A group of girls buzzed nearby, a gaggle of perfect makeup and perfect hair and ninety-dollar flip-flops. They fluttered around Birthday Girl, laughing and giving each other sideways glances, as if they all shared the same secret.

  I remember how exhausted I was, leaning against the bar near the cherries and the olives, my last birthday flashing through my head. My big party? A cupcake that I wolfed down between dives. In my dive bag I found a picture Felix had left for me to discover—the four of us holding hands under a rainbow. He even added little gray bars across your stick figure body. I think Mom got me a present, but I don’t remember what it was.

  The girl one barstool away gave me the quick once-over, and then looked away without another glance. I wasn’t in her zip code.

  As Nick salted the glass and shouted out drink orders to the other bartenders, I started to recognize a few of the girls. They’d been in my class freshman year, back before you went away, when I still actually went to school. The girl who’d dismissed me and my Walmart flip-flops was in my homeroom.

  Which meant Birthday Girl wasn’t even close to twenty-one.

  You know what I had to do.

  She looked so happy and confident waiting there, leaning against the bar with one hip, her broad smile sunny, lipstick perfect. The clothes came from a bank account that always had fresh juice in it. The birthday girl. I didn’t even hesitate. Just leaned over the bar to whisper in Nick’s ear. As I pulled back, the redhead and I met eyes for a split second. The smile faded.

  It was for Nick. It was. After what happened at spring break last year, one more slipup and they’d pull his liquor license for good. When Nick snatched the ID from her for a better look, and she turned her attention on me for real, her face full of the shock of betrayal, I was too tired to look sorry. I just gave her one of your favorite gestures, an empty-handed shrug that says, This is on you, sweetheart.

  Nick’s loud cursing was pretty much my cue to leave. But as I made my way to the door, I chanced a glance back. Her friends had already dispersed, and an officer I hadn’t even noticed lurking in the bar now loomed over her, examining the ID. Birthday Girl was about to have Minor in Possession on her permanent record. And the narrow-eyed look she sent me across the crowd was the kind that leaves a welt.

  As I fell asleep that night, my belly full of fish and chips, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I could have let it go. But if I’m honest with myself—and I guess that’s what I’m doing now, stuck here on hell island until I die—maybe a small part of me was just too tired and bitter to care about anyone who had a life and friends and the joy to wear a plastic tiara to Nick’s Hula Hut on St. Patrick’s Day.

  No wonder she hated me.

  “Sia,” Steph said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Pick up the water and let’s get moving.”

  We made our way through the trees, and I could swear the trunks somehow leaned in on me, no matter what side I took, stealing the air from my lungs. All those invisible eyes. I told Steph again that the coconuts were rotten. She tipped her head, swung her hair over her shoulder, and gave me her back. I thought about fessing up and telling her I was sorry, but a bigger part of me wanted her to apologize, for her to feel horrible about what she had done, putting Nick at risk like that.

  I cracked open coconuts, one after another, and showed her the insides, debating what I should say. Steph dug into the soft earth, swearing when she found nothing to drink. Felix stuck his fingers into every nook and cranny. As I raised my rock to crack one more coconut open, just as I decided I shouldn’t even let on that I knew that she knew who I was and what I’d done to her, a flash of white caught the corner of my eye. I dropped the rock and turned, but it was gone. Or should I say, he. Robinson Crusoe, disappearing like the slippery eel he was, deeper into a palm forest, away from Ben.

  I didn’t tell them what I saw. Maybe they were right and it wasn’t real.

  Steph stepped back, brushed the dirt off her hands, and looked to the top of the palms. “Maybe the good ones are still up there.”

  I peered into the canopy. It was a three-story climb to the crown of the tree, with no real handholds, and I had bare knees.

  “Can you climb that?” I asked.

  “No way. That’s all you.”

  I eyed Steph’s tank top and shorts, tilting my head.

  Steph pulled back. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Two arguments later and a promise to give her most of my water, I was halfway up the tree, her tank top tied onto one knee, her shorts secured around the other. Steph had forced Felix to “go play behind a tree and don’t look at me,” and I’d twisted my rash guard into a sapper’s rope, one end held in each hand and looped around the other side of the trunk. Gripped the tree with my knees, scooted the rope up and leaned back so it didn’t slip. And like a caterpillar, I inched my way up. But not for coconuts, like Steph thought.

  My leg muscles trembled, the sweat pouring off me making the climb near impossible. Halfway to the top, just as I thought the rash guard would grease right out of my grip, I glanced down. Steph stood in her underwear and bra, arms over her chest, shoulders hunched. One more reason for Birthday Girl to hate me, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Will you please hurry?” she shouted up.

  I wanted to. Wished I could let go and swim through the air and kick my way to the top. And not just because every muscle in my body burned with every inch I climbed. I knew, deep down, when I finally reached the peak and had a view of the entire island, that I’d see a plume of smoke rising from the far side. Mom, making a fire. Then together, we’d figure out how to get us home.

  I reached up and grabbed a shaky handhold on a couple of fronds. Managed to pull myself one foot higher, then forced my head through the last barrier between me and the sky.

  The entire island spread out around me. At first the world spun with vertigo and the pure thrill of it. Like perching on top of the world. But I had a feeling, something gnawing inside me, as if this wasn’t the first time I’d had this view.

  Steph called up to me, commanded me to tell her what I saw. And what I saw was amazing. The island was a massive emerald teardrop, too big to get a good view without hovering in a chopper.

  A flock of birds burst into flight, drawing my eye.

  A dark patch, there in the center of the island, among the sea of fronds, constantly moving in the sunlight. It took me a bit for my brain to figure out what I was looking at. The trees there were gone. A flash of hope told me maybe there was a house in a clearing, some off-grid hippie with a chicken coop and a SAT phone. Or a spring and a waterfall.

  Or a man-boy with a gun and a tiger trap.

  Those navigation skills you taught me kicked in, and I figured it’d be an hour’s walk to the clearing. To the phone.
Maybe to Mom. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t get lost. But I’d need a weapon, just in case. And I didn’t have one.

  “Sia!” came a sharp voice from below.

  I slipped on my perch, swearing under my breath. “What?”

  “You see any coconuts?”

  A diseased-looking clump lay directly under my hands. I twisted one off, just in case it still had something worth eating inside. “Incoming!” I yelled before dropping it. Two seconds later a thump, followed by a yelp.

  I turned to check out the coastline and spotted the three big boulders near our camp, sitting in the surf where the water went deep blue. Ben was there, a tiny figure down by the boulders, arms crossed, staring at the horizon. Offshore to the northwest, where the water turned an even darker blue, I spied the white buoy of the Andrews. Beyond the buoy was nothing but ocean, full of whitecaps and endless all the way to the far horizon.

  No other islands, no ships, and no mainland. A beautiful prison.

  “Is that it? Really?” came her voice again from below.

  I twisted off another and let it fall. When I glanced back toward the Andrews, I almost lost my grip.

  There it was. A telltale hump in the water. Big, as if something huge moved just beneath the surface. The buoy rose in the swell as it passed.

  That thing, out hunting.

  What I saw next made me wonder if I was dreaming again. Either that or I was losing it. A shimmer appeared in the water, like the one I’d seen on the beach when the girl showed up next to Ben. The whitecaps near that unnatural swell in the ocean bent somehow—I don’t know how else to describe it. Then the shimmer spread toward the island. I watched it ripple past me, heading straight for the dark clearing, turning the sea of fronds strange and warped.

  My stomach plunged and I shut my eyes. And laughed. Because for the first time in my life, I’d gotten seasick. At least that’s what I thought it was at the time.