“Oh come on, Hank. Two months, an eighteen-year-old girl on a boat thousands of miles from home. Over my dead body. Even if Melyssa—”
Dad stands up from the table. “And you’ve been hiding this from us the whole time. Sneaking around, working on something like this without a word? What are your chances of getting it?”
This is so not the way I wanted to tell them. “I’m competing against Erik. And some other super brains. But I have a chance.”
Dad’s eyes get even wider. “Erik? You’re trying to beat Erik out for a scholarship?”
“Don’t act like it’s so impossible!” I say. “Pete says I have a good idea.”
“Pete! Who is Pete? I thought he was your boss at the marina.”
“He’s not really my boss-boss. That’s Ranger Bobbie. Pete’s the harbor master. He’s also the graduate student who’s helping us all write our proposals for the contest.”
“And you’re sailing around the marina having lunch with him?” says Mom. “Oh my gosh, you aren’t ... sleeping with him?”
“No, Mom, no!” I say. “I am not sleeping with him! I’m not even sleeping. I work around the clock to do my homework, make dinner, keep things clean, do my research, work, hang out with Melyssa and the boys.” My eyes burst, but I’m not sad, I’m furious, at everyone, including myself and Melyssa and Pete.
“Keep your voice down, young lady,” says Dad.
“You’re not applying,” says Mom. “Your sister needs you. And it’s ridiculous.”
“Do you think you can beat Erik?” says Dad.
“She isn’t applying!” says Mom. “Two months on a boat in the middle of nowhere with complete strangers? Has everyone lost their minds? This isn’t even about that. It’s about Melyssa’s life, and the baby’s.”
Carson walks in the room rubbing his eyes. He looks at me happily. “If Mom’s yelling at Dad, does that mean we can turn the sound back up on the TV?”
We all three yell, “No!”
Carson runs out of the room.
“So what is it going to be?” says Mom. “Your vacation or your sister?”
“Oh, Marci, don’t exaggerate,” says Dad. “We can find someone to do it.”
“And just who would that be?” says Mom.
Who would it be?
The question wraps around me. My parents both work themselves to death as it is, and neither one exactly calms Melyssa down. Someone has to pick up the kids from school. Someone older than eleven has to be around between four and five-thirty. And a paid nurse? Forget it. Too much money and too many Morgans. I hate Mom for sounding that siren inside of me, but once I hear it I can’t pretend I don’t. Sometimes you just need someone calm to calm you down. Someone you trust. And that can make all the difference.
Later that night, I peek into Melyssa’s bedroom. She’s hunched up in a ball snoring from a cold. I think of the birds and the turtles and the sun. I think of what it would be like, for the first time in my life, to be on a crew that isn’t a cleaning crew. To study something interesting and real, and hang out with people who are from all over the world. I would finally have something that belongs to me, a future. And win or lose, competing in this contest is a victory for me, against Erik, against Doormat Barbie. Then I think about Melyssa. How she lent me her car and her laptop, dared me to apply, and made me mad enough to follow through. In her own seriously irritating way, she has helped me through this breakup with Erik like no one else could. And she’s my sister.
I have a choice.
I choose her.
35
Winged:
When a bird’s been shot but doesn’t drop dead.
“You can’t quit,” says Pete. “We’re heading into our busy season.”
“Bobbie said she can hire someone else.”
My conversation with Bobbie was cut short by her having to go outside and yell at some unruly boaters. But she said she understood about family coming first.
“She lied. We can’t replace you.”
“Thanks, Pete.” I keep my distance.
“Is this because I kissed you?” he whispers.
I can’t look at him. “That’s not why.”
“Follow me,” he says. He walks out to the picnic tables. Even with the muted sound of Bobbie chewing out the boaters on slip four, it’s beyond beautiful today. The lake is glistening with the light of spring. The wind jostles the masts of the docked boats expectantly. The group being yelled at is just another sign of spring. It won’t be long before summer is here and all the owners of all these boats are crawling over them and taking them back out to open water. Pete has just mowed the lawn around the office and I can smell it everywhere. Inside the office everything is clean and in its place. Outside everything seems blue and white and possible. But it isn’t.
Pete hops up on one of the tables and shakes his head. “Why are you doing this?”
“My sister needs my help.”
“Can’t anyone else help her but you?”
“Not this time.”
“Exactly. This time. The time when you need to make money so you can leave and stop being everyone’s maid.”
“You like me being your maid I’ve noticed.”
He doesn’t laugh. “I don’t want you to be anyone’s maid, especially not mine.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Anyway, this should make the judging easier, though.”
“You’re still going to apply, right?”
“I don’t have all the money.”
“Apply anyway. You can make it up if you win.”
“But that wouldn’t be fair to Dawn and other people who dropped out because they couldn’t get the money.”
“Who cares? I thought you were developing your self-preservation instincts.”
“I guess it just depends on what I want to preserve about myself.”
Pete shakes his head. “I can’t figure out if you think you’re better than everyone else or worse.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about being part of a family.”
He jumps off the table. “Like hell it is,” he says. “You’re chickening out. It isn’t even about the trip. You just can’t stand the thought that you might be happy. It would throw off the whole save-the-world thing you’ve got going.”
I wouldn’t expect Pete to understand. He cracks jokes and drives a car without windows and doesn’t worry about anybody. That’s fine with me. “So I guess I’ll see you around then.”
Pete turns away. He’s watching Bobbie and the boaters. From the looks of it, the guys are giving her some grief. My last shift is over and we both have to go. He turns back to me.
“You’ll see me at six o’clock sharp next Saturday, thank you very much.”
“For what?”
“I believe we have a date. For your birthday. Is seven better?”
“You still want to go to the dance, even though I’m quitting?”
He says, “You think you have the corner on the martyr market?”
“I’m not a martyr.”
“Yes, you are,” says Pete. “And you’re about to be an eighteen-year-old, pretty martyr, which is the very worst kind. Look what happened to Joan of Arc. Not good.”
“At least she died famous.”
“Famous for being dead is still dead.”
“That’s not what she was famous for.” I do a fast-forward, imagining Pete showing up at my senior dinner dance with a beard and his harbor master clothes. I put my hands together in a Joan position. “See you at seven.”
36
Rehabber:
A person who is supposed to know what to do with messed-up birds.
I’ve threatened the kids with broccoli for dinner if they’re late for me to pick them up at the curb from school. Actually, Carson likes broccoli. But there’s no more lollygagging. We are all on a schedule now. Four days down, twenty-six to go.
When I get home, I immediately go hang out with Mel and tell her about my day while she lies there on her side like a pinned animal. I brought her some books from the library about pregnancy. But she can’t really read because it’s hard to hold a book in that position. So I’ve read some to her and then read a lot more to myself. Turns out preeclampsia is kind of interesting.
One day I paint her toenails green. One day we search her laptop for pictures of fat celebrities and she actually laughs for about ten seconds.
A lot of the time we just sit in the same room. I know she’s mad I’m not applying for the scholarship, but we don’t talk about it. Usually by the time Mom leaves, Melyssa goes back to merciful sleep and I start dinner.
Today when I come in she’s watching a soap. Her hair is matted to her head in a lovely roadkill updo. Her skin is ashy and swollen. The room smells like cheese puffs and apple juice. She ignores me. I override my urge to power wash the room and instead sit down next to Melyssa and her idiot box. A makeup-caked bimbo is about to get her clothes torn off by a guy who could be her father. I watch the woman throw herself at the rich old creep. What is it with women and older men? Such a cliché.
“Those shows will kill your brain cells,” I say.
“So will being a mom,” she says.
“Exactly. You might want to hold on to a few IQ points.”
She puts another wad of cheese puffs in her mouth.
I stand up and start cleaning. I can tolerate the stench of junk food but not her self-pity.
Mom has made up another bed in the room so she can sleep next to Melyssa during the time I’m at school. Which I think is hilarious, because Mom sleeps so hard after she’s been working all night that Mel would have to fall on her to wake her up. Beside Mom’s folded blankets there are home improvement magazines. And a basket of unpaired socks. I can’t get away from those lonely socks.
“Sorry, I’m a grouch,” says Melyssa. “Crappy day.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” She wriggles her feet up onto her pillow at the base of the bed.
“You talk to Zeke lately?”
“Zeke who?” she says. “He’s probably out writing some deeply pathetic poetry about how dark his life is. Either that or out getting drunk.”
“Since when is Zeke a drunk? Isn’t he in school?”
“I don’t know where he is.” Melyssa gets up on her elbows with a heavy sigh and turns off the TV. “I called his phone yesterday and the number was disconnected. So I called the house and the shrew who runs the place said he’d moved out. No forwarding address. Too bad, that was a great house.”
“You have no idea where he is?”
“I did suggest he go to hell. I guess he could be there.”
“I’m serious. He’s your baby’s dad. What if something ...”
“He’s
not
a dad. He’s a self-absorbed sperm donor. Like this is going to ruin his shot at writing the great American novel or something. I hope I never see him again.”
I look at Melyssa’s puffy face. Her shadowed eyes flutter around the room, taking inventory. I don’t know what she sees, but I’m guessing it’s four walls and nothing she wants.
“And you are a worse liar than I am,” I say.
“I’m not lying. He’s gone.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t care.”
“Fabulous. What good does caring do?” says Melyssa.
I stack Mom’s magazines. One of them is open to an article called “The Sunshine Nursery.” Everything in the nursery is brilliant yellow with bows made of sparkling material. It’s a room you could go blind in.
“No good at all,” I say. “But maybe that’s all you’ve got.”
I hang up Melyssa’s clothes and she turns the TV back on.
I keep thinking about what Ms. Miller said about people getting tired and not giving up on myself even when everyone else does. And how Pete made fun of me for being a martyr. I stare into the basket of lonely socks. I have to ask myself, am I not applying so I can help Melyssa, or so I can avoid losing?
The next night at bedtime I get the boys around. I have a hole the size of a bowling ball in my guts about dropping out of the competition. The application was all I had been thinking about—well, almost all I’d been thinking about—for so many weeks I didn’t even realize how much it had been keeping me from seeing all the other stuff in my life. I need to get away.
“Where were we when last we left our pirates?”
“They just brought the girl back on the ship after tossing her for being a witch,” says Carson.
“Right you are, mate. The island of Isabela lay before them, her vast volcanoes, five fire-belching mountains, rising into the sky. The island was inhabited by hosts of mythic creatures like giant tortoises with saddle backs and fist-sized birds the color of a flame, red crabs with bright blue eyes, and tiny dragons that swim. Around the island’s rim, lurking in watery caves, lived one of the strangest creatures of all: the flightless cormorant.”