Mistwalker (19 page)

Now, it’s true I can’t die. My body’s not a real thing, but it plays the part beautifully. My imaginary whiskers grow. My wisplike hair falls in my eyes. An empty expanse imitates hunger. This insubstantial brain roils and sometimes has nightmares. The heart beats. It’s disconnected to me, but I think I feel it all the same.

So I sit up and try to see Willa’s room anew. She’s here, in the whites and blues and greens. The water, the photos. But I come back to the witch balls. They quiver in the window, put in motion by an ever-shifting earth. The vibrations break the light that shines through the glass. Rays flicker along the walls, dazzling and dancing. When sunlight plays the waves, it looks much the same.

That’s the answer, I decide. It’s not that she bears some secret well of magic. I remain her irritating exception.

Satisfied I’ve unlocked her, I slide to my feet. No, there’s no secret magic in her at all. It’s only another taste of the ocean for her. She loves it so much, she brings it inside. She longs to live on it.

Perhaps that’s the whole of Willa. It could be that she’s not so complicated after all.

But as I descend to my kitchen and my newest music box, I’m bothered. It feels like someone is pressing a finger behind my ear. It doesn’t hurt. It just lingers, coming from nothing, going nowhere. It makes me uneasy.

The brass bones of my oldest music box gleam in the light. I wished for a song to make sense of her, and this is what came with my breakfast. A clockwork I built a century ago, my very first. The parts hum when I touch them. Somehow, despite the hundreds I have, no matter the tedious hours I’ve spent building them, this one excites me.

Carefully, I pick up the movement and turn its key. The tinny pluck of each spike sounds on my skin. My body sings along; it mourns with the ballad. The lyrics are ghosts on a thin sheet of paper. They can float away; I already know this one. It’s the song my father’s piper played. An old tune; ancient even when I was alive.

My love said to me, “My mother won’t mind

And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kine.”

Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say,

“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”

The finger presses a little harder behind my ear. It means something. I’ll learn something. Sinking to my seat, I twist the key and play the movement again.

SEVENTEEN

A car was a lousy place to have an argument. Well, maybe it was a good place for my parents. It sucked for me. The minute the driver’s-side door closed, Daddy started. “What was that, Willa?”

“Leave her alone.” Mom snapped her seat belt and pointed at the road.
Just go,
that gesture said.
Drive this car before I drive it for you.

Dad stomped on the brake and threw it into gear. Then he backed out slow as molasses, because that’s the way he always drove in town. Squealing tires and burned rubber would have been more dramatic. But you couldn’t find somebody less dramatic than Daddy, really.

As he crept onto the highway, he looked at me in the rearview mirror. As if Mom hadn’t just warned him off, he raised his brows expectantly. “Well?”

“You weren’t there when the prosecutor came,” I said.

My mother whipped her head around. “You did what you were told, so don’t you worry about it.”

I would have replied, but Daddy said, “What?”

“This isn’t the only trial we’ve got to worry about.” Ice slipped into my mother’s voice. Not the polished, cutting kind. It was immovable frost instead. An iceberg. “She’ll get her license back in a couple of years.”

“Three,” he said.

“Some things are more important than fishing.”

Dad waited until he got up to speed before he exploded. “And what are we supposed to do for three years? I need Willa working the rail!”

A weight fell on me, but not on my shoulders. My sternum. It felt like my breastbone cracked, split like a Sunday chicken. He said that, and he meant it. It wasn’t idle or angry. It was desperate. I didn’t understand how this could be the same man who’d ordered me off the
Jenn-a-Lo.
And not just once.

Grabbing the back of my father’s seat, I leaned forward to say something. To explain. But Mom put her hand up. It wasn’t much of a screen, but it was enough to cut me off.

“We’ll find the money somewhere. It’s three years, not the end of the world.”

“Like we found it this summer?”

Voice breaking, Mom strained against her seat belt. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

“No thanks to you
or
me!”

Trapped in the back seat, listening to them get hoarse and ugly—I wanted to drip through the floorboards. The wheels wouldn’t even thump over me if I was oil that melted into the asphalt.

Everything had changed and nothing had. I still wasn’t the next in an unbroken line of Dixons fishing this shore. I still couldn’t go out on the water. I was still the reason Levi was dead, only now I had a stupid, useless hope that I could pay penance for that.

“Will you just shut up and listen?” my mother yelled. Again. “Look at the bigger picture!”

“Here’s a bigger picture! We’re losing the boat. We’re losing the business! Good thing the truck’s paid off. We can back it into the kitchen and cook on the engine block when they cut off the power!”

Dad was used to keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes in front of us, no matter what storm came. So he could scream at my mother and burn down Route 1 at eighty without blinking.

I pressed myself against the door. Through the window, the world flashed. Autumn leaves blurred in long red-gold streaks, broken up by green, intruding pines. The flicker back and forth made my stomach turn. My fingers on the handle threatened to tighten.

It had been news to Dad that I was pleading guilty. It was news to me that he expected me back on the stern. And suddenly I was angry. There they were, yelling about me like I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t remember the last time any of us had talked. About anything.

Not that I could imagine sitting down and having a
chat
with my dad. He wasn’t that man. And to be fair, I wasn’t that girl. We liked silent agreement. And if we couldn’t manage to agree, just plain silence was good too. Mom and Levi had talked. They had the same eyes and the same temperament.

It worked, we all worked, and now we didn’t. None of the pieces fit, none of the edges matched up. Mom and Dad fought away in the front seat. I pressed myself harder into the glass.

When we rolled into Broken Tooth, I saw Seth’s truck at the bait shop. Since he wasn’t at the shore, maybe the Archambaults had gotten lucky and their boat had been spared too. Seth’s dad sometimes ran overnight charters—to Boston, occasionally up to Halifax.

“Stop,” I said. “I want to talk to Seth. I can walk home.”

Mom frowned. “I don’t think you . . .”

“Let me out!” I didn’t mean to scream, but I did. It was a raw, ugly sound. I thought my throat might bleed, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m done listening to this! I’m just done. Let me out!”

“You need to calm down right now,” Mom shouted back.

Dad, though, he pulled up to the corner. Hitting the universal lock, he unlatched all four doors at once. I pushed mine open so hard, it bounced back and hit me, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t breathe, but I was
out,
into the sun and the quiet. I didn’t know who I was, but I remembered who I used to be.

So would Seth.

“I feel bad,” Seth said. “We should be down there helping.”

We sat on the tailgate of his truck, at the farthest end of Stickels Cove Road. Pines closed around us, shielding us from the cool wind that came in with sunset. From our cliff perch, we watched Broken Tooth cleaning up after the storm.

Wounded boats rolled out of the water on flatbed trailers. A few had been righted and found seaworthy. Piles of broken wood and garbage rose at either end of the wharf. The
Jenn-a-Lo
bobbed at her slip, unharmed.

Peeling the label off my Moxie bottle, I nodded. Instead of untangling that rat’s nest of loose traps down there, I drank bitter soda with my ex-boyfriend. I put my drink aside and leaned forward. It was a long way down to the water; it made me dizzy to look over the side.

“I know. Why aren’t we?” I asked.

“Because we suck.”

The light falling on us was blazing sunset, and he blazed with it. I remembered when he lost his front teeth, and the big old Chiclets that grew in the gaps. How his pug nose was too wide and too blunt in middle school. Time had stretched him out. He grew into the teeth and the nose, and an old ember warmed me. I remembered why we’d had plans.

“Don’t we, though?” I said.

Seth finished his bottle and tossed it into the bin by his cab. Then he lay back in shadow to stare at the sky. “They took your license, huh?”

“Sure did.”

“Wish they’d take mine,” he said.

Another revelation on a day full of them. Twisting to face him, I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

He plucked the sleeve of my dress, familiar, bothering. He kept doing it, until I finally stretched out beside him. Even through his jacket, I felt his heat. For the first time in a long time, I noticed the scent of his skin.

Bumping my knuckles against his, I asked, “What happened to running charters?”

“I’m sick of doing the same thing over and over.”

I smiled faintly. “And the choir says amen.”

“I’m serious, though, Willa.” He furrowed his brow, idly hooking his finger in mine. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m just tired.”

“I thought everything was perfect. It wasn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t bad. That ain’t the same thing as perfect.”

There was a reason Levi had always written their song lyrics. Still, the sentiment was right. It was there. Sometimes we traded who was trying too hard and who cared too much. Half the time, we overthought it, acting grown and married and forgetting to just be. To have fun. To be in love.

Winding my fingers in his, I looked over. The sun had shifted. A crimson streak of light banded his forehead. He looked ancient, and beautiful. Swallowing hard, I bumped against him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Did you buy me a ring?”

Seth was quiet a long time. He seemed thoughtful, not afraid to answer the question. More like he wanted to get it right. Tightening his fingers in mine, he finally murmured, “Yeah, but I took it back.”

“Well, I didn’t think you—”

“The day after I bought it. Before we, before this . . .”

And yes, that stung. But at the same time, it let me breathe. Nothing had been wrong with us; a lot of things had been right. Comfortable. We were the same shortcut to the same secret place in the woods. Nothing new to discover, and we hadn’t even tried. Seth had realized it too. Maybe even realized it first.

“You should go to New York,” I said. It wasn’t comfortable, but I rolled onto my side. Propping my head in one hand, I dropped the other on his chest. “Make music. You used to talk about it.”

“The band’s gone,” Seth said.

“A lot of things are gone. Apparently we’re supposed to keep on living. That’s what everybody’s telling me.”

“We miss him too, you know.”

“I’m not talking about Levi tonight.” I meant it. It felt a little wrong to say so. To deliberately put him in a box and put him away, but I hadn’t lied. I
was
tired. Shifting to lay my head on Seth’s shoulder, I pressed one finger after another into his chest. “I want you to be happy. I also wanna know what you and my dad got into it about.”

With a snort, Seth sighed. “Don’t you know? I’m a damned fool for breaking your heart.”

I went hot all over. “I’m sorry; I didn’t put him up to it.”

“Didn’t think you did,” Seth said. “Everybody’s worried, though. Where have you been lately?”

“Court. Hell. Jackson’s Rock,” I said.

“Bull,” he replied.

“You’d think. It’s true, though.” I raised my head, peering at the Rock in the distance. Grey was in there somewhere, if he was real at all. Despite everything, it was still easy to disbelieve him when I was on the mainland. “I sailed right up to
the back door.”

“You can’t. All those endangered birds.” Seth raised a hand to rub his temple. Distracted, his blue eyes went blank a moment. Then he said, “I’m taking Kayla to the formal.”

That was his cousin, and that fact came out of nowhere. I watched his face curiously. “Not Denny?”

Slowly pushing himself up, Seth shook his head. “No. It wasn’t anything. I told you that.”

“No point in wasting the tickets, I guess.” I shrugged. “I’ll probably go to the lighthouse just to get out of town.”

“Nobody goes there. It’s automatic.” Seth grimaced, pressing two fingers to his temple. Then he blanked and veered again. “It was a good thing Dad was down at Peak’s Island last night. He says it was smooth water and clear skies thataways.”

A shiver ran through me. My gaze strayed toward Jackson’s Rock. The lighthouse was nothing but a shadow on a darkening horizon. The timer hadn’t gone off yet; the beacon was still. Nudging Seth, I slid to the end of the tailgate. Then, carefully, I said, “Come with me, I’ll show you the island.”

This time, Seth groaned. He didn’t follow me to his feet. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no blankness, but some of his color drained away. He looked like death. “My head’s killing me. Mom’s probably holding dinner for me too.”

“Seth,” I said. I stepped in front of him, touching his chin. For a moment, I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to climb into his arms and under his clothes. He was the shortcut I knew, to a place I’d already been, but sometimes that was a good thing. Instead I glanced over my shoulder. “Let’s go to Jackson’s Rock.”

“I could go to Seattle. I still want to be close to the water, you know? I could take my guitar and sit on the corner and play for change.”