Authors: Jolene Perry
This whole adventure—sailboat, small town, Seattle grayness
...
this isn’t me.
When Mom and I travel, it’
s for a purpose. She’s al
ways there on assignment. T
o tell the story of a group of people who are generally a lot less fortunate than us. This is almost living one of those crazy situations by
choice
.
Almost.
Dad
flashes an electronic card to unlock
a
metal
security doo
r,
and
we walk down a long
ramp
onto dock B. The boats here all look the same. Small, mostly white, and unimpressive.
I know I sound like a snob
, but I don’t mean to.
I’m sure for whoever owns them, they’re great.
“Here we are,” he says again.
I’m standing behind a sail
boat with the name Writer Waves
.
Dad’s an author. Kind of. He writes
thre
e-d
ollar
A
mazon detective books. Not at all the kind of writing I
want to
do. He seems to crank them out pretty fast, but he can’t make much money. He lives on a
boat
.
I step on behind him, and climb the few steps onto the back deck.
The small
ovals up the sides
I thought were
decoration
are actually the windows.
T
his will be
like living in
an underground hut. O
nly we’
re on the water, or well,
in
the water
since we
have to go d
own into the boat
.
The rain is dripping from my hair to my face as I follow Dad through a fo
lding wooden door and down four
steep steps into the
main
living area
.
So, there’s more room in here than I would have guessed after standing outside. The walls and floor are wood. The kitchen is a corner of the living area, and
there’s a separate mini living room and kitchen table.
A
large metal post
breaks up the space
.
“What’s with this?
” I nudge it with my hand.
“The mast,” Dad says, “for the sails.”
“Right.” Now I feel stupid. E
ven I should have been able to figure that out.
“My room’s in the stern and you can take the stateroom in the bow.” He points ahead and I follow.
Dad has this relaxed swinging walk, even in the confines of the narrow hallway.
“Stateroom?” I ask. The thought is hysterical. This whole boat isn’t big enough to qualify for my version of a stateroom.
“It’s what you call a bedroom on a boat,” he explains.
“Oh.” Whatever. Like I’ll be here long enough to care.
Three
months
.
My stomach sinks
further
.
And I’m sounding like a complete
asshole, even to myself, but I am
stuck
here.
“A kitchen is a galley, and the bathroom is the head.”
“The head.” I hold in my smile because that brings a whole different picture to mind than a bathroom.
Maybe I’ll find some time to give Hélèna a call
. She
and her mom travel
a lot
.
I never know where they’ll end up.
Coming to
Seattle is a long
shot, but a definite possibility.
“I’ll leave you to get settled.” Dad stuffs his hands into his pockets as I step into a room that definitely does not qualify for a stateroom.
There’s a
very narrow
walkway on two
side
s
of the bed
, a
few small doors I’m hoping that are fo
r storage, and my very own
tiny “head.”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
This isn’t living. This is camping. Mom and I have slept in tents and huts, but it’s always been for like a week. In a third-world country.
Again, w
here they don’t have a
choice
.
Dad stands in my doorway as I lean against the bed, cause that’s all there’s room for. I’m sure one of us should say something, but I have no idea what that would be.
His
eyes dart around before giving me a final small smile and
back
ing
out of the room
. I don’t have to step away from the bed to push the door closed.
Mom can’t have any idea of what this is actually like. Can’t. He wasn’t
on a sailboat last time I
saw him when we both
came. It was a
motor yacht
. A small one, but still. At least we could see
out
. I
have two tiny oval windows on either side of the small space and a square skylight that looks like it opens. Suddenly it’s hard to breathe. I toss my bags on the bed, stifling the urge to throw them against the walls. What if it’s an old boat and I break it or something?
I’ve never been claustrophobic before. I’ve flown in tiny planes, and gone spelunking, but this…
living
in this…
I need air.
I spin around, open my door and head the fifteen steps it take
s
to go from one side of the boat to the other.
“Where you
off to
?” Dad asks.
“Saw a coffee place.
I’ll be right back.”
Mostly I
need out of here and away from
the awkwardness of
yo
u.
This
probably makes me a bad son, and at some point I might be able to relax into this bizarre world, but not now. Not yet.
“You need money or anything?”
he looks up the hole I
stepped out of to leave the boat.
“I got it.” I
push on the wooden door, but there are hinges in the middle, and I
have no idea how to close
the thing
.
I jerk on it twice before he pulls it shut from the inside
.
It’s raining even harder now. Perfect. I probably should have gotten my
rain
coat
instead of my wool one
. It takes me five minut
es to get to the coffee shop, which is
halfway across this dumpy little town
, and the wetness is already seeping in
.
I order a cappuccino
in
a
place with warm wooden walls, a real fireplace
,
and huge wingback chairs. Then I
head back out into the rain. Making nice with locals isn’t high on my list right now.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
MOM: DON’T POUT. I FLEW COMMERCIAL, TOO. AND WILL BE SLEEPING IN A TENT. LOVE YOU, SON.
I smile. Mom doesn’t shorten
anything, even while texting. I write her back.
LV U 2. TLK SOON.
It feels a little better—
just those few word
s. With what she’s doing, I
can’t complain the way I want to. Also, it’ll go back to her whole spoiled argument.
I wonder how well we’ll be able to communicate when she gets there, though it’ll probably take her days to get set up where she’s going. The thought makes me nauseous. I’ve been to Africa just enough to know that it’s not somewhere I ever want to spend any
real
amount of time.
I stand
at the
gated
door to get
down to
the boats, and I don’t have one of those card thingies like Dad does. I really should have thought of that
before leaving
.
At least this time I’ll be more prepared for the room and small spaces in his boat. As much as I don’t want to be here, I also don’t want to come off as a jerk.
“Need in?” A woman’s voice from behind me.
I turn.
“Yeah. That’d be great. Sorry, I just got here.”
“Oh, I
’m Lynn. You must be Harris
’s boy.”
She’s probably Dad’s age. S
ome grey mixes with her blond and her large pale blue eyes peer out from underneath an impressively yellow raincoat.
“I’m Antony.” I reach my hand out
and shak
e hers. S
he
has strong hands for a woman, and
I’m kind of impressed
.
“Well, Antony. It’s nice to finall
y meet you. I’m in the boat five
slots down.”
Her smile
is warm, but the words are
so weird
, rolling
off her tongue like everyone lives on boats.
“Okay.”
She pulls open the door, a
nd I hold it for her to walk through.
“Thanks.” She smiles over her shoulder as she jogs down the long metal ramp to the docks.
I swear the
thing is steeper now than it was when I got here. Oh. Stupid. Tides. The ramp moves with the tides.
I ta
ke a long sip of my cappuccino. I
t’s the first thing I’ve been grateful for since I got here. The place makes good coffee.
I’m not
ready to make nice with Dad yet.
I’ll need the rest of this cup first.
Instead of going inside the boat, I
step out onto the long bow. This part is covered with the metal roof, still banging with the sound of the rain.
The
bow
of Dad’s boat sticks out quite a bit further than the rest. I wonder how
many people live on boats
smaller
than his
?
It’s nearly inconceivable.
Though most of the people who have boats here probably don’t live on them.
The dread that was creeping when Mom fir
st told me a week
ago
is now in
full force, spreading through me in something that feels half horrible, and half like disbelief.
I sit and pull my knees up, clutching my coffee with both hands.
Damp cold is the worst kind of cold
,
and it’s quickly making its way
through
to my skin.
The metal ramp clanks with the sound of someone else out in this crap weather. I glance ove
r. Wow. Legs. A
girl in tiny
running
shorts
with lean, tan
,
legs
,
is walking down.
She
pushes the hood back on her
coat
as she steps under
the
roof covering the boats
.
Our eyes catch, and holy shit does she have perfect blue eyes. They’re blue like Hawaii ocean blue.
Like bl
ue shards of scattered glass—t
here’s unreal depth.
I can tell even from here. One, two, three, four,
five
boats down.
I look
down
take another drink. Right.
Of course.
She’ll be the daughter of Lynn, the nice lady who
lives
five boats down. Wonder if she likes it, or if she’s stuck like me?
Thi
s
will
be the longest three
months of my life.
Three
“Your mom’
s really off to Darfur then?” Dad
asks.
Wow, this is a great way t
o start my morning. I’m
sick to my stomach over the whole thing. I did a bunch of research after she told me where she was headed. She’s
traveling
with two bodyguards and a film crew of three guys. When she’s reporting like this, she pretties herself down, but I’m still nervous about it.
“Yep,” I answer. “
They want to do a long series.
Guess you knew before I did.”
A fact that still doesn’t feel right.
Dad stands over
the stovetop,
scrambling eggs
for breakfast
. “
She called and said it was a possibility. I’ve been…” his eyes are fixed on the eggs in front of him. “I’ve been
wanting to see you, you know. It’s just… I know
our lives are pretty different.
”