Revel (2 page)

I shifted on the hard bench. The ferry had become a distant white spot on the water. Suddenly it was gone, seeming to vanish in an instant.

A long time ago I bet someone stood on the shore and watched someone they loved sail away. That was the person
who came up with the idea of the earth being flat. Because that’s exactly what it looked like to me, as if the boat just fell off the edge of the world.

Maybe I should give up and go back to Kansas. Then I wouldn’t even have to get near a boat, never mind
in
one.

Water wasn’t exactly my element. I could make do just fine with fire, air and earth. Not that I was terrified of it or anything. That had been Mom’s thing; she wouldn’t go near open water. In fact, I could swim reasonably well. As long as the pool was heated, I had a sturdy flotation device, and I could stand up every few feet.

No, I decided. This was too important. I picked up my backpack and clutched it close to my chest. A measly little thing like the Atlantic wasn’t going to keep me from what I’d started to do. I stared out across the water. The islands in view from the dock had names like Peaks, Little Diamond and Cushing and must be only short ferry rides from Portland. Judging by that old map, Trespass Island was much farther away.

And once I got there—what then? If the past few months had taught me anything, it was that I needed to change if I wanted to make a new life here. To fit in, to be more … unobtrusive, that was the word for it.

I’d been with three different foster families in the six months since my mother died. The last time I’d seen Mrs. Russell, my caseworker from Social Services, she’d seemed to imply that this was somehow
my
fault.

“Delia, I’m here to help you,” Mrs. Russell began, folding her plump hands on top of her desk blotter.

From her careful tone and patient smile, I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

“Why didn’t you call me to discuss the situation with Linda Derosier?”

“I told you. Linda was smoking. In the car. With a baby in the backseat.”

“So you called Child Protective Services.” Mrs. Russell frowned and checked her notes. “From a Mobil station.”

“Are you saying I should have ignored it?”

Mrs. Russell took a deep breath that looked like part of some Eastern meditative exercise. “No. Not at all. I’m saying you could have handled it differently. You could have talked to me, for instance.” She frowned, reading my file. “Oh, you’ve got asthma, don’t you?”

“That’s
not
why I called,” I said in a low voice. “I can open a window. A baby can’t.”

Mrs. Russell closed the folder and rubbed her temple. She must have had another of her headaches. I had that effect on her. “Linda says she doesn’t think she can handle you. You’re a kind-hearted person, Delia, and it’s good to be outspoken.” She paused. “To a degree. But she doesn’t think you’re a good fit.”

Not a good fit. It was a phrase I’d heard before, and it
made me feel like a pair of grungy hand-me-down shoes. The thing is, nobody ever tells you how to
be
a good fit. They just tell you when you’re not one. I clasped my hands tight in my lap and smiled. “That’s okay with me. I can take care of myself. There’s the money Mom left. I could get a job and—”

“Delia,” Mrs. Russell said. “The fact is, until you turn eighteen, the State of Kansas is responsible for your safety.”

“But not from secondhand smoke, apparently.”

Mrs. Russell pressed her lips together in a very thin smile that said
I don’t get paid enough for this
. “I’ll need to make some calls to find another placement for you. It may not be local. But we’ll do our best to try to keep you in your current school until the end of the year. It’s a shame,” she added, “that there isn’t some family member you could go to.”

“Actually,” I’d told her, “there is.”

The hard seat of the bench was getting uncomfortable, and I shifted position.

While I was stuck here, I decided to call Mrs. Russell. Weekly check-ins were part of the conditions for me being allowed to come to the island for the summer.

I got her voice mail and left a message, telling Mrs. Russell that I’d arrived in Portland safe and sound and was on my way to my grandmother’s house.

“Excuse me, miss? You was asking about Trespass. That right?”

Startled, I looked up. A figure stood a few feet away, outlined against bright sun. I lifted a hand to shade my eyes and an elderly man came into focus. His upper back was bent into a stoop, and suspenders held up work pants over his concave chest. Beneath a faded Boston Red Sox cap, the man’s face was old. The kind of old when wrinkles get so deep they begin to look like actual features—sideways mouths or squinted extra eyes.

“Uh, yes.” I straightened up. “Trespass Island. That’s where I’m going.”

“What’s that? Speak up, girlie.”

“Yes,” I said, and nodded for emphasis.

“Huh,” grunted the old man. “Pretty young to be traveling all by yourself, ain’t you?”

I glanced down at my jeans and my purple Converse All Stars. And my Snoopy and Woodstock tee, which probably made me look more like twelve than seventeen. “I’m older than I look.”

“Me too.” He grinned at me, wrinkles making accordion pleats on his face.

Honestly, I didn’t see how
that
was possible.

“Beggin’ pardon, but I was told you’ve got family on Trespass.” He took off his cap, revealing bristly white hair on a spotted scalp. “Who are your people?”

He watched me expectantly, his baseball cap folded between
his hands.
My people?
The expression seemed sort of old-fashioned. And sweet.

“My grandmother lives there. Marianne McGovern.”

“Who?”

“Marianne McGovern!” I shouted.

“Pipe down!” snapped the old man, waving his knobby sticklike arms. “Want the whole Eastern Seaboard to know your beeswax?”

I glanced around the nearly empty dock. There didn’t seem to be anyone nearby who’d have a consuming interest in my beeswax, but I shook my head.

The old man tottered closer, peering at me. “Then you’re Helen McGovern’s girl? Course I should have known it. Just look at you. You’re the spittin’ image of your ma. Like a little china doll.” He stuck out a hand. “The name’s Ben Deare. Pleased to meet you, miss.”

“Delia.” I smiled and shook his hand.
China doll
. I knew he meant it as a compliment, but the expression always bothered me. As if I had little rosy circles painted on my cheeks and those creepy, flip-open eyes. And maybe bloomers. But I
did
look a lot like my mom: petite build, blue eyes and blond hair that curled up like crazy in the damp.

My grip on the backpack tightened. “My mom died a few months ago.”

The old man’s shoulders slumped and he put a withered hand out and rested it on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. Real sorry, miss.”

So many people had said that to me that a quiet thank-you and change of topic had become smooth automatic responses; I didn’t really like people feeling sorry for me. It just reminded me of everything all over again. But something in Ben Deare’s face was different. My throat didn’t have that raw, closed-off feeling.

“You knew my mom?”

“Know her? Pshaw. When she was seven, I taught Helen McGovern how to tie a gill net so fine you could catch a fog in it. Taught her how to whistle too,” he said, grinning wide and gap-toothed.

His blue eyes narrowed on me appraisingly. “So. You want to go to Trespass.”

“I wanted to take a ferry but they said there wasn’t one.”

Ben Deare’s head bobbed. “That’s right. None of ’em can take you. It ain’t allowed.”

“But I paid that man,” I argued.

He shook his head. “He should have known better, the fool. Nope. You can’t go to Trespass.” But his blue eyes gleamed beneath scraggly eyebrows and flicked back and forth over my features. As if memorizing the details of my face, to recall later.

“You live there, don’t you?” I asked. “Why can’t you take me?”

When he didn’t answer, I cranked up the volume. “I
said
, why can’t you—”

“There ain’t no use in shouting at me!” he hollered. He
cast his eyes down, then fixed his cap firmly on his head. “Miss Delia, I’m awful sorry but you can’t go there.”

“Look,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Mr. Deare. I’m going to get out there and see my grandmother. “As I spoke, a desperate, stupid idea occurred to me, and I added, “I’ll buy my own boat if I have to and sail there.” I was so close; I wasn’t going to let rules or politeness keep me back now. Of course, I had no idea how to sail a boat or how much a boat cost, or even the slightest desire to get
into
a boat. But he didn’t know that.

“It’s a free country,” I said, raising my chin. Mrs. Cronus, my eighth-grade civics teacher, would have been proud of my basic grasp of the Constitution. “I can go where I want.”

“Well, that ain’t
exactly
true. Nope, not exactly.”

“Which part?”

“Ayuh.” The old man peered at me and let out a wheezy chuckle. “But I do like your gumption. Sound just like your mother too. You just don’t know what you’re asking.” He looked out at the water for a long moment, his flinty blue eyes roving back and forth. Trying to judge the weather, maybe, though the sky looked perfectly clear to me.

“You’ve a right to go and see your people, I suppose,” he said grudgingly. He reached into a sagging pocket. “But it’s not you or me that’ll have to decide. Here.”

His gnarled hand placed what looked like five white sticks into my palm.

“Throw the knuckles.”

“Excuse me?”

“When an important decision’s to be made, I strew them fingers,” he said with a solemn nod.

Fingers?
With horror I realized what I thought were sticks were actually pieces of bone with irregular, yellowed surfaces and knobby ends.

“Gah!” My hand shook and the bones dropped to the ground, clattering and bouncing before coming to a stop. The old man crouched to inspect them.

After a second he slapped a knee. “Clear enough,” he said. He scooped them up and returned them to a pocket, then straightened. Or as near to straight as he was able. “I’ll take you to Trespass. And you can call me Ben.”

With that he whirled off and strode down the dock, leaving me to grab my belongings and scramble after him. I caught words here and there as he muttered to himself:

“Miss Delia McGovern, harrumph. Spittin’ image. Buy a boat. Harrumph … Devil to pay … the hands.”

I couldn’t make any sense of it. And the resemblance to one of Popeye’s monologues was kind of scary.

We passed boat after boat tied to the dock: from fishing boats stacked with lobster traps to tall-masted sailboats whose glossy cabins were studded with electronic equipment and antennas. At the very end of the dock, the old man stopped. I stared down a rusty metal incline and felt my stomach contract. A dilapidated wooden sailboat floated below. Barely. Rope, plastic buckets and fishing poles littered the floor of
the boat. Peeling paint nearly obscured the name on the side:
Belores
. A frayed piece of rope was fastened to a barnacle-encrusted timber of the dock. The boat looked like a mangy dog left on the curb, tugging at its leash.

“We’re going in that?” I said, staring. “Isn’t it kind of … small?” He would probably take it as an insult if I used some of the other words that came immediately to mind:
filthy, leaky, death trap
, etc.

“Got to be small to get through the Hands,” replied Ben. He’d already hopped nimbly into the boat. When I didn’t nimbly follow, he said, “The reef around Trespass. We call it the Hundred Hands.” He squinted up. “You ain’t one of them queasy types, are you?”

“No. No, of course not. This is great.”

I inched down the wobbling ramp, the small suitcase bumping behind me, stepped in, teetered for a second and plopped down heavily. The orange life vest Ben handed me smelled musty, but I slipped it on and tied each of the three straps tight.

“Don’t you need one?” I asked.

“Nah. I just keep that one in case the Coast Guard wants to make a stink about their rules. Couldn’t drown if I wanted to.”

I must have given him an odd look. “I was born with a caul,” he explained as he fired a battered black motor to life. “A birth membrane over my head. It’s a good omen for a sailor—I’ll never die in the sea.”