The She (20 page)

I drove like that for two hours, hitting little more than four-foot swells. Pretty soon after we reached open sea, Mr. Church left me and sat at the stern, eating hoagies with Grey. They had started an ear-to-mouth conversation, which I hoped was about her and her Girl Scout. I felt like a pig, stealing all her time back on Sassafras, but she looked strangely not-angry, almost as if my own problems were some sort of sponge that sopped the problems out of her. I saw them laugh a couple of times.

I didn't eat my hoagie, and I felt glad after two hours on the water. I got this problem I figured I should have thought about before I left shore. I had seen the Dramamine Mr. Church had swiped at in the cabin when I mentioned Grey's problem. It was the old-fashioned kind that makes you want to crash out, and I thought about the little packet Emmett had thrown into his overnight bag with a chuckle. Emmett's was the newer stuff, the kind that lets you stay completely awake. It was there, and I was here, and every swell I had to face was suddenly turning my stomach to sludge.

About four-thirty in the afternoon, I shouted for Mr. Church and made a motion toward the cabin, because I also had to pee. He took the helm. I stared into the cabin head after I went, wondering how soon I would have to drop
to
my knees.

"When I came out, Grey was inside, sitting in the kitchen booth with her ski hat on the table beside her mittens. She was blowing on her fingertips.

I sat down across from her; taking off my own ski hat and pinching my earlobes.

"You seasick or anything?" I asked, hoping I might not be alone in my idiocy. She had shut the door to the outside, and you could barely hear the engines.

"
Moi?
" She gazed at me. "You've got to be kidding. The only way my parents could ever get me off a boat in the summer was with a set of fins and a scuba tank."

"Really? You dive?"

"Dived my first wreck when I was eleven. Yup." She nodded. "I've done two or three a season every year since."

I nodded, remembering you had to be ten before you could take the scuba course at the Ocean Life Center in West Hook. I'd left after school ended in June of fourth grade, the first year I would have been able to take it.

"Maybe you can teach me sometime," I said, swallowing green.

She watched me for a minute and cracked up. "You know, I'm famous around school for three things: my partying, my downhill skiing, and my scuba diving. You wouldn't know about that last thing, because at the very first party we both went to, people were whispering to me not to talk about the Hooks around you. They said your parents' ship sank with them on it, and you had been a Hook native. They said if you heard any terms associated with salt water; such as
diving,
it would not be a good thing. I was respectful of that."

"You're kidding." I watched her crack up, awkwardly pulling at her mouth over the way she worded it, maybe. I tried to ignore that part. "I had no clue people even thought about it. Not even the most out-of-hand drunk at the most out-of-hand party has ever mentioned my folks."

It freaked me out.

"You've got a lot of friends, Evan Barrett." She grinned. "I won't send this day into the gossip channels when I get back to school, I swear it. But I would love to see people's faces if they could have seen you driving this boat, like you'd just done it yesterday. Didn't you used to go around telling everyone that your grandfather's house made you seasick because of the windows?"

I looked out the little porthole at nothing but blue.

"
Dad! I'm really driving this whole boat!
"

"
You're really driving, little man.
"

"
All by myself!
"

"
All by yourself.
"

"
You swear? Mr. Lowenberg isn't up on the bridge helping me?
"

"
I swear on our ancestors.
"

I jerked my mind to the present and decided to take the high road with some humility instead of the low road about my driving prowess. "Yeah, it's true about Opa's house making me seasick. In fact, I'm very seasick right now. If I don't hurl, it's going to be a miracle."

That totally cracked her up, to where she was slumped over sideways, laughing into her sleeve. She sat up.

"You want some Dramamine?"

I suddenly had a clear recollection of my dad's opinion of Dramamine. A guy taking Dramamine to go to the canyon was like a guy wearing black socks with sneakers. We used to laugh quietly among the family on some fishing trips when he was off for a few days and taking some buyer out to catch marlin. Buyers were notoriously bad seamen, and Dad used to lecture me, "Now, don't laugh in Mr. So-and-So's face, but you can go tell him about the seaweed pie we eat in graphic detail, hee ha..."

"I think I'd rather ralph," I told her frankly.

She just shrugged. "Nothing I haven't seen you do before."

I flinched a little, thinking of a couple of parties I'd gone to as an underclassman where I'd paid a loud visit to the bushes, and I wondered which one she'd been at. I hadn't been thinking about the night she slipped me acid, because I hadn't hit the bush—at least not to my recollection.

I was wondering if maybe I should rethink those memories when she asked, "So, you still mad at me?"

I didn't answer her directly. "Well, you seem to be handling very diplomatically the fact that I stole your whole therapy session this morning. After you drove down from Philly for it, and I just walked across a bridge, having come down in a limo to eat turkey and lobster tails."

She waved her hand like it didn't matter but she didn't look entirely happy when she said, "I get to talk about my problems all day up at Saint Elizabeth's. That's all I do. Dwell on my problems. So today I get to dwell on your problems. I call that a nice break in the action."

I grinned in relief.

"I would like to have seen one of those hands-on thingamabobs that Mr. Church did to you last year. It would have put the icing on the cake." She ran her fingers through her hair and looked a little more serious. "Truthfully, I wouldn't mind him rapping on my head a 'little bit. If I could see the bottom of the deep right now ... if I could see a dead body down there ... it might at least keep me from seeing some huge sea hag chomping down on somebody I actually knew. What happens after she bites you in half? Are you dead or alive in that neat little hole under the canyon floor?"

"Grey."

"Sorry." She glanced toward my knees and then frontward again. "But I don't think I'm repeating any thoughts that you haven't already enjoyed for yourself. Especially right about now. You go over to see Mr. Church. He takes your brain apart, and then it's time to go look for the dead. What do you have now? First you thought it was a wave. Then you thought it was the Colombian mafia. Now? Based on what you see and hear from around the Hooks, you actually have more evidence that it's a witch than a wave that ate your mom and dad."

"Grey." I rubbed my eyes.

She pinched her face with her fingers to break her smile and rolled her eyes like she was sorry. "I'm actually overdue for a dose of Xanax. I can take it every four hours, and it's been"—she glanced at her Ripcurl watch—"six hours, and the sky hasn't fallen." She glanced across the ceiling. "I may actually be licking this panic disorder thing. If you can put up with my mouth."

"Uh, maybe it's not time yet to be such a hero," I said, trying not to roll my eyes.

"In other words, I'm driving you crazy."

I tried to find words that didn't totally bite. "You're about a twelve on the bluntness scale right now. I think I could handle you at your usual six or seven."

With that she grabbed for this little handbag she'd strung across herself under her jacket, tore open the zipper; and brought out a prescription bottle. She stared at it for a minute, then gripped it tightly in her dropped fist. "I've been talking with my therapist about how I've had terrible symptoms for years, actually. I would feel myself starting to ... croak, or spin out, or lose oxygen, whatever: And I could put off the inevitable by making some cutting remark. By, like, hurting somebody."

I watched her tap her knuckles on the table while gripping the bottle, kind of lost in thought. "Seriously. When I was around ten, I only used to do it when my feelings got hurt. I was really sensitive, I guess, and would level back at somebody who made me feel cut to shreds. I don't know how it got to be such a compulsion. The doctor says it doesn't matter; but—"

She shoved the bottle back in her bag. "I really don't want to. You don't know how much this means to me. Not being on anything.
Nothing.
Not alcohol, not sleeping pills, not nothing. I'll try harden If I say anything wicked, just kick me, okay?"

She looked deadly serious, and I had to smile. I admired her guts.

"And let's talk about your life, not mine. It's so much more interesting. Your intuition is very, very cool. I wasn't even scared coming out here today. Did I tell you my book calls this She-Devil Month? I don't know, I just thought if anything was going to happen, your gut wouldn't have brought you this far."

My parents and the Riley boat had disappeared in November I remembered. But I felt pretty safe today. "My brother says my intuition is mostly just picking up on fine details that others miss, and putting them together in a flash. I feel safe because ... she's a rare visitor to the surface, whoever or whatever she is. I didn't hear the noise a lot as a kid. Maybe four or five times at the most. I'd hear her and have this strange heaviness in my limbs." I shook my fingers out, trying not to remember how heavy I'd felt while running up the stairs for Emmett the night my parents disappeared. "But I haven't felt or heard a thing, and this time of year there're freighters whizzing through the canyon at all hours. Nothing happens to them. It's kind of like ... a very safe game of Russian roulette."

She watched me for a few moments. "So, then ... what are you expecting to find out there, Evan Barrett?"

"I don't know. I know it's just water ... very, very deep water. With probably a hundred wrecks at the bottom."

I don't know exactly what pushed my stomach buttons, either the thought of so much water or some of the things she'd just said in that Grey Shailey frank way. I excused myself to the little bathroom, slammed the door and got sick in the toilet. I splashed my face off afterward, but there were no paper towels in there so I came out with water dripping down my face.

"Feel better?" She cracked up, pounding her fist on the tabletop. Then she reached behind my head for something, and came around with a tissue between two fingers.

"Fine. Enjoy yourself." I snatched it, wiped my face, feeling better—empty is better than green. I watched her laugh. "Actually, Grey, you look good today. It must be that cold air working in your lungs. I would not at this moment peg you for the sick person I saw ... lord. Was it only two days ago?"

"
Salt
air working on my lungs. Being back on the water really helps me, I think. And I think there's something to this whole KHK concept Mrs. Ashaad dreamed up. It's like, you weren't only supposed to help me. I was supposed to help you somehow." She laughed. "I think Mrs. Ashaad meant that I was supposed to help your heart grow two sizes or something, which is not what I have in mind in the way of helping you."

"Putting up with me is great of you. I don't think there's much else you can do." It hadn't occurred to me that she was either getting something out of this or thinking of doing something to help me.

"Well, if nothing else, I brought flowers. When we get over the spot where you think your parents died, you'll get a rush out of throwing them. Two years ago I threw a stick out on a frozen lake for my dog to chase. He fell through the ice. I almost drowned trying to save him, but he never resurfaced." She got a far-off look, the first I'd seen on this boat that she might be spiraling into depression.

"That's horrible."

"Yeah, try watching your dog die when he's the only friend you have in your own house." She swallowed and went on almost too quickly. "At any rate, Mr. Maddox is the ultimate snooze teacher but he's nice outside of class. He dragged the story out of me, took me down there. We threw flowers out onto the ice, made a little memorial on the bank there. Just a stupid ritual that wouldn't bring Gonzo back. But it really helped, somehow ... I don't know how. It just did."

That explained the flowers. I figured it would be very hard to throw flowers out there, but my gut told me she was right. I just couldn't think about it too much, because she raised her eyes to mine with some determined look that resembled the hardness I was used to seeing.

"And there's a better thing I might be able to do. I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't get a bunch of my summer friends together to dive for the wreck. They're mostly older mosdy pros."

I picked up her fingers and squeezed them, deeply moved, actually. "Grey, that is really sweet, but—"

"But what? Tell me the challenges. I am a very stubborn person, and you need to prove something to your brother: And telling me the challenges just makes me more determined sometimes. And less bitchy. I can fight with the problems instead of with people." She pulled her hand away, and I cracked up. It wasn't hard to think of the problems with a dive. I'd actually been thinking about it while I was driving the boat.

"First off, I don't know the exact loran TDs of where they went down. They did give a Mayday, but they gave it over the ship-to-shore, so the Coast Guard wouldn't even have it."

"Why the ship-to-shore?"

"I heard it, and I'd say my mom was freaking, just wasn't thinking. Emmett says they did it intentionally—"

"So, the coordinates are stored in your memory only," she said quickly, like she didn't want to get sidetracked on Emmett.

"I actually have some vague memory now of writing them on something. The wall, maybe. But Opa sends a housekeeper over there every other week. I would imagine they've long been washed off."

"Could Mr. Church help your memory along a little bit?"