The Voice inside My Head (2 page)

Swedish chick shrugs.

“Good luck,” she says, scrambling over me to get out of her seat. I don’t know which one of us she’s talking to so I don’t answer.

“Live long and prosper,” says stoner guy, as she pushes past him. “Move over, dude,” he says to me. “Good thing I was here to bail you out.” He heaves a bulging pack off his back and settles into the narrow space I’ve just vacated. Swinging the pack onto his knees, he begins rifling through it, talking the whole time. “That girl was so not into you, man, and who needs that kind of action, right?” He belches loudly and Spanish lady clicks her tongue. “I almost missed this ferry. Three-day vacation on the mainland, like that’s a vacation. Where the heck …?” He stretches out the opening of his pack and stares into it. “Yes!” Grinning, he slides his hand deep into the bag and pulls out a beer, hands it to me and fishes out another. Uncapping it with his teeth, he trades it for the unopened one I’m holding and cracks that one, too.

“Are we allowed to drink on this boat?” I ask. Aside from the fact that it’s eight in the morning, I really can’t afford any trouble right now.

“This is Honduras, man.” He seems to think that answers my question. Maybe it does.

“So, who are you, anyway?” I try to sound casual, like I don’t notice his shirt’s on inside out and he smells like he hasn’t showered in days.

He gives a half-smile (perhaps he’s not as clueless as he seems) and chugs at least three-quarters of his beer in one go. Another time, this would impress me.

Okay, I’ll be honest, it does impress me.

“I’m Zach,” he says, his smile fading as he starts picking at the label of his beer. For a moment I think he’s going to say something more, but he just sighs, polishes off the dregs and starts rummaging in his bag again.

“Damn, I was sure I had one more in here.” He turns to me as if I might have an explanation, which I’m pretty sure I do. I hold up my beer.

“Ohhh,” he says slowly. “Gotcha.” He puts his bag on the floor and slumps back in his seat. “I’m supposed to stop drinking, anyway. The boss gave me a couple of days off to dry out. That’s why I went to the mainland. I figure if he doesn’t see me drinking, it doesn’t count, right?”

“You can have it back,” I offer. “I haven’t touched it.”

“No, that’s okay.” He leans in and whispers confidentially, “I had a couple before I got on the boat.” The smell of his breath makes my stomach twist.

“Yeah? Never would have guessed.”

He grins. “I’ve always been like that; I can be totally wasted and people never know.”

“Huh. So, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you manage a couple of beers before we sailed? We left at 7:00 a.m.”

He looks at me for a moment, before emitting another malodorous belch. “You’re wondering how I could’ve been drinking so early?”

I nod and try breathing through my mouth.

“I wasn’t drinking
early
.” He pauses. “I was drinking
late
. I started last night and I only finished this morning.”

I don’t point out that technically he hasn’t finished yet. I just hand over my beer.

“Thanks, man.” He takes a long swig, rests the bottle on his knee and immediately tears up.

“Are you okay?” I’m a little rattled by his sudden mood swings, though I’m not one to talk. Since Pat’s disappearance, my own moods have been all over the place.

“Nah, not really.” He sighs. “I’m in mourning. A friend of mine drowned last week.” He looks at me sadly, waiting for me to ask him about it.

I don’t. In fact, I madly try to think of some way to change the subject.

I know he’s talking about Pat. The island we’re heading for has a total area of seventeen square miles, three-quarters of it wetlands and mangrove swamp. The population, crammed into one tiny corner, makes up a staggering six thousand people. And with all those people, the last drowning they had, other than the alleged drowning of my sister, was a beached whale, over a year ago. I did my homework. And I’m not discussing Pat with this alcoholic headcase.

“Her name was Tricia.” Apparently, he’s going to tell me anyway. “She was beautiful. She had this amazing black hair, like shoe polish or really shiny black stones, and green eyes, like grass but not dried-out grass, fresh grass, like in springtime. And when she looked at you with those spring-grass eyes, it was like she saw you were a good person and not some loser whose own mother kicked him out just because he hit her boyfriend, who totally deserved it, and he was the loser, not me. You know what I mean?”

I twist the strap of my backpack around my fist.

First of all, no one calls her Tricia, and it’s not like they haven’t tried. With a name like Patricia it could go either
way, and she’s cheerleader pretty, so there’s always some guy who thinks Tricia sounds cutesy, but Pat terminates those guys like they’re enemy combatants. Second, I know exactly what he means. Pat’s not just a good person. She’s so relentlessly, optimistically good, she makes everyone around her want to try harder. I wouldn’t say she succeeded where I am concerned, but as long as she’s there, I feel there’s hope.

“So were you close friends?” I ask. I don’t really want to hear how my sister deserted our family so she could go help some other messed-up kid sort out his life, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. He’s clearly miserable, and one way or another it’s Pat’s fault. Since she’s not here, it kind of makes it my responsibility.

“The best,” he says enthusiastically. “She was my best friend. Whenever we went drinking, she would always make sure I got home safely, and she never laughed at me, not once.”

I sit up straight and stare at him. We have to be talking about different girls. My sister doesn’t drink. She’s the poster child for responsible living: no alcohol, no drugs, no sex. I used to say no life. But that joke’s not so funny anymore.

“So what happened to your friend?” I demand, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice.

“That’s the thing, man, no one knows. One minute she was there, partying with the rest of us, and the next minute she’s gone. Poof. No one saw her leave or anything. The police say she drowned, but I don’t think so.”

Ditto.

I didn’t believe it for a second when my parents came back from Utila with a police report claiming my sister had
drowned. They went through the whole report with me, pointing out that her clothes were found at the end of a dock, like she’d stripped off to go swimming. That part was believable. And apparently there was rain the night she disappeared so the waves may have been high. I don’t think she would have gone in the water on a really stormy night, but that too is possible. Pat’s a strong swimmer. It really would have depended on how bad the weather was, and the report wasn’t very specific.

I don’t deny she’s missing. No one’s seen her for more than two weeks, and all her belongings are still in her room, except for the clothes they found on the dock. But she’s far more likely to have been kidnapped or gotten lost in the jungle. Unfortunately, the authorities are so satisfied with their bogus drowning scenario that they aren’t even looking anymore. Ergo the road trip. Well, not road exactly. But someone needs to search for my sister. If the authorities won’t, then I will.

“What do you think happened to her?” I ask.

“Dunno. Duppy, maybe.”

“Duppy?”

“Yeah, like a ghost. You know. The island’s full of ’em. It was a Mayan burial ground a long time ago.”

“Utila?”

“Damn straight.”

“The whole island was a Mayan burial ground?” This guy is either messing with me or completely insane.

“Word. The Maya brought their dead bodies from the mainland. They wanted ’em far away. Let ’em roam ’round their own island. You get what I’m saying?”

“So you think a Mayan ghost got your friend?”

“Makes more sense than drowning. She worked with sharks, man. She was totally seaworthy, if you get my drift.”

He
is
talking about my sister. I’ve seen Pat swim in all kinds of weather, in oceans, in fast-moving rivers. She’s obsessed with the water and everything that lives in it. Sometimes I think she’s half-fish. It’s a passion I neither share nor appreciate. But the partying and the nickname don’t add up.

“Have you lived on the island very long?”

“About eight months. After my mom kicked me out, I bummed around Arizona for a while; that’s where I’m from. Then I picked up some fake ID and started hitchhiking south. I didn’t know where I was headed, but you could do a lot worse than Utila. The locals speak English, unlike the rest of Honduras. It was settled by some British dudes in the eighteen hundreds who migrated over from the Caymans. Now it’s a real mix of people, though. A lot of mainlanders have moved over and people from other parts of the Caribbean. And there are tons of foreign kids from pretty much every country you could name. Most come for the diving and don’t plan on staying more than a few weeks, but they usually end up hanging around a lot longer. It’s that kind of place — easy to pick up work, crazy cheap if you aren’t too fussy and really laid back. I can’t explain it, but it grows on you. You’ll see. In fact, there it is!”

I follow where he’s pointing and just coming into view is an island. On one end, brightly painted wooden houses are crammed together, with a small hill rising behind them. There’s not a single building higher than the towering palm and fruit trees that compete for every inch of open space. A
narrow cut in the landmass separates the village from the rest of the island, which is miles of narrow, white-sand beach fronting towering, overgrown jungle. If Pat got lost in that, how am I ever going to find her?

I
try to shake Zach when I get off the boat. I need to find the Whale Shark Research Center, and while I’m sure he could tell me where it is, I don’t want to go into a whole song and dance about my sister. He seems nice enough, but I’m not interested in bonding with some random guy over our shared grief. I know Pat’s still alive. If I’d wanted to waste my time comforting people who think she isn’t, I would have stayed home.

Unfortunately, Zach’s not easy to dislodge. He trails me off the boat and stands next to me as I look around. There’s a bunch of kids who are probably a few years older than me standing on the road just beyond the pier. They shift restlessly, moving around behind some invisible barricade, seeming to jockey for position; and every single one of them is staring at me. I know that sounds new-kid paranoid, but I swear if I had a target on my back and they were snipers, they couldn’t be more focused.

“Tell them you’re with me,” says Zach.

“What?” I cut him a look. Being with him is the last thing I want, though obviously he also senses danger. Maybe they
have some weird newcomer hazing ritual here, or maybe they just don’t like foreigners, though most of them don’t look the least bit Honduran.

“They’re from other dive shops,” Zach explains. “But I saw you first. I’ll get rid of them.”

I still don’t know what he’s talking about, but as I step off the pier I’m swarmed so I have no choice but to follow Zach as he shoves through the crowd, creating a channel for me. He keeps telling people that I’m already signed up, which I don’t like the sound of, but it does work. The few people who actually listen to him look disappointed and wander off.

We get to the end of the laneway leading from the pier and pause to look at the town stretching in front of us in three directions. If I keep going straight, the road climbs steeply toward what looks like a mostly residential neighborhood. There are a few motorbikes and pedestrians heading up and down, but it’s quiet in comparison to the bustling street running parallel to the ocean. On my right is what looks like a lighthouse, though there’s a store on the ground floor with dive equipment in the window. There’s another dive shop on my left. And immediately across the road, yet another. I’m relieved to see a bank with an ATM on the fourth corner — at least it’s something useful. I’m less thrilled to count three more dive shops without moving from where I’m standing.

“So diving’s big here, huh?” I randomly choose a direction and start walking.

“It’s the Holy Trinity!” hoots Zach, making devil horns with his fists and punching the air.

“Holy Trinity?” No way am I signing up for some weird religion.

“Diving, drinking and drugs, my man. Everything you could ever need, just the way God intended!”

“Drinking and drugs, huh?” Too bad. It might have been the first religion I could get behind, but the diving’s a deal-breaker.

We walk in silence for a couple of minutes. On both sides of the road, there’s a single row of one-story shops, a few restaurants and a lot more dive outfits. Most have peeling paint and are losing boards like they’ve seen one hurricane too many. Flashes of ocean sparkle between the buildings on one side, while the hill backs the buildings on the other. Roads weave up the hill every so often, some paved and some not. None looks wide enough for more than a single car, but since the only vehicles in sight are motorcycles, golf carts and ATVs, I’m guessing that’s not a problem. Even this early, the heat is intense.