Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

I hurry down the stairs, nearly running. I move so fast, the enchantment lags. My music boxes glimmer, and I laugh—I laugh! Aloud!—when they melt away to reveal the high curtained walls of the dining room. Breakfast will be soft-boiled eggs and toast, sausage and biscuits. Orange juice, grits, and everything I need to know about Willa.

That’s what I wanted instead of gears and springs. I asked the air at bedtime: I wish to know her.

My plate is stacked high. Aside from breakfast, there’s a bounty. Unwrapped, this once—perhaps even magic has limits. It matters not.

Before me, I have two yearbooks from the Vandenbrook School. I flip through those impatiently, then set them aside. Too much searching. Beneath them lie better resources. Much better—photographs. Color photographs! They’re magnificent.

Willa’s so small in the first, buck teeth and a crooked collar. She stands next to a boy who resembles her little, but for the shocking shade of his hair.

They cling to the rail of a boat, the darkening sky behind them. In the shadows, I see a hint of my lighthouse, and when I flip the photo over, there’s handwriting. It’s inelegant, artless, but it tells me so much:

Levi & Willa, 4th of July.

I marvel over my bounty. Yellowed scraps of newspaper announce her birth, her second-place finish in a fishing contest, her survival of her grandparents. Grainy copies of photographs show her on that boat with her brother, with her father, with people gone unnamed. She holds a huge lobster over her head; she’s older, wearing a gingham apron, sitting on a front porch.

Spreading the bits and pieces, I find secrets. There’s a crumpled scrap of paper with a string of numbers written in one hand, and SETH!!!!! written in another beside it. Doodled boats sail the margins of a mathematics quiz.

There’s a list of words in her hand, I’m sure of it. Her letters slope, pencil slashes so pale they’re nearly shadow. They make no sense at first. Acionna, Mazu, Galene, Tiamat. But I recognize Amphitrite—Poseidon’s consort, a goddess of the depths. Then Thetis, one of the fifty Nereids, and I think the list is solved. Deities, every one, rising from the primordial sea.

I find a note from an instructor:

“Willa needs to participate more. Her interests seem limited to boats, fishing, and the ocean. She has so much potential. We’d like to see her try new things next semester.”

There’s another, mechanically printed, that ends with “All things considered, we feel the jewelry-craft class will be less emotionally demanding for her during this difficult time.”

As I clear my plate, it fills with breakfast. Between bites, I create a timeline. Trailing papers and pictures from one end of the table to the other, I study this recorded history. This proof of her, this trove of details to teach me the role to play with her.

When I finally step away from the table, I’m full with her. My head pulses, expanding to make room for Willa, whose last name is Dixon, whose birthday comes eight months after her parents’ anniversary. And who, according to an essay she wrote for ninth-grade English, wants to live and die on the water.

I can grant that wish.

The only reason I went to school was to get served. I waited until the last minute and walked there alone. I kinda hoped they’d find me before first period. Partly to get it over with, partly because I didn’t want people talking about it. Looking at me. Whispering about me. Vandenbrook was tiny and full of people I didn’t want to see.

They fell in and out of my orbit, Seth in my English class, Nick with his locker near mine. I kept catching flickers of gold hair, Denny Ouelette floating through the halls a split second ahead of me.

The only person I wasn’t avoiding was Bailey, and she caught up with me between classes. She had her hardheaded look on. Usually, she broke it out when something had to get done. I think in another life, she was probably a drill sergeant. I wondered what she thought she needed to do with me.

Pulling out the Milky Way bracelet I made, I offered it to her. “It’s done. You can have it.” I didn’t give her the chance to say anything. If I talked fast and talked first, she wouldn’t get to lecture me. I was about tired of getting corrected. I was tired of everything, to be honest. “Or give it to Cait. You know. Whatever.”

Bailey frowned, rubbing the beads between her fingers. “I’ll keep it. Thanks.”

“I’m going to sit out front for lunch. You want to come?”

She fell into step with me, still bothering the bracelet as she walked. It was an absent touch, the same way she rubbed the hems of her sleeves when she was thinking. I threw the door open, walking into the crisp cold. The wind tasted clean, and it swept the extra heat from my skin.

Best of all, I couldn’t see Jackson’s Rock. I’d almost convinced myself that the boat, that Grey, was a vivid dream and nothing else. Seeing the lighthouse would ruin that; it was too real to ignore.

Sitting on the top step, Bailey dug into her backpack for her lunch. “I texted you about a million times yesterday.”

I took my place next to her and stole a stick of her celery. I had my own lunch, but for some reason, Bailey’s always tasted better to me. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. It was a messed-up day.”

“Mine too,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

Cracking open a plastic container, Bailey stirred her pasta salad with a fork, then sighed. “You have enough going on.”

“So? Talk to me.”

She hesitated. And I realized she was fighting with herself about this. That she had something eating at her and she didn’t want to say. I felt bad, because she was my best friend. She needed somebody to talk to, too, and I’d blown her off completely. Twisting around, I nudged her. “Bay.”

“Cait’s up and decided she’s going to apply to USC,” she said. She stabbed her pasta, then put the container aside hard.

Surprised, I said, “I thought you guys had a plan.”

“Yeah, me too.” The bitterness in her voice clung to her. Eyes flashing, she picked up her lunch again just to abandon it. “She says it’s a better school for what she wants to do. And I’m, like, why didn’t you say something before?”

“Why didn’t she?”

“She didn’t want to hold me back.”

Slinging my arm around her, I slid in close. “So you broke up?”

“No, but we’re going to.” Bailey swiped a knuckle across her cheek, then looked into the distance. She was so far away in her eyes, and she looked painfully small. “I’m not stupid. Three thousand miles apart is too much.”

“That’s a year and a half away, though.”

“It’s an expiration date.”

Uselessly hopeful, I said, “Maybe she won’t get in.”

Bailey paid that about as much attention as it deserved: none. Waving her hand, she said, “I can’t . . . It’s like saying, okay, I’ll love you for exactly this long, but then it stops.”

I leaned my head against hers. It’s not like she wasn’t making sense. But I grasped for her anyway. If everything was over for me, then that’s just the way it was. For Bailey, I could be the one who punched at the moon and expected to hit it. “You guys are happily ever after. It’s gonna work out.”

“And then they never saw each other again, the end. Some fairy tale.” She wiped away another tear, then stiffened. In an instant, she put herself back together. “There’s somebody coming.”

She had ears like a bat; she must have heard footsteps on the stone walk, because there wasn’t anything to see just yet. Though I tightened with anticipation, I kept my attention on Bailey. Since we didn’t know who was coming, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m not trying to talk you out of it, boo. I just hate it for you, you know?”