Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

Pulling off his hat, he stared past me. “Standing around in the dark?”

“On my way to bed.”

“Your mother bought you a dress.”

The calendar seemed to rustle, reminding me of my court date. More weight piled onto my shoulders. What difference did it make what I wore to give myself up? Couldn’t I surrender what was left of my life in jeans and a sweatshirt?

Daddy headed for the back stairs. “If you want to argue about it, you can wait for her.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

With a look back, he sighed. “Stay off the boat. I mean it this time.”

Of course he knew. Dropping lobster pots isn’t exact. I replaced them as best I could, but there had to be little differences. A degree off here or there, a trap too close to the next one in the string.

I could have argued with him. Lied about it. But he wasn’t stupid, and neither was I. He wasn’t being hardheaded about the boat to punish me now. After my court date, I couldn’t get caught on the Jenn-a-Lo when there was gear on deck or in the water. The Coast Guard would seize it all. The boat, the gear, the catch. They’d take Daddy’s license, too.

“Your boy stopped by.”

“He’s not my boy anymore.”

Daddy rolled his eyes; he didn’t try to hide it. “I’m just giving you the message.”

Grabbing a bottle of water, I twisted the top off viciously. He wasn’t just doing anything. It was real clear he thought I had a knack for screwing everything up. My insides tangled and turned, leaving me queasy.

It was easy to imagine him and Seth sitting on a tailgate together. Shoulders slumped the same way, baseball hats pushed back a little too far. Talking all low, short sentences like they always did, waiting for me to come to my damned senses.

Snatching my phone off the table, I took it to the dooryard so I could get some air and to bother Bailey some more. Another message into the air, and silence came back. I texted my mother, asking where the dress was. She didn’t reply either.

I was alone in the dark. Not just alone; lonely. Considering the phone, I punched two numbers, then stopped. I wasn’t about to go running after Seth. All my emptiness ached. It was gore under my skin, raw and red.

Pulling my hood up, I hiked back to the wharf. The light swung over me, so solid—I wondered if I could catch it, walk across it to Jackson’s Rock.

The ocean wasn’t the same from the shore now. Earth, solid earth, rock and stone, pushed me from behind. I could walk into the waves, but I wouldn’t be surrounded by them. I’d soar over them.

Out on the Rock, Grey was probably sitting down to supper. Making his wishes for books that weren’t out yet, or a nice iPad to go with his half-assed Internet connection. All those music boxes . . . all that peace and quiet, surrounded by the sea. He had everything he wanted.

And I was jealous.

My kitchen is empty now. The stairs, silent. My sitting room nothing but a museum. I have a bowl of broth for supper, and two slices of bread. They go untouched as I flick through the pages of my book.

Sometimes, I realize that my routine is a lie. I’m not real. My body isn’t flesh. I don’t need to shave, or to eat, or to sleep. When I cut my hair, I’m only rearranging the mist that shapes me. When I tremble in Willa’s presence, I fool myself into believing my emotions are sensations.

I touch her, and in that moment, I trust my hand rests on her shoulder. If I were to cling to her or card my fingers through the light that should be her hair, I would believe it.

She would too.

It’s magic’s perception. All these things I do, I do because they’re vestiges of my humanity. I have habits, because I still consider myself a human being.

But now . . . so close to becoming real again, the artifice is never more evident to me. Trailing my gaze along the walls, I notice the edges of the illusion. Those places where I failed to expect something. Mist hangs in those spaces, obscuring the incomplete picture that is my prison.

This, I realize, is why the only room in the lighthouse is the room I’m in. The stairs come and go because I only need them when I walk to the lantern galley. Because it makes sense for my bedchamber to be above the kitchen.

Willa’s presence looms. I feel her in every room now. I hear her voice in the grinding gears of the lamp. I see flickers of copper in my kitchen; her chair isn’t tucked beneath the table where it belongs. It sits at an angle, just as she left it.

Closing my eyes, I hold myself painfully still. In the dark, nothing exists around me. Now that I understand this, I blossom with a terrible fear. This lighthouse is empty. These dinners are lies. The beribboned boxes at my plate are fantasy.

Now that I know this, now that I can so keenly feel the difference between flesh and fantasy, what will I see when I open my eyes?

With a breath I don’t need, I steel myself. Then I look.

The kitchen remains the kitchen. The black stove radiates warmth; my fish broth has gone cold. With my fingers lifted, my book’s pages flicker and flip, losing my place. Willa’s chair remains askew. The walls vibrate still from the mechanicals working overhead. An ordinary, awful listing of things that simply are.

There’s a difference between thinking and believing. I can no more prove myself unreal than I can prove myself real. Finer philosophers and thinkers than I have tried it; some may have achieved it. Ascendance from their mortal remains, existing as pure thought and naught else.

My logic was ruined when I closed my eyes. To truly accept my nothingness, I would have needed to believe that I had no eyes to close.

“I hope you’re embarrassed,” I tell myself.

Stirring my broth, I upset the sediment in the bowl. It swirls, white haze like fog.

“I wish you’d quit climbing on my trellis,” Bailey’s mom called out.

One hand on the second-story window and one foot on the trellis, I leaned over and offered an apology through the window. “Sorry, Ma. I was trying to sneak up on her.”

Ma Dyer came to the window, lifting the sash so I could hear her more clearly. “Works out better for everybody when you come through the door. My clematis lives and you get cookie dough.”

Hopping down, I pointed toward the back, then headed that way. Bailey and her mother were the only people in Broken Tooth who locked their doors. Bailey because her mom insisted on it. Ma Dyer because she liked choosing the time and place when she’d socialize. By day, she did medical transcription. By night, she liked to paint. If it weren’t for my mom and Bailey, Ma Dyer might have been a straight-up hermit.

The deadbolt chunked, and the back door swung open. I got one foot inside and found myself gathered in warm, fleshy arms. Even though I towered over her, Ma Dyer managed to wrap me up completely. The kitchen smelled of onions and garlic. The cookie dough was for eating, not baking.

With a shake, Ma Dyer set me free. Reaching for the bowl of dough, she dangled it from her fingers, toward me. “You don’t come around much anymore, kid.”

“I’ve been sticking close to home.”

Ma Dyer snorted, moving so I could open the silverware drawer and claim a spoon. “That’s not what your mother says.”

Shrugging, I skimmed my spoon into the bowl. “I bet.”

“It’s not my business.” Ma Dyer shrugged. “But she’s having a hard time right now. Try to help her breathe a little, will you?”