Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

“Because you shut everybody out and make it worse. On purpose. Things won’t get magically better because you punish yourself.”

“Who said it would?”

Starting to clap a hand to her face, Bailey stopped at the last minute. She wasn’t mad enough to rub worm all over her cheek. “You act like it, and you know it.”

“So you say.”

“So I know,” she retorted.

Picking up my Styrofoam cup, I dumped the rest of my worms in it. Back stiff and jaw tight, I didn’t look away. I wasn’t afraid of Bailey. I knew her secrets, and she knew mine. Arguing with her was as safe as it got. In the morning, she’d still love me. Even if she was mad. Carrying my collection to the register, I turned back to her. And because I didn’t have anything to say that was true, I flipped her off instead.

With a sneer, she put her head down to finish counting.

Mom worked second shift at police dispatch, and Dad fished from dawn ’til dusk. That meant whoever got home first made dinner.

It used to be Levi, and it was too bad it wasn’t anymore. He could find three random things in the pantry and make a meal. I could follow instructions on a box, more or less.

Low tide came twice a day most days. I’d already earned a couple hundred at the noon low. I could hit the next at midnight, but Seth’s flannel shirts, one I’d stolen from his bedroom, beckoned. It smelled like him. It felt like him wrapping his arms around me, my only constant.

Once I had it on, it was decided. I was done worm digging.

I jogged downstairs to find something easy to make. Bacon and eggs would be plenty for me. But Seth and Dad would be starving when they came in, so I pulled a box of pancake mix from the pantry, butting it against the grease jar as I went back for jam and syrup. The phone rang before I managed to crack one egg.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said when I answered.

Tension laced me tight. Leaning against the counter, I turned the burners off one by one, pretty sure that whatever I wasn’t supposed to worry about meant I wouldn’t be home long enough to need hot pans. Somehow, I sounded calm when I asked, “What’s going on?”

She cleared her throat, then I heard her talking to someone else. Way to drive me crazy, to make sure that knot in my throat was as big as it could be. Finally, she came back and said, “I don’t want you coming up here, Willa. I just wanted you to know your dad’s up at the hospital with me, but he’s all right.”

A slow, sharp pain pierced my temple. “What happened?”

“He was gaffing a buoy and wouldn’t let go. Got knocked on his ass.”

It was a stupid mistake to make, getting hauled down the deck because he didn’t want to lose a cheap hook—a greenhorn mistake. One that could pull you overboard, drown you before anyone realized you were gone.

Anger welled in my chest. He shouldn’t have been on deck to begin with. That’s why Seth was there. Pressing fingers to my brow, I tried to smooth away the ache. “What did he do that for?”

“Just an old fool, I guess.” She said something I couldn’t hear again, then went on. “We’ll be home as soon as somebody tracks down the doctor, but don’t wait for us.”

“And tell her to stay off the boat,” Dad said in the background.

For some reason, my mother didn’t repeat that. Instead she said, “Your boy should be dropping by, so you know.”

The crunch of gravel out front proved her right. I didn’t have to turn to recognize the sound of Seth’s truck in our driveway. But everything inside me felt curiously empty. I didn’t move; Seth would let himself in. All my friends did, and he was more than that now, wasn’t he?

“Willa?”

Shaking my head, I pushed off the counter. “I think I hear him now. Tell Daddy he’s on bait until he learns his lesson.”

“I’ll do that,” she said, and hung up as the side door opened.

Filling the space, Seth looked wrecked. His face was drawn. Dismay darkened his eyes, which seemed nearly black against his ashen skin. The way he started toward me, it was a good thing Mom had called first. Just to look at him, I would have guessed somebody else had died.

Seth caught me in his arms, burying his face against my hair. “Baby, I’m sorry.”

Slowly, I wrapped my arms around Seth’s waist. “Mom says he’s fine. I heard him complaining, so I know it’s true.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Everything got tangled in the hauler, and . . .”

“It’s all right.” I spread my hands across his back, rubbing muscles stiff from work and worry. It felt like a chore at first. Something automatic like the lighthouse, the right motion for the moment. It kept me from thinking too much. From pointing out I’d warned him about the hauler.

By inches, Seth melted against me, and we ended up swaying. We were a slow pendulum, and listening to his reedy breath thawed some of my numb, cooled some of my anger. When he kissed my brow, my heart turned and I clung to him. The house would have been too quiet without him. My thoughts would have been too loud.

“You want me to stay?” he asked.

“Yeah, you can help with dinner.”

And he did; he knew where everything was. He also knew a little cinnamon in the pancake mix made it special. I knew the syrup would explode in the microwave if we left the cap on. We were solid, and certain—a team.

The window framed us, night glass reflecting us—and for a moment, I stared. We fit exactly. Always had. Everyone knew it. Like the moon changed shape, like the sun came up—the two of us were meant to be. In third grade, Bailey and Amber chased me across the playground, throwing dandelion heads and singing:

Tikki-tikki-tembo, Seth Ar-sham-bow

Kissing Willa Dixon, in her mama’s kitchen!

Gonna get married, gonna get married, boo!

They sang it until I cried, and Mrs. Graham sent them to time-out.

No idea why it upset me.

Susannah wasn’t the first girl I loved. Nor the third nor the sixth. I was entirely indiscriminate with my affections. The pretty girls were the only benefit to following my father from Massachusetts to Maine, from Boston to Nova Scotia.

All else was torment, but always on the shore, lovely girls. Girls with exotic accents. With brown eyes, blue, and green. With parasols and gowns that draped them as if they were Grecian goddesses. They distracted me from the hardships of merchant life. In return, I treated them from the stores.

Tea from Boston, mostly. It made a good gift—it wasn’t expensive, it didn’t spoil. I trailed spiced leaves all along the shore, filling cups wherever I walked.

In the beginning, the very beginning, I thought perhaps this lighthouse was my penance. That here, I would learn to be selfless. To become a man, someone worthy of esteem. I was by beauty trapped and thus made a beast. It made sense that by beauty I would be set free.

How brilliantly I deceived myself. But, in my own defense, isn’t that the conclusion bred into us by the Misters Grimm and M. Perrault? (Hr. Anderson seemed rather more occupied with eternal suffering and thus wasn’t a favorite of mine.)

I offered pretty prayers. I wished for a rosary and learned it. Then mala beads, then bells. I wished for a singing bowl and tried rather hard to learn to meditate. But I had nothing but the sea to surround me. Its whisper, constantly in my ears. I was the most shut away of monks, but I never found pleasure in it.

Always my downfall. Pleasure, the wanting of it. The pursuit of it. I ignored my true calling for a decade. Though I held the mists off, I thought, This is my test. If I suffer it nobly, I’ll be rewarded. Another girl will come, I’ll be transformed. I’ve learned my lesson and stopped hating the ocean.