Alexander Chee - Edinburgh

I stare at the dark distance between the cabins, the golden light filled with golden boys behind mosquito screens, like a lamp made from fireflies. I turn and get back in my bunk.

What were you going to do, Eric B. asks me.

Shhh.

Zach in the dark. All smooth dryness, salty. I am like a deer at a salt lick. He giggles. I am stern, and he likes it.

One, two, three, four—

Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made; these are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

Lies, Eric pauses here. Lu-Hies. Enunciate. Or you’ll sound like a Chinese laundryman saying Rice. Those soft consonants need to fire out.

Chinese laundryman, I say.

Quiet oils the room. The other boys know I am quick to avenge insults to my race and wait for a reaction.

Fee, he says, head cocked.

Chinese laundryman, I say.

Are you ready to start again?

Yeah.

Full Fathom Five my father lies, of his bones are coral made, these are pearls that were his eyes, nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

And the choir joins me. A tear pushes out. Peter points to his sheet music. In the margin he has written, dick.

— Full Fathom Five my fah-th-her lies, of his bu-hones are co-rhal mayd—

And the baton comes up and flat, Eric’s fingers scissoring against his neck.

What do I have to do, he says, to have your full attention? Do I have to wear a clown hat? Do I have to beg? Do I have to come around, and with that he proceeds to walk toward us, and then circle from behind. Peter turns his page.

That’s not the page, Eric says, from above him. No wonder it sounded so awful. Let me turn your page for you. His finger drops low, toward Peter’s lap.

I can turn my page, I was just looking back. Peter meets his gaze.

The finger hovers. Have I made my point? he says. And the finger hooks the paper, peels it over slightly, and then pushes it flat to the other side. Mmhmm. Love notes.

The other boys giggle, lightly.

I don’t want to separate you but I will. Am I understood? Am I?

Yes, we both say, a sigh.

All righty, then. Five minutes for water and then where we were.

The boys slip from their chairs. The late-summer heat exhausts us more than usual, and even the cool hall today stifles. By unspoken agreement, Peter and I wait with Big Eric.

When does it stop, Eric says, softly. As if I don’t have enough to deal with. Is it that you don’t feel I’m giving you enough attention? You are forcing my hand here, boys. I like both of you more than I like the rest, but you are antagonizing me now. You really are. You will have to show me your pages when I ask to see them, at any time. And they should be eminently readable.

He sweats as he says this. He reaches in his back pocket for a linen handkerchief, and wipes energetically his shiny forehead, his red cheeks. And then he grabs Peter’s music sheets, hands him a clean copy, and throws the other away.

Who’s Ariel and who’s Caliban, I ask, when he tells me this is Ariel and Caliban’s song.

Ariel’s a magical servant, he says. A wizard’s helper. Shape changer. Could ride lightning, stand at the bottom of the sea, or impersonate a storm.

A girl, I say. Inside, I think of the fox. How Ariel was perhaps a fox, far away from home and lost.

A boy, he says. He’s a boy. Funny, isn’t it, how Ariel is this girl’s name now. But it was a boy, for the play. Caliban’s a monster. They are both Prospero’s servants.

12

Tonight, after the lights are out, I remember. Or is it remembering?

The pale screen. A golden head, resting against a larger, darker one. The sound of pages turning. My heart pounding so hard I am sure it can be heard over the crickets and frogs. A large furry hand touches tentatively, to check to see if the golden one is asleep. And strokes down the leg.

The smaller head turns up. No.

The hand comes back the way it has gone. And Peter rolls out of his lap, turns, facing him. No.

Eric stands, a wall of pink skin. He makes no move. Peter turns his head.

Were you there, I ask myself. Around me: the damp night floats through the screen, the boys smell bitter in their sleep, as if as they slept, nightmares made them sweat. I turn my face into the pillow, the familiar scent of me still warm there. Pull the cover up higher. Were you there, did you watch that night? Had you snuck down, and watched. And done nothing. Or are you making this up.

Outside the cricket hum embroiders the lake hum and here and there, a boy sighs. I hear Luke start to mumble in his sleep and decide to watch, crawl from my covers and slip past Eric B. to the floor. Down the hill I can see that Cabin 1 is asleep, all the gold laid out on pillows, all the lights off

I don’t know what I remember or what it is I imagine right now. I don’t know why that is. I go back to my cabin, lie down, sleep takes me in a swipe.

Light and thunder. I wake up and open my eyes. Above me, in the air, a ball of lightning. So this is what it looks like, I think. I apparently had been asleep in a storm and now the light and then the thunderclap follows so quick behind, the cabin shudders, is engulfed. I half expect to shatter, the bunk bed to fly up. My hair stands up. I don’t dare breathe, as if I could somehow inhale it. As if, without thinking it, I exhaled it.

And then it goes, winks out against the wall above my head. The dark falls in where it used to be.

I stand slowly, in my bed, to peer out the window. The storm lightning falls to the ground. I climb down and begin waking the boys to go out and unroll the tarps again. The rain soaks everything. The trees look cast in gunmetal and oiled. The lake, I can see in the distance, rises and the boats, tied to their mooring, tilt nose-down, end-up, the mooring now well under water. Soon they will turn over in the wind.

13

The fall is almost here. We go back to our towns, to our families.

There are stories in Cape Elizabeth of seeing someone fly through the air at night. I think of them as Zach and Peter and I tie the birch trees down to ride them. We are out on a hill, across the road from a graveyard and the marsh. I wonder if one of them is out in the woods late doing this by himself. Peter and Zach tie me on, because of my cast.

You shouldn’t be out here, Zach says.

There’s always a moment when it seems like it won’t work out. Like the whole thing’s a fake. And then the tree rises up and you head for the sky. Scream as you go. And then the tree sets you down again, and then brings you back up. I scream as I go up. This time, I do not fall.

Peter leaves to go home on his bike. Bye, he says. Are you leaving, he asks Zach.

In a bit, Zach says. See you later.

Zach stays. We wander around my dark house. My parents are watching the evening news with my grandparents and my younger brother and sister. How long before dinner, I ask.

You have half an hour, my mother says.

We slip out the back door and head down the road.

The greenhouse has been deserted for years with the exception of Zach and I using it as a kind of clubhouse. Overlooking the marsh, through its many broken panes, we can see my house in the far distance, above which clouds parade, today, toward the sea. Zach and I ride our bikes out here on Route 77 and drop them in the tall grass just outside the door. We stand now, facing each other under the patchwork of light coming through the smashed roof. The floor under our feet has cracks and saplings have pushed through.

What’s wrong with you, Zach says. I have said nothing since arriving.