It is another forty-five minutes to the island, and this is what it feels like to be exiled.
There are just nine of us on the ferry, including the captain and a young white guy, maybe college age, who loaded the bags onto the boat in a bright red wheelbarrow. The captain looks like he’s been in the sun for a hundred years, and the young guy has bleached hair, the color of an Ohio winter, that pokes out from underneath his baseball cap. They speak in these languid, drawling voices, which make me know I’m in a completely foreign place. A couple of the passengers sit under the little covered area and the rest of us sit—or, in my case, stand—in the blazing sun.
We pass paper mills, hulking on the banks of the mainland, and the hot, heavy air smells like sulfur. The factories are ugly and I’m happy they’re there. They keep this place from being too beautiful. Then suddenly we are turning and the mainland is at our back.
I stare down at my phone, and there is one little bar. And a text from Wyatt Jones.
Let me know when you’re home. I’ve been thinking about that kiss.
Normally I wouldn’t type back right away, but this is an emergency—who knows how long that one little bar will last? I write:
I’ve been thinking about it too.
As I hit send, I feel a pang of guilt over Lisa Yu, but it’s overshadowed by the enormous panic I’m feeling over that bar disappearing.
Another text appears from him:
I should’ve asked you out last year. I want to kiss you again.
Me: I want to kiss you too.
Him: Get home soon, Claud Henry.
He spells my name wrong, but I don’t care. After all, he’s the only one who knows my secret, which in some cheesy-movie kind of way means we’re bonded.
Me: I can’t wait to see you.
And then a photo. Him without a shirt, lying on his bed. My heart nearly stops because he is that beautiful. I want to lick the screen, but instead I scroll through my photos and try to send him one of me from spring break in my bikini to remind him what I look like and to show him that I have curves—such as they are—and legs and skin that would feel good against his own. I press send and wait. And the phone is trying and trying, but of course my picture doesn’t go through because now there are no bars, which means no service, which means no Wyatt.
I want to shout all my frustration and anger into the wind and the warm salt air. I want to fling my phone into the water and have a full-on kindergarten tantrum. Instead I grab onto the railing so tight, it’s a wonder my fingers don’t snap.
I’m glaring over my shoulder at the paper mills when I feel a thump on my foot. A giant bear of a red dog sits there, one paw on my shoe.
“That’s Archie.” The guy with the baseball cap leans on the rail beside me. He smells like weed and incense and wears too many skull rings. “Island dog.” Archie looks up at me, panting, and then trundles off into the covered area and the shade.
All these little boats are going by us, and the people aboard wave at our captain and us, I guess, because this is what people on boats do. Except for me. I am still gripping the railing with both hands, because if I don’t I might pitch myself over the side.
“That’s Palmetto Island,” the boy says. He nods at the one we’re passing. “That was where they quarantined smallpox victims, like, two hundred years ago. Now there’s nothing on it but wild hogs and gators.” I can’t tell if he’s trying to impress me or if he’s just doing his job by passing along information.
“Grady!” The boy turns to look at the captain and then ducks back into the covered area, leaving me to think about how I am no better than a smallpox victim from the 1800s or whenever it was they had smallpox. The island is scrubby and desolate, no signs of life anywhere. No wild hogs in sight. No gators. We are getting farther and farther away from the mainland.
There are islands on either side of us, but we keep going.
And going.
And going.
Until I half expect to see the coast of Ireland on the horizon. We are sailing through the world’s largest moat. Not only