your face.”
“Life lessons,” I echo.
“It’s something I tell myself.”
“Does it help?” I want him to say, Yes, it helps. The mere act of saying it chases all the sadness and anger away forever.
“Not really.” He seems to think this over. “Maybe sometimes. A little.”
Wednesday hooks her arm around Jared and lets it rest there for a minute.
“What about you?” I say to Emory. “What made you come here?”
He stares out into the night as if he’s looking for the answer. “I could tell you it’s because I always dreamed of being a nature guide, that I’ve always been fascinated by this island. Both true.” He shrugs and looks back at me. “But mostly? It’s just far enough away from home.”
We sit. We drink. I wonder if they also feel the night closing in.
After a minute, Jared says, very low, “It can get kind of nerve-racking when you realize how isolated you are from the actual world here. But all the scary stuff doesn’t really compare to getting lost in your own mind.”
And somehow this, more than anything else, chills me.
* * *
—
Another beer later, the rain has stopped, and I’m dry and cozy and tucked into the couch of the living room of the dorm-type house that they share with the other staffers. There is music playing and there are about a dozen people of various ages, most around twenty-one or twenty-two. Wednesday is dancing and singing, and she sounds just like Adele. She pulls me up so I’m dancing too. I don’t know the song, but it feels good to move. There’s a line that says something about feeling homeless or hopeless, or maybe both. And I love this line. I love it more than any lyric I’ve ever heard in my life.
“That’s me,” I say to no one and everyone. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
Someone hands me another beer, and I drink it fast. And I feel lighter and freer, like I’m shedding the past four weeks—as if it was a skin—right onto the floor. I’m singing along with Wednesday and the music, and she and Jared and Emory and I are jumping and dancing and spinning, and I’m completely, utterly free.
When the song ends, I fall back into the couch and there’s this boy with a messy shock of white hair and too many skull rings. The boy from the ferry.
He points to himself. “Grady.”
I point to myself. “Claude.”
“Claude.” He nods like he approves. “What’s that short for?”
“Claudette.” It isn’t, of course, but I like the sound of it.
He rests his arm on the back of the couch, and he smells intoxicating. Not like weed and incense but something else. Hair wax, maybe. Pine needles. Something Christmasy. He’s talking, but the music’s too loud and I don’t hear him. And then Wednesday is pulling me to my feet again and someone cranks the music up louder.
At some point Jeremiah Crew walks in. At first I think it’s a mirage, but no, it’s him, arms folded, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, talking to Jared and some of the others who live here. He’s wearing jeans. A dark V-neck T-shirt. No shoes. He catches me staring at him and keeps right on talking the whole time he’s looking at me.
“Oh shit, your face,” Wednesday yells over the song.
“What?”
“You like Miah.” She looks at me through cat eyes.
“I don’t even know him.”
“Hmm,” she says.
The song changes and it’s some country tune I don’t know, slow and croony. I watch Miah as he stands there. As he talks to people. As he takes a handful of chips and eats them. As he walks away from everyone. As he walks right past Wednesday, who’s practically burning a hole in him with her eyes. As he offers me his hand and does this kind of exaggerated bow like I’m royalty.
“Dance?”
I pretend to think this over. I look around the room like I’m weighing my options.
Finally, I shrug. “I guess.”
He pulls me close and wraps his other arm around my waist. We dance for a few beats like this, and then I look up and he’s staring down at me.
“Your hair is shorter. Like, really short. Is that why you tried to drown yourself?”
“I wasn’t trying to drown myself. And it was like this when you interrupted my swim.”
“I was too busy saving your life to notice.”
“You didn’t save my life….”
“I mean, it isn’t horrible.” He stares at my head. “It’ll grow back. Eventually.”
“Okay.”
“I may actually like it better.”
“Great.