if each step is a struggle. I sit rooted, barely breathing, and silently cheer her on. Willing her to make it to wherever it is she’s going.
She is enormous. I watch as the turtle lumbers to a halt several feet away and begins to scoop out the sand with her hind flippers. The work is laborious and slow, and I want to help her. But she’s the only one who can do it. She’s the only one who knows exactly how it needs to be done.
I can hear Miah’s voice in my head: A female can lay as many as two hundred eggs. Two months later, if the nest survives, the hatchlings will claw their way out and head for the ocean. Most of them won’t make it.
I am still as a stone and barely breathing, but my thoughts are racing and I wish I had my notebook to capture them, to capture this. I watch as the loggerhead burrows into the sand and sometime later—minutes, hours—covers the nest and drags herself back toward the water. I think about the effort. About how strong she is to swim hundreds of miles, fighting to get back to the beach where she was born, to make a nest for her babies. And now I’m picturing these baby turtles, no mother there to help them, and suddenly I feel like crying.
Isn’t there anything we can do?
We help how we can, but at some point you have to let nature do its thing.
As I watch her lumber into the ocean, I want to yell at her to come back. I want to grab her and drag her to the nest and make her stay there. But instead I watch her swim away.
After a few minutes, I get up, brush the sand off, and tiptoe to the nest. I take the only thing I have—the flashlight—and bury it nearby, marking the spot. I shrug off my sweater and drape it across the sand. It’s not wire netting, but it will at least offer some protection from the raccoons and coyotes and mark the nest until we can come back.
THE ISLAND
TWO
DAY 9
I know this about the general store: Terri is a volunteer from the mainland. She has three grandkids and a dog named Banjo. The campers buy more junk food than anyone. The most popular item in the store is—surprise, surprise—bug spray. Before it was a store, it was a schoolhouse, but it shut down in 1972 because there weren’t enough children on the island. On days when it isn’t busy, usually in winter, Terri goes home early because why sit around when no one shows up? Except for her lecturing me about Miah, Terri and I have become fast friends.
I sit in my usual corner, writing in my notebook—which I now carry everywhere with me—because it is less lonely here than it is at Addy’s in the window seat. My notes are scribbles across the pages and in the margins and upside down and in word bubbles. It would take a code breaker to decipher them. I am being as honest with myself as possible, which is harder than it sounds. Who wouldn’t rather write down pretty things and pretend they are the truth? But these notes are how I feel—an unedited, wild, messy jumble of emotions and thoughts without order, everything spilling out at once. Welcome to the chaos of my brain.
My phone buzzes and it’s Saz. We’ve been going back and forth all morning. Topic: sex. Specifically: our first times.
Here’s the thing, she says. No matter what they tell you, no matter what they show you online or in movies, it looks different in real life. Not worse or better, just different. It’s different than doing it yourself because there’s this other person there and maybe they don’t know how to touch you like you know how to touch you, but there’s a lot to say for you wanting them and them wanting you. Having sex with Yvonne makes me feel like I’m invincible, and it also makes me feel totally, I don’t know, human. Does that make sense? I don’t think that makes sense. But you’ll be able to figure out what I mean, Hen. You always do. That’s why I know we’ll always be okay. Because you’re my interpreter in this world.
I text back: It makes sense. Somehow him touching me and me not coming was bigger than me touching myself and coming. I’ve never felt more human in