The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,32

He acts like he’s our dad now, and I’m always messing everything up. He’s big on being in charge.”

He won’t look me in the eye. “I’m sure he knows I’m fine; he’s just got to figure out how to get in touch.”

This seems like a long shot, but I have more questions.

“Why did you run away in the first place?”

“Why are you so nosy?”

“I’m just curious,” I say, feeling slapped. “I did save you, you know.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, not at all grateful. I could tell him that I didn’t see anyone else on the deck of the ferry and I doubt his brother knows he’s safe. But if he thinks I’m too nosy, fine. I’ll keep it to myself.

Slowly Sam starts doing small jobs like handing fish to Uncle Gorky down in the fish hold or hosing off the deck at the end of the day. Dad shows him how the trolling poles work, explaining that the little bells attached at the top will ring if there’s a big fish on the hook. I don’t know when I learned any of this. Maybe never, because I was born on the boat, so all of this stuff was just part of being human, like learning to talk and walk and breathe.

The moment Dad started seeing Sam as another pair of hands was probably the day the wind kicked up out of nowhere and Sam ran over to the stabilizer propped on the deck, undid the chain, and threw the whole thing overboard like he’d been doing it forever. Stabilizers are heavy weights on chains that are a pain to haul back in, so Dad avoids using them until it’s so choppy we’re flopping around like a tiny toy in a very large bathtub. I watch Dad watching Sam, starting to see him as someone who could eventually pull his own weight, skinny as he is.

The days start to bleed together one after another, and Sam and I fall into a routine of sitting on the flying bridge at the end of the day. Sometimes he even forgets to put up his impenetrable wall, and I get to learn a few more things about him. He’s sixteen and likes poetry. His younger brother, Jack, is fourteen and has what Sam calls a “sixth sense.”

“Sometimes it’s weird,” he says, “like he can feel things that other people can’t.”

I can tell he’s thinking about his brothers a lot, but I don’t ask direct questions anymore since he called me nosy, and I do keep my promise not to tell Dad.

I also finally tell him how the Pelican saved his life. He touches the rubber side of the inflatable raft, and I’m grateful he doesn’t laugh when I say she was his rescuer. But I don’t see her the same way I used to, either. She looks like nothing but an old beat-up raft, especially now that Sam is sitting next to her. I look at the duct-tape patches and the faded rubber that is almost white in spots from being bleached by the sun or the ocean or the passage of time. “Was there anyone else there?” he asks. “I mean, besides the whales?”

I think about the way the orca looked at me; how it blinked as if we had an understanding. But I still don’t know how much I should say to this boy who is starting to make me feel weak in the knees. I tell myself it’s just my sea legs, but I think Uncle Gorky would disagree. I’ve seen the way he looks at us, like we are a puzzle to be figured out. I don’t see how anyone will figure out Sam, because if he is a puzzle, there are some big missing pieces that he isn’t in any hurry to tell us about.

“No, just the whales,” I say, and he looks disappointed. It’s kind of the truth, but not the whole truth. I’m afraid I’ll sound dumb, and I don’t want him to stop talking to me again.

On the way back down, we stop on the bow, where Dad and Uncle Gorky’s voices filter up through the open porthole. They must have forgotten it was open, because we can hear them talking about Sam.

“Are you going to tell him?” Uncle Gorky asks.

“I don’t see how that’s going to help now,” says Dad.

“You should at least tell him you know who he is.”

“And then what? Make him go back when obviously they were running away from something?”

“What about his

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