“Listen, Sacajawea, I’m not the kind of person to tell you your business, but I don’t think you’re going anywhere tonight,” he said tartly, nodding toward my feet. “Not like that. If I let you hobble all the way back to your camp on those bloody stumps it’s as good as killing you myself. And, hey, guess what? I’m not going to argue about it.”
He was right, but I felt cold all over. I had let my friends down, sure, but letting Shane down was worse. What if they went looking for me? Now that I knew the real truth of the island, of what lurked around every tree and sandbar, I could do things differently. But they didn’t know because I hadn’t told them.
My feet hurt like hell but I still had a bit of strength left in my arms. Do it for Shane, I thought, do what you have to.
I hit him on the cheek with my right elbow, fast and sudden enough that he swayed and dropped me. Ground. Ground bad. Ground hard and fucking painful. The pain could be ignored, I insisted, shrieking as I got to my feet and limped through the sand, huffing and puffing and paddling my arms. I fancied I could feel every particulate grain sticking to my bloodied feet. Crawling actually sounded more appealing in comparison to this …
“You are really, really stubborn, you know that?”
Apparently I hadn’t hit him quite hard enough. He caught up before I could make it a few yards, scooping me back up into his arms as I flailed against him, sapped of coordination and energy by the pain radiating in my legs.
“Fuck you! No! Put me down!”
“Can you just—just hang on for one damn minute, okay? Jesus. Don’t hit me again either.” He frowned, veering his head away preemptively. “Can we talk about this? I think you could use some food and bandages before going on any long journeys, all right?”
“You don’t get it.” I sighed, realizing that hitting him again probably wouldn’t work. A bruise was starting to form along his cheekbone. “My nephew is just a kid. They don’t have any way to defend themselves at my camp. I can’t leave them like that…”
“How long d’you figure it would take to get back on those things?” He nodded toward my feet.
“A few hours…”
“Try many hours, slugger, and come nightfall you’d be snapped up before you can say ‘appetizer.’ Either way, you wouldn’t be making it back to camp tonight.”
“That’s not the point, I—”
“I wasn’t finished.” He sighed, hoisting me a little higher. “In my scenario, you have a bite to eat and I take a look at your feet and then in the morning I take you back to your people. What’s better about my way is that you make it back to them at all. Got it?”
“No, I don’t. What if it’s too late?”
“Then it’s too late, but at least you’re alive.”
I hated it but he was right. That one taste of walking was enough to prove that I was in no condition to strike out on my own. The undead hadn’t come the night before, but that didn’t banish the anxiety that made me trembly all over. How many times did I have to promise to be a good protector for Shane and then fuck that up?
“Promise you’ll take me back?”
“Yes.” He smirked, just a little. “I promise.”
There was not much to do but grit my teeth and try to stay distracted. I got a clear look at his face. He was closer now and the sunshine fell on us equally. His soft dark hair had been swept back from his forehead, piling into a casually rakish coiffure. Spanish, I thought, or something like it, with a blade-straight nose and lips that wouldn’t have been out of place on a woman. His eyes were blue, tucked under two thick smudges of eyebrows tented in perpetual amusement. The all-around effect was, I’m afraid to admit, dreamy.
It was hard to pin down his age. There were tiny flecks of gray in his hair, but he had the continuously sunburned good looks of a teenager. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to guess, I would’ve said late thirties or early forties. Early forties and as strong as an ox. I thought about him beating that zombie with its arm and wondered—for a brief, deeply shameful and adolescent instant—what he would look like with his tight wet T-shirt off.
Right. Time to look at something else. I stared out at the horizon, horrified: the day had come and gone and now a bright orange streak signaled sundown.
The beach angled right and we rounded a corner that opened up into a bay, a real honest-to-God harbor, with docks and squat cabins and several fires cheerfully burning away into the twilight. There was a huge sailboat floating off shore and a smaller canoe roped to one of the docks. It looked, quite frankly, like heaven.
“This is your camp?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not much but it’s getting better.”
Not much? I gaped. This wasn’t roughing it by anyone’s standards. I’d seen dirtier gas station bathrooms. I wondered how much food they had, how much water. A person could make a living in a place like this. A home.
He turned up a hill, passed the docks on our left, and into a wooded clearing. There was a row of five cabins set back from the water, and a fire pit in front of each building. Buckets were strewn here and there with plastic coverings. I glanced inside one as we walked by. It was filled with black, shiny mussels. They were practically living the high life. It didn’t seem so strange now that Boy Who Cried Zombie was clean shaven—here they had the basic amenities of real, normal life. I wondered who “they” were.
“We’ll get you something to eat,” he said brusquely. “And then I’ll get to work on your feet.”
Food sounded good. The other thing? I could take or leave it. Then I thought maybe there was something seriously wrong with my feet and decided to keep my mouth shut. Getting back to Shane—that was the focus here, and having my feet bandaged was one step on the road back to him. As we approached the cabins, heads poked out to greet us. Boy Who Cried Zombie nodded to each one. A tall, slender black man came out of one cabin with a net in his hands. He was in the midst of mending it. He had a shaggy beard and large, round eyes. There was no suspicion in his expression; in fact, he grinned at us and belly laughed.
“You find a mermaid washed up on shore?”
“Not exactly, Nate,” BWCZ replied. He carried me around a fire pit and to the door of the middle cabin. “Could you get the door for me?”
Nate rushed out in front of us and let us in. He gave me a friendly little wave. I tried to smile, but even the muscles in my face were beginning to feel tired and useless. The cabin was small, probably meant for one family or just two people. There was a simple cot in the back right corner, low to the ground, with a woolly brown blanket. I couldn’t even remember what a bed felt like. In the opposite corner was a pottery basin with a jug. It was clearly a man’s cabin. And BWCZ looked as if he had lived there all his life. He tossed things and left them where they landed—no intention of picking up after himself, no concern.
Nate followed us in and took a matchbook from his pocket. He lit a glass lantern with a red base and placed it next to the cot.
I hissed through my teeth to keep from screaming as BWCZ deposited me on the cot. He was careful, but even so, it was impossible not to bump my feet eventually. He dropped all of my things on the floor and then sprinted out the door with the mesh bag of stones. Nate poured me a tin cup of water from the earthenware jug. I must have looked like a real winner with my feet gashed and bleeding and my hair matted to my head with salt water. But Nate didn’t say anything about that.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Sadie.”
“I’m Nate.”
BWCZ rushed back inside during the introductions with another lantern (already lit) and a felt pouch. His mesh bag was gone. He went to the basin and rinsed his hands and face.
“Could you grab me a stool from outside?” he asked.
Nate ducked out and reappeared quickly with a rustic-looking stool, like the kind of thing you make at summer camp for your parents, the tree bark still rough around the outside.
“Her name is Sadie,” Nate supplied helpfull
y.
“Sadie? I’m Whelan,” he said. He smiled again and it touched his eyes. “Pleased to meet you—I’d shake your hand but I need to keep them clean.” The implication being that I was filthy and covered in grit. I couldn’t actually argue with that, I smelled like I had just come from a lifetime spent in the briny deep.
“Nate, could we have some privacy?”
Nate waved at me again and whistled as he shuffled back out the door. Whelan placed the lantern near my feet. It had the unexpected and pleasant side effect of warming my toes, which were getting chill in the fading daylight. He pulled a squeezy bottle of clear liquid out of the felt pouch and a slender black case. It was a first-aid kit. Inside was a pair of tweezers. Oh, lordy.
“I can get someone to hold your hand,” Whelan offered. He looked genuinely concerned for my comfort. “It might help.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said valiantly.
Whelan raised a thick eyebrow at me as if to say “It’s your funeral” and then shrugged and squirted some of the clear liquid onto my right foot. Hydrogen peroxide. He hadn’t even picked up the tweezers yet. I yowled like an alley cat shoved into a bath tub.
“By the horns of Satan.” He pulled the bottle away. Talking became difficult with my teeth clamped together like a vice. “You win. Please go get someone.”
“I’ll get Banana,” he said, climbing to his feet. I didn’t see how that could help.
“Sorry—did you say you’ll get a banana?”
He chuckled, setting down his tools at the foot of the bed. “Yes, Banana. She was a dancer.”
That was not nearly enough of an explanation, but Whelan left before I could ask what that had to do with being named after a fruit. When Banana joined us I felt something hot and wibbly in my stomach—jealousy or maybe lust. She was by far the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Men started wars over faces like this. She was tall and voluptuous, not MySpace voluptuous, but built like a long, sexy hourglass. The only resemblance she held to a banana was her shining blonde hair, which was pinned up away from her face and cascaded back down to her shoulders. Even dressed in sweats and makeup free, she was stunning. And intimidating. She had a bowl in her hands. Steam rose off of it in tiny white curlicues.
“Sadie?” she said. Well, that was one bubble burst. She wasn’t perfect, and I suppose no woman is. Her voice was sharp, gruff, barbecue tangy like a trucker’s. Maybe it was part of her dancing act or whatever she did. She strode over to the cot and pumped my hand. Man, what a grip. “I’m Banana.”
“Hi … Banana.”
That’s it, I thought with a sigh, I’m actually living in a Japanese game show. Banana dropped down next to me, kneeling. I accepted the bowl she offered. It was instant oatmeal, warm and perfectly cooked. There was even a swirl of maple syrup on top. I wolfed it down, abandoning what was left of my dignity. I was so hungry and nervous I could barely even taste the food. Whelan and Banana were thoughtful enough to hold a muted conversation while I ate. Meanwhile, I plotted, thinking that maybe I’d be able to sneak out after Whelan had cleaned my wounds. But contending with the darkness … he was right. Plunging out into the forest at night was suicidal.
When I was finished eating, Banana took hold of my right hand with both of hers. I looked at her nails. They were chipped, but had recently been manicured. She smelled faintly of salt water. I know I reeked of it.
“What exactly happened to my feet?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Sea urchins,” Whelan stated. “They graze on seaweed. You can see them better when the tide goes out. They’ve got nasty spines. Either they were generous enough to share them with you or you’ve been playing footsy with porcupines.”
“Yeah, I really need to stop doing that,” I muttered.
Banana laughed, loud and throaty.
Whelan looked up from my feet—which were propped up on his forearm—and grinned crookedly. He had changed out of his wet T-shirt into a clean navy polo with an embroidered crest on the left chest. SPD. Seattle Police Department.
“These are most likely green sea urchins,” he added.
“So what were you doing out there?” I asked. It wasn’t the time for twenty questions, but I was eager to prolong the procedure.
“Clamming.”
“I think there’s a cream for that,” I said quietly.
Banana laughed again, tossing her hair. “Whelan used to surf and snorkel,” she said, beaming down at him. Ugh. “He knows where all the tastiest sea life hangs out.”
“Educational,” I muttered. “Now please make the pain stop.”
“Here, sweetie pie,” Banana said. There was no patronizing in it. She called me that as casually as you might call a good friend your buddy. Her perfect rosebud lips split into a smile and she winked. “You squeeze as hard as you want. I can take it.”
To Banana’s credit, she really did let me do that. And I needed it. Whelan was careful, even artistic with those tweezers, but it didn’t matter. It felt like every sea urchin pin had grafted to my skin, fusing to my feet in the time it took to walk from the beach to the cabin. They were holding on for dear life. I wanted to die. There was nothing stronger than a Tylenol for me to take and I felt every last searing jab of those tweezers. I screamed and groaned until I was hoarse and then just sort of grunted like a dying horse for the rest of it. The fact that neither Banana nor Whelan asked me to please shut the fuck up raised them both in my estimation.
Whelan wore a deeply pained expression through the whole ordeal, as if making me twitch and screech caused him actual physical discomfort, that or I was slowly making him deaf. By then I had half-forgiven him for the stunt he had pulled in the water. Sure, it had almost gotten us killed, but he was going about regaining my esteem with real pluck (pun intended). Between tweezes he would pat my ankle or the top of my foot and say things like, “It’s okay now” or “You’re doing great, babe.” In any other situation, being called “babe” would have me fuming, but it made me feel better because—at that moment—any measure of comfort helped. I would do the same thing for Shane when he burned his tongue on a hot drink or got a splinter.
I could feel his warm breath on my toes and the tensing of his shoulders each time he yanked out another pin. It was a slow process and I passed out more than once.
“We’re almost there,” Banana said. Her voice was dim, distant. “We’ll get those little fuckers out of your feet.”
For a minute, when I regained consciousness again, I wondered why pain so often led to euphoria. I’m not a glutton for punishment, not at all, but after a while I began to feel giddy and hysterical and even happy. The whole debacle suddenly struck me as ludicrously funny, like some harebrained setup for a romantic comedy gag. Woman purposely trounces through sea urchin bed to get a gruff but handsome man to bend over her feet for two hours. It did seem vaguely romantic, actually, the fact that someone I had known for less than a day cared so deeply about what was—more or less—my own fucking problem. I was the moron who threw off my shoes before dashing into the water, even if it was with the best intentions. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something so gross and unpleasant for me. Carl brought me a stale muffin once from a Dumpster. That was his idea of romantic.
Pick—ouch—pick—ow!
Luckily, my face was so red and the tears flowed so readily that neither of them noticed that I was blushing. Whelan’s forehead was wet with perspiration, his face less than two inches away from my stinky, bloody feet. It was awkward and disgusting, but I couldn’t picture being more comfortable given the situation. To show my gratitude, I shrieked and squirmed less and tried to catch Whelan’s eye to give him a reassuring smile. He was too focused on my feet. No matter how many times I mentally commanded him to just take a minute and look at my face, it didn’t happen. I closed my eyes and the missed connections ad flickered across my eyelids.
Under The Sea w/ PTSD w4m—29 (Some Island)
You: Tan, blue eyes, nice shoulders, t
all drink of Jack Daniels. Me: Dark hair, irritated, sea-urchined, blacking out with pain. You picked spines out of my toes after I saved you from a zombie. Next time, let’s do Uni.
I considered what the Ketch’s wide-open deck might be like if the world were a kinder, gentler place. Suddenly my head was filled with the smell of coconut-scented tanning oil and steamed mussels, and before I could stop myself I was imagining Whelan on that boat, getting a perfect, line-less tan. Either those spines were poisonous and I was tripping balls, or the tingling all over my body was from something different. Different, but equally troubling.
“Sadie?”
“Mm.”
“Sadie! Sadie? Damn it. Is she all right?”
“Hi. Yes. Yes?”
I was lucid again but the room was spinning. Poor Banana’s hand was turning blue from me squeezing it so hard. I relaxed my grip, finding that the pain wasn’t so bad anymore.
“All finished,” Whelan said, holding up a palm-full of spines, as proud as if he’d just won first place at the Science Fair. White teeth, one deep dimple.
“Thanks!” I said, out of breath. “Should my feet still hurt?”
“It’ll take a few days for the skin to heal. You should try to stay off them as much as possible.” He slathered the soles of my feet in antibacterial gel and began wrapping them up with strips of white fabric, T-shirt strips maybe.
“Don’t be stupid. You promised,” I said. “I have to get back to my camp and my friends. I’ve been gone too long already.”
Whelan and Banana exchanged a look. She sucked in a breath through her teeth and quickly excused herself. So much for sisterly solidarity. Whelan tossed the sea urchin spines into an empty tin cup and offered them to me. “Souvenir?”
“Oh, I think I’ve got plenty,” I said, glancing at my feet.
He sat down on the cot next to me. I had to scoot over to make room.