The She

  "Feel better?" She cracked up, pounding her fist on the tabletop. Then she reached behind my head for something, and came around with a tissue between two fingers.

  "Fine. Enjoy yourself." I snatched it, wiped my face, feeling better—empty is better than green. I watched her laugh. "Actually, Grey, you look good today. It must be that cold air working in your lungs. I would not at this moment peg you for the sick person I saw ... lord. Was it only two days ago?"

  "Salt air working on my lungs. Being back on the water really helps me, I think. And I think there's something to this whole KHK concept Mrs. Ashaad dreamed up. It's like, you weren't only supposed to help me. I was supposed to help you somehow." She laughed. "I think Mrs. Ashaad meant that I was supposed to help your heart grow two sizes or something, which is not what I have in mind in the way of helping you."

  "Putting up with me is great of you. I don't think there's much else you can do." It hadn't occurred to me that she was either getting something out of this or thinking of doing something to help me.

  "Well, if nothing else, I brought flowers. When we get over the spot where you think your parents died, you'll get a rush out of throwing them. Two years ago I threw a stick out on a frozen lake for my dog to chase. He fell through the ice. I almost drowned trying to save him, but he never resurfaced." She got a far-off look, the first I'd seen on this boat that she might be spiraling into depression.

  "That's horrible."

  "Yeah, try watching your dog die when he's the only friend you have in your own house." She swallowed and went on almost too quickly. "At any rate, Mr. Maddox is the ultimate snooze teacher but he's nice outside of class. He dragged the story out of me, took me down there. We threw flowers out onto the ice, made a little memorial on the bank there. Just a stupid ritual that wouldn't bring Gonzo back. But it really helped, somehow ... I don't know how. It just did."

  That explained the flowers. I figured it would be very hard to throw flowers out there, but my gut told me she was right. I just couldn't think about it too much, because she raised her eyes to mine with some determined look that resembled the hardness I was used to seeing.

  "And there's a better thing I might be able to do. I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't get a bunch of my summer friends together to dive for the wreck. They're mostly older mosdy pros."

  I picked up her fingers and squeezed them, deeply moved, actually. "Grey, that is really sweet, but—"

  "But what? Tell me the challenges. I am a very stubborn person, and you need to prove something to your brother: And telling me the challenges just makes me more determined sometimes. And less bitchy. I can fight with the problems instead of with people." She pulled her hand away, and I cracked up. It wasn't hard to think of the problems with a dive. I'd actually been thinking about it while I was driving the boat.

  "First off, I don't know the exact loran TDs of where they went down. They did give a Mayday, but they gave it over the ship-to-shore, so the Coast Guard wouldn't even have it."

  "Why the ship-to-shore?"

  "I heard it, and I'd say my mom was freaking, just wasn't thinking. Emmett says they did it intentionally—"

  "So, the coordinates are stored in your memory only," she said quickly, like she didn't want to get sidetracked on Emmett.

  "I actually have some vague memory now of writing them on something. The wall, maybe. But Opa sends a housekeeper over there every other week. I would imagine they've long been washed off."

  "Could Mr. Church help your memory along a little bit?"

  I shifted around and flopped my hands on the table. I thought of Mr. Church as some sort of saint right now, but I was going back and forth on whether or not I should believe in his mystical powers. I guess I was trying to be cautious.

  "So, what else?" she asked.

  "Even if we had the loran TDs, the canyon is a mile deep. The Goliath could have landed on the bottom as much as half a mile away from their last coordinates. Finally, the canyon's too deep for divers, Grey. A dive into the canyon would have to be done by a bubble drum. It's a little submarine on a long cable attached to a sizable boat—"

  "I know what a bubble drum is. It's expensive."

  "Yeah."

  "How much are we talking about?"

  I flinched, remembering Mr Shields's comments when he'd quoted his price on a dive and how it would "stop any wayward talk." I realized now he'd been talking about the DEA, not The She. I wondered how many other islanders knew about the scandal and what their opinion was on my parents. Not that it really mattered. I wouldn't have to face them.

  "Mr Shields has some guys he networks with. He quoted me a price of thirty thousand dollars. And if they don't find the wreck, you still have to pay."

  "Thirty thousand?" She laughed a little, which is what I expected, and so it shocked the hell out of me when she said, "Thirty thousand dollars is actually quite doable."

  I thought maybe I'd heard her wrong. "How do you mean? It's not like I can just bust into my trust fund."

  "I mean, sometimes we've got more than that just lying around the house."

  I watched her look turn from enthusiastic to clouded, though she was managing to keep her grin.

  "You're not serious."

  "I'm more than serious. I could just ... take it. I know all the hiding places. What's my father going to do? Call the police and say his extortion and bribe money was just lifted?" She continued laughing toward the porthole like she really didn't want to look at me.

  Extortion and bribe money. I tried telling myself I was dreaming, yet I remembered Chandra's description of Grey's dad, and it seemed like every time I heard something about him, it was something worse than the last thing. I didn't want to stare at her so I just kept staring out the window, at the blue meeting blue. The sun was starting to sink, but the water was a deep blue, like the sky, so it was hard to tell where the water ended and the horizon started.

  I cleared my throat. "I, um, had no idea."

  "Most people don't. In fact, I'm not even sure how all he makes his money. Just call him a multifaceted wonder. If it's illegal, he'll do it. Is there a support group for people addicted to breaking rules?" She laughed more at herself, but it sounded forced. She leaned her head on her hand and grabbed a fistful of hair. "He's done money laundering, illegal gambling, extortion, drugs, though I think the drugs are just a hobby to support his own little fun 'n' games. Not that you have to repeat any of that. You know why criminals always end up addicts or alcoholics, Evan?"

  I couldn't imagine repeating this to anyone and expecting them to believe it. "No, I don't."

  "It's because they have no way to clean up without getting themselves killed. They're afraid to go to shrinks and counselors. They can't tell the truth about themselves to anyone ... sometimes not even themselves. I think that's their biggest clog. They're stuck behind their shut mouths, so they have to deaden the pain instead of getting rid of it. That's what my shrink says. I believe it."

  "You told your shrink about your dad?"

  She bounced a little, taking what looked to be her first shaky breath all afternoon. I watched her glance at her prescription, lying on top of her purse, but she looked away again. "Some. It's one perk of being in a Catholic hospital. The shrinks, they're not only bound to a professional code of silence, they're bound to the Church's. Like priests. It's a good deal. In spite of 'The List.'" She turned her weary eyes and glanced somewhere around my chest. "At any rate, it's a lot harder to bank certain types of money made illegally than you would think. It takes time, if it can go to a bank at all. In the meantime, it sits around for the spending. He thinks I'm blind and stupid like my mother,"

  "Uh ... what if he thought somebody else took it? And somebody else gets their head blown off?"

  She shrugged. "Whoever he would blame, believe me, that guy is not on my version of 'The List.' I'd say that's one less subhuman to clutter up our illustrious downtown scenery. Good riddance." She scratched her forehead, looking down at her lap like she'd b
een caught saying another mean thing and life was too confusing to be anything but comical.

  I felt very naive sitting there beside her but also like maybe I wanted to stay that way. She was living in some sort of cesspool. If I wasn't seeing her fight it in so many ways, I might have gotten the urge to go up and keep Mr. Church company. The situation being what it was, I reached for her hair and ran my fingers through it as she slumped forward with her head on her hand again.

  I talked from my gut. "Grey, that's a nice offer: But it just feels all wrong. I'm trying to prove something about my family being not that way." They were the best words I could think of, though I watched her more carefully. "It just doesn't feel right using money made illegally, if you know what I'm saying."

  Her eyes got heavy, like she was enjoying the head rub but wasn't really hearing me.

  "Lord knows, there's enough money in my family. I could talk to my grandfather if I decided I wanted to actually look for a wreck, threaten to empty my trust fund over it, something." Choosing your words carefully is not easy when the person you're talking to is spilling their guts, so I just let fly. "I just don't understand one thing. You've got parents deeply involved in the types of things I want to prove my family had no part of. Why would you want to help me?"

  She flopped back in her seat, thumping her head against the wall like she was thinking. "It's not like I want to turn on my family, or wish that my family weren't my family, or wish that my family were your family, even if they were dead, or something noble like that." She shut her eyes. "One night when I was about eleven, I got up in the middle of the night for a drink or something. I looked down over the banister and my dad was down there talking to some guy, and he gave the guy a gun. I saw it. I'd known about his guns since I was little, but I thought, My dad not only owns guns, but he tells big men how and when to use them. That is cool. That's so powerful. I always saw him as very cool and powerful. And maybe I still would. The problem is, a couple of times he's pushed me too far. I don't care how old you are, or how powerful. You get a decent coke high, you get stupid. And that's all I want to say about that."

  She shut her eyes and thumped her head a couple of more times. She hadn't exactly answered my question, but I thought of Chandra's little tale about her father lending her out. What in hell kind of a life am I sitting across from? When Grey had her eyes shut like that, you couldn't see so much of her hardness. It was still there, in her leg pulled up on the seat, in her arm draped over her knee, in her suede jacket, ski sweater or clunky snow boots. There was nothing overly feminine there, no high heels, long nails, boufed-out hair, or other stereotypes of a mafia don's daughter. Without her eyes to sharpen her face, she looked like a pixie or an angel.

  I tried what I thought was a better way to get her mood back.

  "Maybe the Goliath foundered on the shelf. That's only a hundred and twenty-five feet down. I'll do some more checking around this weekend and see what I can find out. If that's what we decide, then you can teach me how to dive, and we'll dive it together, next summer."

  "You're not diving it, no matter what, Barrett." She never opened her eyes, and her words sounded a little slurry, like she might be dozing off all of a sudden. "There's dead people down there. Do you want to be right on top of us when we start bagging femurs?"

  Definitely, her mood was spiraling again. I figured maybe I should leave her let her take a nap or something.

  "You want to go lie on the bunk? Up in the bow? It's kind of cozy."

  She didn't answer but started knocking her head into the paneling again in a way that looked like it could actually hurt. "Grey, you're not looking so good all of a sudden. Go on, lie down for a while."

  "Least I'm not puking." A little smile spread out on her face, which I took as a good sign, until she went on. "And I'm just sitting here thinking about it. And even if it is possible, I'm not sure I'm a person who should be diving the wreck of the Goliath. Even if it is on the shelf."

  "You were doing okay a few minutes ago, if we're right and what helps me helps you."

  "Yeah, but I thought I could help because I love to dive wrecks. I never told you why I love to dive wrecks." She looked at me with those dangerous eyes and half grin, and never broke her stare as she eased herself to the edge of the booth. "It just gives me some insanely great pleasure to see what happens to people whose lives are more thoroughly down the toilet than my own."

  She got to her feet and went into the bow, laughing to herself. I stood up slowly, staring at my sneakers.

  FOURTEEN

  I got sick again off the stern before we came into the canyon, but not even that completely distracted me from this feeling of having left the planet Earth altogether. I had climbed up on the bridge a couple of times as the sun set behind me. I wanted to get a better grip on what it felt like to look as far as you could in any direction and see only water. It was a wide-open feeling—and yet a closed-in feeling, like you're inside some giant, strangely lit shell that's sewn together all around by the horizon.

  At dusk it was a multicolored shell, with purples and blacks at one end, and reds, turquoises, yellows, and oranges at the other. Then complete darkness finally fell. It was like being in a black bubble, except the top part of the shell was covered in enormous white dots. I had totally forgotten how the stars were like flashlights out here on a clear night. The wind was kind of a bitch. It came and went in freezing-cold gusts, working against the closed-in feeling and reminding me that we were a microscopic dot on one of the largest bodies of water on earth. It was humbling.

  Finally, Mr. Church cut the engine down to idle and came back and stood next to me.

  "Here we are."

  I did not feel anything, really. I couldn't sense my parents underneath me, couldn't sense any sunken ship calling out to me from the depths. All I felt was icy wind.

  "Now what do we do?" I asked him.

  "I don't know."

  He was looking at me like I should know. I walked to the side of the Hope Wainwright and looked down into the black.

  "That stuff, that black that's lapping onto the side of the boat? It's hard to conceive that it's more than a mile deep."

  "Actually, we're right on the edge of the shelf. If we go another quarter mile out, the depth will drop that drastically. It's a little rough here. We can cross over if you want, and the sea will get a little calmer perhaps."

  I could see white neon-like stripes out in front of the Hope, which sometimes mean you're at the edge of the shelf. I shook my head, then nodded, then shook it again. I didn't know what to do, what I was supposed to be feeling. I was amazed at how this could feel like a normal fishing trip. I really thought that once I got out here, I'd sense the Goliath calling me from this direction or that, or some feeling like The She was watching.

  Grey came out of the cabin, holding her flowers, and I kind of wished she had stayed asleep. The cutting of the engines must have woken her. I didn't feel like trying to talk to her right now, knowing she might get some sort of gratification out of lives having been ruined worse than hers. Her mouth could curl your hair.

  "Did you have a nice rest?" Mr. Church asked her.

  "I love sleeping on boats. Thanks." She looked a little better in the lights on deck—less likely to bite.

  Did you take your meds I fought the urge to ask her that, and tried, from the inner depths of my bones, to be someone Mrs. Ashaad would think highly of. I tried reminding myself that this girl had been mauled by old men at her father's request, that she was trying to be better than the cesspool she was living in. It didn't take much more. I was reaching out, pulling her hat down further over her ears, and taking the flowers so she could put on her mittens.

  I only said, "Please, try not to say anything awful."

  "Okay, I will." She pulled on her mittens.

  "Where do you want to go, Evan?" Mr. Church asked, moving back to the helm. "You want to drive?"

  "Why not?" I took the helm, gripped the steering wheel, pushed the throttle
forward slightly, and we moved slowly across the whitecaps into the canyon. The water ahead was pitch-black, and with pitch-black below and flashlights above in any direction you looked, I got a very free feeling, probably ten times greater than driving on a giant blacktop with no lines and no end in sight. I kept my eyes off the dash intentionally, just to see where my gut might land us. But I could not lose my sense of direction, no matter how I tried to ignore it. I felt myself pulling southeast, though the wind whipped up behind us, sending its icy breath down my neck and onto my back.

  It's like I could feel that shelf finally drop, drop, drop, like I was driving a tiny speck over the top of an entire black world, one full of black mountains and black valleys and black hills and black life-forms.

  "My folks, they're definitely down there. I just know it." I looked almost straight up as I let the Hope pitch forward and take on the swells without using my eyes, and I felt Church come up close behind me. The back of my head was in his chest, and I could feel energy barreling off him. It was so free out here, so free of lights and brick and concrete and horns and cars and floor and ceiling and books and opinions.

  I felt free to shed all the shit off my skin, the invisible chains, the things I realized I'd been so subtly taught never to forget—like how to be skeptical. I could even shed my love of Emmett out here, or at least shed those parts that had always made me feel a little bit ashamed of myself, like I didn't measure up intellectually.

  "Where are we going?" I said above the engines, but since Church was right behind me, I knew he could hear it.

  "You tell me."

  "No, you tell me. Come on. Do it, please."

  He backed up so I almost fell backward when the Hope hit a swell I couldn't see or didn't care about. But then I heard a crack and his hot palms swallowed my temples, seemed to meet in the center of my head. It was keeping me standing. I didn't get that chill through me this time. Maybe I was chilled through to the max anyway. It felt like nothing—like normal, like my whole brain relaxed just a little bit more, like nature taking its course out here in the ultimate core of nature, and the right memories could just drop down off the dusty part of my brain with maybe a little extra clarity. I didn't even care whether it was mystical or right out of some standard psychology textbook.