Touch Blue

  “Let’s hope so.” Dad smiles, putting a couple apples in the cooler with our lunch. “Got warm socks on, Tess? It’s chilly this morning.”

  “Warmest I’ve got.”

  “All right, then.” He pulls his overshirt from its peg beside the kitchen door. “Let’s go fishing.”

  As we cross the porch, Dad whistles softly, stroking his beard. He always says he has to get all the whistling out of him before he reaches the wharf, because it’s bad luck to whistle on a boat. I hum along to the hymn “This Is My Father’s World.”

  I slip my hand into Dad’s big rough one. “Why isn’t Aaron more excited to have a new home and a family?”

  Dad stops whistling. “Give him time. This is all new and strange to him.” He sighs. “Let me tell you something. When I picked Aaron up at the office the other day, he was waiting in a room with his trumpet and his suitcase. I said, ‘Let’s go home, Aaron,’ but even as I said it, I knew it was the wrong word. He’d never been to our house before. How could he think of a place he’d never even seen as home?”

  “What did Aaron do when you said that?”

  “He asked me what name he should call me. I said he could call me Jacob or Dad or even Mr. Brooks, if he wanted. Then he picked up his things and followed me to the car — like it was no big deal.” Dad shifts the cooler in his hand. “This is gonna take work, Tess. We’ve got to earn his trust. We need to be stubborn.”

  I tip my chin up to look at him. “I thought being stubborn was a bad thing.”

  He smiles. “Not always. Stubborn can also mean ‘I won’t give up on you.’”

  “I’ll be stubborn.” Part of me itches to tell Dad about Aaron’s letter. I want to know what it means that his mom wrote to him. But I also want to do what Dad said and earn Aaron’s trust. If I tell, he’ll never share anything else with me.

  I peek to make sure Dad can’t read my thoughts, but he’s looking away now. I promised I wouldn’t tell about Aaron’s letter, but I didn’t promise I wouldn’t ask any questions. “Didn’t Natalie say Aaron’s mom and dad didn’t care about him?”

  “No! She didn’t say that.” He blows out an impatient breath. “She said he’s never known his father, and his mother can’t take care of him. That’s not the same as not caring.”

  “Why can’t she take care of him?”

  “Because she’s had lots of trouble with drugs and drinking. When people get hooked on things like that, they can’t even take care of themselves, let alone their children.” He glances at me. “That’s just for you to know, Tess. Not to be repeated, not even to Libby. Okay?”

  I nod. “Do you think Aaron’s mom misses him?”

  His fingers tighten over mine. “I expect so. It’s very hard to know you’ve hurt someone you love. But his mom had a lot of chances to make this right, and she didn’t do what she needed to. She didn’t show up to meetings or take her drug tests. I guess the judge decided it was time to stop giving the chances to the parent and give them to the kid instead.”

  “But what if —”

  “Look, Tess. We don’t get a say in this. The State of Maine decided she can’t have him, and unless they choose otherwise, that has to be good enough.” He closes his mouth, done talking.

  I hate when Dad does that, just clams up, like he’s told me all I need to know. “The State of Maine says our school should be shut down. That’s not good enough.”

  “That’s different,” he says. “In our case, the State’s wrong. They’re only thinking about how much it all costs, but some things can’t be undone. A long time ago, many of the islands in the bay had year-round communities. Now there are only six.”

  As we crest the hill, the bay stretches into view, strewn with islands. A few of the islands are long, with the roofs of houses poking up through the trees. But most are small and uninhabited, scraps of granite and pine.

  I miss the days last summer when I could look at this view and feel happy, not scared I might lose it. Against the pink sky, the smallest islands look like black, jagged-topped rocks tossed helter-skelter into the bay. I search out my favorites: Gosling Island and Big Goose next door, Hog Island, Baker, Pumpkin Knob, Pound of Tea, and the Three Sisters. A chain of three islands, the Sisters are connected at low tide but separated by water at high. When my skiff is launched, I hope I can talk Aaron into coming with me to the beach on the littlest Sister and walking all the way to the thick trees of the biggest one. I’ve always wanted to do that.

  When you live on an island, a boat is freedom. You can go where you want and when you want, without worrying about the ferry schedule.

  “Ready?” Dad asks. “Now!”

  I pull in a sharp breath, filling myself down to my toes with clammy, early-morning mist and the damp taste of salt. We do this every day we go fishing — breathe in the morning together.

  I hold my breath until my lungs feel ready to explode and my heart pounds a wild drumbeat in my ears. When I can’t keep my air back one second longer, I nod at Dad and we let our breaths go together in a whoosh. “The Sisters aren’t visiting,” I say.

  “Nope, but they’ll be having lunch together. Low tide’ll be about noon.”

  As we near the bait shack, I stop in my usual spot near the mailboxes. Bait stinks. It’s a smell you get used to — briny and sickly sweet at the same time — but I’d still rather stand upwind while Dad drinks another cup of coffee and talks with the other fishermen on the wharf. He calls it his “catching-up cup.” Today, I suspect the talk is of the new kids — especially Aaron.

  Out in the bay, the Tess Libby, our lobster boat, waits on her mooring. It’s always a comfort to see her there, her nose up and her wide, flat, open deck in the back. No matter how rough the seas are or how hard it rains, she stays right there, waiting for us.

  Seems wrong to have a boat named half for Libby when she hates fishing. Hates the smell, hates the rocking of the boat, and especially hates the lobsters’ wriggling legs. She’s even afraid of the ocean itself, unless the sea’s near glassy calm. “Libby didn’t get the fishing gene,” Dad says.

  Not like me.

  But whenever I ask Dad if he’ll teach me to drive the Tess Libby, he always says no. And when I tell him I want to be a fisherman on my own someday, he says, “You’re going to college. Spending the summer lobstering with me is okay while you’re in school. But it’s a hard, dangerous way to make a living, Tess. Harder’n I want for you.”

  “What about what I want for me?”

  But Dad doesn’t seem to think that question needs an answer. Waiting for him to finish catching up, I scan the bay, checking out the colorful lobster buoys to see where the other fishermen are setting. Some buoys are crowded together, marking the “hot spots” where lobsters are — or were. Others are sprinkled alone, just in case. I take special notice of Uncle Ned’s yellow-and-red buoys and skip right over Eben Calder’s orange-and-black ones. Eben’s one of the “copycats.” They follow the best fishermen around the bay and set their own traps nearby.

  Dad and Uncle Ned have those copycats fooled, though. They each have a few buoys they use as decoys. Instead of a trap, the other end of the long rope is tied to a cement block at the bottom of the sea. Dad calls them his “new traps” and moves those cement blocks around the bay to throw off the copycats.

  “Hey, Tess Libby, how’s them new traps fishing?” Uncle Ned will ask Dad over the VHF.

  “Haven’t caught many lobsters,” Dad will say back into the mic. “But I caught a bunch of fools.”

  I’d rather catch nothing than be accused of being a copycat. I look around for a new place to try setting my own traps. Near Sheep Island might be good. Not many fishermen are there — which may mean it’s a dud. But the sea bottom around Sheep Island is plenty rocky, and if I were a lobster, I would pick somewhere with lots of underwater hiding places.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my newest good-luck charm: the piece of blue sea glass.

  Let me choose the right place.


  Then from behind me, I hear a sound I dread: the jingle-jangling of dog tags and the thudding of four big paws pounding up the road. Eben Calder’s dog is one of those huge, angry-looking black dogs that make you want to cross to the other side of the road when you see him coming. A dog that thinks he’s more owner than pet.

  And if Beast’s coming, so is —

  “Hey, Mess.”

  I don’t turn around — don’t have to.

  “Where’s your bodyguard?” Eben asks.

  I shoot a glare over my shoulder, but then my lips lift right up to a smile. Eben’s jaw’s all puffy on one side, making him look lopsided. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I say, sweet as maple sugar. “Just a skinny trumpet player from the mainland is enough.”

  Eben narrows his eyes. “I’ll get him back. You wait and see.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I look for Dad, but he’s over at the bait shack talking to Uncle Ned. “You’re gonna ruin it for all of us, if you do.”

  “My dad says it’s a stupid plan to take in other people’s kids.”

  “That’s because no one even asked your family to do it.” I’m so mad I spit the last words. It’s just a guess, but Eben’s eyebrows fall, angry.

  “My mom’ll homeschool me if we lose the school, so I don’t care,” he says.

  “Well, I do!”

  “And my dad is already teaching me to drive our boat.”

  I clench my teeth so my jealousy won’t show on my face.

  “Tess!” Dad calls.

  I’m relieved to get away from Eben, but as I hurry down the road, I get that prickly feeling between my shoulder blades, telling me he’s watching me go.

  I’m out of breath when I reach the wharf. “Can I drive the Tess Libby today? Just for a little bit?” I ask Dad. “We could go way out where there’s nothing to hit. Eben says his father —”

  “No,” Dad says, untying our skiff. “And I don’t want you talking to Eben. He’s caused our family enough problems this week.”

  “I didn’t mean to talk to him. Words just kept popping out of my mouth.”

  “Next time, you keep those words in your mouth,” Dad says. “Hear me?”

  I nod. When I climb into the boat, boards sigh under my feet. I take my usual place in the stern.

  As the skiff glides along, tiny whirlpools from Dad’s oars rush past. “Time for our morning commute,” he says.

  I love how every day at the ocean is different — the clouds, the color of the water, the weather — it’s never exactly the same. But today, I’m only thinking about what Eben said about getting back at Aaron.

  Off starboard, a flight of cormorants huddles together on a ledge. Pitifully holding out their wings to dry, they look like a funeral group, all dressed in black with their arms out. Like they’re begging heaven, “Take me instead.”

  “Do you think God ever makes mistakes?” I ask.

  “Mistakes?”

  “Like not giving cormorants enough oil to make their wings waterproof, so they have to stand there and dry them?”

  Dad slows his rowing. “I wouldn’t venture to speak for God, but maybe cormorants are the lucky ones.”

  “How so?”

  “They have to stand still in the sun awhile every day,” he says. “Not such a burden when you look at it that way. Might do some people well to stop running around and stand still awhile, too. Think so?”

  I nod.

  A seagull lands on the rock, shaking his wings. The cormorants pay him no mind, until he snaps at one. “I think that gull’s making fun of the cormorants because they have to stand there with their wings out.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t set much stock by seagull opinions,” Dad says. “Any bird that’ll eat rotten fish heads and garbage isn’t someone to look up to.”

  I smile. “Shh. He’ll hear you.”

  Dad shrugs. “I’m sure he’s heard worse.” As he pulls our skiff alongside the Tess Libby, I look over toward Eben getting into his father’s lobster boat. I touch the blue sea glass in my pocket.

  Don’t let him make more trouble for us.

  We’ve been fishing several hours, when I decide to ask the question I’ve been wondering ever since Eben made his threat on the wharf. “Did Reverend Beal ask Eben’s family to take in a foster child, too?”

  “No. I’m sure he didn’t,” Dad says. “The Calders don’t give enough attention to the kids they’ve already got.”

  As Dad puts the boat in gear, I sweep my gaze along Bethsaida: past the rooftops and the white church steeple poking over the trees, all the way to the gray gable and black roof of our house. Our attic window looks out over the treetops like a tiny, diamond-shaped eye. “Eben said he was gonna get Aaron back for hitting him.”

  “Hmmpf.” Dad looks around me at his boat instruments. “Eben’s all growl and no teeth.” Everything about Dad’s tight, though: his jaw, his knuckles, and the clench of his shoulders.

  I put my hand on his sleeve. “But what if Eben does something else bad? Aaron might tell Natalie about it. Maybe she’ll think we’re all mean out here, even though it’s only the Calders, and —”

  “Tess! Will you please stop searching for trouble?” The annoyance in his voice slaps me. I lift my fingers, one by one, off his shirt. We bicker plenty, but he doesn’t usually yell at me — not like that. If I were home, I’d run to my room and slam my door as hard as I could. But on a boat there’s nowhere to go.

  A seagull flies fast beside us, keeping up, as we pass the first of the Three Sisters. Pine and spruce trees crowd the islands, bunched together like spectators at a wrestling match. The first row of trees leans out over the water, the ones behind peeking over the front row’s heads. A thin ribbon of water still flows between them.

  Dad guns the engine, spray rising high along the hull.

  “Tess Libby, you on?” Uncle Ned’s voice comes over the VHF. “This is the Windlass. Barb wants to invite you all to supper soon — so you let us know when’s a good time. Okay? And hey, Tess! How’s it going?”

  I glance across to the Windlass fishing at the far end of Bethsaida. A cloud of seagulls floats above the stern of Uncle Ned’s boat, each gull swooping in and out of the others, trying to steal a mouthful of bait.

  I don’t really want to talk to anyone, but it’ll be worse to explain. “Hey, Uncle Ned,” I say into the mic, hoping if he hears the crack in my voice, he’ll think it’s radio static. “I’ll tell Mom about Aunt Barb inviting us.”

  “Tess, who do you suppose your dad’s trying to impress, driving like an idiot?” Uncle Ned laughs. “It couldn’t be us, ’cause he already knows for a fact we ain’t impressed with him.”

  Dad takes the mic from me. “Hey, boys. Looks like Ned’s found a hot spot over near Cousins Island.”

  “You never mind where I’m fishing!” Uncle Ned says.

  “Except he’s setting so close to shore, he’s as likely to catch chipmunks as lobsters,” Dad says.

  The easy teasing in his voice cuts me. If my family is forced to move to the mainland, Dad can still lobster out here on this same bay every day. His whole world won’t change like mine will. I sit on a crate as far from him as I can get and pull my knees up under my chin.

  “Cousins Island, huh?”

  Whenever Dad and Uncle Ned start in teasing each other, fishermen all over the bay grab up their microphones and dive headlong into the scuffle.

  “I’ve got a few traps I could put there.”

  “Red and yellow? Ain’t them’s your buoy colors, Ned?”

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Uncle Ned snaps. “This is all your fault, Jacob.”

  “My fault?” Dad says. “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, it ain’t like I’ve figured the details yet!” Uncle Ned says. “But when I get to the bottom of it, I’ll make sure it’s your fault!”

  Reaching over the boat rail, I dip my hand into the icy, needling spray. Within seconds my fingertips throb with cold. Droplets jump ahead of on
e another, racing near the hull. A scrap of rainbow flickers as sunlight passes through the wet mist.

  A rainbow is a sign of change coming — which can be good luck or bad luck, depending on what kind of change you get.

  Please let it be a good change.

  Let it be Aaron changing to like it here. Or the school regulations changing. Or Dad changing.

  Or —? Peeking sideways through my fringe of bangs, I watch Eben hauling lobster traps with his dad near Gosling Island. Beast stands in the stern of their boat, nipping at the seagulls.

  No, this tiny patch of rainbow can’t be about Eben changing. He’d need a huge rainbow — big enough for a complete overhaul. Dad might accuse me of searching for trouble, but there’s one thing I know about trouble. It doesn’t always sit around waiting to be found. Sometimes it comes looking for you.

  “Tess, you tell your father my lobsters can whoop his lobsters any day of the week, even with one claw banded,” Uncle Ned says. “You hear that, Jacob?”

  “I heard it, but I don’t believe it,” Dad says. “Tess, you tell your uncle he’s downright misinformed if he thinks I’d pit my burly lobsters against the scraggly little crawfish he’s hauling today. Wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

  The wind tickles my hair over my nose, and I tuck the strands back under my bandanna. My hair feels thicker with salt, and my skin is sticky.

  The radio sputters. “Tess Libby, this is Kate,” Mom says.

  “I’m here, Kate,” Dad says. “What is it?”

  “Aaron would like to come join you.”

  Dad smiles, slowing the boat. “Sure.”

  I hold my breath so I can listen better. Aaron wants to come?

  “We had a hard morning.” Mom sounds tired, although it’s not even lunchtime yet. “Natalie called to see how he was settling in, and Aaron asked for a visit with his mom.”

  I pull my fingers out of the water quickly. Did Aaron tell Natalie about his letter?

  “Natalie said it isn’t possible. And Libby has hardly let Aaron breathe today without her.”