The Rattled Bones(3)

Except, maybe I don’t.

I move to the engine at the back. I run my fingers along the fuel lines, testing every valve, every connection. The fuel filter’s clean. No broken belts, no blown hoses. I straighten, mystified. And that is when Malaga Island draws my full attention—or rather, the small wooden boat resting at its shore. The empty skiff is old, its paint beaten bare from Maine’s harsh seasons. But who does it belong to? And can they give me help if I need it?

Help. Something I’ve never been good at asking for.

The current pushes me closer to the uninhabited island, which isn’t much more than a rough mound of stone. The island’s trees are thick green spruce, with pointed, triangle tips that gobble up the sunlight. Tufts of fennel grass cling for life along the rough, small beach. And then, a figure.

A girl.

Maybe my age.

She is bent and focused as if rubbing something against the rocks. Her dark braids slip over her sharp shoulders as she leans forward, pulls back. Rhythmically. Expertly.

I wave, but the girl doesn’t look up.

I call to her, my hands cupped around my cry. “Hello!” I fan my arm again, cutting a single arc through the air. The girl doesn’t respond. I stare at her too-long dress, its white lace seeming so out of place.

The air buckles, allowing a cold current to sweep across the water. The wind has the bite of winter in its breath, too icy for June. My skin blooms with gooseflesh.

Then I hear her.

The girl raises a song over the pounding waves, a low and mournful melody that lifts louder as she presses forward and back, her eyes never leaving her task. Her tune sounds like a lullaby from my childhood. Maybe something Gram would hum as she cradled me in her rocking-chair lap. Or is it from the forgotten depths of days when my mother lived here? Did my mother know this song? Sing it to me?

My memory can’t pull up the words, but it doesn’t matter.

Because it feels like the girl is singing for my loss.

I call to her again. “Hello!” My yell is primal, and I’m not entirely sure it has anything to do with my need to be rescued. When she looks up I see her brown face, her large eyes finding me. Do I know this girl? A word forms on her wide mouth, but the shrill bleat of an air horn devours all other sound. I startle and turn.

Old Man Benner’s slick new lobster boat—appropriately named Pretty Penny—putters beside mine, dwarfing the Rilla Brae. He cups one hand around his mouth and calls, “Ya’s all right, Rilla?”

“Fine.” The lie is quick and spiteful. I’d rather swim home than accept help from Reed’s grandfather, but I hear my dad’s words: “You get farther with sugar than you do with spice, sunfish.” I throw a forced smile.

“Glad ta see ya pulling them pots.” Now it’s his turn to lie. Only one morning after Dad’s death, Old Man Benner called Gram to bully me off our fishing grounds. I listened with my head pressed to hers, our ears tented over the kitchen wall’s landline receiver. When I heard Old Man Benner’s dense Maine accent spit out the words “Ayuh. Ocean’s no place for a girl,” I hung up on him, leaving me alone with Gram and her stern stare. I set twice as many traps into the deep that day.

“Sorry again ’bout ya father.” Old Man Benner’s tongue is thick with Maine, making father sound like fath-ah. It’s the regional accent Dad trained out of me from the first words I spoke. Not because he was ashamed of our roots, but because he knew it would mark me, and he wanted me to make my mark on the world instead.

“Need anything?” Old Man Benner calls.

A tow. My father. I need to believe I didn’t fail Dad on his last day, the way his heart did. I slide my dignity down where I can’t hear its protest and move to the rail. A request for help sits on my lips, but my pride won’t give it sound. “I’m all set.” Another lie.

“Ya shouldn’t be out he-ah, Rilla.” Benner sucks on a toothpick, teetering it between his teeth. “No sayin’ what could happen to a girl alone.”

The threat smacks me hard enough to rattle my head. My blood thickens with hate. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I stretch my arm toward him, hold up my open palm when I want to hold up my middle finger. He laughs at my fisherman’s—fishergirl’s?—wave, jimmying that gnawed toothpick deep in his bite.

My wave is enough to make him move on, and I flip him the bird once he’s passed. His boat stirs a wake that leaves me bobbing in giant man-made swells. When the sea settles, I try the key again. Nothing. It’s okay, I tell myself. I’ll ask the girl for help. It’ll be easy. People ask for assistance all the time. I reach for a rag under the console, find a white square of torn sheet and raise it over my head, readying to wave the international distress signal.

But the girl is gone. I trade the SOS cloth for my binoculars and scan the island.

She is nowhere.

I settle into the captain’s chair—my chair now.

I search Malaga with a strange disappointment swelling my heart. I don’t know why I feel solidarity with the girl; maybe because she’s not supposed to be out here. Same as me.

I stand quickly, feeling trapped. My binoculars catch the edge of the key as they fall from my lap. The electronic gauges light up. “Well, hello,” I say, bringing my fingers to the dashboard. I turn the key fully and the motor turns over with a smooth rumble, shimmying the boat to life.