The Rattled Bones(50)

“That’s exactly what I need.”

Gram nods to Sam, and an understanding passes between them. She kisses my forehead, pats my arm again. “Ya stay fine until I come back, ya hear?” Her words crack with worry.

Sam waits a moment after Gram leaves. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m—”

“Don’t even tell me you’re fine. Even if you are, which I doubt, I’m not going against your grandmother’s orders, so you’re stuck with me. Might as well make me useful.”

My headache sears the space behind my eyes. “Can you pull down the shades?”

“Done.” He stands, moves to the window, pulls the blinds and drowns out the sun. He stands at the sill, unmoving.

“Sam?”

He turns, his fingers lingering on the sill. “What’s this?”

I try to sit up but feel bruised everywhere. “Cover that. I don’t want Gram to see.”

His fingers trace the words: FIND ME. DONT GO!

“That shirt there.” I point to a tee huddled on my desk. His look of confusion confirms that the words are real. “Please just cover it.”

He does. When the carving is hidden, I lay my head back down. Just that short outburst drained too much of my energy.

Sam returns to his seat at my bed. “Did you write that?”

I shake my head.

“Who did?”

A tree branch. The long rattling fingers of the maple outside my window. A girl from the deep, the same girl that haunts the shore. Even in my head this sounds unbelievable. Truly mad. The institutional, all-white mad I’ve feared my whole life. The rocking-in-a-corner mad that is stitched into my DNA. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who carved words into your windowsill?”

The heat from my tea carries flowers on its steam. Flowers kissed by bees. Bees exchanging stories.

“I do know, but it’s kind of wrapped up in one of my private things.”

“I won’t press, Rilla. But if you need to talk.”

I nod, knowing that talking to Sam is what I need. He can help me connect the girl—her song, her words, her persistence—to Malaga in the way that they must be connected. What would I have to lose? A sternman? Sam is the safest person to talk to because he won’t be here after the summer; his roots aren’t set down generations deep like the rest of us.

Gram returns and takes my temp old-school, under the tongue. She packs a second water bottle behind my neck. I close my eyes to this simple medicine, and the room is immediately darker, softer. My bones feel too rattled, but they are remembering their places too, as if settling under my skin as they tuck back into position. I hear my grandmother mumble something to Sam. I hear her leave the room.

Sam towels the wet strips of my hair, trying to wring the sea from me still. I sit up too quickly, and pain bolts through my head, up my spine. The way it rips through me brings fear, and I’m a child again, needing my father to tell his soothing stories about the seals that live in the sea and slough off their skins to walk as women onshore. Or the first people, the first fishermen—any of the stories he used to tell. I settle back onto my pillow, my head searing. “Sam?”

“Right here.” He repositions the hot-water bottle behind my neck.

“Can you tell me a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“Any kind. When I was little, my dad told me stories whenever I got hurt, to draw my mind away from the pain.” I need a story now, and maybe it’s just the act of admitting this deep need that brings me calm. My mind begins to drift to the softened place of sleep.

Sam inches his chair closer, his movements a whisper. “Dragons or real life?”

“You choose.” The answer sounds like yew-choo; my words hold a mumble in their edges.

Sam draws a short breath, lets it free. “Once upon a time there was a king. He was a grandfather, a father . . .”

Grandfather. Father. The words swim together in my head and wash me into blackness. Sleep. A restorative space. I want to hold on to his words. I want to grip at the pieces of his story, but I can’t. The sea is pulling me under again, only this time it promises rest and I’m happy to go.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Hattie’s text is waiting for me when I wake: you okay?

I text back: Fine

Liar

Me: ?

My phone rings immediately. Hattie. She doesn’t even let me get in a “hello” before she starts.

“Don’t tell me some bullshit about how you’re okay. I saw you last night, and you were about the farthest thing from okay.”

“You were here?” My brain reaches for this fact but can’t pull it up.

“Just got home. But you’re kinda proving my point, Rills. You were so out of it you didn’t even know I sat by your bed for a gatrillion hours.”

“How did y—?”

“Your gram called me. She was freaking out worried about you.”

Gram. Of course.

“You freaked the shit out of me, too. Tell me you’re okay.”

“I am. I mean, I hurt all over, but I’m okay.”

“You need to seriously stop stressing. Let your gram take care of you.”

“I know.”