The Light Pirate(68)
“I don’t…” Wanda tries to remember. Yes, there is something familiar. But it’s been so long. She can’t quite reach—
“I knew it was you the minute I saw the lagoon all lit up like that. I just knew. I’ve only ever seen that once before.” And now Wanda does remember. She remembers it as if it’s happening to her right now. The Edge. The sixth graders. The water, the burning in her lungs, the salt in her eyes, the hand pressing her head down into the depths. One twin holding her under, while the other hung back.
“Brie,” Wanda says.
Bird Dog nods. “That name never fit right.” The light is gone now; her nod is just the shadow of a movement. The sharpness of her face has blurred in the darkness, her features melting into one another. Surely the sun is laying its fingers on some other part of the world, but here the night’s grasp is tight and sticky and feels as though it might never let go.
Chapter 55
After Lucas left, Phyllis watched, helpless, as the spark that used to flare in Wanda flickered yet again. The breadth and newfound height of her strong shoulders seemed to droop, her head to wilt like a spent flower. There wasn’t much Phyllis could do for her young friend, but she tried anyway: special foods, day trips to their submerged permanent plots, art projects, board games, hard labor. None of it helped. How could it? A few months after Lucas said goodbye, Blackbeard disappeared as well. At first, Phyllis was relieved that they couldn’t find her remains, but for Wanda, the uncertainty of the disappearance, the denial of finality, of a goodbye, was worse. Yet another missing piece. There and then gone, never found, just like Kirby. Her grief might have made more sense to Phyllis if it were loud and weepy, as it had been after her father died, but it was eerily quiet. When Phyllis looked into her eyes, it was like peeking into a darkened room.
Wanda started taking the canoe out alone, after their work was done, disappearing for hours at a time. She didn’t ask if it was all right, she just went. Phyllis bit back her objections as best she could, telling herself it might do Wanda some good. She’d have to trust her to navigate the wild on her own someday—it might as well begin now. She was young but also capable, and that’s what mattered. Phyllis leaned into the idea that Wanda had already learned more about survival than most adults. Even so. She worried.
On one of these afternoons, Phyllis stood in the driveway, shifting from one foot to the other as Wanda pulled the canoe out of the bramble where they hid it and down toward the water. Phyllis almost stepped forward to help, but then held herself back. Wanda had to be able to do these things alone. She struggled under the weight of it, but she kept it aloft, careful not to drag it across the rocks and scratch up the hull. It wasn’t so long ago that she wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Phyllis remembered the day they brought it home—how firm Wanda was in wanting it. The way the old fire chief just shrugged. Phyllis tried to pay him, but he wouldn’t take her money. “There’s people in this town freaked out by that kid,” he said to her when Wanda was busy cramming the paddle into the back of Phyllis’s car. “But I never been. You gotta be made of something extra, coming into this world like that. I don’t know what she wants that old piece of shit for, but she can have it and good luck to her.” Phyllis wondered where Arjun had ended up. If he was still alive.
At the water’s edge, Wanda slid the canoe down off her shoulder and it landed with a smack in the stream.
“You’re sure you don’t want company?” Phyllis knew she didn’t.
“No, thanks,” Wanda said.
“But you’ll be careful. Not too far?”
“Not too far.”
Phyllis stared at her old mailbox, all but submerged beside the canoe, its little red flag valiantly lifted against the push of the current. Inside, the box would be full of water and algae and maybe a creature or two seeking refuge. She wondered what species had claimed it. In another time, she would already know the answer to that question. She would have been watching since the day they moved in. Wanda was not the only one struggling in the wake of Lucas’s departure. “We should build a dock one of these days,” she said, trying to keep Wanda here just a little longer. Reaching for something, anything, that might occupy her interest. Wanda only grunted in response. The truth was, such an addition would attract too much attention. Someone might see it and wander up toward the blue house, now completely hidden by the bramble she had been cultivating for more than a decade. And they would almost certainly steal the canoe if it was left in plain view. But Phyllis wanted to pretend such concerns didn’t matter, if only for a moment. “That’d be a good project, wouldn’t it? I’ve got that lumber set by, it would be fun, we could—”
Wanda hopped into the canoe without answering and pushed it out into the canal in the same fluid motion, leaving Phyllis there at the foot of the driveway, the water lapping at her feet. She trailed off, her sentence unfinished. Wanda’s paddle began to flicker in and out of the water, and soon enough, between the pull of the current and the determined press of her arms, she was gone.
After Lucas left them for good, the constraints of their life revealed themselves. To Wanda and Phyllis both. Before, the dissolution of society had felt like a release from a structure that no longer made any sense. There was relief in that, and excitement. But once that final human tether to the outside civilization was cut, isolation crept close. The tides pressed in, rising higher and higher. The sun beat down, shining hotter and hotter. The monotony of their days took on a foreboding as the swamp spread and deepened.