Wish You Were Here(21)

I still haven’t been able to talk to him, but I have written him postcards every night. I hope to get stamps and mail them, and maybe find a cellphone store in town where they can work out a way for me to text internationally. I also need clothing, because rinsing out my limited supply every night isn’t ideal. The few stores that are still open do not seem to have regular hours, and I keep timing it wrong. While trekking into town, I have seen intermittent signs of life at the pharmacy, a shawarma stand, and a church. I decide that, later today, I will try my luck again in Puerto Villamil.

Before dawn, I go for a run, until my lungs are burning. When I reach a spiky black monolith of lava, I sit down on the sand and watch the stars burn out of the sky, like sparks on a hearth. By the time I walk back home, the tide is coming in. It erases my footprints. When I look back over my shoulder, it’s as if I was never there.

I take another blank postcard from the G2 Tours box and sit down on the hammock outside my apartment to finish my latest missive to Finn; then something at the edge of the water catches my eye. In the hazy blue light, rocks look like people and people look like monsters, and I find myself walking closer to get a better look. I am almost at the shoreline before I realize it’s the girl from Concha de Perla, carrying a trash bag. She straightens, as if she can sense me coming up behind her. She is holding a plastic water bottle with Mandarin characters on the label. “It’s not bad enough that the Chinese fishing fleets are poaching,” she says in perfect English. “They have to throw their crap overboard, too.”

She turns to me and jerks her chin along the rest of the beach, where other bottles have washed ashore.

She continues to pick up trash as if it’s perfectly normal for her to be here at the crack of dawn, as if I haven’t seen her cutting herself or being yelled at by Gabriel.

“Does your brother know you’re here?” I ask.

Her wide black eyes blink. “My brother?” she says, and then she huffs a sharp laugh. “He is not my brother. And it doesn’t really matter if he knows or not. It’s an island. How far away could I even get?”

When I was in school and that girl was harming herself, I felt like our paths kept crossing. Probably they had before, too, but I hadn’t been aware. One day, as we passed in the hallway, I stopped her. You shouldn’t do it, I said. You could really hurt yourself.

She had laughed at me. That’s the point.

I watch this girl pick up a few more plastic bottles and jam them into her bag. “You speak English so well.”

She glances at me. “I’m aware.”

“I didn’t mean—” I hesitate, trying to not say something inadvertently offensive. “It’s just nice to have someone to talk to.” I reach down and grab a bottle, holding it out for her bag. “I’m Diana,” I say.

“Beatriz.”

Up close, she seems older than I first thought. Maybe fourteen or fifteen, but petite, with sharp features and bottomless eyes. She is still wearing her sweatshirt, arms pulled low beyond her wrists. There is a school crest over her heart. She seems perfectly content to ignore me, and maybe I should respect that. But I am lonely, and just days ago, I watched her self-harming. Maybe I am not the only one who needs someone to talk to.

I also know, based on our previous interactions, that she is more likely to flee than to confide in me. So I choose my words carefully, like holding out a crust of bread to a bird and wondering if it will dart away, or hop one step closer. “Do you always pick up the trash here?” I ask casually.

“Someone has to,” she says.

I think about that, about all the visitors, like me, who descend on the Galápagos. Economically, I’m sure it’s a boon. But maybe having all the boats and tours suspended for a few weeks isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it gives nature a moment to breathe.

“So,” I say, making conversation. “Is that your school?” I point to my chest, in the same spot where the logo is on her sweatshirt. “Tomás de Berlanga?”

She nods. “It’s on Santa Cruz, but it shut down because of the virus.”

“So that’s where you live?”

She starts walking; I fall into place beside her. “During the school year I live with a family in Santa Cruz,” she says quietly. “Lived with.”

“But this is where you were born?” I guess.

Beatriz turns to me. “I do not belong here.”

Neither do I, I think.

I follow her further down the beach. “So you’re on vacation.”

She snorts. “Yeah. Like you’re on vacation.”

Her barb hits home; as holidays go, this isn’t exactly what I hoped for. “How come you go to school off-island?”

“I’ve been there since I was nine. It’s like a magnet school. My mother enrolled me because it was the best chance of getting me out of Galápagos forever, and because it was the last thing my father wanted.”

It makes me think of my own mother and father. Separate circles that didn’t even overlap to form a Venn diagram where I could nestle into both their spaces.

“He’s your father,” I guess. “Gabriel?”

Beatriz looks at me. “Unfortunately.”

I try to do the math; he seems so young to be her parent. He can’t be much older than I am.