The Girl in the Mirror(32)

I could open the through-hulls and let Bathsheba fill with water. Tie myself to the bed so I stay inside her. We would disappear without trace.

I could lie on the foredeck until the sun burns me to the point of no return.

I could beat south to Antarctica.



I fantasize about rain.

I sleep in Summer’s quarter berth. The gold sarong that I had imagined she was wearing lies discarded on her bunk, still smelling of apples and white beaches. I press my face into it and then tie it around my waist. With my fingernail, I scratch a long curve down my left inner thigh, a mark to match Summer’s scar.

We were eight or nine years old when it happened. We were anchored in paradise, an uninhabited coral island, but Dad was in a bad mood. He ordered us kids to go to shore “and stay there till the bats are flying.” As always, I took the oars.

We had to row over the reef to get to shore, but I thought I knew where the pass was. Next thing, my body was crashing into water. I surfaced in darkness, inside Solomon’s upturned hull. I took a deep breath and swam out, and I came up in a sea of blood. Summer was screaming.

I righted the dinghy, pushed Ben back on board, and sent him back to Bathsheba to get help. Despite Ben’s gentle demeanor, I knew I could rely on him. He was small for the oars, but I had taught him how to row, how to “put your back into it” when you needed to push hard against wind or waves. Once I saw he was making progress, I turned to Summer and pulled her to shore. On the beach, I wrapped a wet towel around her leg, trying to stop the bleeding.

Later, everybody said I’d done well, but I knew the truth. Coral cuts never heal. Summer was scarred for life, and it was my fault. I should have borne the scar.

I will make myself into Summer. I will bring her back to life. All I need to do to resurrect my sister is make her scar.

I stand in the cockpit, where Bathsheba’s motion is gentlest. I pull out my sailing knife, and it hovers above my thigh. My hand still aches where I tore it open climbing the mast. I don’t want another wound. I don’t want more pain. But I have to do this. I have to bring Summer back.

The knife kisses my skin, but I can’t push hard enough. Something’s wrong.

Before the knife draws blood, I stop. What am I thinking? I’m about to make a bad mistake.

I’m so used to picturing Summer standing in front of me. I can almost see her now. I’m her mirror and she’s mine. I was about to make a scar that mirrored hers.

I don’t want to be her mirror anymore. I want to be Summer, the perfect twin, the one who is the right way round, but I’m confused. I can’t get it straight in my mind.

My head throbs. Is my memory of Summer fading already? I can see her in front of me, but I can’t step into her body and see her scar from her perspective. I can’t remember which thigh is scarred. I know it curves back at the top and toward her knee at the bottom, and I know it’s an S shape. S for Summer.

I check what I’ve drawn with my fingernail. It’s not an S, it’s backward, a curvy Z. I’ve drawn it on the wrong leg.

I can’t get this wrong. I take a pen and draw the S up the inside of my right thigh, starting at the bottom. I know precisely where it ends. Right at the line of her underwear.

Adam must love that scar. Summer said he was blind to her flaws, but surely he wouldn’t see it as a flaw. It’s part of Summer, part of the sweet, soft body he loves, but he’s never going to see it again.

I grip my knife and draw the S again. This time in blood.





9

The Sacrifice




In the end, I do it for Summer. I have to leave her behind for her sake. I have to stay alive and reach land so that Adam will know what happened to her. That death was swift. That she didn’t suffer.

I turn west with a plodding slowness, but Bathsheba doesn’t catch my mood. She skips and dances across the ocean. It’s easy sailing from here. Less than a week.

No more hand-steering for me, though. I’ve lost all pleasure in staring at the ocean and the sky. I hate them. I sit in the pilothouse and barely look for ships for days, until it occurs to me that if we collide with a fishing boat, I might kill more people.

I’ve already killed too many people.

I can’t think about the baby, but nightmares come. The child rotting inside her mother’s dead womb. The only thing left behind as Summer’s limbs drop away, as her body dissolves around it. Carrion for sea creatures.



I write lists. The people I have to tell. The people whose hearts I have to break.

Adam.

Tarquin.

Annabeth.

Ben.

My brother’s in New York studying economics in a posthumous attempt to win Dad’s approval. He’ll come as fast as he can to comfort me. The others will be too torn apart by grief to think about what I’ve been through.

There’ll be more people to tell. Summer’s friends. Letitia Buckingham is still her best friend, and she has former work colleagues whom I don’t know at all.

I’ll have to tell Francine and Colton and my four half sisters.

The thought of my stepmother’s fake grief, her secret joy, is the final straw.



I’ve been rationing water since I realized I was short, but the wind is light, and I’m not making much ground. I count it out, count miles, calculate, ration. I can’t believe how blasé Summer was, showering every day, letting me shower. We should have been much more conservative with water from the start. Now I have to seriously cut back, for safety’s sake.