ANYA WAS SCREAMING, SCREAMING, screaming.
Mr. Shevvington was racing up the stairs, Michael and Benj were racing up the stairs, even Mrs. Shevvington was running up the stairs.
Mr. Shevvington got there first.
“Christina!” he shouted. “Christina, stop it!”
Stop it? she thought. Stop trying to save Anya?
“Christina, what are you doing? Shoving Anya out the window?”
Mr. Shevvington jerked Christina by the shoulders, throwing her backward against the wall. Then he hooked his arms around Anya’s frail body and pulled her into the room. He rocked her back and forth. “It’s all right, Anya, you’re safe now, don’t be afraid, I’ve got you.”
Michael and Benj burst into the room. Mrs. Shevvington clumped in moments later. Christina was dazed where her head had hit the door jamb. She lay on the floor trying not to cry out with pain.
“What happened?” cried the boys. “Christina, what happened?”
The burning fog. They, living on the island inside the fog, had never seen it. Christina had finally witnessed the apparition that so terrified generations of mainlanders — Is it a house on fire? A ship in trouble? Are children burning? What shall we do?
Anya, eyes closed, lashes black against her pale cheek, lay in the pillow of her own hair against Mr. Shevvington. A tiny red rim of Anya’s blood decorated the white windowsill like a row of garnet beads.
Voice full of horror, Mr. Shevvington said, “Christina, were you trying to push Anya out the window?”
Michael stood over Christina. From this angle, he was enormous, with feet so large he could step on her, squash her like a bug. She did not recognize him — his folded arms, the underside of his chin, the bagging-out of his jeans at the knees. He was glaring at her.
Christina swallowed a sick dreadful taste in her mouth — a taste of metal, of seawater, of her own blood and bile. Are they actually accusing me of trying to kill Anya?
The huffing noise in the room was replaced by the quivering lungs of Michael, Benj, and Mr. Shevvington, by the strange whimpering of Anya.
“No, no, no,” said Anya. “Christina would never hurt me — she — I — ”
“What then?” said Mr. Shevvington. “Trust me. Tell me. I won’t let her hurt you.”
But Anya did not seem to remember the fire on Burning Fog Isle, the house she had needed to save, or the “worst thing of all” that she had not yet told Christina. She just mumbled and made no sense.
When Christina tried to tell, the boys said she was yarning, and Mrs. Shevvington said this was beginning to form a pattern, and Mr. Shevvington said he felt the girls should be separated.
“Separated?” said Anya faintly.
“There’s another bedroom,” said Mr. Shevvington. “We’ll move Christina in there. This is not a good situation.”
Above them the poster of the sea looked out the window. The fingers that rode the painted white froth beckoned, and the curl of the waves was like the curve of a smile.
It wanted her, thought Christina. The sea wanted Anya. If they separate us, who will keep Anya from the arms of the sea?
But what could she say out loud? Even Michael and Benj seemed to be wondering if Christina really had been pushing Anya! Not Michael, thought Christina, betrayed. Surely Michael knows me better than that!
Mr. Shevvington sat down on Christina’s bed. He patted her mother’s quilt. It was the flying geese square — tiny, equilateral triangles of calico that flew around and around. Christina made herself think of cloth, needle, and thread; her mother, patiently sewing for Christina, planning something beautiful for Christina. “Sit with me a moment, Christina,” said the principal.
Christina did not.
I hit my head, she thought. I have a huge bump on my head where he threw me against the wall. He liked throwing me. And nobody has asked if I am all right.
“You do not know yourself, Christina,” Mr. Shevvington informed her, standing up. “I am very worried about you. This kind of emotional disturbance is sad and frightening to us all. We love you, Christina. Everybody in this room loves you. Talk to us about what’s bothering you. Do you feel inadequate? Do the mainland children seem much more capable? Are you very, very jealous of Anya?”
Ah, boys. Michael and Benj did not like how the conversation was going. It promised to be full of emotion and blame and they did not want to get involved. They backed out, claiming homework, important re-runs on TV, snacks begging to be eaten.
Mrs. Shevvington smiled.
Anya began brushing her hair. She brushed it with such vigor Christina thought she would pull all her hair out. “I don’t want to be by myself,” said Anya, looking at Christina and the Shevvingtons only through the mirror.
“I’m only thinking of what’s best for both of you,” said Mr. Shevvington gently. “You’re both denying that anything happened, but the fact is that we walked into a very frightening scene a few minutes ago. I am sure, Anya, that you were not screaming for nothing.”
“I told you why she was screaming,” said Christina. “She saw the fire on our island and — ”
“Christina!” said Mrs. Shevvington. “These stories of yours border on the manic. Call it yarning, or call it criminal defense, I wish to hear no more of it.”
“Criminal defense?” repeated Christina.
“Now, now,” said the principal to his wife. “We didn’t really see. We aren’t really sure.”
Mrs. Shevvington snorted. With a flick of her fingers she whipped Christina’s mother’s quilt off the bed and marched into the vacant bedroom beyond the boys’ room. “No need to unpack drawers,” she said. “Michael, Benjamin!” she yelled. “Move Christina’s entire bureau into this room.”
The boys moved the furniture. Mrs. Shevvington supervised.
Mr. Shevvington began to talk about jealousy and how well he understood it.
Christina interrupted him. She would turn this terrible episode into a little package to be set aside — never opened again — perhaps donated to a church fair. “What’s for supper, anyway?”
Michael said from the hall, “Good grief, Chrissie, we run up here thinking you two are being raped or mugged or thrown out the window and all you care about is what’s for supper?”
“You know me,” said Christina lightly.
But he did not know her. Michael, whom she had loved from birth, was a stranger to her; she was in trouble and he was not with her. Anya was a distant cloud. Benj was merely solid, moving furniture, showing nothing. Christina was alone.
It’s what I feared most, she thought. I didn’t fill it in on the form but he knew anyway.
They walked down the stairs like a column of soldiers.
Supper was fish chowder, just the way Christina loved it; thick, with milk and butter and diced potatoes. A huge stack of puffy, fresh-from-the-oven baking-powder biscuits sat in a basket lined with a red cloth. Christina slathered hers with honey, and Anya ate hers plain, and the boys put on butter and maple syrup. Everybody had at least two bowls of chowder; Michael crushed crackers into his and Benj slurped his. Dessert was a wonderful cherry pastry from the bakery on the tourist street.
Food is the answer to everything, Christina thought. Especially if it’s hot.
Her head no longer ached. Michael’s stories about the soccer team he was trying out for were so funny. She planned to go to all his after-school games. She thought about the tape she had to dictate for Dolly. Good thing she had said nothing yet. She really would sound insane talking about posters and wet suits and cruel principals and forms asking if you were afraid.
She thought about her homework. She was eager to get started. She was sure girls like Gretch and Vicki would be perfect at homework; she could be no less.
Christina cleared the table, and Michael and Benj did the dishes. Anya opened her book bag. She looked into her physics lab notebook, with all its blank spaces for her to fill during the year. Anya had gotten an A average in chemistry the year before; no doubt she would do the same in physics. Christina took a little more dessert and nobody objected. Perhaps the Shevvingtons were going to relax the rules a little.
Michael and Benj just sighed. Homework was prison, and the bars had just shut, as they had known would happen, and there was nothing to do now but suffer, do time.
Michael opened to a chapter about comparisons between the Soviet Union and the United States. “Government,” he muttered. “Who cares about government?”
Benj began calculating on Anya’s pocket calculator. “Fifty-eight school days,” he informed them. “Then I’m sixteen. One and a half marking periods. That’s all.”
Anya said nothing. She filled in nothing.
Christina opened her book bag. For English they had to write a poem. It made her sick just to think about writing a poem. About having to read it out loud, while Vicki and Gretch and Jonah listened. Smirking. Talking about island girls on welfare.
Mr. Shevvington said, “Christina, you and I will have our talk now. It cannot be postponed any longer.”
“What talk?” said Christina.
Mr. Shevvington took her by the shoulder and led her into the library.
His blue blue eyes kept trying to look into her ordinary dark eyes. She found other things to look at. She looked at the empty shelf for a while, and then the pattern in the rug, and next the three dull pencils lying at angles on the lamp table. There were dead bugs lying inside the globe of the ceiling light.
She thought, When did he get blue eyes? He didn’t have blue eyes before!
“You’re afraid to look at me, Christina Romney.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Christina.
He said gently, “You didn’t fill out that form precisely because you are afraid of everything.”
The room grew thick and wait-full, like the bedroom upstairs, with the poster of the sea.
“Christina, talk to me about your fears. I’m here to help.”
Christina said nothing.
He said, “You want to have no friends? Bad grades? Lonely afternoons?”
His voice softened. It grew thick and sucking like the mud flats. “Then you’re doing just the right thing, Christina.” The voice caught at her, dragging her down. “It’s going to happen, Christina.”
It was the dream sequence, being chased, feet stuck, and evil catching up. Christina said, “How can you call this a library when you don’t have any books on the shelves?”
“When you try to change the subject like that,” said the principal, “I know it is because you are filled with fear. You cannot admit yet that you are a very disturbed child. Christina, it’s all right. I understand.”
The evening passed.
Michael, Benj, and Anya did their homework at the kitchen table. Mrs. Shevvington prepared her class lessons at the kitchen table with them. Christina sat in the library, waging silent war with Mr. Shevvington.
“I have to do my homework now,” she said to him, her final weapon. What principal could argue with that?
“No,” said Mr. Shevvington. “I want you to go to bed early, get a solid night’s rest, and be able to face the morning with a good heart. I am writing you an excuse to give every teacher.”
In his delicate looping hand, he penned:
To whom it may concern:
Christina has suffered a severe emotional disturbance, and I have given her permission not to do homework until she recovers from her distress.
Arnold Shevvington
Principal
The principal smiled. “Mrs. Shevvington will read this out loud to the class, Christina, so that they will understand why an exception is being made for you.”
Christina sucked in her breath. She would rather die than have Gretch and Vicki and Jonah and the rest hear that letter! “I am not distressed,” she said, “and I would like to do my homework.”
“Now, now,” said Mrs. Shevvington. She appeared as quickly, as silently, as before. There was something subhuman about the way she could appear anywhere — like an ant or a mouse, coming through the cracks unheard. “You heard Mr. Shevvington, Chrissie.”
But how did you hear? thought Christina. Listening at the cracks, as well as arriving by them?
“I think,” said Mrs. Shevvington, “the attitude I will take is that you are just very, very tired. You aren’t used to the fast pace of mainland life and all those people around you, Chrissie. I think we will give you another chance.”
Don’t call me Chrissie, thought Christina. Only my very very very best friends may call me Chrissie. And then only sometimes.
“We’re going to go on up to bed, now.” Mrs. Shevvington took Christina’s book bag as if taking custody of a child. She smiled, her teeth round and yellow like a row on a corncob. “With lots of good sleep, we’ll behave ever so much better in the morning, won’t we, Chrissie?”
Christina stumbled up the stairs.
Each tread caught her foot, and she banged her shins. There was a spider in the shower, and she could not find her favorite nightgown.
She could not imagine morning. Science — where the teacher had said how the island children were always so good! Math — history — what was she going to do?
Christina pulled the quilt over her head, and in the dark nest of her body and the sheets she tried to stay calm. The math was all review; she could do it in ten minutes during homeroom. The social studies she could read instead of having lunch. The science — well, she would just have to wing it. But English — Mrs. Shevvington had assigned them to write a short poem.
Christina hated writing.
Reading was fine; she could read anything and love it. But it did not work in the other direction for Christina.
How Christina loved paper! Fresh, new, first-day-of-school paper. Narrow lines or wide lines, spiral notebooks or three-ringed, arithmetic paper or construction. Blank paper was beautiful with its calm, clean look. But once she touched it messy thumbprints appeared, and violent black slashes where she had meant to cross a T. It wrinkled from the pressure of her clenched hand around the pen, and it tore at the wrinkles by the time she finished.
Blank paper — so nice when she bought it — such agony when she used it.
And writing her own poem?
I need a month just to think of a topic, thought Christina. She thought if she began crying she would never stop; she would be like the tide, and the salt water of her tears would cycle and recycle, endlessly ripping her back and forth.
Anya slipped into the new bedroom. Christina was so glad to see her. The girls hugged and did not let go. It was not like hugging at all, but like leaning. “What happened, anyway?” said Anya.
“I don’t know,” said Christina. They both knew they were talking about the window, and the burning fog, and the Shevvingtons.
“I couldn’t do my homework,” said Anya. “I couldn’t understand any of it. The pages just sat there looking at me. Christina, I’m going to fail my senior year, I can feel it. And I can’t give a speech. I can’t ever give a speech. I can’t bear the thought of people staring at me and listening to me and analyzing my words and grading my talk. I’ll lose my voice. I’ll lose my mind!”
“Hush,” said Christina. “You’ll be fine.”
“Listen to the sea. It sounds like a coffin being dragged over broken glass.”
It does, thought Christina. Like the sea captain’s bride. And of course there was broken glass. She jumped straight through the window.
Anya said, “Sleep in my room. I don’t want to be alone in there.”
You’re not alone in there, thought Christina. The poster of the sea and the huffing are in there with you.
She shivered.
Surely Anya would not try to get out the window again. It had been the illusion of fire — she really had been trying to save the islanders — she had not been trying to jump like the sea captain’s bride.
They went into the other bedroom. Anya undressed. She had a lovely body, as white as her face, as untouched by the sun as if Anya had been raised a mushroom. “So what should I do about Blake?” asked Anya.
Christina had forgotten Blake. She had forgotten that anybody but her might have problems. “I don’t know.”
“I have to see him. I’ll die if I don’t see him.”
She said this with such certainty that Christina thought, Anya will die if she doesn’t see him. We will all die. That is why we are here. To die. That is why there are no other guests. There must be no witnesses.
Anya put on a nightshirt — a huge man’s shirt, with the tails reaching her knees. She was so thin within it, she seemed not to exist from the throat to the knees.
Christina said, “But what was the worst thing? The thing you were going to tell me before you saw the burning fog.”
Anya said, “I don’t remember. What could be worse than not being able to date Blake?”
Mrs. Shevvington came up to check. She made Christina go back to her room. Alone.
Christina lay in bed listening to the surf, waiting for everybody else to go to sleep. She had a flashlight. Semper paratis. Always prepared, that’s me, just like the Coast Guard motto says, Christina thought. We island girls are prepared to survive.
Christina slid out of bed and stealthily opened the lid of her trunk, fishing among the sweaters and jeans until her fingers found the thin metal tube. She slid the narrow knob of the torch. The batteries were good. Christina tiptoed into Anya’s room and got pencil and paper out of her book bag, since Mrs. Shevvington had confiscated Christina’s. She took Anya’s chemistry book for a writing surface and tiptoed back to her room. She nearly missed her footing at the top of the stairs and fell down them. In the dark green room Christina curled under the quilt and worked grimly on her poem. Version after version — stupid line after stupid line.
Finally she had something. She got a pen out of Anya’s purse and made a final copy.
It was so messy she had to make a second final copy. I’m done, she thought, almost weeping from exhaustion and relief.
She re-read the poem by flashlight.
if I were a sea gull
I wouldn’t have to stick around.
if people argued — I would fly off, swerve, wheel, dip, scream.
a thousand wings of company if I have friends
two strong wings of my own
if I don’t.
She liked it.
It was island strong.
Christina folded the good paper carefully and stuck it in her purse. She put Anya’s belongings back exactly as she had found them. She didn’t stuff the crushed versions in the wastebasket; Mrs. Shevvington might find them and use them for evidence. She stuck them back down in her trunk, under the Icelandic sweater. She slid the flashlight under her pillow. You never knew.
She collapsed in bed, comforting herself with the feel of the seams on her mother’s quilt under her fingertips.
The huffing began again.
Christina’s heart jolted.
“Ffffff,” the room said.
It’s the tide, she told herself. I already went through this once today, and it’s the tide. She lay in bed trembling.
Her eyes burned from staring into the dark.
She identified the separate sounds of wind and waves and a distant motor — car, not boat. Her hands tightened around the flashlight, as if she might need it for a weapon, as well as to end the dark.
“Fffffffff.”
She got out of bed.
The huffing slithered around her nightgown and tumbled through her hair and penetrated her ears like a snake, crawling in, slithering in.
“Fffffff.”
It was not the tide. It was in the house.
In the hall a faint light came from the boys’ room. Their door was open, their window shades were up. They slept deeply and breathed evenly. The open stairs yawned at Christina’s feet and the delicate banisters around the balcony were thin as carved toothpicks.
“Ffffffff.”
She turned on the flash. Some of the banisters stood straight in front of her, and others grew long and thin, and their shadows fluttered like moths. She swung the flash toward them, and they stood still while the doors to the boys’ room and the bathroom vanished. She turned to light those places, and the shadows behind her moved forward and grew fat.
She could not move fast enough. The shadows ate her feet.
The sea captain’s house looked down and up at her, exposed in her circle of light; the house all safe in its dark.
“Ffffffff.”
Christina walked into the jaws of the whispering sound.
It’s not the Cove blowing out the candles, she thought, it’s here, in this house, somebody having an eternal birthday, never getting the wish right, the candles lighting back up like evil magic tricks.
“Ffffffff.”
She climbed the open stairs into the cupola.
The stairs were very steep, and had only treads, not risers, so when she flashed the light at her feet, she could see through the stairs, down to the floors below. The shadow of herself was huge, like a flowing Arab robe. She climbed up and up, too many steps, far higher than the ceiling was high, like a cartoon creature climbing beyond the building into the sky.
In the moonlight the cupola glittered. She flicked the flashlight upwards and the glass turned black, reflecting her like a mirror.
She looked up, and left, and down, and right, flashing her torch, searching the shadows. The huffing was screaming at her now, “FFFFFFFF. FFFFFFFFF. FFFFFFFFF!!!”
The ghost of the sea captain’s bride stood white, frozen by a winter sea, framed by glass, whispering, “Ffffffff. Fffffffff. Fffffffffff.”