IN ENGLISH CLASS MRS. Shevvington was doing adjectives. She would call upon a student, give him a noun — like “prairie” or “ocean liner” — and he would have to think up ten adjectives. Mrs. Shevvington had a stopwatch and they went fast, like a spelling bee. It was fun. Christina hoped she got a good word.
“Burning Fog Isle,” said Mrs. Shevvington to Christina.
She made a face. That was no challenge. “Rock-bound,” she began, counting on her fingers, “salty, windy, isolated, pink, lonely, foggy, beloved, famous, and popular.”
“Very nice, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Eleven seconds. Quickest of all so far. No hesitation. But why ‘pink’?”
“The granite is pink. The pink flecks are called ‘horses.’ My grandmother was called a horse in the granite and so am I.”
“A horse in the granite,” repeated Mrs. Shevvington. “What does that mean?”
“Tough,” said Christina. “Impossible to break.”
She met Mrs. Shevvington’s eyes, but there was nothing to meet. The woman was simply an English teacher working on adjectives. Today when I am strong enough to meet the enemy, thought Christina, there is not one.
“Do you have electricity out there on that island of yours?” said Gretch scornfully.
“Oh, we have all the amenities,” Christina told her. “Hot water, telephone, television, microwave oven, the works.” She ached for friendship. Who wanted telephones when you couldn’t talk to your mother? What good were hot showers or the evening news when you needed love?
Mrs. Shevvington said that Burning Fog Isle had quite an interesting history. The class looked as if they found that hard to believe. “History,” said Gretch, “is never interesting.”
Mrs. Shevvington smiled. “Burning Fog has always been crime ridden.”
The class laughed. Christina was enraged. How dare anybody say bad things about her island? “We are not crime ridden,” she said furiously. “I don’t think there’s been so much as a wallet stolen in my whole life.”
Mrs. Shevvington beckoned to the class, and everybody leaned forward, following the call of that powerful finger. “Before the Revolutionary War, the people on the island were simple fishermen or farmers,” said Mrs. Shevvington with contempt. “Mostly they raised sheep,” she added, as if sheep were invented to be laughed at.
The mainland kids giggled. They looked at Christina with pity.
“Before the Revolution, the islanders were very religious, very stern. After the Revolution, the only religion on the island was rum. Islanders were drunk all the time.” Gretch and Vicki snickered. Mrs. Shevvington not only allowed this, but joined in. Mockingly, folding her arms across her chest, she faced Christina. “Burning Fog boys ceased to be sea captains,” she went on, “and became pirates.” The class laughed out loud. “This may sound quaint — an attractive little myth — but bad people populated Burning Fog. Vicious, amoral people. In fact … murderers.” Mrs. Shevvington savored the word. The children mirrored her, whispering the word to each other, letting it murmur like a distant motor. “Generation after generation the people of Burning Fog salvaged from ships they wrecked themselves.”
“We did not!” cried Christina. “You’re making that up.”
Mrs. Shevvington raised her eyebrows. “No, Christina, I read it just last night in a book about the shoreline.” She lifted the local Historical Society’s privately printed book and proceeded to read aloud. The names of the supposed shipwreckers were Romney and Rothrock — her family and Anya’s. “You, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington, “come from a long line of murderers.”
The fingers of the sea pressed into the small of Christina’s back.
She remembered Anya stepping out the window toward Burning Fog.
She thought of Mr. Shevvington implying that she, Christina Romney, had been trying to push Anya out.
They are going to murder Anya, thought Christina. They are going to blame it on me. They are going to say that I come from a long line of murderers. That my great grandparents thought nothing of enticing ships onto shoals.
“Christina the Criminal,” said Gretch, giggling. “I like that.”
“Christina the Pirate’s Daughter,” suggested Vicki.
“No, that’s too romantic,” said Gretch.
The class laughed.
She went through the cafeteria line. She filled her tray. She passed in her blue ticket. She could feel them all watching her. She could feel them all waiting, getting ready to mock or laugh or sneer.
I will not break down, she thought.
She walked alone, threading through the filled tables. She did not attempt to say hello and she did not look to see if anybody would let her in. She knew that Gretch and Vicki controlled popularity and they had decided she could not have it after all. Christina walked steadily to one of the empty tables and pulled out a chair. It scraped a little on the floor, the sound her soul would have made if it could have cried out. The seventh grade smirked and turned its back.
It seemed that all the girls came in pairs and trios and quartets, and giggled together, shared candy bars, alternated arithmetic problems on homework. She wanted to sob, or throw herself at their feet, begging to be allowed to giggle with them.
Every time she reminded herself that she was granite, it seemed to be a little less true. They were chipping away at her.
Jonah sat down with her.
She hated him for it. No boy sat with girls. Not in seventh. It was better to be alone than have a boy take pity on her.
“I’m not here because of Mr. Shevvington’s orders,” said Jonah. “I really and truly want to go to the dance with you.”
Christina made a foul noise.
Jonah said, “You’re beautiful, Christina. You really are.”
“Get lost, Jonah Bergeron.”
“My middle name is also a graveyard name,” said Jonah. “It’s Gideon. Jonah Gideon Bergeron.”
“So?”
“So don’t you think you could go to a dance with Jonah Gideon?”
“What makes Jonah Gideon an improvement over Jonah?”
“He’s more interesting,” said Jonah. “More depth.”
Christina snorted. Her mind was occupied with other things. She wanted the flashlight. Her allowance was like nothing. One snack, one ticket, a single item at the pharmacy, and it was gone. If she needed a piece of posterboard for a school project, or Magic Markers, or more gym socks — there it went. “Jonah, would you loan me some money?”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. I need a flashlight and batteries.”
“What for?” said Jonah.
Christina studied him.
She saw nothing new. Jonah was incomprehensible. Why would he keep asking her to that dance when she was so mean to him? Was he a pipeline to Mr. Shevvington? If she said things to Jonah, would the Shevvingtons be told, line by line, betrayal by betrayal?
Jonah Gideon Bergeron, of graveyard names.
Was that what it meant to be friends with Christina Romney? Graveyards?
Christina took a risk. “The Shevvingtons are trying to hurt Anya and me. I need a flashlight because we’re isolated up there on the third floor in the dark and we’re not safe.” She stared at him, her eyes hot. Her own mother and father had not believed her. Her own mother and father had listened to half an argument and cut her off. Why would Jonah believe?
“I believe it,” said Jonah slowly.
Christina’s hair prickled, silver and gold.
Jonah wet his lips. He leaned toward her, his eyes darting like minnows in shallow water. “The Shevvingtons — there’s something about them, Christina. Nobody knows what it is. The parents think they’re perfect, but — well, like, there was Robbie’s older sister. And everyone thinks that Anya is next.”
Christina felt herself grow lighter, as if she might float on fear. “Next what?” she breathed. “What is the end of it? Where are the Shevvingtons taking us?”
Jonah shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Robbie’s sister just disappeared.”
“You mean, like murdered?”
“No, no, she’s there. Her body is there. She’s just not — nobody knows, Christina. She doesn’t have a personality anymore. It’s like the Shevvingtons took it away, and now his sister is nothing. Vacant. Only the bones, but no soul.”
Christina thought, What is a flashlight compared to the power of the Shevvingtons?
“Listen, Christina, tell somebody. You have to have help.”
“Like who?” Christina was perilously close to crying, right here in the school cafeteria, with Gretch and Vicki watching. How they would love to tell Mrs. Shevvington that they had made her cry. “Did anybody help Robbie’s sister? Has anybody offered to help Anya?”
“They don’t see,” said Jonah. “Only the kids see, and they don’t do anything. They watch, though. They’re like jungle animals. They watch the predator take the weak.”
Christina felt Gretch and Vicki watching.
“But maybe a teacher …” Jonah’s voice petered out. He knew no teacher would take a side against the principal. They’d never believe anything awful about Mr. Shevvington. All grown-ups thought he was so wonderful, so kind — caring — careful — and that disgusting phrase all grown-ups adored, such a good role model.
“Miss Schuyler? In math? She’s not too bad,” said Jonah.
If my own parents don’t believe me, thought Christina, if Michael and Benj don’t believe me, why would Miss Schuyler?
And yet, and yet … only Miss Schuyler had ever asked if Christina was all right.
Jonah said, “I’ll get you the flashlight.” They were not Jonah’s eyes looking out of his face anymore, but the eyes of somebody older and tireder. Had he aged, thinking about her danger?
After school she met Blake and Anya. She was their chaperone now, their stage manager.
Anya began whistling, face puckered up as if her lips were stuck in a Coke bottle. She whistled no melody, but a steady note, like the wind playing cello through the ropes of a high-masted ship.
“Stop it,” said Christina.
Islanders never whistled. Whistling called up a wind. But you don’t want a wind, it’s Weather; nobody wants Weather.
“We’re going for a walk,” said Blake firmly.
That’s what it is to be almost eighteen, thought Christina, full of awe. I can say I’m granite, but a person like Blake really is granite.
Blake took Anya’s arm in his right arm, and Christina’s in his left.
“Talk,” said Blake. “I want to know. I know you’re not crazy. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I quit high school today,” said Anya. “I’ll show you where I’m working. You can visit me there if you like.”
“Quit high school?” echoed Blake. “Mr. Shevvington let you? But Anya, you’re first in the class! You’re going on to medical school someday, remember? Remember your dreams?”
But Anya’s dreams were no longer of school. Christina knew her dreams; dreams of the bottom of the sea. What kind of job? she thought. It will kill Anya’s parents if she’s really quit! She is the light of their lives.
And her own parents. What would they say? Would they blame Christina? And Michael and Benj, whom she hardly knew, and they were only three weeks into school — it was still September — still autumn. The longest month, she thought, in the history of the world.
Down Breakneck Hill they went together, feet sideways to keep from falling. By the bottom, gravity was making them run. Blake held the girls’ arms to keep them with him.
Christina fell in love with Blake.
It happened in an instant, and she was no longer their escort, their advisor, their little sister. She loved him.
Oh, no, no, a thousand times no! thought Christina. He’s Anya’s! Anya loves him, he loves Anya and he’s old, old, old. I’m only thirteen, and Blake is eighteen, it’s impossible.
His arm linked in hers was heaven.
His scent was of men and wool jackets.
His shoulders were higher than hers. Wind blew Christina’s tri-colored hair over his jacket. Ribbons of silver and gold danced over his shoulder and then blew gently onto his face. Blake smiled down at her. A ribbon of her own hair made a mustache over his lip.
Kiss me! thought Christina.
She tried to kill the prayer — for it was Anya he should kiss. Anya with whom he must have his romance.
But she looked at his lips anyway and dreamed.
She could have walked forever, hanging onto his arm, dreaming of him, pretending Anya was not on the other side.
“Here,” said Anya happily. Her voice was warm and cuddly.
Blake let go of Christina’s arm. “Anya, this is a laundromat.”
Anya’s bright smile was like gauze over her face, a bandage over her craziness. “See how safe the water is!” she told him. “It’s trapped behind little glass doors. All the waves in here are under control.” She spread her arms to embrace the laundromat.
Dreary people sat mindlessly staring at the clothing through the little glass doors of the washers and dryers. Lint lay on the floor and a few abandoned socks were pushed in a corner. A tired woman with seven baskets of laundry was struggling to fold sheets by herself.
Blake controlled himself. “Anya, you’re an honor student. Like me. You’re going to college. Like me. You’re going to be a doctor.”
“Folding,” Anya nodded, hearing nothing he said. “It’s clean and neat. You can keep track of things here.”
Blake dragged them out of the laundromat. The humid, linty air stayed inside the building, along with the dirty linoleum and the broken change machine. It seemed to Christina he was crying, but that was impossible. People like Blake — men like Blake — did not cry in laundromats.
He’s crying for Anya, she thought. He knows she’s gone. She’s already in the washing machines. The Shevvingtons, or the poster of the sea took her. Anya knew all summer they were coming for her. It was just a matter of time.
Christina did not know where they were going. Blake no longer held onto her; he needed both his arms for Anya. “Talk, Christina,” he ordered her. “Anya can’t.”
Christina nodded. She flicked the switch on her cassette recorder. Benj had bought her blank tapes; it was time to use them. She would record it for Dolly at the same time. Then there would be two who knew. She began with the strange glassy weather the day they were given the poster of the sea. Anya said nothing, but nodded and nodded, as repetitively and as meaninglessly as the waves of the ocean. Christina finished with Michael catching her on the stairs.
Blake said, “The poster is just a poster. Maybe there is more than one. Maybe Michael or Benj thinks it’s funny to put up new ones, or substitute different ones.”
Christina knew they had not. Their lives were not interlocked with hers and Anya’s; you could not tell that Michael and Benj occupied the same house. In some strange way, the Shevvingtons had housed them on the same floor, fed them at the same table, and yet they were not together.
“And the tide is just the tide,” Blake said. “All this puffing of candles is famous. People visit this town just to hear that. That’s why Schooner Inne will probably succeed — people who want to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Candle Cove. The house has the same foundation as the cove — the same rocks, Chrissie. You live in that building and you feel the same slap of the wave, the same cannon of sound. There’s a pattern, but I can’t see it. I’m going to, though, Christina.”
A pattern, she thought. Like my mother’s quilt: flying geese or feathered star pattern. This is an evil pattern. Not cloth, but paper and sound. But who? Only people make patterns? But who cuts this one, and why?
Anya said, “I feel the tide coming. I know because my fingers are on fire.” She held out her hands. Long, slim, white fingers without polish, without rings. Christina took one of Anya’s hands and rubbed it. “There,” she said. “Does that put the fire out?”
Christina heard the hum of cars on the Singing Bridge. The more we talked of the sea, she thought, the closer we had to get to it.
Standing on the dock that summer people used for their yachts and power boats and cabin cruisers was the brown wet suit.
Beckoning.
“Blake,” Christina breathed, tugging at his arm and pointing. “There it is. The brown wet suit.”
Blake saw. He let go of Anya and began running. “I’ll get him!” he screamed back at the girls. “Then we’ll have answers!”
A storm had come up. It had not yet burst, but the air was full of electricity and salt wind. Black clouds against a pink-and-gold sunset swept in from the sea, fighting to see who got rain, who got thunder, who lightning.
The wet suit left the narrow gray painted dock. It ran lightly up and over the cliff opposite the Cove from Schooner Inne. It ran to one of the rickety ladders that led to the mud flats below. It began the descent into the cove.
Blake ran after it.
The wind came up, stronger than before, and the black clouds closed in. Christina shouted after Blake, but he didn’t hear her.
“I could watch the waves forever,” said Anya dreamily. “What I do is pick out one and follow it all the way in. Look, look!” she cried. “Look at the one I picked out. It’s running away, breaking against the rocks, trying to get to safety.”
Christina gasped.
The tide was coming in. The wet suit was going right into it. Blake was following right after him.
“Blake!” she screamed. “Blake!” She turned to Anya, pushing her onto a tourist bench flanked by yellow chrysanthemums. “Stay here, Anya.”
“No,” said Anya sadly, “the wave didn’t make it. When my time comes to run, I will break against the stones, too.”
“Anya!” screamed Christina. “Shut up. Be sensible. Just sit here!” She turned and ran after Blake, screaming his name, screaming for other people to help. But there were no other people. How could a town whose livelihood came from the sea, from these wharfs, from the tourists who usually sat there painting and photographing and absorbing local color — how could it be empty?
The storm gathered above Christina, so low in the sky she felt she could throw a basketball into it and break the clouds. It prickled with electricity. She could feel the lightning coming. “Blake! The tide is coming in! Don’t go down the ladder!”
Christina did not know how she could have run so fast, over the outcroppings, over the crevices and cracks, to reach the top of the ladder.
But she was not fast enough.
Blake was halfway down. He turned to see, not Christina, but the water: a tidal wave, larger even than normal because of the storm. A great green blanket, eager to smother him, and carry him to the mattress below where he would sleep forever.
He seemed frozen on the ladder.
Instead of racing up to Christina and safety, he clung to the wood and stared at his death.
The tide slammed into Candle Cove like cannons going to war. It attacked the rocks and crashed against the crags. Its whitecaps reached like fingers to take Blake.
“Blake, Blake, Blake!” screamed Christina, reaching down. The water was so high it drenched her.
Blake looked up at her. The last thing she saw of Blake was his fear: the terrible knowledge of his fate written on his face as clear as print.