The morning air chilled me as I walked along the pier, trailing my suitcase behind me. I stopped to chew on a mouthful of kratom to give me confidence for the journey, looking up at the old rollercoaster and big wheel of my early holidays. It was rusted now and cast long shadows through the gathering mist.
Crouched shapes, like mournful statues, revealed more homeless people in their big jackets as I approached them. I’d thought myself one of the few awake at this hour. They ground their teeth and talked to themselves. Maybe they were addicted to that drug, like Heath explained last night.
I reached the gate at Pier 8 almost out-of-body. To come here after hearing Henry’s prognosis of survival, those diminishing percentages per day spent on the island, I’d had to shut off my intuition and walk towards danger. Which surely made me great cult fodder.
A young woman stood there in a white plastic smock with the stubby-fingered hand on it. She held a clipboard, suggesting she controlled everything along the pier.
“Hi!” Her expression mimicked that of an old friend, but her dead eyes revealed the falseness of the conceit. “What can I do for you today?”
I showed her the joker card.
“Great!”
What would’ve happened if I didn’t have this? She was rake-thin, but if there was any truth to the Glow’s teachings, she’d tapped into hidden power reserves.
She looked at her notes and wrote something down. “You’re the fourth today.”
“Already? Wow. You expecting more?”
“Fingers crossed!” She giggled. “Please go right ahead to Slip 903 on the left, where Melodie will be more than happy to receive you.”
I nodded and continued.
I couldn’t see that far in front of me at all. Where was Melodie supposed to be? Was there a “Melodie”, or was “being received by Melodie” Glow lingo for making someone disappear?
I walked past innocuous yachts, houseboats, catamarans, wondering which one I was supposed to wait beside—and then I saw her, sitting in a ragged approximation of a powerboat.
She had long center-parted blonde hair and wore a plastic poncho. I leaned closer to examine her boat, seeing melted milk bottles, jags of blue and pink pallets, food packaging and plastic bags. It was made from scavenged and reconstituted bits of plastic.
Melodie smiled at me. “So happy you could join us.” She sounded like she’d just woken up. Low energy, a waif of a girl.
Behind her was a stocky kid wearing a gold-spiked baseball cap, thick black glasses and a black denim jacket with embroidered gold insignia on the back, muffin-topping out his skinny jeans. Beside him were two teenage girls, one taller than the other, both with long black hair and angular gold jewelry on their wrists. They wore short white puffer jackets with gloves sewn on the inner lining. Their belly rings were showing. They’d brought only small backpacks, which made me feel silly as I negotiated getting my suitcase into the boat.
“Can you come here for a second?” Melodie said to me.
I stumbled into the boat, balancing myself by gripping onto the slip’s metal cleat.
I approached Melodie and she felt my face.
The teenagers laughed.
“I’m checking for e-implants,” Melodie said. “We don’t allow them on the island.”
Strange. They didn’t have to be on the face anymore, though I wasn’t about to tell her that. Luckily the Glow remained out of touch.
“They creep me out,” I said.
She laughed mildly, which relieved me a little.
“My boyfriend has a gabber jaw,” I continued. “One of those facial phone things. Conducts sound through his skull.”
“Oh yeah?” she said.
“Freaks me out. No one needs to get in touch with me that urgently.”
No laughter, no sound at all.
Shouldn’t have said that, I thought.
I heard murmuring behind me.
When Melodie was done with my face, I turned to see Heath and Corinne, holding hands.
“Who told you?” I said.
They lowered their heads.
“The bartender,” Heath said. “Before you arrived. He said not to tell anyone. People ask him about it all the time and he’s sad to see so many—”
“He told me after you left.” I folded my arms. “He wanted to come up to my room.”
Corinne came forward and held my hands. “I’m so sorry. We were naïve.”
So am I, I thought, but I said, “Bodes well for your survival.”
Had I insulted Melodie? She didn’t react.
“God,” Corinne said, “and after everything you told me about your sister.”
I didn’t think that had bothered me until she brought it up. Everyone I’d met before them had collectively lowered my expectations. But no, I didn’t just tell anyone about the growing distance between me and my sister, not anymore. I’d told Corinne and her husband because I respected them. It seemed, unfortunately, that I had expected more from them.
I’d try not to do that again.
Would I just keep getting further jaded or was it at all possible that Joanna and I would reunite at all, let alone soon? I dreaded finding out, and yet I had to.
“From here on out, we tell each other everything,” Heath said.
I slouched. “Good idea.”
“That’s all I can take,” Melodie said, as if mad that we expected more arrivals.
“Guess we’re ready to go, then,” Heath said.
He and Corinne climbed into the boat, which tilted precariously as it adjusted to the new weight. Once everyone was in, their faces felt for chips, Melodie sat by the motor. “Hold tight!”
She untethered the boat and we sped across the water.
“Did you see Gabe in Edge of the Storm?”
“You know him as ‘Gabe’, do you?”
“I will by the end of today!”
The three teenagers talked amongst one another. Corinne and Heath looked at me in disbelief, but I focused on the boat’s floor, too nervous to look away.
The boy looked at Heath and said, “Fine then, if not for Gabriel Brooks, why are you going?”
“We want to meet Patricia, for one,” Corinne said. “We don’t think she exists.”
“No matter why you’re coming today,” Melodie said, her expression unchanging, “I hope we get the chance to win you all over. We don’t like eating up our biodiesel on these trips.” She laughed nervously.
Was biodiesel as pungent when burnt as what I could now smell? I figured it wouldn’t be since it came from vegetable oil—typically, always?—but maybe that was ignorant of me.
“Of course,” Corinne said. “We appreciate it. We meant no disrespect.”
Melodie didn’t reply. She hardly blinked and tears fell down her face. The cold sea wind, or something else? I had no idea. If something about that interaction had just gone badly wrong for Melodie, I didn’t know what it was. It made me wonder what I might say, or not say, on the island, and what the consequences would be. Again, no idea.
Melodie felt me watching her and nodded ahead to redirect my attention.
There it was. Between the looming wind farms, those forests of metal poles and turbines in the sea. Beyond hulking cargo ships, which breezed aimlessly by, carting around their dull-colored shipping containers. A pale plastic Kremlin. Four large towers with onion bulb heads and other spheres along their length at regular intervals like nodules on a plant root. Together, the towers looked like the swollen-jointed fingers of an enormous, gout-wracked hand.
A glow of pastel light stole up the towers like ivy. Clusters of tendrils made a fluorescent octopus shape in the center of a plaza, around which the towers crowded. It was the plastic mold of a place’s memory. A castle’s ghost.
As I observed the island for the first time, I almost forgot what planet I was on. And the Glow made that much more sense to me. What better place for a “new lifestyle” than somewhere that didn’t look like anywhere else on Earth, completely isolated from the rest of the world? A place that looked deserving of its own rules and strange new commitments. New ways to honor its weird beauty.
The sight hit my heart in a way that felt entirely unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.
As we approached, the island’s shapes gained definition. The delicate crenellations of the towers, their ragged cellophane windows. The white plastic of the buildings and the mess of pink plant parts intertwined like teeth embedded in rotting gums.
The front of more buildings appeared through the mist at sea level: houses, barns, studies. Where the cement of their surfaces had eroded, light shone through plastic bottles wired together.
Out here, plastic was a prized currency.
We reached the island’s harbor, its four flea-bitten plastic piers. A translucent tentacle rose from the pier beside us, glowing with pink light. It slunk into the boat and curled into its side, pulling it close to the pier, light running up and down it in vascular pulses.
Marching feet squelched on wet ground.
Melodie tugged on a cord attached to the boat’s motor and it sputtered to a stop. It was a key, ensuring only she could let us go.
We got out and approached the plaza, from which five petals—alleyways, living quarters and other buildings—branched off.
Heath, Corinne and I stole a surreptitious glance between us. As soon as our eyes met, we knew we had to look away again. This did not seem like a place tolerant of private communication, and it surely wasn’t wise to demonstrate allegiances, friendships or anything that gave the Glow ammunition.
Glow members in plastic ponchos, perhaps fifty or so, filtered out of the lanes between the wonky buildings. The island bobbed gently, but they walked with experienced sea legs.
My stomach muscles tightened at the sight of them, as if holding in the dread. As if preparing to get punched.
But the Glow appeared nothing but friendly as they raised their arms up and chanted, “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”