We are hoping to set sail the first week of June, right after school ends. These final weeks are limping by, plodding hour after plodding hour. In my head, though, I am hurling myself toward that final day, picturing every little detail of it. I told my parents that I would zip home on the last day of school, grab a backpack, snare a ride to the bus station, and meet my uncles and cousins in Connecticut, and off we would all go, sailing out into the sea.
“Not so fast, Sophie,” my father said. “When the time comes, your mother and I will drive you there. We’re not dumping you on a bus by yourself.”
Alas. In the wee little town where we live, everyone is having adventures except me. We used to live on the coast of Virginia, curling up against the ocean, but last year my parents came up with their Great Plan to move us to the countryside, because my mother was missing the Kentucky mountains in which she’d grown up. So we moved to this sleepy town, where the only water is the Ohio River, which is as sleepy as the town. People here sure love that river, but I don’t know why. It doesn’t have waves or tides. There are no crabs or jellyfish living in it. You can’t even see very much of it at a time, only a little stretch up to the next bend.
But for kids in my class, that river is like paradise, and they have had adventures on it and off it. They have fished in that river, swum in it, rafted down it. I want to do things like that, but I want to do them on the sea, out on the wide, wide ocean.
When I told some of my friends that I was going to sail across the ocean, one said, “But it’s nice here, with the river rolling along every single day.”
Another said, “But you just got here. We don’t know anything about you. Like where you lived before, and—”
I didn’t want to get into all that. I wanted to start from zero. That had been one good thing about moving here. It had been like starting over.
Another said, “Why would you want to be a prisoner on a boat anyway?”
“Prisoner?” I said. “Prisoner? I’ll be as free as that little jaybird up there floating in the sky!”
And so I told them about the waves calling me and the rolling sea and the open sky, and when I finished, they pretty much yawned and said, “What-ev-er” and “You could die out there,” and “If you don’t come back, can I have that red jacket of yours?” I figured they were probably never going to accept my adventure, and I was just going to have to go without their understanding why I wanted to go.
My mother gave me this journal I’m writing in. She said, “Start now. Write it down. All of it. And when you come back, we can read it, and it’ll be as if we were there too.”
My teachers don’t want to hear about it, though.
“Sophie! Put away that sailing book and get out your math book!”
“Sophie! School isn’t over yet! Knuckle down to business! Get out that grammar homework!”
Yesterday, Uncle Dock phoned and said that we won’t be setting out across the ocean as soon as I get there. There is work to be done first, “a lot, a lot of work!”
I don’t mind the thought of work because I like to mess around with boats, but I want to get out on that ocean so bad I can feel it and taste it and smell it.