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I didn’t see any sea gulls in the sky or on the beach. If there were any, they’d have flown away in terror because I charged at the shoreline like a crazy man. Sandpipers raced across the glistening sand, the surf so far in the distance it seemed like miles away. I could see the cliffs to the left and knew that just beyond them were the oyster beds, the cul-de-sac, and Uncle Jim’s house. So homesick for Uncle Jim, my heart ached for the simple little world we used to live in. Homesick for peace and quiet like we used to know. A world without strangers. A world without confusion.
“What are you doing, Dylan?” I couldn’t believe Liona had caught up to me. Her gaze had followed mine, surveying the beach, eyeing the buttes that marked Windy Point. Our eyes met, and I pretended I wasn’t upset, or thinking about running away again. I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know what I’d do. “Can’t run forever, you know,” she said.
“Yes, I can.” I could, and I would. Whatever it takes to be free of the shame that people wanted to throw at me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. I don’t fit in at your boarding home. I don’t fit with your people. Didn’t you just see what happened in there? I got you in trouble.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. You had a good thing going with Mrs. Wright, and that lady was going to hire you until I came along. Now she thinks you’re....” I didn’t want to say it. I couldn’t. “She thinks you’re bad.”
“I don’t give a crap what she thinks of me. I covered for you on my own. You didn’t ask me to. I did it because I like you. I care what happens to you. I’m tired of seeing you running away all the time.”
Our eyes locked on to each other. Inside of me swelled with as much emotion as Randy had, and like Randy, I didn’t know what to do with it. I hated Liona getting in trouble because of me, because I have a rotten mother. “It’s not fair,” I said. “Not to you.”
“No. Nothing about life is fair. Life is what it is. Period. You got to take life as it comes. That’s all.”
I faced the sea and wiped the mist off my face with my sleeve. I kicked off my shoes and started walking. She kept pace with me like a shadow, not letting me disappear. I tried to relax and take in the quiet of the morning, the salty smell, the mist. I tried.
“Yeah.” I mumbled, just to say something in response to her wisdom, because accepting life as it comes wasn’t my forte. “What’s worse is Tim Lan snitched on me too. On you, too. I thought he was a friend.”
“So, stay and all of this will be over.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Why not? Why do you want to leave?”
“Why do you care?” I managed to ask. The more I felt the ocean beckoning, the more I wanted to answer the call. I didn’t see a future anymore, not living with old people who hung onto life by a thread, locked up in a house, living by rules and regulations and having to sneak out if they wanted to see the ocean. Not in a boarding home that keeps tabs on me like I’m a prisoner. And not with an old Vietnamese man that lies to me, either.
“Cause,” was her answer and I didn’t mind if she didn’t say anything else. I didn’t want her to care, anyway. If she cared, then I might care.
“Did Mrs. Healy send you out here to talk me in to coming back?”
“Dylan,” she protested.
“So, they can keep Aunt Agnes’ money?”
“Stop that!” she pulled at my arm, but I brushed her away. “Where did that come from? I stood up for you back there,” she insisted.
I wasn’t being nice. I knew what I said wasn’t true. But saying what might have happened gave me an out. I didn’t want to trust anyone anymore. Not even Tim Lan. Not even Liona. Saying those things made it easier to leave.
We left tracks in the sand in the direction of the sea. The breakers rolled and rumbled toward us but never came any closer, tossing and trundling in constant motion. I stopped then, mesmerized by the white foam which broke into splatters of fog against the gray sky. Sparkles of sunlight glistened on the water beyond the waves, and in the puddles on the beach, the nebulous shape of a cargo ship far out to sea as the sky brightened with the rising sun; the monotonous rumble of surf hitting the shore. The salty air tasted good. This was home. This was the peace I’d been dragged away from, and to which I desperately yearned to return.
“Try to find a balance again, Dylan. Try to find peace again. You had it once. You can have it again. Nothing ever stays the same,” Liona whispered, her face lifted to the breeze, her eyes closed. Sea spray landed on her lashes. She looked calm and I resented that she was content, and that she knew so much about life, or about people and that she knew how to be kind and caring, and I didn’t. I walked away from her. I didn’t care if my clothes got wet. Why should I care? Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Why would anything matter? I didn’t matter much to anyone. Only Uncle Jim and he was gone.
I walked all the way past the sandpipers as they scattered away from me on long spindly legs. I walked to the pools which glimmered like mirrors in space. I didn’t care if the cuffs on my pants acted like a sponge and soaked up the sea. The surf met me and reached out to pull me deeper. I kept walking and now the arms of the ocean rushed over my knees and sucked me further away from the city, away from the boarding house I never wanted to live in, away from the shack on ocean front property that once was my home. Closer to Uncle Jim.
“Dylan,” Liona called after me. “You’re going too far into the water!”
Why did she care? I didn’t want to stop, but the alarm in her voice caused me to spin around. “Stay out of my head.” I roared back, the sound of my voice resounded over the crashing surf.
“You stop right now, Dylan van Pelen!” She ran toward me.
“No!” I barked like a sea lion when she got near. “Why are you and everyone else always trying to control me?”
She stopped and stared at me, her eyes wide like she hadn’t expected me to lash out. But I was mad. I was tired, and I was mad. Why were people always telling me what to do and what not to do? Where to live, how to act, what to wear. “You don’t control me!” I said, and she flinched. The sea spray beat against my face as the waves pushed my knees and made me stumble. The breeze blew sand in my eyes and drove hair into my mouth. I pulled the strands away from my lips and then I felt bad because I didn’t really want to yell at Liona. I was mostly mad at Aunt Agnes and Shirley for making me move out of my house, and at Uncle Jim for dying. My voice softened. “I mean, how am I supposed to live with everyone pulling me this way and that way?”
She opened her mouth, but she didn’t say anything, so I asked her again.
“How am I supposed to...” I looked at the ocean glistening in the morning light looking almost as though the sun had already drifted below the horizon. The ocean was my friend; right now, my only friend. “...live? How am I supposed to live?”
“You are living. You’re alive. Stay that way!” She reached out and took my arm. I didn’t fight her. All the fight was out of me, if I had any. I considered her eyes, which were like green bullets that pierced into my mind. She dug at my thoughts and purged them from my body. “Give yourself some more time, Dylan. You’ve got to try harder. This is only a fraction of your life. You have a future. Please don’t despair.”
I looked away. The waves broke around our knees and I staggered.
“Damn Dylan you lost people in your life and so did I. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. She had anger in her eyes, though.
“Yeah. I lost my brother. You think I didn’t feel like you are right now? I survived, though. As much as it was my fault, I kept on living. I knew it was wrong to end my life even though...” She stopped and swallowed her words. Then her voice soften only enough that I could hear her over the surf. “I worked too hard to get where I am now to watch someone I care about get washed away into that same hell hole. Don’t ever think about giving up on yourself. No matter how hard life is, there’s still something to live for and you’ll find that something. I know you will.”
The waves rushed in around the both of us again, splashing on my shirt now. I lost my balance a little when the surf receded. She pulled me back to the beach. Once on drier ground, drenched clothes hanging off me, my body shivering, she slapped my arm. “Don’t be an idiot.” She had a smirk on her face when I looked up. I rubbed the bruise.
“Get ahold of yourself,” she whispered, picked up my shoes and tucked them under her arm.
“Come on.”
I trailed behind her back to the boarding home.
Chapter 19
