WHEN THE TIDE went out in the morning, Thalia could walk all the way to a nearby island and barely get her feet wet. The sand served up evidence of the hidden violence of the night before—amputated crab legs, flies hovering over something in a pile of seaweed—but for long stretches there was just blond sand soft against her feet. Once she reached the other island, she saw a makeshift memorial on a concrete slab studded with metal rings used to anchor boats. The largest spray-painted mural Thalia had ever seen snaked its way across the concrete surface and up the sides and top of the slab. Up close, the blues and greens blurred together with spots of fluorescent yellow. But as she stepped back, the image of a large jellyfish came into view. White tendrils trailed down from four corners of its bell. Its ribboned arms each sparkled with yellow rings. A date ten months earlier was listed, and a name. Necklaces of marigolds and magenta bougainvillea were draped around the diaphanous figure, garlanded along the metal hooks. Glass jars of various shapes and sizes held small lit candles, some still flickering.
Looking around, she saw no one, but as she walked back she saw Neilan walking the sandy path between the islands. From far away, his full head of hair was unmistakable, a lion’s mane on top of a slender man’s torso. He wore only shorts. It was easier to size him up from this distance. There was no need to consider how she must look outside of herself. While she knew that Neilan was considered attractive—she had seen the way women positioned themselves in his gaze—she hadn’t allowed herself to consider whether he attracted her. As he saw her, he waved. She did like the way he walked, she decided. How it seemed both aimless and full of energy. She waited for him to catch up, to take him to the Jellyfish.
“I want to show you something,” she said once he had shrunk the distance between them.
“The beginning of all good adventures …” he replied with his easy smile. Then, as they climbed over some rocks to face the jellyfish mural, he said, “Ah … the box jelly.”
“What’s the box jelly?”
“It is a poisonous jellyfish that lives in these waters. You don’t usually see it much outside of the rainy season, but it can kill. It is large, ten meters long from body to tentacle end. It has twenty-four eyes.” He gestured to the grayish dots found around the white bell in the illustration. She hadn’t noticed them before, as they blurred into the navy and green of the ocean. “But only two of them are like our eyes. The rest are sort of slits.”
“It can kill you?”
“Yes, if you don’t get treated quickly enough. Some people, if they aren’t strong swimmers, drown. The sting is very painful even on its own, without the panic of waves or current.”
Thalia’s eyes followed the long arms with their electric yellow rings to the date in the corner of the illustration. “Why the flowers? The candles?” She had seen this kind of thing before in New York. Street-art memorials on sidewalks for people who died in a car accident or a gang fight.
“It is a sort of mural to the spirit of the box jellyfish. The date is the day a little boy died last year. They say the spirit of the box jelly took him. If you are young, or very small, the box jelly is even more dangerous.”
“Did you know him?”
“No, I only saw him around. He was a wild one, always jumping off from high places, coming up from adventures with scratches that his mother would treat with various ointments. She’s a sort of Ayurvedic healer.”
As they stood there, the tide started to rise again, carrying off some of the blossoms from the makeshift memorial. Thalia was reminded of a boy from her childhood, Scott, who was also known as a wild one, but without the mother to treat his wounds. She hadn’t thought of him since he’d left Queens, where they both grew up, but she had one specific memory that she returned to now.