Between the Spark and the Burn (8 page)

And Finch nodded, though I detected a bit of doubt in his eyes, like he wanted to believe Neely about the world being bigger but couldn't yet, not quite.

We got in the car and drove away.

The truth was, I'd been back in civilization and I liked it. The grand university had sucked the Devil-hunting itch right out of me.

I thought about me going east and Luke going north and I felt a tug. Something was going taut between us, some connection, like the one between me and the sea.

“I'd like to hear your story,” Finch said from the backseat after we turned down a two-lane road that lazily wound around an orchard-covered hill. A few frozen apples still swung from the bare branches and I was tempted to reach out the window and try to grab one. “I haven't talked to other people in a long time and I like listening to your voice.”

I took off my seat belt and turned to face him. “I was just about to ask you to do the same thing.”

“You first,” he said back, half smiling at me in that strange, contrasting way he had, gentle and wild all at once, like a caged wolf only half resigned to his fate. I guess that's what came from growing up all alone in the forest. He had a dimple on his left cheek, a deep one. I decided right then that dimples were inherently likeable.

I told Finch about me, and Luke, and Sunshine, and Neely and Freddie and Citizen Kane and what happened last summer and how we ended up in Inn's End. I wasn't used to talking so much at once, and it didn't come easily to me, but I got better as I went along. Finch was quiet, his expression mild, and I would have thought he didn't believe me at all, believe my tale of glow and spark and blood and fire, except his eyes never left mine.

We went by bare, brown vineyards, their grapes stolen for wine. We went by farms, red barns and dark fences and endless trees. I told Finch about River. And about Brodie. I talked about the red hair and the knife and the cowboy and the mad mother and him cutting up Jack and him biting River and how it ended when I stabbed him in the chest as I bled to death out my wrists.

I showed him the scars and he touched each with his right finger, softly. “I'm sorry about this,” he said, leaving his finger on my left wrist and looking me straight in the eye. “I wish I had been there. I wish I could have saved you the way you saved me in Inn's End.”

I shook my head. “You couldn't have stopped Brodie.”

“And yet you're hunting him.” Finch's expression still had that caged look. “What do you plan to do if you find him?”

I could feel Neely look at me. I moved my wrist away from Finch's hand. “If we find Brodie, then . . . then I'll . . . I'll stab him again. With a knife this time, not a shard of glass. And this time I'll kill him.”

Finch's eyebrows went up. Just slightly. But I saw it. He doubted me.

Of course he doubted me.

River, what am I going to do if we find Brodie in North Carolina instead of you?

“I'd like to see this Citizen Kane someday,” Finch said after I was quiet for a while. “I'd like to have coffee in the guesthouse and dig up old clothes in the attic.”

“You can,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. I can't help getting excited when anyone seems interested in the Citizen. “Once we finish up in North Carolina, you can come back with Neely and me and see it all for yourself and stay as long as you like.”

Finch nodded, and his mouth broke into a sweet, genuine smile. He reached forward and grabbed my hands, putting his fingertips on my wrists again. “So which one are we going to find in North Carolina?” he asked, after a moment. “River, or Brodie?”

“I don't know.” Outside, the landscape had flattened, and lost some of its trees. “Probably neither.”

Neely looked at me again, quick, and then turned back to the road. “River loves the Outer Banks,” he called behind him to Finch. “It was the first place he ran away to back when he was fifteen.”

“But a sea god sounds more like Brodie.” I paused, and slipped my hands out of Finch's grasp. “Either way, if a Redding boy is there, we'll find him.”

“You can only run so far on an island.” Finch sat back in his seat and put his arms behind his head.

“Do you mean us, or them?” I asked.

But Finch just shrugged. His eyes held mine, and . . . shifted. They lit up, and I saw curiosity shining inside them, sparkly and bright, like stars in a moonless sky.

“I'm looking forward to the sea,” he said, and smiled again.

≈≈≈

We reached the coast just as the sun started going down. I drank in the sight of the sea, breathed in the smell of it. I rolled down the window so the breeze could tangle up my hair.

Neely parked the car on a side street in the small coastal town of Nags Dune. We got out and walked right down to the water. Neely stood by me with his legs apart, hands on hips, and looked very Mr. Adventure. But it was Finch I was watching. If he'd never seen the ocean, then I wanted to see how he took it. I couldn't imagine being fifteen or possibly seventeen and never having been to the Great Big Blue. It was such a part of me, like my name and the color of my hair.

Finch faced the sea with his back straight and his palms turned out. He batted his eyes and breathed deep and I kind of felt like hugging him.

“How old are you, Finch?” I asked.

“Seventeen,” he answered. “I think. Not really sure.” And then he turned his face back to the water and disappeared into the experience of it again.

I thought about what Aggie had said, about him losing his mother and then his grandmother too. I wondered how long he'd been alone.

And then I wondered if Aggie had survived the night.

And Pine . . . after we left her there, standing in the middle of the road . . . Did they let her keep my scarf, or did they take it away?

Did they figure out that she helped us?

Don't think about it, Vi. Don't. There was nothing you could do.

But my heart was racing and I felt kind of sick. I forced myself to take big sea breaths, over and over.

The ferries had stopped running for the day and the sun was sinking fast. I thought we'd have to camp on the beach. I even set my heart on it. I wanted to crawl into Neely's tent and stop caring about everything and have the waves sing us to sleep like the wolves in the wilderness of New York.

But then a man with rugged red cheeks and kind blue eyes and thick working-man's fingers wandered up to us after a few minutes and asked where we were going.

“We're trying to find a fisherman's shack,” Neely said, lifting his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the last sharp rays of the sun.

The man laughed, and his eyes crinkled at the sides. “Well, the coast is full of those,” he said.

“This one's haunted.”

He just looked at us, a smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.

“How about an island with wild horses?” I asked.

The seafarer nodded, like he was in familiar territory now. “Carollie, then?”

Was there more than one island with wild horses?

“Sure,” Neely answered, because we didn't know any better anyway.

Our new sea captain introduced himself as Hayden. He gave us a long look as he shook our hands, and told us it would be ten dollars a head.

Which was fair and all right, but I was running out of River's money, damn it. Fast. I unfolded another origami creature and handed it over.

Hayden had a small boat, just big enough for him and us. We left the car behind in Nags Dune, parked in a lot behind a hardware store. We took our suitcases and camping gear and the picnic basket and strode down a dock to a boat that looked as strong and weather-beaten as its owner.

The open sea.

For a girl who's lived her whole life footsteps from the ocean, you'd think I would have set foot on a big sea-crossing boat at some point. But the Whites barely had enough money to pay the taxes on Citizen Kane, and buy canvases and paints. There was nothing left over for yacht buying. Freddie had talked about going to boat parties when she was young, and I'd listened closely and pretty much felt like I'd spent my youth yachting on the sea too. But the actual truth was that I was a girl born by the ocean who'd never ever done the
Queen Mary,
or anything even close.

The three of us stood in the red boat, all together in a line, the dark twilight water moving under our feet and splashing us in the face. Hayden's hair was cropped close and his eyes were permanently narrowed from staring into the sun all day. He held the wheel and looked over at us occasionally in a puzzled sort of way.

“I was born on a yacht,” Neely said, after the houses and shops on the shore had become nothing but twinkling lights in the distance.

I knew Neely was an old hand at this traveling-by-sea thing, but this was news. “No you weren't,” I said, and smiled.

“River's the liar, remember?” He smiled back. “I came early. My parents were sailing to the Azores and my mother went into labor. My father delivered me with the help of the ship's cook. My mother said later that River kept crying and calling out for her, but he stopped the second he saw me for the first time. I always . . .”

Neely didn't finish his sentence. His voice faded into the sound of the waves splitting to let Hayden's boat through. He moved toward me, just an inch or two, just until our arms touched.

Finch turned and looked at Neely. “When did she die?”

Neely raised his eyebrows at him in a “how did you know?” way.

“I heard it in your voice,” Finch said. He leaned his lower back against the side of the boat.

Neely wiped a few drops of seawater off his forehead and stared at the dark horizon. “A while ago. Five years.”

Finch nodded. “And your father?”

“Still alive,” was all Neely said.

Silence.

“You kids know what you're doing, going to Carollie this time of year?” Hayden asked a few minutes later. He was still throwing glances our way, and looking a little worried. I wondered if he had children at home. I pictured him with a strong sea wife, curly hair flying in the wind, her face pretty and clear except for the wrinkles settling in near her eyes from too much staring out at the ocean and thinking about her husband being at its mercy.

“No,” Neely called out, with a laugh, back to his old self. “But we're going anyway. Why? What's the matter with Carollie this time of year?”

But Hayden had turned his gaze back to the water and didn't answer.

And the next thing we knew he was pulling up to another dock and the long sandy beach of Carollie stretched out in front of us, blue-black under the blue-black sky.

And, just as our feet hit the sand, we saw them. Dark shapes running through the dusk ahead of us, kicking up their heels, heads high in the air.

Wild horses.

“They're descended from horses that survived a shipwreck,” Hayden said. “They swam to this island and have lived here ever since.”

We all watched the horses run for a while, their bodies flying through the dark, tails swishing, not giving a damn about anything else in the whole world.

I felt something release inside of me then. Something I hadn't known I'd been holding on to. It ripped through my body and I shuddered as it left.

H
AYDEN TOLD US
that the only place to get supper was “at the Hag's Shack down the shore, near the town.” Everything else was closed for the season.

We could see the Hag's Shack lights from where we stood. The small town glimmered behind it, like a smattering of stars dripping down the beach. The three of us said good-bye to Hayden, and then headed toward the glow, the wild horses still beating a path down the beach behind us.

Finch carried the sleeping bags and tents and he seemed overburdened, despite his strong arms and straight back. But when I asked him if he was all right, he gave me a quick glance and a quicker smile and said he enjoyed the labor of it.

Neely walked next to me, whistling like he hadn't a care in the world, because nothing really kept Neely down, did it.

And I was in a good mood too. I was by the ocean again. And the ocean meant home. The waves didn't crash here like they did on Citizen Kane's bit of rocky shore, but it felt reassuring, nevertheless.

The Hag's Shack was a small little seafood place off by itself on the sand. It looked like it had been built from a large shipping crate, metal and blue and rectangular. It had an open-air counter where you ordered your food and then ate it standing up or sitting on the deck, your feet dangling off the edge. Without the sun, the air was cold, but there was a fire burning in a black fire pit, and that kept things warm enough.

The menu was handwritten on a chalkboard, big and clear. There were a few locals in front of us, and I watched them for signs of Inn's End–ishness. But they just looked like hungry people anywhere, tired at the end of a long day and anxious to put food in their bellies. If they noticed that we strangers were cuddling up to their seafood shack, they didn't seem to care.

The girl behind the counter was the only employee about the place. She was curvy like Sunshine, but shorter, and had dark, curly black hair, a round face, childlike rosebud lips, and feisty eyes. She took our order for three Vietnamese coffees and three clam chowders and three fried oyster tacos and a seared tuna salad, all while jumping between the register and the sizzling pieces of fish she was flipping on the grill.

We ate by the outdoor fire, lemony sauce dripping through our fingers. And it was all hot and good, good, good, the fish tender and salty, the coffee smooth and sweet.

Two local boys joined us after a few minutes—both with thick, dark brown hair and big smiles and a cocky, graceful way of holding their shoulders back and tilting their chins up. Brothers, no doubt. They were as pretty as a pair of Greek gods and they knew it too. They made eyes at every female between them and the counter, and they even winked at me. I noticed they didn't flirt with the fish-frying girl, though. They put in their order and then leaned forward and whispered to her in a serious, intimate way—no smiles, no winks.

When we finished eating we just stayed where we were by the fire. We had nowhere else to go. The place slowly cleared out. Two shiny-cheeked girls joined the Greek god boys and eventually they all swaggered off, laughing.

I wondered if Neely would let me sleep in his tent again.

I wondered if the horses would trample us as we dreamed.

I wouldn't mind that, not as much as you'd think.

“You need a place to stay?” The curly-haired girl had broken free from her counter and stood looking at us where we sat by the fire, eyeing up our suitcases and camping gear.

“What makes you think that?” Neely asked, and laughed his chuckling, contagious laugh. He stood up and reached out his hand. “I'm Neely. The blonde there is Vi and the redhead is Finch. We thought we'd camp here on the beach. Hotels are out—we blew through our money on coffee, gas, and train tickets. Long story.”

The girl nodded. “I'm Canto,” she said, shaking our hands. She had taken her apron off and wore a red sweater and black knee-high socks and a skirt with a dolphin stitched on it. “You can stay at my place for a while, if you want. It's free, provided you help a bit with cleaning and cooking. If you're lazy and you don't want to work, then don't bother. I hate lazy people and can't stand to be around them. But otherwise, what's mine is yours.”

Finch, who had been silent until now, standing back in the shadows, stepped forward. “Yes,” he said, calm and bold as you please. “We aren't lazy and we'll take it.”

“Agreed,” Neely added.

That was quick,
I thought.

Canto was pretty and round and sure of herself and full of opinions on lazy people. And we didn't have anywhere else to go.

Still . . . it annoyed me a little, how fast the boys said yes. It did.

“Well, I'm kind of lazy,” I said.

But Canto just smiled and shook her head, thick curls flopping about her ears and shoulders. She leaned in and stared at me with sharp black eyes. “You don't look lazy,” she said. And it seemed to be enough for her.

We helped her close up the Hag's Shack. Neely washed dishes and I scrubbed the grill and Finch packed the leftover fish on fresh ice. We left the fire to burn out on its own and then followed Canto into the town, which had the same name as the island, Carollie. It was small, just a smattering of houses and a couple of crisscrossing streets. Smaller than my hometown, Echo, but bigger than Inn's End. Most of the shops and restaurants on the main street were closed, as Hayden had said, it being the off-season. Still, we walked by what looked like an active café. One that opened the next morning at six. Perfect.

“Really?” I said. And then again. “Really?” Because we'd gotten to Canto's house. It was at the end of town, on stilts like the Hag's Shack, and facing the ocean. And it was . . . huge. Not as big as Citizen Kane, with its seven or eight guest bedrooms and two main staircases, but still. Huge.

The house was weathered and ramshackle. The wood was a tough, sea-beaten gray, and it had a boxy four-story tower and bay windows and multiple decks and stairs descending into the sand. Several tiny blue shutters covered several small windows and it was pointed and gabled and a hundred years old if it was a day. It looked full of forgotten corners and nooks and crannies and ghosts and moaning sea captain widows. The ocean was lapping at its feet, and
damn,
if there was ever a house that belonged to the sea as much as Citizen Kane, this was it.

We walked up some rickety steps and across a rickety deck and then we squeezed through a door and stumbled into a large room. Canto flipped on the lights, with a snappy little
ta-da,
and I set down my suitcase and looked around.

Comfortable couches and wicker chairs and sunflower curtains and mismatched everything. There was dust on the fireplace mantel and cobwebs swinging from the ceiling and books piled up on the floor. It was cold, no fire in the fireplace, no heat running through the radiators. Sand crunched underneath my feet where it hadn't been swept up in a while.

And the walls were painted pale green. Freddie's color. Like this was right. Like it was meant to be.

“You live here all alone, don't you,” I said, because suddenly I just knew. I felt it, like I felt the sea swirling about right outside. I was so familiar with living parentless in a big house that I would have known blindfolded.

Canto tilted her head and gave me an odd look. “Yes. I do. My mother died when I was little and my dad is out at sea nine months of the year.” She paused, and seemed to read something in my face that made her keep talking. “Sometimes he forgets to send money and that's why I work at the Hag's Shack seven days a week.”

And she shrugged, like it was nothing.

But in that shrug I saw bills unpaid. Holidays spent alone. No letters or postcards. And the wondering, always the wondering.

I didn't say anything, and she didn't say anything, and we both knew anyway. We could smell it on each other like some hopeful, melancholy cologne.

Two peas in a pod. Us.

But then Canto grinned, and there was a different feeling about her suddenly. A lighter feeling. She spread her arms wide and threw her head back.

“Welcome to Captain Nemo. Sometimes I take in travelers and make them pay rent, but I won't charge you guys as long as you help out. I've gotten really behind, trying to run the Shack and go to school at the same time.” Canto tapped her foot against the warped hardwood floor and it crunched. “Someone needs to sweep tomorrow. I vote Finch. He looks strong enough to empty this house of sand.”

Finch looked at her, a sweet, woodland expression on his face. “I'll see what I can do,” he said. And suddenly the sweet expression faded and his eyes went wild and I saw his dimple pop out, so he wasn't hiding as much as he thought he was.

Canto nodded at Finch, and then smiled. Maybe she saw the dimple too. “Good. Don't disappoint me. My dad says my tongue is sharper than a shark's hunger and he knows what he's talking about. He almost lost his leg off the coast of Australia, caught between a tiger shark's teeth.”

That smacks of bullshit,
I thought. And then realized I didn't really care.

Canto walked through the living room and started down a short hallway, flipping on more lights. “Go ahead and explore. Pick a bedroom. Mine is on the top floor of the tower, but everything else is fair game. I'll get a fire going in the fireplace and then we can have some hot caramel milk. And while we drink it we can tell each other our stories.”

“Can you put some coffee in that caramel?” Neely called down, already ten steps up what I figured must be the way to the tower.

“You drink too much coffee,” Canto yelled from the kitchen at the end of the hall, though how she knew this I didn't know. “You'll drink my caramel milk straight and you'll like it.”

And Neely laughed and laughed, all the way up the stairs.