The Secret Sea (5 page)

“—Bellevue?”

“Get me a car—”

Zak flicked his eyes left and right. Three cops, arrayed around him. Moving slowly, unthreateningly. No one had drawn a gun. Not yet.

Outside. Definitely outside. There was a chain-link fence in front of him. Construction equipment all around.

And a sign. 9/11
MEMORIAL MUSEUM
, with an arrow pointing off.

Too much happening all at once. He staggered, and one of the cops moved forward as if to catch him, but he regained his balance and righted himself.

“Kid, just take a deep breath and—”

Why wouldn't they just. Shut. Up. For a minute. A single minute. He needed to hear—

And the gulls cried again, so loudly that Zak gasped and jerked his shoulders in shock. The sky above was black, star-speckled, but it was also—somehow, at the same time—clouded and roiling with incipient rain. The mast creaked; the sails cracked.

It happened right here
, Zak realized.
This is where the boat was.

But how was that possible? He looked around, ignoring the cops, and was stunned when he looked past the fence to find the looming, lofty height of the Freedom Tower. He had sleepwalked to lower Manhattan, to Ground Zero, to One World Trade.

—
look up
—

I was on the train going
under
this spot before. When I had the dream.

He knew it like he knew his own heart: The boat had been here. Someone had whistled for the wind, God blast their eyes, and the wind had come and—

Impossible. How could it be? A boat
here
? It was too far from shore, from both the East and Hudson Rivers. A boat couldn't get here.

“Kid,” a cop said, coming closer, “if you don't start talking to us, we're going to have to—”

Zak ignored him, straining for the only voice he cared about.

And it came to him. Came hard and powerful, like someone had cranked up the volume on Zak's psychic earbuds.

I am in darkness.

Darkness and quiet.

For so long.

And then there is light.

And then there is
loud …

Zak screamed at the sudden clap of thunder that exploded between his ears. He dropped to the sidewalk and slapped his palms to either side of his head. The world had erupted in a fountain of light and sound, roaring out of a dark silence that had been both perfect and infinite. He whimpered.

Look up.

Look down.

Look all around.

Oh, Zak.

“That's it,” a cop said, and Zak felt hands on him. He didn't care.

If only you could see
, Tommy said.

And then,
Help me, Zak
, and it occurred to Zak for the very first time that maybe he himself was the guardian angel.

Wind whipped past him, and the wind had shape, had form, somehow, and it
slithered
more than blew, with an almost tactile, greased sensation, like having oily feathers dragged along his body. He caught a glimpse of blue, gold, and red before the colors flickered into darkness.

“Are you Tommy?” he asked, on his knees, gazing up at an image that flickered back and forth between the Freedom Tower and a sailing ship's crow's nest. When he received no response, he shouted, “Is that who you are? Are you back? Is it you, Tommy?”

Don't tell. They're lying—

—secrecy—

Only the voice didn't say
secrecy
, Zak realized as the police handcuffed him. It had
never
been saying
secrecy
.

Secrecy
was a blur, two words merging.

Secret.

Sea.

Secret Sea
, said the voice again as Zak was hauled to his feet by two police officers and carried to a waiting ambulance.

 

SIX

They handcuffed him gently, and they handled him gently, too. No bruises; not even any sore muscles.

As they pulled him away from the World Trade Center, the voice became softer, the image of the storm-mottled sky weaker. He closed his eyes tight, trying to focus beyond the voices of the cops, beyond their hands on him, trying desperately to hold tight to the voice and the ship and the storm.

Close by, there was a police station. Or a police office. Or a police bunker. Zak wasn't sure what the correct term was. By the time they got him there—and, truthfully, it was a matter of minutes, if that long—Zak had calmed considerably. He was a child in the arms of men with guns and nightsticks. At first he'd thrashed against them, mad for the voice, desperate to return to it. But it was ridiculous to fight them. He went limp and they carried him off and now he was in a small, badly lit room with pockmarked greenish walls. It smelled of old cigarettes, older coffee, and body odor.

There was a steel loop bolted to the table, where, he imagined, they could attach a prisoner's handcuffs, but they had removed his cuffs when they brought him in here.

He was alone. He cradled his head in his hands.

Think, Zak. Think it through.

Alone again. He gritted his teeth together.

The voice was gone, but his memories of it lingered, like a strong after-scent of perfume. Or sea air.

A boat. There'd been a boat at the World Trade Center. He was sure of that.

He was equally certain that the voice he'd heard—the voice he'd
been
hearing—was that of Tommy. His imaginary friend, no longer imaginary? Speaking of a secret sea, warning him not to tell. Talking about

—look up—

Yeah, that.

He looked up from the table. There was a window cut into the wall opposite him, looking into a room much like this one. A boy of Zak's age stared through the window. The boy wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama shirt much like Zak's. He had a thatch of thick, black curly hair that needed to be cut, eyebrows that were a little too bushy, and a complexion like candied walnuts. He was startlingly familiar, and Zak felt a flush of embarrassment an instant later when he realized—
duh
—that the kid was, in fact, himself. That was no window—it was a mirror.

He'd seen enough cop shows to know that someone was watching from the other side.

Didn't recognize myself. Didn't recognize my own reflection. That can't be good. That has to be a sign of serious crazy.

The door opened, and a woman in a police uniform entered. She glanced at the mirror, then sat down across from Zak.

“Hi, there. My name's Judy. What's yours?”

Her nameplate read
JEFFERSON
. Judy Jefferson.

He shrugged. “Zak.” He wondered exactly how much trouble he was in. If they didn't know his last name, they couldn't call his parents, right?

“Zak. Zak what?”

He said nothing.

“Zak, I can't have you shutting down like this. Do you know how you got here?”

“The police brought me.”

“Right, right. But do you know how you got to the World Trade Center?”

He shrugged again.

“We have some video footage and eyewitness testimony.…” She walked him through what the police knew—he'd emerged from the A train over on Fulton and walked, barefoot, to the World Trade Center, where he'd stopped. Some late-night pedestrians had seen him and summoned a police officer from a nearby kiosk. “You were very lucky,” she summed up. “You could have gotten hurt. Or
been
hurt.”

Zak grimaced. He was all too aware of what could have happened to him. His parents drilled the dangers of the city into him at every turn, more so now that he would be traipsing off to school by himself every morning.

“Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” Judy asked. Translation:
Are you always crazy, or is this a special occasion?

Better not to say anything, maybe. He folded his arms over his chest and tried to think. Was there any way to get out of this without landing in serious trouble? Probably not. Once the police were involved,
serious trouble
seemed to be a bare minimum. But he had to try. If he could talk his way out of here and get home before Dad woke up and realized he was missing …

The door opened just then, and a man in a rumpled business suit stepped inside. He nodded to Judy and then stood near the door, saying nothing.

“Is there maybe someone I can call for you?” Judy asked. “Mom or Dad? A grandparent?”

Gnawing his bottom lip, Zak pondered. He couldn't just sit here all night and into the morning. He had to say
something
. But the idea of waking up one of his parents right now … No way. He had to avoid them.

“You could call Khalid,” he blurted without thinking. But, yeah, that made sense. Khalid could get
his
parents to help out.

“Khalid?” Judy and the business suited guy exchanged a glance. “Who's Khalid?”

“Khalid Shamoon,” Zak said. “I can't remember his phone number.” Which was true—Khalid's number was programmed into Zak's cell and into the landline at the apartment. “It's probably under his father's name. Ozzie Shamoon.”

“Ozzie,” Judy repeated.

“It's his nickname. Short for Osama.”

Judy's eyes widened, and the man by the door snorted a snort that seemed to say,
Are you kidding me?
But he walked out, leaving Zak alone with Judy again. She asked if he was hungry or thirsty. He asked for a glass of water, and a uniformed police officer brought one a minute later, without Judy's moving a muscle. Zak knew he was being watched through the mirror, but this proof of it was still unnerving.

He waited for the man in the business suit to return, but he didn't. The next time the door opened, it was Zak's dad, bleary eyed and wearing jeans with a T-shirt and an expression that told Zak that the police were the very, very least of his problems.

*   *   *

Of course Mr. Shamoon had called Dad as soon as he heard from the cops. Of course. Just like a grown-up. You couldn't trust anyone over eighteen. That was the kid code. He wasn't angry at Mr. Shamoon for tattling on him; he was angry at himself for thinking Mr. Shamoon wouldn't in the first place.

Dad signed some papers and talked to some cops and then hustled him into a cab outside. Zak felt a strong tug in the direction of the Freedom Tower and had to clutch the frame of the cab to force himself inside.

The sky was just lightening over the East Village as they drove across town toward the East River. Dad told the driver to take the Manhattan Bridge, then sighed heavily. Zak waited for him to say something, but nothing came. The silence was awful.

“Are you going to tell Mom?” Zak asked after an extended quiet.

Dad laughed without mirth, a short, miserable bark. “Am I going to tell Mom? Are you really asking me that, Zak? Of
course
I'm telling your mother. What do you think this is? Some kind of guy thing? I let you run around the city at all hours and keep it between us? Are you crazy?”

Dad's tone—acerbic and angry—hurt almost as much as his last question. Zak wanted to snap,
You're the one who's making me see a shrink—you tell me if I'm crazy!
But instead he pulled himself into a ball and huddled against the door, as far away from his father as possible. He'd never heard his dad so upset.

“What were you thinking?” Dad insisted, glaring at Zak. “What made you think you could just sneak out of the house and gallivant around the city like that? What are you
doing
, Zak? What is going through your mind when you pull something like this?”

Zak could have answered, but he was afraid the answer would only make things worse. Because telling his father that he hadn't “pulled” anything, that he hadn't thought he could “just sneak out of the house,” that he hadn't made any decisions at all …

That would be like admitting to his father that he
was
crazy. Might as well ask to be fitted for a straitjacket and locked up in Bellevue, where they sent the crazy people.

“This isn't cool, Zak,” Dad said, his eyes troubled, his expression pained. “Your mom … This is going to kill your mother. Of all the places in the city to go, you had to go to Ground Zero. The place she hates more than anything else in the world.”

Right. Mom's brother. He'd died there way back before Zak was born, back in 2001, when what was now one tower had been two. Twins. Zak had seen them on old TV shows and in old movies. Mom's brother had died—

Tomás.

Mom's brother … Zak's dead uncle.

His name had been Tomás.

“You mean Uncle Tomás, right?” Zak asked, his voice barely a whisper. He was hoping to be wrong. He was hoping that he'd remembered the name wrong, that it wasn't Tomás.…

“Yeah, Tomás.” Dad was wistful, for a moment bled of his anger. Remembering.

Tomás. Thomas. Tommy.

Zak held his head in his hands.
What is going on? What's going on in
me
?

 

SEVEN

His parents usually argued quietly, and Zak was pretty sure they thought he couldn't hear them at those times, even though he could.

Now, though, they weren't even trying to be quiet.

Two days after his sleepwalking experience, through the closed door of Dr. Campbell's office, Zak could hear his mother's voice—high, trembling—competing with his father's—deeper, slower. They'd been yelling at each other for a good five minutes straight, according to the clock on the wall.

“—can't even keep him in the
apartment
, much less the borough!” That was Mom.

“
You
try watching a kid when you're asleep at three in the morning!” Dad.