Janey sighs. “I think about it all the time,” she says quietly. She pushes her body into Mary’s, feeling her bones imprint on soft skin. “You don’t understand.”
“I never understand anything,” Mary replies. “Not like my sister, the great Janey Solomon.”
Janey blows air dismissively through her teeth, ruffling the hair at the back of Mary’s neck. Mary shivers, and giggles a little.
“You have to talk to the girls again,” says Mary. “You have to talk to them about everything you know. Everything.”
“I can’t. They’re too…too young.”
“Wait for them to be old enough to understand,” yawns Mary, “and they’ll be adults. And then you can’t do anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vanessa
A few days later, Vanessa is leaving her house in the morning for school; the grass is still slightly frozen and crunches satisfyingly under her feet. Suddenly someone leaps forward, grabs her arm, and pulls her around to the side of the house, where she falls over and lands with a thump on her back. Looking up, she sees gray eyes in a freckled face.
“I need to talk to you,” says Janey rather unnecessarily, still holding on to Vanessa’s arm with both hands.
“About what?” asks Vanessa, sitting up and rubbing her lower back. “And why are you jumping out at me? I could see you at recess.”
“No!” says Janey, pounding the wall of the house with a thump. “It’s too important for that.”
“Oh,” replies Vanessa, shakily getting to her knees and then her feet. “Well…I’m here. I’m listening.”
“Vanessa?” Mother calls from the door. “Is that you, banging?”
“Yes, Mother,” she calls back. “I, um, I fell. Right here. Against the wall.” She glares at Janey, who gives an apologetic little shrug with her bony shoulders.
“Are you all right?” asks Mother.
“Yes,” says Vanessa. “I’m off to school now.”
“Be good, dear,” says Mother, and Vanessa hears the door close again. She and Janey stare at each other uncertainly.
“Well?” says Vanessa.
“Well,” says Janey, “we can’t really talk here.” She looks around exaggeratedly, as if people are creeping toward them to hear their every word.
“I need to be in school. Mother will know if I don’t go to school.”
“Tell her you fell asleep.”
“I fell asleep walking to school?”
“Tell her you fainted.”
“I fainted and lay unconscious all day and then woke up after school let out. And came home.”
“Well,” says Janey again. “Can you promise to meet me after school?”
“Meet you after school,” says Vanessa slowly. “Where?”
“By the shore, near the shelter Mary and I built. Do you remember where that is?”
“It’s a long walk, but yes.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
After school, Vanessa wraps her sweater around her as she walks through the fields toward the beach. She rarely goes to the perimeter of the island unless she is naked and covered in mud; it’s not forbidden to visit the sea during autumn, but she considers the shore to be a summer place.
They all know the spot where the shelter was built; the water stays shallow for ages, and even the youngest children can wade around, hunting sea creatures or flopping on their bellies. She has fond memories of being a little girl, pleading with the older girls to pick her up and toss her into the ocean with a huge splash. The water always welcomed her in a rain of bubbles and droplets, slipping cool ribbons between her toes and fingers and into her ears, wrapping her body in a chilly, playful embrace.
The water seems different in autumn, angrier, even though its soft swells haven’t changed. Perhaps it is the color, the gray of charcoal smeared across paper, reflecting the sky above. Seagulls have gathered on the childless beach, stark white and soft drab with vivid flame-colored beaks and feet. They toss back their heads and keen in sharp, halting sobs.
Crouching, Vanessa runs her fingers through the cool, damp sand. The gulls shift uneasily and glance at her. The skeleton of Janey and Mary’s structure remains, although the twigs woven throughout have frayed and blown away. It reminds her of the altar at home, but stranger, frozen and broken and meant for worshipping something inhuman. She approaches it and runs her hand down one of the supports. A splinter catches in her palm, and she winces and pulls it out with her teeth.
“You came,” says Janey, appearing from nowhere and making Vanessa jump. “I thought you might not come.”
“I promised,” replies Vanessa, wiping the streak of blood from her hand on her dress before she can think better of it. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do,” says Janey. “I wanted to talk to you after the meeting at the church.”
Vanessa sighs. “I’m sorry I called you a freak,” she says. “But you shouldn’t have reminded me that I’ll end up like all of them. I try to forget it, most days.”
“You reminded me of some things I don’t like to think about either,” says Janey. “I’m sorry too.”
They smile shyly at each other and then shift uncomfortably, shouldering the weight of renewed amity.
“Where’s Mary?” says Vanessa suddenly.
“She’s playing with someone,” says Janey vaguely. “Or helping Mother.”
“She’s always with you,” replies Vanessa.
“I love Mary,” says Janey, “more than anything. But she’s not…” She fingers the cloth of her dress. “She’s not…”
“Like you.”
“Lucky her,” says Janey wryly. “I just felt like she wouldn’t be able to add much. To what we have to talk about.” Catching Vanessa’s gaze, she says uneasily, “I’ll tell her when I get home, of course.”
“So, what do we have to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said in the church.”
Vanessa snorts, a bit self-deprecatingly. “I say a lot of things.”
“What you said about us being unable to change anything. Like we’re goats waiting to be slaughtered. Something like that.”
Vanessa nods. “Right.”
“And that got me thinking. You say it isn’t worth wondering if there are other islands, or about the wastelands, because it doesn’t make a difference.”
“Yes.” Vanessa puts a fingernail in her mouth to chew, then snatches it away. “I didn’t say that about the wastelands, but yes. That’s what I said to the other girls.”
“But you love knowing things,” argues Janey. “All those books? Why read them? They won’t make a difference, but you do it anyway.”
“What am I supposed to do?” says Vanessa despairingly. “Just clean the house, and go to school, and watch women have babies, and listen to Pastor Saul go on and on, and wait…wait for my body to change.”
“That’s what everyone else does,” says Janey.
“Not you.”
“Those books won’t change what happens to you.”
“They’re…windows. Even if the place they let me see is impossible.”
“They teach you things.”
“They do,” says Vanessa quietly.
“Why don’t you want to think about other islands?” says Janey. “You say it’s no use, but it might be a window too.”