“Nah. Too late. Just meeting my wife. Maybe I’ll be able to spend more time next July.” I swallow dryly and my heart trills. What if she looks for me on tomorrow’s ferry, or asks who my wife is? What if she knows everyone on the island and catches my lie?
“That short a trip, eh? Well, not much to do now, anyway. Weather’s turning.” She shifts her large, square ass and motions out the window. In the distance, the dense clouds kiss the lake’s surface. “You make sure you get off this island before the witch gets ya.”
There we go with the witch again. What’s with these people? I give her a blank look, not wanting to engage, but she takes it for a question. Great.
“You know. The November storms. Where you from?”
She stares at me in that impolite way that makes my skin crawl. I know what she sees. She’s trying to guess what I am. Not who, but what. I’m some crooked puzzle piece that bothers them. Indian! No, Native? Oh, wait—Hapa, right? I have “double eyelids” that my Korean mom called sankapul. She was so proud of that little crinkle of skin. I made sure to cut my hair so the thick waves were under control. The lady studies the angles and colors of my face—pieces of my parents. I hardly recognize which parts belong to whom anymore. As if ownership ever mattered to either of them.
The lady narrows her eyes—she still can’t figure me out but doesn’t want to ask that question. What a relief. She tries again. “Are you from Grand Portage?”
“Oh. No, we’re from…” I can’t say Duluth, which is where I’m really from. But despite practicing the lie in my head on the bus ride, my brain is all DuluthDuluthDuluth. I stutter, remembering the small town on the shore I’d picked out on the map last week. “Uh. Um. Grand Marais.”
She keeps babbling on about places to visit next time I come, flashing an artificial smile of false teeth. Her upper plate keeps coming loose as she talks to me, so her S sounds are more like sh. She says things like, “Now that’s a nice place to shit for a view of Duncan Bay.” Normally I’d laugh, but nothing is funny now. I don’t want to be chatty. I need to be ignored.
After a few minutes, I can’t be polite anymore. I’ve taken three buses from Duluth to get to this damn boat, and I’m so close. Last thing I need is some square-assed lady committing verbal diarrhea all over me.
“Sorry. Where’s the men’s room?” I fake my best nauseated look and hold my stomach.
“Oh! Bathrooms are aft,” she says, thrusting her thumb behind her. “We have Dramamine on board. Scope patches. Sea bands?”
I nod politely and bolt past the other passengers, who give me plenty of room to pass.
I push through the door to stand on deck. Isle Royale is in view now, with Washington Harbor yawning open a passageway for the boat. Evergreens cling to the rocky shore on either side. There are scant houses and docks as the boat turns gently to enter the bay’s inlet. The water sparkles from the sun cracking through a slice in the clouds. We’ll be docking at Windigo soon. I’m almost there. As I inhale to empty the stale cabin air from my lungs, something on the shore catches my eye.
It’s a flash of amber, and at first I think it’s just sun reflecting off the water. But it doesn’t flicker like reflected light. It almost seems to glow, like the harvest moon beaming against the backdrop of dark evergreens—but it’s daytime.
It’s a girl, standing on the shore. She’s dressed in dark colors, which is why I could only see her face at first, and now, a dab of pale hands clasped together in front of her. She stares back at me, and her face changes—subtly, like when a blink changes sunset to evening. Though she’s far away, I swear she went from smiling to frowning. Or maybe it was frowning to smiling?
Something in her expression tugs at the center of me. It’s a terrible feeling, and wonderful at the same time—like waking up on Christmas, and realizing that, damn, the waking up part is already over. As I squint to get a better look, the door to the inner cabin swings open and that same chatty lady steps outside. Ugh. I can’t handle any more conversation. I shuffle toward the bathroom. But when I check over my shoulder for one last glimpse of the girl on the shore, the rocky beach is empty.
I try to push aside the vision of her face as I search for the bathroom. Inside, I lock the door with nervous fingers. There’s a stainless steel toilet that’s stained anyway, and the tiny compartment reeks of fake evergreen deodorizer and piss. The mirror is broken and divides my face on a diagonal.
The wind must be picking up, because the floor pitches me left, right, left, and waves slap the boat. I close the toilet seat and sit down, placing my bag on my lap. I unzip it. Half the space is taken by an old sleeping bag. The rest is crammed with beef jerky packets, baggies of bulk dried fruit, nuts, oatmeal, and a collapsible fishing rod I stole from Walmart when I worked there this past summer. Since my uncle took every paycheck, I couldn’t spend a penny without him knowing why. I push aside the food, touching the changes of clothes, thick winter gloves (also nicked from Walmart—it was a good summer), a sewing kit, all-weather matches, a tiny enamel cooking pot and water bottle, and some bathroom stuff. Folded within a flannel shirt is a good camping knife. And inside my jeans pocket is enough money to buy me a ferry ticket in May and a bus ride to someplace that isn’t Duluth. I’ve got the clothes on my back and the skin over my bones.
That’s all I have.
I’ll have to break into a few houses, maybe the park ranger’s quarters. On the bus up here, I realized I’d need an ax to chop wood, but it was too late. I couldn’t afford to buy one or risk stealing something that big, so I’ll have to find one on the island and a place with a wood-burning stove. There will be no electricity. No phones, either. Hopefully I’ll survive the five months and get out on the first ferry before anyone can find me. I zip my bag up and exit the bathroom. I can see the dock at Windigo now.
I might die before May comes. But if it happens, at least it will be on my terms. I watch, almost without blinking, as the shoreline grows closer and closer.
I’m almost there.
I’m almost free.
Chapter Two
ANDA
I saw him on the ferry.
Every day, I’ve stood at the shore to watch the disinterested ferry pass by. The passengers are always the same, their faces set with familiar expressions of anticipation, or the green bitterness of seasickness, or the blankness of one who knows the lake and the Isle so well that nothing is new. But this boy was different.
We shared the same expression. And what’s worse, he could see me.
No one ever sees me at first glance. They don’t care to, they don’t want to, they want to but they can’t. If they’re searching hard enough for something, then sometimes it can happen. Father tries to explain why, but none of it matters. This boy—this boy—he saw me. Immediately. And it felt terrible, when his eyes touched my skin. I search inwardly for a similar feeling, flipping through file cards of memory. And then I find it.
Magnifying glass. Sun. Dead aspen leaf. Boring a pinhole of smoke and fire with that focused sun.