I’m sad that I’d found my way back to something that I’d loved doing, that I’d given up because somehow it didn’t fit into my life. And while I’m happy that I found it again, I don’t understand why I felt like I needed to keep it a secret. Or that I felt like Walker needed to be a secret.
I’m sad because out of everything I’ve found out about myself, these are the things I wish I could take back. Since the accident, I’ve been trying to be who everyone was telling me I’d been, when that wasn’t even me.
But last night felt like it could be me. Sitting there on the boat with Walker really felt like it could be.
Still. He’s as much a stranger to me as Matt was, and I can’t do the same thing I did with him. I can’t just decide to go with the story I’ve been told, or feel something because I want to, or think I should.
When Walker had dropped me off, I’d told him as much, even though I’d hated the words as I said them, and he’d nodded like he understood, and it felt like the end of something that never was.
But the photo of me from the day we sailed the boat together sits, creased and bent, on my nightstand, and when I look at it, I feel like there had been something. There had been an us. I pick it up and cross the room to my blank chalkboard wall and tuck it into the frame, like a beginning, and then stand back.
That’s when I notice the manila envelope my dad had brought in. I don’t recognize the address. When I tear the top off and pull out a copy of Coast Magazine, my first thought is that it must be another story about the accident and my rescue. There is a note card with it that says, “Your copy, before it hits the stands! Please call for more details when you are feeling up to it. We’ve been unable to reach you at the number we have.” There’s a smiley face and a phone number beneath it, and now I’m positive it’s a story about that night. These articles have been coming in here and there since I got out of the hospital. I almost just put it in my desk drawer with the others, but then I decide to give it a look. See if it says anything different or new about that night, and me, and Walker. Not that it matters anymore. I know what happened, and I’m done trying to get back the things I’ve lost. Still, I flip through, looking for whatever little human interest story is there.
But that’s not what I find at all.
With the flip of a page, I find something that knocks the breath right out of me. In big, bold letters, at the top of a two-page spread, are the words: Central Coast Young Artists’ Issue: Photo Essay Winner, Teen Category.
Beneath the words is a shot I recognize and don’t. I know the sunset light in this photo, and the glassy water of the bay beneath it. The hand on the mast.
But those things make up only a tiny piece of what’s really there. Of what I’d thought was outside the frame.
In the foreground, there’s a large patch of unfinished deck, with two sanding blocks lying off to the side—a work in progress. Walker’s silhouette faces the sunset and the open ocean. His broad shoulders look relaxed, as does the way one hand holds on to the mast. The other rests on my shoulder. We stand close, leaving barely a space between us. But we are undeniably together in this moment as we look out over the ocean and horizon and fiery sky spread out in front of us, like endless possibility.
And then there’s the title: The Secret History of Us—a photo essay by Liv Jordan.
I flip to the next page, and the story begins with a black-and-white photo of Second Chance, one that I recognize as having taken years ago, when I’d first gotten my camera and was playing around with different types of film. The next one is of the boat—how it must’ve been when Walker started working on it and I started taking photos. There are close shots of the weathered sail, the cracked wood. Our hands, working side by side. As the photos of the boat progress, so do the photos of Walker, and of us. The images tell the story of something forgotten brought back to life. Something lost, but now beautifully found.
And it feels exactly right. I don’t have to remember taking those photos to know what they capture. They came from me, from a feeling in me. They are me. And they’re Walker. And they’re us. And those are the things I know are right.
I need to show him. He needs to see.
I dress quickly, put the magazine into my purse, then head downstairs and out the door. This time I know exactly where I’m going.
I head down to the waterline, where I can walk faster. The sand is wet, and the foamy whitewater comes up to my ankles. It’s cold at first—almost bracing. But each time the waves rush up and the water washes over my feet, I notice the cold a little less. I slip into the waves’ steady rhythm as I go, and for the first time, I notice that moving like this doesn’t hurt. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs to the brim, expecting to feel the protest of my muscles, but there’s nothing. Just the absence of pain.
I take another deep breath to be sure, and I try to pay attention because maybe I’m just so used to feeling it by now that it’s become a part of me. I stop and look out over the water. Breathe in deep, again and again. And it doesn’t hurt anymore. I don’t know when, or how, it happened. It wasn’t that one breath hurt and the next didn’t. But somehow that part of me healed, without me even noticing.
I stand there for a moment, watching the whitewater roll over my feet, and something tumbling around beneath the water catches my eye. I reach for it, then hold the thing up in the sunlight and smile at what I’ve found.
It’s a sand dollar.
When we were little, Sam and I would scour the beach for them, because our dad always told us that if we found a perfect one that still rattled, with no chips or cracks, he’d pay us. He never named a price, but always hinted that the reward would be big. And so we always had an eye out for them on our walks. And there were plenty of them, depending on the tide and the season. But whole sand dollars were rare. I knew they existed because of the bleached-white, dried ones in the Embarcadero shops, but on all our walks we only ever found a few that were still intact. By the time they washed up on the beach, most of them had been tossed and broken by the waves.
I run my thumb over the small white circle in my hand. On the top side that has that little feathery design, it looks nearly perfect. I almost can’t believe it. I hold it up to my ear and give it a gentle shake, hoping to hear the quiet rattle of the three little “doves” inside, but there’s nothing. I look at it again. Turn it over so I can see the bottom side, which is chipped at the center, just enough for them to have slipped out into the ocean.
I hold in my hand this thing that’s been tossed by the ocean, and broken enough to lose part of itself, but that’s still intact, and strong. And I think maybe we’re not so different.
I set it down gently on the sand, where it belongs, and then keep going, down to the harbor, to the boat, and Walker, where I belong.
TWENTY-SIX