Page 34 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
I could find the Fort in my sleep. That’s how many times I’ve walked that unmarked trail through the forest. So when I left Sunny Sunday that morning and started walking, I didn’t even choose to head toward the Fort; my legs carried me in that direction automatically. I was almost there—just a few more trees to pass, a few more rock faces to skirt—when I hit a patch of juniper. I could see the entrance to the clearing; it was right there, right on the other side. Rather than double back or skirt around the prickly bushes, I plowed right through.
Three steps in, my legs were already clawed raw. “Damn.” I looked down. Thin red lines blossomed along the pale skin of my shins.
I turned around. As I did, I heard the four ascending trills of a white-throated sparrow. My ears perked up. White-throated sparrows were my favorite bird. Henry’s too. And Dad’s. Speedy was the one who taught my brother and me to identify their call. “They call them the Whistlers of the North,” he said. “If you listen close, you hear them in Chicago, too, but just for a few days. Just as they’re passing through. The North Woods are their true home.”
So we did. Every year, we listened.
Once we started listening, we heard them everywhere. While walking the boardwalk. Winding through the trees to reach the Laundry House. Belly-up in a swing chair on the porch of ChelseaMorning, feet against the wall, toes pressing smooth planks of cedar to push the chair back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. We swung. We listened. We whistled back. We whistled to the Whistlers, mimicking their white throats’ perfect four-note ascension.
In the woods that afternoon, the sparrow called again. Another joined in. I closed my eyes to listen.
A shiver passed across my chest. My eyes popped back open. The treetops were still. No wind. No chill. Flesh raised on my arms. I shivered again. I spun around. Why was I cold? Where was that breeze coming from?
And then I felt it.
The presence. The familiar illusion.
Henry.
I spun around and started to run.
A blind sprint, no destination. Pine needles clawed at my arms and legs. It didn’t matter where I was going; all I wanted was to leave that forest, to find open air. A few minutes later, I pushed through a wall of leaves and burst out into the morning sun. I sprinted down the flowing rock, headed for a long slice of granite that stuck out into the lake, a natural jetty. At its very edge, I stopped. Stripped to nothing and stood naked on the smooth stone. Shivered in the warm summer air.
This had happened periodically, growing up. A tingle at the base of my spine, on the bottoms of my feet. The sense that my dead brother was there,right there. And I don’t mean in a foggy, ethereal way—I meanthere. Literally. His ashes. Right where I stood. That, after they were lost, of every place on the island, they ended up below my feet.
I thought I’d grown out of this illusion, the same way I grew out of my Worries.
Apparently not.
My feet ached. I listened to my breath drag in and out of mychest. Just beyond my toes, the rock dropped in a flat wall straight into the water. Straight to the bottom.
I’ve always been yours.
I took one last breath and dove in.
—
IN WINTER, THE NORTH CHANNELfreezes. Not just a partial freeze; the water hits complete subzero, creating one unbroken crust of ice, five or ten feet deep, that stretches over the entire channel like an extra layer of skin. In all of the 162 kilometers that make up Manitoulin Island—the massive stretch of land where Port Windfall is located—there is only one bridge that connects to mainland Canada. In the summer, locals drive fifty miles out of their way just to get off Manitoulin. But in the deepest weeks of winter, when the lake turns to stone, they drive wherever they please. Their pickup trucks plow straight across the water. That’s how strong the lake becomes. That’s how deep its freeze. In spring, the ice melts, and by the time summer begins, the lake is a lake once more. But the ice’s whisper remains.
My body plunged into the water. In seconds I traveled from July to January—down, down, down, right to where the last breaths of winter remained. The cold was worse than I remembered; it stiffened my bare limbs. Sunk straight through skin and muscle, straight to the bone. I recognized the shock but felt no pain. My body reacted instinctively—half somersault, legs down, arms up, kick and kick and kick, eyes squeezed tight, no need to look, could find the surface anywhere. I knew this water. I learned to swim in this water. It couldn’t hurt me if it tried.
I surfaced and gasped in the morning air. Paddled over to the rocks. Pressed my palms to their slick surface and hoisted myself up. I turned over into a seated position and pulled my knees up to my face. Took a few deep breaths. Water lapped at my ankles.
The feeling—the presence of my dead brother—passed. It always does. But thememoryof the feeling stayed, and does that really count as relief? Memory of pain is often worse than the pain itself. It drives us. What we do or don’t do, embrace or fear, repeat or avoid at all costs—all of that is dictated by our memory of pain.
I cast my eyes across the lake. As they moved, they spotted a white speck on the horizon, the first sign of an approaching boat. I nearly jumped out of my goose-pimpled skin, grabbing my clothes as I scrambled to cover my naked body. But when I blinked, the speck disappeared or else moved or else had been nothing more than a bird flying low.
12
FIFTH GRADE
THE NEXT TIME CHE ANDJuli travel, my new friend arrives on our front step with a small roller suitcase. I throw open the front door with a grin wider than my face. For any self-respecting ten-year-old, to have your best friend move in for two straight weeks—essentially an eternity—is nothing short of a fantasy on par with climbing into an alternate reality via a wardrobe or building a time machine.
His parents are at a two-week-long conference in Argentina. The business ofdiplomáticos. Something secretive and important and, most likely, uninteresting. We’ve spent enough hours rifling through the papers in Che and Juli’s locked file cabinets—opened with a stolen key—to know.
“Sleepover!” I yell, bouncing about the doorframe.
Manuel rolls his eyes. “Calm down, loser.”
