Page 82 of The Hitchhikers
She could call the police. She could climb out the window or go through the front door. She could run fast to the barn. Simon probably wouldn’t hear her footsteps from inside the shop.
They’d both be arrested. He’d be sent to Ontario. The boy who loved the ocean would be kept in a small, cold cell. The women’s prison might be there too. Would she be allowed to write to him? She wouldn’t have any visitors. She’d have to spend years there. Maybe her entire life. She was only eighteen. She hadn’tgone anywhere or done anything. She wanted to get married. She wanted a family.
Her baby would go into foster care. Would she grow up thinking that Jenny was a bad person? She might not want to see her. She might look at Jenny the same way her mother had. Same as Hannah, her former friend, who would walk the other way to avoid her at school. The teachers who thought her dismal grades were because she was stupid. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet judges when she failed her audition the summer before. Her mother who’d berated her on the train home, saying the tickets were a waste of money. Jenny a waste of her time. She hadn’t practiced enough. She’d gained weight. She was impossible. And then that spring, when her mother had realized Jenny was pregnant, and there’d never be a second audition. The things she’d screamed at her.
The only person who never made her feel ashamed was Simon.
She was sitting on the dock, bundled in her winter coat, with her knees to her chest. Her knit hat was pulled over her ears and a scarf covered the lower half of her face. Her cheeks were wet. Her eyelashes spikey with tears. The stairs were so slick with ice, she’d nearly fallen on the way down and had to cling to the railing. Why didn’t she just let go? She would have slid all the way to the bottom. Maybe straight into the ocean. With her heavy clothes, she’d sink right away.
The February morning sky was streaked with charcoal-colored clouds that rolled across the horizon. In the distance she could make out the dark shapes of the few small islands that dotted the channel. Seagulls glided overhead, soaring up, then sideways with the wind.
She heard the soft sound of a boat motor coming from thedirection of the bay, a purr over the slap of the white-tipped waves, and the creaking of the dock rubbing against the piers.
The sound grew louder, and a metal skiff rounded the point. A man was sitting at the back in a yellow rain slicker with a hood pulled over his head, and an orange life jacket.
The man’s head turned her way. Was he looking at her? He was coming toward the dock. Maybe he was going past. No. He was slowing. She tensed. If it was someone who knew her mother or Robert, he might tell them she’d been on the dock.
The boater pushed the hood off his head as he drew closer. His brown hair was damp and curling around his face. Simon Gray? She was so surprised she lifted her face out of the scarf.
Simon had been in his last year of school when she was beginning senior high. She hadn’t seen him around much since he graduated. She’d heard things, though. The girls at ballet talked about him. The mysterious brown-haired, brown-eyed boy who didn’t have a steady girlfriend, even though they’d all kill to go on a date with him. People said he spent more time on water than land. His dad owned the marina. There were rumors that they used their boats to help draft dodgers flee up north during the Vietnam War. Her mom called them criminals.
“You okay?”
Jenny had never spoken a word to Simon, but he was looking at her like this was normal, his hand draped over the long handle that steered the motor. As if they talked all the time.
“I’m fine.”
He puttered closer, reached out to grip the side of the dock, and quickly wrapped a rope around one of the hooks. He was in front of her now. Only a couple of feet away.
“It’s too cold to be sitting on a dock.”
“You’re in a boat.”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
She noticed a reddish purple shadow under his eye, with ascrape. Something had split the skin. It had been bleeding recently. The blood smeared.
“What happened to your eye?”
He reached up to touch the bruise like he’d forgotten it was there. “My dad’s on a bender. I’m staying away for a few days.” Now she noticed the duffle bag in the boat.
“Where?”
“There’s an old shanty on one of the islands. Not far. I keep supplies there.”
“Is that where you were when you went missing?” It had been over two years, she guessed, since he’d disappeared at sea during a storm, but she still remembered how scared she’d been for him, imagining what it must have been like. When there’d been no sign of him for days, everyone thought he’d died. It was a shock when he and his boat reappeared without injury.
Rumor was that he’d found an island, built a hut out of driftwood, started a fire to keep himself warm, and ate fish and berries. But she didn’t know if any of that was true.
“Tell you a secret?” he said.
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t missing. I was hiding from my dad.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. She’d seen his father around town, with his flushed, wind-burned skin, and deep creases around his eyes from always being out on the water. He was a big man, with muscled arms covered in tattoos. Being hit by him would hurt a lot.
“I see you on the beach sometimes,” Simon said. “What are you looking for?”
