“There’re always reasons to stay,” he says. “You just need to find one reason to leave.” His eyes hold mine, and something familiar stirs inside me—something I want to pretend isn’t there. A flicker that illuminates the darkest part of my insides. And I absorb it like sunlight.
“I guess I haven’t found that reason yet,” I say. I know my cheeks are blazing pink, I can feel the heat against my skin, but I don’t look away from him.
The storm blows against the windows, rattling the glass in the casings.
Bo looks out at the rain, and I watch his gaze, wishing I could pluck more thoughts from his head. Pain rests behind his eyes, and I feel myself suddenly wanting to touch his face, his skin, his fingertips.
Then, like a machine being switched off, the wind outside stops, the rain scatters and turns to mist, and the moody black clouds begin to push farther south, revealing a backdrop of black sky with pinhole pricks for stars.
Rose hops up from the floor and twirls herself in a circle. “We need to go make wishes,” she announces. “Tonight.”
“The shipwreck?” Heath asks from his place still sprawled out on the floor.
“The shipwreck!” she repeats.
“What’s the shipwreck?” Bo asks, flinching his gaze away from mine for the first time.
“You’ll see,” Rose answers.
***
We tromp through the darkness and down the wood path to the dock. Heath insists we take his boat, and we pile into the small, narrow dinghy. Bo takes my hand, even though I don’t need it to keep my balance—I’m as steady on the water as I am on land—and he doesn’t let go until I’m seated beside him on one of the benches.
The interior is sparse and tidy, a stack of orange life vests strapped to the gunwale. Heath pulls on the engine cord once, and the motor revs to life.
Maybe I shouldn’t go with them. It’s late, and my head rocks gently with the sloppiness of wine purring through my bloodstream. But the looseness is also addictive; it rounds out the rough edges of my mind, the worry that is constant there, that lives beneath my fingernails and at the base of my neck.
So I grip the edge of the bench seat, and slowly we chug across the eerily calm harbor. It’s as if the water has died, surrendered after the storm. The ruins of sunken ships are like tombstones jutting up from the water ahead of us, jagged spikes of metal, rusted, turning to sand from the relentless tide.
“I wish we had more wine,” Rose murmurs, but her voice is soft and unconcerned, so no one responds.
The green mast, covered in a layer of moss and algae, rises the tallest of all the wreckage in the harbor, the flag that once hung from its peak long ago disintegrated and blown away.
Heath slows the boat as we approach then kills the engine entirely so that we drift within only a few feet of the mast. Dark, murky outlines of the rest of the ship sit beneath us, close enough to tear apart the propeller on Heath’s boat if he didn’t shut off the motor when he did. It’s dangerous to be this close to wreckage, but it’s also why kids come out here, to test their nerve. If it weren’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be fun.
“Did anyone bring coins?” Rose asks.
Bo looks from Rose to me. “For what?”
“To make a wish,” I tell him.
“This was a pirate ship,” Heath explains. “The legend says that if you drop a coin down to the dead pirates who still haunt the ship, they will grant you a wish.”
“There’s probably hundreds—no, thousands of dollars in quarters down there,” Rose says, waving a hand in the air as if she were a magician.
“Or just a pile of pennies,” I say.
Heath checks his pockets and produces a dime and a quarter. Bo pulls out three quarters and several pennies. “The higher denomination the coin, the greater the chance that they’ll grant your wish. Pirates are greedy, obviously,” Rose says as she snatches the quarter from Heath’s palm.
Bo and I each take a penny, and Heath holds the dime. Apparently, Bo and I aren’t very optimistic about our wishes actually coming true.
But still, I know what my wish will be—the same wish I’ve always had.
We each extend our arms over the side of the boat, fists clenched, and Rose counts us down from three. “Two... one,” she says, and we all open our palms and let our coins plop into the water. They flit down quickly, reflective at first as they sink among the serrated, cavernous angles of wreckage, and then they’re gone.
We are still for a moment, holding our breath... waiting for something immediate to happen. But when nothing does, Bo lets out a breath of air, and I cross my arms, feeling chilled. Anxious even.
We shouldn’t be here, I think suddenly. Out on the water so soon after the sisters have returned. It’s dangerous, risky for Heath and Bo. And something doesn’t feel right. “We should head back to the island,” I suggest, trying not to sound panicked, looking up at Heath, hoping he’ll start the engine.
