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Jason
I pull some strings and manage to convince the ferryman to get us back to the dock. Donovan is waiting for us. He looks pissed, though I can’t tell if he’s mad at me, or Otto, or both.
“Kenzi’s waiting at the house,” he says. We get in the car.
The excitement of the whole thing kept me warm, and I don’t realize how cold I am until I’m in front of the car heater. I put my hands on the vents and glance in the back seat. “You warm enough back there?” I ask him.
“I’m fine.”
Otto is somber in the back seat. He stares out the window with the eyes of someone ten times his age.
“I know it’s rough, buddy,” I tell him. “What you’re going through…it’s a lot for anyone to handle. But running away isn’t the answer.”
“Yeah,” Otto says, his voice small. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Donovan adjust his hands on the steering wheel.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a minute. Then, finally, he says, “Sometimes, I feel like it’d be better if I wasn’t here. Then everyone wouldn’t have to worry about me so much.”
“I understand why you’d want to escape. But sometimes it’s good to just think about it, you know?” I continue. “Take a moment. Breathe. Have you tried meditation?”
Suddenly, Donovan hits the brakes, and the car gives a lurch forward. I brace myself with a hand on the dash and look at the road, expecting to see an animal. Nothing. It’s empty.
But Donovan’s jaw is tight, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Hey, you okay?” I ask him.
He exhales tightly. “We’re not meditating. We’re taking a detour.”
“Where?”
But he doesn’t answer. He just turns the car around.
He pulls us off the main street. We drive the strip of road that follows the coastline for about five minutes until he pulls into a patch of empty dirt on the side of the road.
“Everyone out,” Donovan says.
The three of us climb out. I recognize where we are—we’re on the other side of the boatyard, which is closed up for the season. The side of the road is covered in browned and frozen-over dune grass, and Donovan leads us down a small path through the elm trees. It takes us out to the edge of a cliff. We’re on the north side of Hannsett, nothing out here except a long stretch of water and red and green buoys blinking in the distance.
“What’re we doing here?” I ask.
“This is the Screaming Rock,” Donovan says matter-of-factly.
“Why do they call it—?”
Donovan moves to the cliff’s edge, buckles down, and screams. The sound he makes is a scream I’ve only heard once before—when I had to do an emergency amputation on a man who’d gotten tangled in a propeller. It’s the sound of limb being severed from muscle, of losing something you should never have to lose, and it sends a chill through me.
Then he stands, immediately collected again, and takes a step back.
“You okay?” I ask him.
He gives me a look—like I’m crazy for asking that question, like it’s perfectly normal to have that much pain bottled up inside of you. “Your turn,” he says to me.
I shake my head and cross my arms. “I think I’m good. I don’t have…all of that.”
His mouth turns downward. “Your parents are ruthless. You got married and divorced in the same year. And no matter what you do, you’ll never make your father proud. But you’re right. You’re good.”
Alright. He has a point.
