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1
September
Just a few more weeks, and then we descend into darkness.
The voice on the radio belonged to a woman, a Seattle radio host, but the words still unsettled Saber, who had lived her whole life in the sun, in the light.
“Strange way to say that winter is coming,” she said, and her dad, in the driver’s seat, glanced over, smirking, then patted her knee.
“She’s not kidding. Soon it’ll be dark most of the day, and the sun will set around four.”
He’d started shaving his head entirely this year, and she still wasn’t used to it. He also dressed in crisp flannels and dark-washed, expensive looking jeans. Along with his hair, the polos and khakis he wore when she was a kid were long gone.
“Awesome. So glad I’m here,” Saber said, looking out the window. About a half-dozen crows circled above the parking lot, flying out over the churning gray water.
A murder, she thought.
They were in the industrial parking lot of the Seattle ferry terminal, in line for the boat to Bainbridge Island, a place shehad never been. Her father had only lived there for a few months after finally building his dream house, a starkly modernist bachelor pad he hadn’t planned to share.Then her grandmother, her nanny, died suddenly and ruined everything for both of them. The thought made Saber’s heart tighten, a vivid pain. The hurt came on strong, as if it had all just happened, but it quickly passed.
It was a breezy, cool day. The skies had been clear for most of the afternoon, and she’d seen Mt. Ranier on the drive in, a sight stunning enough to take her breath away. She’d never seen a snow-capped mountain like that before, other than in movies and photographs, and a part of her couldn’t believe she would be living so close to something so rugged and awesome. She wondered if she could paint it without making it look corny, like a greeting card.
Then they had driven through downtown Seattle, and the homeless encampments on the side of every highway had startled her. Ragged tents and structures made of pallets and Ikea-bag-blue tarp clung to the side of highway divisions, or huddled beneath overpasses, barely recognizable as homes. There was something stark and dystopian about them, unreal.
“There’s so many of them,” she said, tent-after-collapsing-tent floating by. “I can’t believe nobody’s helping them.”
Her dad drummed the leather steering wheel of his luxury car.
“It’s a complicated situation, bean.”
He’d called her “bean” as a kid, when he still lived with her in Florida, but hearing it now made her flinch.
They paid their fare and got in line for the boat in a big parking lot by the water. Saber’s dad said she could get out and walkaround. She nodded and slipped from the car, a black BMW SUV with a bike rack bolted on top. She wondered if her dad ever actually rode bikes. There was so much she didn’t know about him and his life here in this completely foreign place. All he ever did when he visited was ask questions abouther, which she dutifully answered.
School is good.
I got an award for a painting.
Grandma seems fine.
She didn’t know him, but she didn’t think he really knew her, either. And now they would be living together. Not for very long, if Saber could help it. She was determined to grit her teeth, get through the school year, and leave as soon as she possibly could. She wasn’t sure where.
Her grandmother’s death at the end of the last school year had completely derailed all thoughts of college or after-high-school plans. She had planned on getting good grades, then taking a year off, maybe backpacking in Europe, going to museums, figuring out what was next. She could still do that, but leaving home only sounds exciting when you have a home to come back to.
The ferry parking lot was in the shadow of the city, and she turned to look up at the skyscrapers, a ragged silhouette that ended with the Space Needle, a sight so vividly familiar it almost seemed fake. She’d been to large cities before, even Seattle, to visit her dad, but she’d never lived in one. She felt a tiny thrill at the thought of all there was to see and do, but it passed quickly.
She just wanted to go home to Florida, to Fernandina Beach where she’d lived with her grandma. She had wanted to finish school and go to college on the East Coast, somewhere that would make it easy to visit home.
But her grandma was dead, the house was sold, and she’d already been registered for school on Bainbridge Island. She didn’t have a home anymore. Her future felt wide open like an unexplored wilderness, foreboding and uninviting.
She walked, hands stuffed in the pockets of her denim jacket, to the edge of the parking lot, which ended at the sea wall. She’d vaguely understood that Puget Sound was the body of water that made the notch in Washington State’s otherwise square shape. She knew now, too, that it was sprinkled with islands, and the closest one to downtown Seattle was called Bainbridge. She’d never been there. On the rare times she’d visited her dad, he’d been living in a condo in a charmless suburb called Redmond. It had been her dad’s dream to move to Bainbridge, but Saber had literally no idea why.
“It’s an island, but it’s completely different than Fernandina,” he’d said. “You’ll love it.”
How in the world would he know that she’d love it? He barely knew her at all. She didn’t care enough to hate it, not yet, but she knew she wouldn’tloveit. How could she?
She saw the ferry, and for the second time that day she was stunned.
It washuge.
