Isle Requiem

1.

Sometimes if the night gets late enough, I can feel waves pulling at my eyelids as they recede into an ocean I can only half remember. I think I used to lay at the shore of that great body, fed the gulls, and looked into the sun. The sun doesn’t rise over that beach anymore. The stars gaze down like little holes in a black sheet. 

I sleep eternally.

2.

“Playground?”

“We were just at the playground.”

“Were we?”

“When you fell off the swing, remember?” a

“Wasn’t that yesterday?”

“Damn, I don’t even remember, we’ve been doing this every night for like a week.”

“We need a night off.” 

I need a month off. Conor and Arwen don’t seem tired. I try not to either. Nights on the island used to seem so exciting. Going to Rocky Beach after the sunset used to be so new, alien, and unfamiliar. Now I think we go there at night more than we do in the day. 

“Wait, is the boat here?” At this, my ears actually do prick a little. The three of us go quiet for a second. The hum of the fan in the hall keeps gently whirring gently. The bells of buoys ding softly on the distant windy surf of the ocean. A familiar horn sounds down by the dock, a loud, short blast.

“Boat's here,” says Conor, and we all scramble off of the pool table we've been sitting on. Conor pushes open the door and Arwen and I slip out after him.

“Shit, the lights.” I turn around, open the door again, and hit the light switch. The fan begins to slow down, wiggling less and less. That fan never quite spun right after the ceiling fan incident. We don’t talk about the ceiling fan incident. 

The red light in the next room glares out across the dusty wooden floor of the hall. The door to the kitchen is half ajar, just like it was that time when we were little when we snuck in at night and ate all the sugar. Sometimes we still go in there at night, squeeze together, and sit crosslegged on the kitchen counter trying not to acknowledge the fact that we aren't as small as we used to be. We eat big sticky pinchfulls of sugar and talk about how bright and full the island used to be.

The hall rules changed. We aren’t allowed in the kitchen anymore.

“Will, it’s gonna leave, come on.”

“Yeah,” I say. I close the kitchen door and leave the hall. 

3.

The hum of the ferry’s engine makes the dock gently tremble. I’m not sure why doing this excites us all so much. I think it's the people getting off. Usually, we know them, but it's even more exciting when somebody we’ve never seen before steps off of that boat onto our desolate little island, we can watch their fresh eyes take it all in for the first time, just like we wish we could do again. Lately, though, the people seem more tired than full of wonder.

I remember when we used to come to the night ferries with a pack of Oreos and hold out a single cookie to strangers stepping off the boat just to see what they would do. We didn’t say anything; we didn’t even make any facial expressions. Some of them gladly accepted and ate it, and some of them asked questions. Some of them just ignored us and kept walking. We couldn’t blame them, but when we got to know all the people in the following days, there was an undeniable correlation between how quickly they accepted the cookie and how much we liked them.

That was on the same dock that I wasn’t allowed to go on without a lifejacket until I was ten. I tried and tried and tried to convince my mom that I was big enough to go on the dock on my own like a big boy. The sun in the cloudless summer sky beat down on the bright green life jacket, making everything unbearably hot and itchy.

That was the same dock that I feel like I’ve been walking on since before I was born. The earlier memories are too foggy to put into words, but they’re still there, I promise.

“Yo, let's jump the wake!” Conor’s voice pulls me back into reality.

“We’re not allowed to at night,” says Arwen. I can tell from the tone of her voice that she wants to. Conor looks from side to side dramatically

“Do you see our parents? I don’t. Will, do you see our parents?”

“Nope.”

“Fine, Fine.” A reluctant smile crawls across her face. 

“Will, you actually want to?”

“I’m wearing fucking jeans right now Conor, of course not,” I say as I’m already pulling my shirt off and taking off my glasses and shoes.

In case you were wondering, that kind of thing happens a lot with us three. Saying and doing things that contradict each other. That’s because we don’t really need to rely on speech anymore as a way to communicate. We understand each other well enough not to need that kind of thing.

We stand at the edge of the dock, waiting for the boat to pull away. I feel the all too familiar thrill of being poised at the edge of a giant watery abyss scraping at the souls of my feet. The waves sloshing under the dock sound like their hands reaching up at me, but pulling back away with nothing, blocked by the wood of the pier.

Two years ago this familiar, almost joyful sensation was the exact same feeling that terrified me to my core two years ago. While all my other friends enjoyed splashing into the water on a bright summer day, I stood petrified in my uncomfortable life jacket.

The boat has detached from the dock now and it's pulling away. Conor yells up at the pilot to give us a good wake.

“Arwen, you should get on the pilings,” says Conor

“Absolutely not.” Arwen never wants to get on the pilings.

“If you insist.” Conor begins to hoist himself onto the giant wooden poles at the edge of the dock.

“No fuck you, I want the pilings,” I say.

“Fine,” says Conor. “But I’m jumping first.” The boat charges past the dock, leaving a massive frothy wake behind it. Conor leaps from the dock and begins the plunge down into the dark water below.

I push myself far off of the pilings.

For just a couple of seconds

I am completely weightless

The sound of the ocean wind

Rushes past me.

For just a couple moments,

My eyelids are full of life,

And I’m back there on the night beech,

Looking at the sun.

The last thing I hear before I hit the water:

“OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK”

I don’t hit the water like I normally would. There’s no impact when you jump into a boat wake. One moment you are in the air, the next you are in the water.

Normally you just tumble around in the wake for a couple of seconds, and then the water goes smooth, shooting you away from the dock. That's the best part. 

It's the feeling I felt two years ago when nothing mattered, and we all stood shivering and wet on the float watching the sun slowly go down. 

It's the feeling I felt when I was eleven, right before that green life jacket yanked me back up to the surface of the water. 

But it's not the feeling I feel now. Somethings wrong. We jumped to early. Shit.

I try to reach back up, but it's too late. The watery hands that reach up at me from underneath the dock have their icy hands wrapped around my every molecule. I slither down, down, down as I struggle and flail. I can’t tell which direction my head is facing, but I hope to god it's upwards, otherwise I’m swimming straight downwards. Or at least I’m trying to. I have no Idea If I’m even moving.

This isn’t unfamiliar. I remember being lost in water before. Back before Arwen and Conor, When My mom held me up in the bright cove on a hot day, looking at me sniffle at the chilly water. I remember her light voice:

“It's just like crawling in the water, Honey. Something about her voice could always make me relax a little.

The memory of actually going in the water is too hazy to put into words, But I must have scrunched my eyes up all tight. I didn’t crawl. I thrashed. I lost all sense of direction. I sank through the ice. Bubbles shot out of my mouth in a scream I couldn’t hear.

My mother’s Hands lifted me through the water to safety.

The water becomes still. I can’t waste any time. There’s only so much air left in my lungs. I claw up through the water, and push the icy night fluid down past my chest as hard as I can, but my head doesn’t break the surface. The pressure in my ears crushes down on my skull. I stop swimming for just a second, plug my nose, and blow. Nothing happens. I blow harder. POP. My head feels like it's just ruptured, but the pressure on my ears is gone. Suddenly the constant deafening rush of water meets my ears.

I’ve lost any sense of time now. I swear I could have been down here for five seconds or half an hour. I open my eyes. Stinging salt soaks into my pupils. The black haze before me stretches forever. I look down. My body dangles weightlessly in the void. Straight out in front of me, I see a little white dot. No, a piller, directly parallel to my body. It's hurtling towards me. No, I’m hurtling towards it. Oh shit, ITS THE PILING–

Slam.

I drift. Gentle wind pushes me through a noisy haze of silence. The smell of grass meets my nose as I inhale the bright ocean.

4.

“Alright, you’re Up William!” Except he doesn’t say it like “William.” Some people on this island talk like that, they say my name like “Wiyum” It's only the second time I’ve been here. Everywhere is so close to the beach. I step up to the place where the people with the bats are supposed to stand. I’ve never played softball before. I’m only four. Clouds hang lazily in the blue sky. The man with the glove throws the ball at me. I swing the bat just like the others do, but it doesn’t go anywhere near the ball. The man behind me catches the ball, throws it back, and I try again. It doesn’t work this time either.

“Lemmie help you.” Mr. Little stands behind me and puts his hands on mine. The man with the ball throws it again, and Steve moves my hands to hit the ball. The impact on the bat stings my hands a little. Clink. The ball sales foreword a couple of feet. “Go, Go, Go” the grown-ups shout from behind me.

But I can’t move. I look down. The ground beneath me has turned to mud. Dark water bubbles up from the soil.

It’s up to my knees now, and as hard as I squint into the black ocean below me  I can’t see my feet. It rises and rises over my neck and covers my eyes. My body goes numb.

5.

“Hon! Dinner!”

I set my book down. I’m very hungry. Running around the island all day does that, and especially now that I’m going on seven (very big,) I’ve become a black hole, constantly sucking in food.

I look out of the big window. The stars are starting to descend from the sky by our neighboring island, Jewell. 

The window I’m looking at is made up of three glass panels with a door in the middle, all pointed upward in a triangle shape.

The sweet piney smell of the old A-frame is always strongest in this corner.

I walk down the steep stairs leading from the loft to the main floor, the ones I had to scoot down on my butt so I didn’t fall and hurt myself when I was little.

Mommy, Daddy, and my Sister sit at the table. The sliding glass door is open to let the smoke out through the screen door behind it. 

“Haven’t seen you much today, Bill. How’s it going?” Asks Daddy.

“Good,” I say. I’m looking down at my plate of Italian sausage, baked potato, and asparagus. “Me and Kai and Cove are building a fort.” We’ve started work on a new fort this year. Every year we’ve tried to build one, but we always get bored and give up. This time we’re not. It’s gonna have a bunch of different rooms, and a second floor.

I get Mommy to cut up my sausage. I put a piece on my fork. As soon as it touches my mouth it dissolves into cool salty water. I look down at my plate, now covered in water, which is leaking off and soaking into the tablecloth. I look around at my family. They stab their forks into empty watery nothing and scoop it into their mouths. Slowly, they melt into the freezing abyss. The floorboards of the A-frame begin to grow soggy and the loft comes crashing down on me like a waterfall. Stars hang from the great pointed ceiling. The entrance to the balcony shines into the dark ocean house. The sky is clear and beautiful and blue, and the trees dance in the wind, but the birdsong is muffled and distorted by the still water.

6.

“Pretend I jump onto the ship just in time and then I open the hatch and run down the hallway–”

“The hatches only open from the outside.”

“Okay well pretend the hatch opens right as I jump onto the ship and before the door closes I get inside.”

“Pretend I shoot my grappling hook onto the ship so it lifts me as it flies away, and I climb up the rope. 

“Pretend I’m flying after it with my get-pack.” Now we’re going so fast that “Pretend I” sort of morphs into one word.

“Preteni run down the hallway to the control room, and just before the guys in there get me I hit a button to open the hatches so you guys can get in.”

“Ok, Preteni’m running down the hallway too.”

“Me too.”

Kai, Cove, and I jump around, blasting punching, and kicking. The two brothers both become blurs of blond hair and tan skin. Woodchips on the floor of the alien mothership kick up everywhere.

All of a sudden the fantastical spacescape outside of the window becomes playground equipment again. The dark wood we’ve known since birth, scuffed and scratched from years of play rubs against our bare feet, sore from running around all day. The sun begins to set in the cloudless sky.  I look to my sides hoping to get a glimpse of Kai and Cove before everything gets dark, but it's too late. Nobody is here. I’m not standing on wood anymore, but the sterile plastic that will come to replace it in a few years.

It starts to rain. The water covers the lenses of my glasses, and then my whole body, and then, once again, I have nobody.

7.

I stand on the ferry dock. Rain slicks the wood. We hold an umbrella over our heads and try to make sure our bags don’t get too wet. For some reason, it always rains when we leave. Arwen and her mom stand with us, waiting for the boat to pull in. We have a silent agreement not to acknowledge each other too much in front of our parents. Grown-ups are always weird about boys and girls being friends. Even though we’re only twelve and eleven, they always think we like each other. It’s like their brains just can’t handle the idea of anything other than that. It’s always confused both of us.

I think I’m usually at least A tiny bit excited to go back, but honestly, this summer I forgot why. I try to think of the place we’re going back to as “home” but it just isn’t right.

We’re on the boat now. Mom wants to go below deck where it is warmer and dryer, but I want to stay up here and look at the dock, the store where we got ice cream every Monday, the flag pole that we saw in the square every day, Arwen’s house, and the rocks near the dock that we would climb on. I’ll look at them until the island starts to float away from us, but I won’t watch it leave fully. I’ll turn away before it goes completely out of sight. That’s why, I never really see it go. 

8.

Half a year later I sit at a school desk, silently gazing out at the ocean beyond the classroom window, wondering if anyone else can see it.

9.

Arwen and I sit at a picnic table at the ballfield planning our night. When we don’t have anything to do in the morning, we sit on the library porch and play Settlers of Catan on the library porch. At least, that’s what we start out doing. We get too distracted to finish the game by the end of the night.

“Can we invite Conor?”

“I mean… I guess, if you want. But I don’t know Conor super well. Won’t it be awkward?”

“You’ll get along, I promise. I’ve known him, like, my entire life.”

10.

A year later, Arwen, Conor, and I stand on a pool table. Arwen brought her Bluetooth speaker, and we’ve all created a collaborative playlist on Spotify. All the lights in the hall are on. (We had to start using the hall instead of the library because we got told off for being too loud. All the fans are spinning. Arwen and Conor seem to have known each other since childhood. They seem to be getting tired.

“You guys wanna do something else?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but I’m bored. Let's go to a beach or something. I want to see the ocean.”

“Are we allowed to do that?”

“I don’t see our parents. Do you guys see our parents?”

We put the cover on the pool table and move it back to the corner, shut off the hall lights, and step out onto the porch.

Stars look like little specks of shattered glass on the floor that is the night sky. The moon, full in the sky, looks down on the street lights. I can hear waves lapping under the dock nearby The open night is brighter than any day I’ve lived through in years.

“We should do this every night”

11.

I check the time. 4:40 AM. Nearly time. I see Arwen emerging from her house and crossing her lawn. She meets me out on the road.

“You ready?”

“Arwen.”

“C’mon, we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Arwen, My dad got the job.”

Arwen is silent for a moment. 

“The Vermont job?”

“Yeah! They called him last night.” my voice is shaking with excitement.

“So you’re really moving.”

“Well he said not to tell too many people… but yeah! He’s gonna take it!” Arwen and I both bounce with excitement.

“Alright, come on then.”

“So I guess that means you’ll be at a new school?” It’s 5:15 now, and we’re sitting on the rocks at the cove in the dark. It’s about to happen.

“Yep! And think about how much closer to the island I’ll be.” 

“You can come up in the–”

“Wait shh, It’s about to come up!”

Then, over the black water, just past Jewell Island the sun starts to come up. Red shoots across the sky. A strip of light ignites across the center of the ocean. Arwen and I are clothed in pink light. The waves lap higher and higher at the shore

12.

“I guess I’ll see you some time next summer.”

“Maybe sooner. I’ll live closer now.” Arwen and I are sitting on the swings at the playground at night one final time. The streetlight nearby casts an electric glow on the desolate woodchips

“I wonder what public school’s gonna be like for you.”

“Maybe I’ll meet some cute Vermont boy and bring him out to the island next summer.”

“You? Yeah right,” says Arwen, but I can hear her smile in the dark.

I look to my side. An empty swing sways gently a breeze that stopped blowing a long time ago. I think someone was sitting in it just a second ago, but I can’t remember exactly who they were.

I turn towards the sea that stretches out before me. The monkey bars stand like a lighthouse not too far away. The waves pull at the beach of woodchips. I sit quietly and watch the tide rise for a couple of hours. A few cars drive by in the sea foam. Just when the water is directly under the swing,

   i drop.

13.

I lay In bed looking up at a ceiling fan. This feels different. It’s like remembering something that’s happening right now. 

“Quinn?”

“Yeah?” Quinn is lying next to me, his hands clasped over mine.

“I’m gonna be gone in two weeks, you know that right? For the island?”

“Yeah I’m… I know.”

“Quinn?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad I moved here.”

The fan is gone now. Stars festoon the deep blue sea of night sky staring up at me from where the ceiling once was. Quinn reaches out into them and pulls himself up onto the roof.

“Come on!” He calls from the sky “Come follow me!” 

I get out of bed. I look around at my cluttered desk. The door to my closet is cracked open. The Ocean laps at the hardwood floor of my room. It’s waves wash up against my feet.

“Follow me! Come on!” My chest starts to burn. I can feel that weight under my eyelids more than ever before now.

Arwen and Conor stand out in the ocean before me, just looking at me. 

“Come on! Come on!” I glance back at Quinn. He’s so happy. He’s so, so, happy.

I collapse Into the ocean. My body dissolves.

14.

When it comes back, I’m with my mother in the cove. Everything seems so much more bright and vibrant than it really is.

“It’s just like crawling underwater, honey.”

It’s just like crawling underwater.

I choke.

“WILL"

"BREATHE"

"HE’S NOT WAKING UP.”

“W I L L”

“W  I  L  L”

I crawl.

“S  H  I  T”

“S H I T”

“Shit. Shit. What do we do?”

“Get Rachel. Now”

15.

My eyes shoot open. I choke and spit and try to get up but the float is rocking too much.

“Will!”

“Holy fuck, He’s awake.” I can’t talk. I breathe, and breathe, and breathe, but I just can’t drink in enough air. My lungs crumple back into two wheezing messes.

“Woah, breathe, breathe.” Says Conor.

Well why didn’t I think of that I think to myself, but to hear Conor’s voice, any human voice, really, feels like music. Not just an echoey, watery distortion of a long-dead voice like I heard while I was floating, but an actual, real voice. I get the last bit of water out of my system. I lay there, my chest heaving. The sky is too cloudy for stars. Everything is too dirty to be a dream.

I try to get up, but I fall again. Arwen kneels next to me and tells me to stay lying down for a while. My breathing slows down. I close my eyes again. For the first time, I don’t see anything. My mind has nothing more to show me. The echo of waves sloshing underneath the pier can be heard not too far away. Buoys ding out by Hope Island. The float rocks my limp body like a crib.

When I’m ready, I open my eyes back up. The sky has cleared a little, and I can see the moon staring down at me. Conor helps me up slowly.

“Let’s get you home.” We begin the walk back through the square. For a second, I think I see the hall lights on with the fans spinning. Children seem to run across the dirt road ahead of us. A line of tourists stretches out of the door of the store.

Together, the three of us walk across our own dead little island.

“Jesus, what are our parents gonna think?”

“They don’t have to think anything,” I say. “I’m fine.”

“You need to get home and go to sleep. We all do.”

“I’ll sleep in the morning. Let’s go to the playground or something.”

“Will, we were supposed to be home fifteen minutes ago.”

“I don’t see our parents. Do you see our parents?”

16.

Sometimes if the night gets late enough, I wake up on a beach I had once forgotten. I lay at the shore of that great body, feed the gulls, and look into the sun. Sometimes, if I wait long enough I can see the rise over that beach. I gaze out at the stars disappearing as though a great white sheet is being cast over the ceiling of night.