The Dead of Summer, page 2
I insert myself as a buffer between the bachelorette party and Gracie, who holds on to her wig and leans dangerously over the railing like she means to sip the ocean spray. If Sam followed us, he’s lost somewhere in the crowd, and I decide to let him go. The next moment is just for me and my mom. As is our tradition, Gracie and I take turns pointing out our favorite sights. The iconic water tower, of course, looming like an alien balloon over the town. The old wharf building with all its pretty flags. The steeple of the library tucked into the taffy-colored houses. The dunes softening the southern edge. The lighthouse floating closer. The bristle of boats bobbing between.
“It’s all still there.” Gracie’s eyes brim with tears, like she expected it to wash away. Frankly, I’m just as surprised. My memories of this place have sunk into a part of my mind I never realized was so dark, and now I can feel them rising up, twisted and ruined. A perfectly timed chill gusts over us.
“It’s getting rocky. I think that storm we saw on the news is coming?”
I’ve got my eye on the dark clouds bruising the southern sky, which the news has named Tropical Storm Raquel. How glamorous. It’s been a stormy storm season, and I secretly prayed Raquel would delay our return, but she did the opposite. Gracie abandoned all our stuff in a moving van scheduled for the later ferry so that we could take this one before the coast guard put out their storm warning and halted boat traffic yet again. Her plan worked. We made the last ferry out, a day ahead of schedule, with nothing but suitcases.
“Aww, since when is my Ollie-baby afraid of a little stormy weather?”
I brush away her hand as she tries to cup my chin. I know that pensive look. I know she’s about to give me one of her dumb life-lesson phrases.
“You know what they say, Ollie. The bigger the storm, the wider the rainbow. Always remember that.”
There it is. A Gracie original. I force my scowl into a smile. To a stranger, I’m sure this seems like a nice moment between mom and son.
It’s something entirely different to me.
* * *
Growing up, my mom had a little language of sayings.
A secret is a breath you ask another to hold.
Never cry for fun.
Polish perfects it, but it’s the grit that makes the pearl.
We called these gracioms, like idioms combined with her name. I, and anyone who knew her, could anticipate with near psychic accuracy when she’d say a graciom—and which one. It was just the way she talked. At the same time, she resented all clichés that were not her own. If anyone—even a guest at Singing House—ever dared say It is what it is, Gracie would stop everything just to back them into a corner and demand they answer her. But what is it, actually? Say it. Say what you mean!
I asked her once what the difference was between a graciom and a cliché. She thought about it for only a few seconds before telling me, Well, Ollie-baby, the difference is I’m saying the truth, and those wannabe wisdoms are saying nothing at all. And she was right. My mom’s sayings always meant something true, whereas the other adults I knew used clichés to make sure nothing true ever got said.
This was clearest to me at the fundraisers in the offseason. On Anchor’s Mercy, there is always a fundraiser for someone in the offseason. A lot of funerals, too. My mom and I contributed our piano playing—sometimes organ playing, if the guest of honor was already done up in a casket or an urn at the front of the party—and then stuck around to help clean up. It is what it is, the adults would sigh into their drinks before toasting to another townie lost to some vague ailment, leaving me to wonder: But what is it, actually?
I knew better than to ask my mom. On Anchor’s Mercy, you’re not supposed to notice how often people get sick, how quickly they die, or how ready the island is to move on without them. What you don’t look at can’t see you. It was like playing peekaboo with god. For a while this worked, and we were spared. Then we weren’t.
When Gracie got sick, all her heart and humor hissed like coals smothered in wet sand. She vanished into shame. She forbade a fundraiser of her own. We left Anchor’s Mercy, we left everyone. I understood without asking why I couldn’t tell my friends what was happening, and why no one would visit us on the mainland. I also understood her long silences, which sometimes swallowed entire days. Words always mattered to my mother, and some days were too hard or sad to dignify with small talk. She was dying and she was angry. You can’t talk back to death when it’s already in your bones. There was nothing to say but goodbye. Together, we were waiting for her end.
But she didn’t die! Her chemo worked, and bit by bit she climbed back to life. But she came back … different. Hijacked by this born-anew Gracie hell-bent on positivity, and second chances, and joie de vivre, whatever the fuck that is. And Gracie loved clichés. Not the handcrafted gracioms, but the generic kind you see in home decor stores. Quickly, our apartment was crowded with loud, jazzy decorations shouting positivity at me.
LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE.
IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE.
GOOD VIBES ONLY!
The clichés became inescapable. And then, to my horror, the positivity spread into Gracie’s own personal vocabulary.
Salt water is good for the soul, she said to my academic advisor when they expressed concerns about me moving back to Anchor’s Mercy after only one year on the mainland. I’d barely made any new friends, and the ones I had back on Anchor’s Mercy hated me. I told Gracie and she said, The only ship that’s ever unsunk is the friendship! And then there was her new favorite: My blood type is sea positive. Gracie liked to trot this one out at least once a day, to a barista or a waitress. She even said it to Dr. Rosen, her oncologist, at our final visit. Dr. Rosen’s face had clenched like a fist before forcing a smile as she said, Your island sounds lovely, but if something happens, it’s a big ocean between us. I really would just feel more comfortable if you remained in Portland.
But Gracie’s mind was made up. No argument was any match for her brand-new, bulletproof philosophies. I had my doubts, my fears, my anxieties, but I knew none of it mattered. It was what it was.
We were going home.
* * *
You know what they say, Ollie. The bigger the storm, the wider the rainbow. Always remember that.
Gracie settles her shining eyes on me, willing me to absorb this pearl of wisdom alongside all the other pearls she’s choked me with. I feel myself try to smile, but instead I snap.
“You know, just because there’s a rainbow after the storm doesn’t change the fact that a big fucking storm is coming. A rainbow’s no good if we drown.”
Gracie scoffs. “So negative! You know, I worry about you sometimes. Always brooding. Can’t you stay positive? Focus on the beauty of life? For me?”
As if I’m not in a constant state of enforced positivity. For her! I bite back on my argument, tasting the pointlessness. I’m being horrible and I know it. So what if my mom’s got a few canned catchphrases? Why can’t I mimic her good moods? Instead, my insides match the ugly, angry storm churning on the horizon, and if I don’t get it together, I’ll darken everyone’s skies. I smile through it.
“Sorry. You’re right. It’s beautiful.”
Gulls circle the deck, crying for chips and french fries left out by the passengers. I focus on their cries, my hand hovering over the invisible keyboard before me on the railing until I find the note. C-sharp. I press it again and again, until Gracie’s hand closes over mine.
“It’s okay to be nervous. I am, too.”
For a second, Gracie isn’t Gracie. She sounds like my mom again.
“You’re nervous?”
“Like a worm on a hook. What about you?”
It’s hardly anything, but this moment is a tiny treasure to me.
“I’m scared,” I admit. A few tears have been hiding behind my eyes all day, and they finally make a run for it. My mom wipes them away. There is so much I’ve been holding back about my doubts, about what I read online about our island’s trends of sickness, about why I can never face my friends Bash and Elisa again after what happened between us. I want my mom to ask me about all of it, and to really listen, but Gracie smiles instead. Smiles biiiig, and I know she’s going to shut me up with another cliché.
“Don’t be scared, baby. The only ship that unsinks is the friendship!” Gracie wraps me in a hug that smells like alcohol and bubble gum. “We’re going to have the best summer ever, right?”
“Right.”
I love my mother, especially when I hate her, but most of all when I miss her, which is constantly. I hold on to Gracie tight, but then someone elbows me in the back hard.
“Hey—” I’m cut off by a chorus of shrieks. It’s the bachelorette party, jostling us aside as they try to snap their thousandth selfie.
“Dakota, you’re missing it! Hurry! Get the lighthouse. The lighthouse!” The bride flaps her hand at Dakota—poor Dakota—who is juggling three phones.
“Wait!” one of them yells. “Shouldn’t Dakota be in the photo, too?”
The group gleefully rearranges, shoving Dakota into the middle, then looks around with dismay as no one takes their picture. Like a giant spider, all their eyes land on Gracie and her bright blue wig.
“Do you mind? Do you mind?” they all ask at once.
Gracie shoves her drink at me and says, “Certainly, ladies. Let’s see some smiles!”
Oh no. I brace myself. Gracie is no good at photos. She gets way too close, causing the bachelorette party to physically recoil, and then she takes just one photo. Sinful.
“Get the lighthouse,” the bride barks, and I nearly toss both drinks at her. No one snaps at my mom but me! But before I can say anything, Sam reappears.
“May I?” He swipes the phone from Gracie, but he’s a perfect gentleman about it. Everyone relaxes as he snaps a jillion photos of the bachelorette party. Another! Another! Now a silly one! The ladies pose and pose and pose, and I protectively drag Gracie behind me.
“How fun,” she says, but she sounds smaller now. Unsure.
“Get the big boat,” demands the bride, pointing.
What boat? My eyes pass through the bachelorette party and return to the darkening horizon, where a massive, ghost-white boat has appeared. It has a giant red cross on the side, bloody and bright as a fresh brand. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a naval hospital ship. But what is it doing here?
Sam is at my side, easily chatting with Gracie as the ferry sidles up to the pier. Welcoming parties clot the wooden dock, waving us in.
Gracie tugs at my arm. “Oh, Ollie, do you see Bash and Elisa? Did you let them know we made the early ferry?”
This is the question I have been dreading most, the one I know I can’t smile through.
“Who are Bash and Elisa?” Sam asks.
Gracie answers as she waves at random people. “Ollie’s best friends. Everyone calls them the Suds ’cause they’re always stuck together, like bubbles, and slippery as hell when they’re in trouble. Which is all the time. Oh, you’ll love them. Elisa has all the boys on their knees, and Bash probably could, too—he’s as handsome as our Ollie, everyone says—but he’s timid. More nervous than a deer in dune grass, that Bash. Honestly, Ollie, I’m surprised he and Elisa didn’t visit us, but I guess I can’t blame them. Between school and college applications and working for their families all summer. Hey, Ollie-baby, are you going to get your old job back at Pizza Monster?”
“Pizza Monster?” Sam asks, intrigued.
“Where are they?” Gracie’s waving has slowed. “Maybe they think we caught the late boat?”
“I’ll go grab our stuff,” I say, burrowing my way backward into the crowd, past bikes and strollers and at least a dozen seasick dogs. Gracie is wrong; no mistake has been made. Anchor’s Mercy is tiny enough that I’m sure the whole island knows this is the last ferry for the weekend. Maybe that’s why everything feels so electric, and final, and important, like we’re all riding one big, last chance. And add in a tropical storm? A flutter of dread pulses in the soft skin behind my ears.
No, I stop myself. Be happy. You are going to have the best summer ever. Or else.
I reach the back deck and I’m alone. Finally. Without anyone to smile for, I permit myself one last look out to sea before the storm takes it all away. I find myself watching that strange white ship on the horizon, its immensity punched out of the sky like a hole in heaven. It scares me, but I shove this new fear down, too. Down, into my own fathomless depths. By the time I find our suitcases, the ship is forgotten, but a ripple of anxiety remains.
“Get ready to live, laugh, love like your life depends on it, Ollie,” I tell myself as I lug our suitcases to the lower deck.
But something flickers in my depths, something rising from my darkness for a fleeting, frigid moment. A question: If this is our brand-new beginning, why does it feel like it’s about to end all over again?
Then it’s gone, and I step off the ferry.
Into the best summer ever.
AUGUST 13
23 DAYS AFTER
22:08
I watched a woman drown today. She was not in water. She was standing in a room, begging for help, as the water within her overwhelmed her lungs. No one helped. There is something very wrong happening aboard this ship.
I have to write quickly. At night. I am a PhD student studying at University. My real name is , but my code name within this mission is QUERENT-2. Defined, it is a person who asks question. I don’t dare ask what became of QUERENT-1.
I do not know if I, or this notebook, will ever make it out of the laboratories aboard the USNS Embrace. Still, my training compels me to keep a notebook of my process and findings. This notebook was not provided to me. No one knows I am keeping it. But even in secrecy, science is science. I am beginning this notebook to compile my own conclusions about the contagion that has overtaken the island of Anchor’s Mercy.
Three days ago men in white uniforms knocked on my office door at my lab in , . Ordered me to pack only a few essentials and then escorted me to a military airport, then a helicopter. Told me only that I had been conscripted to work aboard a top-secret laboratory off the coast of Maine. Asked if I had heard of the island of Anchor’s Mercy. I said yes. Asked me if I had seen the news about the disaster. I said of course.
Here is the story most people know and believe:
• On July 19, twenty-five days ago, Tropical Storm Raquel made a direct hit to the island of Anchor’s Mercy—a popular summer destination off the coast of Maine famous for its shellfish and drag queens.
• July 23: Anchor’s Mercy was put under emergency quarantine, and communication with the mainland ceased. No ships allowed in or out. No details about the nature of disease or origin. Only that it seemed to spread across the island overnight, shore to shore, as though the sea itself had grown sick.
• July 24: The US Navy hospital ship USNS Embrace was deployed to provide medical care for an unknown pathogen.
• July 29: The CDC first announced an emergency effort to evacuate survivors onto the USNS Embrace, but less than a week later on August 3, abruptly declared the entire population of the island lost.
Not dead, not dying, but lost.
• The last ten days: TV memorials, tearful celebrity tribute videos, and rampant speculation. The disaster was dubbed the Mercy Killings by the headlines, and gradually the news cycle began to move on. Anchor’s Mercy was, after all, a predominantly queer summer destination. That a sickness bloomed there, and that it spread fast, seemed to satisfy a dark expectation in the American mind about who gets sick and who deserves to die. The nation turned away from the lost souls of Anchor’s Mercy, grateful they had taken their sickness with them. Others were not so hasty. In the absence of any further updates from the USNS Embrace, online conspiracies flourished. Was it bioterrorism unleashed? A classified experiment ending in slaughter? A supernatural plague? The rapture?
As a scientist, I strive to remove myself from the desperate theater of outlandish theories … but then, riding in the helicopter, the island came into sight through a bank of gray fog. The USNS Embrace remained inert, stark white and immense, dropped into the northern bay. All seafaring traffic had ceased. No fishing. No ferries. Blank sky, not even seagulls circling. No people upon the beaches. No lights shining in the mist. And I thought: The island is a corpse. This ship is its tombstone.
Landing on the Embrace’s helipad, I overheard the men in white—soldiers—discussing a nearly completed evacuation. This surprised me. I asked if there were survivors contrary to what the news had reported. My question was ignored. I was instead brought to the laboratory for orientation.
People in hazmat suits. White lab coats. Standard for a BSL-4 facility, though clearly set up in a rush. I was not yet allowed inside, having to first undergo decontamination, a security briefing, and training. My personal items were seized, including my phone and computer. I was given standard navy fatigues to wear under a Level C hazmat suit, required at all times in the lab setting.
For a few days I was assigned an assistant’s role. A combination of field and laboratory tasks. Then today there was an incident. A “drowning,” they call it, when the infection takes someone. After, a memo was slipped below my cabin door. A new mission. I have been reassigned to an ongoing experiment dubbed TS188. In a biomedical study, TS may stand for test subject. I am surprised. So there is at least one survivor, though the code insinuates they are in some way sick. At the bottom of the memo is a handwritten instruction:
“You have five days. Talk to the TS. Find out everything that he knows before he turns.”
Stranger than this note is the handwriting. I am sure I know it, but there’s no signature. I have begun to wonder who summoned me here. And why. I will keep this dossier in secret.
Tomorrow, my true mission begins.
