Searching for Sky (31 page)
Authors: Jillian Cantor
I hold on to his hand as we walk and breathe deeply, taking in the cool, salty air as we walk past the last of the houses, toward the steps that will take us to the beach below. The sky is a pearly blue gray now, the sun a yellow-orange ball dropping so far on the horizon that it seems to be floating on waves in the distance.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, just as we walk down the steps to the sand below. “What happened to the person who shot us?” I take my flip-flops off even though my leg hurts a little without them. I want to feel the sand between my toes, to remember that in one way, the world is still the same, just as it always was.
“I don’t know.” Ben shrugs. “I know the police were looking for him, but they never found him. The money in the bag was just cash—bills,” he clarifies, “and they weren’t traceable or anything. So I guess he got away with it.”
“Do you think they’ll ever find him?”
Ben shrugs again. “Probably not. Unless he does it again and gets caught. It sucks, I know.” He sighs and holds on to my hand tightly as if he’s afraid to let me go too close to the water, as if he understands this inclination I have, I always have, to run in, to dive under the waves, to let them swallow me and carry me home. To Island. Except Island without River wouldn’t be Island at all.
I roll up the bottoms of my jeans and let my toes touch the edge of the water. It’s still cold enough to sting, but I don’t care. The wind blows hard, whipping my short hair in my face, pushing the water up my legs in curls, seeping into my thin pink scar. The Santa Anas are here, just as Mrs. Fairfield promised me they would be as she tried to explain it to me, the regularity in this California world. Every October, Santa Ana winds.
The normalcy
.
I try to imagine it again, across the giant space of the Pacific. Island. I don’t know what will happen to it, now that we’ve left it, now that it’s going on a map. Mrs. Fairfield guesses that tourists will want to see it, that cruise ships will stop there on their way to Fiji. She laughs when she says it, as if Island, my life, is something that amuses her. I don’t want to let it go, any of it, but maybe I have to.
The past is now a giant, heavy book waiting in my bedroom.
But it’s also the shimmering memories I have of a beautiful life on Island. Of my mother. Of River. Even of Helmut.
Ahead of me, there is the same ocean. And yet everything about it is different: the color, the temperature, even the beating of the waves against the shore.
The tide is coming in, and we have to move back so the water doesn’t take us. “Can we walk a little down the beach?” I ask Ben.
“We probably shouldn’t, Sky,” he says. “It’s getting late.”
Sky
. I think of that girl I was. With River.
I can’t be her anymore
, I think. Island is gone. My hair is gone. My mother is gone. River is gone.
But I can’t be Megan, either.
Megan
. This baby who once
lived on a farm called Eden, who once rolled around in her mother’s belly during a shooting.
No
.
I am the girl with the thin pink line on her calf, the girl who doesn’t know who she will be and what she will do without River. The girl who understands loss and love, survival and death, but who still doesn’t understand money, where it comes from, why everyone wants it so much. I am the girl who could stay here in California and maybe learn to love her grandmother. And also the girl who still dreams in Island, and wants to find a boat to make her way back to the place she still thinks of as home.
I want the ocean to tell me, as it always has. I want the ocean to call to me, to heal me and save me, to protect me and feed me. I want it to offer me answers, the way it once offered fish and pretty pink shells.
“Can you give me a minute alone?” I ask Ben now. He hesitates, and then I say, “I’ll be right here. I promise. I’ll meet you up on the steps in a minute.” He nods, and he walks back up toward the steps.
The Santa Anas blow, and the sand swirls behind me in the wind as I watch him go. When I turn back, I see the sun has almost fallen below a wave, and the sky has turned a pale blue, surrendering to the whole moon, to Venus twinkling just below it.
Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may. I wish I might. I wish the wish I wish tonight
.
I wish for the ocean to tell me who I am and where I belong.
I stare at the ocean, listening to it carefully. The waves crash and turn, and crash and turn again. The tide has pulled me closer in and also caused me to drift down the beach a bit. I take
another step back. This time, without looking first, and my foot hits something hard, a shell or a stick, or a piney branch. I bend down to pick it up, and then my eye catches on something in the sand.
It is hard to see at first, and the water comes in again and washes over it. I wait for the water to recede again, and I kneel in the wet, cold sand to have a closer look.
The last moments of sun shine down across the sand, illuminating the top parts of two circles that were connected once, through the middle. The bottoms are missing, drowned already by the high tide, but the top parts remain, still connected, in just the smallest way. When they were whole, before the tide came in, they were exactly what I drew that night when River found me here. But that was so long ago. These drawings are new, fresh. Exactly what I traced in River’s limp palm in Military Hospital. Two circles, running through each other, together, around and around. Forever.
You and me
, River told me.
See you soon
.
“River!” I shout his name into the ocean now, and then turn and shout it again into the pines. The Santa Anas blow, twisting the treetops. The ocean roars, higher and higher up the beach. The tide is almost at its height. “River,” I shout again.
The ocean answers back, the waves falling, crashing against the sand. Rushing over these circles, erasing them a little piece at a time as the tide comes in.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Ben is back, standing there behind me. “You all right?” he asks. “I heard you shouting.”
“River is still here,” I whisper to him.
“Yeah.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I know. The ocean reminds you of him, doesn’t it?”
The trees rustle behind me, though for a moment, I do not feel the wind pushing against my cheek. I turn quickly, but the rustling stops, and then in another moment, the winds are back, cresting the tops of the pines like waves.
Promise me you won’t leave me again
, I said to him that night underneath the pier.
I promise
, he said.
“Come on,” Ben says. “We have to get back.”
“Not yet,” I whisper.
But he tugs on my hand. “Come on,” he says again. “We can come back tomorrow.”
As we walk up the beach together, I keep on looking behind me, back toward the ocean, toward the circles disappearing in the waves of the high tide. I’m pretty sure they’re completely gone, erased by the water, by the time we climb the steps.
But now, from higher up, the Pacific begins to glow in the new light of the full moon, the waves bright and dancing, and suddenly, filled with hope.
Thank you to my agent, Jessica Regel, for her support and guidance and for encouraging me to take a chance on Sky and River. I’m so lucky to have her championing my work, which she did in this case even through a hurricane! Thank you also to everyone else at JVNLA, especially Tara Hart and Jennifer Weltz, for all their support and hard work on my behalf.
Thank you to the entire team at Bloomsbury, whose enthusiasm for this book has been amazing, especially my wonderful editor, Mary Kate Castellani. Thanks to Mary Kate for all the time, hard work, and editorial guidance, and for loving Sky and River just as much as I do! Thank you also to the Bloomsbury UK team and my UK editor, Natalie Hamilton, for giving this book a home in the UK.
Last but certainly not least, thank you to my friends and family who read my work, encourage me, and keep me going on a daily basis, with biggest thanks to my husband, Gregg, who plotted this book across the kitchen table with me and who took over the real world while I delved into Sky’s world.
JILLIAN CANTOR
is the author of several novels for teens and adults, including, most recently, the critically acclaimed
Margot
, a reimagining of Anne Frank’s sister’s life had she survived World War II. Jillian lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.
www.jilliancantor.com
@jilliancantor
Copyright © 2014 by Jillian Cantor
All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in the United States of America in May 2014
by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
E-book edition published in May 2014
www.bloomsbury.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Children’s Books,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cantor, Jillian.
Searching for Sky / Jillian Cantor.
pages cm
Summary: On her sixteenth birthday, Sky and River, the boy with whom she has shared Island
since she was a toddler, are “rescued” and taken to California, where Sky is separated from
River, is forced to live with a grandmother she has just met, and learns new rules for survival.
[1. Acculturation—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Grandmothers—
Fiction. 5. California—Fiction. 6. Islands of the Pacific—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C173554Sd 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013039234
ISBN 978-1-61963-352-0 (e-book)
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