Page 21 of Wild Life (STEAM-y #2)

Apologies, Who is Ariel?

Aleki

I couldn’t remember the last time I had been afraid of another person. Maybe that time at age seven when I’d lied to my mother about brushing my teeth for a whole week. When she had realized my toothbrush was never wet, she yanked me into the bathroom by my ear and interrogated me about it. I had denied everything, of course, and tried to convince her that it always dried quickly after use. She’d made me do it in front of her so she could test the bristles herself. I had nearly peed my pants because I had been so anxious and frightened that she’d pull my ear again. I always made sure to brush my teeth after that, even if it involved using a twig.

Again, I felt like a scared seven-year-old, but this time, I was afraid the explosive woman sitting near the fire was going to yank my ear. If she did, I deserved it. Something told me she wouldn’t hesitate to chop the whole thing off if I spoke out of place.

The fire cracked, sending sparks into the evening air. I approached her, but she didn’t look up. She was freezing me out, or at least trying to. The little wrinkles on the bridge of her nose deepened, as they often did when she was disgusted by something, like when Poaka pooped in front of her while she was eating. I now ranked with pig feces on her list of repulsive things.

I stayed put. It was only the two of us on this island, and she couldn’t ignore me for much longer. She was a social being. And though I was proof that she didn’t need someone to converse with, she needed someone to listen. Another human. Her admission had helped me understand how her lonely childhood had caused her to crave human companionship. In my case, the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction, and the loneliness had forced me to keep to myself. Maris sought what she had missed out on, whereas I was so bitter that I sank deeper into the very thing that had wounded me. Which one of us was the healthier of the two?

This time, I wouldn’t choose reclusiveness again. I moved to the right to obstruct her focus on the roaring fire, only to be met by the smooth surface of her cheek as she turned her head away to evade me.

I knelt, unsuccessfully tucking my oversized body in to fit in front of her. “M-Maris.”

Her gaze snapped to mine, the ice in her eyes melting away for the briefest moment.

Years had passed since I had spoken to another person, and I was rusty at it. I had never suffered from a stutter, but the lack of practice with another human combined with my nerves created one. It frustrated me that I couldn’t spit out words, but Maris didn’t show any sign of misunderstanding.

Despite my impediment, it was the first time I had called her by her name, and I was surprised it had affected me as much as it seemed to have affected her when it rolled off my tongue. I liked the feel of it.

“Say it again,” she ordered, her thawing vision holding mine.

I inhaled much needed courage and exhaled her name as if it were my own to breathe out. “Maris,” I said softly, my tongue rolling through each letter smoother than before. My shoulders relaxed slightly.

Then her eyes hardened again, colder than before. “I just wanted it to be the last thing you said before you went up in flames. Goodbye, asshole.”

She shoved my shoulder, catching me off guard, and I tumbled backward, missing the fire by only a hair.

I composed myself, taking a seat on the ground like her. “L-listen, I know you’re an-gry. If I were you, I’d hate m-me, too.”

“Good, then push yourself into the fire and spare me the effort.”

“Will you l-listen to m-me?” I touched her knees tucked to her chest.

“To what? More lies? I poured my heart out to you, and you stood there holding your chub in silence, playing the part of a man void of voice! Do you understand how mean that is? You deceived me. Instead of responding or answering any of my questions, you simply stayed quiet. Who does that? You’re more of a stranger to me than I imagined.”

My head raced to keep up. Maris always spoke quickly, and now that she was angry, the words were rushing out like hornets on the attack. Despite my respectable vocabulary thanks to my book collection, she used a lot of colloquial terms I hadn’t learned yet. “What’s a ch-chub?”

She snapped her fingers in my face. “Wrong thing to focus on right now, nature boy!”

I sighed. I was failing miserably at this. “I’m s-sorry. I wish I could m-make it up to you, but it all happened s-so fast. After all this t-time of being the only p-person here, you w-washed up on shore and I p-panicked.” Speaking became slightly easier as I continued, “I wanted you to wake up and leave. You were loud, and I wasn’t hap-py about it. I wanted my p-peace again.”

“Gee, thanks.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard. I think I want my peace again, too, so please go back to being silent.”

“I p-pretended not to speak so I didn’t have to d-deal with you. Then, as time p-passed—it never seemed like the right t-time to admit the t-truth.”

“Do you know how much stress and anxiety I could’ve avoided if you had spoken to me? Answered my questions? I could have figured out where I was or who you were with one sentence instead of worrying that you were some creepy forest-dwelling creature who was going to kill me.”

I laughed and the tension rolled off my back. I loved her dramatic sense of humor, even if I didn’t understand it sometimes. “You thought I was a c-creature.”

“Kinda why I referred to you as Cryptid in my head.”

“Which c-cryptid?” To my knowledge, there were a few of them, but I didn’t know the specifics.

“A Sasquatch,” she said plainly, as if it were common knowledge.

“What’s a Sas-quatch?” I took care to pronounce the word just as she had done, even if it came out much slower.

“A forest-dwelling creature…Stay focused, Aleki.”

Although she was angry, I still loved hearing my name on her lips.

I took her hands in mine and cheered inwardly when she didn’t pull away. If I kept her talking, her anger would crumble eventually.

“Th-things changed. Having you around b-brings me peace. I realized this after I left you on the b-beach. It sur-prised me that I was sad of the p-possibility of you being rescued and return-ning to your world for good.”

Her fingers wiggled in my hold.

“You told me how you crave hu-man bonds because of how lonely you were as a ch-child after your parents died. I under-stand that because when I was sh-shipwrecked here, my parents died.”

“How old were you when you came here?”

“Ten.”

“Damn,” she said under her breath. “And you’ve been living here all this time? Alone?”

“Well, Poaka has been with me for many lifetimes.” I smiled. Poaka and I had been through it all.

The corners of her eyes softened. “Your parents. You said they passed away. Are you sure?”

I nodded, images from the worst day of my life flashing in my head. “My dad died during the acci-dent and his body washed up with us. Ma and I were so scared. Dad was an ad-ventur-er, and loved trips like this.”

“Trips like this?” she repeated.

“Dad loved traveling to remote locations. He was ob-sessed with chasing danger. Sky-d-diving, c-canyon climbing—anything that resulted in a thrill. Ma and I relied on him for his survival know-ledge on our trips. He read maps, or-ganized all the g-gear, and knew how to operate the radio and navigate the c-catamaran.”

She brightened. “You traveled in a catamaran? That sounds so bad ass.”

“It was, until it got him k-killed.”

“Good point. And still, I can’t imagine bringing a kid on those wild journeys. It must’ve been wild.”

“I hated it. We lived in New Zealand, but we left every other m-month for some trip. I missed school often and wanted to stay p-put so I could be with my friends. I wanted life to be b-boring for a bit.”

“You needed a routine,” she offered.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t every kid?”

“I suppose so. I had one with my parents, and then again when I had to go live with my Aunt Sherri, but I still turned out messed up.” Her mind flew far away from the present for a moment before she regained her senses. “So, how did you end up here?”

“We lost signal and were s-stranded at sea. Dad couldn’t p-place where we were because the ra-dar had been down for too long, and we had drifted really far from our last known l-location. Then a storm hit.”

“Of course. Fucking storms! Always Poseidon fucking with humans and laughing.”

“Po-sei-don, the Greek god?”

She pointed a finger at me. “That’s the dude. Vengeful little fucker.”

Half of my mouth tugged upward. A smile. Only she could make me smile.

I had read about him in my copy of The Odyssey . Maris could hold a grudge, warranted of course, yet she had nothing on Poseidon. He was the master of contempt.

“So, Daddy Poseidon attacked your boat and then what happened?” Her interest warmed me.

“I don’t really re-mem-ber too much, except Ma screaming and a lot of water f-flooding my nose and mouth. Then I woke up. My face was c-covered in sand and my c-clothes soaked. Ma and Dad were face down on the beach. I woke Ma up f-first and helped her as she choked up w-water. Then I tried to wake Dad up, but he wouldn’t m-move.” The bits that I remembered were as strong as the sun’s rays, burning my mind.

Maris took my hand in hers. “Oh, God, Aleki. That’s horrible.”

I swallowed back tears. It had been a long time since I’d replayed the whole story, and saying it out loud for the first time was difficult. I could smell the sea air, feel the grit against my skin and the hollow pit in my stomach as Ma sobbed over Dad’s lifeless body.

“You don’t have to continue if it’s too hard to share,” she said gently.

I shook my head. I wanted to share. I had kept silent for too long and starting this story had been like opening a dam, all of it ready to pour out. I needed it to pour out. “Ma ended up getting sick. Her skin got really hot, and she looked p-pale.”

“Infection,” Maris suggested. “Perhaps from aspirating water.”

I wasn’t a scientist like she was, so I took her word for it. “She died a week l-later.”

Maris’s eyebrows drew closer. “Is that why you put flowers on those two dirt beds?”

I nodded. I still remembered the day she had followed me out there when I was visiting Ma and Dad’s graves. I went often to clean them of weeds and offer new flowers. I sometimes talked to them about things, mostly complaining about life.

Her face twisted like she wasn’t well.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She hugged herself tightly. “You were only a child when you had to bury your parents. I remember attending my parents’ funeral, and that was the hardest thing I had to do. I can’t imagine having had to bury them myself.”

“Ma helped me with Dad’s g-grave. We cre-ma-ted him on the beach and spread his ashes deep in the jun-gle since he was too heavy to carry. And then when she was too sick to w-walk, she wanted to stay with him. So, I knew she would want to be b-buried next to him.”

A tear dripped down Maris’s cheek, and I wiped it with my finger. I didn’t need them, but for some reason, watching her cry halted my own tears. Caring for her first was my priority.

“And no one ever came to find you? Not even your family?” she asked, quietly crying.

“We didn’t have much family in New Zealand. Dad wasn’t cl-close to his, and Ma’s were back in India. She n-never spoke to her family either. They didn’t like that she broke her en-ga-ge-ment and ran away to m-marry my father.” I had never met any of my family in India, but I still connected to my culture through the way Ma raised me. I may not have spoken or understood her mother language, but my heritage spoke strongly within me.

“My only family that I talk to is my Aunt Sherri. We were never really close, but I still think she’s looking for me right now. Where are we, by the way?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere in the South Pa-ci-fic. Dad n-navigated east of the Cook Islands, and I think we were cl-close when the storm hit us.”

“That was how I ended up here, except we were on our way to Fiji, and then the storm hit, and I fell overboard.” She let out a soft chuckle. “Guess the universe had some weird-ass plan for us with all this inclement weather.”

“Terrible plan,” I agreed.

“Yeah.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “You said you were ten when you landed. How long have you been here?”

“Twenty-four years.”

“Fuck. Decades?! That’s a long time. So, wait, that makes you thirty-four years old?”

I nodded.

“We’re close in age.” She motioned in the air between us. “I’m thirty-two.”

It was remarkable that we had so many things in common, like age, the loss of our parents, this island.

“How were you able to keep track of time so well? I can barely keep up with how long I’ve been here. It feels like years already.”

“The trees.”

Realization dawned on her. “The ones with the marks on the trunks? Like they’d been attacked by sloth claws or something.”

“I m-mark each day that passes.”

“Like a calendar?”

I nodded.

“Wow.” She took a minute to digest everything. It was a lot of information, even for me, and it was my own story. “So, how do we get out of here?”

“I don’t know. I never really tried to l-leave.”

Her face twisted like she had eaten something sour. “What?! Why not? It sucks living here.”

It wasn’t so bad. “I was young when I came here, too young to think of a good es-cape plan. I didn’t know how to build a boat. It took for-ever to learn how to start a fire on my own after Ma died. I was skinny and helpless and b-barely able to find food.” How would I ever have braved the ocean to find civilization? Eventually, as I grew older, this place became my life, the will to leave was replaced by daily chores to keep me alive.

“No boats or planes ever randomly passed by?”

“You s-spent time on the beach. You saw how d-dead it was.”

She bit her lip.

“I don’t think anyone knows this pl-place exists,” I said.

“Does that mean we’re just going to die out here? That’s so morbid.”

I shrugged again. “That was my plan.”

She shoved me gently, this time careful not to push me into the fire. “Ugh, you’re not helping my anxiety.”

“S-sorry,” I said.

“If you were only ten and all alone, how come you speak like an adult? And don’t tell me that Poaka is a magical pig who can speak.”

Poaka’s ears perked up with his name, but he continued scarfing down some fish guts I had saved for him after today’s catch.

I was flattered that she thought I spoke like an adult when I felt like I was failing to keep up with our conversation. The flow was much easier, yet I still found some words difficult.

“I learned from books.”

“You have books?!” she shouted, her eyes gaping wide. “And you didn’t share them with me? Asshole! I was bored out of my mind this whole time, and you didn’t have the decency to offer them to me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “God, you must really hate me.”

“I guess I have a lot to a-apologize for now.”

“This is far worse than you lying about speaking.”

She was dramatic, and I found it endearing. “Dad had p-packed some into a trunk, and it wa-washed up with us. I’ve added a few m-more over the years that I found on the b-beach.” People loved throwing stuff away into the ocean in plastic bags, which were insanely protective.

“That’s how you amassed your collection of…”

“Junk?” I completed the question for her.

“I was trying to be polite, but yeah, your shelves are like Ariel’s secret lair with all the knick knacks.”

“Who is A-riel?”

“Ugh, really?” Maris waved her joined hands through the air like a dolphin fin. “ The Little Mermaid ?”

I stared at her blankly, no record of anyone named Ariel coming to mind.

“Hot jailbait redhead in a shell bra and fins, with a weird obsession with legs?”

“I don’t understand any of that. I c-collect whatever washes up since I never know when I m-might need it.”

“I see there’s a method to your madness now.” She smirked, and it melted my insides.

“W-will you ever forgive me for lying to you?” I asked, hopeful we were making progress. I missed her. I wanted to fix things between us.

Her focus fell to her lap. “Probably. But right now, I still need to be mad at you.”

Human emotions were complex and difficult to understand after years of not having to deal with them from another person, but I was willing to try.

“I understand,” I said.