Cover

Dedication

For my sisters.

Chapter One

I open my eyes to the churning of the waves outside. They don’t rest, so I don’t sleep well either. I really should be used to it by now. At least it’s sunny. I try to use the thought to power my move out of bed and into my clothes and off to Mrs. Tyburn’s house for work. To be honest, I preferred it last week when it rained every day. Rain in big wet slaps, the kind of rain you only get on islands, out to sea. On dark mornings there’s a reason why it’s hard to get up, an actual weight in the air to fight, something real to run from, to hide your face from. Today it’s clear and the light is coming through my window like the blond arm of a Christmas card angel. But fuck you, I don’t want to go.

The clothes I washed yesterday should be dry by now, out on the clothesline strung between two trees in the backyard. I don’t have a lot to choose from clothes-wise now that it’s summer, so I do laundry kind of a lot. It’s too hot for most of the clothes I packed to come here, when I thought this would only be for a week or two. That’s what my parents said when they left me on my grandmother’s old folks’ island—just a week or two, a month at the most, and we’ll come get you. My mother kissed me with those purple-brown lips of hers and said, “We’ll be right back, hold tight.”

Those dickheads are always late.

And the old folks, the Swan Island Swans, are past caring whether I have anywhere to go. Most of them didn’t care in the first place, were reluctant to agree to my coming here at all. By now they just want me gone.

As I walk through the house, it’s easy to ignore the mess I’ve left. There’s a path from the stairs and into the kitchen and to the back door where that too-bright morning becomes big and real and takes over my field of vision. When I close my eyes, I can make the ocean sound like a city. Swells of traffic and millions of voices that flow together into a murmur. I walk toward it as if to an overpass at the edge of a highway. Normal people don’t live like this.