Goodnight Stranger by Miciah Bay Gault

Author:Miciah Bay Gault
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2019-05-14T19:56:43+00:00

* * *

From our window, we could see most of Water Street, which was like Clara Day Street. Tuck pointed out the buildings, told me what they were and who worked there. There were several large scientific labs on Water Street, because Carson Cove had two big science institutes.

“Let’s play a game,” he said, “called local, tourist, or scientist.”

“I’m really, really good at this game,” I told him.

“I’m really good at this game.”

While we ate fish and chips out of paper cartons, we eavesdropped on conversations of groups coming in to buy tickets or use the bathroom. When we heard bits of conversations about bones and neurons and cartilage, Tuck and I listened intently, as if the word Dinoflagellata held some sort of important clue.

Tuck smoothed the take-out bag and produced a pen from his pocket, which he used to draw a map of Carson Cove, the important parts of town we couldn’t see from our window. A pathway along an icy pond. A bell tower rising up out of a garden where, Tuck told me, local kids went to get it on. He ran out again, for coffee, and came back holding two blue ceramic mugs, the liquid still steaming. “I’ll bring the cups back when we’re done,” he said. “The last thing you need right now is a paper cup.” We ate pastry, left over from the morning, so half price, and we sipped coffee and suddenly it was after eight and time for me to get in line for the ferry.

I felt strange leaving Tuck; we’d spent so many hours together. “Seven hours,” I said out loud, and then blushed.

“I know,” he said. “It’s been an unusual day at the old Carson Cove Information Booth.”

I thought of the information booths, his and mine, separated by a strip of cold, deep water.

“You know what would be fun?” he said. “To do this again, only leave the building.”

I laughed.

“Or you know what?” he said. “I could come over to Wolf Island.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said.

“To meet this dude,” he said.

“You’ll probably love him. Everyone does.”

Tuck walked with me to my car, staying close, like a bodyguard. When we reached the car, a seagull swooped near us, and Tuck lifted his arm, as if to shield me, but the bird hovered, staring at us with its black-bead eyes.

“This guy’s the reincarnation of my long-lost brother,” Tuck said.

“Learn his name.”

“His name is bird.”

“I’m beginning to think,” I said, “that the only way to escape your family is to move far away.”

“To another island?” Tuck said.

“Just far away, and never have kids and isolate yourself from everyone. That’s the only way to really escape your family.”

“Or just stop believing in this crap,” he said. “Just leave all this crap behind and live your life.”

I sat again on the upper deck of the ferry in the cold night wind. I couldn’t stand being indoors: the stuffy enclosed space, the windows with their warped views. I sat in the frozen air, under the dark sky and let myself be pulled back home.

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