The Sea Knows My Name by Laura Brooke Robson

Author:Laura Brooke Robson [Robson, Laura Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

NOW

Seventeen years old

Providence

It takes me two hours to find my way out of the forest, but I do it. I end up far north of Providence, so I have to trek back to the cliffs to the place where I once hammered on the Prices’ door.

The last time I was here, it was night, and my vision was fuzzy with anger. In the light, I see it clearly: The villa is more dilapidated than I first realized. In the fountain, the statue of Saleus is missing his fingers and stained with soot. In a garden around the side of the house, a few undersized pumpkins grow from vines.

A blur of white shoots past me. I whirl, primed for danger. But it’s a dog. He comes up to my knees, but his cloud of fur makes him look bigger than he is. Mud stains his paws.

I catch hold of his collar, where a metal tag reads: Clipper.

“Hey, boy,” I say. “Remember me?”

Clipper slept at the foot of Wes’s bed every night, no matter how many ways Commodore Price tried to lock him out. He showed up at Keswick-Fleming at least once a week, his big nose bumping the window of our classroom and prompting the teacher to either sigh or tell Wes to bring him in, depending on the teacher. Wes and I made up a secret code and named it after the dog—Clippish, we called it—where we added an ip before every vowel sound and talked fast enough to infuriate Commodore Price. My father helped us fashion Clipper a soft leather collar with a name tag on it. With the leftover scraps of leather, Wes and I tied bracelets around each other’s wrists, and I felt so buoyed by this marker of friendship, this us I was a part of, that I thought I might float away. It sounds silly now, sentimental and sappy, the way anything good does when you’re older and jaded, but when Wes quadruple-knotted my bracelet so it wouldn’t ever accidentally fall off, he told me, “Bipest fripiends.”

Clipper licks the side of my face. I’m pretty sure Clipper looks at everyone with this sort of adoration, but still. Feels good.

“Thea?” Wes says.

I straighten.

He’s leaning against the door frame, head tilted.

“I was hoping,” I say, the words coming slowly, “that we could make a trade.”

“A trade.”

“I’ve gotten good at harvesting honey. I can sell you some in exchange for clean clothes. Maybe a blanket?”

He fights a smile. “You can just come in, you know.”

“No,” I say. “I want to trade.”

“Fine. Bring me a jar of honey, and you can have clean clothes and water and a blanket and some bread. And maybe also a bath.”

“That’s too much.”

“It’s not,” he says. “You smell awful.”

“Do you have a jar?” I ask. “And more matches? I had flint, but Felix stole it.” I’m not sure this is precisely true, but it makes me feel better about asking for more.

I wait as he thumps around in the kitchen for a few minutes.

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