The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Author:Amber Dermont
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Corsair
Published: 2013-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

TEN

I felt the waves of this new truth, this new loss crash over me, and I did the most unremarkable thing. With my fingertips, I dug into and peeled the clementine, the one Race hadn’t taken. With great focus, I flayed the peel off in a single orange curl. I did all of this listening for an ambulance’s siren, but when the ambulance arrived it was silent. The ambulance driver drove onto the beach and parked on the marsh blocking my view. After I removed the rind, I tried to fit the curly shell back around the orange, attempting to restore the skin. I would have no appetite. Not for a long while.

I figured that Hardy had put me in the backseat to prevent me from running out, from seeing Aidan being unburied and placed on a gurney. But locked in that car, sequestered behind a metal grate, I felt a surge of guilt. I wanted to confess my own crimes. How I’d hurt Cal, how I’d let us both down. I thought my remorse might save Aidan. I wasn’t ready to accept that she might be gone. I needed her to be alive.

It wasn’t long before Officer Hardy returned to the car and insisted on driving me back to school. “You knew her?” he asked. “Was she a student?”

I nodded. “Is she going to be okay?” I understood that she wasn’t, but I needed to hear the hope in my own voice.

Hardy stole a look in his rearview mirror. “There wasn’t much we could do, son.”

What I wanted was to go to the hospital, to sit with Aidan. I had no desire to flinch or back away from this moment. I wanted complete access to whatever pain or mystery was attached to that scene on the beach. Hardy wasn’t hearing any of this. He drove me to my dorm and asked me to spell Aidan’s name. That was all he wanted to know. I wrote it down for him on a scrap of paper. “She doesn’t have a father,” I said. “Her mother does stuff with films and oranges.”

“Films and oranges?” Hardy repeated.

“In California.” I could hear myself not making sense. My shoulders began to shake. My chest expanded and I felt as though I were drowning.

Office Hardy looked away. I heard him open the glove compartment. He pulled out a crushed roll of toilet paper and unspooled a makeshift handkerchief. He handed the tissue back to me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “She was my only friend. This can’t be happening.”

Some random freshmen from the JV soccer team saw me get out of the back of the police car. Hardy waved the boys along and said, “Nice cleats.” I felt too old for this boarding school world, like I was living in my own past. Hardy asked if I was going to be okay. “Do you need to sit with someone?” I told him I’d be fine, though I wondered how I would even make it up to my room without smashing my fist into a wall or some innocent face.

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