“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I live with my mom, remember?”
I smile. “Just because you said it about yourself doesn’t mean that I don’t get to say it about you at least once today.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” he says with a quiet laugh.
We buckle in and are given headphones, and no sooner has the propeller started spinning than we are rolling along the tarmac and my face is glued to the window.
It’s one of my favorite things about flying into Boston—the glimpses of islands below as we near Massachusetts. I spend that time quietly guessing at what I see: is it Block Island? The Hamptons? Is it Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard?
This is entirely different and a million times better. The Keys become distant squiggles of pale, white sand, looking more like desert islands than places where you can get a thirty-two-ouncedaiquiri in a plastic crossbody bag. The water rests below us in pools of varying jewel tones, one abutting the next: aquamarine next to clear emerald green next to the deepest sapphire.
Elijah lifts one side of the headphones off his ear and I do the same. “How’s my surprise so far?” he calls over the wind and the roar of the propeller. His eyes twinkle.
He did this for me, to make me happy, to show me something I’d probably never see otherwise when he very easily could have left me at the pool and gone off to enjoy his day. He’s literally impossible to stay mad at, which I already knew, but this moment seals it—whatever he did to me that day on the beach, it shouldn’t define him.
He’s a good man who’s only hurt me once. He deserves a pass.
“Better than I expected, that’s for sure.”
He laughs. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
I grin. “Allow me to confirm that it wasn’t.”
Through the headphones, the pilot points things out to us—the Marquesa Islands, pops of heavy forest right in the middle of the sea; a massive shark, clear as day in the crystal waters below. It should give me pause, provide some consolation about the fact that I can’t go snorkeling with Elijah, but it sort of does the opposite. With every change in color below us, with every sea turtle or shark or dolphin I spy...I just want it more. I crave it the way the Titanic survivors craved land, the way a man in the desert craves an oasis.
As if I’ll die if I can’t sink deep in that clear water at least once.
We’ve been in the air for about an hour when, ahead of us, a road made of pure white sand leading to a massive brick fort seems to appear out of the middle of the ocean.
“Up ahead is Garden Key, where we’re setting down,” says Jed, our pilot. “That’s Fort Jefferson—the largest all-masonryfort in the United States. Thirty years and sixteen million bricks, but they never finished it.”
He begins to descend, lower and lower, until the plane is gliding over the surface of the water and coming to a stop where it’s shallow. Elijah hops out and reaches up for my hand. I kick off my flip-flops and land in ankle-deep water, so clear we can see our toes. We hand Jed our headphones and get snorkel gear and a cooler in exchange.
Elijah and I trudge through the water and climb up onto the moat that surrounds the fort.
I look out over the wide expanse of blue sea with my jaw clenched tight. This moment sort of sums up my life over the past few years: this feeling of wanting something that is the least responsible choice. Wanting the precise thing I know is bad for me.
Craving freedom when it’sresponsibilitythat gets you what you want in life.
“They used this place as a prison during the Civil War,” Elijah says. “Dr. Samuel Mudd, one of the guys who conspired with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln, was held here.”
“I wish you’d brought your grandmother so I could ask if she knew him.”
He laughs wearily. “That would be funnier if I didn’t think you’d really do it.”
We wander farther down along the moat while he points stuff out.
“You’ve been here before, I guess?” I ask.
He nods. “My dad grew up in Key West. He brought me and Campbell here a couple times. We camped out once, which I would not recommend.”
His smile is forced and bittersweet. Kelsey has almost no memories of their father and brother, and there are times, like now, when I think she might have gotten the easier end of thedeal. Elijah remembers everything, and each of those memories sort of hurts.
He elbows me. “Stop making your sad face. I got twelve years with a decent father. You got none.”
I smile. “I got the freedom that comes from no parenting whatsoever.” I step up to the very edge of the moat wall before I glance over my shoulder. “So I guess you’re snorkeling?”
There’s frustration and sympathy in his gaze at the same time. I don’t know why he cares so much about me not swimming anymore. There are certainly bigger deprivations.
