Then she looked down at the envelope and back at me. And at that instant, I did something I’d have never thought I could do. Withoutthinking, without weighing the consequences, I made a decision. I closed my eyes and jumped. I felt the emptiness beneath my feet, the fear, but I didn’t try to reach out for something to hold onto.
I just held my breath and kept falling.
And I liked it.
That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.
—Rabindranath Tagore,Stray Birds
6
We Would Be Shadows of Ourselves
The plane landed in Charlottetown at three in the afternoon. According to Hayley’s letter, the easiest way to travel would be to get a car there and drive to the coast, where I could catch the ferry that would take me to Petit Prince.
As I left the parking lot headed for Souris, I felt my heart pick up a bit. Until then, I had been so impossibly composed. You could almost say I was numb.
I rolled down the window on my rented Honda Civic to get some fresh air. It was cool and smelled good and made me briefly calm. But soon I was nervous again.
To tell the truth, I was barely aware of what had happened just a few hours before and what repercussions my decision would have. I had packed my suitcase in a matter of minutes and vanished into a taxi, much to Dustin’s perplexity. I didn’t think twice, and I definitely didn’t mull it over. At that moment, I was incapable of dealing with more complications, so I ran away.
After an hour’s drive from Charlottetown, I was in Souris, a charming little town of twelve hundred people. The ferry that would take me to Petit Prince didn’t leave until six thirty, so I decided to find somewhere near the port where I could eat. Ihadn’t had a bite since breakfast, and my stomach was growling constantly.
I asked a fisherman cleaning out his traps where to go, and he recommended a nearby restaurant called 21 Breakwater. It was right by the road, a two-story house with a wraparound porch. I ordered a cheesecake and a tea with milk and had them outside.
Someone had left a travel magazine in one of the chairs, and on the cover was the teaser for an article on Prince Edward Island and the Magdalen Islands.
I paged through it as I devoured my cake. I liked how small this island was. You could go from the east side to the west in three hours by car, and you could cross it from north to south in less than an hour. It was practically impossible to get lost. If I could have gotten a hotel, I’d have stayed there instead of taking a ferry for two hours to a tiny island far out in the sea.
I was starting to worry about things. Was there a supermarket on Petit Prince? What about restaurants? A pharmacy? I hadn’t left Montreal with anything but clothes and some toiletries, and I had no idea about the place where I was going.
As I walked around the port, I tried to find some information. I punched the name of the island into my phone. Just a dozen links appeared, with no details that would be useful to me. The internet told me what I already knew: there was nothing there.
Brilliant.
A few minutes later, on the deck of the ferry, my willingness to spend a few days on the far edge of the world flagged, and the reality of what I was about to do overcame me. For six years, I’d been so indecisive that I’d been using the same brand of shampoo, even though I didn’t like it, just to avoid having to choose another one. The devil you know is better than the one you don’t know. After all, in the blink of an eye, everything can go downhill, so why bother helping the process along?
If my thoughts were a reflection of myself, I was pathetic.
The ferry docked in the port sometime after eight thirty. I was the only person who got off.
That wasn’t exactly an auspicious beginning.
The orange ball of the sun was descending rapidly, and shadows were falling over the landscape. I started the engine and reread Hayley’s instructions. They included a not-very-detailed map that I turned round and round twenty times before finally deciding which part of the island was north. I needed to go south, then turn right at the third crossroads and pass through what looked like a stretch of woods. Once I thought I had that down, I took off, departing the town, or what I thought was the town: just a few streets with buildings scattered around in no particular order.
The moon rose, and a pale light bathed everything. Not enough to see clearly, but enough to guess at the height of the trees, the outline of the hills, and the houses here and there.
I stopped a few times to check the map, comparing the lines on it with the terrain illuminated by my headlights. Nothing I saw matched, and I was starting to get nervous. I was tired, I was hungry again, and to make things worse, clouds had covered the moon and I could barely see.
I kept going in the hopes of seeing a sign somewhere. But after three miles of driving, none had appeared. After four, it was the same story. Then six. Then eight. I didn’t even think the island was that big.
I was about to give up when at last I saw some lights in front of me. Finally! Electric lights! Civilization!
“No way!” I shouted.
I recognized the post office and the violet house next to it. I was back where I had started.
I got out, angry with myself, and kicked the back wheel, like it was the car’s fault.
