The following novella was begun by Mollie Wohlforth ’15 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013 and continued thereafter. She has another novel planned for NaNoWriMo 2014, so stay tuned!
For the record, this isn’t a story where things get found. Some things just fall through the cracks never to surface again. And I’m not going to make something up just so this story might have a better ending, cause that’s not really how real life works. It’s messy, and you lose things.
CHAPTER 1
We all live in Michiasport, Maine, right on the coast. There’s one main street that snakes its way up the hill from the harbor where everybody lives, and another that goes to the next hill, where the town is. Everything looks like it stepped right out of a Robert McCloskey book – the tiny school, the people who have known each other for generations, and the entire town that revolves around our main industry. Lobstering.
Every lobstering family has at least one person up by three am who slips into their waders and boots and goes out to check on their pots, all while the rest of the town lays snug in their beds until the sun starts to rise. In families with teenagers, they are the ones who sacrifice their morning to scour the ocean floor for crustaceans before they go to school, in hopes of furthering their attempts to move out of this place. Our class has had the same 152 people since fetal development, so there’s really no way, or place to hide. Our high school is in an old, converted fish warehouse, ‘cause ten years ago some kids thought it would be fun to burn down the old school building, and the only standing structure large enough for the five hundred high school aged kids to move into was the old warehouse. The entire thing smells like old lobster shells and new paint, but we do have a view of the harbor through the window-covered eastern wall, which would be amazing, if I hadn’t seen it every day of my damn life. Luckily, I had Sylvia for sixteen glorious years of my life. She was my best friend, the kind who wiggles their way underneath your skin and into the very make up of your heart, and lives there forever.
Sylvia lived two blocks away from me, and every morning at 3:35, she rang my doorbell and we walked five minutes down to the harbor together, our boots and waders slapping the pavement. We customized our waders as a way to dispel the darkness of 3:30 am that inevitably sullied one’s positivity. Sylvia’s were covered with jingling pins that always got stuck in her mouse brown hair; mine covered with swirls of colorful paint. We clamored through the misty darkness over the slippery docks that creaked and slapped the water with every footstep, our laughs and chatter punctuating the early morning calm. We checked all the lines, the oil, and the hauling equipment, fixed what needed fixing, and then started up our families’ boats, the Zephyr and the Magnolia. After however many tries the engines needed that day to turnover, we would help each other push off from the dock and I would putter out in Magnolia to our fishing ground, Sylvia in the Zephyr, right on my tail.
Both of our fathers, friends since high school, fished in northwest finger of Larrabee Cove, which really meant that Sylvia and I fished in the northwest finger of Larrabee Cove. It was our place; nobody was ever there except us, and nobody was ever there to find us. I don’t think anybody even knew that the cove existed, as its opening was masked by a tiny spit of land that acted almost as a breakwater. When we were there, it was like we were lost to the real world, in a complete disconnect. When we got to the cove, we cut the engines, listening to their vibrations bounce across the rocky beaches to be absorbed by the wall of green pine that blanketed the entire Maine coast. Sylvia drifted over to her father’s orange and yellow buoys and I drifted over to our purple and magenta ones and started to haul.
We pulled up the pots till our shoulders ached, and sometimes found them filled with glistening blue and orange bodies of clamoring lobsters, sometimes filled with disappointment and maybe a few taunting fragments of seaweed. As soon as the first pot of the day was up, gulls started to flutter around our boats, cackling, pooping, and swooping, trying to snatch up a lobster. Once a gull actually got one off of my deck, but Sylvia thought fast, and, sticking her fish net up in the air, snagged the utterly baffled bird. I’ve never laughed harder than at the sight of miniscule Sylvia trying to keep a handle on the net, which contained a gull flying up at full force in a panicked haze, practically taking Sylvia with it.
During the summer, our days went on forever, and we lived in Larrabee Cove. We declared it our kingdom, and everyday, after the afternoon check was over, we spent hours upon hours doing absolutely nothing. Then, we would return to the real world, where we then spent the rest of our days living at each other’s houses, sewing the dresses we wore everyday, talking till our voices went numb, singing and painting together, running around in the woods that stretched out far behind the main road, having adventures in between the trees, wandering. Summers were made for adventures, Sylvia always said, so adventure onwards we did, breaking probably every rule and causing both of our mothers at least a dozen gray hairs every week. Every day was finished with a milkshake at the diner around the corner, where we recapped, and decided whose house we were sleeping at that night. Then we would do it again. Lobster, adventure, repeat.
However, September always loomed on the horizon, and with it brought the brutally early mornings we were all used to, but they were now followed by a day’s worth of classes. Around 7:15, the sun would start to rise over the pine trees of Larrabee Cove, staining the sky robin’s egg blue, which was our cue to start back. By that point, the rest of the older, childless lobster men would be out, gathering their own pots, and as Sylvia and I passed, giggling and chatting over the thrum of the engines, they laughed to themselves in that salty old manner sea-hardened men often have. “Sylvia and Phoebe give the gulls a run for their money,” they would say.
When we returned to the harbor and unloaded all of the rubber-banded lobsters (Sylvia was the fastest bander in the state of Maine, she liked to say), we changed quickly and then walked to our standing 8:00am breakfast reservation at Pamela’s diner, where we grabbed the bagels and coffees that always stood waiting on the counter. With a smile and a “Good morning honeys” from Pamela herself, we trudged to the school building, and joined all of our other classmates in the rush for the locker rooms to shower off the fish scent and change into non-waterproof clothing. Our school was accustomed to this; they had special hooks in the showers to hang wet waders that by first period were as decorated with the various shades of brown and green rubber. However, our waders stuck out – not only were they decorated, I was also about a good six inches taller than every other girl in our school. Coupled with my fire engine red hair, Sylvia’s five foot one inch frame, and our odd style of home-made vintage and fishing boots, we were quite the pair walking down the hallway to first period.
Classes began at 8:35, and then Sylvia and I were parted for the next six hours, as we didn’t have a single class together. Sylvia was a math person, whereas I was staunchly allergic to numbers, which meant that I didn’t have anybody to talk too for the majority of my day. Sylvia and I had been friends for so long, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to talk to new people as other people grew their own cliques, so as everybody developed networks of friends and acquaintances as high school progressed, I had slowly become the quiet girl who sat at the back of the class, thinking of things to tell Sylvia later, when we would go out for the afternoon lobster runs. Those afternoon runs were our gossip session for all the dirt we gathered throughout the day. After the afternoon’s fishing was over, Sylvia walked me to my door and said, “Tomorrow, Red?”
I replied, “What else would I do?” Sylvia chuckled each time, without fail, and walked away.
Then, almost out of the blue, the police found Hannah Staedler’s body in a ditch on the side of the road. A junior, just like us, she had been raped and beaten to death. “This type of thing just doesn’t happen here,” everybody said, but as the story leaked out into the town, it became clear that yes, in this case, that type of thing did happen here. The entire town balked and practically shut down, crippled by grief, but it took a backburner in my mind as something started to change in Sylvia.
I started to know something was wrong when she stopped chuckling, and I really knew something was wrong when she stopped calling me Red for my genetically confusing mass of naturally sanguine hair. She started to come late to get me every morning, wearing her black waders, if she came at all. Some days she missed school, and our afternoon pot checks were silent as I worked, often alone. She would never laugh with me when she did show up, and she always seemed drained and tired. She ignored my calls. Then, she stopped going to school.
I had at first passed it off as her being shaken up by Hannah’s death, but I couldn’t ignore that a week went by without me seeing her. Finally, I walked up the hill and rang the doorbell of her wooden, gray-shingled house that was consumed by the wildflower garden we planted in middle school. We considered ourselves old souls, with normal activities consisting of gardening, quilting together, vintage shopping, and making our own clothes, Sylvia painting and me reading, all usually to the soundtrack of me singing. Ever since Sylvia discovered that I had a “talent” (her word, not mine), she forced me to sing wherever we were. She always joked that Larrabee Cove gulls knew as many songs as the top forty radio, which was probably true, given the amount of time I had sung out there. There was just something about that place, maybe it was the wall of rock on either side, or maybe it was the trees pressed right up to the edge of the pebbly beach, but music echoed around the cove, surrounding you in first and second rounds of echoes. It was like singing to an opera house of trees with an audience of only Sylvia.
Opening the door only a crack, her mother greeted me, subdued, face creased with worry.
“Sylvia isn’t feeling well, honey,” Ms. Layman murmured, clearly trying to keep her voice lowered.
“Can I just come in to see her for a minute?” I pleaded. Mrs. Layman’s face softened as she saw my genuine concern.
“She hasn’t gotten out of bed today. Do you have any idea what could be wrong with her?” Now it was her turn to ask something of me. I could tell that she was just as baffled by her daughter as I was.
“Nothing. Nobody’s saying anything about her at school, and she didn’t tell me anything.” I felt tears start to well up in my eyes. Sylvia tells me everything.
“Phoebe honey, I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you see her like this. She’s lost a lot of weight; she’s really not doing well. Maybe try back later in the week or so, or I’ll call you if she asks for you, but right now really isn’t a good time. Sorry sweetheart.”
Kindhearted Mrs. Layman shut the door in my face, and I started to cry. I stepped back through the flower-lined pathway and looked up at Sylvia’s purple curtains. They fluttered, as if she had just let them go, and I could have sworn that I saw her peering through the crack in between the pieces of fabric.
I walked home, utterly confused and hurt. Why didn’t my best friend want to see me? What the hell was even going on with her? Was it something I did? Why wouldn’t she let me see her? What could be so bad that her own mother wouldn’t let me in the house?
As expected, I collected the pots by myself the next day, as I had for the past week, but when I got into school, there was Sylvia, haggard in a gray sweatshirt. Her hair was limp and lusterless, her pink cheeks were a disturbing gray and her usually green eyes were dull and exhausted. It was as though her entire body was being consumed by this oppressive sadness. I reached out to hug her, but she shied away, and crossed her arms across her chest.
“Please don’t touch me”, she wavered. I stepped back, and I felt as though her words had just sent an electric shock through my body. She held up her hands, defeated. “It’s not you. I just…can’t right now.”
Sylvia turned around, and walked down the hallway, a wake of gray sadness trailing behind her, washing over everything she passed. “Sylvia…” I called after her retreating back, but she did not turn, and instead her tiny frame disappeared into the sea of kids.
I known Sylvia as a person to make me laugh till I cried, but she had never terrified me, not like this at least. I walked into first period, still encircled in her despair, and felt it start to eat away at me. No, I said to myself. I will not fall victim to this. Sylvia needs me.
Seventh period rolled around, and, after what felt like an eternity, the final bell rang. The normal chattering hoard of tight-jeaned, phone-sporting girls packed the hallway, but today was no time for me to be polite, I told myself, as I barreled through, eyes searching for Sylvia. Finally I saw her through the science lab window- she was walking up the hill back to her house, hunched over, back gently shaking. It looked as though she was crying, so I sprung out of my desk, absently threw an excuse at my baffled teacher, sprinted through the final barrage of people clogging the hallways and plowed through the front doors. As Sylvia got farther away, I started to run, my long legs carried me quickly up the hill and soon I had caught up to her.
Slightly out of breath, I grabbed her arm, and forced her to stop. She wouldn’t look at me though.
“Talk to me, Sylvia. What could be so bad that you wouldn’t tell me? I love you more than anything, you know that. Come on. You’re scaring me here.” Sylvia turned around and looked at me, her eyes red and tears streaking down her face, and she gasped for air in between her sobs.
“Red, I can’t talk about it. It’s just too awful. You would hate me.” Her body was wracked with the force of her crying. Without saying anything at first, I folded her bony frame into my own. She shuddered at the contact and her arms stayed locked to her sides, but did not shy away from me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmured into her hair. “It’s not physically possible for me to hate you. You just got to tell me the truth, and then I’ll help you. That’s how this is going to work. But I’m not going to let you walk through the door of that house without knowing what’s wrong with my best friend. You can trust me.”
“You can’t make that promise, Phoebe. This is really horrible. This isn’t something that I can get back from, something I can’t forget. You need to trust me on that.” With that, Sylvia sprinted up the rest of the hill, leaving me speechless in her wake. I was still standing, tears burning my eyes, when I heard her door slam.
The next two weeks passed very much like the one before- rare sightings of Sylvia as I rang her door bell every day, but otherwise, no contact. Hundreds of my calls went unanswered, and I walked to the harbor alone, braving the icy mist in solitude. On my way back, the salty lobster men, instead of their normal greeting, called, “Phoebe- bird! Where’s your partner in crime?” When they got no answer, I could hear them gossiping about “trouble in paradise” as I motored past. I docked the Magnolia next to the still dark Zephyr that was waiting for Sylvia’s dad and his hired guy to come and take her out. School turned into a blur as each quiet and lonely day melted into the next. I hardly spoke now that Sylvia was gone, and only said anything when called on. Sylvia’s mystery sadness was eating away at me as it devoured her, and I couldn’t stop worrying about her. I didn’t know if she was going to get better, and that was scaring the shit out of me, to put it frankly. I sat at lunch by myself each, watching the laughing blonde girls like Boston-princess Violet Marconi, who had never worried a day in their lives, and I felt fear mingle with my anxiety into a bitter smoothie of bile in the pit of my stomach.
It was the nineteenth day since I had talked to Sylvia, a month and a half since this had all started. It was twenty minutes past midnight; I was in my room, staring into space, books spread over my bed, when my phone rang. Sylvia.
I’ve never moved faster than I did when I answered that call. “SYLVIA”, I announced into the phone, cutting of the first ring. I heard sobs and a whooshing static on the other end. “What’s wrong? Will you talk to me?”
“I just feel so lost. I don’t know what I’m doing, Phoebe.”
I began to plead. “You have to let me help you, Sylvia. I can help you, I promise.” I held back tears.
“You can’t promise that. Nobody can. I just don’t even know who I am anymore. It’s like nothing makes sense anymore. There’s no point to anything. I’m so lost, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” She had stopped crying, but her voice was completely flat, defeated.
“What do you mean, you’re lost?” I said, slightly too frantically.
“I just don’t know what I’m doing here anymore”, she repeated. In the background, I heard the screech of gulls.
“Are you by the harbor? Just wait, I’ll be there in two seconds.” Recognizing how desperate I both sounded and felt, I jumped off my bed and hurriedly started throwing on clothes.
“Phoebe, don’t. This is something you can’t fix. I’m looking at the world right now, and I don’t see a place for me here.”
“SYLVIA. JUST WAIT FOR ME”, I screamed into the phone, tears running down my face as my shaking hands pulled on boots over my pajama bottoms. “Stay with me here….” My trembling fingers lost their grip on the phone as I struggled with my shoes. “SHIT” I bellowed as the phone bounced under my dresser. I flung myself down onto my stomach and searched blindly for the phone, following the indistinguishable garble that was Sylvia’s voice. I finally grabbed it and pressed it to my face, only to hear the tail end of a sentence.
“… and I love you, but you can’t do anything.”
“WAIT, DON’T SAY THAT. I’M ON MY WAY.” I heard a click on the other line and the start of a dial tone, and threw my phone onto my bed in frustration as I tore out of my room. “SHITSHITSHITSHIT,” was my war cry, my thoughts racing with the possibility of what I might have missed when my phone had fallen. My mother met me on the landing, concerned.
“What’s going on?” she demanded
“I’m going down to the harbor. I think Sylvia’s going to hurt herself”, I said, tearfully, breathlessly, as there was no time for breathing. I had to get to Sylvia. I charged down the stairs, not even looking back at my mother’s surely alarmed face. I ran out into the night flung myself down the hill, into the darkness, completely oblivious of what, or who could have been out there. Pure terror was running in my veins, forcing my feet to move even faster than they ever had before. I made it to the docks in about two minutes, a record. The Zephyr was gone. I paced back and forth, scream-crying and holding my head with both hands, pure terror and panic filling up my body. There was no doubt in my mind. Sylvia was going to kill herself.
The sound of Mr. Layman, Sylvia’s father, running towards me triggered me to jump into the Magnolia. For the first time in her life, she turned over as soon as the key hit the ignition. I threw it into reverse and backed my way out of the slip.
“I’M GOING TO FIND HER” I yelled back at the shore.
There was no laughter or gossip and I gunned the engine of the Magnolia, ignoring her thirty year-old protests as she went faster than I even knew she could. I pulled the high beam out of a locker and started scouring the water, raking the beam back and forth across the wakeless surface for hours until the rising sun started to do it for me. Around six am, the engine whines hit a high C and started coughing. “NO. DON’T YOU LEAVE ME TOO.” I slapped the dashboard, which must have only served to make Magnolia angry, because as soon as my hand hit the salt-encrusted surface, the engine died. I slid down against the inside of boat, resting my heaving back against a stack of seaweed-covered pots. I buried my head in my hands and screamed, my hands quaveringly pulling at my hair. I couldn’t tell if my face was wet from the spray from the bow wave or from my own tears. This can’t be happening.
I heard the hum of an engine pull up along side to mine, and Crusty Steve, a lobster man who had a beard like Santa Claus and always had caramels in his pockets to give to Sylvia and I, swung himself over the hull and crouched next to me. “Phoebe-bird, lets get you home. Ray is hitching up a tow.” He looked over and saw my tear stained face, gestured something to Ray and then sat heavily next to me and swung his arm around my shoulder. “Oh Phoebe-bird. Don’t cry. You’re going to be okay.” A fresh wave of crying hit me, and I leaned over and pressed my face into his chest, inhaling the smell of fish, salt, and laundry detergent.
By the time we got back to the harbor, Crusty Steve’s beard was soaked with tears, and my face was the colored of boiled lobster. He carried me out of the boat as lightly as if I was a porcelain doll, my face pressed against his scratchy Irish wool sweater. I was cried out, my eyes swollen shut, and I was only half aware of myself being wrapped in one of those tinfoil blankets given to avalanche victims, the babble of a police scanner, the lilt of my father’s step as he carried me up the hill to our house, my parents anxious half-whispers about my condition, the early morning mist that was settling in my heart.
I slept for thirteen hours before my eyes decided they could handle the light of day. Even still, the sun sliced my corneas and I groaned as I realized that the real world was waiting for me. Resigned to my fate and half out of pure habit, I peeled myself from out from under the covers to go pee. My mother was waiting for me at my bedside when I returned.
“Sylvia didn’t come home last night. The boat is still missing.” My mother hesitated, and that was when I noticed my phone in her hands. “You have a message”, she murmured.
I snatched the phone from her and pounded in my voicemail password.
8181# I’m sorry you’ve entered the wrong passcode…
8121# I’m sorry you’ve-
8131# You have one new voicemail from Sylvia-Layman.
Sylvia’s calling card echoed in my ear.
“I know you’re hurting because I won’t tell you what’s wrong. And I’m so sorry for that, Red. You have no idea. But I’m completely, irrevocably broken now, and there’s nothing that can fix me. I can’t go back to who I was. I’m lost in this hell of darkness that is completely of my own making, and there’s no way out. It’s like everything is dark, and nothing has any kind of meaning anymore, not books, not music, not laughing with you, not even lobstering. All of it is just gray. Oh god, I just have to tell you, I can’t go anymore with this lie. Oh god. Please don’t hate me. Please, Phoebe.” Her voice shook on the message, and I felt as though I was going to drop the phone again. “I saw them kill Hannah. She screamed to me, but I didn’t help.”
“Please forgive me.”
CHAPTER 2
Hannah Staedler was walking home from her piano lesson when two men jumped out of the woods, raped her, and killed her. Still, nobody had any idea who had killed her- all evidence yielded no trail towards anybody they could pinpoint, which they said is because the police found her two days after it had happened, and only after an anonymous tip led them to her body. Apparently, when Hannah’s mother was called in to identify the body, she tried to wake her up, and had to be removed, because she wouldn’t stop. I heard some of the stupider kids at school laughing about that, but for the most part, everybody was very quiet. Nobody wanted to be the person who first acted as though they had gotten over the murder. Grief was popularity, so Hannah Staedler had more friends after death than she ever did alive. She was a junior like us, who just so happened to have the same piano teacher as Sylvia.
That was about a month and a half before everything, exactly at the time that Sylvia got sad. In retrospect I should have put the pieces together, and guessed that she knew something, but sometimes life gets in the way of thinking.
Sylvia was reported missing on Sunday, April tenth, twenty-four hours after her disappearance. I heard somebody say in the grocery store, “Thank god she’s a minor, other wise they’d have to wait another day.” Yes. Thank God for that. Machiasport has the most wonderful people.
As the Zephyr wasn’t found yet either, April 11th was an eerie day, as I walked down to the Magnolia and an empty slip. My parents told me that I didn’t have to go, but I left so early in the morning that they couldn’t stop me. I put on a pair of olive green waders and went out to pull pots. It was no morning for the colorful ones.
The Laymen’s pots were untouched, but I said nothing, for there was nothing to say, and nobody to say it too. I did my work, passed by the salty lobstermen who gave only worried looks and murmurs of condolence, as if Sylvia was already dead. Crusty Steve called, “Doing okay Phoebe-bird?” as I passed by, but I gave no answer, and felt his stare on my back as I motored back to the harbor, all the while scouring the horizon for the Zephyr, to no avail. I labored through the first two periods with no event. A few whispers and rumors bounced around the halls, but everybody just assumed that Sylvia had mono or something, that she was out for some silly reason like that. Nobody had any idea, not really.
Third period I was sitting in Mr. Hart’s English class when two cops in full uniform knocked on the frosted glass window of the door, startling the entire class as the glass shivered under the blows. All eyes were drawn to them, as nobody had a) ever did anything so bad as to draw a cop into school or b) ever seen the Machiasport town cops in any more uniform than a badge and a windbreaker with POLICE written on the back. “This type of thing just doesn’t happen here,” everybody said. Open your fucking eyes, I wanted to scream. It already fucking has.
“Phoebe Brush?” The cop met my eyes and motioned for me to come over to him. I should have been prepared for them to have shown up, but I felt frozen in place until my feet began to work on their own accord. I started to walk over to him, as quietly as I could muster, and felt the eyes of twenty of my classmates boring into my back. It would be many years before they would forget the day the cops came for Phoebe Brush.
They ushered me into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me. My entire body had the painful sensation that occurs after your foot’s been asleep for a really long time, but the blood wasn’t returning anywhere to relieve the pain. The taller cop leaned down and said, “The parents of Sylvia Layman have told us to inform you that we’ve located the fishing vessel the Zephyr. She was unoccupied and floating, and had a suicide note left behind, so we are closing this case as a suicide.”
I started to wail as though I had just been shot through the heart, and began to loose my balance. It felt as though I had just been shot. Then the entire world went black.
I had to be carried out of the building that day.