Chapter Nine
The next day, I got a text from Sekou. Head over to Naira’s.
I frowned, wondering why he was telling me to go there when she wasn’t back yet.
Last night, after I’d returned home, the only person I wanted to talk to was Naira.
Had she been here, I’d have gone to her house instead of to my empty one.
I’d have climbed up the tree by her bedroom window—centuries younger than our Gathering Tree at the center of Kin’s Landing town square—and let myself into her room, like I’d done all our years growing up and vice versa.
But she wasn’t here, and instead, I sent a text.
naira u gud?
I had waited for the three pulsing dots. None came. Minutes had passed, each one making me more anxious than the one before.
shits happened here
I fell asleep waiting for the dots. I woke up the next morning, forcing myself to go to work at the golf cart rental at Freeman’s Port.
The Mast General Store was still closed, but I shrugged it off.
Maybe they were running late because it was still early.
Maybe Naira had been partying late last night and was sleeping it off.
Or she was annoyed that up until now I hadn’t answered her back?
Whatever the reason, she wasn’t answering. Then Sekou texted.
“Cover for me?”
My question came out more a statement as I handed my coworker Rita my clipboard and redirected the customers coming at me with their thousand and one questions to her. Rita didn’t have a chance to say no because I was already hopping in my cart and zooming off to Naira’s house to see what was up.
The surprise was on me because not only did I see Sekou’s cart parked on the curb, but Nana’s cart was parked in the driveway of the Russells’ big beachfront home.
She rarely if ever took it out since someone was always on hand to drive her where she needed.
The sight of her cart was the first signal that something wasn’t right.
I recognized Sheriff Lyle’s official truck parked among the carts. Usually he kept it at the municipal building closer to the public port. Usually he rode around in carts as we normally did. The truck meant he had to get somewhere quickly. I wondered if this had anything to do with Elder Gilbert.
A bunch of ppl r at ur house. What’s up?
I waited for the gray dots letting me know Naira was replying. Nothing. I sent another message, this time to Sekou.
Se, what’s the deal?
There were dots pulsating. Then they stopped. They started again and then Sekou’s reply came.
Come in
Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was on the other side of that door. The familiar feeling when I woke up from the earthquake, that a shoe was hovering ready to drop, was back and I wasn’t ready for it to slam into me.
The vibe was like the humidity: heavy, sticky, and suffocating. It smacked me in the face and clung to me like glue. The vibe here was all wrong.
Eventually I got out. If I hadn’t, Sekou would have come to get me.
I focused on what was on the other side of the front door.
When I went inside, the house was full of people, but it was as quiet as a tomb.
There wasn’t the usual Russell family commotion—a blaring TV or Alexa playing Mr. and Mrs. Russell’s favorite jams, the four younger kids screaming and running around with Naira’s parents yelling at them to settle down.
Through the hall and in the great room, I spotted a few elders standing around.
Some wiping their eyes. Some mumbling what sounded like prayers under their breaths.
Others patting backs and looking like the world had ended.
One of them was humming, a long solemn melody of the Lord working in mysterious ways.
No one said much to me, as if they were trying to avoid me.
I counted one brother and all three of Naira’s sisters.
All present and accounted for. Whatever this was, it wasn’t about any of them.
I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.
Sekou was there. He’d squeezed himself in a corner near the doorway I’d entered.
His eyes were vacant, lost. Seeing him there made me slow my step.
My stomach triple-flipped. The way Sekou looked, hell, the way they all looked—turning in unison to watch me walk in, conversation suddenly halting like some kind of screwed-up movie—had me wanting to turn around and go back the way I’d come.
My knees jellied and I could barely keep myself upright.
There was Nana, bending over Naira’s mother, rubbing gentle circles on the woman’s back with the soft palm of her hand.
I couldn’t see Auntie Janet’s face—her head was buried in a blue striped dish towel in her hands.
Her aching moans chipped away at the affirmations I’d told myself before coming in that whatever was going on wasn’t too bad.
Uncle Kofi, Naira’s spitting image with eyes like hers—gentle and kind and inquisitive—leaned heavily against one of the eggshell-colored walls, his feet crossed at the ankles.
He had both his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.
His eyes weren’t the usual warm with a hint of comedy that had comforted me all my life.
Now, they were glazed, hollowed out and unseeing as he stared off to a space over everyone’s heads.
He didn’t seem to register anyone, even as Elders Andrew and Edu sandwiched him in, taking turns murmuring in low rumbling tones, speaking words I couldn’t decipher and didn’t know if I wanted to.
In the middle of the room was Sheriff Lyle, looking grimmer than I’d ever seen him. I’d take his usual aloofness to the way his face was closed in, looking as if the world had ended.
Beside him was a cop I didn’t recognize in a military-style buzz cut, with small ice-blue eyes that held not an inch of warmth, and DNR etched on the lapel of his uniform.
The DNR caught my attention. Like, do not resuscitate?
From the way his eyes shifted from face to face and then to the wide, pretty room we all stood in, I could tell the guy wasn’t used to being in a room where he was the minority, a shock of white in a sea of black and brown.
But I didn’t have time to dig into the irony of his situation because his being here with Lyle was suspicious.
The way he and Lyle gripped their hats in their hands looking like a couple of grim reapers had wild thoughts beating at my mind’s door, and I only caught the last part of what he was saying.
“… with me from the Department of Natural Resources and they are doing everything in their power to locate her.”
Locate?
“Who?” I asked, since no one seemed to want to clue me in.
No one said anything.
I turned to Sekou. If the adults weren’t going to answer me, then at least he would. But it was as if he were trying to get inside the wall, as stuffed into the corner as he was. And his eyes were glassy.
“Se?”
The only people who existed in this moment were me and Sekou.
Me asking him the question and him trembling as his will to keep himself strong crumbled in front of me.
The tears pooling in his eyes began to leak, and all he could do was shake his head, his lips smashed in a firm line as if he were fighting to keep them from spilling whatever news he had.
Sheriff Lyle cleared his throat and, in a voice filled with regret and without any of the humor and easy drawl he normally had, said, “Well, there’s been an accident.”
He hesitated and Nana prompted, “G’awn, Sheriff.”
Nana pulled away from Naira’s mother with one final pat of the shoulder, taking a few steps toward me. She didn’t reach for me, knowing her granddaughter more than anyone else. I didn’t need coddling right now, not in front of all of these people. I needed the truth.
He stepped forward, shoulders sagging and face full of pity.
“Naira and a classmate were out boating during the night, and there was an accident. We think the boat may have run aground on some rocks in one of the inlets around Charleston and…” Lyle swallowed, casting a worried look at Naira’s parents, who were too dazed to be paying attention.
“We’re out looking for them, but they haven’t been found. Neither Naira or—”
“Luke.” His name choked up in my throat, bitter and vile.
Lyle nodded and surveyed the room, holding his hat out. “We are still looking, y’all. It’s not over.”
“Is this related at all to Brother Gilbert?” Elder Mabel asked from the back corner of the room.
Yes, Elder Gilbert. My head twisted to Nana Ama, whose face remained serene. I turned to Sheriff Lyle. He cleared his throat as DNR looked at him, confused.
“I’m sorry?” DNR said. “Who?”
“An island matter,” Nana Ama said smoothly, her tone commanding and ending that topic. “Continue.”
“The location of the boat, however, was pretty far out. It would have been nearly impossible for anyone to swim back in those conditions.”
It was like the DNR guy wasn’t talking about someone’s loved ones, like he was talking about a busted-up boat that didn’t have two people in it.
Like he thought of Naira as a statistic.
Another irresponsible kid. His lack of empathy had me seeing red.
He was talking to us like we were a bunch of country bumpkins.
Lyle had to have caught the death stare I launched at Officer Buzz Cut because he cut in.
“It’s still a rescue, everyone, okay? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Coast Guard is still out, and we need to let them do their jobs.
We’re still looking. You know the coast is filled with inlets, and when the tide goes out, new patches of land emerge. ”
“Only to be submerged again when the tide comes back in, though,” Buzz Cut returned. “Again, with the type of damage the boat sustained, and the fact they were so far out…”