Chapter 10
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
When the last smudge of land had dissolved on the horizon and no more orange buoys or gleaming catamarans were left, Tia let
her face tilt toward the sun and embraced her new home at sea. She could have been anywhere in the world, anywhere even in
history. The water she sailed on at this moment had, at one point, been locked in polar glaciers or sliding through brackish
streams. It had circumnavigated the globe with more completion than Magellan, and who knew if the molecules of water that
now pushed up against The Old Eileen had once met the tallowed oak of Viking warships or the birchbark of Indigenous canoes. Here, Tia experienced insignificance
with sanctity. She felt as though her understanding meant something, not in relation to the water but in concert with it.
“Nothing like it, huh?”
MJ Tuckett lumbered up beside Tia, hands clasped behind her back and shoulders set. MJ was a six-foot-tall Southern woman
with spires of smoke-like gray hair and an expression lined like a rock face.
“No. There really isn’t.” Tia straightened her own posture. “It doesn’t get old for you?”
“What?” MJ smirked at her, Carolinian drawl honeying her words. “Even as I get old, you mean?”
Tia laughed. “Pretty much.”
“Think the stars get old to NASA, missy?” MJ bent to tidy a coil of lines on the deck. “You’ve got the bug, I see.”
Tia watched MJ lift the thick rope, muscles outlined beneath her sun shirt. “The water bug?”
“Mmm-hmm.” MJ deposited the rope into Tia’s arms, and she nearly buckled. “Hang that on the cleat.”
Tia looked where MJ gestured and managed to hook the rope to a bit of metal jutting from one of the masts. MJ nodded her approval.
Tia watched her admiringly. She had so many questions but wasn’t sure how to broach them. What had MJ been doing since she
saw them last? Had she gone on more great adventures? Was this trip going to bore her in comparison?
Tia opened her mouth to ask when Francis called out from his place helming in the cockpit.
“Everyone, come on over! Time for a little meeting.”
MJ and Tia shared a brief glance that made Tia’s chest inflate like a life raft. Tia finally had an ally. Together, they made
their way to the cockpit.
Francis had set up Rylan’s gift, the deep-sea fishing equipment, off the back of the stern, several translucent lines flaring
out behind them as Francis himself stood at the helm.
Tia’s father looked different at sea. He had spent most of Tia’s childhood in ties and golf polos, bronze hair gelled to one
side, and cologne pungent. He believed in impeccable impressions, and everything from the Rolex on his wrist to his brand
of mouthwash had its purpose.
But when he was at sea, Francis Cameron could have been anyone.
His ungelled hair obeyed the wind, revealing iron roots and thin spots. His cologne had been replaced by sea salt, his ties by safari button-ups. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing a faint scar the width of a penny on his forearm.
And he was smiling.
“Come. Come.” He motioned eagerly for everyone to make a tight circle around the helm. They were all there now. Alejandro
leaned against the chart house with flour powder on his shirt. Rylan sat on the cockpit bench, chewing the inside of his cheek
as Lila gripped the railing and looked in the direction of New Haven as if she were leaving for war. MJ stood beside Tia,
and Nico, who stood next to Francis, gave Tia a blinding grin when they locked eyes.
Francis slapped his thigh. “Well done, everyone! We’ve made it to open seas. First, some business. I’ve posted a list of watch
times on the door of the chart house and in the galley. We’ll cycle through watches until we are safely docked or anchored
somewhere.”
Tia craned her neck to see the list, written in her father’s delicate penmanship.
Captain Francis: 8 am–12 pm
MJ: 12 pm–2 pm (dogwatch)
Alejandro: 2 pm–6 pm
Nico: 6 pm–8 pm (dogwatch)
Captain Francis: 8 pm–12 am
MJ: 12 am–4 am
Nico: 4 am–8 am
“As you can see, MJ, Nico, and myself are the main crew members, so we are responsible for two watches each. Alejandro has additional responsibilities as cook, so he only has one. I thought about rotating time every day, which is more traditional . . . However,” he went on, “I believe it will be easier for us to get into a routine. Furthermore, kids, Lila, you can’t stand watch because you aren’t licensed crew members, of course, but I really want to encourage you to take a few watches with us now and then.
Trade some ghost stories. See the stars.
This trip is to celebrate you, and you should get every last experience you can.
And who knows?” Francis turned his smile onto Rylan.
“Maybe you’ll be a captain yourself someday. ”
Lila returned her gaze to the sea. “Is that all, darling?”
“Not quite. Everyone, please give a warm welcome to the newest member of our crew, Nicolás!”
Francis gestured to Nico so dramatically that Tia and Rylan both started to clap. Nico bowed, murmuring “Thank you, thank
you,” and Tia rolled her eyes to stop from laughing.
“Nico has saved us quite a bit of trouble. Not many people can drop everything they’re doing to sail with six strangers for
a week.”
“Five strangers,” Alejandro said, and he leaned to rub his knuckles on Nico’s curly head.
“Yes, of course,” Francis said.
Rylan raised his hand. “How long until we get to Florida, exactly?”
Tia looked at Francis, but it was MJ who answered.
“It’s the twenty-sixth. We should make port in West Palm around June first or second.”
Francis clicked his tongue. “Well, we will be stopping to dive, so it could take a bit longer . . .”
MJ stared right through him. “June third at the latest. I hear there’s an eighteenth birthday party worth getting to.”
Tia nodded, even though she was pretty sure the party Lila was planning was more for Lila’s sake than Tia’s or Rylan’s. My last birthday at home. She looked to see if Rylan was thinking the same thing, but he had lowered his head.
“Well, then. That’s all I’ve got. Fair winds, everyone! This is an adventure that none of us will forget.” Francis glanced at his Rolex. “MJ, you have watch in thirty.”
MJ grunted and turned to the twins. “Let’s raise the fisherman’s jib.” She didn’t wait for their response as she headed toward
the bow.
Tia fell in step with her brother, nudging him to look at her. “Seven days till Florida,” she murmured.
“Eleven till our birthday,” he replied.
“And then the world.” She bumped their shoulders and stopped in front of MJ before he could answer.
MJ handed Tia a line she called the halyard. Tia didn’t quite understand how sail-raising worked, but she had figured out over the years that the halyard pulled the
sail up. There was another line that needed to be eased out as the sail rose. That same line would be pulled tight (or sweated, as MJ said) when the sail was lowered.
“Ready to sweat, Taliea?” MJ barked, dark eyes fixed above them.
“Ready!” Tia wound her fingers around the line and pulled on MJ’s command. It was exhilarating. Her biceps ached, and the
skin on her palms threatened to rip. The little triangle of a sail—the fisherman’s jib—unfurled and flapped noisily in the
wind. The pulling became too much for Tia far faster than she would have liked, and MJ came to help. With both of them together,
the sail was up in seconds.
“Make that off,” MJ ordered.
“Uh . . .”
“Here.” MJ’s huge, strong hands closed over Tia’s and showed her how to make the right knot.
Tia committed every movement to memory. Someday she would be as strong as MJ.
“Good,” MJ told them when she had shown Rylan the same knot. She rested a hand on each twin’s shoulder.
It was enough to make Tia burst with pride. The wind whipped her face, bright and warm and wild. Sunlight threaded between the sails as the whole ship flew and fell, and the salt-sweet scent of the ocean flooded her nostrils. The smell of adventure.
Then MJ’s grip tightened. The movement was so sharp, so sudden, that Tia’s breath left her all at once, her mind whirring
back to what happened last summer.
Tia was kneeling on the blinding deck. Bloody teacup shards fanned out like morning glories. The hand on her shoulder was
big and strong and digging into her bones. Threatening her.
Tia knew without looking that Rylan was remembering the same.
But then MJ released her grasp, and the memory was gone as soon as it had come. “He’s whistling,” she muttered, her eyes on
the other side of the ship.
Tia swallowed as she turned in that direction. Nico was filling out a boat check sheet on a clipboard. Her mother and Alejandro
had vanished belowdecks. And her father was in the cockpit, whistling merrily.
MJ patted their shoulders, then headed toward the cockpit. As she went, she put a hand over her heart and massaged as if the
whistling was enough to physically pain her. “It’s bad luck,” she said under her breath so that Tia barely heard.
Tia rotated her shoulder to prove to herself that nothing was wrong. She wasn’t hurt. Of course MJ wasn’t angry at them. She
was stronger than she realized, that was all.
But the memory she’d been trying to forget had been stirred all the same, and as Tia took her brother’s hand, she knew it
was something they would not easily escape.