Stay by Deb Caletti

carrying my sandals by their straps, and
    walked over.
    “You going out again?” I shouted.
    “Hey,” he said. His brother stood at the tip of the boat15*
    smoking a cigarette, looking out. He turned when he heard my
    voice. “Shy girl.”
    “Clara,” I said.
    “Finn,” he said, though his name had traveled through my
    mind on a million different paths already. “My brother Jack.
    Don’t mind him; he’s trying to quit.”
    “Don’t mind him; he’s an idiot,” Jack said, blowing smoke
    up into the air. You could tell they got along just fine, though.
    They both were thin and fit and had unshaven scruff, but Jack’s
    hair was longer and wilder and Finn had those sweet eyes. Finn
    hopped off the boat. There he was, next to me, in his tight T-shirt
    and loose jeans, black hair messed up from a windy, windy ride.
    15 Called the bow. The back, called the stern. I knew this only in some vague way be-
    fore, and might have failed the quiz if there had been one. The left is “port,” the right
    is “starboard.” Sailing has its own language. Colorful, too. Bowsprits and breeches
    buoys and battening down hatches, language from another time. Nothing like all the icy
    tech words we have now—DOS and CD-ROM and CPUs—no romance. And then there’s
    the jib sheet and the spinnaker, the luffing and the jibing, lively, cheery words. And of
    course, the stays. The stays: the wire that supports the mast. Thin and hardly notice-
    able, but the only thing keeping the mast from toppling.
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    Deb Caletti
    “Come on out,” he said. He seemed shy himself. But not so
    shy that he couldn’t say what he wanted. “It’s fast. It’s fantastic .”
    His eyes danced.
    I must have shivered. It was a little cold out there. “Scared?”
    he said.
    “No,” I said. “My father’s afraid, not me.”
    “The whole ghost thing?” he asked.
    “Ghost thing?”
    “I thought maybe you were staying at the Captain Bishop
    Inn. They love that stuff. Shove it at the folks that go there.
    People eat it up. They make pamphlets , even. ” I shook my
    head. I didn’t know what he meant. “Deception Pass? Used to
    have a lot of sailing vessels. The big old ships . . . But—high
    winds, narrow channel . . . The waters were, are , so treacher-
    ous there that most of the ships sailed around the whole island
    rather than go through that pass. They had to lose a few for
    sailors to know that, though, right? So, supposedly, you know.
    Old dead sailors haunting the waters. Captain Bishop’s young
    widowed wife throwing herself off of the lighthouse in despair.
    Blah blah blah.”
    “Some TV show came out here and filmed the lighthouse and
    now we have every bored, middle-aged kook who is hopingto be
    freaked out,” Jack said.
    “I know the shows,” I said. “Old ship on choppy sea? Guy
    with a pocket watch and a telescope? Filmy white images?”
    “You got it,” Finn said.
    “I didn’t even know,” I said. “My father just hates the water.”
    “Ah,” Finn nodded. He shrugged his shoulders, to each his
    * 90 *
    Stay
    own. “Anyway, you wouldn’t believe how many people ask about
    the ships down under there. Number one question.”
    “Tell me about the ships down under there,” I said.
    He laughed. Someone called Jack’s name. It was the girl from
    The Cove, yesterday’s hamburger place. She was waving at him
    madly.
    “Our sister,” Finn said.
    “Pretend I never saw,” Jack said. “I’m not chasing that fuck-
    ing seagull for her.”
    “There’s this seagull . . .” Finn said. I nodded. I knew about
    him. “She claims to hate that seagull, but I have my doubts. You
    coming?”
    “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to—”
    “Work at the lighthouse?” he grinned. “Did she hire you?”
    “Starting on Monday,” I said. The brothers looked at each
    other. Knowing glance. “What? Come on. Tell me.”
    “Maybe you ought to start job hunting,” Finn said.
    Jack cracked up. “She’ll fire you by . .