The Incident on the Bridge Read Online Free

gate, right?”
    She nodded. Her family did, anyway.
    “This is the key to our boat.”
    “So, what,” she said, “I’ll let myself in when you’re not there?”
    “Or when I
am
there.”
    Stay out after curfew, run from cops, and go to a boy’s boat? Why did he think she would do that?
    Because she would, it turned out. Not the running-from-cops part, but slip out of the house after eleven o’clock and meet him at the boat, stay two hours, sneak back home? Yes.
    Ted had caught her in the bathroom afterward, the one that connected their rooms and so gave them pretty much
no
privacy. She said, “
Clay?
Clay
Moorehead
! You know he deals, right?”
    “No, he doesn’t,” Thisbe said, though of course he did.
    Thisbe knew where he kept the dealables, too. She could use the spare keys right now, while he was down at the Of with Isabel. She could walk back down the ramp and unlock the door of his now-empty yacht cabin.
    Black sky overhead. The stink of wet iron and mud. She found the key under the yellow kayak: simple. Walked down the ramp to the slips, turned right, then left, then right: simple. Stepped onto the deck like she’d been sent there on an errand. Laughed a little and said, “Whoopsy!” when she lost her balance. Turned the lock like she’d been sent back for a lighter or blanket or coat. The yellow Havaianas and the flowered bag were gone, as she’d known they would be. She didn’t even have to flip on a light, because he’d left a bulb burning. She could see blankets heaped on the unmade bunk, Clay’s hoodie on the deck, unwashed dishes askew in the sink, bits of food—noodles and blobs of steak fat—stuck to them. Two glass cups where chocolate mousse had been scraped out with greedy spoons. Same exact food to do the same exact thing. “You know he has about a million girlfriends a year, right?” Ted had asked. “He’s like a serial killer, only with, like, girlfriend changing.”
    What kind of person fell for a guy like that?
    It was now 10:55 p.m., so she had five minutes to make curfew, six percent power on her phone. She could just type, I’m home , and hope her mother was upstairs in bed, not on the couch.
    Risky.
    I’m at Nessa’s , she type-lied. We’re watching a movie. Can I stay?
    There it was, the devil’s cabbage, ha ha. Hidden in Starbucks bags all lined up like books on a shelf. Just one bag, mahalo. A pound of French roast to go.
    Her mother’s reply was so gentle that it gave her a stab-and-twist: Ok. Call me in the morning. Have fun!!
    She was not having fun. People should stop telling her to have it. Still, her mother was so good. She was trying to be nice. Thisbe walked past all the boats with a bag that said
Starbucks
but was light as air. She’d had Clay’s permission to drive his car anywhere, anytime, when he so-called loved her, so mahalo, Clay! Mahalo, tiki doll swinging from the mirror! Mahalo, yacht club gate, which opened as she touched the clicker Clay kept by the gearshift. Maybe she would toss the clicker in a trash can later on. The club made you pay to replace those and it was always a big fat deal, like you’d given away the keys to the White House and
now everyone would get boat-robbed!
    She had no place to go, but that was the whole, entire, total, unchanging problem. She’d killed her chances to leave, and she’d mucked up any chance she had with Jerome. She had to do something with Clay’s weeded-up car.

F rank Le Stang rowed to Coronado Island from the
Sayonara
with his usual supplies: the week’s garbage, a clean Hefty bag for any recyclables he might find in the park trash bins, duct tape, stun gun, wallet, canvas sail bag. It was not, however, an ordinary night. The girl in pink boots, the one who came all the time to the boat ramp near Glorietta Bay Park, filling jars with seawater, measuring creatures—she was Julia reborn. Julia was here, on this very island, 229 nautical miles from the place where she died, and he had found her.