Excerpt
The Last Ferry Out
Chapter OneABBY
Monday afternoon
Sweat beads on my neck and lip and slithers down my chest. The path is overgrown and steep, sprouting from the edge of town and pushing a mile north from the island’s inhabited southern end, into its lush nature preserve. Though there are a few signs of life along the trail—empty beer bottles, a rotting pack of cigarettes, litter I stuff into my backpack as I pass—I haven’t encountered another human since I began the climb a half hour ago.
Just as Eszter promised. Look, I have it all to myself, she told me, panning the camera around her. Smiling crookedly, sunlight shimmering on her maple-colored hair, tattoo taut on her shoulder. It feels like I’m the only person on Earth.
I finish the steep ascent along a coastal cliff, where loose rocks slide under my feet. Thick vines hang off the trees like stiffened rope, and I cling to them as I ascend. To my left, I catch glimpses of the choppy waves and yellowish sea stacks sending up wild sprays of salt water. My heart thrums. I must be getting close now.
The path widens and zags inland, past a patch of fat ferns and broad-leaved banana trees, everything glistening and wet. Was it just this morning that I paced the terminal at Mitchell International Airport, airline announcements garbling through my ears like squawky trombones? A mid-May storm was brewing outside the windows, specks of rain floating on the breeze. I thought my flight might get canceled. Then I’d have an excuse to abandon the whole idea. On the plane, my eyes flooded with tears when a flat-voiced flight attendant droned, “Cross-check completed.”
The vegetation drops away and it’s clear, abruptly, how close the trail is to the cliff’s edge, to its rough rock and deadly pitch. Eszter loved this hike—on the phone, she told me she couldn’t wait to show me the route to the island’s highest peak. My heart thuds against the backpack. I take a step closer to the precipice, closing the gap between myself and thin air, four flights of sheer limestone. Vertigo pulls at my head and knees.
So badly I had wanted to walk this path with her.
This is the spot, then. The highest lookout point on the island that took her. A dilapidated hotel hulks behind me—twisting around, I can’t make out the building, but I spot curls of barbed wire peeking through the foliage, perhaps fifty feet inland. There’s some sort of abandoned comm tower jutting above the treetops, too, big rusted pipes and dishes. The resort must’ve been impressive when it was open: a hilltop property rising out of the Mexican rainforest.
I slip the backpack off my shoulders and ease the zipper open. I feel feral, unpredictable. The sea roars and tumbles, calling out to me, somehow. I picture it: My body sinking below the whitecaps, giving in to the undertow, the ocean’s impassive yank. Waves slapping my face and worming into my nose and mouth and, eventually, lungs.
It’s been four months since Eszter’s brother Laszlo called me, his wife’s sobs audible in the background.
There’s been an accident.
I felt a desperate swoop. Is Eszter okay? I asked. My brain flipped through possibilities like a slide projector: car accident, bike accident, hiking accident—
She’s—
And I interrupted him. Tell me she’s okay.
The silence was so long that it took on shape and form, dark and thick and widening by the millisecond, broadening to make room for the dawning horror.
On New Year’s Day, kicking off this godforsaken year, Eszter arrived here, on an island where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean Sea, for a three-week trip. I was going to join her that final week, after she’d made some headway on a big final project she was working on for business school—her capstone. But her brother called before I ever got to the airport. Eszter and I were only just beginning; our time together, a year and a half of dating plus three months of an engagement, should’ve been a start, not a finish.
I pull the phone from my backpack and leave the bag flopped against my ankle. I open a folder labeled eszter photos and swipe through the last ones she sent me. Smiling from the top of the ferry, hair flapping in the breeze. Sitting in the town square, dark sunglasses shielding her eyes, with a stingray mural over her shoulder. The cute rental she found, even more darling than it looked in the listing, its salmon-pink walls offsetting the white front door. Her toes in the sand, her sparkly ring in front of the marina. And sunsets, so many sunsets, each a commotion of color, lovingly documented like every one was a miracle.
I zoom in on the one picture that’s not like the others: Eszter with her arms around some other folks, everyone in bathing suits and cover-ups, cheesing for the camera. Hey, babe! These are the cool people I met . . . can’t wait for you to meet them. I’d given the heart response, fighting down a flicker of envy, labeling it my own excitement to see her. There was a tall fellow with broad, tanned arms and a salt-and-pepper beard. A pale, round-faced woman who reminded me of an angel in a Renaissance painting: unlined skin, barely-there brows, calflike eyes. An artsy-looking girl with an Afro and hoop earrings. I’ve always wondered who took the photo. Did Eszter intend for me to befriend them, too?
Only one way to find out.
Eszter never shared their names, let alone their contact info, so I came here to look for them. Reconstruct her final days, understand the place she loved so much. We weren’t talking nearly as often as we should’ve while she was here; I was so busy, so focused on the upcoming investor meeting at work.
I failed, of course. Couldn’t get the demo to work in time; didn’t get the promotion I was hoping for. So I’m finally doing what Eszter begged me to do a few months ago: taking a vacation.
I rewatch Eszter’s video, wind competing with her voice: It feels like I’m the only person on Earth. It ends on a freeze-frame, silent. This is definitely the spot. I look back and forth between the screen and the seething water—
A bird streaks past, so near it rustles the air across my back. I startle and step and then I feel it, the disorienting whoosh of losing my balance. The phone slips from my fingers as my arms windmill, and I trip over the backpack at my feet. I call out, joining the cacophony of wind and bugs and waves.
The last thing I see before I hit the ground is my phone bouncing off the rock face and sailing out of sight.
I scuttle away from the edge, icy adrenaline shooting through my limbs. I sit there for a second, my heart a jackhammer, my brain catching up to what just happened. A deranged laugh pops out of me. And then—
Another spurt of cortisol. My phone. I crawl forward and peer over the lip of the cliff—no sign of it. A panicky pang goes through me. I’m now alone and phoneless in a foreign country.
Get ahold of yourself, Abby. At least my photos and videos are all backed up in the cloud. A shard of optimism creeps in: Maybe a store on this tiny island sells pay-as-you-go phones? Otherwise I’m out of luck. The next ferry to the mainland won’t show up until Thursday, three days from now. I’ll be on it, beginning the long journey home.
I spot my sunscreen, then my ChapStick, both strewn on the ground near my feet. My backpack is a few inches from the ledge—unzipped, flipped on its side. I snatch it up and rifle through, then suck in a breath. Eszter’s EpiPen is missing. The one rattling in the bottom of my bag, a slim tube I still occasionally grabbed when groping around for a tampon. I should’ve taken it out months ago, obviously, but something stopped me.
Idiotic, like carrying mace after a mugging.
Also idiotic: getting so lost in thought that a single bird almost cost me my life. See, Abby? This is what happens when you don’t focus.
I scan the area for the EpiPen’s yellow case, but it’s gone. Another piece of her. I stand.
I undo the clasp of my necklace. The pendant is a tiny gold llama with an emerald chip as its eye—a birthday gift I gave Eszter a couple months before she died. Early in our relationship, she was learning Spanish, and in solidarity, I learned a phrase for her; instead of ending a call with the usual “G’night, love you,” one evening I proudly said, “Buenas noches, te amo.” But she heard “Te llamo,” which (I soon learned) has a totally different meaning: “I call you.” Sitcom-y confusion as we sorted it out, and just like that, two inside jokes were born: llamas as a relationship motif, and a hand signal we could shoot each other anytime we wanted to say “I love you”: thumb and pinkie out, knuckles near the face, miming talking on an old-school phone.
My chest burns; I remember the last time she did it, before bed on Christmas, the night of our spectacular blowup. I had no idea we were in the final countdown: one last week together. I was still upset and I’d rolled over, pretended to be asleep. I want to reach back in time and shake that Abby: Grow up, stop it. Appreciate what you have.
