The Different Girl

I had told the others, and since we had all talked about the Mary being sunk on purpose, I decided I could say “more” instead of simply “planks”—and Irene didn’t correct me.
    “Are they from the Mary ?” asked Eleanor.
    “Are they from the supply boat?” asked Caroline.
    Irene shook her head. “The supply boat is mostly steel.”
    “How does steel float?” Isobel said, but then nodded, blinking. “Displacement. Could anything float with displacement? Could we?”
    “If we were shaped like boats,” said Eleanor.
    “Just being in water is dangerous,” said Caroline. “Not only sinking.”
    “Is anyone shaped like a boat?” Isobel asked Irene.
    “I’m afraid not.” Irene turned back to the debris, and we all looked with her.
    “We should tell May,” I said. “If they’re from her boat.”
    “Wouldn’t anything from the Mary have drifted away by now?” asked Caroline. “It’s been weeks.”
    “Work out the current,” said Irene.
    “It depends on the storm,” I said, but then I nodded to Caroline. “Probably not.”
    “Then whose boat could it be?” asked Eleanor. No one had an answer.
    “Do you see anything else?” Irene asked.
    We looked from where we were, because no one felt confident climbing out on the rocks, especially because the rocks were full of little pools. If we had seen something special Irene could have collected it, but we didn’t: only knots of nylon rope, chunks of packing foam, and strips of plastic that could have once been anything.
    We returned down the beach, each of us trying to walk in our original footsteps. This was one of Robbert’s tests for balance, and even after we got it right we all kept doing it. We passed the beach path and continued in the other direction with Robbert’s and Irene’s footsteps ahead of us.
    We just found more junk. Most was what Irene called natural junk, like coconuts or driftwood or jellyfish or shells or kelp. Irene said this was how palm trees got from one island to another. With jellyfish it was different, because they were all dead. Eleanor once compared the dead jellyfish to things on land that couldn’t live in the water, wondering if there were jellyfish swimming past dead sunken birds and people, wondering where they were from. It had made Robbert laugh. He patted Eleanor’s head and made an entry in his notebook.
    This junk was the same: coconuts and wood and kelp and jellyfish, and also regular fish as well, caught in a wave and flung up to die. Mixed in were more of what we’d seen on the rocks, except not planks, just plastic, packing foam, bottles, nylon rope.
    It was disappointing, but then we came to where the back and forth tracks from Robbert and Irene stopped at the same place, where there had also been some digging.
    They had reached this spot, dug something up, and then come home.
    We all turned to Irene. If Irene really hadn’t wanted us to know about what they’d found, she would have stopped the walk halfway.
    “What did you find?” asked Caroline.
    “Did you bring it back?” Eleanor tugged Irene’s hand. “What was it?”
    “Should we guess?” asked Isobel.
    “Was it something useful?” asked Eleanor.
    “Was it another plank with holes?” I asked.
    But Irene wasn’t listening. She stared over the water. She went up on her toes and shaded her eyes with both hands.
    “Irene?” I asked.
    “What do you see?” Irene asked. She extended her arm. “What do you see there .”
    We all looked. A gleaming fleck against the darker waves, spray breaking across it like a rock, except the fleck heaved up and down, in motion.
    After all this time, it was a boat.

10.
    We had never actually seen the supply boat, so as much as Irene hurried us back, we kept craning our heads to catch another glimpse. We talked aloud to each other, describing the color, the size, and making guesses about displacement, wind shear, speed. At the courtyard Irene called for Robbert, then waved us impatiently to the kitchen. Robbert came out, and we all shouted that the supply boat had finally come. Irene wheeled and told us to get going. Robbert ran back into the classroom.
    Since we’d seen the boat from a distance, we hoped to see it up close, too, and meet the men who sailed it, because finally it had come when we were awake and ready. Irene just shook her head.
    “No. Everyone on their cots.”
    “But, Irene—”
    “No.”
    “But, Irene—”
    “ No! Keep your smocks on—there isn’t