Chapter Text
August 21. 7:45 PM.
When I first meet Kristen Applebees, she’s wearing flower-print board shorts over a red lifeguard swimsuit; she offers me a life jacket, but doesn’t wear one herself. She picks me up in her family’s boat, the “HMS Sundial,” which is modest and weather-worn. It’s a windy day, so plenty of sailboats cross our path through the channel. She stands at the wheel (helm?) with practiced ease. Something about the way she carries herself doesn’t seem to me like the body language of a girl whose friend has gone missing. I could be overlooking something: maybe it’s been enough time for her to move on, or maybe they weren’t as good friends as I assumed-
“What are you writing?”
Riz looks up, squinting against the sun-spattered water. Kristen’s turned slightly to face him, hands on the wheel and a slow, casual smile on her face.
Riz looks down at the little notebook, still crisp and pristine, which he had packed in a plastic bag before leaving. He felt a little humiliated when he took it out, considering the carefree way that Kristen had slung his backpack over her shoulder with the absolute confidence of someone who will never slip and fall into the water. “Notes,” he says. “For my research.”
Kristen wiggles her eyebrows. “You researching me?”
“I mean, you’re a subject of inquiry.”
“Ooh.” Kristen flashes him one more smile before turning back to driving. “Special me.”
The channel is short and easily navigable, so Solace Island rises on the horizon fairly quickly. It’s wide and flat, with sparse stubby trees dotting the shore. Shingled houses hang over the water, tiny shacks and large beach mansions and quaint family homes. Sailboats and motorboats rock at their moorings, their naked masts swaying in the breeze. It’ll be a beautiful day once they’re off the water; the sun sits high in a cloudless blue sky, and with the heavy wind it’s all a little grating. Riz feels like his skin might just peel right off.
Kristen guides them right up next to an algae-covered dock; she kills the engine, grabs a rope, and hops from the moving boat onto the dock in her flip-flops. In a moment they’re tied up securely against the pilings, and Kristen extends a hand to help Riz out.
With his backpack hanging from Kristen’s shoulder, Riz grabs his briefcase and duffel and follows her down the dock, taking care not to slip, to his first introduction to the island of Solace.
When their feet hit land (thank god) Kristen lifts a hand in greeting to another guy their age, who looks up at the sound of footsteps from the upturned boat he’s scraping barnacles off of. “Hey, Seacaster,” she hollers.
The guy- Seacaster- tilts his chin in acknowledgement. “Applebees.”
He doesn’t ask who Riz is.
Kristen leads him through the marina, past the repair shop and the tourist information office and rental building, and out onto the main street of Solace. Riz has been to beach towns before, two or three times, and this looks like all the rest. Sand sits dusting the corners of the asphalt road like light snow kicked up underfoot. There are seafood restaurants, novelty bookstores, an ice cream parlor. A whitewash library clock tower rises in the distance, crowning above the evenly spaced trees lining the sidewalk, their trunks in rusted cages among scraggly beachgrass. Riz would be lying to say that he hadn’t done some research before coming, but the sheer… beach theming had escaped him just looking at pictures. Every picture window has a model sailboat on the sill, every restaurant has a fisherman in a yellow coat on their sign. Wooden lobsters abound, and it’s all compounded by the ever-present smell of sour ocean and the crying of gulls both overhead and flocking around dumpsters.
“Most of these places close once tourist season is over,” Kristen tells him, gesturing to a saltwater taffy shop with a bike rack out in front. “Everything gets pretty quiet around September. And then once the first snow hits, it’s like a ghost town.”
She unlocks a yellow bicycle and looks Riz up and down. “You don’t have a bike,” she says, quite obviously. “It’s okay, we can walk it.”
So Kristen walks her bike down the street, chattering incessantly about the island and its features, the necessary information he needs to survive, the local gossip. “The school is up by the bluffs, so we pretty much all bike everywhere. There’s only one stoplight in town, you know. On the whole island. I can ask around, see if anyone has a spare bike. Or Gorgug could probably fix one up for you.”
“Gorgug?” Riz asks.
“Thistlespring,” Kristen adds. “He’s in our grade. He was on the football team, and he’s like this crazy inventor. He won a science fair on the mainland last year. And he’s in a band.”
Riz tries to read Kristen’s expression, but her face, tanned and freckled from the summer sun, is nothing but open and casual. “Did he know Lucy?”
Kristen shrugs. “Eh, not really. I mean, we all did, but they weren’t, like, friends.”
“Were you friends with Lucy?”
“We were in philosophy club together.” Kristen points down a twist in the road through a craggy trail of bushes. “That’s the mainland ferry. There’s a separate one for tourists that only runs in the summer, but this one’s ours.”
And that’s the end of that conversation.
Kristen continues to lead them down long, flat stretches of cracked road. Sometimes houses dot the street, crammed together like they’re out of room to build. But then, inevitably, the houses become steadily fewer until they exit into a broad expanse of scrubland, sand and low grasses and endless ocean.
A few turns later and they’re officially “inland,” according to Kristen, where Figueroth Faeth lives, and where Riz will live for the foreseeable future. Down a dusty, private road, hemmed in with trees, Kristen leads him to his temporary home, a quaint white-shingled suburban with chairs on the porch and a swingset in the front yard. The sun has begun to set, casting a warm copper light on the world.
It’s so familial, so sweet-looking, that for a moment Riz almost balks. Who is he to come in and just live here? To insert himself into a family with no payment but the promise of justice? He thinks of his own home, the comfortable fit of a two-bedroom city apartment, his mom working at the kitchen table, a cold cup of coffee just out of reach, and he thinks that maybe he’s making a terrible mistake.
But Kristen goes marching straight up to the door, knocking on the metal corner of the screen door like it’s nothing.
A few unbearable moments later, a harried-looking woman comes to the door. “Hi, Mrs. Faeth,” Kristen greets, gesturing loosely to Riz, who still hasn’t been able to bring himself to move from the road.
“Sandralynn, please,” the woman says, propping the door open on her hip. She offers Kristen a small, tight smile. “Besides, it’s not like I’m a ‘Mrs.’ anymore. Is this my ward?”
Shit. Riz scrambles up the path to the porch, dropping his duffel to shake her hand. “Riz Gukgak, ma’am. Sandralynn. Thank you so much for letting me stay.”
She looks him up and down appraisingly, his briefcase and too-hot trousers, his father’s watch with the genuine leather band, and offers him that same smile, though there’s a tenseness in the line between her eyebrows. “If Aguefort thinks it’ll help,” she says, as if she’s trying to convince herself of something. “Come on in.”
Still on the porch, Kristen hands Riz off his backpack and turns to leave. “I’m sure my parents need me, so I’ve gotta go. But I’ll see you around!”
“Thank you, Kristen,” Sandralynn says, and shuts the screen door behind her. Riz tries not to feel as though Kristen, his only mentor in this crazy scheme he’s gotten himself into, has just abandoned him.
The Faeth house is small and economical; every corner has some sort of bookcase or side table or hutch tucked into it; the entrance, with a staircase on the left and the living room to the right, is crammed with bike helmets and hiking boots, coatracks and baskets of throw blankets and beach towels.
“Fig’s upstairs,” Sandralynn says, ducking into the stairwell. She then shouts her daughter’s name at such a piercing volume that the echoes of it reverberate through the house and make Riz feel three feet smaller. It’s strange being here, in someone else’s house. It feels like an intrusion.
Almost immediately there’s a shift in the sound of the house; Riz hadn’t noticed until now (stellar detective work), but the soft thrumming that vibrated down the walls and along the floorboards stops. “She’s a musician,” Sandralynn explains, wearily, “and she’s got this ridiculous sound system. I didn’t want it, but it was her own money, so. The kitchen’s right through here, if you want something to drink. We’ve got water and milk, pretty much, so I hope you want either water or milk.”
“Water is great, thank you.”
Sandralynn hands him a glass cup, inlaid with bumblebees, filled with tap water. It tastes chalkier than back home, less metallic. She stands at the sink, tapping her short fingernails thoughtfully against the butcher block counter. She’s wearing grey cargo pants, standard-issue, a white undershirt, and purple fuzzy slippers. The look on her face is one that Riz has seen on his own mom plenty of times, a weariness from a full day of work and then a kid at home. “Have you eaten?”
“I had dinner in the city,” Riz says. Sandralynn clicks her tongue and looks out the window.
The kitchen is simple and small, but clearly well-used. A row of cereal boxes stand at attention beside the coffee maker, and the fridge bears a gallery wall of family photos: Sandralynn and her daughter on vacation, at a soccer game, second place in a cheerleading competition. Riz tries not to touch anything.
Figueroth Faeth comes thundering down the stairs, swinging around the banister like a tornado. “Riz Gukgak,” she says, as if she’s surprised he’s there at all.
Her hair hangs shaggily around her ears, like she cuts it herself, and she’s got an eyebrow piercing. Around her neck is a guitar pick on a slim silver chain, the only thing dressing up the too-big band tee and cutoff shorts. Unlike Kristen, with her flip-flops and farmer’s tan, Fig looks like someone that Riz might see on the subway late at night back home, the kind who would slouch across seats with their gothic friends and call him ‘little man’ as they hop the turnstile.
But she slumps against the doorframe, eyeing Riz just as her mother had, and grins. “I sort of thought you were fake.”
“Fig,” Sandralynn chastises, but there’s no threat in it.
“You’re really a detective?”
“Private investigator,” Riz corrects. “I am licensed. But the case isn’t good for a missing persons, and they didn’t want to send a real cop for someone who they think probably ran away in the first place, so here I am.”
It’s a story that they both know, that they messaged about a lot before he came. Fig takes it in stride, hums a bit absently, and says, “but you don’t think she ran away.”
Riz tries not to meet Sandralynn’s eye. “I really want that to be the answer.”
Fig looks between them for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. All day Riz has felt scrutinized, too big for the close-knit tiny island and too small in the lives of the people he’s passed through. Like an outsider.
And maybe it’s because she looks like a city kid, but there’s nothing dissecting in Fig’s expression. She’s just taking it all in, so at home in her own kitchen, and the says, abruptly, “well, let’s get your stuff upstairs.”
Up the painted wood-slat stairwell is a small bathroom and a framed puzzle of the Solesian coastline, a map with little dots indicating the clusters of houses along the island’s banks. On one end of the hallway is Sandralynn’s bedroom and Fig’s on the other, separated by an overflowing linen closet.
Fig’s room is small, cozy. A box fan sits in the one window whirring gently. Over the top of it, through the white curtains, Riz can just make out a sliver of ocean. In the dying golden light of sunset, the green walls feel warm. To the left is a handpainted dresser, complete with rosettes around the handles, cluttered with schoolbooks and scattered makeup and a polka-dot lamp. Then on the right-hand wall is the bunk bed, Riz’s generously appointed bottom bunk, with a yellow gingham quilt. A poster of Joan Jett hangs over the bed, guitar slung low across her hips as she stares at Riz with solemn, black-lined eyes.
A guitar of Fig’s own sits on a stand in the corner, and the lion’s share of her desk is taken up by tweed speakers.
Fig comes in behind Riz and stands, with her hands on her hips, as if seeing her own room for the first time.
“You really think you can solve it?” Is all she says.
On the corkboard by her desk is a pinned-up postcard with clean white sailboats on the water, next to a star twisted from red pipe cleaner. “I’ll do my best.”
Fig opens her dresser drawer, pulls out a pair of pajamas, and leaves the room.
Alone, but with no idea for how long, Riz undresses faster than he ever has before, and changes into his pajamas with one eye on the door. It’s only about ten, hours before he usually goes to bed. He shoves his duffel under the bed, out of the way, and sits down with his notebook.
There’s nothing that he could think of to write that doesn’t feel inappropriately personal; he could write about how strange it is to think of spending the next however long sharing a room with a stranger, and sharing a room with a girl, or what he’s supposed to do tomorrow morning; does he wake up with Fig, go downstairs for breakfast with her mother? Does he operate on his own schedule? Should he expect to use their coffee machine or should he buy his own on main street? Because that would add up, months of bought coffee every day.
And all this because he might solve a case, one that’s days from going cold. On an island, isolated from his family and home, starting his senior year in a high school with a graduating class of 35.
And for a moment, a wave of terror consumes Riz, like the moment before the drop on a rollercoaster. And all he can think is that he’s made a terrible, irreversible mistake.
Fig knocks, twice, on the door, and enters. With her face bare and her hair down, she looks very… young. Open. There’s a gentle curve to her jaw of lingering baby fat, though Riz can tell that in five years her face will be thin and rugged, like her mother’s. She’s got on pink plaid pajama pants and fuzzy socks.
Riz watches as she crosses the room and pulls the fan from her window. With one practiced motion she pops out the screen and pushes it out onto a flat section of roof. Riz sits, silent, and watches. She’s sneaking out, it seems, probably to go to a party or a boyfriend’s house, and she’s going to leave Riz alone in this strange house on his first night.
She pauses with one leg swung out through the open window, a knee resting on the desk, and turns to Riz with an expectant smile. “Well?” She says. “You coming?”
In Riz’s lap a clean white page stares up at him, and he can’t think of anything to write that isn’t horrendously personal. So he follows Fig through the window, over the sloping roof onto a small widow’s walk, where she sits and looks up to the sky.
A few days ago the weather had officially crossed the threshold from summer into fall, and nights are cold now; through his thin t-shirt and shorts Riz feels the chill from the roofing tiles seep into his bones.
Fig loosens a shingle and reveals a small mint tin full of hand-rolled cigarettes. With the gentle click-hiss of a lighter, it starts releasing smoke out into the pristine night air, spicy and cutting. “Tell it to me again,” she says, almost inaudibly.
Riz slumps down against the roof. Above him, more stars than he’s ever seen before stretch into infinity. It’s not even objectively impressive: there’s more than plenty of light pollution on the island, but gone is the ever-present lavender tint that colors the sky in the city. Instead, the big dipper shines clear and bright, like a true compass.
“On June twelfth, Lucy Frostblade left her home at 9:30 and told her mother she was going to a sleepover at her friend’s house,” Riz begins. Fig lets out a soft puff of smoke. “As far as we know, she never made it.”
“And?”
“She was reported missing by dinner on the thirteenth.”
Fig sits, looking absently out towards the horizon, shrouded in darkness. In the dim light of the moon her face looks ghostly and pale. They stay out there until Fig’s cigarette burns down to a dull ember, just them and the stars. A chill wind blows through; after a long moment, Fig stubs out her cigarette on the peeling white paint of the widow’s walk fence. She stands, offering a hand to Riz. “I hope you crack it,” she says, with the mournful expression of someone who thinks otherwise.
“Yeah,” Riz says. “Me too.”
August 21. 10:50 PM.
Fig knows something, I think. I’m sure all of the teenagers in town do, or at least more about the personal lives of the suspects than the police do. Hopefully they accept me enough to actually open up. Sandralynn seems reluctant to house me, but I understand. I’ll try to monitor how much I eat to not add undue financial stress. I hope I can speak to the employees of the marina and the ferry drivers (captains?). I can tell that Fig hasn’t gone to sleep yet- she keeps shifting in the bed above me. I wonder if she’s as nervous as I am. With the window open and the fan off I can hear the boats in the marina. It sounds like a flagpole on a windy day, or maybe fifty flagpoles. Interesting, considering the marina is easily a half hour walk from here. Depending on where Lucy disappeared from, there’s a good chance that someone might have heard if there was a struggle, or if a boat left from the marina at an unusual hour.
Solace is isolated and the houses inland are all fairly separate from each other. Everyone here has lived in each others’ pockets for decades. I find it increasingly more difficult to believe that what happened to Lucy Frostblade wasn’t murder.