Unconditional
by Lucy Griset
I don’t know exactly when the ocean grew so angry.
I remember glassy days out on the bay in my little peeling-paint rowboat, paddling in circles, feeling the quiet wind on my face and the swell of the sea beneath me. I remember the joyful greetings of the gulls overhead, remember the docks and houses that lined the shore. Remember light and warmth and blue, blue, blue.
Now, everything is gray.
It began with the clouds. Their gentle white soured to a bruised shade of ash when I was a child, perhaps nine or ten, still carrying baby teeth and hope. The old radio in the general store told us the storm would clear in a matter of days. But the clouds never broke, and even when the rain stopped, the sun stayed in hiding.
In those first dark years, it didn’t seem so sinister. Surrounded by my family, by the people I’d known since my birth, I felt safe. Protected. The clouds were just clouds, and the rain was just rain. All of it was simply water. And I knew water better than I knew myself.
But the darkness didn’t end, and with each year, the island wilted further. The ocean grew hot and restless, clawing at our shores, driving away our lobsters and fish. The tourists no longer came in droves, swarming across the island in the sticky summertime as they once had. The schoolhouse grew emptier with each passing year. Families left, scared off by the shadows on the horizon.
My parents refused to even discuss leaving. They both came from island families, the old ones who used to own nearly the whole place once upon a time. Their swaths of land were broken up, so neither of my parents came into much money. Maybe, once, that mattered to us. Money can’t help us now.
It is raining. Some ancient beings finally decided to wash the stain of humanity off of the Earth. Water is in my mouth, my eyes. I am walking down the main road that slashes across the island, letting the rain lash against me with all of its ferocity. The island is angry. Tired. We have failed it in some inexplicable way, and this is how it is taking its revenge.
There is a rumble from behind me. I turn to see a red pickup truck, bright as a cherry or a drop of blood, a truck I know like a song that you can never quite get out of your head. This is Calder’s car, the one we both learned to drive in.
Calder pulls to a stop next to me and unrolls his window. His hair is damp and sticking up in the back. I anticipate his crooked half-smile and crooked nose before it comes into focus. I know the color of his eyes as well as I know the color of the sea.
And today, like the sea, his eyes are angry. He makes a poor imitation of a smile when he sees me, for my benefit. I am not deceived.
“Taking a walk?” he asks, but he’s not really here. His mind is crashing against the rocks, foaming and raving, drawing back only to roar forward again.
“Getting some fresh air,” I joke. He chuckles, but a moment too late. “Can I get a ride? I’m freezing.”
He nods, and I hurry around to slide into the passenger seat. He stares down at the steering wheel. His knuckles are white. The truck starts to move. I don’t ask where we’re going. His jaw is tight.
“Calder, what’s going on? Are you okay?” I push the wet hair back from my face. “You just seem—”
“We’re leaving.” The words tear out of him, bloody and raw. He finally looks at me, and I see the churning sea in his gaze. “My parents just told me. It’s getting worse and worse, and they don’t think it’s going to get better, and they’re— We’re leaving.”
All I taste is rain. My tongue is stone, and my body is sand, slowly eroding onto the floor. When I speak, my voice is the grating gravel beneath the truck’s tires. “When?” It isn’t enough, and I know that it’s not enough, but it’s all I have.
He swallows. “Today. They’ve been planning this for ages. They thought I’d fight them, so they didn’t tell me until now.” We fly around a corner at an unnecessary speed. I place a hand on his arm, and he slows the truck.
Lightning flashes in the sky above us, and as the thunder follows, it seems the island is being cleaved in two, the ground shaking and splitting and collapsing. The truck lurches on the road, and I cannot tell if it is us or the island moving.
We drive in silence, and for a heartbeat, I am grateful for the rain; it fills the quiet with its insistent drumming on the metal roof of the cab. Finally, I force out, “You should go.” A pause. Calder looks over at me, and the ocean in his eyes roils with hurt. I can’t look, or I’ll drown, sucked in by the undertow. “The island won’t last much longer. I can feel it. We’re running out of time. It isn’t safe here anymore.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Calder says quietly. “I don’t want to just abandon this place. It’s my home. I don’t want to die,” he adds quickly, “but I don’t want to run away. It isn’t hopeless like they say it is.”
Hope. What a volatile thing. “I don’t know, Calder.”
We arrive at the docks, and Calder parks in the lot beside the wreckage of the general store. It was reduced to driftwood and metal scraps a few months ago. There have been no efforts to rebuild.
The ocean is livid, clawing at the shore, hissing and rumbling. The rain cloaks us in cold. We walk to the end of the pier, the wood darkened with water. The waves rush in, in, in. They speak for us, but not to us. Not anymore.
“I love this place,” Calder murmurs. The rain flattens his hair into his eyes. He watches the ocean below us. “Even if it doesn’t love me.”
Another crack of lightning. The waves are ravenous, revenging. The pier seems to tremble with each collision of water and wood.
“We should go,” I blurt over the rising wind. “The storm’s picking up.”
Calder doesn’t move, and for a moment, I wish I could slow the storm until we were frozen, held in place, the rain trapped midair. We could stay on this pier, this island, indefinitely. The wind shoves against us, and I stumble. Calder steadies me with a firm grip on my arm, and we begin a hurried escape toward solid land. The pier is shaking. I have never known a storm like this. Fear shatters through me, fueling my legs. We break into a run, pounding out a sharp, staccato rhythm on the wooden boards.
I love this place, even if it doesn’t love me. It’s strange, I think, how unconditional we are. We give all we have to the island, and it’s not enough. Still, we cut ourselves open and bleed. The island drinks in our blood, and still it deems us unworthy.
We reach the parking lot, the cracked pavement and the remains of the general store, and I turn back to face the ocean. The rounded cobbles of the beach fill my throat, my lungs, and I am choking on nothing. Calder is shouting, but his words grow fins and dive into the water.
The clouds have broken open. Water fills my mouth. I am crying, or perhaps it’s just the rain.
Lightning cracks through my ribs, and the thunder that chases it tumbles the broken bits of bone inside of me into smooth pebbles. The waves grow legs and hooves and wild eyes, attacking, retreating, then attacking again. The island is splitting apart now, shaking and bucking and tearing. Calder reaches toward me, but I pull back, arms wrapped around my torso.
“Do we really have to leave?” The impossibility of things staying as they are compresses me into something sharp and shining and breakable.
I look up.
The ocean in his eyes stills as the real waves rise higher. His gaze is smooth, glassy. He’s crying. Or perhaps it’s just the rain. “Do we really have a choice?”
Lucy Griset
Lucy Griset wrote “Unconditional” while an eighth grader in Brunswick, Maine. Her piece was inspired by her climate anxieties and uncertainties about our planet’s future. She also drew inspiration from the time she spent every summer on Great Cranberry Island, the place that has always felt most like home to her. She has been involved in climate activism since she was a young child, and is now using her voice to make positive change in her communities. When not curled up with a new book or writing pointless poetry, she can be found skiing in the woods behind her house with her dog, playing guitar and singing, and rowing on the Androscoggin River.