Chasing Sunshine | JJ Maybank

7 // The Lucky Compass

Boat went down, seen anything?

Guys, bogey two o'clock.

Meg, you have to breathe.

This was my father's.

My eyes flew open sharply with a short gasp, and I had to stare at my bedroom ceiling until I felt my heartbeat return to normal. I had decided to sleep at my own house last night, thinking John B would most likely want to be alone after finding what we did on the Grady-White. Though truth be told, if there was ever a night I needed the familiarity of the Château, it was last night. This was easily the worst sleep I had gotten since my mother died; every bump outside or heavy snore from my father downstairs brought me tumbling back into consciousness. And even when I did manage to nod off for a few blissful seconds, the images and scenes from yesterday still plagued my dreams.

A quick glance at my phone informed me it was only 5 AM; the sky outside had just started to lighten in color and the birds had begun to rise, filling the air with soft chirping. Ultimately deciding I wasn't going back to bed, I groaned in frustration and rubbed the sleep from my eyes before swinging both legs to the floor and padding as quietly as I could to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

Adding a sweatshirt over my tank top to ward off any early morning chill, I slipped down the hallway to sneak out the front door. My bedroom was at the very back of the house, so I had to make it past the rest of the rooms, all while avoiding the floorboards I knew would creak loudly if stepped on. James's door was right next to mine; we shared a wall. A distant memory flitted to the forefront of my mind of two siblings tapping secret messages against that wall in a language only we understood. Some of them had changed meaning over the years as we had grown older, morphing to better suit our needs. For example, two taps of your fingers used to mean that Mom or Dad was coming to check on us, and to pretend to be asleep. Once we hit our teen years, that meant, 'Cover for me, I'm sneaking out.'

Others were purely informational. One tap: Are you okay? Two taps followed by a slide of your fingers: Yes. A finger slide and then two taps was: No. I know there must have been others, but the more obscure ones were lost to the gaps of childhood memory. It was an imperfect system, and things most definitely got lost in translation every now and again, but one specific one stood out among the rest. Its meaning had never changed; three taps was, 'I love you.'

I'm fairly confident Mom had figured out some of them, because every so often three of her fingers would drum against the breakfast table before we left for school, or against the door frame after she told us goodnight. The bedroom she and Dad had shared was still tightly shut, seeing as neither he or I had the courage to go in after we moved back. He's certain that if we just simply never mentioned her and erased any vestiges of her touch from the house, that eventually her memory would fade. Then maybe it wouldn't hurt so bad because then it would be like she never existed. Reality doesn't work like that though, and the denial was keeping me at a nauseating standstill; forced to carry on as normal, but unable to actually move forward. It was getting harder to remember what it was like before, when we were just simply, happy. I definitely missed simple.

I had most of today free since I worked the evening shift, so I chose to walk the familiar path to John B's and take the time to enjoy the peace and quiet. The sun was starting to make an appearance and slowly, the air grew warmer and the sky a lighter shade of blue. More birds joined the morning orchestra and I watched them flit around the tree branches joyfully. My peaceful stroll was interrupted by the angry rumble of a motorbike driving up behind me. Any avian life I had been observing scattered to higher ground, and I turned to see who it was, concerned for a moment when I saw the bike start to pull over next to me. But then I recognized the driver's messy blond hair and cheeky grin.