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“Georgina, you’re going to be fine. You’re the smartest person in our class, everyone loves you, and there are bound to be more girls who like girls over there than there are here. It’s a simple numbers game.”
She was born for oceanside bonfires, long gauzy dresses and uncombed hair, the scent of salt like a blanket you can’t peel off your skin. She was born for the smell of water, for the way it sank into your bones, stained your skin, dyed your blood a deep, salty blue.
every night is the first night of the rest of your life. Because the present is always the present and the only thing in front of us is the rest of our lives.”
“Are you happy at all?” she asked tentatively. “Of course I’m happy. Why wouldn’t I be happy?” “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you just find reasons not to be.”
And she was a Fernweh, to boot. We Fernwehs had to stick together. Even those of us without any powers. Like me.
“I know what you mean,” Colin agreed. “Like we’ve been waiting our whole lives and now it’s just around the corner.”
Oh, By-the-Sea, island of Fernwehs and everything I had ever known and loved. How I would miss you—every part of you—but especially the smell, always the smell: of salt, of brine, of water, of spells, of potions, of feathers, and of what it would mean to leave it all in just two months.
Now I think of him whenever it rains. And sometimes—though I know it’s impossible—it rains whenever I think of him.
When I was seventeen, I met a girl who’d traveled the world and had the kind of hair you wanted to just touch, just see what it felt like, and who when she talked to you stared so intently into your face that you felt just the tiniest bit like you were going to catch on fire.
Was this what it was going to be like off the island? In two months, when I left for college, was my entire dating life going to be a constant cycle of guessing and getting let down? And although I felt accepted here, I couldn’t help but wonder about life elsewhere. Would the people at my college be as accepting as the people on By-the-Sea? Would I know how to do this better? To navigate the weird is-this-a-date-or-isn’t-it?
“Do you regret traveling so much?” I asked. “I mean—do you wish you had somewhere you could say was home?” “I’ve always had my brother,”
“I think a person can be a home, sometimes, just as much as a place or a house can.
I wanted a hundred million things, but I knew how to ask for zero of them.
“What more could I want?” I said. But I think we both knew the answer to that question was: Lots lots lots lots lots.
That’s because you brought the sun with you to By-the-Sea; it follows you like a doting celestial body,
Because saying things out loud imbued them with a certain kind of power,
“Either way, I’m glad I came here. Bird or no bird,” Prue said. “Oh?” A translation of the word oh: WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME— “Because I met you,” she continued.
Except there weren’t any princes on By-the-Sea. We didn’t need princes; we saved ourselves.
In a family full of girls, you realize quickly that no girls are ordinary.
Once a Fernweh, always a Fernweh, no matter how far you flew.
because life could never be calm and easy, life always had to be scary and dangerous and mean.
“Of course it’s a fucking man. Men are always killing things. Okay.
“Well. Islands. The sea. Rain. Graveyards. Dead things. It’s hard not to feel poetic here.”
So I had absolutely no idea what it might be like to contemplate your sexuality under anything less than ideal conditions. I had no idea what things were like for Prue at home, what the rest of her family and friends were like. Did her friends know? What was it like to be Prue at that moment, quiet and thoughtful, her fingers tapping out some foreign rhythm on the bed. I wanted to hold her hand, to quiet the impulses that made it impossible for her to sit still, but I didn’t want to disrespect whatever music she heard.
I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs. They were small, small, small—
My mother’s eyes darkened. We hadn’t said the word yet. Words had power.
Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose what happens to her body.
On the island of By-the-Sea you could always smell two things: salt and magic.
