The Secret Sea Read online

  Sea.

  Secret Sea, said the voice again as Zak was hauled to his feet by two police officers and carried to a waiting ambulance.

  SIX

  They handcuffed him gently, and they handled him gently, too. No bruises; not even any sore muscles.

  As they pulled him away from the World Trade Center, the voice became softer, the image of the storm-mottled sky weaker. He closed his eyes tight, trying to focus beyond the voices of the cops, beyond their hands on him, trying desperately to hold tight to the voice and the ship and the storm.

  Close by, there was a police station. Or a police office. Or a police bunker. Zak wasn’t sure what the correct term was. By the time they got him there—and, truthfully, it was a matter of minutes, if that long—Zak had calmed considerably. He was a child in the arms of men with guns and nightsticks. At first he’d thrashed against them, mad for the voice, desperate to return to it. But it was ridiculous to fight them. He went limp and they carried him off and now he was in a small, badly lit room with pockmarked greenish walls. It smelled of old cigarettes, older coffee, and body odor.

  There was a steel loop bolted to the table, where, he imagined, they could attach a prisoner’s handcuffs, but they had removed his cuffs when they brought him in here.

  He was alone. He cradled his head in his hands.

  Think, Zak. Think it through.

  Alone again. He gritted his teeth together.

  The voice was gone, but his memories of it lingered, like a strong after-scent of perfume. Or sea air.

  A boat. There’d been a boat at the World Trade Center. He was sure of that.

  He was equally certain that the voice he’d heard—the voice he’d been hearing—was that of Tommy. His imaginary friend, no longer imaginary? Speaking of a secret sea, warning him not to tell. Talking about

  —look up—

  Yeah, that.

  He looked up from the table. There was a window cut into the wall opposite him, looking into a room much like this one. A boy of Zak’s age stared through the window. The boy wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama shirt much like Zak’s. He had a thatch of thick, black curly hair that needed to be cut, eyebrows that were a little too bushy, and a complexion like candied walnuts. He was startlingly familiar, and Zak felt a flush of embarrassment an instant later when he realized—duh—that the kid was, in fact, himself. That was no window—it was a mirror.

  He’d seen enough cop shows to know that someone was watching from the other side.

  Didn’t recognize myself. Didn’t recognize my own reflection. That can’t be good. That has to be a sign of serious crazy.

  The door opened, and a woman in a police uniform entered. She glanced at the mirror, then sat down across from Zak.

  “Hi, there. My name’s Judy. What’s yours?”

  Her nameplate read JEFFERSON. Judy Jefferson.

  He shrugged. “Zak.” He wondered exactly how much trouble he was in. If they didn’t know his last name, they couldn’t call his parents, right?

  “Zak. Zak what?”

  He said nothing.

  “Zak, I can’t have you shutting down like this. Do you know how you got here?”

  “The police brought me.”

  “Right, right. But do you know how you got to the World Trade Center?”

  He shrugged again.

  “We have some video footage and eyewitness testimony.…” She walked him through what the police knew—he’d emerged from the A train over on Fulton and walked, barefoot, to the World Trade Center, where he’d stopped. Some late-night pedestrians had seen him and summoned a police officer from a nearby kiosk. “You were very lucky,” she summed up. “You could have gotten hurt. Or been hurt.”

  Zak grimaced. He was all too aware of what could have happened to him. His parents drilled the dangers of the city into him at every turn, more so now that he would be traipsing off to school by himself every morning.

  “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” Judy asked. Translation: Are you always crazy, or is this a special occasion?

  Better not to say anything, maybe. He folded his arms over his chest and tried to think. Was there any way to get out of this without landing in serious trouble? Probably not. Once the police were involved, serious trouble seemed to be a bare minimum. But he had to try. If he could talk his way out of here and get home before Dad woke up and realized he was missing …

  The door opened just then, and a man in a rumpled business suit stepped inside. He nodded to Judy and then stood near the door, saying nothing.

  “Is there maybe someone I can call for you?” Judy asked. “Mom or Dad? A grandparent?”

  Gnawing his bottom lip, Zak pondered. He couldn’t just sit here all night and into the morning. He had to say something. But the idea of waking up one of his parents right now … No way. He had to avoid them.

  “You could call Khalid,” he blurted without thinking. But, yeah, that made sense. Khalid could get his parents to help out.

  “Khalid?” Judy and the business suited guy exchanged a glance. “Who’s Khalid?”

  “Khalid Shamoon,” Zak said. “I can’t remember his phone number.” Which was true—Khalid’s number was programmed into Zak’s cell and into the landline at the apartment. “It’s probably under his father’s name. Ozzie Shamoon.”

  “Ozzie,” Judy repeated.

  “It’s his nickname. Short for Osama.”

  Judy’s eyes widened, and the man by the door snorted a snort that seemed to say, Are you kidding me? But he walked out, leaving Zak alone with Judy again. She asked if he was hungry or thirsty. He asked for a glass of water, and a uniformed police officer brought one a minute later, without Judy’s moving a muscle. Zak knew he was being watched through the mirror, but this proof of it was still unnerving.

  He waited for the man in the business suit to return, but he didn’t. The next time the door opened, it was Zak’s dad, bleary eyed and wearing jeans with a T-shirt and an expression that told Zak that the police were the very, very least of his problems.

  * * *

  Of course Mr. Shamoon had called Dad as soon as he heard from the cops. Of course. Just like a grown-up. You couldn’t trust anyone over eighteen. That was the kid code. He wasn’t angry at Mr. Shamoon for tattling on him; he was angry at himself for thinking Mr. Shamoon wouldn’t in the first place.

  Dad signed some papers and talked to some cops and then hustled him into a cab outside. Zak felt a strong tug in the direction of the Freedom Tower and had to clutch the frame of the cab to force himself inside.

  The sky was just lightening over the East Village as they drove across town toward the East River. Dad told the driver to take the Manhattan Bridge, then sighed heavily. Zak waited for him to say something, but nothing came. The silence was awful.

  “Are you going to tell Mom?” Zak asked after an extended quiet.

  Dad laughed without mirth, a short, miserable bark. “Am I going to tell Mom? Are you really asking me that, Zak? Of course I’m telling your mother. What do you think this is? Some kind of guy thing? I let you run around the city at all hours and keep it between us? Are you crazy?”

  Dad’s tone—acerbic and angry—hurt almost as much as his last question. Zak wanted to snap, You’re the one who’s making me see a shrink—you tell me if I’m crazy! But instead he pulled himself into a ball and huddled against the door, as far away from his father as possible. He’d never heard his dad so upset.

  “What were you thinking?” Dad insisted, glaring at Zak. “What made you think you could just sneak out of the house and gallivant around the city like that? What are you doing, Zak? What is going through your mind when you pull something like this?”

  Zak could have answered, but he was afraid the answer would only make things worse. Because telling his father that he hadn’t “pulled” anything, that he hadn’t thought he could “just sneak out of the house,” that he hadn’t made any decisions at all …

  That would be lik
e admitting to his father that he was crazy. Might as well ask to be fitted for a straitjacket and locked up in Bellevue, where they sent the crazy people.

  “This isn’t cool, Zak,” Dad said, his eyes troubled, his expression pained. “Your mom … This is going to kill your mother. Of all the places in the city to go, you had to go to Ground Zero. The place she hates more than anything else in the world.”

  Right. Mom’s brother. He’d died there way back before Zak was born, back in 2001, when what was now one tower had been two. Twins. Zak had seen them on old TV shows and in old movies. Mom’s brother had died—

  Tomás.

  Mom’s brother … Zak’s dead uncle.

  His name had been Tomás.

  “You mean Uncle Tomás, right?” Zak asked, his voice barely a whisper. He was hoping to be wrong. He was hoping that he’d remembered the name wrong, that it wasn’t Tomás.…

  “Yeah, Tomás.” Dad was wistful, for a moment bled of his anger. Remembering.

  Tomás. Thomas. Tommy.

  Zak held his head in his hands. What is going on? What’s going on in me?

  SEVEN

  His parents usually argued quietly, and Zak was pretty sure they thought he couldn’t hear them at those times, even though he could.

  Now, though, they weren’t even trying to be quiet.

  Two days after his sleepwalking experience, through the closed door of Dr. Campbell’s office, Zak could hear his mother’s voice—high, trembling—competing with his father’s—deeper, slower. They’d been yelling at each other for a good five minutes straight, according to the clock on the wall.

  “—can’t even keep him in the apartment, much less the borough!” That was Mom.

  “You try watching a kid when you’re asleep at three in the morning!” Dad.

  They went back and forth. Accusing. Defending. Zak put his hands over his ears, but he could still hear them. Maybe he should have told them the truth. Maybe he should have told them about Tommy, the voice, the boat, the dream. The sleepwalking. But every time he considered it, the truth seemed too enormous and too fluid to contain, as if he’d tried to gather the ocean in his arms and lift it up out of the world.

  He couldn’t tell them anything, so he’d told them nothing. And so they argued.

  They were arguing because of him. When they’d divorced, they spent a lot of time telling him it wasn’t his fault. He’d gotten used to hearing them argue, dismissing it as Parent Stuff. But this time it was his fault that they were yelling at each other. His fault and nothing more.

  Dr. Campbell interrupted them. Zak could hear her voice, low and murmured, but he couldn’t make out the words. His parents’ voices eventually went mute, and a moment later the door opened.

  Mom’s makeup was a mess, cried into a frozen mask that made Zak think of old Native American warriors he’d seen in movies. Dad’s eyes were bloodshot. They both looked like they wanted to be anywhere but in Dr. Campbell’s outer office, anywhere but near each other and Zak.

  “Zak? Come on in and let’s talk a bit, hmm?” Dr. Campbell beckoned from just inside the door.

  Zak had to force himself to stand, to walk past his parents. They’d never hit him or spanked him, but these days he figured he was headed in that direction. He probably deserved it, too. If he had a kid who’d done what he’d done, he’d seriously consider giving him a good smack.

  Inside, with the door closed behind him, he was still keenly aware of his parents just on the other side of the wall. The wastebasket was filled with tissues.

  He took the sofa again. Dr. Campbell sat across from him. She drew a deep breath and then smiled at him.

  “So, we decided to go walkabout, eh?”

  Zak wasn’t sure what that meant; he shrugged.

  “Walkabout is something the Aborigines do in Australia. They leave their villages or their towns on foot, and they wander in the wilderness until they have a vision from what they call Dreamtime.”

  Zak startled at the description, then tried to mask his surprise. That sounded scarily like what had happened to him. Except he hadn’t intended to “go walkabout.” It had just happened to him.

  Dr. Campbell noticed his reaction, though. “Is that what happened, Zak?” she asked very softly. So softly, he knew, that his parents wouldn’t be able to hear. “Were you looking for something?”

  He said nothing.

  “Was there something you needed to find?”

  Still nothing.

  “Did you find it?”

  The cry of the gulls. Trim the sails! The storm overhead.

  The Secret Sea.

  Tommy.

  What could he tell her?

  He couldn’t tell her anything.

  Don’t tell. That’s what the voice said, the voice of his imaginary friend, or maybe the voice of his long-dead uncle, dead before Zak was even born.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zak said quietly.

  Dr. Campbell nodded slowly and wrote something on her pad for the first time.

  * * *

  At home, decisions were made outside of Zak’s earshot, and the next thing he knew, Dad was packing up, even though he still had four days left in his week. Mom was taking over.

  “Bedroom. Now,” she said as soon as Dad left.

  It was two in the afternoon. Zak didn’t protest. He resisted the urge to slam his door.

  He scrounged for the old iPod and plugged in the earbuds. A moment later, his best friend’s long, thin face filled the screen.

  “Hey, man, what’s going on? You still grounded?”

  “They have to invent a new word for what’s happening to me. Grounded doesn’t begin to cover it. Tell your dad I’m sorry I woke him up the other day.”

  “He was already up. For Fajr.”

  That was even worse; he’d interrupted Mr. Shamoon’s morning prayers.

  “Hey, look, Khalid, can I—”

  “Oh, hey! Moira’s on! Hang on!”

  Before Zak could say anything else, a still image of Moira popped up as she loaded into the conversation. Zak couldn’t help himself—he grinned as soon as he saw her. That was his default reaction to Moira, and even as depressed as he was at that moment, he still grinned.

  An instant later, the image moved and she was on with them.

  “Now, laddie,” Moira said, mimicking her old Irish brogue, “why are ye misbehavin’ so? Don’tcha want to be playin’ and gambolin’ with your wee friends in these fine summer days before school’s startin’ again?”

  She was laying it on pretty thick to amuse him. It wasn’t quite the same as Mrs. O’Grady, but it still made him feel a lot better. “I’m trying, believe me. I’m trying.”

  “What happened?” Khalid asked. He was always the one who put the camera too close to his face; now he was so eager and so excited that he had positioned it mere inches away, and Zak and Moira had a distressingly close look at his upper lip and nostrils. “I heard Pop and Mom talking about it, but I didn’t get the whole thing.”

  “What did they say?”

  Khalid’s image moved in a way that made Zak think he’d shrugged. “Not much. Just that maybe I shouldn’t hang with you so much for now.”

  Not much. Not much? That was everything!

  “Fortunately, we’re not listening to parents these days, are we?” Moira chimed in.

  “Why start now?” Khalid asked.

  Zak could only nod. His throat had clogged, and he couldn’t speak.

  “So, you went to the tower,” Moira said. “What’s going on, Zak?” Her voice had lost its playfulness. Khalid would be concerned but never let on; Moira wasn’t afraid to get serious.

  Zak shook his head and swallowed down the ball of hot emotion that had congealed in his throat. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

  Khalid furrowed his brow. Moira frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “If he doesn’t want to talk about—”

  “Was I as
king you, Khalid?”

  “I think I sleepwalked.” He was grateful to Khalid for trying to spare him, but also grateful to Moira for making him talk about it. He had the two best best friends in the world. “I don’t remember anything before waking up there.”

  His friends absorbed that for a moment. If that freaked them out—and it should, shouldn’t it?—then what would they say if he told them the rest? If he told them about Tommy and Tomás and the boat and the gulls and the storm and the sky?

  “Well, that’s new,” Khalid said.

  “Are you sure you sleepwalked?” Moira’s bottom lip was chapped and rough from her constant gnawing at it; she had it between her teeth now as she thought through the situation. “Maybe someone came and took you—”

  That was even scarier than the idea that he’d sleepwalked! “No. The cops have video of me going in and out of the subway.”

  All three fell silent and pondered that. Zak decided to risk a little more.

  “Do you guys know anything about boats?”

  “My people have the ship of the desert, the camel!” Khalid chortled in a very broad, fake, heavy accent, clearly glad for an opportunity to joke.

  “I mean real boats, like sailing ships.”

  “Why?” Moira asked.

  “Well, this might seem crazy, but I just have this feeling that there was a boat there.”

  “Where?”

  He hesitated but then told them: “Where I was. At the tower.”

  If they’d all been in the same room, he was certain that at this point Khalid and Moira would have exchanged a worried look. Instead, they both just nodded on his screen and looked away from their cameras for a moment.

  Before anyone could speak again, Zak heard his mother’s tread on the creaky hardwood floor outside his door. He signed off quickly and hid the iPod just as Mom opened his door.

  “Dinner,” she said, clearly leaving him no other option.

  * * *

  Dad had made empanadas and left them in the fridge the day before, so Mom heated them up for dinner. She sat at one end of the table and picked and pecked at her food, a sight that set Zak’s parent alarm off. Mom couldn’t live with Dad or love him anymore, but she’d always liked his cooking. “On our first date,” she’d told Zak once, years ago, “your father cooked chicken mole and brought it to my apartment in the Village. He thought it was the way to my heart, and I guess he was right. It was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen.”