“The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea”
FictionBy Sheila HetiJanuary 19, 2025Photograph by Eva O’Leary for The New YorkerThere was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys’ ship would not be attending. It almost wasn’t worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys’ ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.The best thing about liking a boy was that it filled in all your time. You could lie on your bed and listen to music for an entire afternoon, daydreaming about him, feelings travelling deliciously all throughout your body. Without a boy to like, you were liable to spend your energy spreading gossip and causing drama among the other girls, just to have something to think about and do.Read an interview with the author for the story behind the story.Sebastien wasn’t any normal boy. He was a technophobe. This meant that very few girls could get close to him. In person, he wore huge headphones at all times, so he was very difficult to approach. It was a big deal that he liked—or maybe liked, or at least was writing—Dani. Somehow, she had slipped through the cracks of his consciousness, which she believed to be a moral, self-protective, and upright place. Sebastien’s pant legs were the perfect width. His mother was a nurse. He liked music made in generations long ago. She didn’t know much more than that, but she didn’t need to know much more than that. The last time she had seen him, on the girls’ ship, she had experienced a sudden, warm drop in her stomach. She hadn’t known of his existence before he entered the dining hall, where their eyes had met, and that was when she felt the warm drop. It was the first time a boy had made her feel that way. She had the attention deficit disorder, but she was able to think about Sebastien for hours on end. Surely this was good for her brain. Maybe it was even making her smarter. Thinking about Sebastien, she could lose all sense of time and space.Now Dani knocked on the door of the cabin that Lorraine and the delicate Flora shared. When Flora opened the door, Dani rushed in and fell on Flora’s bunk, dramatically throwing the flyers everywhere.“What’s the point of the talent show now? You’ve heard the news, haven’t you?” she asked them.“Yes,” Lorraine said, turning from her desk and regarding Dani with pity. Lorraine had the moral superiority of a girl who had never been in love. “Now you won’t know if some boy with a girlfriend likes you.”Dani made significant eye contact with Flora. Surely Flora understood. The point wasn’t to learn whether Sebastien liked her—he probably didn’t even know what his feelings were. No, the point was to experience the warm drop or something similar. She was eager to have more of those same feelings, the very feelings that inspired verse and song. The point was not the pedantic collection of information. Only Lorraine would think that.“Sebastien wouldn’t be writing Dani letters if he didn’t like her,” Flora said. Flora was one of those rare people who had the beautiful quality of the middle pedal of a piano, as if everything that came from her, sounds and gestures, was slightly dampened or softened.“Where’s the worth in being liked by a two-timing bastard?” Lorraine asked.Podcast: The Writer’s VoiceListen to Sheila Heti read “The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea.”This hurt Flora, whose father was a philanderer.To put an end to the conversation, Dani stood up and began collecting her flyers off the floor. “I was just being silly. Of course he likes Erica. He went to kindergarten with Erica. Who’s going to dislike someone they went to kindergarten with?”A photograph of Audrey hung above her former bunk. Audrey had been Lorraine and Flora’s roommate before she was dropped off in London for a movie shoot. She was a popular child actress, and she liked looking at her own face. Flora had kept the photograph up, even after Audrey left the ship. It had become a joke, but also an oracle.“I think I’d better ask Audrey,” Dani said, and she climbed the ladder to Audrey’s bunk and bowed down before the picture. “Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar. What is the situation with Sebastien and Erica? Is it true love?” Even Lorrain
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys’ ship would not be attending. It almost wasn’t worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys’ ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
The best thing about liking a boy was that it filled in all your time. You could lie on your bed and listen to music for an entire afternoon, daydreaming about him, feelings travelling deliciously all throughout your body. Without a boy to like, you were liable to spend your energy spreading gossip and causing drama among the other girls, just to have something to think about and do.
Sebastien wasn’t any normal boy. He was a technophobe. This meant that very few girls could get close to him. In person, he wore huge headphones at all times, so he was very difficult to approach. It was a big deal that he liked—or maybe liked, or at least was writing—Dani. Somehow, she had slipped through the cracks of his consciousness, which she believed to be a moral, self-protective, and upright place. Sebastien’s pant legs were the perfect width. His mother was a nurse. He liked music made in generations long ago. She didn’t know much more than that, but she didn’t need to know much more than that. The last time she had seen him, on the girls’ ship, she had experienced a sudden, warm drop in her stomach. She hadn’t known of his existence before he entered the dining hall, where their eyes had met, and that was when she felt the warm drop. It was the first time a boy had made her feel that way. She had the attention deficit disorder, but she was able to think about Sebastien for hours on end. Surely this was good for her brain. Maybe it was even making her smarter. Thinking about Sebastien, she could lose all sense of time and space.
Now Dani knocked on the door of the cabin that Lorraine and the delicate Flora shared. When Flora opened the door, Dani rushed in and fell on Flora’s bunk, dramatically throwing the flyers everywhere.
“What’s the point of the talent show now? You’ve heard the news, haven’t you?” she asked them.
“Yes,” Lorraine said, turning from her desk and regarding Dani with pity. Lorraine had the moral superiority of a girl who had never been in love. “Now you won’t know if some boy with a girlfriend likes you.”
Dani made significant eye contact with Flora. Surely Flora understood. The point wasn’t to learn whether Sebastien liked her—he probably didn’t even know what his feelings were. No, the point was to experience the warm drop or something similar. She was eager to have more of those same feelings, the very feelings that inspired verse and song. The point was not the pedantic collection of information. Only Lorraine would think that.
“Sebastien wouldn’t be writing Dani letters if he didn’t like her,” Flora said. Flora was one of those rare people who had the beautiful quality of the middle pedal of a piano, as if everything that came from her, sounds and gestures, was slightly dampened or softened.
“Where’s the worth in being liked by a two-timing bastard?” Lorraine asked.
Podcast: The Writer’s Voice
Listen to Sheila Heti read “The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea.”
This hurt Flora, whose father was a philanderer.
To put an end to the conversation, Dani stood up and began collecting her flyers off the floor. “I was just being silly. Of course he likes Erica. He went to kindergarten with Erica. Who’s going to dislike someone they went to kindergarten with?”
A photograph of Audrey hung above her former bunk. Audrey had been Lorraine and Flora’s roommate before she was dropped off in London for a movie shoot. She was a popular child actress, and she liked looking at her own face. Flora had kept the photograph up, even after Audrey left the ship. It had become a joke, but also an oracle.
“I think I’d better ask Audrey,” Dani said, and she climbed the ladder to Audrey’s bunk and bowed down before the picture. “Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar. What is the situation with Sebastien and Erica? Is it true love?” Even Lorraine couldn’t help glancing at the picture. At that moment, a bright white beam of sunlight came in through the porthole and struck Audrey’s left eye.
“It’s a no! Audrey said no! ” Dani cried joyfully, jumping down from the bunk. This confirmation of the lack of true love between Sebastien and Erica was even better than if she’d learned that the boys’ ship had changed course and would be visiting their ship on the night of the show. It was so rare for Audrey to speak, and to speak as unequivocally as that!
“So what if he doesn’t see you sing,” Flora enthused. “He loves you, so he’ll imagine it. And because he won’t be seeing you in a few weeks, he’ll long for you more.” Flora had no idea what she was talking about. “He’ll imagine you, and whatever he imagines will be much better than you actually are.”
“It’s true,” Dani said. “He’ll imagine the best girl possible and think it’s me!”
“Audrey didn’t say that he loved Dani. She said it wasn’t true love with Erica.” Lorraine felt it was important to be precise. Even if she didn’t believe in the Oracle, the picture of Audrey was in her cabin, which put it under her jurisdiction.
“I wish I liked someone as much as you like Sebastien,” Flora said dreamily as Dani began to leave. She didn’t even care whether Lorraine heard. Flora was used to Lorraine’s stringent disapproval and no longer tried to hide from it.
That night, there was a mood of dismay in the dining hall. The St. Alwynn girls had been at sea for three months now. They looked gloomily into their pea soup, gloomily at their plates of meat and potatoes and peas. The chandeliers shook gently with the motion of the waves, sending shadows dancing in a nauseating rhythm all throughout the room. Lorraine felt smug. She was strong and bespectacled and had a serious expression that the other girls interpreted as an inability to adopt the carefree attitude, which was true: she wasn’t carefree. She was deliberate, introspective, and highly suspicious. She was glad the boys’ ship wouldn’t be visiting. She had been dreading watching the girls become so crazy in the weeks leading up to the visit, as had happened the time before. She couldn’t understand how anyone could value the attention of a boy so highly—a boy who was nothing special, which was obvious to everyone but the girl with the crush. It was bizarre that a girl could esteem one boy so highly while not caring a thing about the rest, yet be unable to see that the boy she liked was exactly like all the rest—just as undeserving of worry or care. It was a cognitive distortion, of which humans had so many. They had learned about this in social-studies class, but somehow only she was immune. It’s what keeps the species going, Lorraine understood. She felt privileged not to be at the whim of species blindness, that she could choose what to think.
“Girls!” their headmistress, Madame Ghislaine, called. She was standing at the teachers’ table. A hush fell over the dining hall as the girls looked up.
“There has been a rumor that the boys’ ship will not be attending the talent show,” she said, “and I must confirm this rumor as true.” Madame Ghislaine paused. “Since they won’t be coming, there’s no point in showcasing our talents.” She looked around, searching the girls’ hollow eyes for any hint of protest. Sensing only a general deflation, she concluded, “We’ll use our energies to knit socks for the soldiers instead. A talent show during wartime is a frivolity, anyway.”
It was Madame Ghislaine who had come up with the idea of bringing the girls onto a ship where they would be safe from the bombings, and, once she’d had the idea, she had called the principal of a nearby boys’ school and proposed he do the same. It was never suggested that they would charter the same ship; at that age, boys and girls had to be kept separate. Some parents preferred to keep their children at home rather than having them board a ship and be sent to sea until the war’s end. That was why a school of two hundred and sixty girls had been reduced to a school of forty-three. You’d think more parents would have wanted to take advantage of Madame Ghislaine’s solution, but many of them had chalets or homes in other countries, and simply took their children there. Only the families that did not have second homes or relations in distant lands sent their daughters onto the ship. Same with the boys’ ship, which was carrying twenty-two boys. Sebastien, of course, Greg, Terry, Jason, Raif . . . Madame Ghislaine had received a star pin from the government for coming up with the idea and implementing it. Naturally, there had been newspaper articles written about privilege and waste, about how these schools were polluting the sea, and how it was unfair. Madame Ghislaine wasn’t bothered by the articles. She cared about the girls.
The principals agreed that, for the sake of sanity, their ships should meet every month so the boys and girls could socialize, as they would have done on land. A large drawbridge sort of contraption was loaded onto the girls’ ship, and it could be unfolded in such a way that the other end landed on the boys’ ship, so the boys could walk across it. That, or they could dock in the same port. But there was a lot of paperwork involved in docking, so staying in the middle of the ocean and using the gangplank seemed best. The boys liked hearing the fighter planes thrilling through the skies, and would sneak out in the night and stand on the deck and watch the colorful lights of the planes flying overhead, but the majority of the girls had little interest in leaving their warm beds and standing in the cold air and staring up into the sky, unless it was to search for shooting stars. It was hard to tell the difference, though, between shooting stars and planes that had been shot down and were now falling heavily into the ruby-dark sea.
Dani had terrible manners, but she was wily and could get people to do her bidding. In fact, it was probably because she lacked any sense of social correctness that she was able to pull off her plans. She did not feel any hesitation in manipulating the other girls. There was some higher good she always had in mind—the higher good of things happening. She was the one who’d told the girls that Audrey was an Oracle and had first demonstrated her use.
That evening, Flora and Dani were in the activities room, sitting on spindly chairs, explaining to Gala, Pip, and a handful of others what had happened earlier in the day. “The left eye flashed,” Dani told them, “immediately after I asked if it was true love between Sebastien and Erica.” Nobody needed to ask who Erica was; everyone knew she was Sebastien’s girlfriend, who either was or was not standing in Dani’s way.
“That doesn’t mean that Audrey is an oracle,” a small girl ventured.
Flora grew nervous. It was important that the girls continued to believe in the Oracle. As she wanted to one day know everything, it was necessary that she be privy to all the intimate questions that came fluttering heavily from each of the girls’ hearts.
“I think it makes sense,” Gala said, gently. “Signs have always appeared in the form of natural things like lightning, or birds landing somewhere. Just because it was ordinary sunlight doesn’t mean we should take it any less seriously as a sign.” Gala was sulkily pretty, and she loved the Greek myths. She loved them so much that it was almost revolting to the others, a sign of some deeper perversion.
“It sounds like wishful thinking to me,” said Lorraine, annoyed. She thought Dani was an attention whore. “Of course Dani doesn’t have a chance with Sebastien. He has a girlfriend! Is everyone here an idiot?”
“A lot of people cheat,” said Flora, who knew it from her own family. The fact that her father had cheated on her mother so flagrantly and frequently made Flora feel as if she were already sexually active, or at least had more experience than the other girls, although she had none. “Some people like having double lives. It turns them on. They don’t feel quite right unless they have a secret.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes. She could see right through Flora—the way she tried to turn her father’s affairs into some sort of tragic status for herself. “Shut up, Flora,” she said. “We’re talking about a thirteen-year-old boy, not your father.”
Flora, hurt, shut up.
It was time for evening prayers. The girls were in their bunks, in their linen nightgowns, and as they lay, Madame Ghislaine’s calming voice came from the ship’s loudspeakers. She began:
And, since she was aspiring to be a great war poet, she tried out this one:
On Monday morning, the girls woke to the disembodied voice of Madame Ghislaine, welcoming them to the day. They had half an hour until breakfast. The girls washed their private parts in the sinks. They pulled on their bloomers and bras—those who wore them—buttoned their starched shirts, tied their ties and knotted them tightly, pulled up their blue socks and laced their oxfords, slipped into their navy tunics, and fastened their fabric belts. Some pulled on cardigans, while others wore red blazers. They brushed their hair, looking in the inadequate mirrors, then left their cabins for the dining hall. Breakfast that day was oatmeal with dried toppings, orange juice, and wilting bananas. It was the last of the bananas. They didn’t keep fresh at sea.
That morning, Flora had awoken from terrible dreams about her naked mother dying, writhing beneath a street light. Sitting at breakfast, soaked in the feeling of the dream, she felt a terrible, rising humiliation. It had been wrong to speak about her father as she had done the day before. One’s family troubles should be kept private, even if one’s classmates already knew everything. She didn’t have to keep reminding them! Obviously she kept bringing up her father because she thought it would give her a certain cachet—the cachet of maturity. But the other girls didn’t respect her for it. They didn’t think she knew more than they did or that she was sophisticated. They thought of her as slightly soiled, as if she came from a messy home. Yet somehow she believed that if she could only present the story of her father’s infidelities in the right way, she would win the approval she was looking for. But it had not once worked out! Their reactions were nowhere in the neighborhood of awe. Now she vowed, over oatmeal, to never bring him up again. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep this promise without some sort of cosmic help, she stood up from her plate and went over to where Dani was sitting. Although you were not supposed to get up during breakfast, there was something about Flora that was a little bit invisible, and she managed to get to Dani unnoticed.
“I need to speak to Audrey.”
“Now?”
“Yes, before class.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Dani, who had early on made the rule that, when speaking to the Oracle, one always had to have a witness.
Five minutes later, they were in Flora’s cabin.
“What do you want to ask her? Or do you want me to ask?” Dani secretly felt that it would work better if she, Dani, asked, but she was trying not to be too pushy. “Maybe I’d better ask,” she offered.
“All right.”
Dani began setting herself up on Audrey’s bunk. “Well?”
Flora hadn’t quite formulated her question. “I guess . . . ask her . . . if at the end of my life I will be vindicated, if this will all make sense—the way my father lived—and whether it will prove to have been a good thing . . . in a way I can’t yet understand.”
Dani bowed down before the picture, which with its sweet smile said, Audition me!
“Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar: Will any good come of Flora’s father being a philanderer—good for Flora, that is? Is all this leading her somewhere great?”
The girls looked closely at the picture, which rippled a little bit on the left side, possibly from Dani’s breath.
“I think the left side rippled,” Dani said. “That’s a no.”
“Right. O.K. Thanks anyway.”
Dani climbed down from the bunk, and they left the room together. Dani didn’t know what to say. She liked to orchestrate good things, but when the good things she was orchestrating went bad, she wasn’t sure what to do. She suddenly felt that none of this was her responsibility, that Flora had some bad luck attached to her. She didn’t want to be near her anymore.
“Bye,” Dani said and turned down a corridor toward her classroom.
Flora pushed herself into the nearest washroom, locked the door, and began to cry. The Oracle had confirmed what she had suspected all along: some bad things were simply bad and couldn’t be confectioned into something sweet just because you wanted them to be. Her father was a bastard, he caused her mother to suffer, he brought shame on all of them and just didn’t care. She would have to find a man like that when she was older and suffer the same pain as her mother, because that was what the women in her family were made for: humiliation and suffering. She would find a gorgeous roué and allow him every license, and have a daughter and name her Flora, and send her to a school on the sea. And now she felt that she was not herself but her daughter, and in this way she was able to comfort herself, saying, “Silly girl, there is more to life than what the man you married—or your father—gets up to. There is a whole world outside the shame a man brings upon a woman, a world far from that. Ignore the man, forget about him, he’s smaller than a bug. You are bigger than he is. You are beautiful and bright and shining and tall.” Even though she was not tall, she did stop crying. Then she left the bathroom and went to class.
After dinner that evening, the letters were handed around. Madame Ghislaine pulled them from the canvas mailbag one by one, calling out names. The chosen girl would then rush from her seat and collect her letter, secreting it inside her pocket for later, or else she would hurry to her seat, where she would rip it open, or else she would wander slowly back to her seat, reading it as she walked. Dani was in this last camp. Receiving her envelope, she saw at once that it was from Sebastien, and, removing the letter, she scanned the page while weaving blindly between tables and chairs, knocking into one girl who, hurrying to collect her own letter, cried out, “Hey! Watch it, Dani!” Dani was bathed in glorious feelings, so she didn’t snap back. She merely glanced up and smiled vaguely.
Then she was back at her seat with her head bowed low as the other girls watched her closely, trying to guess from her expression what Sebastien had written. Dani gazed up at them. “Do you want to hear?”
They nodded intently.
“Dear Dani,” she read, in her most musical voice. “It’s another boring day on the ship. Last night we had turkey with gravy, and cake for dessert since it was Marcel’s birthday. The cake wasn’t even all that good. Marcel received a box of chocolates from his parents, and he gave some to me. I have been practicing Prince songs. Hopefully I’m getting better. Erica sent me some gum, thirty dollars, and a few paperback books that I wanted—plus a Kurt Vonnegut. Have you ever read him? I can send them when I’m done. I miss being able to go into a corner store to buy something. I miss pizza. I miss the basketball court. But most of all, I miss Erica. Yours, Sebastien.”
The girls looked blankly at one another. It was a very mysterious letter. On the one hand, he said he missed Erica. On the other, there was that “yours,” and just the fact that he had written her at all. One of the girls suggested that his mention of Erica could be seen as proof of his strong feelings for Dani; he was using Erica as a mask to hide them, so as not to seem too vulnerable, too available, too needy. They generally agreed that the letter seemed to confirm the Oracle’s revelation that Sebastien didn’t love Erica. But, Lorraine suggested, “it’s also possible to interpret the letter the other way: that he loves Erica and doesn’t give a shit about Dani.”
“Then why is he writing me?!” Dani shouted, slamming the letter on the table, her heart beating faster.
“Boredom, distraction, he likes to be liked, it’s good for his ego to get letters from you—there’s a million reasons.”
Flora nodded to herself: it was even possible for Sebastien to have no feelings about Dani and also no feelings about Erica, but since none of the other girls had suggested this, she decided to keep quiet. Anyway, none of them would have believed it. A boy had to love someone, so it was either Erica or Dani. “What if there’s a second girls’ ship,” Flora said, “and he’s writing a third girl, not just Dani and Erica?”
The girls rolled their eyes. Here again was Flora with her messed-up vision of the world because of her messed-up home.
“There’s not a fucking third girl he’s writing!” Dani shrieked. “Why did I even read you the letter! There’s a special energy between Sebastien and I, an intimacy, I can feel it!”
“Where?” Lorraine asked.
“In the feeling of it! In the handwriting! He misses pizza, he misses Erica, he misses spending money in stores. The thing he doesn’t say but wants to say but is implied is that he’s also missing me!”
This sounded plausible to Pip, who was willing to believe anything, as long as it was good. She was like a little yellow bird whose very being lifted all of their spirits—just the fact that someone like Pip could exist. “I think Dani’s right,” she said in her delicate voice, as if pitched with silver. “He also mentioned chocolates and cake. He’s trying to pass these good things on to Dani. Or he’s saying that she’s good, like they are.”
Lorraine cried, “You nitwit!” She was the only one who wasn’t charmed by Pip’s pure heart. “Has a boy ever sent you a letter, dummy?”
“No.”
“Then shut up! Why are you all so interested in Dani’s life? Have you nothing better to do? Dani could be reading books, she could be making out with Emma”—the reputed lesbian—“she could be knitting socks for the war effort. Instead, you’re encouraging her in this ridiculous infatuation, this colossal waste of time and energy!”
Pip looked at Lorraine with her strange, rare openness. “You really think he doesn’t like her?”
“The simplest explanation is that he loves Erica, and for whatever stupid boy reasons he’s decided to write Dani.”
Dani began breathing more shallowly, her face growing pale. The other girls crowded around her, saying that Lorraine didn’t know what she was talking about; did Lorraine have a boyfriend? Was Lorraine getting letters from the boys’ ship? Dani should trust the Oracle.
“Maybe we could clarify what the letter means,” Flora suggested.
“No!” Lorraine cried. “You can only ask it your question once! Dani would only be asking what she asked already: whether Sebastien likes her.”
“The last time she asked if Sebastien loved Erica,” Flora corrected.
Dani agreed. “There’s a difference. Let’s go.”
So Dani, Flora, and Pip left the dining hall, while Lorraine went disgustedly off to the lounge.
Back in Flora’s cabin, Pip pressed her body against the wall that was farthest from Audrey’s bunk. She had never seen the Oracle at work and felt a tiny bit scared.
Flora offered, “I have a candle, Dani. Maybe it would help if you held it?” Flora, who was Jewish, had a thing for lighting candles.
Dani gratefully agreed. She perched herself on Audrey’s bunk, took the lit candle from Flora, and, squeezing her eyes shut, slowed down her breathing. “Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar,” she intoned, as a little bubble of wax rolled down the candle and onto her palm. “Ow! Does Sebastien like-like me?”
As the three girls watched, the flame suddenly flickered, catching Audrey’s right eye.
“It’s a yes!” Dani cried. Pip squealed and clapped her hands, and Flora squeezed Pip’s arm, laughing with relief. It wasn’t that they cared so much about Sebastien; they just liked love. If Dani could get love, any of them could. It was a prize for every one of them! It was a fact of life that you couldn’t learn anything from a boy‚ not directly. You had to ask an Oracle. Oracles understood boys and could tell you what they were thinking. Boys had no idea, or else they were too selfish to say.
While all of this was happening, Lorraine was sitting in the lounge, watching the nightly news. Things were getting worse. More people had died, and hate was spreading in all sorts of ways. When people are being bombed from the sky, the hardest thing in the world is to not begin hating someone. Yet none of the people who had new hates felt remotely ashamed. Hating was good, for it meant you cared. It meant you were involved, whether you wanted to be or not. Being involved whether you wanted to be or not meant you had no choice, which meant you were a proper citizen. Lorraine had also been stoking hate in her heart, mainly for Dani, who had never once asked Lorraine, “What was on the nightly news?” Dani knew nothing about the world and was determined not to know. She was undermining the seriousness of the war with her Sebastien obsession. After the broadcast ended, Lorraine walked the halls to spread word of the latest political developments, although only the best girls cared.
Over the loudspeaker came that evening’s announcements. Madame Ghislaine predicted the weather and the wind for the next day, then closed with a new prayer that she had been working on:
Dani lay in bed, gazing up at the ceiling and thinking about Sebastien. Yesterday morning, the Oracle had said it was not true love with Erica, and that evening it had proclaimed that Sebastien like-liked her. That didn’t mean he loved her, though. And she knew that the Oracle could only tell two-thirds of the truth: the truth of the present and the truth of the past. It could not tell the future, and tomorrow Sebastien might change his mind. She made a tent with her knees and the blanket, and, cocooning under it, turned on her flashlight. Adjusting her stationery, she clicked her pen. The best thing was to write from the spirit of the moment. If she started second-guessing herself, she would never finish the letter, and the next day the mail boat would be leaving for the boys’ ship. She had to strike the right tone. But what was the right tone? She had to both reveal herself and talk about him—show her interest. She was always afraid of talking too much about herself and not responding enough to what he’d said, and so she began:
She read the letter over. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t think she was capable of doing much better. She blushed a little at the last part, hoping he wouldn’t read into it any hostility toward Erica. Probably the best thing would be to seal it up so she wouldn’t give herself a chance of rereading it in the morning and rejecting it. There was nothing wrong with the letter.
She turned off her flashlight. Now, in the total darkness, she began to feel herself to be a truly disgusting girl. Why was she writing a boy who had a girlfriend? Surely Erica liked him just as much as she did—if not more. She didn’t want Erica to find the letters she’d sent. Erica would say, Who the hell is Dani? And if Dani ever met Erica, she would have no way of justifying herself. It was obvious that she was offering herself up to him. How awful! All this, just to have some nice feelings inside her—although the nice feelings also came with the bad. In fact, exchanging letters with Sebastien probably came with more bad feelings than good ones. And were the good ones really so good that the bad ones were worth it? No question it was a lousy bargain. Yet here she was, another letter waiting to go, and she knew there was no reality in which she would not send it. But there was nothing else to do on the boat! There was literally nothing else to look forward to but a letter from Sebastien! Yet if she was truly the horrible person she felt herself to be, did that not also mean that Sebastien was horrible? Because it was he who had sent the first letter, and he who had the girlfriend. So she couldn’t very well judge herself—could she?—without also judging him. But this didn’t make her feel any better, because Sebastien was splendid! He was wonderful and handsome, and it was right that such an amazing boy should be on the lookout for the very best girl.
No, she didn’t judge Sebastien for writing to her. She only judged herself. Her letters made her seem easy, like she was just dying to give him a hand job. It wasn’t true, but it was surely what he thought. She tried to reconstruct the letter: Had she written anything he might construe as the desire to give him a hand job? She had talked about chocolates, she had talked about not missing her parents, she had talked about thirty dollars. Now she saw that there were ways of putting it together that just screamed, “I want to give you a hand job!” The more she recalled her letter, the more it seemed like the salivating, demented, desperate outburst of a complete loser—that she was basically parading herself before him, and he would read it and be horrified by the awful, shameless girl who he’d thought was a nice girl, nice enough to send a letter to. She pulled the letter out from under her pillow and tore it into as many pieces as she could. Thank God she had destroyed it! The next day, she would try again and would hopefully come across as less of a monster in that one. She couldn’t believe how close she had come to shaming herself, but she felt ashamed anyway, because he had almost seen her insides.
The next morning, Dani woke half an hour before the announcements. The bright sun was streaming into the cabin. It was a perfectly nice day. She climbed down to her desk and arranged her stationery, and, as the ship made its way steadily through the sea, she swiftly and confidently wrote a much better letter than she had the night before.
She tore up the letter. “Dear Sebastien,” Dani began again.
This was off to a bad start.
She bit her pen.
It was probably no better or worse than the other letters. She could rewrite it forever and it would likely never be satisfying, because she didn’t know who Sebastien was. Was he a potential boyfriend, or just a friend, or neither? How could you write a proper letter if you didn’t know your relationship to the person you were addressing, or really who they were at all? In some way, you had to just throw caution to the wind—or your letter onto a mail boat—and move on. She pulled out an envelope, folded the letter inside, wrote his name in block letters on the front, and, underneath, THE BOYS’ SHIP. Then she hurried to breakfast and thrust the letter into the hands of Madame Ghislaine, who was just leaving the dining hall.
Over the next few weeks, Dani grew increasingly weary. Every time the letter returned to her mind, she felt she would nearly faint from shame. The strength it was taking to await Sebastien’s reply was sapping all her vital energies. The situation was clearly too much for her. He was too cute and too cool. Why had she been honest? Had she secretly been wanting to bring their correspondence to an end?
Dani felt especially exhausted in geography class. Even at the best of times, it was hard for her to see the value of geography. Some part of her rebelled against its irrelevance to her own life. Little blocks of color, like a jumble of puzzle pieces: made-up boundaries and made-up names. It would take the force of sheer memorization—rote, heartless memorization—for her to retain a single thing.
Lorraine, by contrast, had wonderful memorization methods, which she was always trying to get the other girls to use. You had to make up a song, she would tell them, or a limerick, or a lyric, or pretend you were in a room with a bunch of strange objects: visualize picking them up and putting them down—Ethiopia, Slovakia—as you walked the room’s perimeter. The whole world was interesting, was the point of education—not only what applied to your heart. But her classmates had no interest in civic life—in expanding themselves inwardly in order to be of help to the world. They believed education to be a drag. It seemed old-fashioned and from the past. Its uses appeared naïve to the girls, who felt condescending toward the ancient Greeks, who’d lived in a far less competitive world than the world that they were living in.
As Dani gazed out the classroom’s portholes, hoping to see a dolphin or whale, Lorraine hoarded every detail on every map: she examined the ridges of mountains, and traced the curves of rivers and tributaries leading into the sea. She tracked the ocean currents and imagined vast, gusting breezes from north to south, confidently chilling the land. For her, a map wasn’t a meaningless muddle: it was wars and territories built from men’s passions. She was fascinated at how the whole world hung together so tenuously, at how tentative truces allowed life to proceed. But just look at the borders, which were always changing: no alliances could be taken for granted. She longed to be one of those people who travelled the globe, brokering deals—a diplomat. She felt she might have the touch. The touch meant sensing what countries thought they needed, and the most they were willing to give up, and to always be carefully treading that line. In a way, diplomats were like seducers, but they used their charms on entire nations, making them put out at the very edges of their reason.
After many weeks, a letter finally arrived from Sebastien. Although previously Dani had been brave enough to open his letters in public, now she nervously waited until bedtime, pulling the woollen blanket over her head, switching on her flashlight, and reading in utter privacy:
Dani was stunned. Would she and Sebastien have written inanities forever if she hadn’t been rushed into sending him such an honest letter? The Oracle had been right! He did like-like her, and it wasn’t true love with Erica, but some other, more brotherly kind of love. The intimacy of his letter touched her deeply, creating a delicate bubble that bound her and Sebastien across time and space. Nobody had ever written to her so beautifully before. Had she really caused those feelings in a boy? Might he become her boyfriend? Was she ready for a boyfriend? It would be hard for Sebastien to let Erica down, but surely it was right. Dani felt humbled, as if singled out by the heavens. Love wasn’t supposed to proceed so simply, nor fate respond so readily to your wishes. She read the letter again and again, and whenever she came to the part about him wanting to be inside her, or for her to be inside him, she felt the wonderful warm drop in her stomach. She knew just what he meant, but she would never have thought to express it that way. Strangely, she found she didn’t have a desire to tell anyone about the letter. Maybe it was too precious, or too beautiful, to risk even one lazy interpretation, or one cynical word, or anything that might degrade it. It might be the weirdest thing she would ever do, but she would never speak to anyone of what Sebastien had written.
It had been Flora’s misfortune to be sitting beside Yvonne when the mail boat next came, and Lorraine’s good fortune to be sitting beside Flora. Yvonne sparkled quietly in her seat, reading her letter under her breath. That night in bed, Lorraine could think of nothing else. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was clear what the right thing to do was.
The next day was lovely. The waves were shimmering in the sunlight, and it was relatively warm. Lorraine was waiting, leaning on the railing of a lower deck, when Dani passed by.
Lorraine stopped her. “You know that Sebastien is exchanging letters with Yvonne?”
“What?”
Lorraine repeated what she had said, but Dani’s soul was already far away. Yvonne? Yvonne, the prefect? But why? Was it one of her duties to be writing the boys’ ship? Then, suddenly, it was agonizingly clear that there was no girl more ravishing than Yvonne, and the force of Sebastien’s desire overtook her. Dani pulled his letter from her pocket and shoved it violently into Lorraine’s pocket, then rushed away.
Now Dani was leaning over the railing, staring out at the vast sea—the sea that would remain the sea forever, no matter what any boy did. Inside her was the growing awareness that Sebastien had only been writing her, Dani, out of a sense of duty, all the while hotly suffering a much more grownup correspondence with the incredible Yvonne. It had only taken a moment for the older girl to transform herself from someone Dani had never once thought about into the most desirable girl in the world, and Dani now imagined the two of them planning adult things, like taking a shower together. Perhaps they had already done this. How had she been so stupid as to think that because Sebastien wore headphones he was incapable of wooing other girls? Or that he didn’t want to?
Now she understood the truth: a boy was nothing but the boy you made up in your head. You made up the boy you wanted—the one who would be the most lovable to you—not someone with disturbing flaws or any moral weakness. No, the slimmest of available clues would always be assembled to make an ideal boy with coolness and strength, who held you in as much esteem as you wanted to be held in. That was what the mind did. She hadn’t known it before.
Now Lorraine was back, anxiously trying to return Sebastien’s letter, saying, “Please, Dani,” but Dani no longer cared. She walked off, her mind occupied with chipping away at the brick wall that was her feelings for Sebastien. He had lied by writing to her as though she were the desired alternative to Erica when in fact Yvonne had been the desired alternative. Not only had he been withholding himself the entire time, but he had actively used the sheen of seeming to reveal himself to utterly conceal himself! Everything about Sebastien had been a deceit, a masquerade.
But how could she call herself betrayed when she had known all along that he had a girlfriend? Yet there had been a deliberate deception: he hadn’t hidden Erica, which meant that he knew that his love for Erica wouldn’t be upsetting to Dani. He only wrote to her about Erica because they both knew she didn’t matter. But his hiding of Yvonne proved that Yvonne was someone who must be hidden. Perhaps because she was new? But Dani had thought that she was new. What a cheat! Yet she had already known he was a cheat, for there he was, in a relationship with Erica yet sending letters to Dani. So was he not a cheat when he was writing to Dani, but now he was a cheat because he was writing to Yvonne? Did she not care about a person’s actual character? Did she only care about coming out on top? Why was it O.K. for Erica to be lied to, but it was not O.K. when he was lying to Dani? That was it, then. That was proof. Her morality was simply: what is good for me.
The rain was a gentle trickle, soft as a kiss. The sky was perfectly gray, illuminated from within. Flora looked out over the guardrails but could not see the coast. The waves sounded against the boat, slow and sloshing. The next day, they would be heading north toward the Labrador Sea. She imagined their ship being welcomed by a caravan of dogs, rapidly paddling, or paddling leisurely, like her own dog in the distant waters of her childhood. Mother and Father were far away. Flora no longer believed she would ever return home. The St. Alwynn’s School for Girls would continue to sail until it reached Russia. Or China. Or Sri Lanka, where she would buy a marvellous necklace. She imagined a string of red wooden beads, ending in one giant bead in the shape of a skull, made from ancient ivory. If she found such a necklace, she would wear it for the rest of her life. It would be a “conversation piece,” just as Eleanor Lindsay had—Eleanor Lindsay, her mother’s friend, whose necklaces were impossible not to comment on: chunky metal, lying oddly upon her chest. She had once heard another friend of her mother’s say of Eleanor Lindsay, “She doesn’t wear those necklaces, those necklaces wear her!” This was something Flora thought about often—the necklace wearing the woman, like the necklace was a symbiotic creature, a barnacle upon a whale, a relatively insignificant thing that attached itself to something greater. You would think that the whale would be wearing the barnacle, but what if you considered it the other way around: that the barnacle was wearing the whale? So with Eleanor Lindsay and her statement necklaces—and one day she, too, she hoped. That would transform her life into simply a way for a statement necklace to get around. This felt wonderful, liberating, and like a far better fate than that of many women in history, who had to suffer so wildly from men.
Now the breeze was picking up, cooler against her cheeks. It was time to stop daydreaming. It was time to go back to washing the deck. Flora lifted the mop and began moving it back and forth, sloshing warm, soapy water all over the pebbly white surface. Little raindrops grazed her forehead, her ears, the tip of her nose, and it felt like an insult, like spitting, and this made her feel like crying. She hadn’t cried the entire week. But she hadn’t been alone until now. With the other girls, you could forget the truth of your situation. It masked the loneliness to be amidst the gossip, the Oracle, mealtimes, classes. You almost forgot what you really wanted, which was just to go home; that as much as you hated your mother and father, you actually loved them more than anyone on earth. How could it be true? Well, it just was. It wasn’t logical. Flora was the eldest. Her brother and sister were snug at home. Every night, her mother would be sitting them down to dinner, encouraging them in their usual conversations, her sister insisting upon eating while standing, her brother picking at his meat. And here she was, so far away, and yet somehow family life was continuing, just as if Flora had never been born.
How good her classmates all were at pretending! How effortless, how convincing, so she might not have even realized it if she had not been alone and mopping. How dishonest people were!—except for the crazies. But it was what made you crazy, the decision to rip off the mask. It made everyone else uncomfortable. In a way, it was like calling everyone a liar if you went ahead and spoke the truth. Flora had never wanted to stand out in that way. It would be easier to wear a statement necklace than to actually speak the truth. Yet, she now saw, a statement necklace was a way of speaking the truth. It said, I know this world we are all agreeing upon is not the truth, but I’m not going to be the one to say it—yet. That was why she had felt a sympathy with Eleanor Lindsay. Eleanor Lindsay was the same sort of person she was. Eleanor Lindsay saw behind the curtain, too, but she didn’t speak up about it, probably because she didn’t have any idea of what the world should do instead of continuing its masquerade. It was wrong to rip off even one person’s mask if you didn’t know what should happen next. Yet there was Eleanor Lindsay, walking around in her statement necklaces, signalling, I’m willing to be part of the next world with you, if you’re willing to start it. Probably the one who started it would need a lot of charisma, a lot of energy, a lot of strength. Flora swirled the mop, then tiredly rested it in the pail. She sat down on the lowest rung of a metal ladder that led to a still higher deck, a deck so high she hadn’t once wondered where it went.
A seagull overhead cawed, and Flora glanced up. It was sailing through the air, gliding through the rain that was falling like wet kisses, salty and warm, which Flora imagined kisses to be. The raindrops were like the kisses of a thousand women on the lips of her father. When she understood the kisses as rain, for just one moment, she understood her father. Then the loneliness of all men filled her. Then she even understood Sebastien. ♦
