The Starboard Sea: A Novel by Amber Dermont Page A

some stranger will find my empty boat.”
“The Flying Dutchman,” I said.
“No, that’s just folklore. I mean disappear for real. You ever hear of the Marie Celeste ?”
I shook my head.
“She was a famous phantom ship, a giant brig who sailed out of New York only to be found near Gibraltar with no crew to speak of, her food supplies untouched, her sails at full mast. Couldn’t have been a pirate attack because all of the valuables were still on board.”
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
“Not sure I want to know. I enjoy a good mystery. Makes me happy that there are so many things I don’t understand. That’s part of why I like the ocean so much. All of that water makes me feel small and uncertain. You learn more about yourself when you’re afraid.”
It had never occurred to me that being scared or unsure could be good, useful, even.
We smoked another cigarette and talked about the wildness of the Atlantic, how the strange currents of the gulf stream forced a sailor north before he could travel east. Coach Tripp told me about a summer he’d spent fishing for swordfish in the dangerous shallows of the Flemish Cap. A lot of prep school teachers were rich kids. Guys struck sick with nostalgia for their own prep school glory days. I hadn’t figured out if Coach Tripp was one of these casualties or not. He loved sailing but not in a yacht club way. He actually cared about the history of sailing, how the trade winds helped determine empires. Coach hoped to recreate all of the famous early voyages. Like the Phoenicians, he wanted to cruise through the Pillars of Hercules and down the coast of Northern Africa. He’d studied charts and understood how Leif Ericson had navigated from Norway to Cape Farewell in Greenland and then all the way to the coast of Canada and the Bay of Jellyfish. Coach was a smart guy. I could learn something from him.
“Can you teach me about celestial navigation?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s one of my minor obsessions. We should go out sailing sometime. Just the two of us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”
We finished smoking. Coach pointed to the dorm, and, without a word, we began to race along the beach, then up the seawall’s staircase and onto the grass. Dashing hard, fast, we stayed about even until we hit the path to Whitehall. Coach Tripp stopped short, smoothed down the front of his jacket, and fell behind. I continued to run straight up to my room and into bed. I slept well that night because someone had been kind to me.

FIVE
    I’d made it through an entire day without visiting Aidan. Sitting in my room. Face-to-face with the blank essay page on my Princeton application. I’d used the word “beautiful” to describe another boy. I knew how it must have sounded to her. I also knew that it was exactly what I’d meant, exactly what I did not want to mean.
    Aidan said nothing when she saw me back at the grand piano. I was still in dress code. A blue suit jacket and my favorite tie: yellow silk with small navy medallions, my mythical family crest. Aidan had made me a copy of her key, and I arrived before her, placing an apricot and a box of cinnamon graham crackers on what I took to be her favorite chair. Aidan entered wearing a black sweater that fell below her waist and flowed into a long skirt that covered her shoes. She sat down in the empty seat, across from my gifts, opened a blank book, bound in marbleized paper, and began to write.
    “What’s in the book?” I asked.
“My journal,” she said. “Don’t you keep a journal?”
“I did. Once. At least I tried to. The stuff I put down was so dull, I
    decided that if anyone else read it, they’d think I was the most boring person in the world.”
“Boredom is actually the most plentiful substance in the universe,”
    Aidan said.
“I started making stuff up, just to sound more interesting. Stories about sailing mostly. Like a captain’s journal. Sudden storms. Sea snakes. Pirate