Island Boy

by Brett Summers

My dad never texts me when I’m at school, which is why I ask the teacher if I can use the bathroom where I read what he said: “Mom has an infection, so I’m flying her back to Seattle to see a doctor.” Good thing he can fly a plane to get Mom off the island when she has to; that makes me feel a little better. I’m able to keep my mind quiet for science class on South Beach, where I point out anemones, a sea urchin, and a nudibranch to my classmate, but once my pants get wet with sea spray, all I can think about is Mom. I can’t imagine having a whole part of my body removed, but Mom lifts her shirt on that side to show almost anyone the weird bulge with a seam like a closed eyelid. She also has a lump under her collarbone for the port, because they’ve turned her into a cyborg, so they can stick in a needle to pump in the chemo, and I lie in bed nights wondering if my mother will be delivered back to me by this strange spaceship of doctors and hospitals. Right now I just want to be at home, because the island feels so far from everything when they’re not here, and I wish I could reel them back in to me like I was hauling in a fish from far-away Seattle, over the Salish Sea and right here to my doorstep.

6S

Brett Summers taught English for fifteen years and always wrote alongside her students. This year she is reinventing herself as a writer by reading a lot of writers on writing, writing daily, and submitting regularly. She lives in Providence, RI.