Island Boy

by Brett W 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 W 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.