Shell Island
My flip-flop busted, for one. Another is I strayed too far toward the Air Force base. I wanted to clear my mind and find a shell better than anyone else’s. Abalone or conch as big as my skull, stupid hubris.
You take a ferry to Shell Island. You take rum punch, too, bought at the dock, so maybe that’s a third thing. For twenty-five bucks, two guys drive you out on a pontoon. For fifteen more, you can rent snorkel gear, which I did, because you only live once, right?
The men have a cheery schtick. They’re true Florida guys—suntanned boat dudes crusted in salt. I pictured them drinking High Life after work, splitting their tips.
“Keep your arms inside the boat,” they said. “It’s a fifteen-minute ride.”
The one with a beard announced more rules over a mic: don’t trespass on the base, use a flag if you’re snorkeling so boats don’t hit you, and keep all the shells you want except for gray sand dollars. White ones you can keep, but the gray ones are alive, a protected species: “If it’s gray, let it stay.” I suppose the main rule is that they return for pick-up on the hour until five, so don’t miss the last ride back or you’re staying the night.
Then they pointed out two dolphins flipping in the water. We scrambled to take pics, but the creatures disappeared. Even then, what would our phones have shown? Miles of blue water and the tiny tip of a fin you’d have to zoom in to see? They redirected our attention to pelicans gliding nearby.
I’d traveled alone. Not to Florida: I’d gone there with family. We took the beach trip to celebrate our mother’s life, which had ended. Not spreading her ashes, just crashing in a condo, making margaritas and piecing together jigsaw puzzles and mostly laying on the beach below our balcony. It’s a tourist spot we’d visited for years. It’s what she would’ve wanted, we guessed. My brother and sister-in-law broke up the days by taking their kids on swamp tours or playing claw games at the arcade. But no one felt up for Shell Island, which is why I bought rum punch solo.
On the ferry ride, I sat next to a guy named Marcus.
“Wonder why we have to keep our arms in the boat?” he said. “It’s like Disney World. Ever been?”
“No,” I said. “But I want to go someday.” I actually did not want to go someday, but I also didn’t want him to feel bad for liking Disney World. Codependence, my therapist would say.
“Eh. It’s kind of trash,” he said. “Where you from?”
“Indiana.”
“Crossroads of America,” he said. “You like it?”
“It’s fine,” I said. The truth is it was kind of trash, too. I’d never felt that way before my mother died, but now I noticed how low the gray sky hung, how flat the corn fields looked, how spitefully her sisters behaved, like fairy tale villains. “I’m on vacation with family,” I said.
“Same,” he said. But neither of us had family on the pontoon. We sipped our rum punch, identical red straws in styrofoam cups. The boat picked up speed.
Shell Island looks like the brochure: you’d think you were in the Caribbean, though I’d never been to the Caribbean, except in my mind. The pontoon crunched the sand it landed on, and we exited. I hauled a beach towel, my bag, the snorkel gear, and a red flag attached to a buoy. We walked as a crowd of fifty or more, families gabbing, kids scrambling ahead, until everyone dispersed like prospectors seeking prime spots for shells and solitude. I tromped over a brushy hill, and it felt like the time I’d visited the desert in the summer and hiked to hot springs in ninety-degree weather. Sun beating down and no relief in sight.
But then I found my own perfect spot below a rocky ledge and spread my towel. In the distance, a party boat fashioned like a pirate ship dropped anchor. Marcus followed me, but not in a weird way: he just walked in my direction when the crowd scattered, like we had an agreement as two people untethered to others. He laid his towel down several yards from mine. Or I think it was several yards—I couldn’t have thrown a football as far as where he sat, though I also can’t throw a football very far.
Punch-buzzed, I stripped to my bathing suit and waded into the gulf with my snorkel. The water felt perfect: there’s no other way to say it. I ducked my head below, then surveyed the island. God, I could live here if it not for Indiana. I stood still for a moment and fish circled my legs, white flat ones with googly eyes, and some iridescent, their sides deckled with rainbows. I dragged my feet around the ocean floor to feel for shells, my toes seeking hard edges that would signal an amazing find. My hope was to return with two significant specimens: one for my niece, one for my nephew. It shouldn’t be hard, I figured—that was the promise of a place called “Shell Island.” I strapped the snorkel to my face and ducked below, grabbing what my feet found. Gray sand dollar, gray sand dollar, gray sand dollar. The broken tip of a majestic conch floating elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
Josh had wanted to go to Florida with me. My guy. But I told him I should go alone, that it wouldn’t be fun for him. We lived side by side in a shotgun house he was perpetually hammering into, sawing on, veneering. Josh was a natural improver and newly sober, with a robust health regimen and this bright, charming smile that drew strangers—babies, other people’s dogs, other people’s wives—towards him. We met one summer when he worked as a handyman and repaired my leaking sink. I’d taken an early lunch break from the office where I prepared tax returns, and I’d hovered, nervous he wouldn’t finish in time for me to get back to the office, though it only took him twenty minutes. I felt fluttery when he handed me the receipt with his phone number written at the bottom. Then I thought I could work with this. So I did. Had, for eight soft years. He asked me to marry him six months ago, but I needed more time. He proposed the day after my mom died. I told you he was an improver—he’d even built me a painting studio tacked onto the back porch—and I’d thought of myself as an improver, too, or at least improving until I couldn’t answer the marriage question. He’d filled the kitchen table with candles and pink petals, my favorite cherry cake in the fridge. But how do you move forward when everything inside you has stopped?
So I’d actually need a third shell: one for him. Make it three gems from the sea. To say, “Look what I have brought forth from my journey to prove I’m okay and the world is okay, too.”
Jets brushed the sky with white paint, a reminder that I was in a military-adjacent zone. I left my snorkel on my towel, slipped on my flip-flops, and left to explore.
It’s amazing how far I could walk. I mean, it amazed me: once I started, I kept going. I collected shells, the tiny, sun-bleached clam kind that would be good for a necklace if you drilled holes into them, though who was I kidding: I was never going to do that. Still, each one felt precious. From time to time, I ran out into the water, submerging myself to cool off, scaring the fish away until I froze again and they rushed back to me, brushing my thighs. In the distance, the pirate party boat sailed away, and I imagined everyone hungover in their hotel beds. Then I found a secluded spot and lay in the sand, no towel needed, feeling at peace like a kid, but tipsy. I fell asleep like that.
When I opened my eyes, I panicked. The sun hadn’t set but would soon. Had the ferry come for the last group? I couldn’t tell from this distance—couldn’t see clear to the other side of the island. They’d made it known they wouldn’t wait and it’s not some sophisticated operation where they’d taken head counts or anything. The two boat guys might already be cracking cold ones with their feet up.
So I ran. Which is how I broke my flip-flop. Which is also how I almost broke my toe. Or maybe I did break my toe: it still isn’t right. Out of breath, I hobbled along the shore, shuffling as fast as I could, my chest pounding. The sun dropped and put on a full Florida sunset show. But I couldn’t appreciate it because my heart had dropped, too, upon seeing that I was alone on Shell Island. The families had disappeared. Marcus also.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said aloud because there was no one to hear me. Adrenaline and dread flooded my chest, arms, legs. But I felt more embarrassed than scared—ashamed at my ridiculousness. How irresponsible I’d been.
I texted my brother. I didn’t want to confess the truth, so I wrote Hey! Met up with an old friend in Panama City. Staying the night to be safe. See you in the a.m.! Did it sound cheerful? Normal? I hoped so. He texted back Okay, cool. He was a man of few words and also a man losing at mini-golf, letting the kids flout the rules and fish golf balls from the ponds. I sent a version of the same message to Josh since I knew my phone would die soon. That’s great, babe! he texted back. Have fun! I thought for sure he’d ask who exactly I was with or even try to call, but he was giving me space like we’d discussed when he attended one of my therapy sessions, a guest star that day.
And he was happy I was enjoying myself, doing better. I told you how good he is.
My bag contained a protein bar, an orange, a bag of popcorn, my water bottle. A useless wallet, two tampons. My good pen. Plus, Sylvia Path’s collected poems, which I’d regretted selecting as a beach read. But I would survive. I mean, if I had to locate fresh water or spear a fish or build a raft, well, nature would vanquish me. Honestly, I’m not sure I had that kind of will to live. Plus, the way the fish had come up to me like that, trusted me, flicked me with their gentle fins? I couldn’t betray them.
But this wasn’t a survival situation, I reasoned, as I found a boulder close to where we’d docked. I’d take the second ferry back in the morning, not the first, in hopes I’d blend in and the boat guys wouldn’t remember me. I could survive one night on the beach. No need to catastrophize. People pay good money for this kind of thing, right?
So I went for a sunset walk—after all, I had time to kill. I had to do it barefoot, of course, and on a throbbing foot, so I strolled the shore, up and back, limping slowly as I watched the tide creep, the sky delirious in a riot of red and orange. When it got dark, I’d walked more than I could handle, and I felt relief in sitting again. Stars populated the sky. I don’t know constellations, so I made them up: Party Hat, Dolphin’s Beak, Drinking Fountain. A line of bright orbs moving at a steady pace suggested satellites. They looked like a string of diamonds—like a tennis bracelet being dragged across the sky. My mother had worn one, though hers was fake. “Lab-grown diamonds!” she’d exclaimed when she ordered it from QVC. “Isn’t science amazing?” I knew she’d pictured people in white coats carefully cultivating gems inside glass tubes. Maybe that’s how it works—I’m not sure. But the point is that I knew my mom so well I could picture in my head the same picture in her head when she spoke. And now everything reminded me of her.
I wondered if it would always be so. I settled on my towel and braced myself for the strangest night of my life.
When the woman woke me up, I screamed. Or I tried to, but my breath got lodged in my lungs. I scrunched my legs toward me, pulled my towel around my shoulders, and backed as far into the boulder as I could, its cool contours pricking my spine. I think I said, “Oh, my god!” but I don’t know if it came out of my mouth. It was maybe midnight.
“Hey,” she said. A Southern drawl. She was eighteen, maybe nineteen, and wore a Waffle House uniform, gold embroidery on her black apron. She held a lit cigarette in her right hand. Red chipped nail polish and her dark hair pulled back. I hope I’m getting this right.
“Hi,” I said. I could hear the panic in my voice. “Did you get stuck here, too?”
“Maybe,” she said. She seemed friendly but distracted, like she was striking up conversation in the grocery check-out line while her mind rummaged through other things.
“Did you take the boat here?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know where I am.” She said “am” as “ay-um,” two syllables.
“This is Shell Island,” I said. “Florida?”
She smiled. “Well, I know fuck-all about Shell Island, but I do know Florida.”
“That’s cool,” I said, trying not to freak out—trying to seem casual, like this happens to me all the time.
“Some folks talk shit about Florida, but I’ve always liked it here,” she said.
“It’s really nice,” I said. “I’m from Indiana.”
“You like it?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to live there, but it’s fine.” I wasn’t sure she was real.
“I’m real,” she said. “But I died. A year ago, maybe? Doesn’t matter.”
And it’s a funny thing to tell you I felt relieved to hear she was dead—even though it meant I was talking to a ghost or had truly gone bananas—because her words confirmed just how strange this night had become.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” she said. “Also, Marcus actually likes Disney World. He loves it. He’s my cousin.”
“Oh,” I said. “He seems nice.”
“He is,” she said. “Most people are. Except assholes. But, you know, most people.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That seems right.” And then I couldn’t help but ask it: “Are you a ghost?”
“Well, I’m not alive, but there’s a lot afterwards. It’s hard to explain.”
“Oh,” I said. I was disappointed, because I hoped she’d share something important and true.
“It’s not that I don’t want to explain. But it’s impossible. Like if I wanted to explain how the ocean works? I could talk all night and you wouldn’t understand,” she said. “No offense.”
“I get it,” I said. “I mean, I don’t get it. But I get that I don’t get it.”
“Then you actually get it,” she said. “Kind of.” She smiled at me, then looked around like she was searching for her phone or car keys.
My feet juddered—I hadn’t realized I’d been shaking. She sat down next to me, sighing like she was taking a load off after a long day. We stayed that way for a while, the tide lapping, talking without talking. I could try to describe it, but you wouldn’t get it, no offense.
My mom died on a Tuesday. It was a stupid accident: a tree fell on her car as she drove to work. A dead oak collapsed, just like that. It felt unfair the way every death does, but more unfair because she was my mom, and my favorite person, and also because there was nothing or no one to blame. My best friend Aliza had, in fact, suggested I sue “the fuckers:” the city, the homeowners, somebody! But it didn’t make sense. Sue the tree? God? Time itself? It wasn’t clear. Trees grow old and die like people do. My mom would’ve died another way if not that way and I would’ve had to go on without her eventually—I took odd comfort in that fact. Though I suppose if I’d been truly comforted, I wouldn’t have worn the sofa cushions down across six months, or dragged around the blanket she’d knitted me like when I was six, neglecting to shower, scrambling tax returns at work, forgetting how to paint or think about the future or say more than “Hi, babe,” to Josh, which took mighty strength.
The woman pulled her knees up to her chest like me and surveyed the water. When she offered me a drag, I accepted. The cherry glowed against the black sky and I coughed.
“Your toe okay?” She asked. “It honestly doesn’t look good.”
“I might have broken it?” I said and held it up for us both to survey.
“Bummer,” she said.
“It’ll be okay.”
There was a long pause, and I realized my heart had slowed to a normal rhythm.
“It’s kind of a bitch,” she said, and I thought she meant my toe. But then she added, “People can think about infinity, but they can’t feel it. And then when they finally can feel it, it’s because they’re not alive anymore.”
“Oh,” I said. I understood it on some surface level, but I would get it on a deeper level later, long after this night, after the boat ride back, after Josh packed his tools and drove away for good, after my toe mostly healed and my heart did, too.
“It’s funny if you think about it!”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Anyway, if you could actually see what I’m saying, you wouldn’t be so sad.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks for that.”
“Go have a good life. It’s honestly not that serious,” she said as she stood up and brushed sand from her apron. Then she added, “See you tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow?”
“Kidding! But I meant it, the good life part.”
Then she left.
I didn’t fall back to sleep. My eyes couldn’t shut, my brain couldn’t slow. Every gull cry, every breeze: I wondered which ghost-not-ghost would appear next. Maybe I needed something stronger than therapy, like a full psych exam. Some powerful SSRIs grown in a lab. Would the darkness gulp me up tonight? I could sense my heart doing double-time inside my chest again and I just wanted to be at the condo with the goofy kids or home with Josh, curled against his back.
But my mom always said things don’t seem as bad in the morning. And when I tell you about the glimmering pink sunrise: it was nearly worth the terror of the prior twelve hours. I hauled my exhausted body and swollen foot to the top of a hill and imagined the island my own magic kingdom. I couldn’t kill a fish, but I could probably build a raft if I had to. “How hard could it be?” some latent, confident force inside me asked.
I waited for the second ride back to shore. I wore one shoe as I boarded—better than none—and held the broken one in my hand.
“Blew out a flip-flop!” the guy with the beard said. “Just like the song!”
“Yeah!” I said. “Totally!” To my relief, he didn’t remember me.
I looked for Marcus, but he wasn’t there, of course. Still, I sat on the same wooden bench we’d shared.
It was empty for a few minutes until a little girl, maybe eight or so, moved up to my row, plopping herself on the far end. She’d gotten mad at someone, it was clear: she held her arms across her chest, scrunched her face into a pout. I could see she was bent on making a point.
“We can buy more shells at the souvenir shop!” her mom called from behind. “They have tons of them!”
“No!” the girl said.
“They have big ones! All different kinds!” her mom said, pleading with her.
“But I wanted to find a big one!” the girl cried, dragging out the word “find,” equal parts mournful and furious.
“I know,” her mom said. “But things don’t always go the way we want.”
I knew it wasn’t my place, but I scooted toward the girl, just a foot or so, and leaned in her direction.
“I bet you find a shell at the store better than any on that whole island,” I said. Then I pointed at the water. “Maybe we’ll see a dolphin!”
She looked at me, shocked that a stranger had spoken to her. Then she turned her head to watch the water. I could tell she’d probably been taught to not talk to strangers but also to be polite to grown-ups, those conflicting lessons my mom had taught me, too. Still, she seemed less likely to cry now.
“Look up ahead,” the man said on his loudspeaker, pointing out seagulls and royal terns and ospreys—each bird guiding us closer to shore and everything waiting for us there.
Ashley Farmer is the author of the essay collection Dear Damage (Sarabande Books, 2022), winner of the 2022 International Rubery Book Award in Nonfiction and the 2020 Sarabande Series in Kentucky Literature, as well as three other books. Her work has been published in places like TriQuarterly, Southwest Review, The Progressive, Santa Monica Review, Salt Hill Journal, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Review’s Short Fiction Award, two Best American Essays notable distinctions, a 2023 Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from Syracuse University and the Baltic Writing Residency. Ashley lives in Salt Lake City, UT with the writer Ryan Ridge.