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Chapter One
Kitt
For one fleeting second, I consider turning back and running home. My stylish new ankle-height black leather commando boots feel heavy. They keep me cemented where I stand in the tight airplane aisle, wedged between my seat and the one in front of me.
I glance around as people gather their bags from the tiny overhead compartments and make their way down the aisle.
Bustling, busy airports somehow always manage to make me feel lonely. Reunions of teary-eyed families and friends gathered in groups. This experience is so different.
The only way to the island is via this tin-can death plane or a very long ferry ride. Though I’d hardly call the tiny aircraft I’m standing in a plane. It shuddered as they turned the engines on, my heart racing at the sound.
The other passengers remained calm, telling me the shaking was perfectly normal as we endured the rough ride through the Scottish skies.
The view as we left the city was incredible, calming me as we flew. Vast swaths of rolling green hills, blue-gray skies, and the turquoise sea crashing into sandy shores that rise into dramatic cliffs.
It held my attention, but now, after a pulse-pounding landing, we’re on the tarmac, here on the island that will be my new home for the next few months.
I’m here to save the codfish.
Thrilling, right? Searching through pages and pages of data then charting the numbers. It’s easy, predictable work. And that’s exactly what I need right now.
A recovery for the fish, and one for me as well.
The last year of my life was an absolute disaster.
“Keep going,” I tell myself, taking a deep breath. I’m the last passenger to walk down the narrow aisle. I paste what I hope is a friendly-looking smile on my face and grip the rail, walking down the wide flight of wobbly white steps they’ve rolled over for us to exit directly onto the tarmac.
The wind hits me first. Then the sheer beauty of the never-ending horizon, vast skies painted with brushstrokes of clouds, grassy hills rolling into the turquoise sea. The scene literally takes my breath away.
I reach the bottom step. An attendant wearing a bright yellow raincoat rolls my shiny black suitcase over to me. I thank him, then nervously gaze over the small groups of people.
A girl with dyed purple tips at the ends of her black hair and colorful tattoos up her arms holds up a white posterboard sign, my name handwritten across the front in massive black letters. She wears a black long-sleeved shirt and fishnet tights underneath her black overall shorts.
Next to her stands a soft-looking redheaded girl in navy leggings under a short gray-and-black tartan skirt, a thick, woolen, cream-colored sweater patterned with pink stars wrapped around her small body. She bites her bottom lip, tugging on the end of the thick red braid that hangs over her shoulder.
I stand only a few feet from them, but both their gazes pass right over me. They wait for someone else to come down the stairs but there’s no one left now other than staff.
They have to be here for me. My name is on the sign.
I approach the girls. “Hi, guys. I’m Kitt.” The two girls stare openly at me for a moment. I move closer, holding out my hand. Is it polite to shake hands in Scotland?
Neither one takes my hand. I shove it back into the pocket of my dark olive calvary-style Barbour quilted jacket I wore in the hopes of fitting in…
I glance at the paper sign. “Unless you’re here for another Kitt Townsend?”
The girl with the sign examines me head to toe with a curious gaze. Finally, she speaks. “Hi, I’m Carol Ann.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
The redheaded girl gives me a timid smile. “Sorry—It’s just…we thought you’d be…”
“What?” I ask.
“Tan?” Her words hang in the air between us for a moment.
“Oh!” I blurt out, unsure of how to follow that up, other than with a laugh that may seem impolite. “Um…” Should I apologize for my pale skin? It’s not the first time I’ve felt I owed the public a general apology for not fitting in.
Pretty pink blotches warm the redhead’s cheeks. She gives a sheepish grin. Maybe she’s just awkward like me.
