The Day Our Ships Came In
by Ginger Weil
My best friend Sandra and I used to joke around about how our day was going to come. We stayed in town after high school. I got a job at the diner. Sandra worked at a resort farther up the mountain. "Someday, Lesley," Sandra liked to say, "our ships are going to come in and we'll leave all this behind."
Someday came last weekend. But Sandra sailed off in her ship without me, and now I'm not sure what to do next.
If you've seen anything about the ships on the news, you've probably seen a picture of the flying galleon. The red-painted decks and bright orange sails stood out against the clear blue sky, and the whole thing looked like a set for an acid-drenched rewrite of Peter Pan.
The galleon wasn't the only ship that came to Valcour last weekend. It was just the easiest to photograph. There was the spaceship as round and ridiculous as a 1950s B-Movie rocket. There was the hot air balloon made of silk and spiderweb.
The town newspaper, the Valcour Courier, printed wild guesses about why the ships came to Valcour. They ran a gorgeous photo of the flying galleon that they pulled off someone's uncredited photo feed, and a grainy security camera pic of the wavery outlines that were all anybody but Sandra saw of the invisible spaceship.
Marge Conley wrote the editorial, where she quoted the same six women she always interviews for opinion pieces, with a headline titled "What a Long Strange Ship It's Been," which made no sense since there were at least 17 ships and many weren't very long at all. One of them was just six feet: a kayak made of silver with paddles of birch and starlight. I know what that one looked like. It's still parked behind my apartment, glinting hopefully at me.
Marge never interviews me. I'm not sure she even remembers we went to school together. She was a couple years older than us and her family had more money. Two years was a big gap in high school, and the money still matters.
Sandra texted me about the first ship before I even saw it. "I guess my wish came true :)," she wrote. I had no idea what she meant. I looked up from her text and saw all the diner's customers looking out the window.
We gathered in the parking lot to stare up at the galleon. It seemed like the more people who came out to watch, the more ships sailed overhead. There were sloops and yawls and a rowboat floating as peacefully in the air as if they were hitched to a dock on a calm day. A shiny rocket wove between vast rigged sails.
Sandra texted me again. "I see you!" she said. I looked around. I couldn't spot her in the crowd of people with cell phones taking pics of the flying ships.
A rope ladder dangled out of nowhere and almost hit me in the face.
Sandra peered down at me from the basket of a hot-air balloon.
"Looks like my ship finally came in," she said.
All over the parking lot I saw other people clambering into ships. Tourists rolled up ramps into sleek-bayed rockets. An old woman in a red hat climbed into an Adirondack guideboat and paddled up into the clouds.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I don't know," Sandra said. "Somewhere new."
I didn't ask to go with her. I wanted her to invite me. The rope dangled, inches in front of my face.
"The wind is picking up," Sandra said. "Guess it's time to sail."
