The Fishing Boat at 4am

Kai was sleeping the deepest kind of sleep—the kind where you're so far down in your dreams that you forget you're a person at all—when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Kai. Hey, little fish. Time to wake up."

Dad's voice was a whisper, which was strange because Dad's voice was never a whisper. Dad's voice was a big, booming thing that filled up rooms and made people at the grocery store turn around and smile.

Kai opened one eye. Her bedroom was dark. Not nightlight-dark. Not almost-morning-dark. Just dark dark.

"Is it nighttime?" she mumbled.

"It's four in the morning," Dad said. "Remember? The fishing boat."

Oh.

Oh.

She had been talking about this for weeks. Dad's friend Marco had a fishing boat, and he'd said Kai could come along, but they had to leave before the sun came up because that's when the fish were hungry.

"I'll be ready in one minute," Kai said, and then she closed her eye again and fell immediately back to sleep.

Dad laughed his quiet laugh—the one she'd never heard before—and scooped her up, blanket and all, and carried her to the kitchen.

The kitchen was all wrong.

Not bad wrong. Just wrong like a word you've never seen before. The kitchen table, which was usually covered in mail and homework and a banana that nobody wanted, was completely empty except for two thermoses and a paper bag. The light above the stove was the only light on, and it made everything glow soft and orange, like the whole room was inside a lantern.

Dad set her down on a chair. "Shoes," he said, pointing to her rain boots by the door.

Kai looked at them. She looked at Dad. He was wearing his big rubber boots and his puffy vest and a hat she'd never seen before—a faded green one with a fish hook stuck in the brim.

"Whose hat is that?" she asked.

"Mine," Dad said. "From before."

"Before what?"

"Before you," he said, and he smiled in a way that made his eyes look like someone else's eyes for just a second—someone younger, someone she didn't know yet.

They walked outside, and Kai stopped on the porch.

The world was gone.

Not really gone. But everything she knew about her street—the yellow house across the road, Mrs. Patterson's garden gnomes, the fire hydrant where she and her best friend Lucia would sit and eat popsicles—all of it had been swallowed up by dark blue air. The streetlight at the end of the block made a fuzzy circle of gold on the pavement, and beyond that, nothing.

"Dad," Kai whispered. "It's so quiet."

And it was. No cars. No lawnmowers. No dogs barking. No screen doors slamming. Just a sound she'd never noticed before—a low, soft hum, like the whole world was breathing in its sleep.

"Everybody's still dreaming," Dad said.

Kai reached up and took his hand, not because she was scared, but because it felt like they were the only two people awake in the world, and she didn't want to lose him in all that blue.

They drove with the windows down. The air was cool and smelled like something Kai couldn't name—something green and wet, like the inside of a garden hose mixed with the ocean. Dad didn't turn on the radio. He hummed instead, low and rumbly, a song she didn't recognize.

The roads were empty. Every single traffic light they hit was green, like the whole town was saying go ahead, go ahead, it's all yours.

When they got to the marina, Marco was already there, standing on a boat that looked much smaller than Kai had imagined. It rocked gently in the dark water, and its little white light bobbed like a firefly.

"There she is!" Marco called out, but softly, like even he knew that four in the morning was not a time for loudness. "The famous Kai. Your dad says you're going to catch the biggest fish in the bay."

"I've never caught any fish," Kai said.

"Even better," said Marco. "Beginners have the best luck. The fish don't see 'em coming."

Dad lifted Kai over the gap between the dock and the boat, and for one second she was in the air above the dark water, and her stomach did a little flip, and then she was on the boat, and it rocked under her feet like it was saying hello.

They motored out slowly. The water was so dark it looked like a sky with no stars. Kai sat on a wooden bench with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, and she watched the town get smaller and smaller until it was just a line of tiny lights, like a bracelet laid along the edge of the world.

"How do the fish know it's morning?" Kai asked.

"They feel it," Dad said. He was setting up the fishing rods, his hands moving quickly the way they did when he was fixing things at home. "The water changes temperature. Gets just a tiny bit warmer. And the light starts coming up from underneath, and they think, oh, time for breakfast."

"Fish don't think that."

"How do you know? You ever been a fish?"

"Dad."

"I'm just saying. We don't know what fish think. Maybe they think very big thoughts. Maybe there's a fish down there right now writing a poem about the sunrise."

Kai giggled, and her giggle went out across the water and didn't come back, like the bay just took it and kept it.

Marco handed her a rod. It was heavier than she expected, and the reel was cold against her fingers. He showed her how to cast—pulling back and letting go at just the right moment—and her first try went sideways and almost hit Dad in the ear.

"That's exactly what happened my first time," Dad said, rubbing his ear. "Except I hit my dad right in the hat."

"Grandpa took you fishing?"

"Every summer. Same water, actually. He stood right where I'm standing now."

Kai tried again. This time the line went out straight and far, and the little weight at the end went plop into the water, and she felt it sinking down, down, down into the dark.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Now we wait," said Marco.

So they waited.

And this was the part Kai hadn't expected—the waiting was the best part.

Because while they waited, the sky started to change. It didn't happen all at once, like turning on a light. It happened so slowly that she kept thinking she was imagining it. First the black turned to the darkest blue she'd ever seen. Then the blue got lighter in one spot, way out at the edge of the water, like someone was pressing a flashlight against the other side of the sky. Then that spot turned pink. Then gold. Then the gold spread and spread and spread, and suddenly the water wasn't black anymore—it was silver, and she could see ripples, and she could see Marco's boat was actually dark red, and she could see Dad's face, and he was looking right at her.

"There it is," he said.

The sun came up over the water, and it was so bright and so close that Kai felt like she could reach out and touch it. The whole bay turned to gold and orange and pink, and the little waves caught the light and threw it around like glitter, and somewhere a seagull called out, and the world was back—loud and bright and wide open.

And then her rod bent.

"Oh!" Kai gasped. "Oh! Something's pulling!"

"Reel it in!" Marco called. "Slow and steady, slow and steady!"

Kai reeled. The fish pulled. Kai pulled back. Her arms burned and her hands were slippery and the rod bent almost in half, and Dad was right behind her with his hands hovering near hers, ready to help but not helping, letting her do it, letting her do it—

And then a fish burst out of the water, silver and shining and flipping in the air, catching the brand-new sunlight on its scales like it was made of a thousand tiny mirrors.

"I GOT IT!" Kai shouted, and this time her voice went out across the water and came back to her, bouncing off the morning.

It wasn't the biggest fish in the bay. Marco said it was a striper, about two pounds, and he held it up for Kai to see. Its mouth opened and closed, and its eye was round and dark and calm, like it wasn't even surprised.

"Can we put it back?" Kai asked.

Marco looked at Dad. Dad looked at Kai.

"You're the one who caught it," Dad said. "Your call."

Marco lowered the fish back into the water, and it flicked its tail once and disappeared into the gold.

On the drive home, the town was starting to wake up. A jogger passed them. A bakery had its lights on. Mrs. Patterson was out watering her gnomes.

Kai leaned her head against the window. She was so tired her bones felt soft.

"Dad?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"Can we go again next Saturday?"

Dad put his hand on top of her head, warm and heavy and sure.

"We can go every Saturday you want."

Kai closed her eyes. The sun was all the way up now, and the world was loud and full of people again, and she knew something she hadn't known yesterday—that there was a secret hour when everything was blue and quiet and yours, and now that she'd been there, she could always go back.