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SHAKEDOWN

SOPHIE

70 ’m not really sure what day it is anymore. These duty watches are
Iwarping my sense of time.

71 For the first couple days, there were two of us on a watch (I was
paired with Uncle Dock), and we were on for four hours at a time, off
for eight, then on for four more. Four hours is a lot, especially when it’s
dark, and every muscle in your body is tensed, listening, watching.
Everyone else is asleep then and you know it’s only the two of you

keeping them safe.

72 Out here, there isn’t day and night and then a new day. Instead,
there are degrees of light and dark, merging and changing. It’s like one

long stream of time unfolding in front of you, all around you. There
isn’t really a yesterday or day before, which is weird, because then what
is tomorrow? And what is last week or last year? And if there is no
yesterday or last year—or ten years ago—then it must be all now, one
huge big present thing.

73 This makes me feel very strange, as if I could say, “Now I am four,”
and by saying so, I could be four again. But that can’t be. Not really.
Can it?

74 We’ve been sailing up through the Gulf of Maine, toward Grand
Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy, just west of Nova Scotia. Uncle

Dock calls the wind “a capricious lady” because it comes in fits and
starts. Yesterday (I still have to use words like yesterday, because I don’t

warping If something is warping something, it is distorting it or twisting it out of shape.

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