He scrolled down to the comment, though he already knew who had sent it.
LeonardC404: Wow! Great opener—detailing her inner thoughts as she risked her life and others on the highway to free those birds. I was gripped. Can’t wait for your next one.—Dad
Annoyed, Anders rolled his eyes. Leave it to Leonard Caldwell to effuse praise when none was due. Obviously, it wasn’t “great,” or more people would be listening to it.
Anders had started the podcast in college, after the news editor at his school paper turned down his profile pitch on a notorious student on campus named Mark Harris, a full-bearded, wide-smiled man who had been attending the school for nine years—and had no plans for matriculation in the near future. More rumors swirled around him than around JFK’s assassination. He was a legend, yet no one knew if the stories about him were true. Had he really been involved in an S&M love triangle with the provost and the women’s soccer coach? Was he the one who hid a nest of yellow jackets in the visitors’ locker room during the school’s rival football game? Had he really sung “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” in a duet with Charles Barkley when the basketball star appeared at a karaoke bar in Atlanta?
Anders followed Mark around for weeks, recording interviews, observing his daily life, mostly trying to avoid the contact high from his near-ritualistic vaping sessions—and he edited the material down into a fascinating inside look at Mark Harris’s life. That podcast was listened to more than sixteen thousand times, half the student population of his university, and Anders thought he’d stumbled onto something big. Podcasts were the next big thing—the perfect medium to tell stories that newspapers no longer had the time, space, or money for. And what if his took off? He fantasized about those sixteen thousand listeners doubling, tripling, even quadrupling! Forget crawling his way up that very long ladder to Newsweek, the New York Times; he could sprint to the top. He could be the next Ira Glass on This American Life or the next Sarah Koenig and Serial. NPR would be banging down his door to hire him.
Except, within a matter of weeks, he soon realized that Mark Harris was what the listeners had been interested in, not Anders’s own journalistic storytelling prowess, and his audience dropped sharply with each consecutive episode. Still, he had thought this poultry woman story had legs.
He slipped his earbuds in to drown out the rap music and typed “Frick Island” into his search bar. Though he had looked through past issues as Greta suggested and could write the Cake Walk piece in his sleep without ever stepping foot on the island (It was literally a cake walk, he had thought to himself, wryly), Anders was committed to treating each article as though it were an A1 feature, carrying on methodically in his research. He clicked on the first result.
Frick Island is a 1.2-mile strip of land in the Chesapeake Bay, twelve miles off the coast of Winder on the eastern shore of Maryland. With no airstrip or bridges, the island is accessible only by boat. Passenger ferries run twice a day, year-round, to and from the island.
History: Native Americans resided on the island for nearly twelve thousand years until the early 1600s, when it was discovered by Jamestown settlers. The island is one of the oldest English-speaking communities in the region and is known for its unique dialect, which linguists have dubbed Tidewater English.
Present Day: As of the 2020 census, there were 94 people living on the island. Most residents are direct descendants of the first British settlers. The median income for a household was $26,324, and the median income for a family was $29,375. The main profession is fishing. The town boasts one church, one general store/market, and one restaurant. Notably, there are few cars (most people walk or ride bikes for transportation), no street signs, and there is no police force. There is a schoolhouse, although there are no longer enough children to fill it, and therefore children ferry over to the mainland to attend school every day.
Anders’s cell vibrated in his back pocket, interrupting his reading. He dug it out, half hoping it would be Celeste.
“Kelsey,” Anders said when he answered, swallowing his disappointment.
“I’ve been texting you all day. Why haven’t you responded?”
“Because I don’t know what Zoosk is, and I’m not joining it.”
“Mom says you’re heartbroken.”
“I’m not heartbroken.” He was. Even though it had been two months since he and Celeste broke up. Theirs was a college romance, a first love, and when Celeste got accepted to Emory’s medical school upon graduation and Anders got the job in Maryland, they did what most young lovers do—ignored the facts and held steadfast to the belief that their love could endure anything, including a distance of six hundred and ninety-six miles between them. Turned out, it could not. Celeste met a fellow doctoral student at her orientation in June, and the swoony way she spoke about him that evening to Anders—“he’s really smart; an infectious disease major”—should have been his first clue that it was over. The next night it was more facts: “He has this adorable German shepherd, Lola. He showed me a picture.” When she finally ended things for good two weeks later, Anders felt a literal pain in his chest. He had loved her. Or admired her, at least. Or just really appreciated the way she laughed at his quips, as though he was the funniest person she’d ever met.
But he knew defending himself further would only cement Kelsey’s claim, so he chose to deflect. “Mom says you’re sleeping in until twelve and have only been on one audition all summer.” His sister had somehow convinced their parents to let her defer college for a year and live at home to pursue her dream of acting in Atlanta, which had suddenly become a mecca for filmmaking.
“Well, I already signed you up,” she said, ignoring his jab.
“For what?”
“Zoosk.”
“I still don’t know what that is.”
“A dating app. I’m sending you the sign-in now.”
His email dinged. He didn’t bother looking at it and stuck the straw from his Coke in his mouth.
Anders sighed. “I don’t need a dating app.”
“Yes, you do. Celeste has moved on and you need to get out of your comfort zone.”
“I like my comfort zone.” Anders started to wish he hadn’t answered the phone.
“Will you just look at it, please?”
“Sure,” Anders said, though he had no intention of doing so.
He heard muffled speaking and then: “Mom wants to know if you’re coming home for Labor Day. She’s ordering the pork butts or something and is trying to get a head count.” The Caldwells’ Labor Day barbecue had somehow become the social event of the year in their suburban neighborhood.
“I’ve already told her, I’ll probably be working,” Anders said, though he hadn’t even asked Greta yet.