THE LAUGHING CROW: A CRYPTIC Anthology

Justice of the Sea

NOOR DOES NOT consider herself a master manipulator, but she did manage to convince her best friend Prem into illegally hitching a first-class plane ride to Miami and stealing a yacht to take out on a joy-ride through the Caribbean using only half a bag of Taki's, a car wash coupon worth slightly less than $20, and her unrelenting charm.

It is not worth mentioning that, in order to do so, she'd had to tie him up and gag him. It is also not worth mentioning that Noor may or may not have given Prem sleeping pills that resulted in him being unconscious for the entire voyage. It is, however, very worth mentioning that he'd had a brief period of consciousness in Miami before promptly passing out again, where he'd thought he'd died and been reborn and went around telling everyone he saw that Jesus was a drag queen in go-go boots and ripped fishnets.

(Noor hadn't understood that particular claim of his. Prem was Hindu and had thought Jesus was a real person and the current Pope until he was twelve.)

Thinking back on this accomplishment with pride, Noor glides her brown hand through the warm breeze floating off the water. It's peaceful here, the moonlight dripping into her skin like warm candle-wax, the sea breeze rustling her hijab, the faint smell of fresh sea salt melting into her tongue. The endless deep turquoise waves. The quiet of the still summer air. The stars reflecting above them like the lights of the city. Growing up in Manhattan, Noor never got to see the sea as pure as this. She never got to see the world as pure as this, as gentle and as dark. She feels like it's only her and Prem alone in the universe, alone in this vast moonlit universe. She almost likes it better this way.

The boat they're on is a small but expensive-looking white yacht, and the deck they occupy is one on the bow of the ship that the owners must have used to sun themselves on. Above them, the windows of it turned to black mirrors reflecting the night back out at them, towers the bridge.

Prem's just starting to wake up. He keeps twitching in his sleep, shifting uncomfortably, his face contorted somewhere between pain and anger as if he knows he has to get up soon. He looks uncomfortable and hot in his tie-dye hoodie and Nike track pants, sweat beading down his neck and into his dark tufts of hair; it'd been cold and rainy in New York when they'd left. Large drops of salt spray are freckled against his glasses, and his dark skin's already begun to turn red from the sun earlier in the day. Noor's always wondered how he manages to get so sunburnt, the kid's so brown.

The two of them had been best friends since second grade , when Noor'd side-tackled Prem 'cause he'd had a silly-band she'd wanted, one in the shape of a unicorn. Only after Noor had beat the crap out of the poor boy had their art teacher managed to pull her off of him. Prem had then lied that he'd stolen the silly-band that had prompted the fight, resulting in the lessening of Noor's punishment. They'd been inseparable ever since. Really, he was all she'd ever wanted: a partner-in-crime that would lie straight through his teeth to keep her out of trouble, even if it meant getting punished himself.

Current-day-Noor shakes Prem's shoulder. He jolts awake, his eyes bursting open like a water ballon full of rich melted chocolate.

"Noor!" Prem screeches. "This is not the subway!"

"Well, obviously it isn't. It's the Caribbean."

"What are we doing in the Caribbean? Are we running from the feds again?" Prem asks, looking slightly panicked. "Noor, what did you do this time?

Noor spins her necklace, a golden locket in the shape of a cartoonish crow, around her pointer finger. It'd been a gift from her parents for her sixteenth birthday. Her dad, who was an engineer and pretty darn brilliant, had worked together with his friend, a jeweler, to it for her. The crow was meant to symbolize her mom's airplane; she always told the story of how, the first time she ever flew, they found a stowaway crow hiding in the luggage compartment after they landed. It updated in real-time to tell her her mom's exact coordinates, so she'd always know where she was. He'd made her mom one that gave her Noor's coordinates, one in the shape of the Empire State Building. It was meant to symbolize both her home and her daughter's love of architecture.