It’s not the street I usually go down, but for some reason that day, I turned down a different road. Actually, it wasn’t my decision, but my day was far from normal and did not go as I had planned. It was a fairly sunny day, and I spent most of it relaxing on the lido deck of the cruise. My mom decided it was time for the family to get out the house and be normal, so she suggested we all pack ourselves onto a boat with two-thousand strangers and let the ocean take us where it may.

As much as I would have loved to stay home with a good book, my mother was not having it. Once that woman gets something in her head, it’s impossible to get it out. So, there I was with the sun burning my face and too many people lounging around in bathing suites making me regret eating so much at lunch time. Deciding I needed some space to myself I started to get up and before my other foot could hit the floor something zoomed past me. Of course, with my luck and terrible clumsiness, I ended up stepping on the zooming object and falling flat on my back.

As much as it hurt, I was more curious about what actually made me fall. When I sat up, there was a little boy standing over me with a scared look on his face. He immediately began to try and pull me up with his small hands, abandoning the object he was holding. After I was standing up and pretty sure I didn’t need surgery, I turned to address the boy.

“Hey, what was that all about,” I asked. On a regular day I would have left before the kid got a chance to say sorry—I’m not a very social person and try my best to avoid people. For some reason that day I figured I should try being normal.  He went to pick up the object that he had set down. Normally, I would have flipped out but then suddenly the little boy turned to me. He was now holding up a cell phone, looking at me with these big, apologetic eyes.

“I am so sorry,” came an automated voice from the cell phone. “I didn’t mean to knock you down.” I was a little confused as to why the phone was talking when I heard a voice calling out loudly.

“Isaiah! Isaiah where the heck are you?” I turned and saw a girl a few years younger than my seventeen years. She kept looking back and forth from her iPad to the crowded deck. “Isaiah, you know you can’t run off like that!”

She came to an abrupt stop when she finally spotted me and the little boy standing at my side. He was looking so scared, and I figured he was the Isaiah she was looking for. He began to rapidly type on his phone.
The automated voice came on as he held the phone up. “I am sorry Cecily. I was driving my race car too fast and made this girl fall.” He typed something else into his phone. “I didn’t mean to do it and I am so sorry.”
Things were starting to make sense to me now. I turned to address the girl. “What’s going on? Why does he keep using his phone to talk?”

Cecily got a sad look in her eyes, “I normally don’t share this with anyone, but I think Isaiah feels really bad. You see, one year we decided that the whole family would go with dad on one of his expeditions. We all went to the Bermuda’s knowing that anything could happen.”

“Wait,” I interjected. “Your dad goes on expedition in the Bermuda? Like the fancy vacation spot?
“No, Bermuda as in the triangle where boats go missing. Anyway, what we didn’t think was that my brother would fall out of the helicopter on one of our excursions. He was holding all of dad’s books and papers with his important notes because he is a pretty responsible kid. Anyway, the winds had picked up and the pilot lost control of the helicopter for a brief moment. You would think everything in a helicopter is secure but for some reason my brothers’ seatbelt snapped and he went sailing through the opening and we watched in horror as Isaiah plopped into the water.

We were all so scared but there wasn’t anything we could do up in the air. We weren’t that far off shore so the pilot immediately turned the helicopter around and took us to land. We got off right beside the port where a boat that my dad sometimes uses was sitting. We packed into the car of the ocean and went frantically looking for Isaiah. Long story short, we found him floating on an old and tattered airplane seat looking as scared as he felt. It was a relief to have found him, but when we got him on the boat and to shore, you could tell something was off about him. We decided to head home and get him thoroughly checked out and it dawned first on mom that we hadn’t heard Isaiah say a word since we found him in the water clutching that seat.”

Cecily was looking a little sad, on the brink of tears but her brother gave her a look of encouragement and she continued on. “You see, Isaiah is a mute. I don’t know what could have happened in the short time he was out there alone—none of the family can figure it out—and Isaiah refuses to tell us. All I know is that the Bermuda Triangle changed him. We took him to a number of psychological therapists, but they could never get him to speak. One did suggest that we try and get him a companion like a dog, but Isaiah was never really an animal person.

Our last resort is this cruise to Hawaii. Mom and dad are hoping that a change of scenery will get Isaiah to relax and open up but I told them I didn’t think it would work. Honestly, he’s been this way for a year and still does normal kid things. We just need to give him more time.”

I didn’t know how to react to all the information Cecily had just given me. Here I was about to chew out a boy, who made me fall when, come to find out, he’s been through such a traumatic event. My day had definitely taken a turn, but I wasn’t sure if was for the better. It was definitely interesting to say the least.

Just as I was about to respond to Cecily, Isaiah tugged on my arm, drawing my attention.  With the cell phone in one hand, he cupped the other to his mouth, stood on the tips of his toes and leaned in very close to my ear. What happened next shocked both me and Cecily. Isaiah started to whisper in my ear.