Shining Sea (33 page)

FALL

At school, Alyssa stops me in the hall, giving the teal turtleneck a quick once-over.

“Is that new?” I shake my head. “But you look different,” she insists.

Staring pointedly at her slutty black cat Halloween costume, I raise an eyebrow.

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Don’t talk to me.” She starts to walk away, when one of her feet skids out from under her and she stumbles. Haltingly, she turns to me.

It’s like watching a moonrise over the water, the way the fear and confusion slowly fill her face, her skin paling, then blanching further.

She glances furtively down the hall. “What—what was he trying to
do
to me?” she whispers. Her voice is a tracery, barely there. Then she jerks like a puppet whose strings have been pulled—and stares straight ahead.

Maine Medical hadn’t known what to make of Alyssa’s symptoms. The story she told on Monday when she came back to school after being out for nearly three weeks was that she’d been dieting and had fainted. But will she stick to that story?
How much does she remember?

Now she rolls her eyes again. It’s almost like a tic. “Fine. Don’t talk to me,” she repeats. Then she walks away.

Stunned, I stand still for a second. Then I think,
Such a good idea
. How about—

I don’t talk to anyone?

I’ve already been lying low, eating lunch in the library. How hard can it be to keep on hiding? Just look at the Summers. They hide in plain sight.

Mary calls. Logan calls. Even Pete and Bobby call. But their efforts to get in touch with me . . . feel like intrusions. Everyday voices carrying across airwaves—how can that possibly matter? There is no call I want to answer, no call I
need
to answer.

There is no call I can’t resist.

There is no Call . . . at all.

Dad gets an answering machine for the cottage.

I smash my cell.

It never worked here anyway.

Nothing works.

PACIFIC TIME

Mom is in San Francisco. Again. Why is she always leaving? Pointless to ask, because I don’t believe anything she says now.

And actually, I know why she’s out there; I know all her beats. Why she’s out there—
Art
—and why she’s not here—
Your father.
She had, I remember now, told me these were the reasons she was going. This time. I just hadn’t listened. But Dad’s rattling reminds me.

“Mom’s going to be out in California for a while,” he says, searching through the pots and pans as if he’s misplaced something, giving me time to digest what he’s said.

But I already knew she was planning on staying at the old house for a while, the house that, conveniently—coincidentally?—hasn’t sold.

“Arion, your father and I . . .”

Your father.
Like some new, identifying hashtag, she’d thrown it around for a few days before she left. Every time she talked to me, as a matter of fact.
Your father.
Like he belongs to me now, like maybe I’m even the one who’s responsible for his behavior, responsible for him. Like she’s washed her hands of him. And maybe she has.

“I know,” I say now, watching him search the cupboards. I hate seeing him like this, disoriented in his own kitchen, where he’s usually king. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t, it’s just—of course it’s
okay
, I just . . . wanted you to know.”

To know what? That she’s going to be away for a while? Or that—

She’s not coming back
.

I instantly dismiss the thought. Even she wouldn’t be that heartless.

My father is looking out the window now, looking toward Summers Cove.

“Dad?”

He startles. And then he startles me, by saying, “Why don’t we go out for dinner, Water Dog? How’s that sushi place?”

Jordan Summers’ staring eyes—it’s almost like they’re in front of me. Like he is.

I say, “Closed for the season. How about we go over to the mainland?”

My father, who loves to cook—who
never
goes to restaurants
because
he loves to cook and because he’s a
great
cook—jumps at the idea. It makes my heart sink just a little, even though I’d been the one to suggest it.

He smiles, but his face still has that slightly baffled look, like he’s woken up in someone else’s life. I feel kind of like that too, although not for the same reasons, and it pisses me off that Mom has done this to him, that she’s unavailable when he needs her most.

Lying to the rest of the world, maybe that makes sense, but lying to Dad and me? I can’t forgive that.

But. She and Lilah are family. And I still love them. I just . . .

Hate them too.

I. Will. Not. Cry.

In fact, I almost laughed when, the day before she left, Mom said, “I’m concerned about your reaction to your breakup with Bo.” My parents, the kids at school, everyone believes we broke up, that Bo went to India with his family. It’ll be easy enough to say he’s decided to stay there.

In her infinite wisdom, Mom insisted I see a therapist for what she deems my “unhealthy unwillingness to emote.” At each session, I set myself on repeat.

Shrink:
“How do you feel about that?”

Me:
“Sometimes it’s pain. Sometimes it’s hollow. Never the same. Are we finished for today?” Because I’d rather curl up with a book.

And I do. I read constantly.

“The heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care.”

Emily Dickinson, right again. Funny how I never noticed that second part until now.

The paper I wrote for O’Keefe’s class wound up changing too. I used the end for the beginning, and the beginning . . . I just scrapped it. Beginnings don’t always matter. Sometimes they’re just a place to start. And way back when I started O’Keefe’s assignment, I never would have chosen isolation as a theme. But there it was. In Hardy’s
The
Return of the Native
and Joyce’s
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
. Isolation. And now? My paper makes perfect sense.

Sometimes I miss Dr. Harrison just a little—Mom would love that. But I’m pretty sure he’d at least get that I’m quoting song lyrics. The new therapist, with her rote questions, she’s just dialing it in. And even if she asked the
right
questions? Even if she
listened
to my answers? I wouldn’t be able to confide in her. Because how can I tell anyone the truth, about anything? Plus, how do I explain to a therapist that I don’t need to talk about my feelings?

Along with my mantra, the music keeps them in check, the MP3s I receive as email attachments, nearly every day, from Cord, sometimes from Mia.

The emails tell me that Lilah is “adjusting.”

The music . . . soothes me. Keeps me numb.

WASTEPAPER BASKET

Until one day, I stop listening.

It’s not easy at first. At first there are fevers, and chills. There’s nausea and vomiting so bad I need pills. Motion sickness medicine, that’s what I take. Because whenever I move, I throw up.

I remember how Lilah sat still for days, staring unseeingly at the Golden Gate Bridge. I know now it wasn’t the bridge that she watched, but the water below it—
I am waiting.

Now I’m the one waiting. But just to get better.

Lilah didn’t fight it—her Siren sickness. Her lovesickness. But I do.

I fight it with music, and writing. Day after day, I write page after page.

The stuff is crap: bad poetry and songs that collapse under the weight of sentimentality.

But what doesn’t end up in the wastepaper basket? Gets me through Thanksgiving.

And the less I listen to the Siren Songs, the more my love for Bo starts to seem like . . . something other than love, just like I suspected at the end.

But I wonder some days, without his Song in my ears now, what we actually had—because it
had
been something—a singular, stellar something—that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Unbelievably, some days I miss him. He’d been a beautiful boy—who wasn’t a boy.

So I think of him sometimes, but I don’t cry. Refuse to cry.

Why should I? When all I’ve lost is an illusion.

FLOOD

But then it comes. Comes out of nowhere.

Comes out of me.

I’m in the bathroom, brushing my teeth when it happens.

I brush, I rinse. I pour the remainder of the water from the glass I’ve been using down the drain, watching the miniature whirlpool as if hypnotized. Then I set the glass back on the sink.

The glass. It’s such an innocuous thing.

Until I notice that it’s empty. And suddenly I think—
I’m empty too.

And now, although I don’t remember leaving the bathroom, I’m in the bedroom, standing at the east-facing window and looking down through a night so clear, the stars appear pointed. Sharp. The wind is picking up, and I watch the black ocean rock wildly, spiky waves reaching toward the stygian sky.

The way the spires of water smash themselves against the shoreline suddenly strikes me as suicidal. I turn away.

Two hot tears squeeze themselves out of my eyes, then two more. Soon, tear after tear is rolling down my cheeks, and great, heaving sobs wrack my body. Another minute and I’m crying so hard my chest is hitching, my breath coming in wet gasps.

I’m finally, finally crying for Bo. Not for our relationship—for him. I’m crying about his death. About his life.

The life my sister will have.

She’d fought like a demon when they tried to take her.

Until Jordan started singing.

He sings to her a lot, that’s what Cord writes in his emails. It helps, he tells me. Some.

I cry for her too, now.

And maybe she doesn’t deserve my tears. Maybe Bo doesn’t. But I can’t help it.

I’m not empty—I’m full. Overflowing.

Lastly, I cry for me, because I killed my best friend’s brother, and no one can ever know.

And for one hectic second—my heart hurts for Logan. But then I picture Nick smashing Bo’s head against granite. Imagine Nick leaning over me while I slept, unprotected, in my bed.

I put my hands over my eyes, trying to block out the worst, but the awful images, the cutting memories, remind me:

Nick hadn’t been Logan’s brother, not anymore.

And that keeps me from crying for Logan.
But does it absolve me?

Sobbing, I stumble over to the bed, climbing on as if it’s a life raft, as if it can save me.

But it’s too late. Turning my face to the pillow, I let the tears take me—and I go under.

It’s finally happening. I’m drowning.

PORTAL

Winter. In Maine.

It’s not too much of a trick to avoid people.

Sure, there’s school. But there are snow days, and vacation days, mental health days, and of course sick days—though I’m way over the allotted number of those.

But at least I’m not sick anymore. It’s amazing how clear my head is.

On the calendar, it’s still the end of autumn. But outside it’s cold and bleak and a million shades of gray now that the leaves are off the trees.

“Stop making excuses,” Mary said on the phone earlier today.

“I’m not making excuses.”

“Hermit. Recluse.”

“Try, musician. Writer.”

Mary and I talk nearly every day on the phone. She was upset that she hadn’t gotten to meet my sister, but I explained that Lilah wasn’t here for long. I felt guilty lying to Mary, telling her that Lilah’s surgery was “canceled” and that for now, she’s staying out in California.

“She’s living in a hospital facility that specializes in advanced neurological research,” I said. And I wondered at the way the lies came so easily.

“Wow,” she said softly. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really do wish I’d met her.”

“Well . . . you will. When she visits again. Sometime. She’s going to be okay. Eventually.”

That’s when Mary started talking about Kevin’s uncle. “He’s a neurologist.”

“Oh. Uh—” I’d scrambled for the right thing to say. “Well, don’t talk to Kevin too much about this, okay, Mary? It’s . . . you know, family stuff. Private. In fact, I don’t really want to talk about it anymore. It’s kind of depressing.”

Mary said she totally understood. Then she asked, “Did you let Logan in on all of this?”

“Uh, no. But you can. That’d be great actually.”
One less lie to tell.
“Only, just the basic facts, okay?”

“The basic facts,” she said, “are all I know. Your sister’s surgery was canceled. She’s back in California. Your mom is too, I guess?”

“My mom is too, that’s right.” My mom. Back and forth she goes, between here and California. But Lilah has nothing to do with it.

Once in a while Mary stops by, or we meet at the library.

Sometimes I imagine I see Bo in the stacks. And then I tell Mary, I need to go.

My inbox is crowded with unread emails from the Summers that I downloaded the last time I was at the library. I select them all now and move them to a folder containing the rest of the unopened emails from India. It’s almost easy at this point, not to listen—

A message pops up in my chat window.

IM with Jordan Summers Today 1:00 p.m.

Why don’t you answer your email? Skype. Today. w/ your sister. 11:30 p.m., our time. That’s NOW.

I jab at the keyboard— This Internet connection . . . I hit the keys again—

Skype opens.

Oh—

Her eyes are the same brilliant blue, only now there are traces of green, tendrils of mossy color swaying in the depths of her irises. Instantly, I feel myself being pulled toward watery reaches, toward a distant realm, a faraway world.

“Arion? I hear your Internet sucks—sucks, ha! Hey, are you there? Can you see me? There you are! You’re crying.” She laughs. “Why?”

I close my eyes, feeling for the shoreline.
Lilah. A Siren.
I touch my cheeks. She’s right—of course she is. My face is wet with tears.

Opening my eyes, I drink in the sight of her standing there in a white summer dress. I have a million questions—

But suddenly she flings her arms wide—spins in a circle. Her raven hair—streaked with silver now, beams of moonlight—flies wildly around her face.

I gape, watching her twirl in a sparsely furnished room with high ceilings and saffron walls. The Summers’ house in India.

“Well?” she cries out, stopping abruptly. Her voice fills the room, and now—I hear
her
music
. As if pulled, I move closer to the screen. “Well?” she repeats. “How do I look? God, you’re so close to the screen—your face looks like a balloon!”

“You—you look beautiful.” I blink rapidly. “How are you?”

“I’m
great
!” She wraps her arms around herself in a passionate self-embrace, then she writhes in a suggestive manner that’s so—crude, it’s alarming.

Suddenly the lower part of her torso glints with metallic scales, her legs twist, elongating into a serpent’s tail—

I shove my chair back—

The illusion fades. She’s once again a beautiful girl in a diaphanous white dress standing in a large, nearly empty room with golden walls.

My hands begin to shake.

She lowers her voice, and again, I hear her Song, as she asks, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s—nothing. I’ve—missed you.”
You lied to me.

Like smoke at a crowded party that you can’t avoid inhaling, her Song begins to seep inside me. I want to cover my ears, but I know it won’t help.

She grins, curves her arms overhead, and performs a simple plié. Then, to my shock, she leaps several feet into the air. Like, four feet.
Siren skills?

“Ari, this second life . . . it’s so much better than the first.”

She looks as if she’s ready to leap again, when all at once her body seems to
spill
—like water—as she drops to the floor in a crouch.

“Sirens approaching,” she says in a stage whisper, her eyes wide in mock alarm. She laughs, and like before, the sound simultaneously thrills me and sets me on edge.

I have the sensation of being in a tunnel. “Lilah—”

At the sound of her name, Lilah’s head cocks to one side. The colors in her eyes swirl and shift—then her gaze falls to my lips. She looks at them wonderingly, and I have the feeling that she hasn’t actually seen me until just this moment, hasn’t heard me. She purses her own lips and taps them with an index finger, as if considering something. Then she springs up from the floor—

In the same moment, Jordan Summers appears in the open doorway behind her, shirtless and dripping wet.

“Little Mortal Girl,” he says. Droplets of water run down his muscled arms.

“Hi.” I avert my gaze, but not before I see Lilah reach over and pluck a strand of seaweed from Jordan’s forearm. And just that—the intimacy of the small gesture—tells me what’s between them. My stomach surges.

“Okay, you can start the party now.” Cord nearly knocks Jordan over as he bounds into the room. Lilah spins around and begins talking to him a million miles a minute.

She’s like a more potent, manic version of herself. The way she’d been before the accident—times ten. Maybe times a hundred.

Jordan steps close to the screen, and finally, I meet his eyes. See the glittering spread of a dark sea. The color of the ocean—it’s just a reflection of the sky. But it’s also affected by what lies beneath. Even half a world away, I feel the pull of him.

“She’s a new Siren,” Jordan says in a low voice. “When she comes home, be careful.”

“She’s my sister,” I say shortly. “I don’t think I need to be careful.”

His midnight eyes hold mine. “Oh, but you do. She takes what she wants.”

I don’t blink. “She always has.”

Lilah snaps to attention. “Are you two talking about me?”

Jordan’s expression shuts like a door.

Cord says, “Uh-oh.”

Lilah shoots him a black look, then turns back toward the screen, toward me.

But I’m still looking at Jordan. And I’m thinking—only not thinking. I’m remembering. But not well.
That night, that night at Hive . . .

What is it about Jordan and that night? About Jordan and that club? Jordan and that—girl.

There’d been a girl.

Slither.
The thought slides away.

But it leaves something behind. Some residue. Like oil on water. Something that reminds me:
there are more of them
.

“In this ocean, in
all
the oceans! Sirens, some like us, some who are different than us, and not so . . . compassionate.”

How many, Bo? Is there a whole hidden world around me?

“We’ve discussed it, you know.”

I nearly jump. The screen in front of me seems to brighten, the resolution becoming crisper. Lilah’s skin, it’s so . . . luminous.

“Discussed—discussed what?”

“You,” she says.

Confused, I watch in fascinated disgust as her long pianist fingers creep up Jordan’s arm to his bare shoulder until her hand fits to it, cups it in a way that’s more than possessive, that’s almost—greedy. As if her hand alone can swallow him whole. Her bright eyes move like the sea on a windy day, rocking and hypnotic. Unbalanced.

“You say you don’t want to be a Siren,” she scoffs. “Yet you were in love with Bo.”

“No. I wasn’t. I—thought I was.” I glance uneasily at Jordan. His brother lost his life saving mine. This isn’t a conversation I want to have in front of him.

“Really. Well,
I’m
your sister. You definitely love me.”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“
So?
Am I supposed to live
forever
without you?” Lilah’s face darkens.

“No—I mean, yes. I mean—I missed you so much, Lilah. When the doctors said you were going to die—this was the only way! I couldn’t let you die.”

I stop, aware that her eyes are once more focused on my lips. Then they flick up—meeting mine. My stomach turns to acid as I see the ocean inside her, murky and roiling with something unspeakable. She’s Lilah—but she isn’t.

“You took my notebook.”

“I—”

“I want it back.”

“You can have it. It’s here. You’re right. I took it. I’m sorry, I just—”

“You just couldn’t help being a nosy little bitch. Send it to me,” she snaps.

It’s like a black hole has opened at my feet, and she’s pushed me to the edge of it.

I don’t say anything. I think Jordan is maybe trying to tell me something, that maybe Cord is looking embarrassed, or, or—but I don’t know. I feel like . . . I don’t know anything. Like she’s reduced me. And in a way, I want that. Not to be diminished by her, but to erase myself. I consider the hole. Consider allowing myself to drop into it. To plummet into black nothingness.

But then her voice—it’s like a balm. Her abrupt mood shift is truly terrifying, but her voice . . .

“You’ll love it,” she says silkily. “I mean the singing, come on! What’s not to love?” Her beauty is magnified as she leans toward the screen and begins humming a song from our childhood, a duet we sang together for years. I remember the teachers now, the music lessons, and Lilah, always the best at everything. Except for singing. I’d outshone her there. No secret.

But now her voice is more beautiful than mine can ever be, and she sounds like
she
has a secret—one I want to know. I’m that little girl again, the one she
let
tag along. My resolve begins to weaken. Why had I come to the conclusion that being a Siren is hell? Is horror?

Lilah’s voice is an orchestral instrument of beauty. Harp strings vibrate through my body. Woodwinds caress my soul.
Lilah.
She’s always enthralled me. Had me under her thumb, under her spell.

But I can break that spell now.
Have
to break it—

Quickly, I hit two keys.

Command-Q.

Skype quits—

Break the connection.