Wrecked (6 page)

At one point, according to legend, there’d been talk of banning betwixtmen from Surfacing, ever. It wasn’t only because they could pass as humans, with two legs instead of fish-like tails, but because Sephie was afraid that even a drop of human blood would make them somehow susceptible to falling in love with humans. The legend was, if that happened, the entire world of Down Below would be compromised. That was why the penalties for breaking the rules were severe—ranging from banishment—which, in a place like Down Below, surrounded on all sides by sharks and fearsome creatures of the deep, was akin to immediate death—to death by Sephie’s hand. Christian knew that. And yet, he couldn’t let go of the girl. He’d already interfered. He might as well follow through.

“Fletch?” The girl called. Her voice was hoarse and sputtery. “Fletch?” She clawed at her shoulder, panic in her high-pitched voice.

“Shhh,” he said, stealing a glance behind him. Fletch must
have been one of the bodies. He or she wasn’t there anymore. Instead, the ocean was ghostly silent; the flash storm already much further out to sea.

Hastily, he dragged her onto the white sand that enveloped the island. In the distance, a siren wailed. Christian recognized the sound meant the humans knew something was amiss. Particles matted in the girl’s dark brown hair and she flailed from side to side, reminding Christian so much of a dolphin in a net that his heart froze. He didn’t want to leave her, but he couldn’t be found here. There was only a matter of time before he’d begin to transform, and the transformation only meant he would no longer be able to breathe on land. Already, he felt a tightening in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered roughly, allowing his lips to brush against the pinkish blush of her cheeks. While her hands and shoulders had been freezing, her face felt surprisingly warm underneath his hands. How could she feel so good when everything he’d ever learned had taught him she was bad? He reluctantly yanked his hand away, but otherwise stayed still, watching the rise and fall of her chest. A heart-shaped engraved necklace was clasped around her neck. He leaned closer, wanting to read what it said, in case it provided any clues about who she could possibly be.

He heard another round of sirens; the screech of wheels on gravel. At the far end of the island, off the dock, boats with floodlights were entering the water like a flotilla. He had to go. He knew he shouldn’t, but he gently unclasped the necklace
and cupped it in his palm. He needed something to remind him of her.

“I tried,” he whispered again, knowing as he said it that nothing, not Sephie’s law, not an entire ocean, could keep him away, as he turned away from land, walked into the water and swam, deeper and deeper, past the shipwrecks, past the great coral reefs, until he got to the part of the ocean that was too dark and cold for anything but the hardiest and ugliest creatures to live. Now, in the dark in between that was neither here nor there, he felt safe. Sephie couldn’t have seen, he reminded himself. Down Below, she was all powerful. But here, how would she have known about a tiny boat capsizing? And even if she did, she wouldn’t have seen him. She’d have been too distracted greedily counting her acquisitions, in the form of the souls that had fluttered to the bottom of the sea.

As he continued to stroke downward, he noticed tiny orbs of light falling beneath the surface. They were glowing, beautiful, doomed. He knew those were the souls from the shipwreck, and felt a deep pang in his heart. Down Below, a soul remained forever and ever, reincarnating and regenerating in different forms, so that a deva might be reincarnated as a mermaid, who might be reincarnated the next time around as a merman. But Up Above, one soul existed only in one body.

“Fletch?” He called, the name tasting unfamiliar in his mouth. One of the orbs glimmered slightly, then continued its plunge toward the bottom before leaving his sight.

ONE MONTH LATER

M
IRANDA LAY PERFECTLY STILL.
T
HROUGH THE INCH OF
water that lay between her eyes and the air, she could only see the sky as a sheet of blackness interspersed with fuzzy halos of light. She could barely make out the Big Dipper, and the sliver of moon didn’t even cast a shadow on the liquid that surrounded her. She breathed out, watching tiny bubbles make their way up to the surface of the water. She felt her lungs clench, but she closed her eyes, determined to last as long as possible.

Finally, when she felt her heart beating in her stomach and heard blood pounding in her ears, she surfaced, taking a deep gulp of air, then another.

“Miranda!” Her eyes flew open as Eleanor rushed out the
sliding French doors and onto the sandstone patio. She was wearing a silk orchid-color knee-length dress and had a lily stuck in her hair.

“Sorry. Just swimming,” Miranda called, willing Eleanor to leave her alone.

“Miranda!” Eleanor shrieked again, her voice piercing the air like a siren. From far off, Miranda could hear a dog bark. “Don’t
do
that. You know if you need to go swimming, you should have Louisa watching you.” Eleanor shook her head. “I’m worried about you. This isn’t normal. Dr. Dorn says that this isn’t healthy. You need to get back into your routines, into your
life.
”

Miranda swam over to the side of the pool and blinked up at Eleanor. “I
said
I was sorry,” she said in a low voice. In the semi-darkness, she noticed that her fingers gripping the gutter of the pool were ghostly white. The air was chilly, even though the water was a temperature-controlled eighty degrees. “I’m
fine,”
she repeated, a steely edge to her voice.

Eleanor nodded curtly, her hair not moving from its shellacked French twist. She was platinum blond even at age seventy-five. “I’m heading to the hospital. Can you get ready?”

Instead of answering, Miranda dunked her head underwater. She wished she could stay there forever, until the sound of her heart beating in her ears drowned out the noise of anything else. The only place she felt remotely okay was when she was in the water. If she concentrated on the rhythmic stroking of her arms and legs, then she could
almost
stop thinking. That was
why she spent as many of her waking hours as she could swimming, either in the pool, or more preferably, at Bloody Point at the other end of the island. In the shadow of a long-abandoned golf course and only accessible through a half-mile path in the woods, no one was ever there. And Miranda liked it that way.

That’s why almost every night Miranda had been sneaking out the window, climbing carefully onto the flat roof of the porch, which led to the thick-trunked magnolia tree she could climb down. It was dangerous, but she didn’t really care. It was more dangerous to be alone with her thoughts. It wasn’t like things were
better
in the water, but she felt more in control. She remembered back to when she was a four-year-old—whenever she’d be upset or whiny or nervous, her mother would take her across the street to the park and tell her to outrun the bad feelings. She’d run in circles, around and around the metal jungle gym, until she’d tired herself out. Then, she’d lie on the grass or the sand by the swings, feeling her heart beat in her chest. Back then, she’d always felt better. Now, it was almost the same. It was all about letting her body overtake her mind. It was like soccer, making your opponent think she had a chance to take the ball before cleanly kicking it to a teammate. Except now, she couldn’t outrun her feelings.

“Miranda, we need to go. Visiting hours end at six,” Eleanor said again, practically tapping her foot against the sandstone tiles. “Will you be ready in ten minutes? I’ll have Roger get the car.”

Of course she wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to see Fletch
lying unconscious in a hospital bed, his body bloated and hooked up to dozens of wires. His mom and dad were always by his side. They allowed her to come in, but Miranda knew it would be better for everyone if she didn’t see Fletch. Seeing him wouldn’t make him get better, it would just make his parents hate her more.

It’s not my fault!
Miranda wanted to tell them. But so far, she never had. Because no matter how much people insisted that it wasn’t, that the navigation system had failed, that the channel marker wasn’t clearly identifiable in the storm, that a lightning bolt had caused the fire that had led to all the destruction.
She
had been the one driving the boat. Maybe it was her fault. Genevieve, Lydia, Alexa, and Darcy were dead, Jeremiah had a broken arm, Alan had a dislocated shoulder, and Fletch was in a coma.

Gray was miraculously uninjured, having been guided by Alan to one of the larger fiberglass pieces of the boat. She and Alan had held on until the Coast Guard ship came to rescue them. Genevieve had most likely died immediately; her head had struck the side of the boat as Fletch had tossed her overboard and she drowned. Jeremiah, Alexa, and Darcy had all fallen overboard when the ship cracked in half. And while Jeremiah had desperately clung to both girls, to try to swim them to safety, they’d both been pronounced dead of smoke inhalation as soon as they reached the hospital. And Miranda had woken up with a minor concussion and a gash from her
thigh to her knee where part of the boat’s fiberglass hull had torn into her leg.

Sighing, Miranda grabbed the ledge of the pool and began to hoist herself up. She grimaced as Eleanor instantly extended her fragile hand.

“I can do it myself,” she announced in what she realized was an echo to the phrase she’d said so often as a toddler. One try, two tries, and she finally heaved her abdomen over the lip of the pool, landing like an injured seal pup. She grimaced as she pushed herself into a standing position.

Think confidence. Think you can do it.
That’s what Lacey, the impossibly perky physical therapist at the Mount Pleasant Rehabilitation Center, would say before forcing Miranda to walk up and down the four-stepped mini staircase in the treatment room over and over and over again. It was a miracle she was walking so quickly, Lacey kept reminding her, even as she kept forcing Miranda to repeat the exercises, even when it felt like white-hot pokers were searing her flesh. Of course it was going to hurt. The cut had torn into her muscle, and rebuilding strength was going to take a long time.

Or at least that’s what Lacey said. But what Lacey didn’t know, and what Miranda wouldn’t admit to anyone, was that her leg didn’t really hurt. Sure, sometimes her muscles hurt, and sometimes the cut seemed like it was beating in time to her heart, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle; nothing as bad as the ACL injury she’d had in eighth grade after a soccer tourney.
And despite all the tests she’d had in the hospital, she found that as long as she kept telling them that her leg hurt, then they’d keep running tests and ordering physical therapy appointments and keeping her from heading back to school. And the more she said it, the more she believed it herself. She just wished it could work for everything else—that somehow, if she said the accident hadn’t occurred, it hadn’t. Plus, the more she focused on any twinge of pain that emanated from where the cables on the channel marker had dug into her leg, the more she could ignore her heart. Or try to until she couldn’t bear it any longer.

Then, she’d stay up almost all night, forcing herself to listen to the Fletch and Miranda mix on her iPod, to look through the Calhoun Academy yearbook from last year, to scroll through the thousands of texts she and Fletch had sent to each other over the past year, all of which ended in oxo—which sort of looked like an infinity symbol. It had started as an offhand observation, but had become automatic. Love for infinity.
Right.

Miranda pulled on the sweatshirt that was slung over the patio chair. It was Fletch’s Calhoun lacrosse sweatshirt and still smelled like him: woodsmoke, Old Spice deodorant, and something else Miranda couldn’t quite place—something that made her feel safe and nostalgic and sad, all at once. But the scent was fading and it felt more like a costume than anything, an outward sign to the Kings that she was mourning just as much as they were.

“I’m having Roger drive us,” Eleanor said, almost to herself. “He brought the car around front.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a second,” Miranda said.

Eleanor paused, as if she were about to protest. Then she nodded and turned away, her heels clacking against the sandstone tiles. She moved surprisingly fast for her age, and Miranda was relieved when she heard the French doors to the kitchen click closed.