Galen wraps his arms around her before she sinks an inch.
Ignoring the two splashes on the other side of the boat, he pushes Emma to the surface and into the waiting arms of his sister. Rayna heaves her over the rim of the craft.
When Galen falls back to the water, he spots the two lifeguards and rolls his eyes. They don’t even realize Emma is already safe on board. They wade themselves stationary, not willing to search beyond an arm’s length ahead of them. Without the spotlight, these pitiful creatures can see nothing. If Galen weren’t here, Emma would be dead.
Infuriated, he torpedoes between them. The momentum spins them around like tiny whirlpools. He hears their startled cries as he swims away.
* * *
Galen dislodges his swimming trunks from under the rock; with a beach full of humans, he’d had to pull them off in the water. He slides them on, digs his feet in the muddy floor, and walks toward shore.
Rayna is waiting for him, sitting in the sand with her knees drawn to her chest. She wrings a piece of clothing in her hands until it resembles a rope; Galen recognizes it as the shirt Emma wore when he first saw her on the boardwalk. Even in the moonlight, he sees that his sister is crying.
He sighs and sits beside her. She accepts his arm around her shoulders without a fight, even leans her head on his chest when he draws her to him.
“Chloe’s dead,” she chokes out. For all her venom, his sister cares about life—human or not.
He nods. “I know. I didn’t get there in time.”
Rayna snorts. “Galen, this is one thing you can’t take responsibility for. I said she was dead. I didn’t say you killed her. If you couldn’t get to her, then nobody could have.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I waited too long to intervene.”
“Galen—”
“Forget it. What about Emma?”
Rayna sighs. “She came to right when we got to shore. They let her ride in the white truck with Chloe.”
“But how is she?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s breathing. And crying.”
Galen nods, lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “So she’s okay.” His sister pulls away and leans back. He lets his arm drop but doesn’t look at her. “I think you should go home,” he says quietly.
Rayna stands up and angles over him so that she’s blocking the moonlight. She plants her feet in the sand, hands on hips. Still, he doesn’t expect her to yell like she does. “She isn’t one of us! She’s a pathetic human who couldn’t even save her own friend. And you know what? Even if she is one of us, I don’t want to know! Because then I’d have to kill her for letting her friend die!”
Galen is on his feet before she can finish the last sentence. “So if she’s human, you hate her, and if she’s Syrena, you hate her. Have I got that right?” He tries to keep the defensive edge out of his tone. His sister would probably have a different opinion if she’d just seen what he had. But she didn’t. And since he’s still not ready to tell her anything—not what Dr. Milligan said and not how the shark acted—he’s going to have to be patient with her misconceptions about Emma. And he’s going to have to do better than this.
“She’s not Syrena! If she was, we would sense her, Galen.”
This shuts him up. He’d assumed Rayna could sense Emma the way he could, since she is his twin. But who ever heard of sensing another Syrena on land? Did he just make it up? Could it be that he’s just attracted to a human?
No. He knows what he felt when he touched her. That means something, doesn’t it?
“Wait,” Rayna says, jabbing her index into his bare chest. “Are … are you telling me you did sense her?”
He shrugs. “Did you get in the water?”
She tilts her head at him. “No. I was in the boat the whole time.”
“So how do you know if you can sense her or not?”
She crosses her arms. “Stop answering my questions with questions. That only worked when we were young.”
Galen cringes inwardly. There is no way to explain this to his sister without sounding foolish. And his answer would only lead to more questions—questions that weren’t any of her business. For now, at least.
He crosses his arms, too. “It still works sometimes. Remember a few days ago when we came across that lionfish and—”
“Stop that! I swear by Triton’s trident if you don’t answer—”
Galen is saved by the faint sound of music coming from beneath their feet. They both step away and listen. Galen gently kicks the sand around, looking for the cell phone. He finds it on the last ring. He picks it up, brushes it off.
This phone doesn’t look the same as the one Rachel—his self-appointed human assistant—bought him. It’s pink with little jewels all over the cover. He presses a button, and a picture of Emma and Chloe lights up the screen.
“Oh,” Rayna says, her brow wrinkled. “Whose … whose is it?”
“I don’t know.” He checks the missed call, but it only says, “Mom.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how to tell who it belongs to.”
“Would Rachel know?”
He shrugs. “Is there anything Rachel doesn’t know?” Even Dr. Milligan admits that Rachel could likely be the most resourceful human alive. Galen has never told him her background, or how he found her, but if Dr. Milligan is impressed, then so is he. “Let’s call her.”
“She won’t answer from this number, will she?”
“No, but I’ll call the safe number and leave a message.” He dials the 800 number she insisted on buying. It goes to a fake company, a “shell company” Rachel calls it, that’s supposed to sell car warranties. She hardly ever gets a call, but when she does, she won’t answer. And she only returns Galen’s calls.
When he hears the voice prompt to leave a message, he says, “Rachel, call me back on this number, I don’t have my cell phone. I need to know whose phone this is, both names if you can get it. Oh, and I need to know where Jersey is and if I have enough money to buy it.”
When he hangs up, Rayna is staring at him. “Both names?”
Galen nods. “You know, like Dr. Milligan’s names are Jerry and Milligan.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot about that. Rachel said she has more names than a phone book. What does that mean?”
“It means she has so many names that no one can figure out who she is.”
“Yeah, that makes perfect sense,” Rayna mutters, kicking the sand. “Thanks for explaining.”
The phone rings. The safe number lights up the screen.
“Hey, Rachel.”
“Hiya, cutie. I can get you that name by morning,” she says. She yawns.
“Did I wake you up? Sorry.”
“Aw, you know I don’t mind it, sweet pea.”
“Thanks. What about Jersey?”
She laughs. “Sorry, hun, but Jersey’s not for sale. If it was, my uncle Sylvester would already own it.”
“Well then, I’ll need a house there. Probably another car, too.”
He turns away from his sister, who looks like she might eat Emma’s poor shirt. He prefers that she does—if it keeps her from biting him.
After a long silence, Rachel says, “A house? A car? What will you be doing in Jersey? Sounds pretty deep. Everything okay?”
He tries to put distance between him and his sister before he whispers, “I … I might be going to school there for a little while.”
Silence. He checks the screen to make sure the signal is good. “Hello?” he whispers.
“I’m here, babe. You just, uh, surprised me, that’s all.” She clears her throat. “So umm … what kind of school? High school? College?”
He shakes his head into the phone. “I don’t know yet. I don’t exactly know how old she is—”
“She? You’re buying a house and a car to impress a girl? Oh, swoooon!”
“No, it’s not like that. Not exactly. Will you stop squealing, please?”
“Oh, no, no, no,
I will not stop squealing. I’m going with you. This sort of thing is my specialty.”
“Absolutely not,” he says, running a hand through his hair. Rayna grabs his arm and mouths, “Get off the phone now.” He shoos her away and is met with a growl.
“Oh, please, Galen,” Rachel says, her voice syrupy sweet. “You’ve got to let me come. And besides, you’re gonna need a mother if you want to register for school. And you don’t know a thing about shopping for clothes. You need me, sweet pea.”
He grits his teeth, partly because Rayna is twisting his arm to the point of snapping and partly because Rachel is right—he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. He flings off his sister and kicks sand on her for good measure before he walks farther down the beach.
“Fine,” he says. “You can come.”
Rachel squeals and then claps her hands. “Where are you? I’ll come get you.” Galen notes that she no longer sounds tired.
“Uh, Dr. Milligan said Destin.”
“Okay. Where’s Destin?”
“He said Destin and he said Florida.”
“Okay, gotcha. Lemme see.…” He hears clicking in the background. “Okay, it looks like I’ll have to fly, but I can be there by tomorrow. Is Rayna coming, too?”
“Not in a million years.”
The phone is snatched from his grasp. Rayna sprints away with it, yelling as she runs. “You bet I’m coming! And bring me some of those lemon-cookie things again, will you, Rachel? And some of that shiny stuff to put on my lips when they get too dry…”
Galen massages his temple with fingertips, contemplating what he’s about to do.
And he considers kidnapping Emma instead.
One
Mr. Shackleford shuffles in the front door of the Breeze Mart, jingling the bells tied to a velvet string on the handle.
Please don’t die on my shift.
Please don’t die on my shift.
Please don’t die on my shift.
He’s one of my regulars—maybe even the regular—and one of the only customers to come in past 1:00 a.m., which is why I wait to sweep and mop until after he leaves. I glance at the clock; 1:37 a.m.
Right on time.
The other reason I wait to mop is because Mr. Shackleford is the human version of stale bread. He’s moldy—seventy years old with a white flaky exterior, crusty around the edges, especially in the eyes where the cataracts congregate. On the inside, slow chemical reactions decompose what’s left of something that used to be soft and pliable and probably pleasant (I say probably because where old people usually have frown lines, Mr. Shackleford has smile lines). The only thing that keeps him alive is the alcohol, due to what I imagine is a pickling effect. And due to the alcohol, he sometimes mistakes aisle four for the men’s bathroom.
As he passes the front register where I’ve got my calculus splayed, he gives me a slight nod, which tells me he’s fairly lucid—and the odds of him peeing near the beef jerky are slim tonight. He doesn’t even fidget with the zipper of his camouflage pants, which is usually the first sign that I should direct him to the bathroom immediately.
I hear him scuffle down the last aisle and back again; this time the sound of a sloshing fifth of vodka accompanies him. I try to clear my books before he gets to the counter but I’m too late; he sets the bottle on my scrap sheet of graph paper, magnifying the graph lines I drew ten seconds before.
“Evenin’, Carly,” he says. I know he’s been drinking, I can smell it, but his words aren’t slurry yet. He appraises the books and papers in front of me. “Math. That’s good. Math’ll take you a long way in life.”
He’s gearing up for the Question of the Night, I can tell. No matter what stage of inebriation he’s in, he goes all philosophical on me before he pays for the vodka. I know he thinks I fail at the answers, but that’s okay. I live in the real world, not in an alcohol-induced euphoria. Last night, the question was “Is it better to be sick and wealthy, or healthy and poor?” Of course, I had to clarify a few things, like how sick and how wealthy and how poor. Very sick, very wealthy, very poor, he’d said.
So I announced that it would be best to be very sick and very wealthy. That way you could afford the best health care imaginable, and if you died, you could leave your loved ones something besides broken hearts and a funeral bill. In this country, to rise above healthy and poor is just an ideal. An ideal that most poor people don’t have time to contemplate because they’re too busy trying to put food on the table or keeping the lights turned on.
Like me and my brother, Julio.
Yes, it sounds like a pessimistic outlook on life blah, blah, blah. But pessimism and reality are usually mistaken for each other. And the realists are usually the only ones who recognize that.
Mr. Shackleford thumbs through his dirty camouflage wallet—which is always full of hundred dollar bills—and pulls out a twenty, probably the only one he keeps in that fat thing. I give him change, the same change every night, and he pockets the bills but leaves the seven cents in the got-a-penny tray in front of the register. I put his new bottle in a brown paper bag and gear up for the Question.
He tucks his purchase under his arm. “Is it possible to be truly happy without ever having been truly poor?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not only possible, Mr. Shackleford. It’s more likely.” Okay, so I like these debates we have. Mr. Shackleford is easy to talk to. He’s not judgmental; I don’t think he’s racist either. Most people don’t even say anything when they check out at my register. I know I look Mexican through and through—not even mixed Mexican—just straight-up Mexican, fresh from the border. But that’s where they’re wrong. I’m not straight from the border. I was born right here in Houghlin County, Florida.
I am an American. And so is Julio.
Mr. Shackleford has never treated me like anything but. He acts like I’m his peer, which is both a little weird and a little cool, that I could be a rich old guy’s sixteen-year-old peer.
Mr. Shackelford purses his lips. “Money can’t buy happiness.” This is the root of all our discussions, and his usual comeback.
I shrug. “Being poor never delighted anyone.”
He chuckles. “Simplicity has its merits.”
“Being poor isn’t the same thing as being simple.” And surely he knows how hypocritical it sounds, coming from him. After all, he’s about to hoist himself into his brand-new colossal pickup truck and drive away to his family’s plantation house. He’ll probably watch some TV before drifting off into his nightly vodka coma. Sounds like the definition of simplicity to me.
But he sure as heck isn’t poor.
Besides that, things can get real complex when you’re just poor enough to have to choose which utility bill to pay and which one to let go. When you can’t send enough money along to your family without missing a few meals yourself. When school makes you buy a calculator that costs one hundred something dollars just to take a calculus class—and if you don’t take the calculus class you don’t qualify for the scholarship you’ve been working for since Day One.
Being poor isn’t simple.
“How is it complicated?” he presses. He counts to three with his fingers. “Work. Eat. Sleep. The poor have time for little else. There is a kind of peacefulness in that simplicity. A peacefulness that the wealthy will never know. Why? Because of the drama, Miss Vega. Higher taxes. More ex-wives. A cornucopia of lawsuits. Lengthy, tortuous family vacations with stepfamilies of stepfamilies. Slavery to hideous fashion trends—”
The list continues to escalate in ridiculousness. Not to mention, I doubt Mr. Shackleford has ever found himself the victim of a fashion trend. In fact, it doesn’t look like he’s even acknowledged fashion since somewhere in the vicinity of 1972—and the extent of that acknowledgment appears to cover what was hot among rednecks back in the era of starched flannel.
“Surely this exhaustive list of rich-people issues has a point,” I cut him off, unimpressed.
He grins. “I haven’
t heard your counterargument, Miss Vega.” He pulls the package from his armpit and slides the paper bag off the bottle. Fixing his eyes on the cap, he slowly unscrews it. “I require of you a list to match my own. Prove that a poor person’s life is so terrible.” He takes a swig and waits for my answer.
And suddenly I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
I know Mr. Shackleford is wealthy. Everyone does. And he knows that I’m not working the graveyard shift at a gas station because my family uses hundred dollar bills for toilet paper. This conversation has become personal. Hasn’t it? I mean, his list is full of things that everyone already knows about the lives of the rich and famous. All the drama they create. It’s public knowledge.
But the poor people list? That’s a different story. The media rarely covers the glamorous life of poverty. It’s this hidden gem of truth that only the impoverished get to polish. For the list to be genuine, it can only be created from firsthand experience.
So Mr. Shackleford isn’t asking what I know about poor people. He’s asking me about me. He’s asking how bad my circumstances are. Mine, personally. At least that’s what it feels like. And I don’t like it. Before, it felt as though we were equals in these conversations. I doubt it will ever feel that way again. Have they been personal all along? Have they all been an attempt to … what, exactly? Get me to admit I’m poor?
Or am I being weird?
I just hope he doesn’t want to make me his charity case or something. I could never take anything from him. How do you explain to someone that you were born with the need for self-sufficiency? And anyway, Mr. Shackleford should recognize this.
Just ask him if he wants help getting to his truck. Nooooooope.
“I have to get back to work,” I say.
A glint of disappointment passes through his eyes, a reaction slowed by the liquor swimming in him. I’ve never spurned the Question of the Night before.