She hung up without saying anything. Waited for him to text some sort of excuse or apology. He did neither, and she worried she’d broken an unspoken rule. Pushed too hard or too far.
Her fingers trembled as she typed out: Why didn’t you answer?
She watched the bubbles of his response. YOU DIDN’T WANT ME TO.
The sound she let escape was a cry of frustrated desperation wrapped in a laugh. And then Cynthia did something she never thought she’d do. She turned off her phone. Then she rolled over in bed and cried.
• • •
That week his texts stacked up on her screen. All left unanswered.
HEY.
YOU THERE?
EVERYTHING OK?
TALK TO ME.
It was the last one that broke her. It said simply: CYNTHIA. And it came in late Saturday night as she lay in the darkness of her room.
She couldn’t quite figure out why it brought tears to her eyes. Perhaps because it was the first time he’d used her name. Or perhaps it was confirmation that none of this had been a mistake—a wrong number.
It had been about her the entire time.
It’s not fair that you know my name and I don’t know yours, she finally wrote to him.
She should have expected the answer. It was the same as before: IS THAT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW?
No. She typed quickly. Where did we meet?
And then she wrote: Wait. Not that.
Why me?
WHY NOT YOU?
It was an unsatisfying answer. Flippant in its own way. As though there was nothing particularly interesting about her that stood out—separated her from the herd. She set the phone down, thinking that perhaps she should be done with this. Maybe even block his number.
But when it buzzed again, she couldn’t resist.
I’VE NEVER SEEN SOMEONE WHO WANTED OUT OF HER LIFE AS MUCH AS YOU DO.
Heat flushed up the back of her legs.
He kept going. As her breath came faster and her knees grew weaker.
EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU IS A GIFT.
CAN’T YOU SEE THAT, CYNTHIA?
YOU MEAN SOMETHING.
She felt spent, emptied but in a way that seemed somehow delicious. She pushed herself deeper into the mattress, skin humming, as she let that last phrase repeat endlessly through her head.
Except she added “to me” at the end. Because it was clear that’s what he’d meant. You mean something to me.
YOU STILL THERE? I CAN SEE YOUR LIGHT ON.
Cynthia frowned. My light isn’t on.
There was a long pause. AH, MUST BE YOUR FATHER’S THEN.
She stared at the words before pushing from the bed. The long hallway outside her room was dark except for the wash of light sweeping underneath her father’s bedroom door. She swallowed. Her flushed skin turned cold, clammy.
Quietly, slowly, she tiptoed back into her room and over to her window. A few doors down a car idled in the street, tucked in the black shadow of a thick tree. A weak glow lit the driver’s side, only enough to give her a vague outline of the figure inside.
He was tall. Skinny. His elbow rested on the edge of the open window as he typed something out.
A moment later her phone pulsed against her fingertips.
YOU COULD INVITE ME IN.
But she knew that could never happen. That somehow him stepping into her house would be wrong. Would break whatever it was between them.
She had to go to him. I’ll come out.
She glanced down at her nightgown—white lawn cotton grown thin from hundreds of washes. It ended with a ruffle below her knees, and pink bows decorated the hem, most of them missing after so many years.
She suddenly realized how much it made her look like a little girl. That’s not how she wanted him to think of her. Just let me change first.
His response was swift, lighting the room before she’d even reached for a pair of jeans. NO. AS YOU ARE.
Something inside of her squeezed in a way she’d never felt before. She couldn’t decide if it was from fear or anticipation or both mixed together. But she thought she might like it.
Her breath came shorter. Okay.
But she didn’t move. She just stood, staring out her bedroom window at the car idling in the darkness.
And she realized how ridiculous this all was. She knew nothing about this man. Not even his name.
Not even the sound of his voice.
She thought that if she could just have that, she’d know. Whether to trust him. To go to him. To believe in him.
She pressed the call button, holding the phone to her ear as she watched him. Waiting for the flash of light from his phone to illuminate his face. She thought she saw him shake his head, and a profound sense of disappointment weighed on her muscles.
Not for him. But for herself. Because she felt she’d somehow let him down.
She was about to hang up when she saw him lift his hand. The ringing ended with a click. And then she heard breathing. That’s all there was. Him breathing, her watching him. Neither saying anything.
“Tell me I’ll be okay,” she finally whispered. “That you won’t hurt me.”
“You already know I can’t promise you that, Cynthia.” His voice was more sense than sound, as though the words somehow bypassed her ear and lodged directly in her thoughts. Each time she heard the roll and timbre of him it was a surprise, like discovering the sound of him over and over again.
She wanted more of it. “Then, tell me something about yourself. Something true.”
There was his breathing again, an even rhythm that she unconsciously matched. “You already know it all.”
“Tell me anyway,” she whispered.
“I’m no good for you.”
And he was right. She did know this.
“But it won’t stop you,” he added.
She pretended to think about those words, because she felt that somehow they should be important to her. But they weren’t. Because she already knew the answer. “You’re right. It won’t stop me.”
“It never does.” He sounded tired.
She heard something in the background, a change in the tenor of the engine as though he’d shifted out of park. Outside she watched as his car began to ease from its place by the curb.
He was leaving. Without her. “Wait!” she called, starting for the stairs. When she pushed through the screen door and started across her lawn, he was already pulling down the road. Almost to her house. She sprinted, not caring about her nightgown or bare feet, to the middle of the street and stood with one hand raised.
For the barest hint of a moment she wondered if he’d just keep going. Plow through and over her. She thought she heard the cycle of his engine rev. But still she stood her ground.
He braked, his bumper coming to a stop inches away from her thighs. She was afraid to move, thinking that if she stepped aside, he would drive away. So she stayed in the wash of his headlights, their brightness throwing everything behind into darkness.
Something buzzed in her hand, and she realized she no longer pressed the phone to her ear. She looked down to find a text. YOU SHOULD GO BACK TO BED.
She squinted, trying to see him past the glare of his headlights. But, as before, he was nothing but a vague outline filled by shadow. She shook her head.
YOU KNOW THIS STORY.
Her heart pounded harder, as though her chest had tightened around it. She nodded.
YOU KNOW HOW IT ENDS.
She hammered out her response. Why will it have to end?
EVERYTHING ENDS EVENTUALLY.
Cynthia stepped forward, placing her fingertips against the hood of the car. The metal scorched her skin, but she didn’t care. She remembered, now, that his window was rolled down, so she let her phone fall to her side. “You have to know you can’t tell someone they matter to you and expect them to walk away,” she said aloud.
She thought she heard him sigh. And she knew then that he wouldn’t leave her. Slowly, she eas
ed her way around to the passenger side and leaned through the open window.
The interior was lit only by the shadows of night and the soft glow of his phone, but it was enough for her to realize she recognized him in a vague way she couldn’t place. He wasn’t from school, of that she was sure. The angles of his face were sharper than the boys she knew, his hair shaggier. He looked to be out of his teens, but how far out she couldn’t quite figure.
His jeans were well worn, his leather jacket even more so. His glasses seemed to almost have a tint to them, causing what little light existed in the car to glance off them so that she couldn’t see his eyes.
Looking at him made her stomach clench, but whether it was with unease or excitement, she wasn’t sure. And she knew, then, that he’d been telling the truth when he’d told her he was an old friend—not in any way that was easy to explain or understand, but in a way that felt like some deeper truth.
She pressed her hand against her chest, reassuring herself of her thundering heart. “I know the question I want you to answer.”
He didn’t turn to look at her but continued staring forward, into the illuminated night. But she could feel the tension in him. The set of his shoulders and the grip of his hands around the wheel.
“Where are we going?”
He reached forward and flicked on the radio. It started scratchy before music filled the car. “Does it matter?”
She thought about that a moment, watching the way his fingers drummed against the steering wheel to the beat of the familiar song. She knew what the right answer should be: Yes. That it was stupid to climb into a car with a stranger. It was even more stupid to care what a stranger thought of her. To trust the words of someone she didn’t know.
To believe them more than you believe yourself.
But none of that mattered to her. Because he’d come for her. He’d been the only one. Would probably ever be the only one. It was like in the movies, where suddenly someone had seen her.
All Cynthia had ever wanted was to matter to someone. And now she did.
She knew how this story ended—she’d read it before. He would take her to a wide field and hold her tight, and she would go willingly because she so badly wanted out of her life.
What did it matter if she was perhaps trading one hell for another?
She opened the door and slid into the car. “No,” she told him. “I don’t care where we’re going.”
He nodded once, but there was no smile, no semblance of victory for him. As though this was a game he was tired of winning. He flicked the sound of the radio up, and Cynthia sat back, enjoying the way the car’s acceleration pushed against her. For once the world was open and wide and unknown before her, even if she knew it wouldn’t last.
Carrie Ryan is the New York Times bestselling author of the Forest of Hands and Teeth series, Daughter of Deep Silence, and Infinity Ring: Divide and Conquer as well as the editor of Foretold: 14 Stories of Prophecy and Prediction. With her husband, John Parke Davis, Carrie writes the The Map to Everywhere middle grade series. Her books have sold in over twenty-two territories, and her first book is in development as a major motion picture. A former litigator, Carrie now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and various pets.
Website: carrieryan.com
Twitter: @carrieryan
Facebook: facebook.com/AuthorCarrieRyan
* * *
The Mermaid Aquarium: Weeki Wachee Springs, 1951
CHERIE PRIEST
* * *
But you never know!” Tammy plunged one hand into the trunk of mismatched shoes and felt around with her fingertips. “We could find buried treasure in here. You can’t beat buried treasure for . . . what does the sign say, a nickel?”
Her sister reread the hand scrawled note taped inside the trunk’s open lid. “A nickel,” she confirmed with a shake of her head. “Honestly. Who pays a nickel apiece for mismatched shoes?”
“A pirate. One with a peg.”
Elaine picked a blue leather sandal out of the pile and spun it around on her pinky finger. “I’d love to meet the pirate who’d wear one of these. Peg or no peg. Hey, speaking of pirates—I hear we get to do battle with pirates.”
“Battle? With pirates?”
“That’s what Mr. Newton said.”
Once again elbow deep in stale footwear, Tammy laughed. “Mermaids versus pirates. That’s going to be amazing. Ooh, what’s this?” Her hand hooked something down at the bottom. She yanked it up and out—a shiny silver crown with big, fake-looking gemstones.
“What on earth is that?”
“Buried treasure. I told you we’d find some!” She held it up to the sky and let the afternoon sun beam through it, casting choppy rainbows across the lawn. “This will be perfect for my outfit—look, it’s got little clips on it and everything. It’ll stay on my head underwater, right?” Without waiting for an answer, she said to herself, “I bet it will. Anyhow, it’s worth a nickel to find out.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” She waved her hands and held up the silly tiara. “I found this in the shoe bin.”
The old lady on the porch squinted down at the yard sale and at Tammy with her treasure. “I forgot that was in there. It’s part of an old Halloween costume.”
“Great! Now I can wear it with my costume.” Tammy grinned big. “We’re going to be mermaids. It’s our job, starting tomorrow.”
“Oh.” The old lady’s face went tight and sour. She put one hand on the porch rail and one on her hip. “Over at the springs, you mean. At Weeki Wachee.”
Elaine nodded and stepped up to stand beside her sister. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve joined the mermaid show. We got hired yesterday, and we start tomorrow. Mr. Newton’s going to teach us how to breathe through the air tubes and everything.”
The woman on the porch sniffed, like whatever the girls were talking about didn’t smell very good. “That’s not a decent job.”
“Have you ever seen the mermaid show?” Tammy asked, still holding the tiara aloft.
“Of course not.”
“Then, how do you know it isn’t decent?”
She crinkled the edge of her nose and frowned harder. “I’ve seen those girls, running around in their bikinis, flagging down cars to bring people into the springs. I remember when it didn’t used to be that way.”
Tammy rubbed her foot into the grass and rolled her eyes. “Ma’am, can I buy the tiara or not?”
“For a dime.”
“But the sign on the trunk said—”
“That was for the shoes. It says the shoes are a nickel, and it doesn’t say anything about costume trinkets.”
Tammy gave Elaine a look that asked what she thought about the deal.
Elaine shrugged. “It’ll look good with a fish tail. I say you should buy it.”
“All right. Asking a whole dime for this thing is practically highway robbery, but I’ll pay it.”
“We don’t have no highway here.” One pointed foot at a time, the woman tiptoed down the wood porch steps.
“I guess 19 don’t count,” Tammy said of the nearest proper road, wiggling her fingers around in her pocket. She pulled out a dime and made a show of presenting it.
“I guess it don’t.” The woman took the coin and pushed it into her purse. “Is that all, then? Y’all don’t want anything else?”
“No, ma’am,” the girls said together. “Thank you,” Tammy added.
The old lady nodded and turned her back to them. She went up the porch stairs again, returning to her post, where she could oversee the sale on her broad, green lawn.
Tammy toyed with the tiara as they left, wandering back down into the dirt road and toward U.S. 19, the only paved strip in that part of Florida—a two lane road that ran along the Gulf Coast past all the little towns, joints, and junctures . . . including the springs at Weeki Wachee.
• • •
But Weeki Wachee wasn’t a proper town; it was just a freshwater pool that a sharp ex-navy man had turned
into a roadside attraction. How Frank Newton got the idea to dig an underwater auditorium and fill it with mermaids, no one knew—but word sure did get around about the show. People came from all over the country to see the aquatic acrobatics, and girls came from miles away, hoping to make the cut and wear the fins.
The yard sale lady was right about the bikinis, too. And maybe she was right that it wasn’t decent to go running around half-naked all the time, but in 1951 there weren’t many visitors passing through that part of Florida. People brought in tourist money however they could, and teenage girls in bikinis brought in a lot of tourists.
Besides, neither Tammy nor Elaine had any problem with the skimpy uniform, and if Frank wanted girls to dress that way and chase down cars, that was all right with them.
At least he wasn’t weird about it.
Frank was a big guy, wide in the shoulders, with thighs like tree trunks, and the sort of chest where a big tattoo would look right at home. The way he talked—the way he handed out orders and suggestions, the way he taught them how to use the equipment—you could tell he’d been a military man. He wasn’t unkind, but he was direct. He wasn’t unreasonable, but he was demanding.
Tammy and Elaine caught on quick, and Frank approved.
He liked them not just because they were pretty red-haired sisters, but because they were sturdy farm girls who’d grown up in orchards, climbing orange trees and working hard for a living. Swimming around in the tank was tough, especially with legs bound together in phony fins and only a set of skinny, hidden tubes to breathe from. It didn’t matter how pretty a girl was, because if she wasn’t hardy enough to swim and smile without much air, she wasn’t ready to join the show.
Tammy was all set to swim within one week, and her older sister joined the next.
For their first show together Frank dressed them up the same—passing them off as twins for the sake of the underwater play they were performing.
It worked out well. The girls were only a year apart—“Irish twins” their mother called them—and with enough of the right greasepaint glitter makeup, at a distance, inside the tank, nobody knew the difference.