Parallel Spirits

  I’m almost tempted to speak to Frankie before I spill his secret to Belinda, just to hear his side of the story. Maybe he has changed for the better. Maybe he’s no longer the jealous, homicidal brute he was 372 years ago.

  Chapter 19

  Frankie’s hand grazes my lower back as he guides me out of the water. The waves seem to part for us as we leave the ocean behind. I’m on a high. With Frankie’s help, I managed to stand up on the board over half a dozen times and twice I even rode the wave for a couple of seconds. My body is exhausted, but my mind feels as if it’s been reawakened.

  “You should charge people for lessons,” I say as I reach into my beach bag and pull out my towel. I dry my arms and legs before I slide the towel over my face. The sand scratches my skin, but the smell of the saltwater on the towel stings my nostrils and opens my lungs.

  Frankie doesn’t have a towel. He never brings a towel to the beach. He likes to dry off naturally. He loves the gritty feeling of salt dried on his skin. My mind is drawn back to March 23rd, when I tasted the salt on his skin.

  “I can’t make people pay me to do something I love to do,” he replies.

  He’s carrying his surfboard at his side watching me as I dry my hair. It’s not even six o’clock, but the sky is already beginning to darken.

  “Well, you could earn some money and fix the door on your van,” I say. “Even if you just charged the cost of an iced coffee.”

  He grins at me as I stuff the damp towel in my beach bag. As I fumble through the contents of my bag for my dress, I feel my phone vibrating through the fabric. Reaching my hand into the bottom of my bag, I pull out my phone and glance at the screen. I have one missed call and one text message from Conor.

  Bonfire tonight at 8. Wanna come?

  A bonfire on a Thursday? I don’t notice Frankie looking over my shoulder at first, but when I turn toward him his face is cool.

  “You still owe me an iced coffee,” he says with a hopeful smile.

  I think of this morning, sleeping on his sofa and the silent breakfast and ride to school, how he never questioned me about it. I think of the past two and a half hours; how patient Frankie is with me in the water.

  I think of March 23rd.

  I don’t know if I’m making a mistake, but I know that I can’t blow off my best friend for a boy I’ve only known a week.

  Can’t tonight. Sorry.

  My stomach feels electrified with nervous energy as I wait for Conor’s response. Within seconds my phone vibrates and I nearly drop it in the sand.

  If you change your mind, we’ll be on the north side of the pier.

  I look southward and see the pier less than a hundred yards away. In just a couple of hours, Conor and his friends will be right here huddled around a roaring bonfire. I wonder if there will be any girls. Of course there will be.

  “You okay?” Frankie asks as I stuff my phone between the folds of the towel in my beach bag so I won’t feel it vibrate again.

  “Let’s go to Islands,” I reply.

  Even though I’m the one who owes him a coffee, Frankie insists on paying for our drinks. I sit at the round silver table as he gets a straw for my mocha frappe. He places the frappe in front of me as he sits.

  “Extra chocolate sauce,” he says, looking very pleased with himself for remembering.

  “Thanks.”

  I feel as if a strange immovable wall has been erected between us. It’s the same feeling I got two months ago. It’s the wall splitting our relationship in half: before the date and after the date. It’s as if the wall we’ve tried so hard to knock down these past two months, our attempt to merge our two histories into a solid span of time, has reappeared more concrete than ever.

  “I have to use the restroom,” I say as I stand suddenly and skitter toward the café bathroom.

  I lock the door and collapse into a crouched position on the floor. The smell of urine and wet mop assault my nose down here, but I don’t care. Staring at the terracotta tiles, I try to think of what I’m going to say to Frankie when I go out there.

  I close my eyes and the tiles disappear, replaced by the Payne Bay cliffs. The jagged ocean rocks rise out of the water at the bottom of the cliffs like black daggers. Frankie stands on a rock twice as tall as me. He leaps into the tumbling ocean below. I hold my breath, afraid for a moment that the waves have swallowed him up and soon they will regurgitate his broken body onto the shore where I stand. He pops out of the water next to the rocks and waves at me.

  I open my eyes and see the shadowy silver outline of Mara’s feet against the terracotta tiles.

  “There’s something you need to know about Frankie,” she says.

  I’m still crouching as I look up at her. From this close and in the bright light of the bathroom her beauty is undeniable.

  “Frankie is a carrier spirit,” she continues. “Well, his spirit is a carrier spirit. His name is Tuket. He must have done something to earn his body back, and I don’t know how he became a carrier spirit, but Tuket is the man I was promised to 372 years ago. He is the man who killed the man I truly loved. He is the reason I am a carrier spirit.”

  I frown at her because nothing she says makes sense.

  “Stand up, Belinda,” she commands. “You need to listen. You cannot let Tuket—I mean, Frankie—you cannot let him pull you away from Conor. He is no good for you. Do you understand me? He killed Reno, the man I loved.”

  I can feel the urgency in her voice vibrating inside me. “You’re lying,” I whisper. “I’ve known Frankie since we were five. He’s not a carrier spirit.”

  Mara shakes her head. “You don’t understand. I saw it when he was in your room. It was so quick and only a carrier spirit would have noticed it. It’s a glimmer, a split-second glimpse at the carrier spirit inside the body. It only happens when they experience intense moments of hope.”

  “What are you talking about? This is nonsense.”

  “No, it’s not. I once had a body too. I earned my body back three hundred years ago and I grew up inside the body of a girl named Lily Porter. But I lost my body a second time and that’s why I’m still a carrier spirit. If I mess up again….” Her voice trails off as if she can’t finish this sentence. “I can’t allow that to happen. I can’t let you get hurt.”

  I shake my head. “Frankie would never hurt me,” I say, but my mind flashes to March 24th—the day after our date. Frankie standing next to Andrea Harkin’s locker, grabbing a book out of her locker as if it were his own then strutting off as if he were on top of the world. I saw that wall between us stretching higher than ever and I knew that if things didn’t work out between us as a couple, I would lose my best friend. The thought of losing Frankie’s friendship terrified me.

  I didn’t even ask him about Andrea Harkin. When he showed up at my house that night to study, I told him I thought we should just go back to being friends. I could see the pain and shock in his eyes and a piece of my heart fractured that day, but I know it was for the best.

  Maybe I’ll never repair my broken heart or maybe Conor can clumsily tape it back together. All I know is that I can’t allow this wall to be reconstructed between Frankie and me. And if Mara is telling the truth, Frankie isn’t even Frankie. He’s Tuket. Someone who murders his competition.

  A knock on the restroom door startles me. “There are people waiting,” the woman’s voice sounds hollow through the door.

  “Be out in a minute!” I shout back as I turn on the faucet to pretend I’m washing my hands.

  I yank a paper towel from the dispenser and begin wiping down the grime on the sink. I have to talk to Frankie. If I ask him, he’ll tell me the truth.

  I burst out of the bathroom and into the café with a sense of purpose, but Frankie is gone. All of the tables are taken by strangers, including the table we were just sitting at. I dart outside and see him sitting on the edge of a large clay pot where a cluster of three small palm trees are planted. Spotlights at the base of the trees illuminate the palm
fronds and Frankie’s curls. He turns toward the café and sees me.

  “Hey!” he says, smiling as he holds out my mocha frappe. “It was getting crowded in there, so I gave up our table.”

  That’s so Frankie. Always thinking of others. That’s the Frankie who volunteers at the library with me. The same Frankie who secured a position as the only male volunteer at the battered women’s shelter. That’s the Frankie I’ve known for thirteen years.

  “You’re Tuket,” I say as I grab the frappe from his hand.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t going to leave it on the table.”

  “No, you… you’re Tuket?”

  Frankie tilts his head as if he doesn’t understand what I’m saying. “What did you say?”

  “She told me,” I say, and I finally realize why Frankie freaked out when I mentioned Mara. “You’re a carrier spirit.”

  Frankie narrows his eyes as he glances around. Does he expect to find Mara lurking around here? “I don’t know what you mean. Are you okay?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Frankie.”

  That muscle in his jaw is clenching again as he looks me in the eye. “She doesn’t know me,” he says, and my stomach drops. “I’m not the person she remembers.”

  I’m going to throw up. The vomit is in my throat, burning me. I try to swallow, but it only makes me gag and my stomach clenches a few times before it explodes. A small jet of mocha frappe mixed with saltwater splashes over the front of Frankie’s T-shirt. I clap my hand over my mouth and race through the parking lot, away from the café and toward the street.

  “Belinda!” Frankie calls out after me, but I keep running.

  I’m only a block and a half away from the beach. I sprint down the sidewalk as the rumble of Frankie’s engine startles me. I run past an avocado-green apartment building, Olive Vista. Frankie and I used to joke that we were going to be college roommates at Olive Vista. Dodging a young guy on a skateboard, I turn into the alley beyond the apartments.

  I cut through the alley, past the sickly sweet, rotting stench of overflowing dumpsters, and climb the concrete block fence behind the apartments. My heart pounds in every inch of my body as my flip-flops slip on the fence once, twice, three times before I’m finally able to heave myself up. The gritty concrete blocks scrape my forearms and shins as I scramble over the wall. Throwing myself over the fence onto the sand, I glance over my shoulder as I dart across the beach toward the pier. Wherever Frankie is, he’s not behind me. Whoever Frankie is, he’s still a murderer.

  Chapter 20

  After my sprint across the sand, and my surfing lessons, I’m exhausted by the time I get close enough to see a group of guys lugging wooden pallets across the sand toward a fire pit. I squint through the darkness to see if I can recognize Conor, but one of them is blonde, the other is too short, and the other one’s not wearing a shirt. It takes a moment before I realize the one without the shirt is Conor.

  I don’t know if I should try to get his attention from here, near the water’s edge, or if I should just approach him. Throwing down a wooden pallet on top of the waist-high stack, he glances toward the water for just a moment and I seize the opportunity to wave at him.

  He squints at me through the misty blue darkness and tilts his head, trying to figure out who I am. I take a few steps forward and he does the same before his face lights up with that boyish grin that makes my knees weak.

  He jogs toward me. “Hey!” he says, sounding pleasantly surprised. “I thought you couldn’t come.”

  “I was just—I was just at the café down the street so I thought, since it’s a block away, I might as well stop by and say hello.”

  His eyes examine me, gliding over every inch of me, taking in my bronze flip flops, the yellow dress hanging off my shoulder, my wavy hair matted with saltwater, and my bikini tied around my neck.

  “You look like you’re ready for a swim,” he says as he reaches across the distance between us and lifts the floundering strap of my dress back into place. A chill passes through me and I try to appear unaffected by this simple touch. “Last one to the water is a rotten egg.”

  He takes off toward the water and I chase after him, wriggling out of my dress and kicking off my sandals as I try to keep up. He makes it to the water first and kicks through the shallow waves until the water reaches his thighs then he dives in. I struggle against the power of the surf until I reach the place where he went under and wait for him to resurface.

  Finally, he pops up right next to me and shakes the water out of his hair. The moonlight paints white streaks across his wet shoulders and face.

  “That’s not fair,” I complain. “You could have at least let me get undressed before you started running.”

  “Sorry, but that’s the deal. Now I’m going to have to introduce you to my friends as Rotten Egg. ‘Hey, guys. Meet my new girlfriend, Rotten Egg.’”

  “Girlfriend?” I blurt out.

  “Oh.” His embarrassment is palpable as he realizes he’s uttered this word so easily and so soon. “Sorry, it just sort of slipped out.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, giving his shoulder a friendly shove. “No big deal.”

  He squints at me. “No big deal?”

  I shrug as I try not to stare at his sculpted chest. “It slipped out. It’s not like I’m going to hold you to it.”

  He takes a step toward me and grabs my hand. “What if I want you to hold me to it?”

  He leans over and his lips fall gently over mine. He tastes of seawater and cotton candy. His tongue moves slowly, dancing around mine as his hand reaches around my waist and pulls me closer. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and whimper softly. His heart beats against my chest as we sink further into the sand and each other. The roaring sound of the ocean grabs my attention and I open my eyes in time to see a huge wave, taller than Conor, rushing toward us.

  I push him away and point at the wave unable to speak. He grabs my hand and shouts, “Duck!”

  We both duck as the wave crashes on top of us. The rolling force of the wave tears him away from me. My back is tossed against the sandy ocean bottom as the wave collapses on top of me. I fight the force of the water, trying to find the surface, but I can feel myself being pulled away from the shore. I’m confused by the darkness of the water. I don’t know which way is up. Finally, my knee grazes the sandy floor again and I push off toward the surface.

  I come up a few yards away from Conor. As soon as he sees me, he swims toward me.

  “Are you okay?” he says, then his eyes widen. I look behind me and another wave is barreling toward us.

  I swim toward Conor and this time he wraps his arms around my waist before we take a breath and go under. We’re farther away from the shore this time so the wave doesn’t toss us around as much. We make it out of the water as another wave explodes behind us.

  My chest is trembling from being held underwater for so long. I collapse onto the sand and Conor collapses next to me.

  “First a giant soda in my lap, now a giant wave. That settles it: you are officially trying to drown me.”

  I shove him hard and he falls over onto his side. His eyes widen with pretend shock. I jump to my feet and run away before he can retaliate.

  “Hey! Get back here, Rotten Egg!” he shouts as he chases after me. “Don’t forget your clothes!”

  I race toward the pier in a fit of glee when I see him under the pier: Frankie, staring at us. I close my eyes for a second and when I open them again he’s gone. Just my imagination. An apparition. A spirit.

  Conor crashes into my back and wraps his arms around my waist. “Got you,” he whispers in my ear.

  I twirl around in his arms. His face is beaded with water and his eyes are locked on mine. “Are you sure about that?”

  The corners of his eyes turn downward as he thinks about this. “Yep. I’m sure,” he says, and he scoops me into his arms.

  I wrap my arms tightly around his neck as he carries me toward the fire pit where his friends are still break
ing down wooden pallets for firewood. My nose is pressed against his neck as he carries me and his skin is so smooth I have to keep myself from licking him.

  “Put me down,” I insist. A strained smile curls his lips, but he shakes his head. “You’re crazy,” I insist.

  He finally puts me down and looks me in the eye. “And it’s all because of you.”

  Chapter 21

  The night I met Tuket was the worst night of my life. I was seventeen, in love with a boy I had known since we were both three, and betrothed to a 21-year-old man whom I had never met. Tuket had no hair and didn’t wear any jewelry. He was all savage, no heart. Reno had a full head of hair that I loved to run my fingers through. Tuket wanted to take me back to his camp the day I met him, without even being married. Reno waited twelve years before he touched me.

  I waited in the shadows of the pine trees with Reno, observing from a distance as Tuket was presented to my father. Reno and I watched, frightened and intrigued by these outsiders. Reno assured me he would not allow them to steal me away. I believed him.

  Two weeks later, Tuket arrived in the night with an army of twenty-six men to whisk me away to his world. His camp was fifteen miles away, but it might as well have been fifteen miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It was a fate worse than death—or so I thought.

  I hid inside a large basket inside Reno’s family’s home. Reno’s sister, Hila, covered the basket with a colorful blanket. Sweat ran down my face and back as I lie curled inside the basket. If they couldn’t find me, they couldn’t force me to leave. We were so naïve.

  My sister knew where to find me. I blame her as much as I blame Tuket. My father tore the blanket off the basket and yanked me upright by my hair. Colorful lights blinked before my eyes as the searing pain in my scalp exploded. Reno fought like a wild animal, writhing and striking at the three men who held his arms and legs. My father dragged me toward the wooden table in the corner and pressed my skull against the surface of the table. I screamed with pain and fear. He was going to crush me or behead me. My own father.