It Wasn't Always Like This

  Either way, he was right about one thing. None of them contracted polio.

  Simon was the f irst to catch their eyes.

  1913 turned to 1914, but nobody understood yet that they were no longer aging, not any O’Neill or Ryan. The problem was that Simon O’Neill was two. He was a chubby little thing, toddling around in diapers, still waiting for his second molars to come in. And he’d been that same chubby little thing for almost a year, even though he was soon to turn three. He should have been growing. Maturing from toddler to little boy. Instead, he was exactly, precisely a two-year-old. Endlessly asking “why.” Banging on his toy drum. Crying when he didn’t get his way. Frozen in some perpetual state of miniature-drunk-man neediness.

  “Every baby is different,” Emma’s mother said over and over.

  Emma knew enough about authenticity at this point to know that Mother didn’t believe her own words. Mother knew something was very wrong.

  But no one would admit it.

  Not until the day that Kingsley Lloyd, having just returned from the swamps on one of his herpetology expeditions, shambled into the Alligator Farm and Museum gift shop. Emma had been looking at Charlie’s watch, but when she saw Lloyd staring at it, she snapped the case shut and jammed the heavy thing in her pocket. The pocket watch with its birds was between Charlie and her. Kingsley Lloyd did not need to know about it.

  He leaned against the counter, studying Emma with his bug eyes. She couldn’t put her f inger on it, but he didn’t look quite as sick as he’d looked before. He wasn’t shaky or sweaty, although his skin was still pasty and his eyes rheumy. But looking almost imperceptibly healthier didn’t make him any less peculiar. If anything, his gaze was more intense.

  Was he going to ask for lemonade? He usually did, though why he insisted on drinking it here, which inevitably cleared the shop of costumers, was as much a mystery as anything else about him. There was just something about the careful, exacting way he stared at her—at everything and everyone, even more, she thought, since he convinced them to drink that tea—that made her skin crawl.

  “Do you know that lobsters don’t age?” he asked.

  Emma stared at him. “Pardon me?”

  “Well, technically, we can’t f igure out their age. They just seem to, um, get bigger. But not any older.”

  Emma managed a polite nod. Where was he going with this? There weren’t any lobsters in the swamp. She knew what lobsters looked like, but she had never eaten one. She had never thought about them in any particular way. But she was not a stupid girl. She knew he was trying to tell her something, maybe teach her some sort of lesson. But what?

  Kingsley Lloyd’s broad mouth stretched in a lopsided smile. He shifted his gaze to the window. Simon was lumbering around outside in his white sailor suit, clinging to his mother’s hand, mouth red and probably sticky from peppermint candy.

  “People can be like that, I think,” Lloyd said, looking back at Emma.

  People. She tensed. For the f irst time ever, someone had spoken of . . . it. This thing that Emma kept feeling, this thing she feared was somehow keeping Simon from growing. This thing that neither her parents nor Charlie’s would talk about. Emma’s heart skipped a beat. She lowered her voice. “Are you saying we’re like lobsters, Mr. Lloyd?”

  He gave a brief laugh. “Perhaps I am. You’re a clever girl, Emma.”

  Goosef lesh rose on Emma’s arms, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  Every day she looked into the mirror, and every day, the same girl stared back at her. But what, exactly, was she seeing? It was easier to pretend it wasn’t happening. Or not happening.

  “Have you ever heard of the Fountain of Youth?” Lloyd asked her suddenly.

  Now it was Emma’s turn to laugh. She almost answered, “Of course I’ve heard of it—every time Charlie’s dad has too much whiskey.” Lloyd had never joined them (thank goodness) for family dinners—not yet, at least. So she said instead, “You know Juan Ponce de León didn’t ever f ind it.”

  She hoped that might send him on his way. She wanted to end this conversation. Kingsley Lloyd didn’t want lemonade, so what did he want? Emma wished Charlie would walk in, but he was putting the hawks and other birds through their paces for the tourists. For business. For family. For their families’ survival.

  “I know,” said Lloyd. “In fact, I know that he never wanted to f ind it. He was a noble sort. But think, Miss O’Neill. Eternal life. An endless rebirth. Renders conception almost obsolete, no?”

  Emma blushed at the word “conception.” The heat on her skin made her think of Charlie and the way he . . . What would Charlie think about this man and whatever it was he was talking about? Did Charlie think that his own face was exactly the same? They hadn’t talked about it, not ever. As though giving the fear words would break the spell of this wonderful thing between them. But sometimes when she looked at him, when she watched his brows pucker as he looked at her . . .

  “We’re mostly made of water, we humans,” Lloyd went on. “Did you know that? That’s the key.” His voice rose. “The Knights Templar thought to drink from the Savior’s chalice. The Druids saw eternal life in the Evergreen tree. Our Indian friends here . . . they’ve got their own ideas.”

  He leaned closer. His breath smelled herbal and strong, something oddly unpleasant. There was a splatter of something greasy on the collar of his white shirt. “Everyone wants to get back into the Garden,” he said in a quiet rasp. “Make it last forever, you know. There’s power in that. Big power. And we modern folk don’t even believe the fountain exists.”

  Emma frowned. “Because it doesn’t,” she said.

  Kingsley Lloyd withdrew and straightened himself. “You know better, my dear,” he said. “But be careful. No one else knows. Not a single soul. Not even the ones who keep searching.”

  Emma’s heart gave a sharp stutter.

  “I needed to be sure. We scientists, that’s how we work.”

  “Sure of what?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he f inally took the hint and left.

  Grown-ups are crazy, Emma told herself. But the explanation felt as false as her mother’s words about Simon.

  That night out by the docks, Charlie whispered, “Emma, do you feel different?”

  She was dizzy from his kisses, holding on to him as he stepped back. She’d been expecting him to say, “I love you.” Or maybe, “I want you.” Or possibly just take her hand and walk with her to the private little arbor a few feet away and lie in the grass, and she would let him slip his hands anywhere they wanted to go.

  Emma had not yet contemplated the possibility of actually making love with him. But she sensed that someday she would like very much to be seduced by Charlie Ryan. She knew nice girls shouldn’t think things like this. But secretly, Emma also sensed she wasn’t all that nice.

  “Yes,” she said. Because at that moment, she thought he meant because of the kissing. She leaned into him, but he backed off again.

  “I know how that makes you feel,” he teased. Then his grin clouded over. He took her hands in his, pressing warmth into her. “I mean . . . something’s happened, Em. Don’t you feel . . . an energy?”

  She did feel it. She closed her eyes. The thick, warm, salty air swirled around her. It was a perfume of the wildlife and the swamp and the ocean. When she opened her eyes, she knew exactly what Charlie meant, because she’d felt it, too. Not just an energy; she felt like energy itself, like she was a furnace or an engine or the sun.

  Of course it was the immortality kicking in, not that she fully comprehended that yet, but still, she knew. It was spreading its magic through every vein, singing in her blood. The original Emma was being burned out, a new and permanent Emma rising from her own ashes.

  On the other hand, girls who are kissed by boys who know how to kiss them always felt like that. She knew that by then.
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  Emma started to tell Charlie yes, she understood, that she sensed it, too.

  But he let her go then and spread his arms wide, f ingers reaching like he wanted to lift off the earth and f ly. “I don’t know what it is, exactly.” She could see him searching for the right words. “It’s like the earth is racing inside me. Like I could do anything. Be anything. Invincible.” His gaze tipped again to the sky. “We’ll go up there someday, Emma. You and me. We’ll go everywhere.”

  Charlie wasn’t normally this talkative. She’d always known this was what he wanted, to leave this place that was their parents’ idea and embark on his own mad adventure. Emma wanted that, too, but mostly she wanted Charlie.

  He edged his f ingers slowly up her bare leg under her skirt.

  “Oh,” she said. “That tickles.”

  And then as his hand slid higher, she forgot what they were talking about at all.

  Chapter Nine

  St. Augustine, Florida

  1914–1916

  By the end of 1914, well over a year since they had sipped from the stream, the difference she and Charlie had felt and shared became impossible to forget.

  On New Year’s Eve, Emma found her mother staring into the mirror and sobbing. They had f inished scrubbing and sweeping, her mother’s ritual. “You start the new year with a clean house,” her mother always said at this time of year. “Then good luck will come your way.”

  Not this New Year’s Eve. On December 31, 1914, her mother couldn’t speak at all.

  “It’s going to be f ine, Mama,” Emma said. The words felt fraudulent even as they left her mouth. How absurd of her mother to shine things up as though it made a bit of difference.

  Glen Walters and his Church of Light were hosting a New Year’s Eve prayer meeting and celebration. Posters had been hung all over town.

  f ight the evil among us

  bring back light in the new year

  Of course, the Church of Light had never approved of their families. They’d been unequivocal in their judgment. In their eyes—and words—the Alligator Farm and Museum gift shop was another symptom of general human decay in the form of silly pleasures and thrills. And their congregation was growing each day. Converts had taken solid root in this little part of St. Augustine. Maybe it was the heat that set their apocalyptic drums beating. Or just their inclination to f ind the devil in anything that felt different. The rumors had begun slowly and then with increasing speed and venom. Whatever was going on with the O’Neills and the Ryans went against the laws of nature.

  Emma had never even been so much as disliked. Now she felt hatred, the same as she’d felt fear of polio, the same way she felt the heat of the sun. Hatred from the people who’d once been their neighbors, who’d spent time at the museum and the aviary.

  The families huddled together that night at the O’Neill’s carefully cleaned house, toasting to 1915. The cheer was forced, the toasts were empty.

  “They won’t calm down, will they?” Emma’s mother whispered.

  “It can only last so long,” her father soothed. “Things like this, they have a way of burning themselves out.”

  As for Frank Ryan, he used the word “immortal” for the f irst time. He said it apropos of nothing, during a long silence, but they all knew what he meant. He was referring to their collective condition, his voice awed and terrif ied at once. He wasn’t even drunk.

  Emma’s mother—who no longer laughed at Frank’s stories or hung on his every word—clutched at baby Simon.

  “No,” she keened, sobbing. “No.”

  “He won’t ever catch polio,” Emma’s father said. (He was drunk.) As though this made up for Simon staying forever two. Emma’s mother slapped him, hard, across the face.

  “Mama!” Emma cried, shocked.

  “Let her be,” Charlie said, and he led her outside. They sat on the front steps. It was the f irst time Emma thought about running away. But where would they go?

  “Are we?” she asked Charlie, barely believing what she was saying. “Are we really . . . immortal? Is that possible?”

  Charlie was silent for a long time. Through the open window, she could hear her father and his arguing about what to do.

  “They won’t leave,” she said. “You know they won’t. The business . . . it’s all they think about.”

  He didn’t respond to that, but said instead, “I think we are. Em, I think something changed inside us. When I look in the mirror, I just . . . will it last, do you think? Maybe it’s only—”

  “Temporary,” she f inished for him. Neither of them smiled.

  Emma studied Charlie’s face. Did he feel exactly as she did? Because the truth was this: When Emma looked in the mirror, she saw that her eyes were wide and bright and clear. Her black hair fell in long waves. She was scared, but she was also thrilled, alive.

  “We’ll talk to Lloyd once the year turns,” she heard her father say back inside the house. “We’ll f igure this thing out.”

  But 1914 turned to 1915, and Kingsley Lloyd didn’t return to work. When Emma’s father went looking for him at the rooming house where he lived, his landlady announced that he had “sneaked out like a damn thief” in the middle of the night. His room was empty. He’d left no note, no forwarding address, no real trace that he’d ever been there at all.

  Emma thought, He wanted to escape, too.

  One year turned to two. And then two turned to three.

  It was 1916 now. Three years since the Ryans and the O’Neills had drunk the tea brewed from the purple-f lowered plant that grew on the island, at the edge of the stream Emma had never seen with her own eyes. Three years since the f irst time Emma and Charlie had turned seventeen.

  They should have left. They should have run like Kingsley Lloyd.

  “Talk’ll die down,” Art O’Neill promised his family again and again and again. Of course he did. Everything they had was tied into the business, into this place.

  Early in January of 1916, a year after Kingsley Lloyd disappeared, Emma found herself hurrying down Main Street with Simon—headed to McClanahan’s because Emma had promised her brother some candy and Mr. McClanahan always stocked sweets.

  Simon still loved peppermints. He always would. She knew that now.

  “Be careful,” her mother warned.

  But what could happen in broad daylight? Emma couldn’t spend her life hiding, could she? The energy that burned inside her felt invulnerable, eternal. If what they thought was true, and it def initely hadn’t been proven otherwise, then who could hurt them? She knew what she saw in the mirror every day. No, fear wasn’t her problem. It was anger.

  Preacher Glen Walters stood on the wooden porch of the mercantile, his silver hair shining in the sun—his receding hair. She saw it now: even in the few years since he’d arrived, he’d aged far more than her parents. His skin was perpetually red, lined, weathered from the sun. And the dark circles under his icy blue eyes had deepened.

  He turned those eyes on Emma, then down to little Simon.

  “How old are you, son?” he asked as they climbed the stairs, stooping to pat Simon on the head.

  Emma tensed. It was a harmless tap. But she kept her eyes on that gnarled hand, the hand that balled into a f ist and shook with righteous lies at the revivals every Sunday.

  “He’s four,” Emma said through pursed lips. “He’s small for his age. His birthday is in March.” Which would make him almost f ive. Simon did not look almost f ive.

  Simon smiled his baby smile. “Four,” he repeated.

  Glen Walters ruff led Simon’s dark hair, f ine as silk, wavy like Emma’s, then curled his hand around her brother’s skull. Emma yanked Simon away.

  “Candy,” her brother said and started to cry.

  “I know,” Glen Walters said softly, eyes tight on Emma’s. “You think I don’t, but I do. You can tr
ust me, dear. Just tell me the truth.” His voice was gentle, but his eyes burned with something not gentle at all.

  “Let’s go,” Emma said to Simon. She dragged Simon back to the road. He was crying harder now.

  “You shouldn’t promise him something and then take it away,” Glen Walters called after her. “Come back, and I’ll buy the boy some candy.”

  “Leave us alone!” Emma shouted over Simon’s shrieking. She picked him up and broke into a run.

  “I can’t leave you alone, Emma,” Glen Walters said. “It’s too late for that.” His tone was polite, so different than his f iery fury at revival—but hearing him say her name like that was more terrifying than if he had shouted.

  •

  Two days later, Emma stood watching as Charlie tended to the hawks, tying jesses on their legs, f itting some with hoods, making sure everything was sturdy and proper. His hands moved steadily from task to task. When Charlie did something, he did it well.

  “I wish we were them,” she said. “Then we could f ly away from here, and nothing could catch us.”

  “Em,” Charlie began, then stopped. He straightened.

  Glen Walters was strolling up to the aviary entrance. His dark suit—the one he always wore, even in this primeval heat—clung to his tall and lanky frame. He was sweating, but he had an easy saunter, as though he were a tourist or just an ordinary man out for an afternoon’s walk. Except for his blue eyes. They were blazing.

  “This is private property,” Charlie said. He positioned himself in front of Emma. “Is there something you need?”

  “Just paying a social call,” Walters said. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “Those are beautiful birds you have here.”

  “Yes, they are,” Charlie said.

  His voice was tight but f irm, his posture straight and composed, and Emma could feel his muscles coiling.

  She forced herself to be brave like Charlie. She said, “Bird shows are every afternoon on weekdays and Saturday.”

  Walters smiled. “Good to know,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t count on every afternoon.”