Calder shot me a scandalized look, and I thought of Tallulah.
“That was different,” I whispered. He took a corner too fast, and I fell against the window. “So you’re running away from Jack Pettit?”
Veins bulged in Calder’s temples, and his face flushed. “I’m not running!”
I tugged my seat belt tighter. “Okay. You’re not running. What’s Jack fighting with those guys about?”
“Same thing as before. The two kayak accidents from this week—”
“So you did hear about the kayakers.”
“How could I not?” he asked with an exasperated sigh. “Both of them reported seeing a dark shadow in the water and then bam, their kayaks turned over and they were pulled out. I expected Maris and Pavati to hunt, and I worried their grief would cause them to take too many lives in too short a time, but letting two kayakers get away?”
“I don’t understand. That’s a good thing, right?”
“Wrong,” Calder said. “The worst thing. Letting a target escape is sheer negligence.”
“You think because those kayakers have told their stories, Jack will have more fuel for his anti-mermaid crusade?”
Calder’s fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly. “That’s part of it. For now the other guys are still giving him crap. They’re calling him a freak back there. That’s what started the fight.”
“That’s good, then,” I said.
“For whom?” he asked, looking quickly at me, then back at the road.
That was a question I couldn’t answer. “You just said no one believes Jack.”
“Not yet, but it will take only one to get it started. It’ll be like before. At first, it’ll be curiosity. Some adventure seeker will come searching the caves. Then they’ll come with underwater cameras and sonar.”
“Be serious.”
Calder yanked the steering wheel hard to the right and hit the brakes. I fell forward into my seat belt, and my hand hit the dashboard.
“I couldn’t be any more serious. How can you ignore the facts?”
“Maybe life is better for me if I do,” I said grimly.
His eyes flashed emerald. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Don’t call me a fool!”
“We should have never come back to Bayfield,” Calder growled.
“You didn’t have to.”
His face darkened, and his eyes turned more menacing than I’d ever seen them before. For the first time, I could see the bleakness of his soul. It coiled and curled like smoke and eels in his darkening eyes. How was it that his mind could spiral into misery so quickly? It scared me that I wasn’t proving an effective talisman against his despair. Not now, anyway.
What scared me even more was the strange heat that pulsed through my own chest. I might not have been able to see the colors, but I could feel the burning, mustard-colored haze that hummed around the outline of my body. It didn’t surprise me at all when Calder recoiled at the sight of me. If I didn’t have enough control over my own emotions, how could I bring him back to himself?
“I need a fix,” he snarled. “I’ve pushed this abstinence long enough. I’ve been kidding myself. If Jack wants a monster, he’s got one!” Calder hazarded another glance my way and snapped, “Because you’re certainly not helping me any.”
I sucked in my breath and stared straight ahead while Calder added, “What is wrong with you? Take that necklace off.”
I wheeled around on him and slapped my hands down on the cracked vinyl seat. “Why is this my fault? Why do I have to be the one to make everything all better for you. For Dad? For everyone?”
“No one asked you to.”
My mouth popped open to give him the best retort I could muster, but nothing came.
“God, Lily, you’re impossible.”
I turned toward the window and yanked my blouse back over my shoulders. “Take me home,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
Calder threw the car back in gear, muttering “Gladly.” A few minutes later he pulled into my driveway. He didn’t say good night. I didn’t either. I slammed the car door and ran up the porch steps.
“How was the movie?” Mom asked.
“Awesome. I’m going to bed,” I said as my feet hit the stairs.
“Lily?”
“Good night.” I slammed my bedroom door with enough force that our family portrait, which hung on the other side of the wall, slipped off its nail and crashed to the floor.
14
DISCOVERY
The next morning, I stood in the middle of my bedroom, still dressed in my clothes from the disastrous Date Night. The house seemed smaller, and that was saying something. Even alone in my room, the place was too crowded. Though everyone was asleep, the house was loud. The walls pressed in on me until I had no choice but to crawl out onto the porch roof for some air.
Waves sloshed gently against the smooth gray stones on the beach and made sucking sounds under the dock. I crept to the edge of the roof and dropped silently to the ground, just in case Calder was in the hammock. I didn’t want to fight, and I didn’t think I was the one who should apologize. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Calder wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. He was probably still pissed, too. He was probably out with Dad. Maybe they hadn’t slept here at all.
It was still so early that the sun barely peeked above the trees on Madeline Island. I peeled off my too-tight jeans, hopping from one foot to the other, until I was down to my underwear. The blouse Gabby had picked out for me hung crooked across my body, the neckline draping halfway down one arm. The water stretched out before me like a blue blanket. It waited for me, and my body tingled with longing for it.
This was stupid. I was stupid.
I touched my fingers to the beach glass hanging around my neck, feeling its warmth on my skin. Problem was, when it came to the lake, I couldn’t help myself.
Despite what Calder said about his sisters never attacking onshore, land was where I felt more unsure of myself. Only in the water did my tensions dissolve. I had no fear. I felt lighter, smarter, braver. I belonged in the lake.
“Stupid,” I said, this time out loud. But there was no convincing myself. Try as I might, I couldn’t ignore the instinct to dive simply because I was afraid of the consequences.
I kissed my pendant for good luck and dove, reveling in the crushing rush in my ears. I wouldn’t go far. I promised myself that much.
The water combed through my hair and caressed my cheek. It pulled along my legs, making them seem longer than before. I kicked and propelled myself away from shore, skirting the surface, pretending I was a real mermaid, that I could keep up with Calder and Dad.
Reaching forward, I pulled myself through the water stroke after stroke, stroke after stroke, feeling the remaining bits of my rage dissipate. I turned a somersault. And then another. Twisting in the water. Startling a lake trout that came up to investigate. It made me want to laugh, and I surfaced so I could. I made no gasp at the air. It was all too easy. So very easy.
When the air hit my face, I turned in a quick circle, completely disoriented. The dock was gone. The willow tree was gone. I turned again to look for the scattering of islands and realized I was at least a quarter mile north of our dock. How long had I been underwater? Or was it a matter of speed? No. That couldn’t be it. My body was nothing more than human. I hadn’t suddenly broken out with a tail. I would have noticed that. Still, I couldn’t help but look. Nope. Two legs.
I turned south and filled my lungs to capacity, submerging and swimming underwater as I had before—though this time without fooling around. I counted in my head, One Mississippi. Two Mississippi … When I hit sixty, I started to panic, but not in the normal way. My lungs didn’t burn with their pending collapse. I had no need to scramble toward the surface. This time, the panic came from not needing to breathe. At least, not yet.
Two hundred Mississippi. Two hundred one …
Familiar voices filled my head. The higher-pitched one
s were muffled and far away. The lower ones were closer, south of the ferry route. There were no distinct words; instead, they hummed and blended into a kind of melody, an eerie harmony, like wind over an empty bottle.
The lake floor sloped up to meet me. I reached forward, my hands hitting the slippery timber-and-boulder foundation of our dock. I threw one arm up on the deck, and the sun hit my face, unnaturally hot, burning my skin, like someone was staring at me.
“Have a nice swim?” Sophie asked. She was sitting cross-legged at the end of the dock, drawing in a sketchbook with one of Mom’s charcoal pencils.
“Yeah,” I said. How long had she been there? What had she seen? “Thanks, Soph. Can you go grab me a towel?”
“You’re done already?” She rubbed her pencil furiously over the page.
“Um, yeah. Think so.” I stared at her, waiting for her to look up from her drawing, wondering how to interpret her words, but she just kept scribbling. “No, I’m good,” I said, finally giving up.
“Okay.” She set the sketchbook down, saying, “Back in a sec,” and she ran for the house.
I pulled myself out and sat on the edge of the dock. Four minutes. I’d held my breath for four freakin’ minutes. Without really trying. That was seriously messed up. More amazing: I’d only come to the surface because I’d reached the dock. How much longer could I have gone? I’d find out tomorrow.
I dripped water on Sophie’s sketchbook, leaving dime-sized circles that bled into quarters. When I picked up the book, I saw a picture of myself. But this time the metamorphosis was complete. She’d drawn me with a tail.
I turned around and watched Sophie come skipping across the lawn, whipping the towel over her head like a lasso. When she got to the end of the dock, she tried to snap it at me, but I grabbed it out of her hand and wrapped it around my shoulders.
We sat in silence, staring out across the lake. Dad and Calder were out there somewhere. Did Sophie know that? I sincerely hoped I was reading too much into her drawing, but I had to ask.
“What’s with the picture, Sophie?”
“You don’t like it?” she asked, her lips pursed.
“Who’s that supposed to be?” I asked, tapping the picture with my fingers.
“It’s supposed to be you,” she said. “Is it bad?” She held the picture closer to her face, scrutinizing the details.
“No, not at all,” I said. I put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s just that the last time I checked, anyway, I didn’t have a tail.”
“No,” she agreed, still sounding disappointed. “But it’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t know you were into mermaids,” I said casually.
“They’re pretty,” she said. She picked up her things and stood. Before she left me she said, “Mom’s making blueberry pancakes. Are you coming?”
“Yeah, I’ll be up in a bit.”
Sophie stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “Don’t skip out.”
“I won’t. I said I’d be up.”
Sophie chewed on her lip and stared at her feet. “Mom looks weird. Kind of sad. So be really nice to her.”
“I’m always nice.”
“And be nice to Calder. You weren’t nice to him last night.”
Before I could retort, Sophie stole the towel from around my shoulders and ran back to the house chanting, “Lily’s in her un-der-wear! Lily’s in her un-der-wear!”
MY SCRIBBLINGS
A Lake Superior Haiku
Cold lake consumes me
as if it were the one who
needed me to live.
—Lily Hancock
MERMAID STATS as of today
Swim Time: 4 min. 17 secs
Hearing Voices?
Tail: None
15
HAMMOCK
Thursday dinner went by, still without any word from Calder and only an email from Dad, which was sent from another fictitious teachers’ conference sponsored by the so-called Midwest Ecology Review. All I could think was M.E.R.? Was that supposed to be funny? Mom didn’t seem to think so, either, although not for the same reasons.
Sometime around three in the morning on Friday, I woke up shaking. I’d left my window open. Cold lake air filtered in, and my teeth chattered uncontrollably, threatening to shatter like glass. There was an extra blanket in my closet, but I was too cold to leave my bed to get it. Same was true for shutting the window. For a second I wondered if I could telepathically close the window from where I lay. If I thought about it hard enough. Long enough. Harder. Nope. Not going to happen.
The tree branches creaked and dragged wooden fingers across the roof. No matter how cold I was, it shamed me to think Calder was somewhere out in that wind with nothing more than the trees to cover him. No matter how mad I’d been, no one deserved that.
I pulled myself from the sheets and, just in case Calder was there, gathered what he might need. I found him shivering in the hammock outside.
“How have you survived all these years living outside?” I asked.
“It’s warmer underwater, or by a campfire. I’m not used to so much wind. What you got there? Sleeping bag?”
He rolled out of the hammock, and I handed it to him. He wrestled it flat and, finding the opening, crawled inside. “Very roomy.”
“I zipped two of them together.”
His green eyes glowed in the darkness. “Does this mean we’re not fighting anymore?”
“Sophie says I have to be nice to you. Besides, I like my fish fresh, not frozen.”
He laughed warmly and held the bag open for me to climb in. I snuggled into his chest, and he pulled me up so our faces were even. Gabby was wrong. I appreciated every inch of him. And not just the parts I could see, but the way he made me feel when he looked at me like this—like I filled some hollowed-out part of his heart.
“You’re in a better mood,” I said, zipping the bag closed around us.
He winced. “Marginally. But don’t worry. It’s not because I took someone last night.” He sounded ashamed, even though he was telling me he had nothing to be ashamed of. “I mean, if you were wondering about that. You look nervous. I’m guessing that’s it? I didn’t really think I would—take someone, I mean. At least, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. Jack set me off, and then you … well … you scared me … the way you looked. Something’s changing with you, Lily. I wish you’d tell me. I promise I won’t be mad.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Okay, I will try very hard not to be mad. But I will promise you this: I won’t ever try to guilt you again. I was wrong the other night. If, for some reason, I was to slip, it wouldn’t be your fault. It would never be your fault. You’re still all I want.”
I ignored the contradiction in his words. I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips as he spoke. I put my finger against them and lied, “I never thought you’d slip.”
“Then tell me what’s bothering you.”
I took his bottom lip between my teeth, tasting the sweetness. He inhaled sharply and pulled me so close I imagined what it would feel like to be absorbed, to be soaked into his skin as pure emotion, to be but one body. My heart flip-flopped between us as his fingertips pressed my lower back toward him. I slipped my hand inside the back of his shorts, feeling his muscles tense.
“Lily, are you sure?” he asked, his breath hot in my ear. His hand slid over my hip, then up my waist to my rib cage. He threw one leg over mine and waited for my response.
He was right. I wasn’t sure.
Desire turned to fear, which—no doubt—he could see on me, too. He groaned and rolled away from me.
“Wake me up before my dad finds me out here,” I whispered.
He shook his head and said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
“Which part? The waking or the finding?”
“Shhh.”
Something about the way he dismissed my question put my mind on red alert. “He’s barely been home since we got back to the l
ake.”
“I know,” Calder said. “He’s having a hard time adjusting. I’m trying to help.”
“Please tell me you’ve at least made some progress in finding Maris and Pavati. Has Dad been able to hear either one of them?”
Calder closed his eyes. Two vertical lines formed between his eyebrows. The hammock swung gently, and I watched as Calder gathered his thoughts and rolled back to face me. “Is this really what you want to talk about?” he asked, kissing my eyelids and then my nose. “Your dad?”
“Yes. No,” I said, my mind addled. What did I ask?
“The answer to your question is no, not yet. And no, he hasn’t been able to hear them, either, but I’m working on a theory.”
“Tell me.”
“He’s never heard their voices before. On land, I mean. Maybe he is hearing them, but he doesn’t recognize the sounds for what they are.”
“That’s possible.” It occurred to me that I was in a unique position. Dad, Maris, Pavati—even Calder—were all family to me, by blood or by choice. I knew all their voices on land. I’d heard Maris’s screeching accusations and Pavati’s seductive murmurs. I knew Calder’s, of course, and Dad’s best of all.
Although I’d heard no distinct words in the water before, only muffled sounds, I was convinced it had been all four of them I’d heard the other day.
“That’s my theory,” Calder said. “The other option is that they’re a million miles away. They feel like a million miles away. Especially now, when you’re here with me. And we’re not fighting. Now, can we talk about something else?”
“Are you and Dad going out again tomorrow?”
He sighed. “He wants me to, but after how Tuesday night ended, I told him I still needed to recharge, that I needed to spend some concentrated time with you.”
I choked on my words as I asked how my dad reacted to that. “Yeah,” Calder said, laughing a little. “That might have been more than he wanted to hear.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “It’s okay if you need to go.”