Neither of us was awake for the end of the movie, and I was dreaming again:
I sank through the floor, through the joists, past the tangle of wires to the downstairs, and on past the basement. I dropped like a weighted line below the foundation into a watery underworld. The cold cut my skin and my lungs burned. A mermaid’s arms crushed my chest. Tighter, tighter. I called out, but no one answered. I reached for something that wasn’t there, then the sudden explosion of sound, and the mermaid’s unexpected release, the copper taste of blood in my mouth, red pooling around my face, and the tug of two arms pulling me onto the rocks, a silver ring appearing around a throat … the howling sound of voices calling my name …
I woke up with a shout. “Dad!”
Ugh. Groggy and stiff, I looked around to get my bearings. The movie was over, the lead actor’s voice replaced by a late-night talk-show host’s. I clicked off the TV and stood up. Jules slept peacefully in my bed, her hands curled under her cheek. It wasn’t nice, but I gave her a swift shove, and she rolled off the edge, hitting the floor with a satisfying thud.
“Hey!”
“You fell,” I said, crawling into the warm sheets. “Better go back to your own room. Graduation and all. Get some sleep.”
3
BLUE
“Geez, it’s so blue,” Jules said as we walked into Humphrey Auditorium. She was right. The decorating committee had gone overboard: blue balloons, blue banners, a curtain of blue and white streamers hanging behind the stage. Add in six hundred kids in blue caps and gowns and the effect was a little overwhelming. It was the first time in a long time that I was dressed like everyone else. It made me feel a little off balance.
“I got to get to my seat,” Jules said. “Good luck.”
I nodded, exhaling slowly. “Yeah, you too.”
I found the H row and my metal folding chair with only minutes to spare. Rob Hache slapped my hand as I squeezed by him. Besides Jules, Rob was my oldest friend—ever since we tied for third grade spelling-bee champ. Sometimes he tried to cross the friendship line, but lately we’d reached a truce in that debate.
Up front, the superintendent stood at a shiny blue podium, coughing into his sleeve before making some comments about how we were all heading off into a grand adventure. It wasn’t long before the name butchering began with “Mary Margaret An … An … drze … ze … jewski.”
The superintendent continued to trudge through the alphabet, while Principal Landsem, who was handing out the diplomas, quickly began to lose his enthusiasm for the ceremony. By the time we got to the H’s, my classmates had already deposited two hundred pennies into his palm, and the pockets of his suit coat bulged and begged for the floor.
Brian Halvorson turned and winked at me as his name was called, saying “Penny for your thoughts,” then he strode confidently across the stage. I clenched my penny tight in my fist. It might have been a boulder for how heavy it felt.
“Lily Anne Hancock.”
Principal Landsem, his mouth pinched at the corners, stood with his hand outstretched. I shifted the penny from my sweaty palm to my fingers and walked forward with an apologetic smile.
When I was halfway across the stage, an air horn blasted me out of my embarrassment. I turned toward the audience and caught, for just the briefest of seconds, a familiar dark head in the standing-room-only section. I stopped in my tracks and stared. No. Why would he be here? Now?
But I lost track of the beautiful figure ghosting through the crowd. And then I lost faith in my eyesight. Wishful thinking, I decided. Calder didn’t like crowds.
Mom and my ten-year-old sister, Sophie, screamed my name and waved blue pompons in the air. Dad sat stoically beside them, mirroring my wide-eyed expression, his face pale as paste. The sight of my family shook me out of my befuddlement. I refocused on my diploma and finished the trip across the stage.
“Congratulations, Miss Hancock,” Principal Landsem said. He handed me a black certificate case as I slipped him the penny. He added, “Although I expected a little more maturity from you.” The penny made a plinking sound as he dropped it into his pocket.
And then I was free! Thirteen years of school were over!
Jules high-fived me as I passed the B row and made my way back to my seat. I collapsed onto my folding chair and Rob reached across a couple of laps to shake my hand.
“Good going,” he whispered. His red-brown hair curled around the edges of his cap. “You didn’t wimp out.”
I rolled my eyes. As if. I’d wrestled with sea creatures. It would take more than a stupid, juvenile gag to undo me. Really, there was only one thing that could make me lose it, and that day was drawing near. Back in the Badzins’ guest room, thirty-one paper links hung from my bedpost.
The drone of names continued. I let the sounds blend like the beads of sweat that met and blossomed under my cap band. The back of my neck prickled, and I was sure I was being watched. There was no mistaking the burn. I turned in my chair, expecting to see Calder White standing there, his shockingly beautiful face mocking my exhibition. But still there was nothing.
“Elizabeth Marie Smith,
Sandra Ellen Smith,
Zachary David So-beach … Sobee-eck … Sobee-ack.”
Our beleaguered and weighted-down principal looked two inches shorter than when we started. When the superintendent finally called Yousef and Zinn, Principal Landsem slunk to the back table and emptied both pockets of our goodwill offering while the band struck up the school anthem. No one knew the words.
Caps flew into the air. I got up and walked to the back of the auditorium, toward my parents. At least, that was where I tried to go. My body bounced off my classmates as I battled against the stream of people. The blare of air horns ricocheted off the ceiling and into my ears, along with the girls’ woot-woots and the boys’ loud guffaws. I couldn’t believe I’d grown up among these faces. Everyone was a stranger.
“Lily!”
A hand clasped my arm and snagged me from the crowd. Dad pulled me against his chest and whispered something in my ear. I wrapped my arms around him, and held on tight. Having him here, intact, standing on two legs … I wasn’t prepared for the rush of relief.
He led me to a corner at the back of the gym where Mom swiveled her wheelchair in an excited dance at the bottom of the ramp. Sophie stood with one hand on a handle.
“Oooooh, Bay! Bee!” Mom cried, her hands waving in the air. “How do you feel? Tell me. How do you feel?”
She didn’t give me the chance to put together an answer, or to beg to come home, or to even say hello.
“You look so much older,” she gushed. “Doesn’t she look all grown up, Jason?”
I glanced nervously at my dad, wondering if I could find the answer to a different question in his eyes, like “Yes, you can come home now.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom continued, “I’ve missed you, but I’m so glad you got to walk with your class. Now bend down, we’ve got a present for you.”
I knelt in front of her chair and she fixed a fine silver chain around my neck. “It’s a family heirloom from your dad’s side. The original chain was broken, so this one’s new, but the pendant … I think it must be very old. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Grandpa gave it to me before he died,” Dad said. “He wanted you to have it.”
“A real keepsake,” Mom said as I studied the beach-glass pendant hanging from its copper fob. Softened by sand and water, the glass was the same green as Calder’s eyes, and it lay strangely hot against my chest.
“I’m glad you made it, Mom. You too, Dad.”
He said, “We’ve missed you, too, kiddo. It hasn’t been the same since you left.”
I didn’t correct him by saying that I hadn’t left, I’d been sent. I didn’t want to pick a fight; it felt too good to have them here.
An hour later, we arrived at the Badzins’ house. Inside, the air conditioner hummed and aromatic candles laced the air. Mrs. Badzin had brought out her white linens and go
od silver service. Several parents hovered around the buffet table where a platter of sushi and sashimi had center stage. I dunked a spicy tuna roll into soy sauce and shoved it in my mouth whole, bending over the table so the drips rolling down my chin wouldn’t stain my lace minidress.
Rob grabbed me as I came around the corner, and he pulled me into a bear hug. “Congratulations, beautiful,” he said, stumbling a little.
I pried myself free and shook my head. My mouth still full, I mumbled, “Knock it off, Wobby.”
He laughed, saying, “C’mon. Everyone’s in the basement.” He pulled me by the arm, down the steps to where our friends were hanging out.
Jules announced my arrival ceremoniously as I tripped in my vinyl platform shoes and fell awkwardly onto the futon with a self-deprecating “Ta-da!”
I lay my head on Jules’s shoulder. “I’m so glad it’s over.”
“Over?” Zach asked as he aimed a dart toward a small plastic target hanging on the wall. “It’s just beginning.” He let the dart fly, but it glanced sideways off the bottom rim and barely missed Jules’s foot.
“Careful! You nearly killed me,” Jules said, pulling her feet up and under her. Zach shrugged.
“So what’s up for tomorrow?” Phillip asked.
Colleen Gilligan lounged on a lumpy, basement-worthy couch, her head in Scott Whiting’s lap. The two had been an item since sophomore year. “Beach?” they both suggested in unison.
I couldn’t help but watch as Scott twirled a lock of Colleen’s dark brown hair around and around his finger. She looked up at him, her lips pulling into a small smile as he took off his thick glasses and curled his body to kiss her. For a second, I thought I could feel it myself. The soft meeting. The momentary heat. Voyeuristic, I know. But there it was.
“What do you want to do, Lil?” Rob asked. “Does the beach sound good?” He dropped onto the futon next to me and swung an arm around my shoulders.
“What? Oh. Yeah. That sounds good.” I let him leave his arm where it was. It was graduation after all.
Phillip laughed. “We’ve got the Hancock seal of approval. Beach it is!”
“Are you going to Square Lake?” Sophie asked, her small feet tripping silently down the carpeted stairs. “Can I come, too?”
“Of course,” I said before anyone else could answer. I slipped off the futon onto the floor and pulled my sister into my lap. The baby-powder scent of her made me homesick. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered in her ear.
“Me too,” she whispered back. “It’s been really bad without you.”
The shine in her eyes brought on the guilt. All this time I’d been focused on me. How alone I felt. How worried I was. Why hadn’t I ever considered Sophie in all of this?
She might have been completely in the dark about what had gone down with Dad, but she was still left with the fallout of the mess I’d made.
“Let’s get something to drink,” I said. She crawled out of my lap, and I led her outside through the sliding-glass patio door. I grabbed two bottles of water from a cooler and screwed off the top for Sophie, passing her one.
“Y’know you could have called me. Or got on the phone when I called Mom.”
“Mom said you were busy with finals and I shouldn’t bother you.”
“Well, school’s over. Start bothering me.”
Sophie peeled at the label around her bottle and pouted her lips. Her once-curled hair flopped in the humidity and clung to her neck. Finally, she said, “Did you see Dad’s face?”
“Yeah. He looks old.”
Sophie kept peeling and picking.
“Sophie, tell me.”
“He’s acting weird. I watch him from my window. Every night he’s down at the dock. After Mom goes to bed … he gets down low, like he’s going to get in the water. Then he stands up and comes back to the house. Sometimes he’ll turn around again and touch the water, and then he pulls back like it’s biting him or something.”
My arms stiffened at my sides. “Has he gone in?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“No. It’s like he really, really wants to, but he’s afraid. Do you think it’s because of me falling out of the boat that one time? Is it my fault?”
I inhaled and let it go slowly. “Don’t be silly. And I wouldn’t be too worried, Soph. You know Dad can’t swim. He’s probably trying to get over his fear, and he was looking to do that in private. You probably shouldn’t tell him you’ve been watching.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t. When he’s not at the dock, he’s in his room.” She dropped her voice lower. “I think he’s crying. He hides it from Mom, but I can hear him. Last few times after church, me and Mom will go to the car, but he stays on his knees for, like, an extra ten minutes. Sometimes more.”
My first reaction was that it served him right for sending me away, but that quickly gave way to pity. Even if he’d allowed me to stay, what help could I have been to him? He needed someone who could actually explain things. He needed Calder.
There it was again. Where the hell is he?
A drop of water hit my arm, and I glanced up at the slate-colored sky. “Let’s get in,” I said. “It’s starting to rain.”
With the crack of thunder, the elegant graduation party turned into a refugee camp. The wind shook the house, and the lights flickered. All the adults came down to the basement as the sky went prematurely dark. Rain lashed at the windows and when lightning lit up the sky, we’d get a look at the backyard trees, twisting and arching like a landscaped yoga class. No one wanted to venture out onto the roads.
Instead, we all hunkered down around the television, watching the giddy weatherman gesture at the Minnesota map. A big red patch covered the metro area with the words Tornado Warning. After he warned the viewing public to stay indoors (as if we needed convincing) and away from windows (harder to do), the screen cut away to the news anchors and the scripted stories of the day.
Mr. Badzin leaned forward and reached for the remote. He turned down the volume just as the picture cut to a young blond reporter. Behind her was a familiar dark lake with spotlights focused on the brambles along the shore. I pulled closer to the flat screen so I could listen.
“Thanks, Geoff,” said the reporter. “This afternoon, twenty miles north of Ashland, Wisconsin, a young man discovered part of an enormous fish that washed up on the shores of Lake Superior.”
The studio cut to video of agents from the Department of Natural Resources carrying something bulky and wrapped in a tarp to a waiting truck. They struggled with its weight. I glanced around the room. No one was watching but me, their heads all turned to watch the storm.
The reporter continued. “DNR officials believe it to be the remains of the largest sturgeon on record. However, one young man has a different theory for us to consider.”
The studio cut to a prerecorded interview, the camera lens tightly focused on a face I knew too well. Jack Pettit was staring intently at the camera, his dark eyes looking directly at me.
“It’s pretty big for a fish,” he said, not blinking. “Even a sturgeon. Makes you wonder.”
The reporter pressed on, capitalizing on the story. “Makes you wonder what?”
Jack seemed unaware that she was making fun of him with her question. “Whether the legends are true,” he said. “The ones about mermaids in the lake. Anyone who looks at those scales has to wonder. It doesn’t look like any fish I’ve ever seen.”
The camera cut back live to the studio, and the male anchor laughed warmly. “That kid’s got quite a theory, Lindsay.”
“Well, he is right about one thing, Geoff. It is a sensational find, and the DNR is investigating it as an unusual specimen, possibly a new species, but not anything mythical. Although I have to admit, that would be a lot more fun.”
More chuckling between the two anchors, as they cut to footage of the DNR picking over the decomposing remains. The remains of Tallulah White.
I grabbed my stomach and ran upstairs to the bathroom, vomiting half-dige
sted tuna roll into the toilet. How could this be? Tallulah’s body was supposed to stay hidden forever. What did this mean for Calder? Is this why he’d vanished?
I rinsed my mouth and staggered to my room. Rain splattered on the window, leaving long-fingered patterns behind. Outside, the sky seemed to pull me from the house, like a black hole, endless and unforgiving.
There was a flash of lightning, and—happy to do anything that would get my mind off Tallulah—I began to count for the center of the storm. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. At three seconds, the house rattled with thunder. “Three miles away,” I whispered to myself.
The storm was getting closer and Calder was out there—somewhere. I wanted desperately to reach him, for him to tell me nothing would change, that the discovery of Tallulah meant nothing. That everything would be okay. That he was coming soon.
I lay my palm flat against the window pane. Down below, something moved in the darkness. I threw open the sash and leaned out into the rain. My hair plastered to my face and shoulders. My vision distorted. I curled my arm across my forehead to shield my eyes. It seemed the whole world was underwater.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the street in a vibrant blue. I sucked in my breath, certain I must be dreaming, because in that flash I saw him, standing between the parked cars, looking up at me. His sad eyes pleading.
“Calder!” I called, reaching for him. At the sound of his name in the air, electricity surged not from the sky, but up from where he stood on the street. It blazed through my bloodstream. And everything went dark.
4
CHICKEN
I didn’t remember getting into bed, but that was where I woke up. In my pajamas, no less, and I didn’t remember putting them on, either. My head pounded, and I reached behind me. An enormous, throbbing egg was growing out of the back of my skull. When did that happen?
The storm had marched on, leaving shards of bright light streaming through my window. I groaned, rolling away and making my pillow crackle.