“You knew that.” Gretchen stopped and watched her friend squirm.
Mafer pulled her fingers through the ends of her long dark hair. It was her peculiar habit, Gretchen had noticed. “Sometimes, Gretchen, we … My family. We know things about people. We don’t find out. We don’t ask. We just …” She lifted her shoulders, then let them drop. “We just know. But I don’t know why my grandmother just called you an orphan. What was she thinking?”
Gretchen couldn’t fight the feeling that this was exactly the conversation Mafer’s grandmother had wanted them to have. She had said what she did because she wanted to tell Gretchen something. And what she wanted to tell Gretchen was this: I know things about you.
It was a thought that might have frightened some people, but not Gretchen. But it did leave her with a feeling of unease. What did the woman know?
The Waterbreak library was a boxy, eighties-style modern building with an entire wall of windows. The children’s section was upstairs, and the main research area was downstairs. A corpulent librarian stood behind the circulation desk, organizing DVDs on a cart. He didn’t look up as the girls stepped inside, even though there was only one other person—a white-haired gentleman, reading quietly at a library table—in the whole place. The long wall of windows was tinted, and the light that crept in cast everything in sepia.
To Gretchen, the library felt like a safe place. She had often come here with her father when she was younger, as the video collection was better than the one in Walfang. In general, Gretchen preferred the Walfang library, with its small, snug spaces and nineteenth-century architecture. But Waterbreak had more resources, including a research room with an aggregating system that made article searches easy and comfortable chairs for collaborating. This was where the girls were headed now, as they passed the spinning racks of paperbacks and the cozy reading chairs gathered around a low wooden coffee table. Mafer led the way and took a seat at a wide library table. She removed her off-white jacket and slung it over the back of a chair. “Okay,” she said, pulling their science text from her messenger bag. “Want to check and see if there are any articles to back up what we’re saying?”
“Sure.” Gretchen pulled her library card from her wallet and walked over to the bank of computers. Gretchen typed in her card number and logged on to the system. In the moment it took for her computer to boot up, she found herself staring at a painting on the far wall. She knew the painter—John William Waterhouse. He had never been one of her favorites. Gretchen preferred contemporary art, and this painting, like many Waterhouse paintings, was an idealized, romantic image of a classical subject. A beautiful woman sat by the sea, combing her long hair. An almost serpentine tail wrapped around her, gleaming. Her lips were parted, as if she might be singing to herself.
An image of Kirk’s drawing rose in her mind—the head half out of the water, the eyes peering out from the dark shadow. That was more how Gretchen imagined a mermaid. Threatening. Terrifying.
She thought of the seekriegers out on the bay. She remembered them—dimly. She remembered that they were terrifying.
This innocuous mermaid in the painting before her seemed like a lie.
Almost reflexively, Gretchen turned and looked at the wall behind her. On it was another Waterhouse reproduction. But this was no innocuous mermaid. In this painting, a woman held out a poison-green bowl in both hands, offering it to the viewer. She wore a long, toga-like wrap in peacock colors, and her bare feet stood on water. Her chin was tilted at an angle so that she was looking up, from beneath her eyelashes, in a pose that might have been coquettish, but here seemed menacing.
Gretchen found herself standing before the print, studying the face. There was something in the expression that seemed familiar, yet sent a chill through her. The small plaque below it read Circe Invidiosa.
“You call that research?” Mafer asked.
Gretchen nearly jumped at the voice by her elbow.
Mafer smiled at her apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No—I’m sorry. I just … got distracted.”
Mafer crossed her arms across her chest, studying the painting. “Circe,” she said, almost as if it were the name of someone she knew and didn’t really approve of. “Not someone to mess with.”
“All I remember is that she turned Odysseus’s men into pigs.”
“Then he had to come and save them. She kept him on that island for years.” Mafer pursed her lips. “I like how it almost seems as if she’s standing on some sea creature—a giant squid, or an octopus, maybe. Probably some poor guy who washed up on her shore.” She leaned toward the painting and whispered, “Don’t drink whatever’s in that bowl!”
Gretchen tried unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh as the librarian strode in wearing a disapproving frown. He glanced at them sternly, tucked his button-down shirt into his pants, and stalked off.
“I like how his tie only comes halfway down his belly,” Mafer noted as they watched him leave. “He looks like Papa Bear in my old Goldilocks book.”
This made Gretchen giggle again.
Mafer poked Gretchen in the shoulder. “Okay, get to work,” she said mock-sternly. “Art appreciation hour is over.”
They made their way back to their chairs, but when Gretchen sat down at the keyboard, she was suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to do something she had never done before. She wanted to look for her mother. Her biological mother.
But she didn’t even know where to start. She racked her brain for clues. Hadn’t Johnny mentioned that she was born in Boston? Her birth certificate was sealed. She had never seen it.
Before she knew what she was doing, she typed in “boston adoption gretchen ellis.”
It was the usual search engine mess that you get when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for: hundreds of entries, but nothing that seemed remotely relevant. Gretchen took a deep breath, trying to get some oxygen to her spinning head. Why did I even do that? She had never tried to research her mother before, and here she was in the library just doing it. With no thought. No intention.
The only answer she could come up with was that Mafer’s grandmother had called her huérfana, “orphan.” Which she supposed she was. And “fire’s daughter,” whatever that meant.
It unnerved her slightly that she had just tried a potentially life-altering search on a whim.
But nothing came of it, anyway.
She didn’t know what she was feeling. There were traces of relief mixed with sadness and confusion. Fire’s daughter. What could it mean? Did that mean that her mother had died in a fire?
Gretchen looked down at her arm, the one that should have been burned in the lab the other day. She couldn’t help feeling as if she were looking at a pointillist painting—all she could see was dots. One dot was the seekriegers that night on the bay with Will. One dot was the fire that didn’t hurt her arm. One dot was that Mafer’s grandmother had called her “fire’s daughter.” One dot was the dog attack. If only she could step backward, she’d be able to see the whole picture. The clues would add up to some clear meaning.
She felt a pair of eyes on her. Mafer gave her a lopsided smile. “Got some good articles?” she asked. Something in her tone suggested that she knew Gretchen wasn’t looking at science.
“Working on it,” Gretchen said.
She cleared her last entry and started a new search.
Chapter Ten
From the Walfang Gazette
Amateur Astronomers Prepare for Meteor Shower
Tonight is prime viewing for the Orionids meteor shower, which causes a beautiful show of meteors and has been known to produce fireballs.
“It’s exciting for us, as a club,” said Walfang Astronomers Association president Jenna Riley. “It’s a rare event, and we anticipate something amazing.”
Although not as active as the Leonids, this shower often peaks at a rate of 20 meteors per hour.…
“Remind me why I’m doing this again,” Will said a
s Gretchen brought the car to a stop by the side of the road and pulled it behind a long line of parked cars.
“I have no idea,” Gretchen confessed.
Will laughed and took her hand. Then he kissed her wrist, right at the place below the palm where the blue veins showed through. “Tell me why you want to go to this party when you could be sitting at home watching a movie with me.”
“Because I’m the weird new girl, and I want to erase that, get to know people. I don’t want to spend my senior year with just two friends.”
Will felt that he would happily have spent the rest of the year with only Gretchen, but he didn’t say so. He understood what she was saying … intellectually. Emotionally, he felt sick of most of the same faces he’d known since kindergarten, and he had a hard time understanding why Gretchen would want to spend time with them.
Still, he didn’t want to send her into the party alone. He opened the door and stepped out onto the grass. Gretchen walked around the car to join him on the sidewalk, and the two of them started toward Jefferson Lang’s house.
It was lit up, a tasteful white ranch house in one of the older sections of Walfang. Jefferson’s father owned a security business, and they weren’t sick rich, like most of the summer families. They were townie rich—wealthy enough to have an elegant little house with a large yard bordering the Mill River, but not wealthy enough for a mansion by the sea.
The backyard was strung with lemon-size Chinese lanterns. In the center of the yard was a large beech tree, and kids were gathered beneath its branches in groups of twos and threes.
A table was laid out with food—a twelve-foot-long sandwich cut into slices, platters of sliced watermelon, and chips and dip. There were two coolers overflowing with bottled drinks and ice, and a keg set up along the roots of the tree.
“Pretty,” Gretchen said to herself, almost dreamily.
“I’m sure his mom did most of it,” Will said, and Gretchen laughed. He smiled then, hearing how petty and jealous he sounded. Well—so what? Jefferson was tall and handsome and thought he owned the world. He had about as much depth as a kiddie pool.
“There’s Mafer!” Gretchen waved, and her friend started over to say hello.
Will watched the way Mafer walked—her slow movements made her seem as if she were studying everyone at the party the way a vulture would. She seemed apart from the others but somehow interested in them, yet there was warmth in her smile as she greeted Gretchen.
“This is my friend Will,” Gretchen said.
“Hello.”
Mafer nodded at him. “Hi.”
“Looks like Jefferson invited the entire school.”
“I’m sure he didn’t need to,” Mafer said. “He invited three people, and they invited everyone else.”
“Speak of the devil,” Will said. Here he was now, waving at Gretchen and jogging over to say hello. Will touched Gretchen’s elbow in a possessive gesture and immediately felt an odd mix of embarrassment at his behavior and pride in being there with Gretchen.
“Gretchen, you made it!” Jefferson beamed, flashing those even white teeth. He nodded at Will. “Hey, man, surprised to see you here.”
“I can never resist a hero sandwich,” Will said, and Gretchen narrowed her eyes at him.
“Looks like half the school is in your backyard.” Gretchen gestured at the crowd beneath the tree. “We had to park a full block away.”
“That’s good! People need a party, am I right?”
Gretchen agreed, but Will didn’t hazard an answer. He could hardly guess at what people needed.
“Hey, come on down to the river, I want to show you something,” Jefferson said, taking Gretchen by the elbow.
Will looked at Mafer, but she just lifted her eyebrows and waved at him with her fingers as Will was forced to relinquish his hold on Gretchen. He trailed along behind as Jefferson led Gretchen down a steep slope to the river. The air was cool and clear as they crossed the grass. Near the water was a rack, and something covered by a blue tarp. Jefferson pulled it away, showing a beautiful wooden canoe. The athlete gave the dark wood a paternal smile and looked up at Gretchen. “I made it. Isn’t she a beauty?”
“Oh, yes,” Gretchen whispered as she touched the boat.
Will wanted to agree, but he was too surprised—and annoyed. Who would have guessed that Jefferson held secret depths of passion and talent?
“I worked on her all summer—just finished up last week.” He looked over at Gretchen and asked, almost shyly, “Maybe you’d like to take her out on the river with me sometime.”
Gretchen hesitated, and Will said, “Gretchen doesn’t like water.”
Jefferson looked at him, surprised. “Really?”
A flash of annoyance crossed Gretchen’s face, but she didn’t contradict him. Will winced a little, realizing that she must have thought he was trying to pick her friends for her again. Which he wasn’t. Well, not intentionally.
“Hey, what are we doing down here?” called a voice, and Angus loped down the hill with his awkward, long-legged stride. “Nice boat! Should we go fishing?”
“Jefferson made the boat,” Will said, feeling that he had to make nice now.
“Really? You’re a man of many talents.” Angus looked impressed. “Um, listen, I hate to bug you, but you’re out of chips, and Kirk Worstler is up in your tree.”
“What?” Jefferson tied the tarp back into place.
“You can just tell me where the chips are,” Angus volunteered.
“I’m more worried about the lunatic in my tree,” Jefferson said.
“He’s not a lunatic,” Gretchen put in, but Jefferson didn’t respond.
“We’d better go see if he’s okay,” Will said, knowing better than to get into an argument about Kirk.
“He’s not doing anything,” Angus insisted as they all started up the slope. “He’s just sitting there.”
The crowd cleared a bit as Jefferson strode to the tree and looked up. “I don’t see him.” He squinted into the leaves.
“He’s there.” This was from Mafer. “Near the top.” She didn’t look up, just took another sip of her soda.
“I can’t see him,” Jefferson repeated.
Mafer shrugged. “Listen.”
They did, then, but Will couldn’t hear anything. “What is it?” he whispered to Gretchen.
“Singing,” she replied, and from the expression on her face, Will could tell that the music had an eerie quality that unnerved her.
“Hey, it’s not a party until Kirk does something weird, right?” Angus pronounced.
“Kirk!” Jefferson shouted. “Kirk, get down from there!”
Nothing happened for a moment; then the leaves rustled and Kirk dropped to a lower branch. He hung for a moment and jumped in front of Jefferson. Kirk looked up at the football player, who was almost a head taller than he was.
People had stopped to stare, but Kirk’s expression was innocent. “What’s wrong?”
“You were up in my tree!” Jefferson exclaimed. “What if you broke your neck? You’re on my property—my family is liable.”
“I just wanted a view.”
“Of what?” Jefferson demanded.
“The meteor shower,” Kirk explained. “There’s supposed to be one tonight.” He gazed helplessly at Gretchen. “Isn’t there?”
“What?” She shook her head, clearly confused, and Will didn’t know whether to throttle Kirk or offer to take him home. God, why did he have to be so weird? Still, Will got the sense that Kirk really was trying to be normal—that the poor spaced-out kid didn’t have any idea that most people don’t climb trees at a keg party.
A ripple of surprise ran through the crowd, and when Will looked up, he saw silver rain falling from the black night sky. Like shimmering fireworks, the translucent tails drifted across the darkness as the brilliant heads descended toward the horizon.
“It looks like the stars are falling into the river,” Angus said, and Will was shocked that his fri
end had managed to capture the poetic essence of what was happening. It did look as if the stars were falling into the river, and the water reflected their light, rippling and dancing like silver flames.
“Fire on the water,” Kirk whispered, and Will saw Gretchen shudder.
The shower didn’t last long—not more than twenty seconds—and when it was over, the partygoers burst into applause, as if Jefferson had planned the spectacle for their entertainment. Then the chatter began again, this time at increased volume.
Kirk looked at Gretchen then, his large eyes resting on her with an unreadable expression.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s nothing,” Will said, before Kirk could answer.
“Wow!” Angus said. “Wow! That was awesome!” He clapped Kirk on the shoulder and said, “Aren’t you sorry you weren’t up in that tree?”
Kirk looked at him, then turned away, letting Angus’s hand drop from his shoulder.
Angus opened his mouth, as if he might call Kirk back, but Gretchen touched his arm. “Don’t,” she said.
Angus looked at her serious face. “Okay,” he said.
“You don’t look so good,” Mafer told her, and Gretchen squeezed her eyes shut.
“I have a headache,” she admitted.
“Let’s get out of here,” Will suggested.
“Okay,” Gretchen said faintly. She let him drag her away, much to his relief.
They climbed into the Gremlin, and Gretchen sat behind the wheel. It was quiet, and the noise from the party provided a low murmuring background to the darkness that surrounded them.
Gretchen put her hands to her face.
“Are you okay?” Will asked, touching her shoulder, and she leaned into him. She was crying, softly, making no sound, just the gentle, shaky intake of breath. “Hey,” Will said. “Hey.” And he wrapped his arms around her.
“Fire on the water,” Gretchen whispered.
“I know.”
“I remember it. The night on the bay.”
Will felt deafened by his own heart. “You do?”