by Anna Davies
“Of course it’s not real,” Miranda snapped. “But I don’t know . . . he saved me. I guess I owe him that. It’s not like we did anything. He was just . . .”
“What was he?” Teddy asked.
“Nice,” Miranda sighed. “I don’t know, it was like . . . I couldn’t talk to Eleanor . . . or to you, because you were always so worried about me. And then everyone hated me, and then Fletch’s parents . . . I just needed someone to talk to.”
A cloud of emotion crossed Teddy’s face, and Miranda realized that she’d hurt him by saying that.
“I didn’t want to burden you,” she said softly. “I mean, you already had to deal with being related to me, and then everything . . . I just needed someone to talk to, who didn’t feel sorry for me. I mean, whatever. It doesn’t matter. I got out of it, I’m fine, I won’t see him again, end of story. Really,” she added when she saw Teddy’s expression.
“So where is he now?” Teddy asked.
“I don’t know,” Miranda shrugged. “Under water? No, he calls it Down Below. He doesn’t know where I live, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good,” Teddy said slowly. “You definitely shouldn’t see him again.”
“I know!” Miranda said. “And I won’t. Really,” she added.
She turned away, glancing out the picture window, where the moon was reflecting on the quiet pool. The pool looked so small compared to the ocean. Safe. And instead of feeling happy that she’d escaped a potentially dangerous and unstable guy, all she wanted to do was head out to Bloody Point.
TWO MORE DAYS. BUT NOW, THE INITIAL PACT WAS ALL but forgotten. He realized that Sephie had never intended to spare Christian. She’d wanted him to kill Miranda, and then no doubt she would have killed him as well.
He felt betrayed. The ocean had been the only home he’d ever known. And in what type of home would saving someone be wrong? He knew that there was no life for him Down Below, even if, by some miracle, Sephie spared him.
Which was why he needed to kill Sephie. But he also needed to be careful, to formulate a plan. Tempting as it was, he couldn’t just climb up on her boat, strike a match, and start a fire. He needed to be smart. Impulsivity had gotten him into his current situation, and only careful planning would get him out.
He imagined it as he stroked to the surface: He and Miranda, living a free and normal life. Miranda, running out into the ocean and splashing him, and the only thing to fear would be catching cold. Him, learning to drive one of those hulking pieces of machinery that humans called cars, with Miranda by his side. Both of them, setting up a home, together.
It was a nice fantasy. Of course, he’d have to give up everything Down Below. Not like there really was anything tying him there. Of course, there was Valentine. But he’d leave it all in a heartbeat if it meant he could have everything that Up Above offered. The only thing he needed to do was figure out how to destroy Sephie. It should be easy. Just one fire, on the boat, and Sephie would disappear.
Suddenly, Christian saw a figure on the crest of a far-off wave. He squinted as the figure came closer and closer toward the shore.
Christian shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand and squinted as the broad-shouldered, tall guy walked out of the surf, stumbling slightly on the uneven sand. It was Valentine.
Fear jolted through Christian’s veins. What was he doing here?
Valentine gazed around wildly.
“Here!” Christian called. He remembered how confusing and disorienting Surfacing was, at least at first. The relentless heat of the sun, the shifting sand, the way the wind sometimes blew so hard it hurt your face. Until you got to know it, Up Above felt wild and exposed.
“There you are!” Valentine said angrily, as he half-ran, half-walked up to the pile of driftwood Christian was sitting on. He was wearing a pair of cargo shorts that were similar to the ones Christian was wearing, and his skin sparkled in the late-afternoon sun. His sandy blond hair was already drying against his forehead, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “You haven’t been Down Below in days. You’re almost out of time!”
Christian shook his head. “The spell doesn’t matter. Sephie has another plan.”
“What?” Valentine asked, furrowing his brow.
Christian glanced toward the horizon. The yatch was still rocking in the same spot on the dock, as ominous as a thunder-cloud. Miranda was oblivious to the danger she was in. How could his brother possibly understand? At worst, Valentine would think he was a traitor. At best, Valentine would join him in being a traitor to Sephie, as well. Neither was a great choice, especially if his plan didn’t work.
Christian reached into the pocket on his sweatshirt and pulled out the small booklet of the firestarting sticks from the other night. Curiously, he swiped the stick against the rough stripe on the back of the package, as he’d watched Miranda do. Instantly, a brilliant burst of orange erupted from one end.
Valentine shrank back.
“It’s fire,” Christian said, entranced as he watched the flicker move back and forth like a tiny ocean wave. He held it against a piece of wood, watching in awe as the orange streak began to dance slowly, tentatively, up the wood.
“I didn’t come here for a science lesson,” Valentine said angrily. “I came because you seem to have forgotten your mission.”
Christian shook his head. “My mission’s changed.” He glanced around, but there was no one on the beach. “I need to do something else.”
“What? Sephie will find you no matter what you do. Think rationally!” Valentine said. He shivered, hugging his arms around his body.
“Sephie’s here,” Christian said dully. “See that ship?” He cast his gaze to where Sephie’s boat was rocking with the gentle waves. “That’s her. And I don’t know what she’s planning on doing, but I’m sure that she has her own plans. Which is why I have to kill her,” he said simply, locking eyes with his brother.
“Kill Sephie?” Valentine choked.
“She’ll kill me if I don’t. You know the legend says fire destroys her.”
Valentine clamped his hands over his ears. “No, brother. No, no, no. I won’t stand here and listen to this. I’m going to see Sephie myself.”
Christian lurched, as if he was about to lunge toward Valentine.
“No, brother,” Valentine said, holding out a warning hand toward him. “I won’t tell her anything of your betrayal. But she’s reasonable, and I feel she might reasonably change the terms. Don’t do this to us,” he added. Then he ran back to the water and dove under the waves.
Christian watched until his brother disappeared, unsure whether to follow him or simply go forth with his plan on his own.
HE’S A MERMAID? DID I RUIN YOU FOR HUMANS? FLETCH SAID.
I like him, Miranda would say. She’d pull her knees up to her chest and glance up at Fletch through her bangs, which she always did when coaxing him to agree with her on anything, from Netflixing a Wes Anderson movie, to ordering pizza with extra mushrooms as takeout.
Good. You deserve someone who treats you right. I’ve always thought that. That’s why I was your boyfriend.
Her eyes flew open. She wasn’t sitting on the beach in front of a bonfire, and Fletch was nowhere in sight. Instead, Louisa was sitting next to her in a rocking chair and bright sunlight was streaming through the dormer windows.
Suddenly, yesterday came flooding back to her.
“Teddy told me you came home upset. He thought you needed someone to watch over you. And I was only happy to be there. You were screaming in your sleep. You were moaning, crying . . . you had a rough night.”
“Something like that,” Miranda said dully. The truth was, she had no one. Not Christian. Not Fletch. Even Teddy seemed scared for her, and Louisa was only doing this because it was her job.
“I’m fine. Really, Miranda said sharply, pushing Louisa’s hand away. “I just need to take a shower.” She swung her legs off the bed and stepped onto the cool wood floor. Before Louisa could do it,
she flung open the windows. But the view of the sun rising majestically over the harbor only made her more exhausted. She was tired, the type of exhaustion that made even attempting to fall back asleep seem too daunting.
She headed into the adjacent bathroom and turned on the water, waiting for the room to get ultra-steamy before she stepped into the shower. She surveyed herself in the mirror above the sink, frowning at her reflection. Her dark hair was crunchy and tangled from too much salt water, and her legs had dried streaks of sand on them. And she had huge dark circles under her eyes. She looked tragic and sad. She couldn’t do this anymore. A thought crept into her mind, terrible and frightening. What if . . .
She glanced around the room, her eye momentarily landing on a razor. Would it be easy? Would it hurt? And worse, what if it didn’t work?
“Miranda?” Louisa rapped sharply on the door, as if she’d sensed where Miranda’s thoughts were headed.
“I’m taking a shower!” Miranda yelled, stepping into the thick steam of the shower. She washed her hair, noticing how much lather the shampoo produced on her scalp. Darcy, who read beauty magazines religiously, always said that the more lather your shampoo produced, the dirtier your hair was. How could she keep living, if something as everyday and routine as taking a shower could make herself hurt so badly? At least when her leg had throbbed those first few weeks, that was something real, something she could feel. But now that the leg pain had faded into the background, the only thing that ached was her heart.
She turned off the shower, dried off, and pulled on her skirt and blouse. She’d lost so much weight she didn’t even have to unzip her uniform skirt to pull it past her hips. Not like she cared. She pulled her still-wet hair into a ponytail and walked down to the kitchen as though she was walking through a fog.
“Good morning, Miranda,” Eleanor said, glancing up from the kitchen table, where she was drinking a cup of tea and reading the newspaper. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Miranda said.
“And you’re going to school today,” Eleanor announced.
“Of course. I’m fine,” she added, wishing it were true.
“Good.”
Just then, Teddy ran down the central stairs, grabbing his backpack.
“Ah, Teddy,” Eleanor looked up and smiled one of her rare smiles at her grandson. “Will you drive Miranda to school?”
“I’ll drive,” Miranda said sharply. “Teddy doesn’t need to be my babysitter. And you have to trust me,” she added, noticing the way “trust” had cropped up more and more in her vocabulary these past twenty-four hours. But unlike Christian, she didn’t have anything to hide. People could trust her.
“Miranda,” Eleanor said in a warning tone.
“Okay, fuck it. I’ll meet you in the car,” Miranda huffed, storming out of the house, not even bothering to grab her bag.
A minute later, Teddy climbed into the driver’s seat.
“You had to f-bomb Eleanor? Why?” Teddy asked in exasperation as they backed out of the garage and headed toward the ferry.
“I’m not talking to you,” Miranda said shortly. It was childish and bitchy, and she didn’t care. She turned her head away from Teddy and closed her eyes, not bothering to open them during the entire ferry crossing or the drive to Calhoun.
“We’re here,” Teddy announced finally, as he parked in the junior lot at the far end of Calhoun.
“Thanks,” Miranda said flatly. She knew that Teddy was only trying to help preserve peace between her and Eleanor, but she didn’t care. For once, she just wanted someone to care about her. She’d thought Christian had been that person.
“Are you coming in?” Teddy asked.
Miranda shook her head. “I’ll wait until the bell rings. See you later,” she said.
Teddy sighed, as if about to protest, and Miranda was convinced he thought she was planning to skip the whole day. But she wasn’t. All she wanted to do was avoid another round of verbal attacks in the hallway.
When the bell rang, Miranda slowly got out of the car and headed to AP English. Although she doubted school would get her mind off things, it was preferable to sitting in the car obsessing.
She sat in the back of the room, glancing out the window and wishing she could be anywhere but here. But where would she go?
Suddenly, the intercom crackled, the sign of an imminent announcement.
“Miranda O’Rourke to the guidance office, please.” The intercom crackled.
Of course. She stood up and walked out of the classroom and down the winding hallways to the guidance office. Head-mistress Wyar was standing at the door like a sentry.
“Miranda,” she called, her voice echoing down the hallway. Her chestnut hair was pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck, and she was wearing a salmon-colored cardigan twinset. “Come in,” she said firmly, closing the door with a thud.
The interior of the guidance office resembled a Southern parlor that looked like it belonged in a Gone With the Wind knockoff movie. Initially the sitting room of the Calhoun mansion, it had oriental rugs that covered the polished oak floors, Tiffany lamps on the end tables, and photos of long-dead patrician-looking men on the walls. Surrounding the waiting area were smaller offices, which either were used for guidance meetings or for college counseling sessions.
“Come in,” Headmistress Wyar directed, leading Miranda toward Dr. Carlson’s small corner office. Normally Headmistress Wyar went out of her way to make small talk to students, especially ones who were the athletic and intellectual elite of Calhoun. It was all part of the homey atmosphere that the school prided itself on. Miranda realized that she was being treated like a capital-P problem, like Henry Burke, the junior who had his lip pierced and a small business selling pot in the junior parking lot, or Jenny Martin, the frail sophomore who wrote pages-long angsty poems for the school literary magazine and cited Sylvia Plath as her personal heroine at every opportunity.
Miranda had never understood why they seemed so tortured, why they couldn’t just realize that they’d kind of won the life lottery. After all, they lived in a beautiful place, they went to one of the best schools in the country, and even if their lives kind of sucked now, at least they had the ability to escape in a few years. But now she got it. Sometimes things just sucked, and wouldn’t get better.
Miranda stepped into the office, recoiling when she realized that Eleanor was perched on the cream-colored loveseat in the corner.
“Miranda,” Dr. Carlson said, standing up behind the desk.
“Please sit,” she offered, gesturing to the spot on the loveseat next to Eleanor.
Instead, Miranda slumped on the hard-backed chair in the corner of the room, as far away from Eleanor as possible. She felt like she was being ambushed. She fixed her gaze on the scarred coffee table in the center of the room. It was cluttered with prospectuses from colleges around the country. The smiling students in the cover photographs seemed to be looking at Miranda.
“Now, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page,” Dr. Carlson chirped nervously, as she glanced from Headmistress Wyar to Miranda to Eleanor. It was clear that Dr. Carlson wanted to impress Headmistress Wyar with her handling of the situation. It was a big step up from her normal tasks of consoling people who didn’t get into their first choice of college.
“Miranda, we want to make it clear . . . Headmistress Wyar and I want to make it clear, that you’re not in trouble. This is just a conversation to determine whether you’re in the best place for you. It can’t be easy to be here, surrounded by so many memories,” Dr. Carlson said, lowering her voice somberly.
“She hasn’t been herself,” Eleanor said, arching an eyebrow at Dr. Carlson. “I don’t know what she’s been doing, but I will do anything to help Miranda.”
“Whatever,” Miranda whispered under her breath.
“Excuse me?” Headmistress Wyar asked coolly, turning toward Miranda, clearly uncomfortable at getting caught in any family drama between Miranda and her grandmother. Aft
er all, Eleanor was a staunch supporter of Calhoun and Headmistress Wyar would no doubt miss the generous checks Eleanor wrote to the school at the biannual galas.
“I just don’t think I can handle her right now. It’s too much,” Eleanor said, as if Miranda were a disobedient puppy.
“You don’t need to handle me. I’m trying. Why don’t you call Gray in and tell her not to turn everyone against me? Why am I in so much trouble when I haven’t done a goddamn thing?” Miranda exploded.
“Shh,” Dr. Carlson said, pursing her lips. She grabbed the box of tissues on the corner of her desk and brought them over to Miranda.
“Let’s get to the point,” Headmistress Wyar said nervously. “We all know that Miranda suffered something incredibly traumatic, both physically and emotionally, and that can have rippling effects on an individual, a family, and a community.”
“I think you need to take a break,” Eleanor interjected. “It’s been decided. I can’t lose you. And I can’t help you right now. It’s for the best.”
“A break . . . ,” Miranda said slowly, trying to wrap her mind around the idea. On one hand, a break sounded like exactly what she needed. But she knew there was going to be a catch.
“I think everyone was greatly . . . surprised at your decision to return to the classroom so quickly after the chain of events. And I’m wondering, both as your advisor and as someone who does care about you, Miranda, whether that’s the best option. As you know, Calhoun’s a small place, not so different than a family . . . and we have to be aware of the needs of all students,” Dr. Carlson finished somberly.
“You’re kicking me out,” Miranda realized slowly. “You’re going to send me away,” she added, glancing toward Eleanor. “What about college, and Fletch and . . . everything,” she finished with a shaky sigh.
“No!” Dr. Carlson jumped in. “Not at all. You’re an amazing asset to this school, and we would have loved for you to graduate from Calhoun Academy. But given your circumstances, coupled with the fact that it’s always been your desire to apply to the most competitive colleges, we feel that transferring to a residential community that can offer you the academics and the emotional support you need, might be the best path for you. There’s a great one in Arizona, and another one in Utah,” Dr. Carlson said smoothly, reaching down to pull a few brochures out of her desk drawer.
