Fathomless

by Jackson Pearce

  “Hi. My name is Jude Wallace, and I believe you saved my life last night.”

  “I… yes…”

  “Well, I was calling to say thanks, which sounded a lot more genuine and less lame before I said it out loud, and now I think I just sound like a lunatic. I’m not crazy—I sneaked a look at my chart at the hospital, and your information was on it and… yeah.”

  I laugh a little. This is easier than talking to someone in person, where I worry they might brush past me, might come too close, might share their memories without meaning to. “It was nothing,” I say. “The paramedics did all the work.”

  “They say you pulled me out and did CPR. That’s not nothing. Trust me, my lungs would know if you’d done nothing.”

  “Well… you’re welcome, then?” What do you say to something like this?

  “What’s especially stupid about all this is I’ve noticed that plank and avoided it hundreds of times before—I play at the pier every night during the summer. I don’t know what happened,” he says. “And I lost my guitar in the water. Which I know in the grand scheme of things isn’t a big deal, but now I have to play with my crappy one until I can get a new one.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Based on my calculations, I’ll have a new one by the time I’m forty-seven,” he jokes, and I laugh again. “Just kidding. Not too long, though it’ll pretty much destroy my savings account. And my non-savings account. And the quarters I find in my car seats.” He talks fast, as if he doesn’t like the chance of silence creeping into the conversation.

  “Well, um… let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” I say. “Beyond, you know—the CPR.”

  “What if you were to go get lunch with me?”

  The door bangs. Anne and Jane stumble in, tripping over their own feet, lips red and dresses short. They’re laughing loudly till they see me waving my arms, trying to make them shut up.

  “How would that help?” I ask, distracted as Anne and Jane mouth “Who is it?” almost simultaneously.

  “Well, for starters, it would absolve me of the incredible guilt I’m feeling for thanking someone who saved my life over the phone. If I’m not focusing on guilt, I’ll work harder. I’ll make more money. I’ll get a guitar sooner. Doves will fly free, and soldiers will lay down their guns.”

  “I don’t know….” I say. Not that I don’t want to see him, actually—I just feel like I’m dealing with enough at the moment, without adding him to the picture.

  “It’s the guy! The one she saved!” Jane deduces excitedly.

  “Who was that?” Jude asks.

  “My sister,” I explain.

  “Well, bring her, too, then,” he says, and I cringe. “That way if I turn out to be weird, you have backup.”

  “No, that’s not it—”

  “Then come on. Lunch. Please? I’ll buy. Well, obviously I’ll buy, since it’s a ‘thanks for saving me’ lunch, but… yeah.”

  “There’re two of them.”

  “Lunches?”

  “Sisters.”

  “Bring them both,” Jude suggests. I wish he knew exactly what he was saying. Anne is thrown over the couch, ear pressed as close to the phone as she can get without touching her bare arm to mine. She giggles loudly.

  “Okay, right, where and when?” I say, grimacing. I just want to get off the phone.

  “Maybe Wednesday? Have you ever been to that Thai place in the Landing?”

  “We love it!” Anne says, and Jane laughs as she grabs Diet Cokes from the refrigerator for both of them.

  “Okay. Then… Wednesday. One o’clock?”

  “We’ll be there. Thanks. Bye,” I say unceremoniously, and hang up while glaring at my sisters.

  “Oh, come on, Celia, we were just playing,” Jane says, opening the soda can. She’s drunk, or close to it.

  “Besides, that conversation sounds like you didn’t see him today. Where were you?” Anne asks. She’s grinning, but there’s a sharpness to her words.

  I shake my head at her. “I was out. Without you.”

  “Clearly, but where—”

  “I didn’t ask the two of you where you were when you came in,” I point out, rising and pocketing my phone.

  “Yeah, but that’s because we were together,” Anne says.

  We’re stronger together.

  I was strong on my own. For the first time.

  “I was out,” I say, and turn away from them. I walk to my tiny bedroom, shut the door briskly—I can practically feel the two of them exchanging irritated looks on the other side. They don’t like this; they don’t like me being away from them, they don’t like me keeping secrets. Who am I to argue? Jane knows my present, Anne knows my future. They know best, not from experience or wisdom, but from power.

  We’re stronger together, and no matter what happened today, I’ll be weak if we’re broken apart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lo

  My sisters are mostly as I left them—the old ones still staring at nothing, the rest in clusters of three and four by the Glasgow, passing time slowly. Key is with the old ones, staring like they do, even though she is not truly old yet—she just wants to be, desperately. She’s been talking about becoming an angel since the day we met and watches the old ones with reverence, admiration, like they’ve achieved something where she’s failed. Molly is still by herself. It’s not natural for us to be alone before we’re old, I think, before realizing that I’m alone, too. And part of me wants to stay that way, but another part of me longs to join the others…. I’ve already forgotten a few of Naida’s memories, though…. Maybe if I’m alone, I’ll be able to hold on to more of them.

  I slink around the ship, settle with my back against the exterior wall. Its name is written above me, almost faded entirely by the water. Glasgow isn’t its full name—there are words that came before it, but all we can read is of Glasgow. I reach up, trace my fingers over the name on the slick wood. Just as I do so, a shadow flickers by me. I turn to see Molly passing, keeping her eyes firmly on her destination. There’s more to Molly’s name, too. I am still my sisters, they are me, but Molly and I are different. We both remember…. Maybe I could talk to her; we could tell each other our memories. Maybe she could help me hold on to mine, and I could help her hold on to hers.

  I swim after her, around the hull, into the belly of the ship. I realize where she’s going—one of the back bedrooms. She cuts down a hallway, around an overturned piece of furniture covered in seaweed. Walls, walls everywhere—she passes through a larger room adorned with a chandelier; light fingers its way in from a crack in the ceiling and makes the chandelier’s glass cast tiny rainbows on the floor. I haven’t been this far inside the Glasgow in ages. Molly disappears through a doorway, into the dark. I pause for a moment, follow—

  Molly’s face is in front of mine, eyes dark, sharp—I cry out in surprise. She looks less human than before, more like a sea creature whose home I’ve disturbed. She pushes toward me, forcing me to swim backward until my shoulder blades hit the remains of a picture frame on the wall behind me.

  I remember… I remember a picture frame, the sort that you put things in. There was a white dress behind it, a baby’s dress. My name was below. No, not my name, Naida’s name. I squint my eyes shut, try to see more of the memory, the lace on the dress’s sleeves, but it’s gone almost immediately. I wish I could reach out for Celia, have her remind me—

  “Why are you following me?” Molly bursts into the fading memory. Her words aren’t hateful, actually, not even spiteful. They’re irritated. Like I’ve interrupted something.

  “I want to talk to you,” I say slowly. “About the past.”

  Molly looks at me for a long time. Nothing softens, nothing welcomes me, nothing suggests this was even remotely a good idea.

  “About my past?” she finally says.

  “And mine.”

  Molly exhales, still steely-eyed. “My past is gone. I’ll never get it back.” She turns, retre
ats through the doorway. I slowly follow, peer into the room. There’s a bed frame, the rusted springs of a mattress, a tipped-over lamp. I want seeing them to spur another memory in me, but they are nothing, just things in the water. Molly reaches out, wistfully touches a pile of something—shoes—clumped in the corner.

  I swallow, speak. “Do you remember—”

  “Yes. I remember everything,” she hisses, and I can’t tell if she’s telling the truth or if the claim is just a desperate lie. “Everything I won’t ever have again.”

  “You’ll be happier if you forget,” I tell her instantly, a well-rehearsed line, one we all say to the new girls. As it leaves my mouth, I wonder if it’s true. Molly looks at me, blinks, stares hard. I regret saying anything, regret encouraging her to forget when suddenly I can’t bear the thought of doing so.

  “Everyone would be happier if they forgot,” she says. “Humans, us, angels. Do you remember how we changed? Why we changed?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing before the angel bringing us to the ocean, like everyone else.”

  Molly smiles a little, but it’s cold. “Ah. The angel. Of course.” The way she says it is dangerous. It’s fine for the very, very new girls to question the idea of angels, but girls Molly’s age should know better. We would never cast a girl out, of course, but doubting what happens after we grow old might as well be exile—none of us wants to talk to someone with doubts, none of us wants to be upset by someone’s unproven ideas and lies. Even now, having remembered my name, Molly’s tone makes me uncomfortable. She must see the concern on my face, because she pauses, then moves on quickly. “Well, I still remember what happened before that. Just barely. Why it was us instead of some other human girl, and how it all happened. It was terrible, you know.”

  “Tell me,” I say, breathless.

  She looks at me, shakes her head. “You said it yourself. You’ll be happier if you forget. Everyone else is.” Her words are daggerlike, and I feel my chest spark with frustration. I want to know. She has to tell me….

  Molly rises, turns her back to me. She traces the top of the bed frame, lets her hand drift to where pillows might be if they hadn’t long decayed. “Drowning the boy wouldn’t have been so bad. It’s a terrible way to die. But death is nothing compared with what happened to us.”

  I close my eyes as Molly settles in the spot between the shoes and the bed, pleased with herself. She remembers. We could have helped each other remember. She knows how we became ocean girls; she knows a part of my past that I don’t.

  I shake my head at Molly, back away. Past the picture frame, down the hall, back to where the water isn’t still. When I reach the open ocean, I gasp, let the sweet electric feeling that links me and my sisters flow through and overwhelm me. This is easier, so much easier than remembering, I think as the ocean current swirls around me, supports me, loves me. So much easier than trying to remember a life that’s been shattered into a million tiny memories, impossible to put back together.

  But in the back of my mind, I hear Naida. I pity her. A girl I once was, a girl who I mourn.

  I can’t forget her now.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Celia

  It’s Wednesday, time for my triple date with Jude. Anne and Jane are giggly and ecstatic—they make me change clothes four times until I’ve achieved what they call “the perfect combination of heroine and girl-next-door,” which apparently means my oldest jeans and one of Jane’s ultragirly tops.

  The Landing is a touristy shopping center with an alligator adventure park and a bunch of carts that sell things like airbrushed T-shirts and shot glasses with palmettos on them. That said, the Thai place here serves lunches cheap enough that we can afford them on the allowance our uncle gives us, especially when Anne and Jane are getting so many of our other expenses paid for by their conquests. We park near the back of the lot to avoid the sea of SUVs up front, bypass the long line for the ice-cream shop, and find seats on the Thai place’s patio. The heat is bad, but we’ve always enjoyed watching yachts ease through the canals, imagining which one we’d like to own one day.

  “Where is he?” Anne says, looking at her phone to check the time.

  “We’re early,” I say. “He’s always running late.” He was even late to his stepfather’s funeral, according to his memories, though that might have been intentional—I couldn’t see it clearly.

  “Celia!” Anne and Jane exchange puzzled glances, then we all look in the direction the voice came from. On the Landing’s center strip, where the vendor carts are set up, is a much drier, happier version of Jude than the one I saw the other night. And he’s wearing a hat with foam palm trees shooting out of it.

  “Is that—” Anne begins.

  “Oh my god, he’s one of the cart people,” Jane says, but she looks delighted anyway.

  Jude, apparently, is manning a cart that sells annoyingly wacky hats—ones with dolphins, sea turtles, or beach balls shooting out of them. He pulls down the canvas sides of the cart, ties them up, and jogs toward us, lightly jumping over the railing that separates the patio from the sidewalk. As drowned and soggy as Jude looked in the hospital, he looks the opposite now. His hair is a mess, and he’s wearing jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up; I can see the tattoos covering his arms disappear under the fabric. He arrives at our table, sweating from the heat and still wearing the palm-tree hat. I can’t tell if Anne and Jane are entirely charmed or entirely horrified. He doesn’t look at them, though; he stares at me, lips curled into a smile.

  “Strange,” he finally says. “I remembered you being brunette, not blond.”

  I try not to cringe as I think about Naida’s chocolate-colored hair. So he does remember her.

  “Then how did you know it was her?” Jane asks, voice flirty.

  “I’ve been yelling ‘Celia’ every time I see a group of three girls. You’re the first set that’s turned around. I’m right, aren’t I?” Jude says, grinning.

  “Right. Hi,” I finally say. Jude turns back to me and extends a hand. I let it hang awkwardly in the air for a moment before grimacing and shaking it. I stiffen as more memories hit me, this time details about his first love, his first kiss, the way the sunlight looked in her hair—

  I release his palm. Way too much information in that memory…

  “Sorry,” he says. “I just feel like, you know, at least shake the hand of the person who saved your life.”

  “Sit down,” Anne says, pointing to the chair beside me. He obliges, sweeping the palm-tree hat off as he does so.

  “It’s my uniform. No, seriously. My boss says that we sell more when we wear the palm-tree one.”

  “This is your job?” Jane says. “I thought you were a musician.”

  “Haven’t you heard the whole ‘starving artist’ thing?” Jude asks. Jane nods. “It’s true. Dr. Wacky’s pays the bills. Or at least some of the bills. The smaller ones, mostly.” He leans back and fans himself with the menu—I can see more of his tattoos now. Flowers and waves on his lower right arm open up into an image of a mermaid on his upper. She’s blue-skinned and blond, with a long, curled fishtail. She looks nothing like Naida, but it’s not the tail or hair that makes them different—it’s something to do with her mouth, her demure smile. It’s an expression I can’t imagine on Naida’s lips.

  “So,” Jude says. “Sisters. Twins?” He motions to Anne and Jane.

  “Triplets,” Anne corrects him, and points back at me. “I’m Anne.”

  “Jane,” she introduces herself.

  “Is there a trick to telling the two of you apart?”

  “No,” Anne answers a little smugly.

  “Damn,” he says. The fact that he has no problem telling me apart from Anne and Jane doesn’t bother me like it does with others.

  We order cheap appetizers as our meal, all with silly beach-themed names like Krazy Kokonut Shrimp and Bahamarita Alligator Bites. It helps that there’s also a bottomless basket of hush puppies, which is a standard for ev
ery restaurant in town, even a Thai one. I jump every time Jane or Anne reaches for a hush puppy and it looks like they might touch Jude, try to read him. I already know so much about him; it isn’t fair that they get to know even more. They behave, though, and I start to relax and actually listen to what Jude is saying. It’s nothing I don’t already know, pretty much—where he’s from, no siblings, lived here for two years—but I pretend for a little while that this is all new information, like we’re normal people meeting and I don’t have to act like I couldn’t practically write an essay on his past.

  I’m so relaxed, I guess, that I let my guard down by the end of the meal, which is exactly when Jane strikes. Reaching across the table for the last spring roll, she lets her hand brush Jude’s arm. It’s hardly anything, but it was enough, clearly, because I see Anne and Jane exchange glances. I sigh. What’s the point in trying?

  Jane giggles quietly over whatever she saw. When Jude gets up to go pay at the register a few minutes later, she loses it, dissolving into a fit of laughter.

  “Stop it,” I beg her, straight-faced. “Don’t mess with him like the others.”

  “What did you see?” Anne asks excitedly.

  “No! He’s nice. Don’t do this!”

  “Oh, he may be nice,” Jane says, holding up her hands. “But just so you know, Celia, he was thinking about you naked when I touched him. He has… what’s it called, when you save someone and they fall for you?”

  “Oh, I know this. Nightingale syndrome? Like Florence Nightingale? Or am I making that up? I hate history class,” Anne says, ignoring the fact that I’m blushing furiously. It’s not that I even care if Jude thought about me naked—okay, I care a little, but that’s not the point. I don’t think I’m the one he’s fallen for, if he’s fallen for anyone. He remembers Naida, not me. He’s just confused.

  “Stop it! Both of you, stop!” I finally snap, though I’m talking to my subconscious as much as my sisters. Their eyes widen at my tone—I never talk to them this way. We never talk to one another this way. I’m instantly sorry, but not sorry enough to say so aloud. My sisters fall silent for a few heartbeats, giving Jude just enough time to return.