“So, where are you three headed now? And is it somewhere that a fine animal-shaped hat might be appreciated?” he asks. “Because I’ve got a stingray hat back at the cart that would look lovely on you, Anne. Or are you Jane?”
“Jane has to go get her hair cut after this,” Anne answers, irritation with me lacing her voice. “After that we’re just going home. I think we’re going out tonight.”
“All three of you?” Jude asks.
“I’m not,” I cut in. I can be just as bitter as you, Anne.
“Ah,” Jude says, becoming aware that he’s touched on something uncomfortable. He glances from Anne to me, then speaks slowly. “You know, Celia… you said to tell you if there was anything you could do to help me earn guitar-fund money. What if I were to call in that favor this afternoon? I mean, if you really don’t have any plans.”
“How will I get home?” I ask.
“I’ve got a car,” Jude says. “I’ll take you.”
I nod at Jude; Anne rolls her eyes at both of us. “Fine. Nice meeting you, Jude. We’ve got to get back. We’ll see you later tonight, Celia?”
“Sure,” I say through a sigh. Anne rises, drops her napkin on the table, and starts out. Jane follows suit, grinning at Jude before she hurries off.
Jude and I are silent for a moment. A long moment.
“So… did I just miss something?” he finally says, turning to me.
“Kind of,” I answer. “They don’t like it when I disagree with them. They really don’t like it when I’m vocal about it.”
“And did I hear one of them say I have Florence Nightingale syndrome?”
Of all the things he could have heard, I actually think that’s the least embarrassing. I shrug my shoulders and nod.
“Interesting,” he says, screwing up his eyebrows for a moment. “Would it help if I told you I don’t?”
“Not really.”
“What about if I told you that I’m not a stalker or anything weird?”
“Not convincing, seeing how you found my cell number Saturday night.”
Jude sucks in air through his teeth. “Hm. That does look bad, doesn’t it? Maybe I do have Nightingale syndrome. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it. And you don’t have it,” I say, shaking my head at him, trying not to picture Naida leaning over him that night. We rise, and I follow Jude back to the Dr. Wacky’s cart, where he rolls up the canvas and situates the palm-tree hat back on his head firmly.
“Here. Pick one,” he says, motioning to the cart.
“What? Why do I have to wear one?”
“Because you said you’d do me a favor. And also so I’m not the only one that looks like a moron wearing a foam hat,” he says, grinning, which is why fifteen minutes later, amid a trickling stream of customers, I’m wearing a hat with sea turtles on it. When I move my head, their flippers wiggle.
“Tell me something,” Jude says. “About you, I mean. Because basically, all I know is you have two sisters, you prefer sea turtles to stingrays, and you sometimes save people from drowning.”
I smile, wrap my ankles around the legs of the stool I’m sitting on. “I…” I can’t think of anything to say. I like history class? I like the ocean? I hate cheap chocolate? Everything about me seems to be so caught up in my sisters and our powers, I can’t think of anything to share with a stranger. For a moment I find myself wishing he could see my past, if only so he’d understand my silence.
Jude looks a little amused, but nods. “All right… what about this—I’ll tell you trivia about me, but you have to tell me matching trivia about you.”
“Like what?”
“Like… here, trivia: In third grade I had to do this report on Indians. I worked really hard and made this poster and had a costume and everything. And after the report was over, I found out that my teacher meant ‘Indians’ as in ‘India,’ not ‘Indians’ as in ‘Native Americans.’ ”
I nod, grin—I didn’t know that memory. “Okay, okay. In… fifth grade, I think—maybe sixth—Anne, Jane, and I used to try to switch places in classes.”
“Did it work?”
“For them it did. But anyone who knew us at all could always tell it was me. I spent a lot of that year in detention for it,” I admit.
For an hour, things are different. I didn’t know as much about Jude as I’d thought—I mean, yes, I knew the big picture, but there are so many details, so many little things I didn’t see, that I wouldn’t know if we weren’t playing the trivia game. Sweat trickles down my neck despite the umbrella shading us and the waters we buy from a passing cart.
“Seriously, it used to infuriate me,” I say. “They called me Mother Celia for, like… a year.”
“All because you were named after your mother? I think they’re jealous.”
“Anne and Jane don’t get jealous,” I say. “But… I do like that I have my mother’s name.”
“You were close with her?”
“Not at all, I barely knew her. But she was exciting and beautiful, and everyone adored her. She and my father had this dramatic love story; she was a rich girl from the city and he was a poor woodsman, but she ran away with him anyway.” I can feel myself grinning as I tell the story. “She said her life started that day.”
“That is dramatic,” Jude says, nodding. “Are you like her, at least?”
I exhale. “Not really.” I hesitate. “Or maybe just not yet.”
“An optimist,” Jude says, smiling. “All right, all right. Let’s see… to match that… I’ve got an excellent one. But you’ll owe me like… fifty pieces of trivia about yourself if I tell you.” He inhales deeply, closes his eyes. “My name isn’t Jude.”
I hesitate—I probably look more shocked than is fitting. But in all the memories I saw, I never heard someone call him another name. Were the memories wrong? Did I read them incorrectly? I run through them in my head, alarmed.
“Relax, it’s not that bad a name….” Jude says, a little concerned. I try to wipe my expression away.
“What is it, then?” I ask.
“Well, first off, it’s a family name. It’s tradition—every first son gets stuck with it. So in middle school, I renamed myself after the Beatles song. You know it?”
“Hey Jude? Of course.”
“Oh, good, I don’t have to start hating you. Anyway, it didn’t really stick until I moved away from home. Only my roommates know the truth, and that’s only because my rent checks still say Barnaby.”
I try to smash the smile spreading across my face but can’t help it. I laugh, and Jude’s ears turn pink. He rolls his eyes while I get the humor out but smiles a little himself at the same time.
“I know, I know. Everyone in third grade thought it was a riot, too. You see why I changed it? No one would give money to a musician named Barnaby. What about you? Do you play any instruments? Create any art?”
“Not really. I took a painting class at Milton’s once; we made watercolor flowers for nine weeks. No music, though. There’s only a choir program there, and I definitely don’t sing.”
Jude pauses, looking a little confused. “Really? I remember you singing on the beach.”
I stumble a little but shake my head. “Nope. I don’t sing.”
“Huh. I could have sworn you did. What do you do, then, other than hang out with your sisters?”
“I… nothing,” I answer. “Nothing. Really. I go to school, I get decent grades, I… I guess in some ways, being Anne’s and Jane’s sister is really all I have time to be. Or energy, at least.”
Jude raises an eyebrow. “Poetic. Though it’d be more so if you weren’t wearing a hat covered in sea turtles.”
I laugh. “I know, it’s not very exciting.”
“I think you do more than that,” Jude says. “Maybe you just don’t realize it yet. Like, for example, might I remind you that you save drowning victims and give them terrible cases of Nightingale syndrome. That’s pretty exciting.”
“You don’t ha
ve Nightingale syndrome,” I say.
“I could!”
“Yeah, yeah. Your turn.”
“Okay…” Jude says, inhaling. “I… I left home because my mom lied to me about half a pie.”
“A pie?”
“Half a pie,” he corrects, grinning. “She said we were out of this pie I brought home from food day in French class. Really, she’d hidden it so she could eat the whole thing herself.”
“And pie hoarding made you head to the beach?” I ask.
“Well, technically, yes,” he says, adjusting his hat. “Not really, though. Really… I realized that she was always lying to me. She lied to me about why my dad left, about my stepfather being great, about a thousand little things every day. I was sick of the lies.” He looks up at me, smiles a little. “Sorry. Too much information.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t know that’s why you left. I knew she lied a lot, but I thought—”
“You knew she lied?” Jude asks, confused. “How?”
Damn it. “You said it earlier, I think, maybe,” I say, trying to brush it off. “But it wasn’t too much information.”
“Good… good,” Jude says, still looking confused. I curse at myself when he looks away. “But yeah. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I hate lying.”
I grimace. Fantastic—he hates lying, and I’m practically a professional liar between keeping Naida and my power secret. Jude continues. “What about you? How’d you get here?”
I inhale—at least this I can be honest about. “My father has Alzheimer’s, so he can’t take care of us. Our mother is gone. Our brothers are spread across the country, and we hardly know them. All I have are my sisters. We’ve been at Milton’s for seven years.”
“Wow. No wonder they’re protective of you.”
“Protective? More like… stifling.”
Jude laughs. “That, too.”
Another moment of silence. Jude drums his fingers on the register, then grins. “Okay, I’ve got one. So, when I was a little kid, I loved pop music….”
I knew that. I know the story he’s about to tell me.
But this time, for the first time, that’s okay.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lo
When it rains, it ’s beautiful under the water. It’s like the sky and the ocean and the clouds are all connected as we lie on the deck of the Glasgow and stare up at the waves that rock far above us. They look dangerous even in a small rainstorm like this. They look beautiful. They remind us that the ocean isn’t something we’ve tamed, just because we’re a part of it.
Key and I used to play a game; when it stormed, we’d inch toward the surface, each daring the other to go a little higher, a little higher—nowhere near the actual breaking point, of course, but we’d get just close enough that the waves pulled us back and forth and the rolls of thunder ripped through our chests. It was dangerous; in a storm, you have to fight so hard against the water that sometimes you’ll lose yourself in the process, and either instantly grow old or simply be killed by the waves. But Key and I were rebels, wild things, and we dared to challenge the weather—at least, until I got frightened. Then I’d run back down to the seafloor and she’d follow, having always won, gone a little bit higher than me. I look over and realize Key is looking at me, smiling, like we’re both just sharing the same memory. Why haven’t we done that in ages? Hurricane season will be starting soon—hurricanes often sweep away many of the old ones at once, take them to the surface to transform….
I should be going to the surface now. I said I’d meet Celia tonight.
I slip away from the others, down around the back side of the ship. There, I curl my fingers into the seaweed for a moment, like it can give me strength, then shoot to the surface quickly, grimacing the whole way. When I emerge by the shore, I realize. The storm lost most of its power out at sea; there’s only the slightest pattering of rain on the ocean’s surface. The wind is still sharp, though; I wince and dip so low in the water that only my eyes are showing. They’ve fixed the pier, I notice, looking ahead. I remember for a moment the boy falling, Molly’s eyes lighting up….
Celia is here—by the church, the same place we sat last time. Her skin matches the color of the few bits of sky peeking through the rain clouds, where the sun is setting—peach and red, colors I hardly ever see down deep. I look up—there are people on the pier above me. How far into the slowly darkening distance can they see? I dive down and move along underneath the pier, dodging old fishing lines and lures. When the water is waist-deep, I inhale. I have to stand, I have to stand…. As hard as it is to remember Naida, it’s so, so easy to remember the pain of walking.
“Wait!” I look up at the shore. Celia is standing in the darkness at the pier’s edge, balancing on rocks. “I thought these might help?” She holds up a pair of shoes, the strappy kind humans wear when they walk along the shore. It’s almost comical, to think of myself wearing them, but I’ll try anything to stop the pain. I nod, and she tosses them to me, grimacing when they go off course and the ocean takes hold. I slink back through the water and find them, a speck of bright purple against the thrashing waters. When I put them on, they feel strange, uncomfortable. They drag in the water and slow me down. But I finally go back to the shore, near Celia. I wince, putting one shoed foot firmly down on the sand.
The pain is intense, terrible—just like before, the knives shoot through the softest parts of my feet and scrape along my bones. I tremble… but when I look down, there’s less blood. That’s something, at least. My legs are shaky as I walk the rest of the way out, trying not to shout so loudly that the people on the pier above hear me. When I reach the shore, I drop down to the sand by Celia to let my feet rest.
“I also… I brought you this?” Celia says, sounding embarrassed. I look up, pushing my hair from my eyes—why can’t it stay out of my face like it does underwater?—and see she’s holding a dress. It’s old, the fabric weathered and washed. It’s so dry. I watch drops of ocean water splash it, blossom into thick wet spots.
“Why?” I don’t understand—the shoes made sense, sort of, but a dress?
“Because… you’re naked? Last time, you wanted a towel?”
I hesitate, look out over the water. For a moment, I get lost, wondering what my sisters are doing beneath the waves….
“I wanted it?” I ask, turning back to her.
She nods. “You don’t have to. I just thought, if someone were to see you, they might think…”
“Of course,” I say. “Right.” I take the dress from her hands and struggle to slide it over my head. It feels strange on my skin, uncomfortable, like it’ll hold me back from moving all the ways I want to. I’m certain I don’t look like Celia in it, that I just look like an ocean girl in a dress, every bit as awkward as it would look on a dolphin or a fish.
I suppose it’s something, though. Celia rises and walks away, back toward the church. I follow, stumbling a little against the searing pain in my feet, longing for the moment we sit down. If the people on the pier think anything is strange about me, they don’t show it—their eyes skim over Celia and me, instead staring out at the ocean, to where the stars are starting to shine. It looks odd from here. When you’re in the middle of the ocean, the stars are everywhere when you look up. But here, I see them stop, the dark line where the water begins and the sky ends. I stare at the horizon for a moment when we finally sit by the church.
“I saw Jude today,” Celia says awkwardly, drumming on her knees. “The boy from the water, the one you saved?”
“Oh.” Jude. He has a name. Naturally he has a name, but for some reason I always just thought of his eyes, not the name, the mind, the life behind them. “He’s alive?” I can’t pretend it isn’t a relief to hear.
“Yes. He… he remembers you, I think,” she says, looking away.
“What does he remember?”
“Your hair. And… did you sing to him?”
I pause. “No. Another one of us di
d, though.” Celia still looks confused, but I’m not sure I could phrase an explanation in a way she could understand. She couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be one of us.
“Well… he’s nice. He’s really nice,” Celia says, words a little stilted. I look at her, at the expression on her face—it’s different, tried.
“Does he love you?” I ask.
Celia’s eyebrows shoot up. She stumbles over the beginnings of several sentences before landing on one. “No, of course not. We just met. And he… it’s just that he thinks I saved him, which he shouldn’t, because it was you….” Her face turns red with something like guilt.
“But he might love you?” I ask, ignoring the rest of what she’s said.
Celia seems surprised. “I… no. My sisters say he does, but that’s just because they don’t know what love is. They think it’s a game….” She drifts off, sounding embarrassed. We’re silent for a few minutes, listening to the ocean. She moves a lot, I notice, brushing her hair back, flitting her eyes across the water, like the tiny fish that stay near the shore. “Are you… right now, what’s your name?” Celia asks, like she’s confused.
“Lo,” I whisper. Lo, the ocean girl, the girl who can’t be loved. I open my eyes, tilt my head toward her. “I want to remember Naida.”
“That’s why I came,” she answers. She inhales, looks at her hand, eyes softening like she’s praying. Then she slowly, carefully places her fingers over my forearm.
I can feel Celia in my mind, almost. I try to understand what she’s looking for. She suddenly grips my arm tighter; I flinch as her fingers dig into my skin.
Something in me moves, changes. It’s like a wall in my head is crumbling. I inhale, realize I’ve been holding my breath. Tiny bits of memories swarm me—trees, light, silverware, rocking chairs, little things—I can’t hold on to them long enough, I need help. I look up at Celia, who pulls her hand away and smiles at me shakily.
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