“Sophia. Her name was Sophia. Oh, I remember.” I crumple forward, put my face in my hands. It feels like everything in my chest is falling, bursting into flames, pushing Lo aside until I control myself again. My sister’s name was Sophia, and she was three years older than me. I remember. I remember her. Tears drip through my fingertips and onto my lap. Celia sighs and wraps her arm around my shoulders, her skin hot compared with mine.
“How could I forget my sister’s name?” I cry. Celia strokes my hair back but doesn’t answer. “I keep getting lost,” I say, finally looking up. I inhale deeply, try to fight the feeling of collapse in my lungs. “I forget, and then I get stuck being… being Lo. Even though I am Lo, I know I’m her. But I’m also Naida.”
“I know,” Celia says. “I know. Don’t stop trying to remember, though.”
I look at her, shake my head. “It’s so hard to be both. It’s hard to be either, but I can’t be both forever. It’s like…” I inhale, searching for a comparison, and only one comes to mind. “It’s like Lo is killing Naida. I can feel it. Again and again. I go into the water, and she kills me. Buries me, holds me down. I want it to stop. I just want to be myself again, all the time, not… this.”
We sit in silence for a minute. My dress is hiked up and the straps are slipping off my shoulders, but I don’t care. My feet ache, my heart aches, everything hurts and tears at me. The ocean will fix all that. It’ll make the pain stop. It’ll heal my wounds. It’ll kill the memories that gnaw at my mind, at my heart. I watch the waves lapping at the shore, look beyond them to the deep water. How do I live out there? I lived in a house, a house that was also a store, with my sister and a dog. That’s where I’m supposed to be. It isn’t fair that I’m here; it isn’t fair that I somehow became… this.
Nothing is fair.
“Celia?” I say.
“Hm?”
“Don’t trust Lo.” I turn to look at her; she’s silhouetted in the setting sun.
“I don’t,” she says firmly. “I can’t. She’s a murderer, she’s… I’m afraid of her. But I trust you.”
I face the water, nod. “Good. Lo is confused; she’s desperate. You can’t trust someone that desperate.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Celia
In the days following Naida’s warning about Lo, I dream about one of two things: Naida or Jude.
The dreams with Naida always end the same. I tell her all the memories I see in her head—her sister, her house, her room, even her favorite book, but every time I tell her about a memory, she gets lighter and lighter, until she’s faded into nothing but white light. And then that fades, too.
When they’re about Jude, they’re…
Well. They’re different. They involve kissing, of course, they involve breaths and whispers. But moreover, they involve touching. His fingers on my collarbone, my arm, my waist, skin-on-skin and yet no memories, no screaming in my head. Nothing but the simple perfection that is him touching me. And then I’ll wake up and be amazed to realize that the touch isn’t just a dream anymore, that it’s real. I can stop the memories now. I can hold them back and just feel… everything.
But tonight my dreams aren’t sweet—they’re of Naida. In the dream, she’s fading fast, fast, her skin is getting bluer, she looks more and more like Lo as I frantically call out things to remind her of who she is. I plead with Lo to let Naida go, but then they vanish into the waves, and I’m alone on the beach, in the church—which, in the dreams, always looks more like some sort of temple to the ocean, with the mermaid girl from Jude’s tattoos painted on the walls. I call for her, run to the water, drop to my knees, but she’s gone. I failed. I couldn’t save her. My power is as useless as I always knew it was—
I sit up in bed, startled by the darkness compared with Naida’s white light in the dream. It takes me a moment to figure out where I am, for my heart to stop racing. I blink, try to figure out what woke me.
“Shh. It’s just me,” Jane says. “I was just shutting your door. You’re talking in your sleep.” I jump at the sound of her voice, then look toward the doorway at her silhouette.
“I left my door open?” I ask groggily, surprised.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”
I nod, lie back down as she clicks the door shut. Go back to sleep.
I’m not sure I want to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lo
“You’re here again,” I say, surprised. I almost didn’t put on the dress—I didn’t the last few nights, when I came here and sat on the beach alone. Tonight, though, I wanted to see if I could hold on to myself even in Naida’s clothes—especially since I notice her voice is growing ever louder in my mind each time I surface. It’s lucky I put on the dress, I suppose… though for a moment, I wonder how he would react if he saw me without it.
“Yeah, well, I wanted to say thanks, and this is the only place I know to find you,” Jude says. I press myself against the church wall, into the shadows—the moon is bright tonight, and I’m afraid he’ll see me. “The thing you said about the ocean. It was sort of the kindling for a song I wrote.”
“You wrote the song. You don’t need to thank me for that,” I tell him.
“Maybe…” Jude says. He puts his hands in his pockets, sways a little. “But I feel like you put it in my head. Like a muse. Is that weird?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
We’re quiet for a few moments, listening to the waves.
“How did you know I’d be here?” I ask him, keeping my eyes trained on the water.
“I didn’t.” Jude shrugs. “I just thought I’d check. Are you all right?”
“You asked me that last time.”
“Last time it was because you were crying. This time it’s because you look… sick. Green, sort of.”
“I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say, looking away. How long can I continue tricking him into thinking I’m human if he’s already noticing it? A cloud passes in front of the moon, and I almost sigh audibly in relief. If he knew what I really was, would he run? He should. If he’s smart, he’d run and never look back.
Jude sits down in the sand near me, just out of arms’ reach. “So, what are you really doing here all the time?”
I could give him another short answer, an answer that doesn’t really answer him at all. But I’m tired, and I’m starting to wonder if my sadness makes me more human than even Naida’s memories do. I look his way, hoping he doesn’t notice how dark my eyes are. “I’m trying to remember the girl I used to be.”
“Used to be?”
“A long time ago. She was happy; I’m not.”
Jude nods knowingly—really knowingly—before speaking. “I’m familiar with being miserable with your life. I understand.”
I don’t know how to answer, so I stay quiet.
“I played the song for a girl,” Jude finally says when the silence is too much to bear.
That’s right, he played it for Celia—I remember talking to her about it, but only vaguely. Those memories belong to Naida. “She loved it,” I say, perhaps a little too knowingly.
“Yes. It seemed a little weird, playing a song for one girl that was inspired by another.”
“I inspired the song, or just the parts about the ocean?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
Jude looks sheepish, guilty. “Both. I’m not sure why. When I look at you, I think about music. It’s like you’re singing to me even though you aren’t.”
I nod, look down. Molly sang to him, sang our songs to him. He thought they were beautiful, but not for the right reasons. Not for the same reasons he thinks Celia is beautiful, not for the same reasons he might love her.
“Play it for me?” I ask. He looks up.
“I’d have to go get the guitar from my car,” he says, but he’s already rising to do so. I nod, and he turns to hurry up the path, like he’s worried I might vanish before he gets back. I sigh as th
e clouds move away from the moon—it’s risen so that moonbeams are streaking down straight onto the side of the church. I can’t stay here, not without Jude realizing that my skin color is far too wrong for me to simply be sick.
I rise, let a cry of pain escape my lips, but I force my feet along the beach, toward a section shaded by the shadow of the pier. The sand here is a little wetter since it’s closer to the water—it still hurts, but it’s not quite as excruciating to stand. Being closer to the waves also makes me calmer, like it slows down my heart, soothes my mind the way the water soothes my wounds.
Jude jogs back down the path, guitar over one shoulder. I see a moment of panic when he realizes I’m not by the church, but then he finds me.
“You moved,” he calls out.
“I do that,” I answer through teeth gritted from the pain. I have to relax—he’ll know. I keep waiting for him to come closer, but he’s frozen up by the dry sand, staring at something. I follow his line of sight out to the waves.
“You’re still afraid?” I ask.
“I liked what you said about the ocean,” he answers, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I almost died. I can’t stop thinking about the way it felt underwater.” He looks between me and the waves, like he’s afraid to take his eyes off either of us. He can’t move.
I can. It hurts, but I can. I force myself to stand straight, to walk forward—still in the shadow of the pier but closer to the dry sand. The urge to cry out is overwhelming, the urge to drop to my knees and crawl even more so. But I can’t let him see, I can’t let him see. The shadow hides the trail of bloody footsteps behind me as I grow closer, closer. Please, stop hurting me, I beg as it burns through my stomach, around my shoulders, behind my eyes.
“Thanks,” Jude says when I’m nearer to him. I nod, sink to the ground. I want to cry. I don’t. Why didn’t I just go into the water, disappear?
Because I want to hear his song. Jude turns the guitar around to his front and positions it. He looks at me, then starts to play, keeping his eyes on mine. I feel trapped, locked in his gaze, but I don’t dislike it. I don’t dislike it at all.
The song sounds like the ocean—it rises and falls, notes splash forward and harmonize with the sea behind me. It sounds like one of our songs, I realize. The one Molly sang to Jude the night I saved him. I close my eyes; the song makes me think of home. It makes me forget the pain, the hurt, the longing. It makes me feel like I did underwater before all this happened, before Jude, before Celia—it makes me feel peaceful. No conflict, no doubt, just me and my sisters and the ocean all around us.
I open my eyes and begin to sing.
My words and Jude’s music turn around each other in the air, matching the ocean, matching the darkness. Jude is still looking straight at me, his eyes widening as each line leaves my lips. We’ve long forgotten where our songs came from, yet we never forget the lyrics even when we’re old. Jude takes a step toward me, another; his face is still, his eyes locked on mine like he’s seeing something beautiful for the first time. Another step. I continue to the next verse.
Yes. Come to me.
Another step. I back up. Closer to the waves, closer to the water. Follow my song, so I can pull you under—the voice in my head feels dark, like it’s not my own.
I shiver. No, no. I don’t want to drown him. He says he thinks of music when he looks at me. He turned our song into his own—he must feel something…. Could he love me? Is it possible?
I’m afraid the answer is no. But he’s drawing closer, mesmerized, following me as I back up toward the water… and I find I’m equally afraid the answer is yes.
It would be easy. Naida would be human again. I wouldn’t forget myself and become an angel. I’d be a real girl, like Celia. I could run on the beach and be seen by others and go find my family—
No. I am Lo, and I don’t want to kill him. But I can’t stop the song; it feels like it’s forcing itself out of my mouth, like it isn’t really me singing. We take another step toward the water. Part of me wants to drown him so, so badly—I want to dive into the water, let it encircle us both. Pull him to the bottom and kiss him in my home, in my world. I want his soul. How can I just walk away if there’s even a chance I could have it…?
No.
I force my lips shut.
Jude continues playing for a moment, then wakes up—the smallest of the ocean waves lap around his feet. He stiffens, then clambers backward into the sand.
“How…? I was just—” he begins, looking confused. He shakes his head, rubs his temples, glares at the water like it tricked him. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t suspect me. I walk forward, out of the tiny waves. My toes curl up from the pain.
“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what happened. That was weird.” He looks up at me. “You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thank you,” I say. There are tears in my eyes, but I hold them back. Jude shakes off the last of my spell, turns the guitar over his shoulder. He takes another step away from the water just for good measure. It’s a little while before he speaks again.
“Who are you, really?” he asks me.
I stare. “I’m no one. Just a girl on the beach.”
“You’re different, though. I told you, I look at you and I think of music—”
“Maybe you should stop looking at me, then,” I say. A tear falls, but I look away before he sees it. When I turn back, Jude is looking at the ground.
“I can’t stop looking,” he mutters. “Besides, it’s like I told Celia. Once you get involved—”
“Celia.” I say her name like she’s a stranger. “You should go to her. See music in her.”
“I…” he begins, but he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Finally, he starts a new one. “Can I help you, Lo?”
“With what?”
“With whatever makes you come to the beach in the middle of the night, alone.”
I look down, shake my head. “No. It’d kill you to help me.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he starts to insist, stepping forward, hand outstretched. I step back.
“It would,” I whisper. I turn to look down the shoreline. “I have to go.”
“I can drive you—”
“I’ll walk,” I answer, and before he can say anything else, I start toward the darkest part of the beach, knives carving into my feet each time they hit the sand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Celia
Students will be moving back into the dorms again in a few weeks. Our little island of solitude on the outskirts of campus will become packed with parents and students and boyfriends and bags from bedding stores. I see all the signs: a few teachers moving in early, the fire alarm they keep testing, the reminders to register for classes. Anne and Jane are currently on a quest to be excused from science this year, hoping they can pass the senior exam and prove they already know the material. It helps, of course, that right before the test, Jane plans to brush against the proctor and see the answers. We get a check from our uncle to purchase a new set of uniforms—khaki skirts and blue shirts, which every girl at school will inevitably hike up or down, whichever makes them look more scandalous. Still, none of this seems real, like school and Jude and Naida and my sisters can’t all possibly exist in the same universe.
We spend Saturday cleaning our apartment—sort of. Mostly, the three of us are watching a stream of terrible crime shows while halfheartedly throwing things from the main room into our own bedrooms, then shutting the door quickly, like the clutter might escape.
“I remember this episode,” Jane says, when the third hour of a crime show starts. “The brother did it.”
“Why bother watching it, then, if you know what’s going to happen?” Anne asks.
“By that logic, why do you bother living?” Jane answers, giggling. Anne and I laugh. I feel like what happened at the coffeehouse with Jude started to heal something between us, some wound that existed long before I met Naida. Maybe because kissing Jude means I’m
more like them than they thought. More like them than I thought.
“We should go to a movie tonight,” Anne suggests after a series of trailers plays on the screen. The movie theater at the end of the strip is pretty impressive, since there’s not much else to do on a rainy day at the beach. We haven’t been in ages.
I nod. “We should. But you’re not tricking Jude into paying for our tickets,” I say, only partially joking.
Anne throws a pillow at me. “We won’t! But maybe… you could invite that girl. The one who knows about your power.”
The room falls silent, save a peanut butter jingle on the television.
“You said eventually,” Anne adds. “Eventually we’d meet her. She knows about your power. We deserve to know her.”
“It’s not like that,” I say quietly. “She can’t… she can’t come out.”
“What are you keeping her a secret for?” Jane asks, and I suddenly realize that my sisters have been preparing this conversation for a while now. They’re well rehearsed, like they’re reading lines in a play.
“Because, she’s just… It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not. She’s your friend. Why can’t we meet her?” Jane says.
“Look, she’s not going to tell anyone about my power. I’m using it to help her. She wouldn’t ruin that. She’s just a girl—”
“If she were just a girl, you’d have introduced us. We’re stronger together, Celia. We always have been. I don’t understand why you’re letting someone change that,” Anne says.
“I’m not changing that!” I argue. “I just want to be strong on my own, too. I want to be able to use my power for something good. I want to be able to talk to someone, to have friends outside of you two—”
“You have Jude!” Jane says.
“Why doesn’t he bother you?” I ask suddenly. My sisters don’t answer. Anne rolls her eyes at me and yanks open a cabinet door, begins piling plates inside like she’s punishing them.
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