The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

  “To the Swan sisters!” someone shouts. “And to another fucking year of high school!” Arms rise into the air, holding cans of beer and red cups, and a chorus of hoots and whistles carries across the beach.

  Music thumps from a stereo balanced on one of the logs near the bonfire. Rose takes the beer from me and shoves a larger bottle into my hand. Whiskey—it’s being passed through the crowd. “It’s awful,” she confesses, her face still puckered. But then she smiles, wagging an eyebrow at me. I chug back a quick slog of the dark booze, and it burns my throat, sending goose bumps down my arms. I hand it off to my right, to Gigi Kline. She grins, not at me—she doesn’t even seem to notice me—but down at the bottle as she takes it from my hands, tips it to her mouth, swallows down way more than I could ever manage, and then wipes at her perfect coral lips before passing the bottle to the girl on her right.

  “Two hours until midnight,” a boy across the bonfire announces, and another wave of whoops and hollers rolls through the group. And those next two hours pass in a fog of bonfire smoke and more beers and swigs of whiskey that burn less and less with each sip. I hadn’t planned on drinking—or getting drunk—but the warmth radiating throughout my entire body makes me feel loose and floaty. Rose and I find ourselves swaying happily with people who we might normally never talk to. Who might normally never talk to us.

  But when it’s less than thirty minutes to midnight, the group begins to stagger down the beach to the water’s edge. A few people, either too drunk or deep in conversation to leave the bonfire, stay behind, but the rest of us gather together as if forming a procession.

  “Who’s brave enough to go in first?” Davis McArthurs asks aloud so everyone can hear, his spiky blond hair pushed up from his forehead and his eyelids sagging lazily like he’s about to take a nap.

  A rumble of low furtive voices passes through the mob, and a few of the girls are pushed playfully forward, their feet splashing into the water only ankle deep before they scurry back out. As if a few inches of water were enough for the Swan sisters to steal their human bodies.

  “I’ll do it,” a singsong, slurring voice announces. Everyone cranes their head to see who it is, and Olivia Greene steps forward, twirling in a circle so that her pastel yellow dress fans out around her like a parasol. She’s obviously drunk, but the group cheers her on, and she bows forward as if greeting her adoring fans before turning to face the black, motionless harbor. Without any coaxing, she begins to wade out into the salty sea, arms outstretched. When she’s waist deep, she does a very ungraceful dive forward, which looks more like a belly flop. She disappears from view for half a second before reappearing at the surface, laughing wildly with her tragic-black hair draped over her face like seaweed.

  The crowd cheers and Lola steps into the water up to her knees, urging Olivia back to the shallows. Davis McArthurs calls again for volunteers, and this time there is only a half beat before a voice shouts, “I’ll go in!”

  I snap my gaze to the left where Rose has stepped out of the crowd, moving toward the water.

  “Rose,” I bark, reaching out and grabbing her arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Going for a swim.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  “I’ve never really believed in the Swan sisters anyway,” she says with a wink. And the crowd pulls her from my grasp, ushering her toward the cold ocean. She smiles widely as she wades out into the water, past Olivia. She’s barely up to her waist when she dives forward and slips beneath the surface. A ripple shudders out behind her, and everyone on the beach falls silent. The air constricts in my lungs. The water flattens again at the surface, and even Olivia—who’s still calf deep in the shallows—turns to watch. But Rose doesn’t reappear.

  Fifteen seconds pass. Thirty. My hearts starts to clap against my chest—a painful certainty that something isn’t right. I push out from the crowd, suddenly sober, watching for Rose’s red hair to break through the surface. But there’s not even a breeze. Not even a ripple.

  I take a single step into the water—I have to go in after her. I don’t have a choice. When beneath the bloodless half-moon, shattering the calm, she suddenly bursts above the waterline, reemerging several yards farther out into the harbor from where she went in, I let out a trembling sigh of relief and the crowd erupts in a collective cheer, raising their cups as if they just witnessed some impossible feat.

  Rose flips onto her back and lifts her arms overhead in a fluid pinwheel, swimming toward shore—casual, as if she were doing laps in a pool. I expect Davis McArthurs to ask who else wants to go in, but the group has gotten rowdy and girls are now traipsing through the shallow ankle-deep water, but never actually going all the way in. People stretch out on the sand, some shotgun beers, and others do sloppy cartwheels into the water.

  Rose finally reaches the beach, and I try to push over to her, but several senior guys have gathered around her, giving her high fives and offering her beers. I slink back from the group. She shouldn’t have done that—gone into the water. Risked it. My cheeks blaze, watching her nonchalantly wipe the water from her arms as if she is pleased with herself, smiling up at the cluster of guys who’ve taken a sudden interest in her.

  The moonlight makes a path up the beach, and I wander away from the noise of the party—not far, just enough to catch my breath. I drank too much, and the world is starting to buzz and crackle and tilt off axis. I think of my father vanishing on a night when there was no moon to see by, no stars to guide his way back from the dark. If there had been a moon, maybe he would have returned to us.

  I consider heading back to the marina, ditching the party and returning to the island, when I hear the heavy breathing and staggered footsteps of someone stumbling up the sandy beach behind me. “Hey,” a voice calls. I spin around and see Lon Whittamer—one of Sparrow High’s notorious partiers—swaying toward me like I’m standing in his path.

  “Hi,” I answer softly, trying to step out of his way so he can continue his drunken walk up the beach.

  “You’re Pearl,” he says. “No, Paisley.” He laughs, tosses his head back, his brown eyes slipping closed briefly before focusing on me again. “Don’t tell me,” he says, holding up a finger in the air as if to stop me from giving away my name before he’s had time to figure it out on his own. “Priscilla. Hmm, Pinstripe.”

  “You’re just saying things that start with the letter P.” I’m not in the mood for this; I just want to be left alone.

  “Penny!” he shouts, cutting me off.

  I take a step back as he leans forward, exhaling a boozy breath and almost falling into me. His dark brown hair is plastered to his forehead, and his narrow-set eyes seem unable to focus, blinking closed every couple seconds. He’s wearing a neon orange shirt with palm trees and pink flamingos scattered across it. Lon likes to wear obnoxious Hawaiian shirts in all shades of bright tropical colors with exotic birds and pineapples and hula girls. I think it started as a joke or maybe a dare our sophomore year, and then it turned into his trademark style. It makes him look like an eighty-year-old man on permanent vacation in Palm Springs. And since I don’t think he’s ever been to Palm Springs, his mother must order them online. And tonight he’s wearing one of his ugliest.

  “I like you, Penny. I always have,” he mumbles.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yup. You’re my kind of girl.”

  “I doubt that. You didn’t even know my name two seconds ago.”

  Lon Whittamer’s parents own the only major grocery store in town: Lon’s Grocery, which they named after him. And he’s known for being a total narcissistic asshole. He considers himself a ladies’ man—a self-proclaimed Casanova—only because he can offer his girlfriends discounts on makeup in the meager cosmetics aisle at his parents’ store, and he uses this like a gold trophy he only hands out to girls who are worthy. But he’s also known for cheating on his girlfriends and has been caught numerous times making out with other girls in his jacked-up, chrome-rimmed, mud flap–ac
cessorized red truck parked in the school parking lot. Basically, he’s a moron who doesn’t even deserve the breath it takes to tell him to get lost.

  “Why didn’t you go into the water?” he asks slyly, inching closer to me again. “Like your friend did?” He brushes his hair back from his forehead and it sticks straight up, either from sweat or seawater.

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “You’re afraid of the Swan sisters?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I answer honestly.

  His eyes slide partway closed, and a stupid grin curls across his lips. “Maybe you should swim with me?”

  “No thanks. I’m going back to the party.”

  “You didn’t even wear a dress,” he points out, and his eyes slide down my body like he’s shocked by my appearance.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” I start to take a step around him, but he grabs hold of my arm and digs his fingers into my skin.

  “You can’t just walk away.” He hiccups, closes his eyes again, then snaps them open like he’s trying to stay awake. “We haven’t swum yet.”

  “I told you, I’m not getting in the water.”

  “Sure you are.” He smiles playfully, like I must be enjoying this as much as he is, and begins dragging me with him into the shallows.

  “Stop it.” I use my other hand to push against his chest. But he continues to lurch backward, deeper into the harbor. “Stop!” I shout this time. “Let me go.” I look up the shore to the mass of people, but they’re all too loud and drunk and distracted to hear me.

  “Just one swim,” he coos, still smiling, slurring each word as they tumble from his lips.

  We’ve staggered calf deep into the water, and I slam my fist against his chest. He winces briefly and then his expression changes, turns angry, and his eyes go wide.

  “Now you’re going all the way in,” he announces more crisply, yanking against my arm so that I stumble several steps deeper, up to my knees. Not deep enough to risk being taken by a Swan sister, but still my heart begins to thump, fear pushing the blood out to my extremities and sending panic racing down my veins. I raise my arm again, ready to punch him directly in the face to keep him from dragging me in any farther, when someone appears to my left; someone I don’t recognize.

  It all happens in an instant: The stranger shoves a hand against Lon’s chest; Lon’s throat lets out a short wheezing sound. His grip on my arm releases at the same time he loses his balance, and suddenly he’s careening backward, falling all the way into the water, arms flailing.

  I take a staggering step back, sucking in air, and the person who pushed Lon off of me touches my arm to steady me. “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod, my heart rate not yet receding.

  Lon, a few feet away, stands up from the waist-deep water, gagging and coughing and wiping seawater from his face. His bright orange shirt is now sopping wet. “What the fuck?” he yells, looking directly at the stranger standing beside me. “Who do you think you are?” Lon demands, marching toward us. And for the first time I really look up at the face of the stranger, trying to place him—the rigid angle of his cheekbones and the straight slope of his nose. And then I know: It’s him, the boy from the dock who was looking for work—the outsider. He’s wearing the same black sweatshirt and dark jeans, but he’s standing closer now, and I can clearly see the features of his face. The small scar by his left eye; the way his lips come together in a flat line; his short dark hair flecked with droplets of mist from the sea air. His gaze is still hard and unflinching, but in the moonlight he seems more exposed, like I might be able to read some clue in the rim of his eyes or the shiver of his throat when he swallows.

  But I don’t have time to ask him what he’s doing out here because Lon is suddenly in his face, shouting about what an asshole he is and how he’s going to get his face punched in for having the nerve to shove Lon into the water like that. But the boy doesn’t even flinch. His gaze looks down at Lon—who is a good six inches shorter than him—and even though the muscles in his neck tense, he seems wholly unconcerned by Lon’s threats of an ass-kicking.

  When Lon finally takes a breath, the boy raises an eyebrow, like he wants to be sure Lon is done babbling before he responds. “Forcing a girl to do anything she doesn’t want to is reason enough to kick your ass,” he begins, his voice level. “So I suggest you apologize to her and save yourself a trip to the ER for stitches and a raging headache in the morning.”

  Lon blinks, opens his mouth to speak—to spew some rebuttal that would probably involve more cuss words than actual substance—but then thinks better of it and snaps his jaw shut. Standing beside the two of them, it’s obvious Lon is outweighed, outmuscled, and probably outexperienced. And he must see it too, because he turns his head to face me, swallows his pride, and mutters, “I’m sorry.” I can tell it pains him to say it, his expression twisting in disgust, the words sharp and foreign in his mouth. He’s probably never apologized to a girl in his life . . . maybe never apologized to anyone ever.

  Then, he turns and slogs up the beach back to the group, trailing seawater from his soaked clothes.

  “Thank you,” I say, wading out of the shallow water. My shoes and the lower half of my white jeans are drenched.

  The boy’s shoulders relax for the first time. “That guy wasn’t your boyfriend, was he?”

  “God, no,” I snap, shaking my head. “Just some self-entitled prick from school. I’ve never even talked to him before.”

  He gives me a half nod and glances past me to the party in full swing. Music thumps; girls squeal and skip along the edge of the waterline; boys wrestle and crush empty beer cans between their palms.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, squinting up at him, tracing the arc of his eyebrows where they pinch together.

  “I came down to sleep on the beach. I didn’t realize there was a party.”

  “You’re sleeping out here?”

  “Planned to, up beside the rocks.” His eyes flick up the shoreline to where the cliff rises, steep and jagged—an abrupt end to the beach.

  I assume he checked the bed-and-breakfasts in town but there were no vacancies, or perhaps he couldn’t afford to rent a room. “You can’t sleep out here,” I tell him.

  “Why not?”

  “High tide will be in at two a.m., and that whole stretch of beach by the cliff will be underwater.”

  His dark green eyes taper at the edges. But instead of asking where he should move his makeshift campsite to, he asks, “What’s with the party? Something to do with June first?”

  “It’s the Swan party, for the Swan sisters.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You’ve really never heard of them?” I ask. I think it’s truly the first time I’ve met an outsider who came to Sparrow with no clue about what goes on here.

  He shakes his head then looks down at my waterlogged shoes, my toes swimming in seawater. “You should get dry by the fire,” he says.

  “You’re soaked too,” I point out. He went into the water just as far as I did.

  “I’m fine.”

  “If you’re sleeping outside tonight, you should probably get dry so you don’t freeze to death.”

  He glances up the beach to the dark cliff wall, where he’d planned to sleep, then nods.

  Together, we walk to the bonfire.

  * * *

  It’s late.

  Everyone is drunk.

  The stars sway and slip out of alignment overhead, reconfiguring themselves. My head thrums; my skin itches from the salt water.

  We find a place to sit on an open log, and I untie my shoes, leaning them against the ring of rocks encircling the bonfire. My cheeks already feel flushed, and my toes tingle as the blood circulates back through my feet. The fire licks at the sky, licks at my palms.

  “Thank you again,” I say, looking at him from the corner of my eye. “For the rescue.”

  “Right place at the right time, I guess.”

  “Most guys aren’t so c
hivalrous around here.” I rub my palms together, trying to warm them, my fingers cold to the bone. “The town might be required to give you a parade.”

  He smiles full and big for the first time, a softness in his eyes. “The hero requirements in this town must be pretty low.”

  “We just really like parades.”

  Again he smiles.

  And it means something. I don’t know what, only that I’m intrigued by him. This outsider. This boy who glances at me from the corner of his eye, who feels both familiar and new all at the same time.

  Down near the water’s edge, I can see Rose still talking to three boys who’ve taken a sudden interest in her after her swim, but at least she’s safe and out of the water. Half of the crowd has wandered back up to the bonfire, and beers are handed around. My head still feels swimmy from all the whiskey, so I set the beer in the sand at my feet.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the boy as he takes a long sip of his beer.

  “Bo.” He holds the can loosely in his right hand, casual, noncommittal. He doesn’t seem uneasy in this foreign social setting, in a new town surrounded by strangers. And no one seems to think he looks out of place.

  “I’m Penny,” I say, glancing at him, his eyes so green it’s hard to look away. Then, twisting my hair over my shoulder to ring out the small amount of seawater from the ends, I ask, “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  I press my hands together between my knees. Smoke from the fire swirls over us, and the music continues to blare. Olivia and Lola stumble up to the edge of the bonfire, hugging each other around the waist and looking completely trashed.

  “Are those the Swan sisters?” Bo asks. Olivia and Lola do look alike, with their jet-black hair and matching piercings, so I can see why he might think they’re related.

  But I let out a short laugh. “No, just friends.” I dig the toes of my right foot into the sand. “The Swan sisters are dead.”

  Bo turns back to me.

  “Not recently,” I amend. “They died two centuries ago—drowned in the harbor.”