by Sara Ella
Keeping to the shadows of the amphitheater’s dark staircase aisles, I inch closer. The sound check goes on. With each new song, Jordan’s voice seems to carry farther, up and out and away. Her silver sequined halter top sparkles and her white skinny jeans appear to glow. If I angle my gaze right, I can picture Jordan with silver scales, shiny and slick, slipping beneath the waves.
When the rehearsal ends, Jordan says, “Thanks, guys,” then turns off the mic clipped to the back of her jeans. She sets her guitar on a stand by the drum set and exits the circular stage.
And that’s my cue.
When she heads up the steps of the aisle closest to her, I backtrack. We reach the top of our sets of stairs at the same time. She aims for the elevator and I follow, stepping out of the shadows and into the light as she pushes the down-arrow button.
I swallow every fear that whispers she’ll hurt me again. Extinguish each anxious wave of emotion that tells me I’m nothing.
“Jordan.”
She bristles. Turns. Squints through black-lined slits. “Brooke?”
My gut churns. I long for the courage I possessed in Nikki’s car. Instead, all I feel is the sense that this is not the beginning of something new, as I’d hoped.
This is the end.
“Hey,” I say.
“What are you doing here?” She sounds tired, irritated. Overworked and overbooked.
“I wanted to see you. I saw you were on tour and I . . .” My words fall flat. “Congrats on the single. That’s something.”
“You’ve ignored my calls for months, Brooke. You left Nashville without a word.”
I stare at her. Hard. Anger, rage, and maybe even a little insanity stir inside me. “Dad sent me away.” Why does she do this? Why does she twist the truth to make me feel like I’m crazy?
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been living it up by the beach with Mee-Maw. You always were her favorite. You didn’t even say good-bye.”
“You told me I was nothing, Jordan. You abandoned me the day of River’s funeral—”
“Don’t say her name,” Jordan snaps. “Don’t you dare say her name. Our sister betrayed us. She went off with that lowlife street musician behind Dad’s back and came back heartbroken. Served her right. She should have listened to him.”
I don’t know what I expected from Jordan, but this? Never. “How can you say that?”
Jordan glares. “What do you want, Brooke? Get to the point or leave.”
I clear my throat. “Is Dad in town?”
Jordan blinks. “No. And he wouldn’t want to see you if he was.”
“Duke?”
“Off signing the latest boy band to his record label. He’s an important man, you know.”
I don’t care about Duke’s business deals or how valuable he is to my father. He could sign all the platinum recording artists in the world and I wouldn’t give a shark’s fin. All I want to know is, “Are you still together?”
Jordan lifts her left hand. A massive diamond sparkles from her ring finger. “The wedding is in December.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Ignore the fact I didn’t receive an invitation. “I need to tell you something.” Speaking it means reliving the moment, but I have to. I’ve been through this with Jake. Now I look at the memory with new eyes.
Duke can’t hurt me anymore.
But he can hurt Jordan. If my story makes a difference for her, it’s worth it.
“The night of my sixteenth birthday . . . he tried to . . .” Swallow. Keep going. “Before I got onstage, he found me at the pre-show party. He cornered me, Jordan. The way he touched me, it made me feel powerless.”
“I know who Duke is. I don’t need you to tell me.”
A chill rushes my senses. “He followed me when I left to look for River.”
“I told you not to say her name.”
“How can you be so cold?”
“I told you.” She flips her hair and checks the time on her phone. “I know who my fiancé is.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
A couple of band members skirt around us and load the elevator. Jordan coats her expression in sugar and they exchange good nights. When the doors close, she crosses her arms and shrugs her shoulders to her ears.
Why won’t she look at me?
“He’s promised me he can change.” Her eyes close. “Dad thinks he can. He says I need to give Duke a chance. We could go far together. Duke knows a lot of important people in the industry. Besides, he loves me.”
My skin freezes. Time seems to still. What she’s saying . . . She can’t possibly believe her own words. “That isn’t love, Jordan.”
“And what do you know about love, little sister?”
In the past, Jordan’s condescension would have stopped me, would have eaten at my heart for days. Now, the same empathy I felt for Jordan the night of River’s suicide overcomes every other emotion.
“I know enough to tell you love isn’t cruel or controlling. I know true love is patient and gracious and understanding. It’s the kind of love that accepts you, tears and wounds and brokenness. The kind River would have wanted us to have for one another.”
The kind Hope showed me.
And Jake.
And Mee-Maw.
And maybe even Merrick Prince.
Jordan shakes her head. “You’re still living in the fantasy world you’ve made up for yourself, Brooke. Face the music. The love you think exists, the kind our older sister ended her life over? It isn’t real. Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.”
How can I bring myself to reconcile Jordan’s words? Did I believe things would be solved in one conversation? Regret washes over me. Part of me wishes I hadn’t come at all.
“You should go. It’s late.”
“Jordan—”
“Go.”
A familiar numbness courses through me. There is no closure for me here. No reconciliation. Still, I came for a reason.
And I won’t leave until I make it to the end.
I reach into my tote, withdraw my manuscript, and offer it to Jordan. My heart ticks off each second that passes.
“What’s this?” Jordan eyes the pages. Still, she takes them.
“Read it.”
“Coral,” Jordan says, reading the title on the front. “Why Coral?”
I exhale. The name triggers a memory. Of the first time Merrick spoke the name I gave him.
“Do you know what happens to coral when it dies?” I ask.
Jordan shakes her head.
I squeeze my eyes. Open them wide. I bled my soul into those pages. Now I’m finally setting them free.
“It loses its color. It turns gray.” Like my world after River died. And Hope. Only recently has the color finally begun to return.
“I don’t get it.”
“You will,” I say. Or maybe she won’t. “It’s about us.”
The horrified expression spreading across her face ought to drown me.
Instead, anchors lift from my shoulders. Whether or not Jordan understands doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t invalidate my perspective or my feelings or make them any less real.
“Brooke.”
I wait for Jordan’s next words. Hope.
“You haven’t shown this to anyone else, have you?”
Sigh. The story of our sister’s suicide was an embarrassment to our King family name. But somehow, it also aided in helping Jordan rise to the top of the charts. Her voice has become quite the commodity. Even more than River’s was. Our older sister’s face was featured in all the tabloids and plastered across social media after her death. She was reality TV. She was entertainment. A good story twisted and retold a hundred times over.
But my story is different. Because, even with the mermaids and the Sorceress and the Abyss, everything I wrote is true.
Sometimes fiction speaks truth the way nothing else can.
“The first chapter was a school assignment. It even mad
e the finalist list in a statewide contest.”
Jordan gasps.
“It was disqualified when I couldn’t finish the manuscript. It doesn’t have an ending yet.”
Her features relax. “Are you going to publish it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think—”
“Read it,” I say again.
“Do you need money? Is that it?”
Why can’t she see this goes so much deeper than material things? “I wrote it because I couldn’t hold on to it anymore. I need to let it go.” Even without a proper ending.
I turn to leave. I’ve said everything. Now it’s up to her.
Jordan doesn’t stop me.
I press the button beside the elevator. It lights up and I stand there, alone though my sister is inches away. An awkward silence hangs in the air between us. So much left unresolved. So much pain behind Jordan’s eyes.
When I step over the elevator’s threshold, Jordan rushes forward and blocks the door.
“I’m pregnant.”
My emotions war. I want to kill Duke and scream at my dad and do anything I can to protect the lost girl before me. “Oh, Jordan,” I say, same as I did the night of Red Ti—of River’s death. “That doesn’t mean you have to stay with a man who is abusive.”
“I know what it means.” She doesn’t look me in the eyes. “It means I’m connected to Duke for the rest of my life. No matter what. I’ve made my choice. And nothing you can say will change it.”
I nod. Jordan is stubborn as a clam and twice as hard on the outside. Inside, though . . . inside there’s a pearl waiting to be set free.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday. “I’m here.” I let my gaze linger on hers so she knows my words are true. “I’m a call away.”
Jordan’s armor seems to crack before she swipes at her eyes again and allows the doors to close. The last thing I see before she’s gone from my vision is the tear that slips down her cheek. The one she doesn’t hide.
I wrap my arms around my middle and take the elevators back to the lobby. Jordan has to walk through her own season of darkness. I only hope she’ll eventually let me help her find the light on the opposite side.
A quote Hope wrote in my journal back at Fathoms invades my thoughts. The first half once stood out more than the latter. Now I recall the quote as a whole.
“Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.”
—Veronica Roth
We can mend each other. So many in my life have played a part in mending me. I take out my phone and send a quick text to Jordan. It’s the one thing I didn’t say that I wish I had.
I love you. You are not nothing to me.
She doesn’t respond, but I see the notification she’s read it. Maybe someday she’ll say the same. Even if she doesn’t, I know I am loved. That I am not nothing. And I never will be again.
Relief washes over me when I see Nikki’s red convertible sitting outside the lobby entrance. I climb inside. Exhale.
“How’d it go?” Nikki asks.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I did.”
“And?”
I face my friend. Stare at my empty hands. “We’ll see. But I think I figured out my ending.”
Nikki squeals, then makes a face. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I thought you hated spoilers.”
“True.” She puts the car into drive and pulls away from the hotel. “But I get dibs as first reader.”
“Promise.” I can’t help but picture a boy with his pinky extended, a Prince who promised he didn’t read my words.
Now that’s all I want him to do.
As we cruise through the city, the lights gazing down like so many stars, I let the scene form in my mind. I’d planned for Coral to die at the end of her story. She was supposed to die. That was her purpose. Her destiny.
Her fate.
But every time I sat down to hash out the chapter, I could never get it quite right.
Now I know why.
Now I know . . . that’s no way to end a fairy tale.
Like a character created by one of my all-time favorite authors—a boy who beat the impossible odds against him—Coral would make it past her intended ending.
She would have an after.
And I would be the girl who lived.
Forty-Nine
Merrick Prince
Merrick pulled his key out of the ignition, sat back, and stared up at the shabby downtown apartment building. The barred windows gave him a feeling of entrapment, though he hadn’t even stepped foot inside.
After all his searching, the trail had finally led him here?
He almost didn’t want to know what waited beyond those brick-and-mortar walls. What did this last chapter matter? The truth might hurt Brooke more.
He turned the engine over again and shifted into reverse. The car idled, ready to take him far away from the finality of this moment. He wasn’t doing this. What good could come of it?
But then his phone conversation from earlier that morning replayed in his mind. Vivi King—aka Mee-Maw—truly did have her fair share of secrets.
“The bracelet was yours all along?” Merrick’s detective work had ended at a custom jewelry store off the coast just north of San Jose. “The shop’s records showed your name on the purchase order.”
“A wedding gift from my late husband,” she said through a light chuckle. “I thought I’d lost it for a time. When it showed up on my oldest granddaughter’s wrist a few months later, I kept my lips sealed. She was so happy with that young street musician the summer she came to stay.”
Mee-Maw told Merrick everything. About the guy River referred to as her “prince.” Though Vivi only knew his alias, it didn’t take long for Merrick to trace his identity through social media based on his description and where he played. Process of elimination did the rest.
Ironic that the man who’d caused so much trouble lived mere miles from the home where Merrick grew up. Big city. Even bigger state.
Small world.
“What about when Brooke started to wear it?” he asked Vivi.
“She grew so attached to it after River passed, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it was mine. I didn’t have the heart.”
Merrick released a full-voiced exhale as the memory faded. He put the car in park, shut down the engine again, and climbed out. The strong scent of asphalt stung. He tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and cursed. He was on edge and he hadn’t even started. At the top of the stoop he rang the buzzer for apartment B3, then pocketed his hands and waited.
“Yeah?” The man on the intercom sounded as if he’d been sleeping.
Merrick checked his watch. Late afternoon. Either the guy worked a night shift or he was lazy. Merrick was inclined to believe the latter.
“Hey, I’m looking for Andrew ‘The Sandman’ Daniels.” The pearl bracelet in his pocket felt like a weight. He hoped to lift it soon. From Brooke’s shoulders more than from his own.
“It’s Drew. Or Sandman. I answer to both. Who’s asking?”
“My name is Merrick Prince. I’m a friend of River King’s.”
The intercom went silent before a loud ennnt sounded above him. Merrick slipped inside the bar-and-window door, then took the stairs two at a time. When he made it to the correct apartment, Drew stood in the open threshold. The scent of stale air and dried sweat wafted from behind him.
“What do you know about River?” he asked before Merrick could explain. “If she’s pregnant it’s not mine.” He crossed his arms and then one leg over the other. Everything about his stance said this guy had a certain amount of experience with pregnant girls showing up on his doorstep.
Nice. Merrick should have stopped while he was ahead. He still could. Instead, he withdrew the bracelet. Held it up into the harsh, flickering fluorescen
t light. “Recognize this?”
“Ah, a jealous boyfriend, then?” Drew shrugged a pair of bony shoulders. “Figures she’d go for a rich one. Good for her, man.”
The way he said man rubbed Merrick the wrong way. It was so far from Grim’s casual terms of endearment. Was Drew covertly insulting him?
Merrick glanced down at his retro jacket, ironed shirt, non-distressed jeans, and white sneakers. Did his clothes give away his—his father’s—status? So what if they did? Who was this guy to judge him? Currently, Drew modeled a pair of Santa cat pajama pants. At three o’clock in the afternoon, for crying out loud.
Plenty of insults bombarded his mind and played on the tip of his tongue. This isn’t about clothing or status or who drives what car. This is about River. And Brooke. I’m not leaving until I get to the bottom of this.
“I’m not River’s boyfriend.” Merrick almost said he was dating her sister, but that wasn’t quite true.
For now.
“I’m trying to help her sister find closure,” Merrick started again, trying to figure out where the conversation had gone south.
“Closure?” Drew asked, tone drenched in sarcasm. “It didn’t work out between us. How much more closure does she need?”
It hit Merrick then. Full force.
He doesn’t know.
Merrick cleared his throat and swallowed. “River died.”
Palm to his forehead, Drew slumped against the doorframe. “Oh, wow—” He slid down the frame to a crouch. “When?”
“January before last. She left this bracelet to her sister. Brooke.”
Recognition shone in Drew’s green eyes. Had River mentioned Brooke to him? He rose, pushed his bleached hair off his forehead, and took the bracelet. The way he stared at it made Merrick wonder if the guy was seeing another scene entirely.
When Drew finally spoke again, Merrick’s theory solidified.
“We met the summer before that. She was visiting her grandmother in that little tourist town. You know the one off the Coast Highway? The one named after a dessert topping?”
Coastal tourist towns were in full supply here. But yeah, Merrick knew the one. He nodded.
