I nod, meeting her eyes with my wet ones. “It was a lot shorter.”
“So I guess I got here first. Did he write you back?” I shake my head—the only email is the response from Jenna before she’d sped over here to beat me over the head. The subject line is filled with F-bombs and exclamation marks.
“Just you,” I say. “He probably hasn’t gotten it yet, which is for the best. A part of me hopes I’ll be gone before that happens.”
“What did you tell him?” Jenna asks, sitting next to me.
“That we’re moving to South Africa.”
“That far?”
“It has to be far,” I say. “And remote, with no internet. And it has to be a clean break with him. I couldn’t take it if we were just email buddies...not after we...” I trail off, leaning on Jenna’s shoulder.
We lie back on the bed, staring at my fake Waterfell ceiling. I let the tears come as she whispers that everything is going to be okay just as a best friend should. We lie quietly for a few minutes, with my occasional sniffs breaking up the silence until Jenna props herself up on one elbow. Her eyes are puffy as I expect mine are, too.
“So after you beat this Queen of Wannabe, then you’re going back home?”
“Yes.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“I hope so.” I smile through my tears. “It’s not like I’m on a different planet. I’ll always be here, just not here.”
“You’re going to miss the hockey final,” Jenna says with a wry grin. “We’re never going to win State without you.”
“You’re going to do a lot of things without me.” Leaning over, I reach into a jewelry box on my bedside table and pull out a necklace. I hand it to Jenna. “I was going to ask Echlios to give this to you. It’s one of mine, so you never forget.”
Jenna’s eyes widen at the shimmering iridescent yellow scale that’s the size of a silver dollar, hanging on a thin gold chain. “It’s beautiful,” she says in a choked voice. “Thank you, Riss. I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“Why, oh, why couldn’t my best friend in the world have been normal instead of some shape-shifting alien who has to leave?” she says, burying me in a hug. “It’s not fair! In the movies, you guys always take a human with you. Can’t I go with you?”
“Not in E.T.,” I say. “And even if you could come with me, what about Sawyer? You wouldn’t leave him in a million years.”
“Girl, boys come and go, but best friends are forever.” She grins. “But yeah, if I left him, he would probably pine away to nothing.” Jenna puts my necklace on and gets up to admire it in the mirror. “I’ll never forget the day I saw you change,” she says to me. “Are you happy to be going home?”
“Happy to go back, sad to leave here. Double-edged sword.” I shrug. “And I could die, too.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re Nerissa Marin! Get that thought out of your head or else I’m going to get in a boat myself and come find you.”
I stare at her, horror on my face. “Don’t do that!”
“Relax, I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid,” she says. “You know what I mean. You kick that skank’s ass, you hear me?”
“When did you get such a potty mouth? You’ve been watching Jersey Shore again, haven’t you?” We both crack up just as my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Lo.
We need to talk.
“What does it say?” Jenna says, peering over my shoulder.
“He wants to talk.”
“You going to go over there? Or is he coming here?” I shrug again and Jenna pulls on my T-shirt, staring at something on my back. “Wait, when did you get a tattoo?”
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
Jenna tugs at the collar of my shirt as we both stare at the blue swirls marking my skin at the base of my neck. “It’s really pretty,” Jenna says, tracing one of the patterns with her fingers.
“Must be something to do with Dvija.”
“Dee-vee-what?”
I pull back on my shirt. “Remember, that coming of age thing I told you about on the beach?” I ask. Jenna slowly nods after screwing up her face for a second. “Probably has to do with my coming of age and becoming a queen. Royal thing, I guess.”
My phone buzzes again.
Meet me at my place.
Can’t, I text back. Soren would flip if I went over there.
Marine center? 10 mins?
Okay.
“He wants to meet at the marine center,” I tell Jenna. “I have no idea what I’m going to say to him.”
“Just tell him the truth,” she says. I blanch and she grins. “You know, that Echlios got a job in South Africa and your whole family has to go. Don’t embellish, just keep it simple. It will be okay.”
“Thanks, Jenna,” I say, and hug her.
“Call me the minute you get back, okay?”
“I will.”
After Jenna leaves, I let Soren know that I have to pick up a couple things I’ve left at the marine center. Speio, who is sitting at the dining room table, looks up with an odd look. I’m getting really sick of his strange expressions every time I open my mouth. I ignore him and grab my car keys.
The marine center is deserted but I unlock it with the spare key I carry on my own set of keys. I know Lo will already be inside. Without turning on any lights, I walk to the back of the first floor, where there’s a giant aboveground saltwater tank. The tank connects to a larger outdoor pool. We use it when we find injured marine animals in the bay but right now it’s empty. The dolphin that had been in there a week ago has been rereleased into the wild.
Lo is standing on the other side of the tank, the bluish water making shimmering light patterns across his skin.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi,” Lo says, putting his arms around me and inhaling deeply as if he hasn’t taken a real breath since he saw me last. I feel the same way. We stand that way for a few minutes, letting our bodies reconnect in the silence. My heartbeat aligns with his within seconds.
Lo shifts against me, his breath warm on my temple. “I got your email. So, South Africa?” I can’t speak so I just nod against him, trying to etch every curve and bend of his chest into my memory. “It’s not that far away.”
“It’s on the other side of the world, Lo.” I feel the pressure on my nose bridge already from the tears building up behind my eyes. “It may as well be at the bottom of the ocean.” It’s the closest I’ve ever come to admitting anything like that to him, but of course, Lo won’t know the truth. Lo chuckles softly.
“If it were, I would still find a way to be with you.”
“How?” I whisper, giving in to the false fantasy for one brief moment. “How would you do it?”
Lo places his hands on either side of my head and kisses my lips in a soft, melting kiss that does little to stop the burning of my eyes. It only makes it worse. “Don’t you remember?” he says, brushing my hair off my brow and kissing there, too. “I’m the god of the ocean. I can make anything happen.”
“Anything? Can you make me stay here?”
“Is that what you want?”
Suddenly the conversation has taken a serious turn, and we aren’t playing anymore. Lo’s eyes are shadowed, his expression inscrutable. I can’t read him or anything he’s thinking, but I can’t shake the feeling that his question is double-edged somehow.
“I...want so many things, Lo,” I whisper. “I want to be with you. I want to be with my friends. I want to stay here. I’m going crazy with all the wants bubbling inside of me, because everything I want, I can’t have.” My tears have broken free now, running down my face like an unstoppable tide.
“Then stay,” he says in a thick voice, kissing my cheeks so that his lips
are wet with the salt of my tears. I step away from the haven of his arms because I need to think. When I’m in there, it’s too easy to say yes to whatever Lo wants...what I want more than anything. “Run away with me, just the two of us.”
“It’s not that simple. I have responsibilities. My family...people are counting on me. They need me to be there for them, and I can’t just run away anymore. You don’t understand.” I turn away to stare at the empty tank—a metaphor of who I am, a caged animal in a pool. The thought of running away with him is nearly my undoing. “How could you understand?” I say almost to myself.
Lo embraces me from behind, wrapping his arms around my torso and threading his fingers through mine against my stomach. “I understand more than you know.”
“You don’t.”
A strangled laugh that sounds like it came from the bottom of Lo’s throat. “You think I don’t know about responsibilities? About having to do things that someone else wants you to do, even though you don’t agree with them? About never being free to be who you are...who you want to be? About never being able to say no because you’re always afraid—” Lo breaks off, his chest heaving on my back as if he can’t breathe.
“Why are you afraid, Lo?” I ask, turning around to face him. His arms fall to his sides and he steps backward, staring at the ground. I step toward him. “Look at me, Lo.” When he does, his eyes are so full of pain and regret and something else I can’t quite place that the force of it makes me gasp. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m...” He rakes his hands through his hair and slumps backward against the side of the tank, holding his head in his hands. “I lied to you, Nerissa.” I crouch down beside him, my heart pounding. I’ve never seen this side of him before—so vulnerable and broken that it scares me. Lo’s always the one who keeps me together, not the other way around.
I brush away the single tear on the side of his face. “You aren’t the god of the ocean?” I ask, tremulous. Lo’s shoulders jerk with a choked laugh and his fingers find mine, squeezing tightly.
“Yes, that, too. I lied to you about everything. About who I am.” He leans toward me, his head against my brow. “And I’m so afraid that she’ll hurt you, too.”
“Who’ll hurt me?” I say.
“She hurts everyone to control me. My foster dad is on life support because she allows it. His life is in my hands. If I don’t obey her, she pulls the plug and he dies. I do everything she says...on the promise that she’ll help him.” Lo is sobbing now, little sounds coming from his mouth between his smothered words. “She hurts people, and says it’s to teach me how to be strong. How to lead.”
“Your mother?” I ask, thinking of the cold impervious woman I’d briefly met.
Lo nods. “And you...all I had to do was get you to fall for me. And I did everything she said. Then, I got to know you and everything changed. I’m in love with you, but it doesn’t matter, you’re still going to hate me.”
My alarm bells are ringing like crazy but I want to believe him. I want to believe that he’s everything I thought he was...my Lo. “I could never hate you, Lo,” I say. But my voice is breaking with doubt, falling apart already at the truth in his eyes.
He turns toward me, his face earnest. “I didn’t plan on falling for you,” he says. “But I did. And now, for you, I’d do anything. I didn’t think I could love someone so much that I’d be willing to risk it all. But I do. Everything about you is beautiful. Your face, your heart, your glimmers—”
“What did you say?” I whisper, the water inside of me like beating wings.
“I’m so sorry, Nerissa. I’m so sorry....”
The fluorescent lights in the poolroom turn on in blinding brightness. We both scramble to our feet. “Get the hell away from her, you asshole!” Speio shouts. He’s wielding Jenna’s homemade Taser in one hand and has a wild look on his face.
“Speio, what are you doing?” I scream, rushing toward him in the moment and forgetting all about what Lo had begun to say.
“Don’t you know what he is, Riss?” Speio pleads with me, his eyes tortured. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you but I felt so cornered by what I’d done. I felt so alone, and then after the dance Cara told me what you said to her. I’ve been so stupid. I’m so sorry. You’ll never forgive me, and I know that. But I couldn’t let it happen.”
“You’re not making sense, Speio. Let what happen?” I say, looking back and forth at the two boys. Lo hasn’t moved, but he doesn’t look surprised at Speio’s accusations. The expression on his face overwhelms me because it’s the same expression I couldn’t place before. Guilt. “What the hell is going on?”
“He knows, Riss,” Speio says, his voice harsh. “He knows about you. They all do.”
“They?”
The world feels like it’s spinning at my feet and all the air has been knocked out of my body. I’m spiraling with it, uncontrollable, like a feather in the middle of a storm. Lo and Speio are fading into two black hazy shadows, and I close my eyes, dizzy.
“He’s one of them, Riss,” Speio says. “He’s Aquarathi.”
And I’m spinning again but, this time, in furious denial. I turn to Lo, remembering his recent words. “Is it true?”
His face is pleading, begging me to trust him. “I tried to tell you—”
A slew of images rip through my brain in cold, cruel succession. The glimmers I’d felt at school all the times Lo was looking through me. The glimmer down on the beach with Echlios in front of Lo’s house. Lo’s expert skill in the water and with a surfboard. Lo going with me to Cano’s house and pretending not to know who he really was. Lo kissing my hair and telling me to trust him.
“When did you try to tell me? Just now?” My voice rises with every word.
“Riss—”
“Don’t,” I snap, the tides building inside of me and spreading like acid through my veins. More images, torturous. Surfing...flirting...swimming in an ocean of jellyfish...our first kiss. The pain of it is like lava flooding through me. He’d kissed me after he’d pulled me from the ocean floor, after the snakes. “Was it you? Was it you that time at La Jolla Cove? Did you save me?”
“Yes.”
Something unfurls in the pit of my stomach at his simple admission. Something ugly and violent and powerful. I feel the bones on the crown of my head pushing outward and flexing through the barrier of my skin. The pain is hot but welcome as razor-sharp fronds pierce their way in a semicircle as the pieces of truth come together in horrifying detail. I see Lo’s eyes widen at my appearance but I don’t care. He knows what I am. He’s always known.
“Are you a hybrid?” My voice is cold, flat.
“Not exactly,” he says. I hiss in his direction at the evasive answer. “But I have hybrid genes.”
So Lo was the big secret all along. He was the Aquarathi with the hybrid blood. No wonder he hadn’t had to reveal himself to me.
“Show me,” I growl, nodding at the pool. With a long look at me and without any protest, Lo slides into the pool and transforms. My breath hitches in my throat and all I can think about is the last time we danced in the gym.
Thick muscular shoulders elongate into a burnished gold curved neck the color of wet sand. Electric green-and-yellow patterns swirl through his scales in a mesmerizing outline. He is bigger than I am but not by much. His fins are navy—like his eyes—and shimmer with different shades of blue, from midnight to cobalt and every shade in between.
Lo’s alien eyes meet mine, his heart in them. My nails dig into the soft flesh of my palm, my heart nearly derailed.
He is beautiful.
And I’m still in love with him.
23
LIGHT AND STONE
“Riss, we need to go. The others are coming,” Speio says urgently.
I turn glacial eyes on him as Lo drags his hu
man body out of the tank and pulls his shorts on. I feel nothing but a deep simmering fury at Lo’s betrayal. Everyone I know has lied to me—Echlios, my mother, Speio and, now, Lo. Either I am at the epicenter of an epic deception or I have an exceptional ability to attract liars.
“What others?” I snap at Speio.
“The ones he told where you’d be,” a female voice says. Speio freezes in his tracks as we both turn to see a bald, striking woman walking into the tank area from the entrance leading to the outdoor pool area. The raw and jagged scar across her brow does little to mar her appearance. She is savagely, achingly beautiful. My recognition is immediate but my breath still hitches as she comes closer and my blood rises to the tide of hers. This night cannot get any worse.
“Mother,” I say.
“That’s your mother?” Lo blurts out in a low whisper. I glance back at him to see if he’s speaking the truth about not knowing who she is, but it’s written all over his face. He looks genuinely surprised. I don’t deign to respond. Right now, Lo doesn’t deserve anything from me.
“Speio, you’ve done well,” she says to him. His face is stricken as he looks toward me. The Taser drops to the floor as he holds both palms up in a supplicating gesture, his face beseeching. Of course, just add the worst liar of all to the mix. His own guilt at what he did drove him to follow me, to try to save me. But it’s a little too late.
Like Lo, he has betrayed me all along.
“Riss—”
“Save it,” I seethe. “Don’t come near me, Speio. You’ll regret it.”
“No, please, you have to believe me,” he begs, but doesn’t move any closer. “I was so mad after you made me tell you about Cano, and I wanted to punish you for that. But I never meant for any of this to happen. I felt so alone. I just wanted to go home, and she said that I could, if I just helped her to get you and Lo together.”
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