“Maxie,” I gasped. “Something killed Maxie!”
“What the—” Ethan whistled through his teeth.
Every morning I took this path to school and fed an adorable old seagull I’d named Maxie. Full of personality, although rather bedraggled, she was almost tame. And she recognized me. It might be odd to admit it, but I’d grown to love that bird much as I loved my dog Scraps.
Normally, I’d stop at smooth luck rock and touch the giant stone to bring luck for the rest of the day. It had a concave surface as if it had been made to sit and gaze out to sea.
Several other rocks had these odd, smooth depressions, but none were as big or as beloved as my smooth luck rock. It was as if a giant had taken her thumb and pressed it into a seat just for me. After I fed Maxie, she’d preen herself and watch from a nearby perch.
Ethan picked up a bone.
“Don’t touch her!” I said, distraught.
“Her?” he asked.
“Maxie. I fed her every morning. This is horrible.”
“Wonder what kinda animal would do this?” Ethan asked. “Scraps?”
I guessed that was his attempt to inject dark humor into the circumstance. “That’s not funny,” I said.
He spun the bone in his fingers.
“Please, stop.” My instinct was to leave her in peace though I didn’t see how that was possible.
“Sorry,” Ethan apologized and put the bone back.
There was no way my old dog Scraps had done this. We had cats on the island, but I’d never seen a house cat catch a seagull. The birds were big and aggressive. Maybe a large bird of prey? I glanced up at the sky. Clear and blue. I looked to the ocean. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw a fin disappear beneath the water’s surface like a green-gray blade. A chill fell over me.
Ethan looked at the sun’s angle. “We’re late.”
Part of me wanted to run and leave as fast as possible. But another part felt like it would make the day worse to not touch smooth luck rock. To not sit and mourn Maxie for at least a moment.
“Hey,” Ethan took my hand. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“C’mon, I’ll help later, ‘kay?” he said with a gentle tone.
“I know I’m being ridiculous, gulls die all the time, right? She was old…but, she was tough. It never even occurred to me that she might die.”
We jogged along the ridge, single file.
“You’re not being ridiculous. I know you have your rituals and things you do. Don’t be embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed! And it wasn’t a ritual,” I lied as I counted my footsteps until we reached the bottom of the hill. Eight hundred and twenty-two. Unlucky.
But all of us kids had grown up on this island together. Truth was, it wasn’t easy to keep secrets, not for long. Secrets were best kept locked in one’s own head. We ran past the dock where Cunningham wound fishing line. He waved.
“Better run fast!” He shouted at us as if we didn’t know. Every teen needed to be in Assembly by 8:30am. We ran to the back of our settlement near the old runway. The Assembly House bordered the abandoned landing strip. Another military left-over that had been here since well before our time. Now in 1998, after decades, the sun and winds had done significant damage. The building was ugly. It had no windows, so the teacher left the wide, swinging doors open to allow air circulation. Our desks were a series of mismatched wooden tables and chairs.
“You are late.” Mrs. Caroline said, interrupting herself mid-sentence.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “It was my fault.” My best friend, Chloe, looked over and shot me an odd look. I smiled and mouthed that I’d explain later. She glared at me and turned away. The day kept getting stranger and worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Well, now that Ethan and Marei have graced us with their presence, let's begin.” Mrs. Caroline brushed a strand of blond hair that escaped from her bun and fanned herself. Tardiness was something she did not tolerate.
“The Binding.”
Her words hung in the humid air like two thunderclouds. Sweat beaded on my brow and the entire room of teens seemed to cease breathing.
“As you know, several factors go into the composition of each pairing. But one factor is choice: your preferences, your predilections. You’ve had several weeks now. Who will you put in for? Today is the glorious day when your choice becomes memorialized and taken into account as best can be.”
Mrs. Caroline had a way of dragging on until I drifted off into fantasies and imaginings. But today I clung on her every word with sick horror. She strolled around the room and handed out white, three-inch by five-inch index cards.
“Now, on the card you’re to enter the person you choose. It’s no guarantee. Not at all. You might not be bound with your choice. But Mayor Marlow and the Council will take them into consideration,”
Edward raised his hand.
“Yes, Edward.”
“Can we put more than one name?”
The class snickered. “I mean a first and second choice,” he tried to clarify.
Mrs. Caroline shook her head. “No need for that level of complexity. One name will be sufficient.”
I glanced over at Chloe. She stared at her card with a queasy look. My card had my name written in pen at the top. I didn’t recognize the writing. It might have been Mayor Marlow’s. Then beneath my name lay one word, Choice, and beneath that a solid, menacing black line hungry for a name.
“No need to belabor this. I’ll give you a few minutes of silence to complete your cards and then we must move on. You’ve had plenty of chance to consider the options.”
My fingers grew sweaty against the pen. I gripped it, fingers pinched and white. I needed to write someone. A name. A boy I liked. Daniel. I closed my eyes and thought through the same things I’d thought over and over again. Why did I make things so difficult?
Sometimes it felt my mind was out of control, churning through options and potential outcomes until I felt, exhausted, tired and dizzy but no closer to choosing. Yes, we had had plenty of time. And I’d thought myself sick over it. I’d lost sleep. If only I’d had the chance to touch smooth luck rock today.
La la la dee dee dee. The melody returned. And the image of the ocean popped into my head: Daniel swimming and smiling at me. To my left, Chloe quickly filled out her card. I couldn’t read it from here, but I knew it must be Ethan. She folded her paper and lowered her head, eyes closed as if praying.
I tried to picture life with one of the island boys. Edward? An easy smile, strong and muscular from fixing up our houses. But Eddie was often moody and crazy for Katrina. Takai? Smarter than I was by a long-shot. I’d never get bored. With a theory about everything though, he might wear me out with his philosophizing. And he often had bad breath. I couldn’t imagine kissing him. Rudolf? He’d be gentle with his long slender fingers and moony eyes. But he seldom smiled. I needed someone with more spark.
Several of the other kids had written choices and folded their papers. Mrs. Caroline walked around collecting the cards. More time must have passed than I realized, because when I looked up, everyone stared at me, waiting. Blood rushed to my face. I was the only one left.
I put the pen to the paper…and my hand froze. While the wall clock ticked, I wrote nothing. My hand sat suspended.
“Keeping us waiting once today wasn’t enough for you, hmm Marei?” she said, tapping the collected cards against her desk. “You’ve lived with these boys for seventeen years. Plenty of time to get to know them. But maybe no one is good enough?”
After so much tension, the class burst out with laughter. I blinked away tears. What she said held some truth, but it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t correct. It’s not that they weren’t good enough. They were good. With a couple of exceptions most of the kids I’d grown up with were great. It was me. I could not choose. No one fit. Or it was me who didn’t fit. I was like a puzzle piece dropped in the wrong box who didn't know where to
place herself.
Cupping my hand over the paper, I moved the pen as if I were writing. I kept waiting for the pen to land, to hit the paper and for a name to manifest itself. But I couldn’t make myself put ink to paper. I could not choose! My mouth grew dry and my heart throbbed in my temples. Not knowing the implications, I folded the paper and gave it to Mrs. Caroline completely blank.
“Good,” Mrs. Caroline said. Even as she took the paper from me I wanted to grab it back and write a name, put in for someone, anyone…but too late. She took the papers and placed them in a black velvet bag. She nodded to someone at the back of the room.
We turned. Mayor Marlow stood in the doorway silhouetted with the sun behind him. “I realize this hasn’t been easy, but it will all be settled soon,” he said. The light formed a halo around blond wisps of hair poking up every which way. For a moment, his hair reminded me of Daniel’s. Daniel had spent hours complaining about his overprotective father. Any similarity ended with their hair. Mayor walked into the room dressed in a crisp linen suit. Seeing the middle-aged man’s bare, sunburned scalp destroyed the illusion completely.
Mrs. Caroline handed him the velvet sack, and he left. Something between terror and relief settled itself in my stomach. On the one hand, relief flooded through me to have it over with, done. But also terror because I had no idea what might lie ahead.
CHAPTER FIVE
Afterward, Chloe and Ethan stood waiting in the square. None of us asked each other about The Binding or who we put in for. Chloe insisted we walk up to see “the dead bird”. Maxie. Poor Maxie. It surprised me that Chloe would want to do that. I’d watched her avert her eyes when Cunningham reeled in a snapper fish. And she’d almost thrown up when we’d found a dead baby frigate bird, its carcass cleaned by squirming, white maggots.
When we reached smooth luck rock, Chloe turned and swallowed. “It’s horrible. What happened to it?”
“Her,” I corrected. “Her name was Maxie.” Ethan picked up one of her feathers, long and white with gray at its tip.
“And you took the long way to school, Ethan?” Chloe asked.
“I wanted to um, ask Marei something,” Ethan responded.
Chloe nodded and looked at me with cold intensity.
My eyes widened. “You’re not serious. Please. Tell me you’re not…”
“Are you crazy? Of course not.” She laughed, turned and breathed in the ocean air as she looked out to the ocean below. “You’re my best friend. I was curious why Ethan came all the way up here to walk to Assembly that’s all.”
Ethan took Chloe’s hands.
“Don’t touch me with your dead bird hands!” she protested.
“I came to ask Marei’s advice. ‘Cause you were upset about me not wanting to say if I put in for you,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, and?”
“I still think it’s bad luck,” Ethan admitted.
“That makes no sense. What’s done is done. Telling someone doesn’t change ink on paper. Things are as they are.”
“No. I agree with Ethan,” I said.
“Well, you would.” Chloe sighed and then smiled at me. “You’re both annoying.”
I laughed. These two were my best friends in the world. I didn’t know how things would change after The Binding, but I knew things would change. These next two days might be our last days of freedom.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “I haven’t been sleeping right.” I nodded in agreement and so did Ethan. None of us teens were sleeping right, I imagined.
“We should do something fun,” I said.
“Swim at Pelican Rock?” Ethan suggested.
“Yes, can’t we forget all of this?” I asked. “Let’s swim!” And I grabbed both of their hands and pulled them along with me down the path. We released our hands, but ran together. Every rock, every turn, every bump and bush of this path was familiar to us. It was the main artery that connected Pelican Rock with the Assembly Hall. And as we ran together, the disturbing tension that had clung to us scattered in the wind.
Twenty minutes later we floated in pristine, tropical water. The three of us dove under and competed to see who could go deeper. We didn’t call it as such anymore, but it was an old game we used to play. Treasure Hunt we’d named it. Officially, we stopped playing it after Daniel died. Unofficially we still fell into it as an old habit.
I dove past Chloe and Ethan down to where the water changed from aquamarine to cerulean blue. I always went far deeper than either of them. Today I found a piece of white stone shaped like a ring. Back on the surface, I grabbed Chloe’s hand and placed it on her finger.
“Maybe we’ll be bound,” Chloe said taking me in her arms. We laughed and held hands, whirling in a circle in the water sending out rings of silver ripples.
“They don’t bind girls with girls,” Ethan mumbled. We stopped, and I saw that Ethan had an odd look on his face. Something mixed between jealousy and desire.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” Chloe teased.
“Because they want us to fulfill our destiny,” Ethan said. “And that means having babies. Difficult for two women.”
“If I were Queen there would be no Binding,” I said, heat rushing to my face. “If girls bound with girls they could. Or boys bound with boys. The important thing would be love. No one would be allowed to bind unless they were in love.”
Chloe swam over to Ethan and draped her arms around him. Ethan’s face relaxed. Teasing aside, I had no wish to bind with either of them. I loved them, but I wasn’t in love with them.
“Do you still have that shell Daniel found years ago?” Chloe asked. Several years ago our friend Daniel found an incredible rainbow shell while playing Treasure Hunt. He’d traded with me for it.
“Of course,” I said. Beneath my bed I had it stowed in a shoebox. But I seldom looked at it. It was too painful.
“Sorry,” Chloe said. She’d just thrown more darkness over a difficult day.
We noodled around on the surface. But no one wanted to dive anymore. I drifted on my back and stared up at the sky thinking about the ship I’d seen. “Do you ever wonder if people are wrong about the Outlands. That maybe it’s not as horrible as they say,” I asked.
“Bet it’s worse than they say,” Chloe said.
“But what if it changed? Things can change for good and bad,” I reminded them. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. We all knew things would change. Today was not a smooth luck day. Every conversation, every look, every glance seemed laden with unwanted meaning or booby trapped with hidden barbs of sadness. Prickles of past times better forgotten.
Chloe and Ethan held hands under water while I swam a short distance away. Their romance had emerged over the last year. Once there had been four of us. We were younger at the time but I knew something would have developed between me and Daniel if he had lived. It was painful to consider. But if he had been alive, I would have put his name down. Of that, I was certain.
Since then, me Chloe and Ethan had become more and more like two sisters and a brother. So, at first I found it ridiculous, hilarious even, the two of them together. I had no interest in Ethan romantically. I felt that Chloe shouldn’t either. But I had to remind myself that was dumb. None of us were related in the strict genetic sense. We were descendants of Lemuria, that was true. What united us was an energetic matrix strung from our DNA “like lights on a Christmas tree,” Mrs. Caroline said.
We not only appeared to be regular human folk, but were diverse in appearance. I had Asian looks, Japanese genetics, though my skin was light considering the amount of sun I got and my eyes were green. Chloe’s family was from Tanzania with dark features that never burned no matter how long she swam. Ethan’s family came from Ireland. The opposite of Chloe, freckles dappled his sunburnt nose and his eyes were as blue as the island’s waters.
Chloe and Ethan would make a fantastic couple. I felt happy for them. Yet despite all rational thought to the contrary, today it felt awkward, to be with them. Like I was intrudi
ng. I left them to enjoy the water by themselves and swam to shore, pulling myself up dripping up on onto a giant black slab of stone made toasty by the sun.
I hugged my knees to my stomach and looked out over the water. Offshore, about a ten-minute boat ride away was Honey Moon Island. It was tiny. It barely deserved to call itself an island, but it did have an old wooden one room building on it. So I’d heard. And in the building lay an extremely soft bed with many pillows. One pillow donated on behalf of each future teen couple. Eleven in total.
The rumor was, and I believed it to be true, that no one could conceive on Alabaster Island. There was something about this place that prevented the women from getting pregnant. Either by chance or by fluke they figured out that whatever prevented pregnancies from happening, was not present on the little island off the shore. So they called it Honeymoon Island and all of us kids were born, eventually.
Chloe and Ethan swam closer, waded out of the water and sat down next to me to dry.
“How come you quit swimming?” Chloe asked as she dried Ethan’s head.
I shrugged. “You guys looked like you wanted to be alone.”
“Don’t be weird. The water is amazing today. You should have swum longer.”
She finished drying Ethan’s head and then sat in between his legs, leaning back against his chest. She nuzzled the underside of Ethan’s stubbled chin.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He kissed her full on the mouth while I watched from just a few feet away. This was new. In the past she’d been shy. They both were. Ethan glanced at me, blushing.
I stood. “Well, I should see if Dad needs any help, back home. Mangoes were falling right off the tree this morning.”
“Why are you acting strange?” Chloe asked. “I thought you wanted to spend the afternoon together?”
“I’m not acting strange…you’re the one who’s being…different.”
Alabaster Island_The Mermaid Curse Page 2
