Of Poseidon

by Anna Banks

  Dr. Milligan nods. “But you don’t have to mention anything about being Syrena do you? She may not even know that part. She may just know you’re different.”

  “I guess,” I say doubtfully. If she knew about me, about my Gift, she wouldn’t have laughed at me all those years ago. She would have comforted me and told me what I was then and there. Wouldn’t she? Suddenly, I’m too overwhelmed to think. My world keeps shattering and putting itself back together, but every time it does I’m presented with a different mosaic of reality. Maybe I do belong in a nuthouse.

  I hop from the exam table, the linoleum slapping my bare feet. “I’m ready to go home,” I say to neither of them. I almost choke on the word “home.” It sounds foreign on my tongue, like I’ve just made it up. As if it doesn’t exist. “You’re done with your tests, right Dr. Milligan?”

  The doctor stands, extending his hand to me. “Yes, I won’t poke and prod you anymore, my dear.” There is nothing generic about his smile now. “It was certainly a pleasure to meet you, young lady.”

  But I’m already down the hall, my clothes tucked tight under my arm.

  20

  GALEN SLIDES into his desk, unsettled by the way the sturdy blond boy talking to Emma casually rests his arm on the back of her seat.

  “Good morning,” Galen says, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair. He even rests his cheek against hers for good measure. “Good morning … er, Mark, isn’t it?” he says, careful to keep his voice pleasant. Still, he glances meaningfully at the masculine arm still lining the back of Emma’s seat, almost touching her.

  To his credit—and safety—Mark eases the offending limb back to his own desk, offering Emma a lazy smile full of strikingly white teeth. “You and Forza, huh? Did you clear that with his groupies?”

  She laughs and gently pries Galen’s arms off her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the eruption of pink spreading like spilled paint over her face. She’s not used to dating him yet. Until about ten minutes ago, he wasn’t used to it either. Now though, with the way Mark eyes her like a tasty shellfish, playing the role of Emma’s boyfriend feels all too natural.

  The bell rings, saving Emma from a reply and saving Mark thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Emma shoots Galen a withering look, which he deflects with what he hopes is an enchanting grin. He measures his success by the way her blush deepens but stops short when he notices the dark circles under her eyes.

  She didn’t sleep last night. Not that he thought she would. She’d been quiet on the flight home from Destin two nights ago. He didn’t pressure her to talk about it with him, mostly because he didn’t know what to say once the conversation got started. So many times, he’s started to assure her that he doesn’t see her as an abomination, but it seems wrong to say it out loud. Like he’s willfully disagreeing with the law. But how could those delicious-looking lips and those huge violet eyes be considered an abomination?

  What’s even crazier is that not only does he not consider her an abomination, the fact that she could be a Half-Breed ignited a hope in him he’s got no right to feel: Grom would never mate with a half human. At least, Galen doesn’t think he would.

  He glances at Emma, whose silky eyelids don’t even flutter in her state of light sleep. When he clears his throat, she startles. “Thank you,” she mouths to him as she picks her pencil back up, using the eraser to trace the lines in her textbook as she reads. He acknowledges with a nod. He doesn’t want to leave her like this, anxious and tense and out of place in her own beautiful skin.

  But he needs to go to Romul. Romul will be able to tell him more about the half-humans, about why Triton hated them. It’s not something Galen ever thought he’d ask; it’s always been easy enough to find reasons to hate the humans. Still, his handful of human friends makes it impossible for him to hate the species as a whole. And one day, he might need the law to side with him on that point.

  The bell rings, startling him from his thoughts and Emma from another mini nap. He grabs her backpack and holds it open while she shovels her book and paper into it. Before she can get away, he grabs her hand, entwining their fingers the way Rachel showed him. He’s surprised when Emma leans into him, resting her head on his biceps. Maybe she’s more used to dating him than he thought.

  She yawns. “Let’s skip the rest of the day and take a nap at your house.”

  He squeezes her hand. Spending the rest of the day with her alone at his house is the best and worst thing he can think of. “Your mom will kill me and ground you.”

  “I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “I can tell.”

  “I look that bad?”

  “You look that tired.”

  They stop in front of the door to their next class. He reaches to open it for her. “Galen,” she says, looking up at him. “Please.”

  He sighs. “I can’t miss school today. I might miss tomorrow.”

  The curiosity perks her right up. “Why?”

  He pulls her out of the way as some of their classmates dawdle into the room. The tardy bell rings. “I’m going to talk to the Archives tonight. To see what else I can find out about the half-breeds. I thought maybe that would make you feel better about…” He shrugs, unable to finish the half truth. “Besides, I have to get back here before Friday. Rachel thinks we need to go on a date Friday night. You know, for show.”

  “Oh,” she says, her lashes tangling together in the world’s longest blink. She yawns again. “Like the movies or something?”

  “She said a few things. Movies was one of them, I think. Something about roller-skating and bowling, too.”

  Emma gives a drowsy laugh. “If you think I’m deadly in flip-flops, you should see me in roller skates.”

  “Movies it is, then. I’m not willing to risk another concussion.” He ushers her to the door, and she lets him open it for her. Tyler, a junior with an Adam’s apple the size of his nose, subtly waves them to the seats he saved in the back row. Galen slips him a twenty dollar bill as Tyler shuffles his things to an open desk up front.

  While Emma sleeps through physics, Galen dutifully takes notes on thermodynamics for her. On a separate sheet of paper, he lists questions he wants to ask Romul. Still, even after he’s checked and rechecked the list, there’s a question he’s forgetting. It gnaws at him, teasing him from the edge of his brain, not quite getting close enough to grasp.

  Beside him, Emma sighs in her sleep. Galen stiffens. Emma. Who will watch Emma while I’m gone? Toraf hasn’t returned from searching for Paca. Rachel can watch her on land, but if Emma gets in the water, she’s as good as gone. Not that she looks up to practicing any time soon, exhausted as she is. But Emma is practically made of defiance and stubbornness and resilience, and everything else that could possibly make his life difficult. If she wants to get in the water, she will.

  That only leaves one person. Rayna.

  21

  THE CHANNELS on the TV continue to change even after Rayna stops pressing the button on the remote. She slides down the front of the couch, planting herself on the floor. “Four hundred channels and nothing worth watching. Unbelievable,” she mutters.

  I glance up from where I’m sitting in the recliner and fold the page of my book. “You could help me practice. They wouldn’t have to know.” I don’t even feel like practicing. It just seems I should get in the water on principal, since Galen told me not to. And especially since he left me with a babysitter.

  She throws me a sideways glare. “Fat Lips would know. He can sense me from anywhere, remember? And he’d snitch to Galen. He would know something’s wrong if you and me got in without my brother.”

  I shrug. “Since when do you care about getting in trouble?”

  “Since never. But Galen said if I kept you out of the water, he’d teach me how to drive his car.”

  Jackpot. “I happen to know how to drive. I could teach you.”

  “Galen said I wasn’t allowed to ask you, or the deal’s of
f.”

  “You didn’t ask me. I offered.”

  She nods, biting her lip. “That’s true. You did.”

  I set the book on the ugly glass coffee table and squat next to her. “I’ll teach you how to drive if you let me get in the water. You don’t even have to get in.”

  The way she raises her brow reminds me of Galen. “You’re wasting your time trying to change if you ask me. You’re half human. You probably don’t even have a fin in there.”

  “What do you know about the half-breeds?”

  She shrugs. “Not much. Enough to know that if you’re one of them, there’s no point in trying to change. No one is going to accept you. At least, no Syrena will.”

  I decide not to take offense. I don’t put much stock in her opinion anyway, and she won’t care if she offended me or not. Rayna can be counted on to say what she’s thinking. Taking offense would waste everyone’s time. Besides, she’s still here. If she thought of me as an abomination, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me, would she?

  “That might be true. But if it were you, wouldn’t you want to know if you could change?”

  She considers, then shrugs again. “Probably.”

  “So we have a deal?” I say, holding my hand out for a shake. She eyes it and crosses her arms. I set my hand on the couch, feeling awkward, wondering if she even knows what a hand shake is.

  “You’ll teach me to drive your car if I let you get in the water?”

  “Uh, no. I’ll teach you how to drive Galen’s car if you let me get in the water. You’re not touching my car without a license. A real one, not some shiny plastic thing Rachel made between afternoon talk shows.” Even if Galen doesn’t have insurance, he’s got enough in his wallet to buy a new one. I, on the other hand, have just enough in savings to cover my deductible.

  Her eyes go round. “You’ll let me drive his little red one? The combustible?”

  Why not? I nod. “Yep. The convertible. Deal?”

  She grabs my hand from the couch to pull us both up. Then she shakes it. “Deal! I’ll go get the keys from Rachel.”

  * * *

  I pull over on the dirt shoulder of the most abandoned road in the farthest hem of the farthest outskirt of Middlepoint. The rearview shows me nothing but our dusty trail disappearing like phantoms into the trees on either side. Ahead of us, a mail truck stops with flashing lights at the only mailbox on the whole stretch. When it passes us, the driver tips his cap our way, eyeing us as if he thinks we’re up to no good—the kind of no good he might call the cops on. I wave to him and smile, wondering if I look as guilty as I feel. Better make this the quickest lesson in driving history. It’s not like she needs to pass the state exam. If she can keep the car straight for ten seconds in a row, I’ve upheld my end of the deal.

  I turn off the ignition and look at her. “So, how are you and Toraf doing?”

  She cocks her head at me. “What does that have to do with driving?”

  Aside from delaying it? “Nothing,” I say, shrugging. “Just wondering.”

  She pulls down the visor and flips open the mirror. Using her index finger, she unsmudges the mascara Rachel put on her. “Not that it’s your business, but we’re fine. We were always fine.”

  “He didn’t seem to think so.”

  She shoots me a look. “He can be oversensitive sometimes. I explained that to him.”

  Oversensitive? No way. She’s not getting off that easy. “He’s a good kisser,” I tell her, bracing myself.

  She turns in her seat, eyes narrowed to slits. “You might as well forget about that kiss, Emma. He’s mine, and if you put your nasty Half-Breed lips on him again—”

  “Now who’s being oversensitive?” I say, grinning. She does love him.

  “Switch places with me,” she snarls. But I’m too happy for Toraf to return the animosity.

  Once she’s in the driver’s seat, her attitude changes. She bounces up and down like she’s mattress shopping, getting so much air that she’d puncture the top if I hadn’t put it down already. She reaches for the keys in the ignition. I grab her hand. “Nope. Buckle up first.”

  It’s almost cliché for her to roll her eyes now, but she does. When she’s finished dramatizing the act of buckling her seat belt—complete with tugging on it to make sure it won’t unclick—she turns to me in pouty expectation. I nod.

  She wrenches the key and the engine fires up. The distant look in her eyes makes me nervous. Or maybe it’s the guilt swirling around in my stomach. Galen might not like this car, but it still feels like sacrilege to put the fate of a BMW in Rayna’s novice hands. As she grips the gear stick so hard her knuckles turn white, I thank God this is an automatic.

  “D is for drive, right?” she says.

  “Yes. The right pedal is to go. The left pedal is to stop. You have to step on the left one to change into drive.”

  “I know. I saw you do it.” She mashes down on the brake, then throws us into drive. But we don’t move.

  “Okay, now you’ll want to step on the right pedal, which is the gas—”

  The tires start spinning—and so do we. Rayna stares at me wide-eyed and mouth ajar, which isn’t a good thing since her hands are on the wheel. It occurs to me that she’s screaming, but I can’t hear her over my own screeching. The dust wall we’ve created whirls around us, blocking our view of the trees and the road and life as we knew it.

  “Take your foot off the right one!” I yell. We stop so hard my teeth feel rattled.

  “Are you trying to get us killed?” she howls, holding her hand to her cheek as if I’ve slapped her. Her eyes are wild and glassy; she just might cry.

  “Are you freaking kidding me? You’re the one driving!”

  “You said to step on the brake to put us into drive, then to step on the right one to—”

  “Not at the same time!”

  “Well, you should have told me that. How was I supposed to know?”

  I snort. “You acted like the freaking Dalai Lama when I tried to tell you how to shift gears. I told you, one was for go and one was for stop. You can’t stop and go at the same time! You have to make up your mind.”

  From the expression on her face, she’s either about to punch me or call me something really bad. She opens her mouth, but the really bad something doesn’t come out; she shuts it again. Then she giggles. Now I’ve seen everything.

  “Galen tells me that all the time,” she chortles. “That I can never make up my mind.” Then she bursts out laughing so hard she spits all over the steering wheel. She keeps laughing until I’m convinced an unknown force is tickling her senseless.

  What? As far as I can tell, her indecisiveness almost got us killed. Killed isn’t funny.

  “You should have seen your face,” she says, between gulps of breaths. “You were all, like—” And she makes the face of a drunk clown. “I bet you wet yourself, didn’t you?” She cracks herself up so much she clutches her side as if she’s holding in her own guts.

  I feel my lips fracture into a smile before I can stop them. “You were more scared than me. You swallowed like ten flies while you were screaming.”

  She spits all over the steering wheel again. And I spew laughter onto the dash. It takes a good five minutes for us to sober up enough for another driving lesson. My throat is dry, and my eyes are wet when I say, “Okay, now. Let’s concentrate. The sun is going down. These woods probably get pretty creepy at night.”

  She clears her throat, still giggling a little. “Okay. Concentrate. Right.”

  “So, this time, when you take your foot off the brake, the car will go on its own. There, see?” We slink along the road at an idle two miles per hour.

  She huffs up at her bangs. “This is boring. I want to go faster.”

  I start to say, “Not too fast,” but she squashes the gas under her foot, and my words are snatched away by the wind. She gives a startled shout, which I find hypocritical because after all, I’m the one helpless in the passenger seat, and
she’s the one screaming like a teapot, turning the wheel back and forth like the road isn’t straight as a pencil.

  “Brake, brake, brake!” I shout, hoping repetition will somehow penetrate the small part of her brain that actually thinks.

  Everything happens fast. We stop. There’s a crunching sound. My face slams into the dash. No wait, the dash becomes an airbag. Rayna’s scream is cut off by her airbag. I open my eyes. A tree. A freaking tree. The metal frame groans, and something under the hood lets out a mechanical hiss. Smoke billows up from the front, the universal symbol for “you’re screwed.”

  I turn to the rustling sound beside me. Rayna is wrestling with the airbag like it has attacked her instead of saved her life. “What is this thing?” she wails, pushing it out of her way and opening the door.

  One Mississippi … two Mississippi …

  “Well, are you just going to sit there? We have a long walk home. You’re not hurt are you? Because I can’t carry you.”

  Three Mississippi … four Mississippi …

  “What are those flashing blue lights down there?”

  22

  IT’S ALMOST a straight shot from the Jersey Shore to the Cave of Memories, where the Archives live. Galen reaches it within hours. Above him, the thick Arctic ice serves as a first defense against the prying eyes of the humans.

  For centuries stacked on centuries, the miles-thick layers of frozen past was the only defense needed. Now, though, humans have figured out how to send down their robotic cameras. Many of the ancient Syrena relics, which once sat out on the seafloor in plain view, were moved to chambers of the cave. Which is a shame, since access to the cave is restricted to Royals and Archives.

  He passes a site where huge Roman columns used to loom over Syrena visitors, as if in welcome. Now it’s just an abandoned plot of ocean floor, gray and cold for more reasons than the temperature. Galen shakes his head. Humans really do ruin everything. No, he tells himself. Most humans ruin everything. Not all.