Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You)

by Rachel Carter

  “I can’t believe you’re already thinking of moving away, even though you just got here,” Mary pouts at me. “Lucas wanted to talk to Wes about starting a fishing business.”

  We leave her childhood bedroom and walk down the stairs of her parents’ house. “Don’t panic,” I tell her. “We don’t know what our plans are yet. I just always thought I would get a degree, and Wes has been thinking about it lately too. We can always come back.”

  “But you’re already working at the paper! And you said you liked it!”

  “I do like it.” I pull her skirt out of the way before she trips on it. “But I still want an education.”

  “Just so you can lord your degrees over the rest of us humble folks.”

  “You’re a nurse! Not exactly humble.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Oh, let’s not argue. I’m about to get married.” We reach the front door and she stops me, her fingers digging into my arm. “How do I look?” Her voice shakes as she asks. I step back and examine her, from her rosy pink cheeks to her new satin shoes.

  “You look perfect. Lucas is going to freak out, trust me.”

  She laughs. “Lydia, you do say the oddest things.”

  “I’m here; I’m here.” Dr. Bentley walks down the hall toward us, still knotting the tie at his neck.

  “Daddy, we’re going to miss the ceremony if you don’t hurry up.”

  I disentangle my arm from Mary’s, and open the front door. “I’ll see you out there, okay?”

  She gives me an anxious look. “If I faint, swear you’ll catch me.”

  I reach over and squeeze her hand one last time. “You won’t faint. I promise.”

  “We should have just eloped, like you and Wes.”

  I smile, then give her a tiny wave.

  The sun is high, shining bright and hot on the crowded backyard. I start to walk down the aisle. There are only a few seats set up in the grass, and most of the guests are standing to the sides, facing the priest. A few turn to look at me as I pass. I see Wes and Lucas up ahead, talking quietly.

  Someone grabs my arm and I look down. Peter is smiling up at me. “Hi,” I whisper.

  “Hiya.” Peter’s mother is sitting next to him, still drawn and ghostly. But between Mary, Lucas, Wes, and me, we’ve been able to keep Peter occupied, and he seems to be doing better—asking fewer questions about his father, and making more friends around the neighborhood.

  I miss my grandfather and my parents every day, but having Peter here is making it a little easier. I haven’t completely lost my grandfather. He’s still a part of my life, and I’ve become like an older sister to him in the past few weeks.

  “When’s Mary coming?” Peter asks me. “I’m hot, and I want to eat cake.”

  “Soon. But I have to get up there or Mary’s going to yell at me.”

  His green eyes get wide. “Mary doesn’t yell.”

  “No, you’re right, but she might talk me to death.”

  He giggles and sits back in his chair.

  “After the ceremony’s over, go ask your grandmother for cake,” I tell him. “I bet she’ll sneak you some before anyone else.”

  “You better hurry,” Peter says, sounding a lot older than eight. “Uncle Wes is staring at you.”

  I look up. Wes is staring at me, smiling slightly, his hands in the pockets of his dark suit. I smile back, and continue walking down the aisle toward him.

  I take my place on the left side of the aisle just as a hush falls over the crowd. Mary and her father appear across the lawn. She is beaming, and I hear Lucas take in a quick breath.

  There have been times when I catch myself in a mirror and am startled by my own reflection—the tight curls, the smart dresses, the large hats. It feels as though I am playacting, as though I will wake up at any moment and still be in the Facility, or at home in my bedroom in Montauk. But then there are times where I am wholly in the moment, and it feels more like reality than 2012 ever did.

  Wes catches my eye and smiles again, and I know this is one of those times, surrounded by family, in a sun-drenched backyard in August, knowing that the Montauk Project is gone forever, where I can almost forget that I ever had a life before this.

  Hours later, after I have eaten cake and danced with Lucas and Dr. Bentley, after the sun has gone down, shedding red and pink rays across the makeshift wooden dance floor, Wes finds me at a table in the corner, my heels kicked off and my legs propped up on a chair. “Tired?” he asks, leaning over me.

  I tilt my head back to smile at him. His tie is hanging loose against his white shirt, and his newly cut hair is just starting to fight back against the grease he used to slick it into place.

  “My feet are killing me,” I tell him. “I hate new shoes.”

  He picks up my legs, sits down in the chair, and starts to massage my insoles, digging his thumbs into the arches. “Oh God,” I groan, leaning back against my own chair. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”

  He gives me his half smile. “Once or twice.”

  We are silent for a while, watching the last few couples spin in lazy circles around the dance floor. Most of the band has gone home and just a trumpeter is left. He is drawing out the notes, mournful and slow.

  Wes drops my foot into his lap. “Are you ready to go home? Mary and Lucas left an hour ago.”

  I nod. We stand, I slip my shoes back on, and we walk out to his truck. In the dark driveway, he holds the passenger’s-side door open for me and helps me in, his hand skimming along the side of my thigh.

  When we reach the small shack, he grabs my hand as soon as I get out of the truck and pulls me down toward the beach. The moon is almost full and it reflects off the water, the circle of light a halo on the black surface. Wes sinks onto the wet sand and tries to pull me down next to him.

  “No way. I’m not wrecking this dress; it cost half my paycheck.”

  His voice dips as he says, “So just take it off.”

  “Don’t get too excited.” I raise my eyebrows. “The girdle I’m wearing covers more than a bathing suit.”

  “Fine.” He reaches up and guides me down until I’m sitting on his lap. “Happy now?”

  I nod, leaning back against him.

  “Don’t go to work tomorrow.” I feel his lips against my neck. “Come out on the boat with me. I want to know you’re close by.”

  “I have to go to work. We need the money.”

  His arms close around mine. “It was easier back then, in a way.”

  I know what he means. Being a Montauk Project recruit was mindless. Food, clothes, all the basics were provided. We never had to make any choices. Our futures were laid out in front of us. But I defied that destiny, and now Wes and I are two orphans trying to survive on our own. I never thought I would be talking about bills at eighteen.

  “But this is still better.”

  He squeezes me. “Still better.”

  The ocean is calm, the waves softly pushing against the shore. “Regrets?” Wes whispers into my hair.

  I tip my head back against his shoulder and stare up at the waxing moon. It is a question he asks me once a week, sometimes daily, and I know he is worried that I miss my family and my original life in 2012.

  “I won’t ever regret what we did. We had to end the Project, for us and for the other recruits. I’m just happy we both made it out alive.”

  He rests his chin against my forehead. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “You should be. That was the worst hour of my life.”

  Before the first bomb went off, Wes used those thirty seconds to rush at the soldiers in the observation room. By then the mirror was almost completely broken, and he dove through, hiding behind the wall when the explosion hit. Most of them blindly copied his actions, and only one soldier died when he didn’t duck down quickly enough. Wes managed to get out of the observation room and into the hallway before the other bombs went off, but amid the chaos and the smoke and the confusion, it took him almost an hour to make his w
ay back out of the Facility.

  A few weeks ago, I convinced my boss at the newspaper to send me to Camp Hero to try to get more answers for a bigger story on what happened out in the woods that day. I interviewed the major general who oversees the army base. He gave me the same stock answers that he gave the other reporters. We’re shocked and saddened by how sick these men were. Camp Hero is in no way affiliated with the events of that day. But his right eye twitched whenever he lied, and I knew he was aware of what was happening down in that Facility.

  But I tried to put his words behind me. Even if the men leading Camp Hero knew about the Montauk Project, it doesn’t change what happened: without Tesla’s notes, without a time machine or Dr. Faust, the Montauk Project is gone forever. Wes and I succeeded.

  Wes’s hands are resting against my stomach. I pick one up and hold it in my lap, playing with his long fingers, the flat, broad shape of his nail beds. “I can’t pretend that I don’t think about my parents a lot, or wish I could see them again. And I love Mary, but I miss Hannah’s sarcasm and how cynical she could be.”

  Wes sits up a little, his body curving around mine.

  “I always had this vision for how my life would play out,” I tell him. “I’d graduate from high school, go to Northwestern to study journalism, then start writing for a local newspaper and work my way up the ladder.”

  “Some of that could still happen.”

  “I know. But I think I’ve learned that you can’t make grand plans and expect everything to work out the way you want it to. Maybe that was the problem with the Project all along. They wanted to control every piece of history, but it kept getting away from them.”

  “Isn’t it hard, not knowing what will happen to your parents, or to Tim? Not knowing if they even exist?”

  I nod against his shoulder. I hope a new version of Tim is with his mom and sister, never knowing what could have become of his life. That the future version of me is free somewhere, with no Project left to perform for. I like to think there could be another Lydia, at home with her parents, hanging out with Hannah and loving her grandfather more than anything. And maybe there’s even another Tag and Wes, out on the streets of New York, hustling to try to get by. But without a TM, I’ll never know what happened to any of them. The Montauk Project is gone, and Wes and I are the survivors, living in a world neither of us was born into.

  “I know we did the right thing,” I say. “This world is better without the Project in it.”

  “We did.”

  He says the words like he means them, though we both know they are only meant to reassure us both. Because we can’t know the future. No one can. Not anymore.

  Suddenly Wes stands up, shifting his arms until he’s cradling me against his chest. I shriek when he bounces me, then shriek harder as he starts walking into the waves.

  “Wes, no! Put me down!”

  He smiles. “If I drop you now, you’re going to get soaked.” He loosens his arms. “Is that really what you want?”

  “No, no.” I grip his neck tight with one hand, the other still in its cast pressed to my chest.

  He turns in a circle, the waves breaking against his legs, the stars spinning overhead.

  I laugh and close my eyes. “Don’t drop me.”

  “I won’t.” He stops moving and stares down at me. The moon makes the angle of his nose stronger, his eyes darker. I reach up and rumple his hair until it looks like it does when he just comes back from his fishing boat: touched with salt and falling over his forehead.

  He dips his head and I rise up to meet him.

  That future Lydia tried to convince me my destiny was to be in charge of the Montauk Project, to turn it into a force of good. I destroyed them instead. There will always be consequences to that decision, but Wes was right when he said that we make our own choices. And I choose this—the boy I love holding me suspended above the dark water and trusting that he won’t let go.

  Acknowledgments

  I have been blessed with the most amazing editors, Sarah Barley and Tara Weikum. Thank you for pushing me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Working with you has made me a better writer and I’m so proud of the books we created together. Sarah, your notes have been spot on, and I always trust your judgment. I already miss passing manuscripts off to you on the streets of New York, chatting and holding up foot traffic!

  Without Full Fathom Five, I never would have had the opportunity to write this series and share Lydia’s story with the world. Thanks especially to James Frey for trusting me from the start, to Jessica Almon for the constant support, both editorial and personal, and to Matt Hudson and Bennett Madison.

  Everyone at HarperTeen rocks, and special thanks to my amazing publicists over the years. I seriously won the cover lottery with this series. Thanks so much to Alison Klapthor and Alison Donalty for creating it. Also thanks to the Epic-Reads gals, Aubry Parks-Fried and Margot Wood—you are awesome and crazy in the best possible way.

  So much research has gone into these books, and I especially want to thank those people who let me pick their brains about certain eras and places. Thanks again to my grandmother, Virginia Gurdak, my expert on the 1940s. You’ve given me so much, and all I did was name a character after you. And thanks to Beth Barraclough, for teaching me all about NYC in the 1980s and 90s.

  Montauk, New York, is a truly special place, and not just because it might house a government conspiracy. Thanks to the Montauk librarians and the Camp Hero park rangers who helped answer pressing questions about what their town looked like over the years.

  Jeramey Kraatz, you are my rock. I would not have made it through the last few years without you. Christina Rumpf, you know me better than anyone and somehow still like me. Thanks for late night phone calls, fancy dinners, writing parties, and generally being the best friend a girl could ask for. Jessica Hindman, Asher Ellis, Mike Murphy, Starre Vartan, Michelle Legro, and Jordan Foster, you’ve been such huge sources of support throughout this process in different ways. Thanks for everything.

  To all the people I’ve stolen names from, especially Nikita Schwalb and Jesse Levy: thanks for the inspiration!

  I have a big, loud, awesome extended family, and their support has meant more than they’ll ever know. Thanks for making up the bulk of my book sales, guys.

  My sisters, Mary and Emma Carter—thank you for your honesty, your belief, and making me laugh more than anyone else can. You’re my sisters but also my friends, and I’m thankful for you everyday.

  To my mom, Terry Gurdak-Carter, and my dad, Phil Carter. I could not have written a word without the two of you. You’ve supported me from day one and made this life possible in every way. I love you both so much.

  I’ve met so many amazing bloggers and fellow writers through this process, and I want to acknowledge everyone who has helped and encouraged me over the past few years. And, most important, I want to thank my readers. Without you none of this would be possible. Thank you for your emails, your tweets, and your tireless enthusiasm. You make everything worth it.

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  About the Author

  RACHEL CARTER has been a teacher, a nanny, a caterer, and a bellhop. A graduate of the University of Vermont and Columbia University, Rachel is also the author of So Close to You and This Strange and Familiar Place. She lives in Vermont. www.rachel-carter.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Books by Rachel Carter

  So Close to You

  This Strange and Familiar Place

  Find Me Where the Water Ends

  Credits

  Photo of girl © 2014 by Gustavo Marx/MergeLeft Reps Inc.

  Cover design by Alison Klapthor

  Copyright

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Find Me Where the Water Ends

  Copyright © 2014 by Full Fathom Five, LLC

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Cop
yright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.epicreads.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carter, Rachel (Rachel Elizabeth), 1984-

  Find me where the water ends : a So close to you novel / Rachel Carter. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: “When Lydia has the chance to see a future in which the Montauk Project never existed, she knows that she will sacrifice everything to make that vision of the world a reality”— Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-06-208111-7 (hardcover)

  EPUB Edition APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062081131

  [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Experiments—Fiction. 3. Grandfathers—Fiction. 4. Science fiction. 5. Montauk (N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C24783Fin 2014

  2013037290

  [Fic]—dc23

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  14 15 16 17 18 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

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