by Stacey Jay
“I got burned by a cigarette when I was kid,” he says. “It hurt like crazy, and that was just a little thing. Nothing like that.” He shakes his head. “That must have been hell.”
He’s offering empathy, not pity, something I know Ariel would appreciate, but I feel awkward accepting his compassion. I don’t deserve it. I haven’t suffered through Ariel’s pain. My own physical suffering was brief—a few minutes on a cold stone floor with a knife cutting slivers of agony through my chest.
Still, I suppose I have my own scars. Even if no one can see them.
“I try not to think about it.” I lift my eyes to Ben’s. “I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. I don’t want other people to feel sorry for me either.”
“I don’t. I think you’re tough.”
“Oh yeah?” My lips curve. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Tough is very good and you’re very tough.” His hand brushes against mine as he reaches into the back, making my pulse beat faster. “At least, tough for a girl named after a mermaid.”
My smile fades. He isn’t really talking about me, and the heart speeding in my chest isn’t mine. I have to get out of this car. Ariel and Ben can become better friends at a later date. Preferably after I’m gone. I like Ben, but I don’t like the way he makes me feel. Me, the bodiless soul who has no business feeling anything.
I am Ariel now, and I need to get home.
“We should probably go,” I say. “It’s getting late.”
“Sure.” Ben holds out a plastic bag he’s fetched from the back and we throw the used cloths inside. “But if that psycho messes with you again, find me,” he says. “I’ll be in school starting tomorrow. You go to Solvang public, right? Or do you go to the private—”
“I go to SHS. Mom says she’d rather save her money for college than waste it on private school. But really, don’t worry about Dylan. I just want to forget tonight ever happened.”
“I don’t,” he says, voice soft, cautious. “If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met you.”
Our eyes meet again and suddenly the car seems too small and his words too big. It would be so easy to bridge the distance between us. A word, a touch, it wouldn’t take much to take this new friendship in another direction. Ben is interested, maybe he even feels what I feel, this connection that defies explanation.
But even if he does, it doesn’t matter. Ariel isn’t ready and I’m not able. This … whatever it is has to stop. Now.
“I’m overrated. Ask my mother,” I say, making a joke, avoiding the possibility he’s thrown between us. “Speaking of my mother …” I glance down the road, but the blue house from Ariel’s memories isn’t in sight just yet. “I should really get home.”
Nurse will be worried if I don’t contact her soon. I need her help locating the soul mates I’ve been sent for. She always knows where to find them, even in the most densely populated areas. In a small town like this she’ll no doubt have already mapped the route from my new house to both of theirs.
“Right. Hint taken.” Ben sounds hurt, but I pretend not to notice, pretend my chest isn’t aching the way it did when I slid off his lap. He starts the car, pulls back onto the road. “I was supposed to be home an hour ago anyway.”
“Why weren’t you?” I ask, filling the silence for the last few feet of our journey.
“A friend and I had a fight. She’s just … confusing,” he says. “I don’t know. I needed to drive. Think.”
“Little fight or big fight?”
He pulls into my new driveway, shifts into park before pinning me with a hard look. “There was no blood. Or broken windows.”
“So not a real fight at all.”
His lips twitch, but he doesn’t smile. “No, not a real fight. It’s no big deal. We’ll be cool by tomorrow. I can’t afford not to be cool with her. She’s the only other person I know at SHS. You gotta have friends, right?”
“I don’t have many,” I say, distracted by the light in the kitchen and the music drifting through the open window. Melanie is waiting up for her daughter, probably wanting to know all the details about her date. Wonderful. I smooth my hair away from my face and pray I’ve gotten enough of the blood off.
“That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“That you don’t have many friends. You seem socially functional.”
“Oh, I guess … I’m … just …”
I’m not Ariel. I’m an imposter, a girl from seven hundred years ago who’s a little less damaged than this girl with the scarred face.
But only a little.
“You’re just what?” he asks.
“Shy.”
He smiles his real smile, the crooked one that is somehow more beautiful for its imperfection. “You don’t seem shy. At all.”
He’s right. And Ariel isn’t really shy; she’s just … broken. I’ll have to work harder at impersonating her. The fact that she’s never met Ben lulled me into relaxing my guard. I have to be more careful. Small, subtle changes in conduct that add up to a better life for her are the best way to get my job done without arousing concern about out-of-character behavior. I should know better than to let my own personality show too much.
I should know better than to make any of the mistakes I’ve made since jumping into this car.
“Well …” I shrug. “I guess the way we met broke the ice.”
“Carjacking. Perfect icebreaker.”
“Yeah. After that, shy seemed silly.”
“I’m glad.” Ben leans into the backseat again, grabs a wrinkled black sweatshirt, and presses it into my hands. “Here, this is a little stinky, but you should put it on. You’ve got blood on your shirt.” He leans closer, the concerned look creeping back onto his face. “A … lot of blood. Are you sure you’re okay?” His fingers reach out, whispering along my shoulder, making me flinch. Because it hurts even more now. His gentleness.
His eyebrows draw together, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know,” I whisper. Hurting me isn’t what I’m worried about. At least, not in the way he means. He can’t know that his care is the thing that hurts, the thing that makes something deep inside me cry out in a way it hasn’t since I was real, since I was a girl with her own body and life and a sadness that felt bigger than the world.
“And I won’t let anyone else hurt you either. I promise.” His fingers drift to my cheek.
I know I should move away, reach for the door handle, get out of here before this moment gets any thicker, but I can’t. For some reason … I can’t. I am lost in him, in the passion in his eyes, the softness of his touch, the conviction in his words.
“I have to go,” I say, but I don’t move. He doesn’t either. He just stares at me, his eyes flicking from my lips to my eyes and back again.
“Then go,” he says, as he leans closer.
“Okay.”
Go, Juliet. Move! Now!
But I don’t. I stay and let him come closer, closer, until I can feel the heat of his lips and imagine just how perfect they’ll feel, how perfect he’ll taste, how—
“Thanks for the shirt.” I break the moment, lunge for the door handle, and half fall out of the car. My heart is pounding so hard it leaps in my throat as I pull the shirt over my head, hiding the evidence of how badly I’ve been hurt before bending back down to face Ben through the open window. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have some classes together.”
When he speaks, his voice is as husky as mine. “Right. Dulces sueños, Mermaid.”
Sweet dreams. Not likely. Not after a shift that’s started like this one.
“You too.” I turn and rush up the concrete steps and through the creaky screen door, cozy in my borrowed shirt if not my borrowed skin, the smell of ocean breeze and Ben following me in out of the night.
SIX
That wasn’t the same boy you left with.” Ariel’s mom—my mom—stands in the center of the kitchen, hands fl
uttering from the neck of her blue robe to the tie at her waist and back again. She leans to one side, peering around me through the screen door as Ben drives away.
Her blue eyes are a different color than Ariel’s. But the rest of Melanie Dragland—white-blond hair, narrow nose, thin lips, willowy frame—is nearly identical, as if she created her daughter from a piece of her own flesh. She’s pretty, or would be if it weren’t for the tension that sours her features.
“What happened to Dylan?” she asks, voice rising. “And what are you wearing? What happened to your new shirt? And your makeup?” She sucks in a scandalized breath as she crosses the kitchen, wide eyes roaming over my face. “It looks like you rubbed it all off. All of it!”
“It’s fine, Mom, I can—”
“It’s not fine. I can see everything,” she says, the pain in her voice making me flinch. The pain is her pain, but it would be so easy to take it personally. It would be so easy for Ariel to look into her mother’s horrified eyes and believe that she is the thing that’s horrible.
I would have fallen into the same trap if it hadn’t been for my father. He was always there with a hug and a smile, balancing the cold consideration of my mother. In her eyes, I was simply a reminder of her failure to give my father a son. If they’d been my only reflection I would have gone mad.
It’s no wonder Ariel has such a distorted view of herself. The mirror Melanie holds to her is warped, cruel. I have to find some way to change things in this house or I can’t see Ariel’s life improving in the near future.
I take a deep breath and try my best to keep my dislike for this woman from my voice. “Dylan and I went to a party on the beach. I got some spray on my face. I guess it washed my makeup off.” My eyes roam around the kitchen as I think how to explain why Ben drove me home. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to look at. Just white cabinets stenciled with blue Danish wooden shoes and windmills, cracked white countertops, and linoleum that was probably new around the time Melanie was born.
She obviously doesn’t choose to spend her nurse’s salary on home improvements. The kitchen feels cold and unlived in and smells of cheap coffee, bleach, and … cabbage. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the house.
“It’s too cold to be down at the beach.” Melanie crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s barely fifty degrees here, and it’s always colder on the coast.”
“I know. I was freezing,” I agree, the lies coming easier now. “So a friend gave me his sweatshirt, and a ride home.”
Melanie shakes her head. “But what about Dylan? What happened?”
He’s dead. Your daughter killed him, and now a monster is living in his body.
I lower my eyes, studying the brown stars on the linoleum, wishing Ariel had never met Dylan Stroud.
“I thought he really liked you,” Melanie pushes, refusing to take the hint. “He actually came inside to say hello to your mother. That’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it? I thought boys didn’t do that anymore.”
“I guess.” I shift my gaze to the ceiling, where lumps of paint bubble like an untreated rash. Ariel’s memory tells me the style is called a popcorn ceiling. The artist within me is unimpressed.
“So? What happened?” Melanie’s impatience is sharp in the air. This is the point when Ariel would usually scream for her mom to leave her alone and run to her room.
Instead, I meet her mother’s eyes, willing her to let the subject drop. “After we were alone, I didn’t like him. I asked a friend to take me home. The end.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“No, I didn’t.” I grit my teeth against the disbelief in Melanie’s tone. “He was rude.”
She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Ariel, real teenage boys aren’t like characters in the books you read. They smell funny and are obsessed with video games and say dumb things. They’re still learning, just like you. You can’t expect a seventeen-year-old kid to—”
“I can expect whatever I want to expect.”
“Fine,” she snaps, not bothering to hide her anger. “If you want to be on the outside looking in for the rest of your life, then go ahead and spend your time painting dead animals and vampires and—”
“They’re not vampires!” I shout, not certain what Melanie is talking about, but knowing Ariel hates it when she says things like that about her work. She hates that Melanie even sees her paintings, wishes she could lock the door to her room when she leaves and keep Melanie away from the pieces of her subconscious hanging on the wall.
“Your fantasies are never going to help you—”
“Wanting a boy who won’t take bets on whether or not I’ll sleep with him is a fantasy?” I wince as the words leave my mouth. I didn’t plan to tell her about that, but her assumption that Ariel is a clueless idiot is infuriating.
“What?” Her eyes grow large, fear swimming in their depths. “Oh god, honey. You didn’t …”
“No, I didn’t. I found out it was a joke before … before.” My temper fades a bit when Melanie’s body sags with relief. Still, I’m not ready to let her off the hook. “But after that he was awful. Really awful. I know the difference between a normal boy and a bad person, Mom. You should trust me.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “Well, I do. Of course I do.…” Her teeth worry her bottom lip, her confusion making her look younger. “I just wanted you to have a good time. I was … I thought maybe … But if Dylan was a jerk, it’s good you found another way home.” Her hands clutch at her robe, tightening the knot until it seems she’ll never get it undone. “But you could have called me, you know. I would have come to get you.”
Does Ariel know? I don’t think she does.
“Well, I kind of … lost my purse,” I say. “And my cell phone, so I—”
“What?” Anger surges back into her voice. “Ariel! We still have another year on that phone before you’re eligible for an upgrade.”
Really? She’s going to have a fit about this? After everything I’ve just said?
“You’ll just have to figure out where you left it.”
“I left it in Dylan’s car,” I say, wondering how Romeo is going to explain his wrecked car to his new “parents.” Hopefully his welcome into his new family is going even less smoothly than my own. “I can’t get it back.”
“You can get it back.”
“No, Mom. I can’t. I’ll pay for the phone myself, I—”
“With what? The money from the part-time job you never applied for?” She makes a sound that’s more of a snort than a laugh. “I swear, Ariel, I—”
“I never applied because you said no one would hire me!” My voice rises to Ariel’s usual, strident whine. If I don’t lose my cool at this point, Melanie will surely suspect her daughter has been possessed.
“Probably not for counter service work, but you could’ve worked in a kitchen or something! Ah! This just … drives me crazy.” She closes her eyes, sucks in a long, slow breath and lets it out, apparently unaware that there are antidiscrimination laws in modern America. Too bad there aren’t any laws against discrimination in the home. “You know what? It isn’t worth another fight. You’re about to graduate and you can find a job next year. Maybe something part-time at the college.”
Assuming Ariel overcomes the certainty that she’s too hideous to be seen in public, and the general awkwardness and self-loathing that make most people her age consider her a social disease. At this point, that’s a big assumption. I have to turn Melanie into an ally instead of another obstacle to overcome.
But not tonight. I’m exhausted and hungry, and Nurse is waiting for me.
“It’s fine,” Melanie continues. “I’ll give you my phone, and I’ll get an iPhone. I can get a good discount, and everyone else has one. I’m the only person at the hospital who isn’t checking their email every ten seconds.” She laughs, a strained sound that seems uncomfortable in her mouth. “So … don’t worry about the phone. I’ll leave mine on the counter for you in the morning.”
“Than
ks.” At least she’s trying. It’s … a start. “I’m going to get something to eat. Do you want anything?”
Her upper lip curls, as if the thought of food is vaguely repellent. “No, I had a sandwich.”
I turn to the refrigerator and tug open the door, searching for something to ease the ache in my stomach. Ariel doesn’t have strong memories of food. She eats to live, doesn’t live to eat. Good thing too, or the contents of the refrigerator—a few Chinese takeout containers, lunch meat, a jar of shriveled black olives, a hunk of orange cheese, three bottles of wine, and an old container of cottage cheese that’s expired—would be enough to inspire a second suicide attempt.
Yuck. So much for taking comfort in food.
I reach for the cheese and the olives, then think better of the olives and put them back. I have high standards when it comes to olives. My family grew them on our estate and pressed olive oil so fine I can still recall the smell of it spreading on a warm plate.
The memory makes my shoulders sag.
“Honey, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” I let the door drift closed and turn to find Melanie exactly where I left her, stranded in the middle of the kitchen, staring at me with a curious expression.
“You just seem … not yourself.”
I freeze, considering my behavior since I came inside. Ariel and Melanie argue all the time, but Ariel usually loses her temper and runs for cover before things get as intense as they did tonight.
Maybe I’ve started off too strong.
I shrug. “It’s been a rough night.”
“I know. I’m just … I want you to …” She sighs and fists her robe once more. “I’ve never been good at this, but you know what I mean.”
No, she hasn’t, and I guess I do. She means that she cares, no matter how bad she is at showing it. But Ariel wouldn’t know. Ariel would see this interaction as yet another time she’s failed to be what Melanie wants her to be, another reason to get angry or give up and quit trying.
Still, that doesn’t keep me from feeling bad for this woman. She isn’t an awful person, or even the worst mother in the world. At least she waited up to make sure her daughter got home safely. My own mother couldn’t have cared less, so long as I didn’t attract scandal and stayed out of her sight.
