But she had. Or how else would she have ended up washed up on the beach, hungover?
Getting drunk didn’t completely explain the night, though. Things were messed up before she drank from the flask, and Gemma had never heard of liquor being thick like that. It had the consistency of honey, but tasted nothing like it.
Maybe it wasn’t alcohol, but it was definitely something. It could’ve been laced with a drug or poison. Or maybe a potion. Gemma wouldn’t be surprised at all if Penn turned out to be a witch.
In any event, they had slipped her something. Gemma would probably never know exactly what it was, but it didn’t really matter. They had given her something, and she had no idea why.
Worse still, she didn’t know what they’d done to her after that. All the scratches were probably from being thrown around in the ocean. After she’d passed out, they must have just tossed her in the bay.
Or had they? If she had been unconscious when she went in the water, wouldn’t she have drowned? Or been swept out to sea? How did she end up on the shore with only a few scrapes and bruises? Why wasn’t she dead?
“Crap.” Harper sighed and walked into Gemma’s room, pulling her from her thoughts. “Marcy just called me. There’s some kind of meltdown at the library, and I need to go help her out.”
Gemma sat up in bed. Her body already felt much better than it had that morning. All the aches had gone away, and even the redness and swelling had gone down around her cuts and bruises. Other than being sticky and dirty, she didn’t feel half bad.
“Will you be all right here, alone for an hour or so?” Harper asked.
“Yeah.” Gemma nodded. “I’m fine. I think I’ll probably take a shower. You go do what you need to do. I don’t want to inconvenience you any more than I already have.”
“All right.” Harper bit her lip and seemed hesitant to leave. “I’ll have my cell phone, and you call if you need me. I mean that, okay?”
“Okay.” Gemma nodded again. “But I’ll be fine.”
After Harper left, Gemma felt relief wash over her. Having Harper look out for her like that only worsened her guilt, but more than that, Gemma wanted a chance to clear her head and try to sort things out herself. It was hard to think when Harper kept checking on her and interrogating her about what had happened.
Gemma knew that Harper meant well, and it was actually her own fault that Harper felt the need to be this intensely involved. But sometimes she just needed room to breathe.
It was after Harper and their mom were in the car accident that things had first started getting bad. Even though Harper was the one who had been hurt, she suddenly became ultra-protective of Gemma.
And Gemma hadn’t minded, at least not at first. She’d needed it. When her mother was in a coma, Gemma had felt totally lost. In retrospect, she’d been a bit of a mama’s girl, and if Harper hadn’t stepped up, she didn’t know how she would’ve coped.
Eventually, though, she learned to handle it on her own. That was when she really took to swimming. She’d always loved the water, but after that, she couldn’t get enough of it. It was the only place she felt free, and sometimes, when Harper got in a mood, it was the only place that Gemma could really breathe.
Now, because of her stupid mistake with Penn, not only would Harper be way more intense, but Gemma wouldn’t be able to go out to the bay to get some release. At least she still had swim practice. And long baths.
Gemma considered taking a bath now, but her skin felt too dirty. It would only take a few seconds before she was swimming in a tub of mud. A shower would be better.
While waiting for the tap water to warm up, she turned on the CD player in the bathroom. Her father’s Springsteen album came blasting out, and Gemma sifted through the stack of CDs on the counter, searching for her own music. It was mostly Harper’s music in the bathroom, groups like Arcade Fire and Ra Ra Riot.
But for some reason, Gemma’s own CDs didn’t sound good. She didn’t want to hear anything on them. It all felt … wrong, somehow. Clicking off the stereo, Gemma decided to just forgo music.
Before she got in the shower, she stripped down to her underwear. In front of the mirror, she turned this way and that so she could see all the wounds on her skin.
A large bruise stretched out from the small of her back all way up to her shoulder blades. It was a dark purple color with green around the edges, and Gemma touched it tentatively. It was sore, for sure, but it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as she thought it would.
In any event, a hot shower ought to make it feel better, so she finished inspecting herself and hopped in. As soon as the warm water streamed over her, she felt even better. Almost invigorated.
Gemma couldn’t help herself, and she began to sing as she washed her hair. At first she was singing the latest Katy Perry song, but a different tune was stuck in her head. It was a song she didn’t even know how she knew.
With conditioner in her hair, she paused to think of it. She couldn’t quite get it, but it was on the tip of her tongue.
“Come now…” Gemma furrowed her brow as she tried to think of the words. “I’ll show you the way … into my ocean…” She shook her head. “No, that’s not right.”
Sighing, she decided to start singing it, hoping it would come to her as she went along, and almost like magic, it did. The lyrics were on her lips, and she sang them out loudly.
“Come now, weary traveler, I’ll lead you through the waves. Worry not, poor voyager, for my voice is the way.”
Then this weird sensation came over her. It reminded her of the way it felt when she had butterflies in her stomach, like when Alex kissed her, but it was on her skin. The feeling traveled down her leg, from her thigh to the tips of her toes. She brushed her hand over her leg, following the path of the strange sensation, and she felt her skin ripple underneath her fingers.
She yelped and looked down. She half expected to see something clinging to her leg, like seaweed or maybe even a leech, but there was nothing. Just her skin, looking as ordinary as ever.
In fact, it was a little too normal. The bruises on her skin had faded and the cuts were almost healed. Gemma craned her neck, trying to see her back, but she couldn’t.
Her hair was rinsed, and she’d already gone over her skin with a bath sponge, so she decided to end the shower. She had planned to scrub harder, but something weird was going on, and she’d prefer to deal with it when she had clothes on.
When she hung the sponge on the faucet so it could dry, the same way she always did after a shower, she noticed something sticking to it. She picked it out of the sponge and held it up in the light, inspecting it.
It was some kind of large iridescent green scale, too big to belong to the usual small fish she saw in the bay. It had to come from something huge, at least the size of Gemma herself. But it was a color unlike any she’d ever seen on a fish. Admittedly, tropical fish came in all sorts of dazzling colors, but the bay was too far north to get the really pretty fish.
“Gemma?” Alex asked, interrupting her examination of the mysterious scale, and he started knocking on the bathroom door.
“Alex?” Gemma asked in surprise, and she grabbed a towel to wrap around herself, even though Alex was hidden safely on the other side of the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I just…” He trailed off, his voice completely lost through the door.
“What?” Gemma asked.
“I needed to see you.”
“What? Why? Did something happen?”
“No, I…” Alex sighed loudly. “Harper told me you were missing, and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I was giving you time to rest, but I just heard you singing, so I knew you were awake.”
Gemma gave an embarrassed look to the open bathroom window. The shades were drawn, but the sash was up; Alex could’ve easily heard her.
Once she got past her initial shame, she furrowed her brow and turned back to the closed door. “So you just came into my house?” That didn’t sound like s
omething Alex would do at all. He was always polite, almost to a fault.
“No, I knocked first, but you didn’t answer, and then you stopped singing,” Alex explained. “I heard you yelp, and I thought something might be the matter.”
“Oh.” She smiled, realizing he was concerned for her well-being. “I just got out of the shower. Let me get dressed, and then I’ll come out and talk to you.”
Thankfully, Gemma had brought her clothes into the bathroom, and she dressed hurriedly. Alex’s surprise visit nearly made her forget about the bruise on her back, but she remembered after she’d gotten dressed.
Gemma turned her back to the mirror and lifted up her shirt. When she looked over her shoulder, her jaw dropped. The massive bruise was nearly gone. It was only a blotch in the center of her back, and the color had even faded from a deep eggplant to a soft gray.
“That cannot be possible.” Gemma gaped at the reflection.
“Did you say something?” Alex called from the hallway.
“Uh … no.” She dropped her shirt, as if he’d be able to see through the door. “I was just talking to myself. I’ll be out in a sec.”
Hurriedly, she ran her fingers through her hair to comb it out. Even her hair didn’t seem as tangled as it usually was. All the salt water and chlorine were harsh on her hair, but it felt silkier than it had in years.
She didn’t have time to worry about it, though. Alex was waiting for her, and she wanted to hurry and see him while she still could. When she got home from work Harper would send him away, and Gemma had no idea when she’d get a minute alone with him again.
“It’s actually really good that you stopped by,” Gemma said as she opened the bathroom door. She’d expected him to be out in the hall waiting for her, but he wasn’t.
“Why is that?” Alex asked, his voice coming from her bedroom.
“Because I’m probably going to be grounded from now until the end of time.”
She went into her room, trying not to let on how nervous it made her, having him in her room. It wasn’t a bad nervous, but this was the first time she’d had a boy she dated in here. This wasn’t Alex’s first time in her room, but it was different somehow. She hadn’t wanted to kiss him before.
She glanced around quickly to make sure she didn’t have anything embarrassing out in the open. Her dirty bathing suit was crumpled up on the floor and her bed was unmade, but there wasn’t anything too bad. Maybe the poster of Michael Phelps on her wall, but Alex couldn’t really fault her for that.
Alex had been standing next to her bed, admiring the picture on her bedside table of her, Harper, and their mother. As soon as Gemma came in the room, he turned to face her, and his brown eyes widened. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He tried to set the picture back on the nightstand, but he wasn’t paying attention, and it fell to the floor.
“Sorry.” He scrambled to pick it up, and Gemma laughed.
“It’s okay.”
“No, I’m sorry.” He looked back at her, giving her a sheepish smile. “I’m so clumsy. You make me…”
“What?” She stepped closer to her bed, and his eyes stayed on her.
“I don’t know.” He laughed and furrowed his brow in confusion. “It’s like … I can’t think around you sometimes.”
“You can’t think?” Gemma asked dubiously and sat on the bed. “You’re the smartest person I know. How can you stop thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat down next to her, still staring at her, but something about his stare had shifted from flattering to unnerving. There was something too intense in his gaze, and Gemma tucked her hair behind her ear and looked away from him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you today,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said quickly, then shook his head, as if that were not what he meant to say. “I wasn’t…” He looked away from her, but only for a moment, and then his eyes were locked on her again. “Where were you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She shook her head.
“I’d believe anything you said,” Alex replied, and the sincerity in his voice made Gemma look at him.
“What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She gestured to him. “This. The way you’re looking at me. The way you’re talking to me.”
“Aren’t I talking to you the way I always have?” Alex moved away from her a bit, genuinely taken aback by her observation.
“No. You’re all…” She shrugged, unable to find the right words to explain it. “Not you.”
“I’m sorry.” His face pinched as he tried hard to figure out what she meant. “I guess … I was scared this morning. Harper wouldn’t tell me what was going on, and I was afraid that something had happened to you.”
“I truly am sorry about that,” Gemma said, deciding that must be what was going on. He’d been worried about her, so he was overcompensating with excessive staring, like Harper did sometimes. “I never meant to scare you. Or anybody.”
“But now you’ll be grounded?” Alex asked.
She sighed. “Yeah, definitely.”
“I won’t be able to see you?” he asked, sounding as depressed about it as she felt. “I don’t know if I can handle that.”
“Hopefully it will only be for a few weeks. Maybe less, with good behavior.” She gave him a small smile. “And maybe sometimes you can stop by when Harper and my dad are at work, like now.”
“How long do we have until Harper gets home from work?”
Gemma glanced over at the clock and realized sadly that Harper had already been gone for an hour. “Not long.”
“Then we have to make the most of this time while we have it,” Alex said decisively.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this.” He leaned in to her, pressing his lips to hers.
At first he kissed her in the same sweet way he always did—gentle, restrained, careful. But something changed. An eagerness took over, and he tangled his fingers in her hair, pressing her to him.
When things shifted, when Alex began kissing her with an insistence that was almost forceful, Gemma grew alarmed. She almost pushed him back so she could suggest they slow down, but it was as if he’d awakened something inside of her, a hunger she didn’t even know she had.
She pushed him back on the bed, still kissing him. His hands roamed over her body, at first over her clothes, but then sliding underneath her shirt to where her bruise should be. Everywhere his flesh touched hers, that same sensation she’d felt in the shower rippled over her.
Their kisses were getting more frantic, like Alex thought he’d die if he didn’t have her. Gemma felt ravenous for him in the most primal way. She wanted him, needed him, couldn’t wait to devour him. It surged through her like a fire, and in some dark part of her mind she realized that what she wanted to do with him had nothing to do with passion.
“Ow!” Alex winced and stopped kissing her.
“What?” Gemma asked.
She lay on top of him, both of them gasping for breath. Alex’s eyes were clearer now, no longer fogged with passion. His hand had been gripping her side, pulling her to him, but he let go and touched his lip. It came back with a drop of blood on his fingertip.
“You … bit me?” Alex said uncertainly.
“I bit you?” She sat up, still straddling Alex.
As she ran her tongue over her teeth, they suddenly felt sharper to her. Her incisors were so pointed, she nearly pricked her own tongue on them.
“It’s okay.” Alex rubbed her leg, trying to comfort her. “It was an accident, and I’m fine.”
Her stomach growled, audibly rumbling. Gemma put her hand over it, as if that would silence it.
“I’m starving,” she said, sounding confused by her admission.
He laughed. “I heard that.”
She shook her head and didn’t know how to explain it. Kissing him had somehow made her incredibly hungry. A
nd though she didn’t remember doing it, she wasn’t convinced that biting him had been an accident.
“Harper should be home soon,” Gemma said, looking for an excuse to end their encounter. She climbed off of Alex and sat down on the bed.
“Yeah, of course.” He sat up quickly and shook his head, as if clearing it of something.
Neither of them said anything for a minute. They both just stared down at the floor, confused by their recent actions.
“Listen, I’m … I’m sorry,” Alex said.
“What for?”
“I didn’t mean to come over and … and…” He stumbled over his words. “Make out like that, I guess. I mean, it was nice. But…” He sighed. “I didn’t want to rush you or pressure you, and … That’s not me. I’m not that guy.”
“I know.” Gemma nodded. She smiled at him, hoping her smile didn’t look as pained as it felt. “I’m not that girl, either. But you definitely didn’t pressure me into anything.”
“Okay. Good.” He stood up and touched his lip again, checking for blood, then looked back at her. “I guess, um, I’ll see you when I can.”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“I am really glad that you’re okay.”
“I know. Thank you.”
He paused, thinking for a second, then bent down and kissed her on the cheek. It was a little long for a kiss on the cheek, but it was still over too quickly. Then Alex was gone.
Of all the kisses they’d shared that afternoon, that one before he left was Gemma’s favorite. It may have been the most chaste, but it was also the one that felt the most genuine.
TWELVE
Pearl’s
The library was slow today, thanks to the pristine weather. The sun shone brightly in the sky, and it was warm without being overly so. It was the kind of day that would make Gemma kill to be out on the bay, and even Harper would’ve been happy to join her.
Not that Gemma could go anywhere. As predicted, their father had grounded her when he came home from work last night. He’d yelled in a way that almost made Harper stand up for her sister, but she didn’t. She hid out on the steps and listened to him rant about how he’d always given Gemma freedom and trusted her, but those days were over.
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