Seven Tears into the Sea

by Terri Farley

  SEVEN TEARS INTO THE SEA

  TERRI FARLEY

  SIMON PULSE

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2005 by Terri Farley

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Tom Daly

  The text of this book was set in Zapf Calligraphic BT.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Simon Pulse edition April 2005

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  Library of Congress Control Number 2004105857

  ISBN 0-689-86442-6

  To my mother, who saw worlds in tidepools and taught her children to be comfortable in their own skins. May your beaches be warm and endless.

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4391-2075-0

  ISBN 13: 978-0-6898-6442-1

  Acknowledgements

  Without Julia Richardson and Karen Solem, Seven Tears into the Sea would have drifted away like a dream. They pronounced magic words over my idea—“It gives me chills”—and poof, it became a book.

  MIRAGE BEACH

  This is what it’s like to be crazy.

  All alone on the beach in the middle of the night, I’m facing huge black waves. My insides vibrate at their thunder. Even a ten-year-old knows better than to be standing here.

  The soles of my feet are rock bruised from the cottage driveway that leads down to the dunes, through the sea grass, and finally to the shore.

  Wind blows in my face and whips my nightgown out behind me. A storm is lurking off the coast. Hunched down, it tries to hide, but clouds cluster on its back.

  Even though I see it waiting, something’s making me walk through the flying sand and wind-spun fog.

  Using both hands, I hold my hair away from my face. I sense someone watching me.

  Part of me wants to go home, but the voice that told me to leave my bed still echoes around me. The thing it belongs to keeps me here, but I’m not afraid.

  The waves rear up, then bow. Pale ruffles show at their tops, then skitter along, running to the right, farther away, and farther. Then the foam is out of sight, like the hem of a white nightgown someone snatches around a corner.

  Like my white nightgown.

  Crack! The waves break and slam toward me. I take a deep breath of salt air, knowing these waves won’t reach me.

  This is my beach. I’ve always lived here, and I can tell these waves aren’t wild enough to drown me. Though they crash, threaten, and rush forward, they finally lay down, spreading white foam over the sand, around black rocks. Hissing a little, they hide my feet in bubbles. A strand of seaweed curls around my ankle, then flicks loose so it can float away on a wave that sucks sand from under my toes.

  As the water pulls away, the sand is bare and shiny except for footprints.

  They’re not mine. They’re ahead of me. They lead into the ocean and I have to follow them. I step in each one, and though whoever made them is bigger, the prints welcome my feet, cradling them, coaxing me to follow.

  The sea’s churning should have erased them, but they’re still here. I look down. The waves lap at my knees. I can’t see underwater, but down in the sand my toes find each footprint.

  Another row of waves stands up and cracks loud as a slamming door. The sound pulls my eyes back to the horizon, and I see him.

  Moving away, darker than the night, a shadow is going out to meet the waves.

  “Stop!” I hold my hands around my mouth, making a megaphone. Does he want to drown? “Come back!”

  But he’s diving into the heart of a wave.

  Trotting through water, I fight against my nightgown, which wraps me like a mummy. My toes jam against a submerged rock and I slip. I put my arms out to catch myself, but I crash through the surface. Suddenly I’m sinking, in over my head.

  Salty water stings the inside of my nose as I bob up sputtering, coughing, and still watching the ocean. He’s gone. My toes stretch, trying to reach sand again.

  There. Tiptoe, tiptoe. My feet touch down and I stagger to a stop and stare into the night sky.

  I know you, Moon. It looks like a yellow balloon about to burst as it shines on a black cutout swimming into the storm. He’s still there, but he’s going to die.

  I’m wishing it wouldn’t happen when all at once the world turns quiet.

  Waves whisper and the wind holds its breath.

  A warm current swirls around me. I glance down, hoping it’s not a shark.

  It’s nothing but my own tears striking the moon-polished water. Tears start silver ripples. I rub the tears away, then look up to see the figure stop swimming.

  He’s standing still. The way he’s tipping his head, he seems to be listening.

  “Come back!” I yell so hard it’s like when you skin your knee, only this time it feels like I’ve skinned my throat.

  And he turns around! My heart’s jumping. Then, all at once, the man, sky, and beach are blotted out by a black wave.

  It slaps me flat. I feel my hair spreading out like a mermaid’s. I blink into darkness.

  A night bird dives so low I hear feathers rustle, but that’s not what wakes me.

  An arm works under me, between my shoulders and the sand, lifting.

  I’m still on the beach, feeling dizzy. I never should have left my bed. You have to be careful when something in the dark is calling your name.

  I’m sitting up when a hand brushes sand from my cheek.

  “Mom—?”

  But when my eyes open, moonlight shows me a Gypsy. Right there. Next to me, close enough that I smell wind and salt water on his shoulders. Wet black hair curves in thorn shapes around slightly tilted eyes.

  Careful, I tell myself. He’s a stranger.

  I draw a breath to ask why he’d walked out into the ocean and isn’t he sorry for getting me pounded against the rocks? Instead, I gag and press my hands over my mouth to keep from throwing up the saltwater I had swallowed.

  Standing might help, so I push with my wobbly legs and he does the rest, rising with me, steadying my arm, smiling.

  Joy bounds up in me. I must know him. He must be a friend. I must recognize that grin, because even though he doesn’t say anything, I feel him telling me you’re okay.

  Then everything goes crazy. A siren wails. His grip loosens.

  I don’t blame him for wanting to escape, but my mouth is saying, “Don’t go.”

  He doesn’t.

  He holds me close to his side. He’s tall, and that doesn’t scare me, but he’s naked, and I know he shouldn’t be. For one more second his warm arm circles my shoulders, the way a bird shelters babies under its wi
ng.

  Against my ear he whispers words I don’t know.

  When he pulls away, my wet nightgown sticks to his arm. And then he goes, leaving me, but still hesitating at the water’s edge.

  The rasping tires of a police car lurch off the highway, crunching over the gravel. A car door slams.

  The Gypsy should run, but he doesn’t. He’s ready to return to the waves, but still he’s looking back at me.

  The moonlight’s so bright I can see him lick his lips. Then he tries to talk, frowning to get the words right.

  “Beckon the sea, I’ll come to thee …

  “Shed seven tears, perchance seven years.”

  Shouts are coming closer. I look up the hill and see flashlight beams bobbing.

  When I turn back to face him, he’s gone.

  My head swings from side to side. I look up the shore, then back to the waves. I look up at the cottage, then out to sea.

  He’s just not there.

  I hear the quiet lap of sea on stone, but even the waves are empty. The Gypsy boy is gone, and I stand on the beach, alone.

  CHAPTER ONE SEVEN YEARS LATER

  The VW took the curve fast.

  Wind blasted through my hair, waving it in front of my eyes before snatching it straight behind me.

  “Faster!” Mandi cheered from the backseat.

  I gripped the steering wheel and pressed the gas pedal just a little. The VW was my seventeenth birthday present, and I wasn’t completely used to it yet. Besides, this two-lane coastal highway kept swooping around turns. What if I came face-to-face with some car passing another car? I’d rather not do that at full speed, since I’d have to pull over against the rock cliff and risk scuffing up my Bug.

  It wasn’t a brand new Bug, but it was a convertible, and my folks had paid for a fresh paint job. “Arrest-me yellow,” Dad called the color I’d picked, but he didn’t say no. Two of my aunts had chipped in to help me buy a sound system that can blast your spine back into the new seat covers.

  I loved my car, and its maiden road trip had been perfect, even though my two best friends would be returning home without me.

  I glanced up to check my rearview mirror. Dad’s car was back there, somewhere. He was following with my stuff and Gumbo, my cat. Most of what I saw in my mirror was Mandi’s up-jutting thumb, still urging me to go faster.

  I shook my head because I didn’t want Dad lecturing me on speeding the minute we arrived at Mirage Beach. Beside me, Jill nodded her support.

  “You guys,” Mandi leaned against the back of my seat, shouting next to my ear so I’d hear her over the wind. “Did you see the men, in that green truck?”

  “You mean the thugs we saw back in that little town?” Jill raised one thin black eyebrow, then shouted, “Watch out!”

  I swerved to avoid a swathe of broken glass glittering across my lane and missed most of it.

  Keep your eyes on the road, I told myself. We’re almost there.

  “They’re cute thugs, at least the blond one,” Mandi insisted. “Besides …”

  I could hear her working into scolding mode, and I smiled.

  “Think of Belle and her Beast—”

  Really, even though she’s going to be a senior, Mandi has swallowed the whole fairy-tale-prince myth. Jill pretended to bang her head against the window as Mandi continued.

  “—sometimes you just don’t know what’s under that scruffy exterior.”

  Mandi’s fatal flaw was that she’d investigate way too many Beasts if Jill and I didn’t keep her straight. This summer, Jill would have to handle the job alone.

  It turned out to be a good thing that I hadn’t gone faster. Not because of the guys, but because suddenly, down to our left, the cove appeared. Gold sand, black rocks, and turquoise water materialized. The sight took our breaths away. Even mine.

  Up to our right, above it all, sat the Sea Horse Inn, perched like a wedding cake on the bluff overlooking the sea.

  “Wow,” Jill said. “Gwen, you had me feeling sorry for you because you’d be without us, but this is incredible.”

  “Like Tahiti or something,” Mandi agreed.

  “I can’t believe you never come here,” Jill said. “And that”—she tapped the windshield—“is Cook’s Cottage, right? Your family’s place? And you’ll have it all to yourself. Such possibilities, you lucky girl.”

  “That’s me.”

  As a child I’d thought the whitewashed cottage looked like an ugly duckling squatting beside the swanlike inn. Since then, I’d been living in Valencia, a San Francisco suburb, where each house looked pretty much like its neighbor. Now I realized the cottage was cute.

  But I’d sworn never to come back. Never should last longer than seven years.

  “Just like playing house,” I joked to smother the dark thoughts roiling around in my mind. My cheeks felt hot, nerves cranked tight inside my chest, and I couldn’t keep the whispered gossip from replaying.

  “… heard about the incident at the cove …”

  “Gwennie Cook was walking in her sleep, I heard and almost fell from Mirage Point …”

  “That’s what they’re saying, of course …”

  “… moving? After what, three generations at the Point?”

  “She says a naked man just materialized from the waves and vanished back into them. She became absolutely hysterical when the police questioned her …”

  “You dont think …?”

  If I’d just agreed I was sleepwalking, everything would have been fine. No scandal, no ugly suspicions. But I remembered shouting and stamping, insisting I hadn’t been alone.

  Small towns never forget. Just read Stephen King or watch a Western where a gunslinger tries to go straight. As soon as the people in town saw me, they’d be gossiping. If Nana hadn’t maintained I was the one she needed, I wouldn’t be here.

  I slid my hand over the steering wheel, downshifted, and took the off-ramp with calm skill, even though the memories made me angry.

  Ten-year-olds aren’t stupid. I could remember being in the grocery store and hearing hushed voices filter past the canned goods on the next aisle. I’d peered through and saw women with their heads together, talking about me. When I marched around the end of the aisle and faced them, chin up, fisted hands shaking, they’d just smiled sympathetic smiles.

  Maybe they really were sympathetic. It was the first time I had heard my name in the same sentence as the word “molested.”

  I knew I hadn’t been molested, but my memories of Mirage Point were a mixture of fantasy and reality.

  I drew a breath so deep the seat belt tightened across my chest. If there was one thing I was determined to do this summer, it was find out what had really happened that night on the beach.

  Distracted, I’d driven right past the gravel road to the cottage.

  “We’ll just check out the Inn and say ‘hi’ to my grandmother,” I said, as if that had been my plan all along.

  Almost at once, I spotted the lip of a freshly blacktopped driveway. I turned, surprised how steep it was, swooping from the street to the Sea Horse Inn.

  I did want to see Nana. My grandmother is my role model.

  Nana is stubborn, strong-minded, and pretty frisky for a seventy-year-old. To tell the truth, I was surprised she’d admitted needing help. If she hadn’t actually broken her leg in the accident, I’d think she was up to something.

  After all, she had Thelma, who’d been at the Inn forever to clean and do laundry.

  But three weeks ago, Nana had called Dad and claimed she needed another pair of hands to help serve breakfast and afternoon tea, and those hands had to be mine.

  Once I got over being flattered, I told Mom and Dad no. I love Nana, but I didn’t want to leave my friends and my summer job. Not that I’d gone out and found one yet, but they knew I needed money. I never have the right clothes for anything. I end up borrowing Mandi’s—which they say are too tight.

  But my parents didn’t give me a choice. I was staying at Mi
rage Beach all summer.

  My parents are so inconsistent, they make me crazy. When I turned twelve, they started talking back to the television. Those announcements would flash on, with the audio saying, “It’s 10 P.M., do you know where your children are?” and they’d answer.

  I’m not allowed to go anywhere without first getting lectures on kidnapping, date rape, and drunk drivers. I’m not as naive as they think. I know those things happen, and I’m careful. But that’s not good enough for them.

  Even if I only want to go to a friend’s house to watch videos, my parents call to make sure there’ll be an adult around. It’s humiliating.

  It’s especially bad, because Jill is totally free. After ten years in foster care, she petitioned the court to make her an emancipated minor.

  Mandi’s dad is more like my parents. Intermittently.

  And yet, despite their paranoia, my parents had decreed I must go live in Cook’s Cottage. All summer, all alone.

  “We’re here.” I yanked on the emergency brake.

  Even though Mandi was pushing her shoulder, hurrying her, Jill tucked her black Cleopatra hair behind her ears before extracting herself from the backseat.

  Mandi was right behind her. They began oohing at the stone maiden pouring water into the goldfish pond and aahing at the stained-glass oval hanging from the Inn’s rafters. It spun in the breeze as sunlight struck emerald, gold, and aqua beams from the mosaic sea horse in its center.

  As we started up to the wide veranda, I skipped steps and breathed in the scent of Nana’s violets and roses. Halfway up, I felt the strongest urge to jog straight through the house, over the back lawn, and down the path that led to the cove.

  I remembered the cove as a neat scoop of turquoise water studded with black rocks and sea lions. There was a stone arch there too, and a mysterious grotto. Hidden from the Inn, it was a secret world. Jill and Mandi would go nuts for it. But the trail down was wet, narrow, and risky. You couldn’t rush.

  I almost ran into Mandi as she stopped on the top step and swiveled around, hands on hips.

  Overhead, the stained-glass sea horse spun faster. It used to be Dad’s job to unhook it from the rafters and bring it inside when the weather turned stormy.