My thumb hovers over the first song. I pop in my earbuds and press Play. I stare at Lena’s photo-face while a soft, ghostly piano starts… then guitar… then a voice that sounds so sad, so pretty, so…
I start crying. Then I cry and cry some more, from one song to the next, until I taste salt on my lips and it almost feels like I’m back in the ocean, just a human girl floating around with a mermaid.
Now that I’ve seen you up close,
you look exactly like me.
Or maybe I look like you.
Sometimes I forget that I made it all up,
the mermaid in the sea
and me in the sand.
CHAPTER
15
On Sunday, I almost convince myself that the whole conversation with Lena was a dream. I don’t talk about her at all. I guess Kate got the message that I’ve locked up all my Lena thoughts good and tight, because she doesn’t ask any more questions. We just sit on the couch while I eat my weight in butterscotch pudding and watch bad movies all morning.
In the afternoon, Kate takes me to the bookstore for a couple of hours so she can get next week’s schedule done. We barely talk on the way there or on the way back.
I do, however, stick a song I wrote into a book in the middle-grade section called Hello, Universe, which is just too perfect for words. The song is the one I wrote about Lena right after she showed up in my hospital room. I’m just sitting there in a cute little alcove in the kids’ area, reading through my songs in my notebook, and before I know it, my eyes stick to this pretty blue cover and the most perfect title ever, and I grab the book off the shelf and stick the paper inside.
My heart pounds for so long afterward that Kate brings me home early and takes my blood pressure. I smile the whole time she pumps the cuff around my arm, thinking of my song hiding out between the pages of a book, waiting to be found, like a little treasure.
Kate and I have just finished up eating dinner—broccoli and chicken casserole with a side of Ensure—when the doorbell rings. I’m almost positive it’s Dave, because it’s always Dave, and I stay in my sluglike position on the couch, all set to watch my third rom-com of the day. So when Kate opens the door and I see Quinn’s blue hair shining under the porch light, I sit up quick.
“Hey, Sunny,” she says as Kate lets her inside.
“What are you doing here?” I blurt. She frowns and freezes. My stomach coils into a tight knot. I haven’t talked to Quinn since the Sam debacle yesterday morning. Not a single text or anything. My face feels like I could cook a steak on it.
“I can go,” Quinn says.
“No!” I shove the blanket off my legs and stand up. Dark gray fleece pools around my feet. “I mean, no, don’t go. I’m glad you’re here.”
She smiles and exhales loudly. “Okay.”
Kate shifts her eyes between us, a tiny smile on her lips. “You must be Quinn,” she says. “I’m Kate.”
“Hi, it’s great to meet you,” Quinn says. “I hope it’s okay I came by.”
“Of course. My closing manager just called in sick, so I actually need to head back to the bookstore for an hour or two. Your timing is perfect.”
I grit my teeth. Translation: You can make sure Sunny doesn’t drop dead while I’m gone.
“Sunny, you’ll be all right?” Kate asks as she grabs her purse.
“Yup.”
“I put your pills out on the counter.”
I scowl.
“Just take them, okay?” She smacks a kiss to my forehead and waves at Quinn as she heads out the front door.
“Sorry,” I say, untangling my feet from the blanket. “Want to go to my room?”
Quinn nods but doesn’t move. She’s wearing a snug navy tee with light blue whales all over it and dark skinny jeans. She’s so freaking cute, I can’t even take it. I look down at my boring gray tank top and plaid pajama pants, both of which I think are Kate’s, now that I think about it. I roll my eyes at myself.
“Um… do you need to take those pills?” Quinn asks.
“Ugh, not you too.”
“I’m just saying, I’d rather not have to dial 9-1-1 while I’m here, you know?”
“Not your idea of fun?”
“Not exactly.”
“I take the pills at bedtime, so you can pipe down.”
She lifts her hands in surrender and I lead the way to my room.
“Whoa… cool,” she says as I open the door. The white lights are on and the lamps are off. Everything looks watery and calm.
“I like it,” I say, plopping onto my bed.
“So, about yesterday,” she says, sitting down next to me.
My stomach flutters. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I didn’t mean to push you to kiss Sam. I thought that was what you wanted.”
“I thought so too, I guess. It was just weird, you know? Once it was really real.”
She nods. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I think so. Just confused.”
“About what?”
I swallow down a knot in my throat and shrug. “I talked to Lena last night.”
“Lena? Wait… you mean…”
“My mermaid.”
“Your mom mermaid?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “She’s taking me out surfing tomorrow.”
“Holy swearword.”
“Major holy swearword.”
“Are you okay?” Quinn asks. “What’d you talk about? Did she say why she left you?”
I sigh and fall back on the bed and stare up at my canopy. “I know, actually.”
“Oh.”
I roll the words—the why—around in my head for a few seconds before I actually say them. “She’s an alcoholic. Do you know what that is?”
Quinn nods and lies back too, twisting onto her side and propping up on her elbow. She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me.
“She couldn’t take care of me,” I say, “so she left me with Kate. She was supposed to come back after she got better, but…”
“She never did.”
“Not until now,” I say.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
We sit there in the quiet for a few seconds, letting it all sink in.
“Did you ask her why she took so long?” she finally asks.
I shake my head. “I heard her tell Kate she just wasn’t ready and didn’t want to mess us up, but I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to hear whatever she might tell me. Once you know something, you can’t ever unknow it. It’s there, forever in your head, and…” What girl wants to know forever that she wasn’t enough for her mom to give up something that was bad for her anyway? is what I want to keep saying, but I don’t. I just think it. I think it over and over and over again.
“I’m a weirdo, I know,” I say.
“No, you’re not. I get it. At least, I think I do. Sometimes I get so mad at my mom because she makes me travel so much. I mean, it’s fun, but sometimes, I just want a house that’s mine, you know? I want a friend I’ve known for years and years. I want to go to the same school and wave at teachers I had the year before in the hall. I want to ask her to stop, even if it’s just for a year or something. She could teach at a college. She could work at the aquarium in Port Hope. Or any aquarium. She has a PhD in oceanography and everything. But if I ask…”
“She might say no.”
“Yeah.”
I can tell Quinn doesn’t want to leave at the end of the summer. I don’t want her to leave either. I mean, yes, I know I’ve only known her for a few days, but she’s my BFF. I can’t even think about saying goodbye to her. I can’t even fathom walking into middle school—with Margot and all her friends there, laughing at me behind their locker doors—without Quinn.
“The aquarium in Port Hope is really awesome,” I say. “I haven’t been in a long time, but Kate took me when I was seven and then I went there on a field trip in fourth grade.”
“I can’t
wait to go,” Quinn says. “My mom has a big presentation there with another oceanographer in a couple of weeks about the dwindling population of sea mammals on the East Coast.”
“That’s good, right?”
Quinn shrugs. “I guess. She’s always doing these presentations, though. Doesn’t mean she’ll take a job.”
“Oh.”
Quinn sighs big and loud. “Port Hope’s aquarium is amazing, though. It has the biggest whale shark on the Eastern Seaboard. They named her Juliette.”
“That’s a funny name for a shark.”
“I think it’s perfect. It’s all graceful, but powerful, just like whale sharks.”
I grin at her. “You really like all this ocean, science-y stuff, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Then she smiles and shakes her head. “No, I do. I actually really love it. I just wish…”
“What?”
“That I could love it and stay in one place at the same time.”
I watch her face, and she just looks so sad that I scoot closer to her, my forehead almost touching hers. Almost, but not quite.
“That stinks,” I say.
“Sometimes, yeah.”
We lie there for a few seconds, the silence like a nice fleece blanket around us. I like this kind of quiet, the BFF kind where you’re not alone but can think and you know your best friend is thinking too and it’s all okay because you know that all the things you’re thinking are safe.
“You know what’s weird?” she asks.
“What?”
“I don’t really remember stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, I remember things, but sometimes, specific memories from when I was a little kid are super-fuzzy. I thought about it a lot and so I Googled it and you know what? A lot of our memories are connected to places like our house and school and, I don’t know, a park we go play at every weekend. I don’t have any of those familiar places where I can put all my memories. Isn’t that weird?”
I can’t tell in this light, but it almost looks like she’s got some tears in her eyes. “I don’t think it’s weird. I think it’s sad.”
“Yeah? Me too, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “Hey, it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through.”
“Don’t say that.”
She smiles. Her free hand is spread out on the quilt between us and I reach out and loop my pinkie around hers. She smiles even wider and curls her finger tight.
“Lena and I talked about kissing,” I say.
Her eyes go big and round. “You what?”
“I asked her what she knew about kissing.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said kissing was a lot better with someone you actually liked.”
Quinn nods. “That’s what I was thinking. And neither of us really liked Sam. I mean, not like that.”
I don’t say anything for a second. I’m thinking about liking and how you know when you like someone and how you know when that liking means you want to kiss them. Then Quinn clears her throat and I realize I’ve been staring right at her mouth.
But I wasn’t. I was just thinking, right? Because this new heart doesn’t wonder about certain stuff anymore. Stuff that gets me laughed at behind closed doors by my best friend.
“You don’t like Sam, do you?” she asks.
“Huh?” I swallow and it feels like there’s sandpaper in my throat. “No way. I mean, he’s cute. But… no.”
Her mouth—which is kind of shiny because she must have on some lip gloss or something, not that I noticed—twitches into a tiny smile. “I didn’t think so. With Sadie, I—” But she cuts herself off and her shoulders curl around her neck.
“Sadie?” I ask. “Your friend from Alaska? What about her?”
“Nothing, she just… I think she’d say the same thing. About liking people before you kiss them.”
I want to know more about this Sadie girl, but I can’t figure out a way to ask that doesn’t sound like I’m being super-nosy. “Kissing is heavy-duty personal,” I say instead.
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s like, faces really close and mouths touching and maybe even”—she leans forward like she’s telling a secret—“tongues.”
I giggle and feel my face warm. “I can’t even imagine that.”
“Me neither. It’s…”
“A lot.”
“So much.”
She stares at me and I stare at her and something feels weird in my stomach. Thinking about being that close to someone—really, really close, knowing they want to be that close to you too—is scarier than I thought it would be. Quinn’s kind of close to me right now and my body feels all buzzy with nerves or something. And she’s just my friend. I might literally pass out when it’s a boy I’m going to kiss. Quinn is so pretty and funny and smart, she won’t have any problem finding a boy who’ll want to be with her. I bet she’ll be super-cool throughout the whole kiss. I want to be like that.
“So… how are we going to find someone we like?” she whispers.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back. Then we just keep staring at each other and my stomach keeps on doing weird things and I feel like I’m about to light up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. I keep opening my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. My mind is all jumbled up, like a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces. Quinn watches me and I watch her and my breathing is so loud, I just know it’s giving away how weird I’m feeling right now.
“Let’s Google Lena,” I blurt, because I need to stop feeling weird and because I’ve been wanting to Google her all day but I don’t want to do it alone and I sure don’t want to Google her with Kate.
“Yes,” Quinn says, sitting up and clapping her hands together. “Let’s do it.”
I grab the laptop Kate got me for Christmas last year off my nightstand and settle against the headboard. Quinn squishes up next to me and I open the browser before I type Lena St. James into the search bar.
There are a bunch of hits, but nothing that looks like my Lena. No Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat.
“Wow, does she even exist?” Quinn asks, squinting at the screen. “I thought everyone our parents’ age at least had a Facebook page. My mom’s on hers constantly.”
I shrug and then type in a new name: Lena Marks.
Her face pops up immediately. She’s just there… thirteen years younger and bare-armed.
“Is that her?” Quinn asks.
I nod, my eyes devouring the screen.
“She’s… gorgeous.”
“Yeah.”
“You look just like her.”
“Do I?” I glance at Quinn and she’s looking right at me. She nods and I feel my cheeks go red. But Quinn’s right—I look just like Lena. Especially like this, younger and flat-bellied and without any tattoos or those dark circles I noticed under her eyes last night.
There are more than photos too. There’s the link to the iTunes page where you can stream Shallows, as well as all these sites with a ton of information on them.
All about Lena.
I click on the first site, a Wikipedia entry, then I go quiet as I read.
Lena grew up in Mexico Beach, Florida, just like Kate and Dave, and when she was eighteen, she moved to Nashville. Kate moved there too, although the bio doesn’t say that, of course. It doesn’t mention Kate at all, but I can’t help sticking her in the stories, piecing together all the bits of information Kate has offered over the years. Like how she and Dave went to college in Nashville, some school called Belmont. But Lena didn’t. Lena moved there to be famous.
At least, that’s what I think, because none of the Internet sites say anything about college. But they do say a whole lot about how Lena was only in Nashville for about a year before she caught the eye of some agent, and a year after that she made Shallows, which got really popular, really fast. Then, for about a year after that, she toured all over the country singing her songs, and ab
out a year after that, the year I was born, she dropped off the face of the earth.
Like, there’s no more information about her. I even find some music blogs that wonder if she died and her family is covering it up, but obviously that’s not true. There’s nothing about her being an alcoholic. There’s not even anything about my dad. I know Lena had me when she was twenty-two, so it’s not hard to connect the dots.
Lena gave up her dream because of me.
CHAPTER
16
Kate doesn’t say anything as she coats my whole body in SPF 40,000,000. I sit in the kitchen chair, not saying anything either. When we hear Lena’s truck rumble up the driveway, Kate smears one last handful of white goo onto my back and caps the bottle with a loud snap. I stand up, my legs wobbly with nerves, and stuff my towel into my beach bag, which Kate has loaded down with about eleven bottles of Ensure, extra sunscreen, crackers, and carrot sticks.
We still don’t say anything, though, as we head out to the porch. Lena gets out of her truck and waves at me. I wave back, but my stomach feels like there’s a thunderstorm happening in there, all lightning flashes and rumbles. Lena doesn’t come up to the porch and I’m glad. I need a second to get a grip.
“Okay,” Kate says, taking a deep breath. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Be safe, all right?”
I glance up at her. Her eyes look a little red, a little wet. “I will.”
“I mean, really safe.”
I manage a tiny smile. “The safest.”
She nods and looks away, but then she pulls me into a hug and kisses the top of my head. I want to roll my eyes at her, but I don’t. I hug her back.
Kate walks me down to Lena’s truck and I get in before anyone—me included—changes their mind about this whole adventure. Kate and Lena talk for a second, but soon, Lena’s sitting next to me and we’re ready to go, two surfboards piled up in the bed of her truck. I relax into the white leather seat.
It’s barely six o’clock in the morning, the sun pinking up the sky, but Lena says early-morning surfing is the best. Kate watches from the porch as Lena turns the truck around, watches us roll down the driveway, and she probably keeps on watching long after we’re out of sight and heading toward the east end of the island. I feel a twinge of guilt, but I swallow it down. I’m going surfing, after all. I’m living.
The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James Page 11
