Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (27 page)

“Enough for them to hate me?” I asked.

Claire looked out at the water, watching birds circle over the ocean. “Around here, our lives revolve around the water, even for those of us who aren’t finfolk. And it hasn’t been easy. My daddy used to run a big fishing business, back when I was a kid, and he sold his fish all over the coast. From Maryland to Florida, people knew his name and his fish.”

“He doesn’t do that anymore?” I asked.

“The fish aren’t like they used to be,” Claire explained. “The catches are smaller and a lot of people don’t buy fish from us anymore. They can get it cheaper from other countries. That’s why my daddy had to lay off almost all of his workers and sell all but two of his boats. By next year, he’ll probably be down to just one.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

Claire shrugged. “It’s the way of life here. Businesses close, people leave, hurricanes tear down things. But we find a way to survive somehow. We always do.”

A chill raced its way up my spine. “Why don’t you just leave? Go some place where your parents can find better work.”

She gave me a confused look. “Why should we leave? This is where we belong.”

Her words caused an ache deep inside me. I envied her certainty about where she belonged. I wished that I could find that one place where I fit in and couldn’t imagine anywhere being anywhere else.

But right now, I felt as broken as the pier we sat on, torn between the water that tried to claim it and the sand that fought to hold it in place.

Chapter Thirty-One

“Let’s go over to the mainland this weekend,” Sailor said as she dipped a fry into her ketchup on Friday afternoon.

Dylan glanced at me. “Do you want to go or do you have something else you’d rather do?” he asked.

Sailor glared across the table. “Why do we always have to do what Mara wants?”

My gaze slid across the cafeteria toward the table where Josh sat with his usual group, including Elizabeth. The room was too noisy with conversations all around me to hear what was happening over there, but I had an unobstructed view of him. He always sat at the end of the table, hunched over his food as if to shield himself from them. He rarely spoke as he ate and Elizabeth shot him more than one annoyed glance when he didn’t take any interest in whatever she was talking about.

My plan was to be long gone from Swans Landing by the weekend. The incident with Josh’s mom and the sabotage of Lake’s pots had sealed my resolve. There was no place for me here, and I was certain that Sailor would be only one of many who would not miss my presence.

I had not slept very well the last two nights. The nap at Josh’s house had been the best sleep I’d had in a long time and now I was too afraid to sleep without him at my side.

But I had avoided Josh so far at school the last two days. I averted my gaze from his even though I could feel his eyes boring holes into the side of my head as we passed in the hall. He’d never come after me or talk to me in front of the other kids at school. He never let them know about us. Instead, he let Elizabeth hang onto his arm like she had a right to be there. She didn’t even know him, not the real Josh that I had come to understand.

“You’re free to do whatever you want,” I told Sailor as I pushed the remains of my lunch around on my tray. “I never said anyone has to do what I say.”

Sailor wrinkled her nose in Dylan’s direction. “Some people certainly seem to think so.”

“Mara is new here,” Dylan told her. “And she’s new to this whole finfolk thing. We need to spend time with her to make all of this easier.”

Sailor snorted, rolling her eyes.

“I’m fine,” I said to Dylan, giving him a friendly smile. “Really, you don’t have to hold my hand through this whole transition. I need to figure some things out on my own.”

“I know it’s not easy to adjust to all these new experiences,” Dylan said. “I want to help out any way that I can.”

Across the room, Josh stood and walked over to the trash cans to dump out his tray. I watched as he walked through the room, shoulders hunched and head down, hands buried in his pockets. My mouth went dry and my senses were on high alert, watching for any little sign from him.

Just before he reached the door, he looked up, almost imperceptibly, and his gaze met mine. Then he looked away and left the room.

I practically leaped from my seat. “Um,” I said, stammering for an excuse, “I remembered something I forgot. I have to go.”

Dylan started to stand, but I shook my head. “Finish your lunch.” It came out almost sounding like a command. “I’ll see you in class later.”

I flew toward the trash cans to throw away my half-eaten lunch and then was out the door in seconds. Josh had disappeared, but I had never needed to know where he’d gone to know how to find him. My pulse sounded like thunder in my ears. My resolve was weak, but I didn’t care. I needed to see him one last time. Just once, to remember what it felt like to be close to him before I gave him up for good.

My feet led me down the hall, footsteps echoing in my ears, past the lockers and closed doors of classrooms, toward the front doors, toward
him
—

“Mara.” The voice was stern enough to invade my thoughts and stop me in my tracks just before I ran into Mr. Richter. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled sternly at me, his lips pressed into a thin straight line.

“We did not finish our session on Wednesday when you decided to leave,” he said. “I’ve been trying to track you down for the last two days, but you seem to be a hard person to find.”

I had the urge to push Mr. Richter out of the way, but I knew that would only land me in even more trouble than I already had. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We’ll reschedule the appointment, but right now I really have to go.”

“I’ve already rescheduled the appointment,” he told me, reaching to place his hand on my back and steer me toward his open door. “For right now. You and I have a lot we need to discuss.”

I twisted out of his reach, backing away. “Now doesn’t work for me. I really have to do something before class.”

“Mara, I am very concerned for you,” Mr. Richter told me. “You’re endangering your future if you don’t learn to control your impulsive actions and keep sight of what is really important.”

Why couldn’t this man find some other poor sap to focus all his energy on? Why did I get to be the lucky recipient of his guidance at all the wrong times? My head spun and my body cried out, wanting salt, wanting the water, wanting Josh.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Richter,” I said, my impatience taking over, “but I don’t have time for this right now.”

I pushed past him and ran out the front door of Swans Landing School, the door cracking against the side of the building with the force of my exit. Josh wasn’t outside so I kept running, desperate to satisfy the hungry cravings inside me.

Tree limbs reached out to scratch my face as I ran, tripping and stumbling, through the path that led to Pirate’s Cove. I burst through the edge of the forest into the hazy noon sunlight, peeling off my shoes, socks, and jeans as I drew closer to the water.

The ocean welcomed me with a frigid hug that invigorated my body, tingling deep into my skin and making me gasp, filling my lungs with the saltwater. My back arched when the change began, my teeth grinding together against the pain that seized my body.

And then Josh was there. His arms slipped around me, his voice whispered in my ear as he sung the song for me. My fingers dug into his shoulders and I clung tight to him.

He kissed me as the worst of the pain passed, as my joints popped apart and reshaped themselves into fins. He wrapped his gleaming silver tail around my legs as they fused into gold scales. We floated, caught in the embrace of the ocean’s current, drifting slowly downward among fish and jellyfish and crabs.

We surfaced after some time, treading water. My left hand entwined with his right, fingers locked to make sure he couldn’t leave me.

“I’m sorry about my mom,” he told me.

I shook my head. “It’s fine. Forget about it.”

“She’s not always like that,” he said. “She doesn’t want to take her medicine anymore, doesn’t think she needs it. I can’t convince her that she does.”

I pressed my fingers to his lips. “It’s okay.”

He kissed my fingertips. “I thought she had scared you off.”

“I’m not an ordinary girl,” I said, trying to sound confident even though his mom had frightened me. “It takes a lot more than that to scare me.”

He laughed a little. I loved to see his smile. He didn’t do it very often, and I’d only seen him do it when directed at me.

“Let’s leave this place,” I said, pulling myself across the water closer to him so that our faces were only inches apart. “We won’t have to worry about any of this stuff out there. It can be you and me forever.”

He closed his eyes as I caressed his cheek. “Where will we go?” he asked softly.

My heart pounded against my chest so hard it seemed impossible that it wasn’t about to crack open. “Anywhere you want. Hawaii. Africa. Australia. Anywhere the water touches. No one can stop us.”

He opened his eyes and the sad expression in them made me pull back slightly. I knew what he was going to say before the words came out.

“I can’t.”

I shook my head, fighting back tears. “Come with me. I don’t want to go without you.”

“Then don’t go,” he told me, pulling me back to him. “Stay.”

“I don’t belong here.”

“You belong with me,” he whispered. Floating there on the water, wrapped in his embrace, I could almost picture myself staying. Growing up on the island, living a life on land with Josh, relegating the water to a once a month thing like so many others of our kind did.

But once we were back on land and dressed, the warmth and safety of the ocean flooded away and was replaced by memories of the looks from people at school and around town. Reality was harsh on shore.

“I have to ask you something,” I said, remembering what I’d witnessed on this very beach.

Josh sat next to me, his eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Yes?”

“What’s going on between you and Sailor?”

His expression didn’t change. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He seemed so innocent, so unconcerned. Had it really been Josh and Sailor that day? Maybe it hadn’t been what I thought it was. Why couldn’t I trust my own judgment anymore?

“Nothing’s going on between Sailor and me,” Josh told me. “I promise.”

I nodded slowly, trying to accept his words. He wouldn’t lie to me. He had told me about the finfolk song, told me the truth about himself. He had been trying to tell me about the finfolk all along, giving me the name of that book in the library. He was the only one who had respected me enough to be honest.

I still had more questions that needed to be answered.

“What exactly happened to make people here hate finfolk?” I asked.

Josh’s gaze focused far off into the distance across the ocean, where a few birds swooped over the water. “I only know what I’ve managed to put together over the years, bits and pieces of stories. There was a death, a human death, and the people blamed the finfolk. A lot of finfolk went back to the water after what happened. A lot of them stopped resisting the ocean’s call.”

“So the ones that stayed behind try to call them back each new moon,” I filled in.

Josh nodded.

“Who died?” I asked. “What happened that night?”

“It started before I was born,” Josh said. “A human man had the bad luck of falling in love with a young finfolk woman. But the problem was, he was already married, with a young child.

“At first, no one suspected anything,” Josh went on. His body was tense under his thick black hoodie, his shoulders hunched together. “The man wanted to learn more about the finfolk and their lives in the water. He had listened to the song secretly for many months, but back then, it wasn’t uncommon for people of the island to listen sometimes. It wasn’t like it is now, where everyone hides out in their homes on song nights to pretend that it isn’t happening.”

Josh paused a moment before continuing. “But eventually, the man started wandering closer and closer to the finfolk on these nights, talking with them as they emerged from the water. That’s how he first became involved with her, the woman he had an affair with.”

“So what happened?” I prompted gently.

“The truth came out eventually. The finfolk woman got pregnant by the human man. He decided to leave his wife, but the woman didn’t want him to. When the news of the affair spread among the island, the people became divided. The humans accused the finfolk woman of throwing herself at a married man. The finfolk accused the human man of taking advantage of a young woman. The woman got scared and told the man to go back to his wife. He tried, but he was still obsessed with the finfolk. During the next song night, he followed them into the water. But there had been a storm that day and the water was rough, too rough for a human to swim.”

His voice was barely above a whisper when he said, “So he drowned.”

I shivered as a cold breeze washed over me and I let these words settle into my thoughts, trying to put together the last piece of a puzzle inside my mind.