Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (9 page)

I swallowed, but managed to speak despite my surprise at his reaction. “Finfolk,” I said again. “What do you know about them?”

His eyes looked me up and down. “What do
you
know about them?” he countered.

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Nothing. I heard the word for the first time two minutes ago, but no one will tell me what it means.”

His nose wrinkled. “So you think I’m going to tell you?”

Of course he wasn’t. That much was clear. Whatever these finfolk were, they were a closely guarded secret. It wasn’t that I even cared, but it was infuriating to keep finding more and more secrets everywhere I looked.

“No,” I said. “Forget it.”

I turned to walk in the other direction, hitching my bag up on my shoulder.

“There’s a book you might want to read.”

My boots squeaked on the floor at my sudden stop. Josh still stood in the same place I had left him, but he didn’t meet my gaze.

“What?” I asked.

“A book in the library.” He stared at a poster advertising the student council’s fish fry fundraiser as he spoke, picking at a loose thread on his hoodie. “
Fae and Other Tales
.”

“I don’t believe in fairies,” I told him.

He shrugged. “It might have other answers you’re looking for.”

With that, he turned and shuffled down the hall.

Chapter Nine

The slam of the front door downstairs made me jump from my spot on the mattress in the loft. My Saturday afternoon so far had consisted of ignoring the mounds of homework my teachers had loaded me down with in an effort to help me catch up to the rest of the class. Outside, rain had threatened to fall all day and thick ashy clouds blanketed the sky.

I was perfectly content to spend all afternoon examining the exposed wooden slats of my loft bedroom, hoping that Lake had found the time to replace the shingles on this crumbling little house every now and then over the years. Mostly, though, I was trying to take my mind off Josh Canavan, who seemed to be invading all of my thoughts lately. The more I tried not to think about him, the more his face appeared in my mind.

Heavy footsteps stomped across the floor downstairs. Lake must have gotten home from wherever he’d run off to this morning.

Then another sound drifted toward me. Shouting. More like ranting and raving actually, coming from outside.

Through the porthole window, I saw a thin woman with wild hair standing in our front yard. She screamed obscenities in the direction of the house. It took me a moment to figure out why she looked familiar.

It was the woman from the bus the first day I came to Swans Landing. She picked up one of the white rocks lining the path to the steps, then swung her arm back and hurled it at the house. The rock hit the wall and skittered back across the front porch.

What was going on now?

Lake stood at the kitchen counter, his back to me when I entered the room. “What’s that outside?” I asked.

Lake jumped and then tried to appear busy, as if he’d been downstairs washing the dishes all day, despite the fact that he rarely washed dishes.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “I didn’t know you were home. I figured you were hanging out with Dylan today.”

“No, I’m trying to take a nap,” I said.

Lake’s shoulders relaxed slightly, but he still seemed on edge. “Got anything interesting planned today?” he asked.

“Probably not as interesting as your day seems to be.”

His eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

I walked toward the front door and pulled it open. “I mean, there’s a woman standing on our front lawn and I think she just called you a barnacle sucker.” The woman still stood in the middle of our lawn, her hair waving in wild curls around her head. When she spotted me, her shouts grew louder and she tossed a few more rocks toward the house.

Lake took two wide steps toward the door and slammed it shut again. “Oh, that? That’s nothing.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s going on?”

“I told you, it’s nothing,” Lake said. But he wouldn’t meet my gaze and outside the shouting grew louder.

I didn’t say anything as I stared back at Lake, unwavering. He walked to the kitchen and turned on the faucet, letting water run until it was warm and then started rinsing off the bowls stacked inside the sink. Even when he attempted to do housework, he wasn’t very good at it, apparently unconcerned with things like soap or wash cloths to actually clean anything, as if the water would take care of the germs on its own.

“If you’re not going out there, I am,” I said, pulling the door open again.

Lake shut off the water and turned to me, twisting the silver pendant he wore around his neck. “It’s a misunderstanding.”

“Which is what exactly?” I asked.

Lake moved past me toward the door. “Nothing. I’ll go talk to her.”

I stepped onto the porch after him, hugging my arms over my chest to block out the chill in the air. The woman—Silvia, I remembered Lake had called her—had to be about the same age as Lake, though she looked haggard and had a permanent downward curl to her lips. Today she wore an old ragged sweatsuit, a house coat hanging off her shoulders and dirty slippers on her feet.

As Lake walked across the yard toward her, she became even more frenzied. Her hands scratched at the ground for anything she could arm herself with even though Lake held his hands up in a surrendering pose.

Dodging a clump of sand Silvia threw at him, Lake reached for her to try to calm her down. She twisted out of his way, stumbling backward. I could see Lake’s lips move as he spoke to her, but I couldn’t hear anything he said. Across the street, the neighbors that I still had yet to actually meet peeked out of their front window to see what was going on. But no one came out to help and after a moment, they turned away, pulling their curtains tight.

I wandered down the stairs slowly to keep from upsetting Silvia again. She had calmed down and stood in front of Lake, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she sucked in gasps of air. She looked poised to take off running at any moment.

Lake held up a hand to stop me from coming any closer. “I’m going to take Silvia home,” he told me.

“Do you need some help?” I asked.

“No, it’s fine. She lives a couple blocks away.”

When Lake reached for her hand, Silvia jumped back. “Don’t touch me, you vile chum eater,” she spat. “You think you can walk around here innocent of his blood after what y’all did?” She pointed a crooked finger at Lake. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, I promise you that.”

“Go back inside,” Lake told me, trying to steer Silvia toward the street without actually touching her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

It wasn’t long before Lake returned, alone. His shoulders slumped and he looked exhausted as he ran a hand down his face, pulling at his chin. I sat at the island counter, waiting.

“Well?” I asked when he’d closed the door behind him.

“Yes?”

I waved my hands in a wide gesture. “Explain.”

Lake shrugged and walked over to his table of shells. “I took Silvia home and there’s nothing to worry about.”

His movements were rigid as he picked through the shells. “I think I deserve an explanation as to why there was a crazy woman screaming at us from our front yard,” I said.

“She’s not crazy. She’s confused. I told you it was a misunderstanding.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not stupid, Lake. If that was a misunderstanding, it was a pretty big one.”

When Lake didn’t say anything, I let out a frustrated sigh. “Does this have anything to do with why the neighbors don’t talk to you? And why kids at school don’t look my way except when my back is turned? Because, you know, if you’ve done something to piss everyone off, I would really like to know. I think I deserve that.”

“Nothing is going on,” Lake repeated, his tone stern.

“Can’t one person around here answer a single question? All I get are more and more secrets, piled one on top of another.”

Lake stomped across the floor toward his room. I jumped off the bar stool and followed. He wasn’t getting out of this that easily.

“I’ve lived my entire life with questions that no one wanted to answer.” Lake tried to close his door on me, but I stuck my foot in the way. “I’m not going away until you tell me something.”

“Drop it,” Lake said. His voice was low and even, but his hand on the doorknob trembled.

Inside, my own body shook with anger and frustration, but I wasn’t going to let Lake see that. I clenched my jaw, forcing back any evidence of weakness.

“Tell me,” I said.

“It’s not as simple as you think.”

“Then explain it slowly.”

“I don’t think you’re ready to hear it.” He turned away, his eyes focused on the wall. The lines around his eyes had deepened.

“Is it about Mom?” I asked.

“Let it go, Mara. I will tell you when you can understand.”

“When will that be? I’m not a child and you’ve put me through enough hell my entire life. Don’t tell me what I don’t understand. You know, I’ll bet this is exactly why Mom left you. Because you refuse to actually talk about anything. You treat everyone else like you don’t even care—”

“I said,
drop it!
” Lake’s sudden shout surprised me and I jumped, flinching at the sound of his voice echoing through the house. His features had twisted into a deep snarl, his skin taut and white.

Lake’s vicious appearance dissipated and he blinked at me as I stepped backward. “Mara,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I took another step back, putting distance between us. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry I ever came here.”

Chapter Ten

My footsteps crunched on a mix of sand, rocks, and shells as I shivered and wrapped my arms tighter around myself. An intelligent person would have taken five seconds to grab her coat before storming out of the house to make a point to her deadbeat dad.

Lake should have been the one out here walking in the cold wind. Why was it that whenever Lake didn’t want something, I got the lousy end of the deal? Lake didn’t want a family—I got to grow up not knowing my dad. Lake still didn’t want me around—I ended up freezing.

Anger fueled my feet and my head remained bent toward the ground, so I didn’t notice the small group waiting outside of Moody’s Variety Store until I stood a few feet from them.

“Look at that,” Elizabeth Connors said, her voice breaking into my thoughts. “The new girl is out all alone. Where’s your little bodyguard?”

I stopped, looking across the short distance toward Elizabeth and Jackie and two other girls from our classes. They all sneered back at me as they sipped from straws in the Styrofoam cups they held.

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” I said. “Want to find out first hand how well I can handle things on my own?”

Elizabeth’s lip curled into a snarl over her drink. “I don’t want you touching me. Who knows what kind of scummy diseases you carry.”

The other girls burst out with shrill laughter as they stood in a line facing off against me. A car drove by, but the man behind the wheel only glanced our way briefly and then kept going without stopping. It was me alone against the people of this island, whether they happened to be arrogant high school girls or a secretive father.

“I’m not playing these stupid games with you,” I said, turning around and starting to walk in the other direction. “Go find someone else to occupy your time.”

I had taken only three steps when something hard hit the back of my head, which then exploded into a cold, wet river trickling down my hair and into the collar of my shirt. A Styrofoam cup landed at my feet, rolling across the crumbling sidewalk as brown soda puddled around me.

The girls doubled over with laughter when I whirled around. Elizabeth’s empty hands made it easy to figure out who had thrown the drink.

“Oh, I am
so
clumsy,” Elizabeth said in a sweet voice. “But lucky for you, it’s impossible to make you look any worse than you already do. I’d say Diet Coke to the back of the head is an improvement. Wouldn’t you, girls?”

Their laughter grew louder, flooding my ears as I sucked in deep breaths. My mom used to tell me when I got mad to count to ten and let myself calm down. But at this moment, I couldn’t even
remember
how to count to ten. All I wanted to do was smash Elizabeth’s face into the Diet Coke puddle at my feet.

“That’s enough, girls,” said a voice above us.

Miss Gale leaned over the railing outside the variety store. She glared down at Elizabeth and her friends, her hands tight on the cracked wood.

Elizabeth shrank back slightly, though she tried to sound just as tough as she had toward me. “This doesn’t concern you, old hag,” she snapped.

Jackie and the other two girls took a step back, avoiding Miss Gale’s glare.

“I’ve had plenty of experience dealing with difficult Little Miss Prisses like you,” Miss Gale said, pointing a finger at Elizabeth. “And I’m not afraid to bend you over my knee right here on this street. You’d best be getting on home unless you want to get acquainted with the palm of my hand.”