Chapter Nineteen
“What’s on your mind?” my mom asked as we bounced along the road toward our house.
She’d been staring at me since we left the physical therapy office. She’d prodded my PT about whether or not I was going to be able to walk across the stage at my graduation, but found out nothing new. My mom didn’t deal well with being out of the loop, which was why she and my father were always at each other’s throats. None of us had been in his loop for months.
I ran my fingers through my still-wet hair and pressed my lips together. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Luna,” she begged. The tires squealed as we followed a curve in the road. “I’m trying to connect here.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Are you trying to have an Oprah moment with me?”
She laughed. I’d forgotten how pretty she was when her face wasn’t all pinched up with worry. She wore happiness better than she wore strife. Strife made my mom look constipated. “Maybe. A little. Come on, talk to me. How’s it going with…”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Saxon?”
“Yes. I was going to say that,” she replied quickly.
“No, you weren’t. You forgot his name.”
“I didn’t forget his name.” My mom rubbed her forehead. “OK, I did. But I know that—”
“You hate him?” I offered, cutting her off.
She frowned. “I don’t hate Saxon. I just think it’s odd.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “What’s odd?”
My mom gave me one of her looks. The one that warped her face into a mix of pity and humor. “He shows up here. His parents still haven’t moved into that house with him. Evey says he doesn’t go to school most days.”
Note to self: Kill Evey later.
“What are you getting at?”
“I think there’s something about him you obviously don’t want us to know.”
It was hard to swallow. If she only knew. “Don’t be weird, Mom.”
“Well, what is it?” She prodded. “He’s older, isn’t he?”
I took to counting the pine trees that whizzed by my window as we careened toward home. Five….eight…twelve…
“Is he in his twenties? Because if he is, your father and I are going to have a real problem with that.”
Seventeen…twenty….twenty-five…
My mom’s voice hardened. “You do understand that he could get into trouble—”
I snapped my head in her direction. “No, Mom! It’s not like that! There isn’t
anything
happening yet, all right?”
“Yet?” She peeled around another bend. “How serious are you two, anyway?”
My mind raced even faster than the red minivan.
Serious enough to be fighting off Isolde and facing death to be together. That serious enough for you, Ma? And you said I take nothing seriously.
I glared at my mom through my damp hair. “Serious enough to be going to the prom together.”
That rendered her speechless. It wasn’t as if she had much of an argument. It’s not as though she could keep me home from the prom if she were letting Evey go. I just wasn’t sure how many insane restrictions she was going to put on me to be allowed to do it.
I broke the silence after a good three minutes. “Come on. It’s not like you honestly didn’t think Saxon and I wouldn’t go.”
She pursed her lips. “I knew you’d probably insist on it.”
“Then why are you acting like I just announced I want to go bungee cord diving off of the Long Bridge?”
“I guess it
feels
like you’re asking to go bungeeing off of a bridge.”
“Ugh.” Irritation made my skin tingle, begging me to retaliate and start a fight. “Do you feel the same way about Evey going?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, I’m nervous about Evey going on a date with a boy. But I also know Hayden, and I know, er,
knew
his brother, and—”
“Mom, if you’re basing your opinion of Hayden on Ian, then your opinion shouldn’t be that high.” We passed by the school building where the reader board listed the details for Ian’s funeral in black plastic letters. How ironic.
“Stop that. He’s gone now. We shouldn’t talk that way.”
I gaped at the side of my mom’s head. “So because you think he’s dead, we’re not going to talk about the fact he dumped me for being in a wheelchair?”
She took her gaze from the road and rested it on my face. “I don’t
think
he’s dead. They called off the search. They’ve presumed he’s dead. It’s the only logical explanation.”
Logical being the operative word here.
I closed my eyes, ridding myself of any thoughts of Ian McClendon. “OK, can we just get back to the subject at hand?”
She sighed. “Fine. Yes. You can go to the prom with…”
I snorted bitterly. “You can’t even remember his name for more than five minutes.”
“Saxon!” Snapping her fingers, my mom grinned proudly. “I told you I knew his name. You and Saxon have to be home by ten.”
Deflated, I drooped my shoulders. “Ten? On prom night? Like…really?”
“I worry about you being out late at night. What if you get into a situation where you can’t get home? What if Saxon drinks? It’s not like you can drive yourself home.”
“OK, first off, Saxon won’t drink. He would never put me in danger.”
She raised her blondish red eyebrows high on her face. “You don’t know that.”
“Actually, I really, truly do know that he would never put me in danger. This is a fact, Mom.”
“Fine.” My mom pinched up her face. “You can go until midnight. But I’m taking you there and picking you up.”
“Mom. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m not. Does he own a car?” When I shook my head, she looked satisfied with her correctness. “Well, we both know you can’t drive, so—”
“Only because you won’t let me,” I snapped, glaring at the trees that whizzed past my window in a green blur. “You know I would love to be able to cart myself around instead of relying on you and Dad to take me everywhere like some sort of junior higher.”
She sighed, letting it evolve into a growl. “You’re living in our home. You have to follow our rules.”
“I’m eighteen years old. Do you understand that I can legally come and go as I please?”
She shot me a look. The official warning look that meant
shut up or duck
. “Yes, but you live in our house, and you have—”
“Special needs, right?” I scoffed, my blood sizzling. “I get it. You’re crippled daughter needs to have a special set of rules because not only was my spine injured in that accident, but my brain too. Apparently, I can’t make a good judgment call to save my life, so I need my parents to treat me like I’m perpetually twelve. That way they can make all my decisions for me.”
“I’m just trying to protect you!” She tapped the steering wheel with one finger. I was testing my mother’s patience, and I knew it. I couldn’t help myself though. I’d been saying these things for two years. It was time for her to listen.
“You’re smothering me!” I thundered, drowning out the hum of our tires on the road. Anger pressed against me from the inside, stretching my skin to capacity and threatening to slit me open. If that happened, my resentment would pour down onto the floor mats and make a freaking mess. I didn’t need this now. Not when every ounce of my energy was devoted to worrying about Saxon and the Council. “Mom, I swear, every time you speak to me, it feels like there are hands gripping my throat and squeezing! I can’t stand it! I can’t even breathe when I’m with you!”
My mom grit her teeth. “Don’t be theatrical—”
Shifting my upper body so I faced her fully, I felt the sting of tears assaulting my eyes. “As soon as I graduate, I’m leaving. I’m getting as far away from you and Dad and all of your guilt. And I’m never coming back, do you understand me?”
* * *
I could hear the sound of my parents arguing clear down the hill, and my cheeks stung from the breeze off the lake hitting my tear-streaked cheeks. The sound of my mother swearing at my father echoed between the thick trees surrounding our farmhouse. I cringed inwardly at the thought of what the Rogersons had to be thinking as they ate dinner out on their deck to the soundtrack of my parents’ marital strife.
Though admitting it made me sick to my stomach, I felt guilty for what I’d said to my mom. Yes, I’d been planning my escape from my parents for quite some time now, but did I plan to rub my mom’s face in it? And did I plan never to come back? No and no.
Well, so long as I was still
human
when I left…
I heard a door slam inside of the house and wiped my cheeks. I was sitting on the end of the dock with a metal fire poker from the set my father kept by the hearth in our living room. It wasn’t hard to sneak out the house with it. My parents had been too wrapped up in their most recent argument—titled
Luna Wants To Go To The Prom, Whose Fault Is It?—
to notice me rolling through the kitchen door with a wrought-iron rod on my lap.
I needed some time to think, and I wasn’t about to do it unprotected. I might have gimpy legs, but my arms worked just fine, and my swing was stronger than ever. Add a sharp metal poker to the mix, and Isolde would be begging for mercy. Besides, I wanted to be close to the water so Saxon could find me easily when he was able to sneak away from the clan.
If
he was able to sneak away. The last few days dragged by, and I’d barely managed to get through my last few finals in school without losing my cool. Every thought I had was preoccupied with whether or not I would ever see Saxon again, and every morning I woke up desperate for a sign that he’d survived another night.
He was being watched closely. The Council put the clan on high alert, insisting they all avoid interaction with him because he’d “gone mad.” He said there were whispers he’d turned his back on his own kind, and many of the Mer were already pushing for the Council to eliminate him without hearing him plead his case.
Some mornings the only sign he was still alive was a note scribbled on a scavenged scrap of paper from the recycle bin, and other mornings I would catch a glimpse of him from the neck up, hundreds of yards out from shore as I was leaving for school. According the notes, the Council was trying to force him to change his mind by limiting his food and breaks to go to the surface. Saxon said it was grueling to contain the shift from happening all day. That his fin ached to shift into legs, and his gills threatened to seal up spontaneously. He was allowed one break per day while being sequestered, and those breaks happened at random, which was why we’d not been together in days. The Council was waiting. Waiting for evidence that Saxon changed his mind. Waiting for him to admit defeat and to arrive at the bottom of the Pend Oreille with a body.
My
body.
“Sax, where are you?” I murmured, looking out over the choppy water. The wind was picking up, and the sky was gray and tumultuous. It was going to rain soon, which meant I had to hoist my butt back into my chair and push myself back up the hill before the clouds split open.
There was a dull ache behind my ribs, and I rubbed at it absently. There was nothing I wanted more than to pull Saxon close, tangle my fingers in his messy hair, and let him cradle me against his body. If I closed my eyes, I could almost smell him on the air. That smell of grass that twisted my insides into ribbon candy and made my head go light.
Heaving a sigh, I began scooting back to my chair. Maybe I could sneak back into the house without being noticed. The chances were slim. The white farmhouse was eerily quiet now, which meant the argument was over, and now my mother was likely cooking dinner in the kitchen with a casserole-size chip on her shoulder.
Luna?
For the briefest of moments, I thought it was Saxon, and my heart coughed and sputtered to life. But there was a rough edge to the voice. This voice sounded like…
“Ian?” I gasped, turning back around and scanning the shoreline.
Down here.
Looking below the edge of the dock, I saw the familiar head of white-blond hair just below the surface. Ian’s skin was pale and slightly bluish; his brow was pulled low over his circled eyes. The gills on either side of his neck were surrounded by dark red scratches, as if he’d been clawing at them for days on end; there were patches of his skin on his shoulders and arms where the scales appeared to be bubbling up and peeling. He looked physically and emotionally spent, and it turned my stomach to see him look so haggard.
I put out my hands when his head started to crest the water. “Ian, no! You have to stay in the water!”
He sank back down and glowered.
You know what she did to me.
Nodding, a lump of sadness grew inside of my throat. Ian McClendon was always so proud, so cocky as he strutted down the hallway under the hormonal gaze of every girl in school. The look in his eyes was so unhappy, my heart ached for his sake.
“Yes.” I tried to swallow my emotion down. “I…I’m sorry this happened to you.”
They tie me up, and they watch me all the time. They won’t let me go home.
“If you try to go home, you’ll die.” I hunched over the side of the dock. “They’re trying to help you.”
Help me? They
did
this to me!
“I know. But…Ian, they don’t mean us harm.” His face started to contort. “I mean, they do, but it’s because they have no choice. Their species is dying, and they can’t—”
Do I look like I care?
Ian’s voice was so loud inside of my head, a pain shot straight to my eardrums.
“OK, listen.” I took a deep breath to calm my hyperactive nerves and threw a glance over my shoulder. “Have you seen Saxon? Is he with you?”
I looked up at the empty driveway. Where were Hayden and Evey? They were due home from softball practice any time. Hayden would be crushed if he missed his brother.
When I dragged my eyes back to Ian, his head was above the water. His mouth opened, gagging and choking on the air like it was tar. His eyes instantly reddened and watered, and his gills opened and closed furiously, trying desperately to find water again.
“Get back under!” I yelped, pushing his head downward. “Ian, you’re choking! Go under the surface!”