“He’s not bad-looking, either,” Jane adds. I turn to her, and she giggles. “You were still thinking about his face! I didn’t mean to. He’s not, like, movie-star hot, but he has that sort of indie look going for him.”
“Go see him,” Anne insists. “What else do you have to do?”
“You know I don’t like to talk to people I’ve read!”
“Which probably explains why you only talk to us,” Anne answers.
The thing about Anne is, she doesn’t necessarily win an argument. She just wears you down, beats at your edges until it’s easier to give in than it is to fight her. And she’s not wrong—I don’t really talk to anyone other than my sisters. She just doesn’t understand that it’s with good reason. Why would I talk to people, get to know them, when the slightest touch means knowing their strongest memories? Sometimes it’s not terrible, I guess, when the strongest memory is something beautiful, but so often it’s not…. I’ve told Anne this before. She doesn’t understand, though, and so she’ll wear me down instead of trying. What can I say? She was the firstborn of the three of us. Maybe that’s why she’s the strongest.
“Maybe I’ll go today. I don’t know,” I answer. “I’ll need the car.” I’m hoping the last point will persuade them to drop it—when we were only eleven, Anne predicted that I would wreck our car. Ever since, she and Jane have been wary of letting me drive it, even though I’m the only one without a speeding ticket to my name. Anne’s power is almost a sure thing, though; even when she tries to intervene, the futures she reads almost always come to pass. She says that’s because the future is like tangled string—you might be able to see how it ends, but it’s almost impossible to work out the knots and figure out how it got there. And apparently there are an awful lot of knots between me and a wrecked car.
They look at each other, weighing the worthiness of me behind the wheel with their desire for scandal. “Ugh, fine,” Jane says. “But can we come?” Damn. Not the response I was hoping for.
“Probably not. I don’t even know if they’ll let me in to see him. Last night it was just a special circumstance, since I… I saved him.”
“Well, if he turns out to be awesome, you have to take us eventually,” Jane says, as if I just ruined her plans for the day. I avoid them for the next few hours, Jane especially, because I have no intention to actually go see Jude. But there is something I plan to do—go back to the beach. Look for Naida.
I don’t really want to. The more I think about her, the more afraid I am of her. And I wasn’t lying to Anne—I don’t enjoy seeing people I’ve read. But as much as I liked Jude’s memories, I know I can force myself to forget him. As much as Naida’s mind scared me, confused me, I know I won’t be able to forget her. I won’t be able to forget the way she disappeared into the water, and I won’t be able to forget the way she looked at me when I called her name—like she didn’t know it. Like she was a wild thing, and I was calling her as if she were tame. There must be an explanation, and maybe if I see her again, I’ll understand, and I can forget.
I leave for the beach in the early evening, an hour or so before the sun will start setting. Jane, thinking I’m meeting Jude, hassles me for not wearing a dress, but I manage to stave her off with excuses about hurrying to arrive before visiting hours at the hospital are over. I jump in the car and leave before she can “accidentally” touch me and realize I’m lying.
Our car is a hand-me-down, bought for dirt cheap off a boy Anne charmed. It rattles, and the sunshine-yellow paint job is splotchy, but it runs. Anne and Jane don’t like to be seen in it, and to be entirely honest, it’s not something I’d proudly identify as my own. But it does the job, so that’s enough, I suppose. I take the long way through town to avoid the inevitable traffic at the amusement center that’s always packed with waterslide-hungry kids, and to stall a little bit longer….
Eventually I have to park. I do so at the Pavilion—it’s closed during the day, but I see a handful of employees setting up for the evening. Down the pier, I can see police tape sectioning off the back end, where the lifted board that caused Jude to trip is astonishingly visible in the daylight. I walk past the pier’s mouth and take the same road down to the beach that I took last night. It’s hardly a road at all, just rocks and sand and sea grass, and the ground shifts under your feet with every step. Farther down the beach, where the water and the sky blur together to form a misty violet-colored line, I can see shapes of people, hundreds of them playing in the water. Bright orange circles—umbrellas—dot the shore, and every now and then the wind stops and the tiniest sampling of laughter and conversation reaches me.
I drop a towel in the sand and sit by the old church, leaning my back against its graffiti-laden wall. I try to figure out exactly where I was standing last night, exactly where the ambulance drove off, where Naida ran into the water leaving only a trail of bloody footprints. It’s impossible, though—the tide has eaten all evidence that anyone was ever here.
The sun begins to set; every second the water reflects a new color. Peaches and yellows and purples and bright, almost neon pink. They make the ocean look like it’s being iced with the colors of the sky above, yet underneath those highlights, the water is blacker than ever. I stare into the water like it might toss Naida out at me, like it cares that I’m here against my better judgment, like it will reward me for coming back.
It doesn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
Lo
I wake up with a jolt. Have I lost it?
No. Naida. I exhale, turn over on my stomach. The sand grinds beneath me, cradling my body. It’s nearly dusk, based on the amount of light peering through the water. The other girls are talking, a few of the youngest halfheartedly playing with a crab that’s poking out from under the Glasgow’s hull. It bares its claws; they taunt it into snapping at them and laugh so quietly it’s almost not laughter at all but just another sound in the ocean. Pity we haven’t seen whales in ages. They’re so big, they make me feel small, remind me of how large the ocean is, that it holds creatures like them. And they’ll play games, sort of, if you can get them to stay under long enough. I wish we could talk to them, ask them how they manage to go from the depths to the surface so often….