She couldn’t remember what happened to her, what turned her into an ocean girl. It was the strongest memory, the first to go. All Lo remembered was standing at the shore of the ocean with a man whose face she couldn’t remember. Her body ached, and there was a jagged wound over her heart. The man sent her into the ocean, told her the other girls would find her. He was one of the angels, Ry told her when she arrived.
Lo doubted that as well.
She touched the scar on her chest, almost faded entirely. There was a voice in her head telling her to stop, to turn back, but she ignored it and swam closer, closer to where the waves crashed against the shore.
Sing, a different voice said. A voice that longed to be human again, the voice of the girl she used to be.
The sisters sang all the time, songs that melded together to form one voice that made the ocean thick with music. Lo opened her lips, let the notes emerge.
The boy stopped first, then the girl. They looked at the ocean. Did they see her? The thought was exhilarating, dangerous. She sang louder; behind her, she heard her sisters join in, voices quiet, guiding her along in the song.
The boy stooped to set his light down in the sand, pointing at the ocean, talking with the girl. He waved at Lo, big arms over his head. He saw her. He sees me; he’s coming for me—yes, he took tentative steps into the water. Come, where it’s deeper, please….
The girl yelled, shouted, tried to pull him back, but he took another step, another, another. The song grew louder. Lo extended her hand in the moonlight. He had a handsome face, sharp features like a statue. His clothing, now soaked, clung to his body as he reached toward her.
She took his hand. Don’t be scared. When he touched her, more memories of her old life slammed into her mind. Being held by her father, the scent of his cologne. The smell of things baking, the way fire leaped up from kindling. She swallowed hard, held on to each memory as long as possible before looking back to the boy’s eyes.
“Hello,” the boy said. He sounded dazed and blinked furiously. Lo stopped singing, and her sisters’ song grew louder in response.
“Do you love me?” Lo whispered.
The boy looked surprised for a moment. Her sisters sang louder—he was having trouble fighting them. “I…” He looked back to the girl on the shore. “I love her. The girl by the church, I love her.”
Lo’s jaw stiffened; her fingers on the boy’s hand tightened. “No, no, you love me.”
The ocean shifted again, and some of her sisters stopped singing, started whispering. They were tired of the air touching their skin; they wanted to go back under—they wanted to leave. Lo bit her lip, ran her fingers along the boy’s shirtsleeves. Fabric hanging on a clothesline, laundry being folded, the way towels felt drying off her skin, more memories that proved even harder to hold on to. They skirted out of her mind like little fish, then darted back to the recesses they came from. Forgotten.
By the next deep tide, I’ll have forgotten everything, just like them, she thought, glancing back at her sisters. That’s why they didn’t want the boy for themselves. They don’t care about their souls anymore. I won’t care in another fifteen months.
Now. It has to be now. Be brave. It has to happen.
She pulled the boy closer to her, so that his breath warmed her skin. “Love me.”
“I…”
There was no time. Maybe he loved her already, maybe that was good enough, maybe—the ocean changed again, and the oldest sisters ducked back underwater. Lo inhaled, grasped both edges of the boy’s shirt, pulled him against her lips, and kissed him, pleadingly, sorrowfully, desperately.
Then she pulled the boy under.
He hardly fought at first, still entranced with their song, confused, and she was so much more powerful than him in the water. It was easy to pull him into the deep, down to the ocean floor, so easy that for a minute, Lo was able to forget what she was doing to him. His eyes were growing wider; he began to fight for air, struggle against her. This is it. It’s happening. My soul, I’ll go back—
His eyes rolled back in his head. Lo realized her sisters were everywhere, watching, waiting. She leaned over the boy and kissed him again as the last precious bit of oxygen left his lips and floated to the surface.
And then he was dead.
And nothing else had changed.
Lo stared at her hands, at her feet, waiting for the pale blue color to turn back to shades of peach and pink. Waiting for the urge to surface, to gulp air happily, to swim to the shore and run on the sand.
It didn’t come.
“Everyone has to try it for herself,” Ry said gently, swimming closer. The boy’s body listed on the ocean floor like seaweed. Lo felt sick; she doubled over and hid her head. “We all did. But it never works. You can’t make them love you that fast.”
“I don’t think it’s even real, that you can get your soul back,” an older girl added. “It’s a fairy story. Oh, Lo, don’t cry. You have us. You don’t need their world now. You don’t have to worry about remembering anymore. You can just be happy here. And one day, the angels will come back for you, and it’ll be beautiful, Lo. It’ll be perfect.”
Lo turned and cried into her sisters’ arms, for her soul, for the boy, for the memories. Her sisters brushed out her hair and held her close. They pushed the boy’s body away so she couldn’t see it. They sang songs and began games to take her mind off what had happened.
But when the night ended and her sisters went to sleep, Lo stared at the sun from deep beneath the waves, at the tiny threads of blue light that made their way through the water, down to where she was.
Her soul was gone for good. The boy was dead, the girl left alone on the shore. And for nothing, nothing at all, other than a fairy tale and a few scattered memories of life on land. Let it go. Let it all go.
And she allowed herself to forget.
CHAPTER ONE
Celia
My sisters love this place.
It smells like sand and cigarettes and cotton candy, like sunscreen and salt. The scent builds up all summer, and now, at the height of tourist season, it’s so thick that I think I could wave an empty bottle around and it would fill with liquid perfume.
We cut through the Skee-Ball parlor and emerge on the main drag of the Pavilion, lights and sounds everywhere, crowds of people with terrible sunburns. My sisters giggle to each other, the two of them perfectly in step ahead of me. We are triplets, but they are the twins, a perfectly matched set with high eyebrows and pretty lips. To most people, we look identical; to one another, my features are a little different. A little off, a not-quite-right replica of Anne and Jane.