“Come on,” Celia says, and grabs the door of the church. It sticks, so she yanks harder—paint flutters off the frame when it finally gives. I follow her inside, turning back to look at the trail of blood I’ve left from the door. She props the door open, then sits down just inside the entryway. I take a seat beside her, sigh as the pressure against my feet is relieved. The back of the church is filled with pews that are tossed together like toys, the ground is dusted with sand and dried sea grass, and it smells of the salt I’m sure the wooden floor has absorbed. As the wind picks up, the walls creak and the light fixture over the pulpit sways, but we’re dry—at least we’re dry. Celia looks at me a little nervously as I stare at the waves chewing at the shore.
“I don’t know what changed. Do you?” Celia asks. I turn to look at her, and she continues, face in shadow. “Why you’re like this now? How you can live in the water?”
I shake my head. “All I remembered before I met you was a man bringing me to the water, showing me how to find the other girls, but at that point I was already different, I wasn’t really like you anymore. And the water…” I look back to the waves, and the sound of the thunderstorm pounding on the roof intensifies. “I’m not sure. Right now it seems crazy that I’d come out of or go back into it. But then when I’m there, it makes sense.” I smile a little, though it feels fake. “As much sense as a girl who can read your past does, anyway.”
“Fair point,” Celia says. “I was just wondering… maybe that scream in your head… maybe the reason it’s clouding everything is it was the change. I think the screaming happened when Lo was created. Do you remember who the man was? Maybe he knows what changed before he helped you.”
I feel Lo thumping in my head as I answer. “I don’t know his name. They say he was an angel. That he’ll come back for us when we grow old.”
There’s a long pause. Lightning crashes somewhere outside, barely audible over the roar of the waves. Celia looks at me strangely. “Naida. You’re Naida right now, aren’t you?”
“I think so. Yes. But Lo is always there. And I’m always here when Lo is… here. It’s like I’m asleep and dreaming about Lo’s life, and then I wake up and I’m me again.”
She waits a long time before speaking. “Do you remember anything about the man who brought you here? Maybe I can find him.”
I close my eyes, try to think back. “Scars,” I say. “He had scars on his chest, thick ones. But that’s all I remember.”
“Then why do you—why does Lo believe he’s an angel?” she asks.
I pause, smile a little at how stupid my words are going to sound. “Why do you believe in angels here on shore? Because they have to, I guess. They have to believe in something, or it means we’re all just sea foam when it’s over—” No, no. That’s Lo talking, winding her way back into my head. I close my eyes, smother her voice.
“That’s true,” Celia says, apparently not noticing Lo’s voice interrupting mine—a fact that bothers me. “But I haven’t seen anything like angels in your memories.”
“He didn’t have wings….” I explain slowly. This memory is half Lo’s, and it’s hard to see, but I don’t dare let her rise back up to give a full answer. “He didn’t look anything like an angel, I don’t think. But whatever happened with the screaming, he made the pain go away when he brought me here.” I turn to her. “Is it that horrible? The screaming?”
Celia inhales. “Yes. It scared me, the first time I touched you.”
“You can stop. If you need to,” I say, but I can’t look at her as I do.
“No,” Celia says swiftly, and then, as if to convince herself, “No. I want to help. You’re the first person I’ve been able to help with my power.”
“Are your sisters like you?” I ask. “Can they read the past?”
Celia pauses, long enough that I can tell she’s debating something important. “No. They have other… talents.”
“But you don’t want to tell me what those are,” I say.
She shakes her head. “They’re not mine to tell.”
I nod. “It’s good that you don’t tell me. They’re your sisters, they’re important. You only get so many.” I only had one. One, and I can’t remember her name. I have others now, under the water, but it’s not the same, is it? Down there, it feels like they’re as good as blood, but now, they’re nothing more than fellow victims of some mysterious, scream-inducing force. “You should tell them about me, though. Don’t keep secrets.”
“They’d never believe me,” she says, laughing a little.
I drag my toe along the wooden floor, leaving a crescent shape in the sand. Would I tell my sister something like this, if I could remember her name?
If I could remember anything about her? I shake off the misery that’s ebbing around my mind.
“Keep talking,” I say. “Maybe we can trigger another memory.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lo
Are we not good enough?
A night or two later, that’s all I think over and over and over. Aren’t my sisters good enough? I think about my past as a human, my future as an angel, like they’re two great lights and I’m currently in darkness. But I’m happy with my sisters. I love my sisters. Aren’t they good enough for me? I should stay away from the shore, stay away from Naida. When Naida is talking to Celia, when she’s in the forefront of our shared mind, I feel weak, dizzy. I ache to return to the water—she resists me more and more each time, till the pain is so intense I almost can’t bear it. And yet… I want to remember her. I want her to remember her life. I want us to… I want to stop feeling like us, start feeling like one girl, with a past as Naida and a present as Lo.
To do that, I have to be able to surface as Lo. Stay myself instead of letting Naida take over every time. I grimace and push off the ocean floor, swimming diagonally in the direction of the pier.
I break the surface of the water swiftly just after crossing the sandbar. I punch out of the waves so hard that water splashes in a halo around my body. The wind sweeps around me. It hurts, it hurts badly; the water lapping around my shoulders is sweet relief in comparison. I wait for the memories to come back as the wind whistles around my ears.