“I haven’t written anything since the accident,” he says, fast, like he had to spit the words out. “I used to have this rule for myself, that I wrote a song every day. But ever since I fell, I haven’t been inspired. Well, until just now, when you said that about the ocean.” He looks at me, guilty almost, like he feels bad for confessing that. I look away, out over the water.
“I sing,” I say quietly. “Or, I do now, anyhow.”
“What types of songs?”
“Love songs, mostly,” I say. “The sad kind.”
“The best kind,” Jude says, smiling a little. “When I was in the water, I remember someone singing to me. The nurse at the hospital tried to convince me it was an angel.”
“It wasn’t,” I say.
“How do you know?”
I smile a tiny bit. “Because angels can’t live underwater.”
“Then how did I survive?” he asks. He’s teasing me, joking with me. It feels strange. His voice is so different from mine; it varies with each word, each letter. Mine is always the same.
I would like to tell this boy that I saved him. I’d like to tell him I’m the angel, that I stopped Molly, that it was her singing but that it was deadly. I even want to tell him that I pulled him out before Celia even got involved. Would he joke with me and laugh the way Celia says he does? Would he be able to love me?
Something shoots up in my chest, something hungry, something starving. If he loves me, I could…
I’d be Naida again. For the first time, that bothers me—Naida doesn’t feel sparked when Jude looks at her; Naida isn’t the one who pulled him out of the water. I am. But his soul, if I persuaded him to want me… the ocean is so close. It’d be easy to pull him in. Naida would get her soul back, Lo would be… gone, I guess. But there’d be no more floating along, pulled by the water, forced into the air, unable to control any of it. Naida could go back to her old life, make her own decisions, be her own person….
Would she forget me, the same way I’ve forgotten her?
Jude speaks, startling me. “I shouldn’t say all that. I survived because this girl pulled me out of the water and gave me CPR. Maybe she is the angel.”
Celia. “Maybe,” I answer.
“I keep thinking about her. Her sisters think it’s just because she saved me, and maybe they’re right, but I just—”
“I have to go,” I interrupt. I have to go. Part of me—Naida, I guess—wants this boy’s soul, part of me wants the boy, and all of me knows this is wrong. He’s Celia’s. He’s innocent.
He’s human.
Jude hurries to his feet, and before I can stop him, he leans down and offers me a hand.
“I’ll…” I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to stand in front of him for fear he’ll see how it hurts me. But I can’t just not take his hand. I exhale and slide my fingers into his. He pulls me to standing, then lets go.
The knives are boring into me, twisting, tearing the bones on the top of my feet; it feels like they might break apart like pieces of driftwood. I don’t wince. I can’t, I can’t cry; he’ll know. Instead I stare at him, unwilling to move, unable to move. He’s looking at me closely. I worry for a moment he’ll realize I look wrong, even in the moonlight.
“It was nice meeting you,” he says. “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for out here.”
“So do I,” I say. I inhale. He’s waiting for me to move.
I’ll have to walk. I’ll have to pretend like it doesn’t hurt. He thinks I’m a human girl, and not only should I not let that stop… I don’t want it to stop. I inhale, turn. One foot in front of the other. Step, another step, another. I feel blood drip from the shoes, hope that the moonlight hides any trace of it in the sand. Another, another. Just get far enough into the dark, then I can dive, go back to where there’s no pain… Is this what the fish, the dolphins, the whales feel like when they find themselves trapped on the shore?
I glance back at him; he’s still watching me. I wave, he waves back, then turns to leave. I think about him under the water, the way his limbs flailed around his body, the way he couldn’t live beneath the waves the way we so easily do.
Another step. Another. Burning through my legs, it feels like my toes are being severed.
Into the dark, into the water—I hit my knees and let the ocean rush around me, soothe my feet, calm me like a friend with each wave that laps against my legs. When I pulled him out, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know Celia could do the things she does. I didn’t even know I was Naida.
I didn’t know how much it could hurt to be Lo.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Celia
“Where have you been the last few nights?” Anne asks several days later at a café down the street from the dorms. This area is unabashedly antitourist; there are no beach towels, no inflatable alligators, no neon signs. It’s tucked away neatly behind the school, and were it not for the salt in the air, it could very well pass for a street in the middle of the country instead of at its edge. I stall, tapping the bottom of a mustard bottle to drown the order of fries we’re sharing—a taste all three of us love and just about everyone else seems to hate.
The silence goes on a beat too long, long enough that I can practically feel Anne growing suspicious. “I’ve been hanging out with someone I met here, when Jude fell off the pier.”
“Hanging out? Like, a friend?” Jane says, furrowing her brows. The way she says friend is odd—not only because the three of us don’t really have friends, so to speak, but because I’m not sure I really consider Naida a friend. She’s more like… a cause. I barely know her. But then, I like her. Friend isn’t a crazy term, I guess…. I nod at Jane.
“Who is it?” Anne asks.
“Her name’s Naida,” I say.
“A girl?” Jane asks in disbelief.
“We were friends with that girl, the younger sister, in Ellison,” I argue.
“For all of five minutes,” Anne says. “But forget it—who is she?” They sound like they think she might be a spy from another set of triplets.
The lie is on the edge of my lips, ready to go: a girl from the public school. Just someone to hang out with. It’s nothing, really. Don’t worry.