“About almost drowning?”
“Maybe,” he says. “I’m really happy with it. I just haven’t been inspired, and then the other day…” He shrugs. “I got over musician’s block, I guess. Maybe it’s the Nightingale syndrome inspiring the romantic in me.” He says the last bit offhandedly, like it’s nothing, but it makes me blush. When he looks at me, he laughs a little, but there’s a nervousness to it that’s as charming as it is awkward.
The music store is between a pet depot and the remains of a closed water park where the slides are cracked and awnings ripped, but the sign still promises the park’s returning next summer. The music shop is empty, save the older man behind the counter, who recognizes Jude immediately. He leads us over to the wall covered in guitars—acoustic, electric, expensive, and ones so cheap that I wonder if they even play.
“How do you know which one to buy?” I ask as Jude runs his hand across them.
“You can just feel it.”
“Really?”
“No. I researched it online and figured out I want this one,” he says, tapping one in the center of the display, then grinning at me. I roll my eyes at him as the old man nods and vanishes to the stockroom to get the guitar.
“Play the song you were talking about to me,” I suggest, but he shakes his head.
“It’s just an idea right now. I’ll need to work on it—oh, that’s it,” Jude says as the old man returns. Despite Jude’s joke about “feeling” the right instrument, he turns the guitar over in his hands, holds it a thousand different ways before nodding and handing over three hundred dollars in wadded-up cash and a blue credit card. When we leave, he looks a little overwhelmed; I notice he keeps looking in the mirror to see the guitar in the seat behind us.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just the last time I bought a guitar, I was fourteen and, stupid as this sounds, it changed my life. It made me feel like… me.” He stops and looks at me. “I never really thought I was going to be a rock star or anything. I just wanted to create something beautiful.”
“What did you want to be?” I ask.
“I just wanted to get out,” he admits, pulling out of the parking lot. “What about you?”
“It’ll depend on what Anne and Jane do.”
“What do they want to do?”
“I don’t know that they’ve thought about it, either.” That’s not entirely a lie—there are dozens of psychic reading places along the strip, promising tourists summer love and sunny vacation days. We’ve talked about opening our own one day, but it’s mostly a joke. Yet at the same time, their powers are the only thing Anne and Jane love to do. What else could they possibly become?
“You know how you said you think you aren’t like your mother yet?” Jude asks. I nod. He pauses, then speaks. “I think you will be when you embrace being Celia, instead of just being Anne and Jane’s sister,” he says. I glare at him, and he shrugs. “I know, I know. But maybe being Celia is for you what playing music was for me. Wishing you’d left me in the water now, aren’t you?”
“At the moment, maybe.”
“There were other people on the pier, you know.” I stop glaring, raise an eyebrow at him. He slows at a red light and looks at me. “There were plenty of other people on the dock. You’re the only one who ran down to save me.”
“I was the only one who knew the way. If you aren’t familiar with it, that road by the church—”
He looks down, a little sheepish. “You were the only one. And you didn’t even know me. I was just some clumsy idiot, as far as you knew. I know Anne and Jane are your sisters, but I guess all I’m trying to say is that you’re enough without them. Even though you seem to doubt that.”
“It’s not them,” I say before I can stop myself, defend myself. “It’s that I don’t always like being me very much. Or at least, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t? What changed?”
I pause. One moment changed everything, and in none of the ways I would have expected. I turn my head to look at the guitar in the backseat as I answer. “You fell.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lo
“And then you twist this side over,” I explain. A girl older than Molly but a few months younger than me sits beside me in the sand, in the area where the Glasgow split, watching as I wind my fingers through Key’s hair. “And that keeps it from getting tangled.” The girl nods, studies my hands carefully, then does the same on the girl sitting at her feet. It’s a silly way to pass the time, but not without its merits, I guess—if you don’t keep your hair braided at the height of storm season, it’ll be a tangled mess.
“How did you learn?” the girl asks.
I smile a little. “When I first got here, another girl taught me. She’s an angel now, though. You’ll teach someone someday.”
“Or I will,” Key sighs. “I’ll be here forever.”
“Don’t be silly,” the young girl says. Her voice is almost bell-like, but there’s a slow, twisted pattern to it, something that reminds me of Celia’s voice—I guess it’s her age, her humanity, coming through. “You’ll grow old soon enough.”
“Not nearly soon enough,” Key jokes, but her voice is sad.
“Molly doesn’t believe we become angels when we grow old,” the young girl suddenly says. We all stop. I release Key’s hair and the braid dissolves, flares up around her head. We look at the young girl, who quickly stares at her hands. “I don’t think that’s right, of course. But she’s been telling people that lately. More and more.”
“She’s wrong,” Key says sharply, voice almost a hiss. “And she’s wrong to spread lies. What does she think happens when we grow old? We just… dissolve? Become sea foam?”
“She… she says she doesn’t know. But that she just doesn’t think we become angels,” the girl says meekly.
“Well, I remember being on the beach. I remember the angel saying he would come back. Don’t you, Lo?” Key says.
I nod. I remember it. It’s just… now I know there’s more to the story. There’s a scream. There’s a mystery….