I see the boys coming before she does.
They’re a few years younger than me, probably drunk on summer freedom and the lack of nearby parents. They tumble through the crowd loudly, knocking people out of the way, oblivious to everything that’s going on except the game they’re playing. Water guns, the pump kind, that they must have won from a booth over by the waterslides—an area I very specifically didn’t take Naida. I rise as they near, shooting carelessly, unaware of the chorus of anger around them from people who didn’t want to get wet. A security guard is coming to stop them, but he’s slow, he’s too far away. They get closer. I step in front of Naida, just as one of them shoots his gun straight up into the air beside us. He bumps into Naida’s chair, laughs an apology, then continues on—only for a few more feet, before the security guard reaches them and they disperse.
“Sorry,” I say, brushing the water off my arms—at least it hit me and not her. “Come on, let’s go look at the Ferris wheel.” I turn to her.
“What?” she asks, and her voice is strange. She’s holding her fingers in front of her face, rubbing them together, staring at the place where her thumb and forefinger meet. I narrow my eyes and realize there’s a single drop of water between them.
“Naida…” I say slowly. Her eyes look darker than before, the circles under them more pronounced. Sicker, by the second, even, like she’s dying. She coughs; she can’t breathe. Something rises in my chest, panic, worry—what have I done?
“Water,” she says. “Take me back.” Her voice is different, not Naida’s voice. Lo’s voice.
I grab the handles of the chair and push, walking fast, hurry, go, go, not so quick as to draw too much attention, but her skin is starting to show through the makeup, her breathing is louder, she’s tilting forward in the chair like she’s lunging toward the ocean. The pier is ahead; I can see the ocean. Naida—Lo—tilts her head back, inhales, like she’s breathing in the water’s nearness. I slide the wheelchair to a stop at the edge of the path. I don’t care if anyone’s looking; it doesn’t matter. I move around, thinking I’ll need to help her, but Lo springs from the chair and runs forward, down the path, and into the darkness. I hurry after her, but the change in light is too much. I can’t see anything. I stumble and fall, slide through the sand and brush, down to the shore.
Sand in my eyes, my mouth. I cough, try to spit it out, clamber to my feet. The tide is in, the ocean is near… I take a few unsteady steps forward.
“Naida? Lo?”
No answer. My eyes finally adjust, and I kneel down at dark marks in the sand. Footprints, thick with blood that pools into the deeper area where her toes pressed into the sand, running desperately. I follow them toward the waves. One shoe, then the other, kicked off as she fled into the water. I step on the edge of one of her footprints, and the blood tints the tips of my toes.
She’s gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lo
I’m sorry.
That’s what I want to say. I know she was trying to help Naida. I know she cares about Naida.
But I’m not meant for the shore. I tear the dress off my body, turn in the water. I breathe deep, let water fill my lungs, course around me. My body aches, muscles sore and skin tender, like it’s been burned. The shore was killing me. Naida was killing me, even if she didn’t mean to.
I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t want to die. But neither does Naida.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Celia
Naida was supposed to meet me a few hours ago—seven o’clock, our usual appointment. She wasn’t there. I waited by the church, but she didn’t come.
Will I ever see her again? The way she left, the pain, the panic… That was Lo, though. Naida wouldn’t just leave like that, vanish forever. Unless Lo is stronger now, able to keep Naida from emerging, from surfacing…
No, don’t think like that. I swallow, try to break apart the tension in my chest. Just outside my bedroom door, Anne and Jane are checking each other’s eye shadow. I have enough to worry about tonight, with the two of them. They’re still angry with me over keeping Naida a secret; I can’t let them see I’m worried about something, not when we’re supposed to be having a real night out together for the first time in ages. A night I’m genuinely excited about, no less.
“Promise you won’t read him?” I say seriously to Anne and Jane as we’re about to walk out the door.
“Jesus, Celia, we can be normal human beings for one night,” Jane says.
“Last time you guys saw him, you read him. It’s not a crazy thing to expect,” I argue.
“Fine, no reading Celia’s boyfriend, Jane. I won’t, either,” Anne says. “Or at least, I’ll try really hard not to.” I glare at her, but she grins back. I sigh as we walk down the dormitory hallway, heels clacking on the tile floor.
“Shotgun,” Jane calls gleefully when we burst through the dorm’s front doors.
“I thought you were driving,” Anne grumbles as we head to the car. I take the backseat.
We drive out of the main tourist section of the beach, down to a tucked-away area behind the canals. It’s an antique-looking part of town, all salt-battered wood and faded paint, filled with old families and crab fishers. There’s a coffeehouse here, one I’ve heard of but never been to. Apparently, after dark it becomes something of a coffeehouse-music-venue-bar where two of Jude’s four roommates are playing tonight. Jude asked us to come—well, Jude asked me, specifically, but Anne and Jane wanted to go and he said that was fine—that his roommates could use the crowd and would probably be more than happy to occupy my sisters after the show.
“Look at the three of you,” Jude says when we park and get out of the car. We’re probably overdressed, but Anne wouldn’t have it any other way. Jude is smiling, though, so I suppose we don’t look too ridiculous. “Anne, right?” he says, pointing to Jane.
“Wrong. Is anyone else coming?” Jane answers, looking around at the gravel lot occupied by only us, Jude, and a handful of crows picking over discarded hush puppies. The trees overhead are thick with wisteria vines and Spanish moss, leaving the dimly lit coffee shop looking spooky, an island of light in the darkness.
“Of course. There’s a drunk who comes here every night for the cheap beer,” Jude says. “Plus the waitresses.”