I’m afraid the answer is no. But he’s drawing closer, mesmerized, following me as I back up toward the water… and I find I’m equally afraid the answer is yes.
It would be easy. Naida would be human again. I wouldn’t forget myself and become an angel. I’d be a real girl, like Celia. I could run on the beach and be seen by others and go find my family—
No. I am Lo, and I don’t want to kill him. But I can’t stop the song; it feels like it’s forcing itself out of my mouth, like it isn’t really me singing. We take another step toward the water. Part of me wants to drown him so, so badly—I want to dive into the water, let it encircle us both. Pull him to the bottom and kiss him in my home, in my world. I want his soul. How can I just walk away if there’s even a chance I could have it…?
No.
I force my lips shut.
Jude continues playing for a moment, then wakes up—the smallest of the ocean waves lap around his feet. He stiffens, then clambers backward into the sand.
“How…? I was just—” he begins, looking confused. He shakes his head, rubs his temples, glares at the water like it tricked him. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t suspect me. I walk forward, out of the tiny waves. My toes curl up from the pain.
“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what happened. That was weird.” He looks up at me. “You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thank you,” I say. There are tears in my eyes, but I hold them back. Jude shakes off the last of my spell, turns the guitar over his shoulder. He takes another step away from the water just for good measure. It’s a little while before he speaks again.
“Who are you, really?” he asks me.
I stare. “I’m no one. Just a girl on the beach.”
“You’re different, though. I told you, I look at you and I think of music—”
“Maybe you should stop looking at me, then,” I say. A tear falls, but I look away before he sees it. When I turn back, Jude is looking at the ground.
“I can’t stop looking,” he mutters. “Besides, it’s like I told Celia. Once you get involved—”
“Celia.” I say her name like she’s a stranger. “You should go to her. See music in her.”
“I…” he begins, but he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Finally, he starts a new one. “Can I help you, Lo?”
“With what?”
“With whatever makes you come to the beach in the middle of the night, alone.”
I look down, shake my head. “No. It’d kill you to help me.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he starts to insist, stepping forward, hand outstretched. I step back.
“It would,” I whisper. I turn to look down the shoreline. “I have to go.”
“I can drive you—”
“I’ll walk,” I answer, and before he can say anything else, I start toward the darkest part of the beach, knives carving into my feet each time they hit the sand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Celia
Students will be moving back into the dorms again in a few weeks. Our little island of solitude on the outskirts of campus will become packed with parents and students and boyfriends and bags from bedding stores. I see all the signs: a few teachers moving in early, the fire alarm they keep testing, the reminders to register for classes. Anne and Jane are currently on a quest to be excused from science this year, hoping they can pass the senior exam and prove they already know the material. It helps, of course, that right before the test, Jane plans to brush against the proctor and see the answers. We get a check from our uncle to purchase a new set of uniforms—khaki skirts and blue shirts, which every girl at school will inevitably hike up or down, whichever makes them look more scandalous. Still, none of this seems real, like school and Jude and Naida and my sisters can’t all possibly exist in the same universe.
We spend Saturday cleaning our apartment—sort of. Mostly, the three of us are watching a stream of terrible crime shows while halfheartedly throwing things from the main room into our own bedrooms, then shutting the door quickly, like the clutter might escape.
“I remember this episode,” Jane says, when the third hour of a crime show starts. “The brother did it.”
“Why bother watching it, then, if you know what’s going to happen?” Anne asks.
“By that logic, why do you bother living?” Jane answers, giggling. Anne and I laugh. I feel like what happened at the coffeehouse with Jude started to heal something between us, some wound that existed long before I met Naida. Maybe because kissing Jude means I’m more like them than they thought. More like them than I thought.
“We should go to a movie tonight,” Anne suggests after a series of trailers plays on the screen. The movie theater at the end of the strip is pretty impressive, since there’s not much else to do on a rainy day at the beach. We haven’t been in ages.
I nod. “We should. But you’re not tricking Jude into paying for our tickets,” I say, only partially joking.
Anne throws a pillow at me. “We won’t! But maybe… you could invite that girl. The one who knows about your power.”
The room falls silent, save a peanut butter jingle on the television.
“You said eventually,” Anne adds. “Eventually we’d meet her. She knows about your power. We deserve to know her.”
“It’s not like that,” I say quietly. “She can’t… she can’t come out.”
“What are you keeping her a secret for?” Jane asks, and I suddenly realize that my sisters have been preparing this conversation for a while now. They’re well rehearsed, like they’re reading lines in a play.
“Because, she’s just… It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not. She’s your friend. Why can’t we meet her?” Jane says.
“Look, she’s not going to tell anyone about my power. I’m using it to help her. She wouldn’t ruin that. She’s just a girl—”
“If she were just a girl, you’d have introduced us. We’re stronger together, Celia. We always have been. I don’t understand why you’re letting someone change that,” Anne says.
“I’m not changing that!” I argue. “I just want to be strong on my own, too. I want to be able to use my power for something good. I want to be able to talk to someone, to have friends outside of you two—”