“You have Jude!” Jane says.
“Why doesn’t he bother you?” I ask suddenly. My sisters don’t answer. Anne rolls her eyes at me and yanks open a cabinet door, begins piling plates inside like she’s punishing them.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Jude and Naida are both new friends; you don’t know either of them that well. Why doesn’t he bother you?”
“Because you aren’t lying to us about him,” Anne snaps. “He’s here. We’ve met him. We can read him.”
My eyes narrow. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“And we won’t,” Anne says. “But we could. And we could know if he was bad news, and we could help. I mean, if he turns out to really just have Nightingale syndrome or some other weirdo girl-who-saved-me fetish, we’ll know about it.” My face heats up with anger. She continues quickly, holding up her hands. “I know, I know, maybe he just likes you, maybe it has nothing to do with saving him. My point is, we’re supposed to help one another. We’re not supposed to just… go meet mysterious people from the water and pretend that’s normal.”
“I never said she was from the water.”
“What?” Anne says, like I’m talking crazy.
“I never said she was from the water. I never even mentioned the water.” I can hear the anger in my voice. I feel hollow. They didn’t. They wouldn’t.
Anne and Jane look at each other, briefly, a flicker of movement. But it’s enough to know that they did.
I feel my blood speed up in my veins.
“You read me?” I say, voice high and shrill. “Not as a joke, not to be funny. You were trying to find out—”
“Relax,” Jane says. “I only went after the things about Naida. I didn’t just look at everything in your head while you were asleep—”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I snarl. I feel tears in my eyes, but I won’t let them fall, not now. I’m shaking—everything is shaking. I’ve never been this angry, this… I force myself to breathe; the air gets caught at the tension in my throat.
“You were lying to us!” Anne says. She’s not sorry—not at all. She slams the cabinet shut and stares me down. “You wouldn’t tell us anything about her, and she knew about our powers.”
“My power!”
“Ours!” Anne answers. “They’re ours. All of them. You’re not in this alone, Celia, and it’s selfish to pretend like you are. I needed to know at least who Naida is, and it turns out, we don’t even know what she is.”
“She’s just a girl!”
“She’s a lot of things,” Jane says. “But she’s not a girl. You know that.”
“She needs my help, that’s all!”
“Then why didn’t you tell us the truth about her? You think we’d care, that there’re more freaks like us in the world?” Anne says.
“Because she wanted to be kept a secret,” I say, folding my arms. “And unlike Jane, I respect people’s secrets.”
“Did she say that?” Anne asks. “To not tell us?”
“Of course!”
“No,” Jane says, voice hard. “No, she didn’t. I saw your mind. You were never thinking about keeping her a secret for her sake. You were always thinking about keeping her a secret for your own sake. Not I can’t tell my sisters—I don’t want to tell my sisters.”
I inhale, try to argue, but the words hang. Is she right? Yes. Yes, she’s right. Naida never asked to be kept a secret. Lo didn’t even ask to be kept a secret.
“I wanted to have something,” I say, throwing up my hands. I’m not sorry, I refuse to be sorry. My mother wouldn’t have been sorry.
“Something without us,” Anne says sharply.
I look up at her, drop my voice low and dangerous. “Exactly. I wanted something without you. Something the two of you weren’t in control of. And you couldn’t handle that.” Jane looks like she’s about to speak, but I cut her off. “So you read my thoughts. You knew what it would mean. You went prying through my head like I was just another stupid boy you’ve brought home—”
“We had to!” Anne shouts.
“Lies!” I yell back. “We’re not stronger together. We’re just… stuck together because we’re afraid to be apart. I’m not afraid anymore, and you two can’t stand it.”
“We’re all you have—” Jane starts.
“Right now, I’d rather have nothing,” I snap, and before they can say anything else, I grab our car keys and storm out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lo
Molly is sitting alone.
She’s talked too much of her doubts about the angels. She’s never said what she believes happens to us when we grow old, but her doubts are heresy enough among my sisters. While most of my sisters are on the Glasgow’s deck, Molly is out near the rocks that wrecked the ship. She has her back against one, and with her left hand, she draws shapes in the algae that covers them. I watch her for a moment pityingly, but I can’t stay long—I want to go to the surface tonight. More specifically, I want to see Jude tonight. I swim around the back side of the Glasgow, where it’ll be easier to get away unnoticed. Does he think about seeing me during the day? I wonder…
“You’re going to the surface,” a voice says sharply. My head snaps up—Molly. She came around the other side of the ship. Her eyes are sharp and bright; her words aren’t a question.
“What?” I say, trying to sound confused.
“Key was trying to make me feel better about losing the boy, trying to convince me he would only have loved you anyway. I asked how she knew that, and she told me everything. Going to the surface, meeting with him…”
I curse Key silently. I should never have told her. “It’s nothing,” I say, but my voice betrays me, cracking at the lie.
“You stole him from me,” Molly hisses. “Fine. He’s yours. But I want one, too.”
“You want… one?”
“Another boy. If you’re strong enough to go to the surface and meet with one, so am I.”
“It’s not like that,” I say. “It’s not…”