I guess I’ll be walking home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Lo
This is my last night alive.
The moon is bright; I’ll need to stay in the shadows, if he’s here.
Maybe I should have stayed down below, with my sisters. The hurricane is coming. I doubt I’ll survive it in the depths; I certainly won’t up here. But I have a few hours, just a few… maybe that’s enough. The pain in my feet when I climb from the water is strangely sweet this time—it reminds me that I’m alive, the same way the ocean did when I first got here. I look at the trail of blood behind me.
It’s smaller than before, like I’ve merely nicked myself instead of like I’ve been stabbed. I close my eyes, force myself to breathe in the thick, heavy air. I remember how the old one ran from the water. There was no blood. How she ran to the thing that turned me, the thing with the scars on its chest, the monster, man, demon.
I swallow, turn, and move to tug the dress from just inside the church door. It’s stiff from absorbing salt water and sitting outside for ages. Ages? No, I haven’t been meeting with Celia that long. Or have I? So many of my sisters go through three or four new names before becoming old. I can’t believe I’m only going to be Lo. I drop the dress. I don’t care about it anymore. I only put it on to be Naida, anyway.
I don’t think he’s coming—he’d be here already. I lie on my back, just close enough to the water that it brushes up against my bare toes. The old one who just turned, she was kind. She was nice. I remember her from when I first came, tiny lingering memories of her telling me to stop crying, helping me braid my hair, teaching me the words to our songs. Will anyone remember me at all? I wonder if Sophia remembers Naida….
A slamming sound from behind me—I sit up, whip my head around. There’s a car parked at the top of the path, bright red and so shiny the moonlight bounces off the hood. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice it when I first emerged. A figure walks around the side; I prepare to run into the water. But no, the gait, it’s familiar.
It’s Jude. I rise.
Hands in his pockets, he comes down the path slowly, running every few steps to balance himself on the shifting sand. He doesn’t have his guitar, I notice, surprised at how that makes me sad. Perhaps it’s for the best; as happy as his music made me, I probably couldn’t resist singing to him right now. And I wouldn’t want to drown him.
He walks across the shore, doesn’t lift his eyes to me until he’s only a few yards away. They glint in the light.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” he says, inhaling. “Naida.”
“That’s not my name,” I tell him, unable to disguise the misery in my voice. How does he know her name? With him I’m Lo. With him I like being Lo.
“It is,” he says, and he sounds something between accusatory and hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because that’s not my name,” I repeat. “It used to be, a long time ago. It won’t ever be Naida again. She’ll be as good as dead soon.”
“Don’t play games,” he says, and there’s an unfamiliar snap to his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me about Celia? And what you are? You let me think you were…”
“Normal?” I fill in the blank, motioning to my body as evidence of just how normal I’m not.
“I knew you weren’t,” Jude mutters, as much to himself as to me. “I knew something was strange. You don’t talk like a normal girl, you don’t look like a normal girl. At the ocean at midnight…”
I raise an eyebrow. “Then why did you keep coming to see me?”
He shakes his head, looks at the sand. “Because you made me remember music.”
“Why couldn’t Celia do that?”
“I don’t know,” he says. He waits. “You saved me. With her.”
“Yes,” I admit.
“You live in the ocean.”
“Yes.”
“What are you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I used to be a girl on land. And for a little while longer, I’ll be a girl in the water. But soon, I’ll be nothing. You can forget me. Everyone else will.” Except Celia, I realize. She lives in the past. The thought is calming, comforting. Celia will remember me, Celia will remember Naida.
“I don’t…” He presses his lips together, looks to the stars. “I don’t want that to happen.”
“There’s nothing to be done,” I say. “I can’t be anything but nothing.”
“You saved my life,” Jude repeats, like he’s convincing himself. “I’ll help you. There has to be something that I can do.”
I pause, look at him curiously. There was hope in his voice, pleading. He doesn’t want me to go, even though he doesn’t know me. I take a step away from him, surprised, alarmed, even.
He’s known me for longer than other boys, though. Longer than the first boy I killed.
“Can I help? At all?” he says. His voice is barely loud enough to reach me over the sound of the waves.
I watch for an instant longer before speaking. “Do you love me?”
I didn’t mean to ask, but I don’t regret it. I want to know. I have to know.
Jude looks at me for a long time, like he doesn’t understand. Not like he’s scared, even though he probably should be. Because if the answer is yes, I could kill him. Something in my chest spirals through me. I think about the way it would feel to pull him in. I wonder how it would feel for his soul to become mine.
I squeeze my hands into fists, try to stop thinking about the old one, about darkness, about all the things that I could stop from happening if he loves me. I’d still vanish, but Naida would live. A tiny, good part of me would live instead of drying up on the shore like just another sea creature. I got over drowning the first boy. I could get over drowning Jude. There’d be nothing to do but get over it, with my soul intact. Naida would go on, back to her house, her sister, her dog. Her life.
And yet I know, without the tiniest hint of doubt, that I will not let myself kill Jude if he loves me. That the tiny voice inside me that wants to steal his soul will not win. I won’t kill him.
I can’t kill him.
But I want so, so badly for him to love me nonetheless. I step forward, reach a hand out to him. He doesn’t back away, so my fingertips find his. I let my hand slide up his arm, to his shoulder. Love me. Please, say you love me. Give me this one tiny thing before I die.