“Was it like this for the other girl? Or did it take longer?” Key asks one of the oldest ones; she doesn’t answer. Key shrugs. “I remember human stories about love at first sight.”
“Those were stories,” I say. Lights, bright white and big like the moon, shine at the waves from the shore farther down the beach. They’re making their way toward us, rolling steadily along. We can’t stay. We don’t want them to see us. We don’t want to see humans, really; the oldest girls are finding it difficult to even look at the human boy, his head cradled against Molly’s shoulder.
There’s a quiet sound, like raindrops—we’re leaving. My sisters slip underneath the water delicately, more and more with every moment. When I look back to Molly, the boy’s eyes are open again. They aren’t trained on her, though—he’s looking at us—no, at me, I think. Not in the dizzy, confused way he was watching Molly earlier, but like he knows me, like we’re in the middle of a conversation. His eyes are light gray pools that remind me of the ice that forms by the ocean farther north. His gaze startles me, and I back up, my lips part.
“Go with them if you want. I’m not leaving till he says he loves me,” Molly sniffs. She’s crying, so humanlike that she and the boy actually seem a perfect match. She looks down at the boy’s face and follows his gaze to me. She frowns and turns him around, so he can’t see me. I swallow hard; it feels like his eyes are still boring into me. I realize that in the long moment of the boy’s gaze, my sisters have left. I’m alone with Molly.
“Leave him. He doesn’t need to die like this. He doesn’t love you.”
“He might!”
“No, Molly,” I say, and grimace as I remember the boy I killed. The way his body rocked with the currents, dead and lifeless on the floor. I don’t want to imagine the boy with the gray eyes like that. Hope forces me to believe getting his soul is possible—I don’t know how, exactly, but I believe it’s possible—but something deeper makes me believe it isn’t right. And it certainly isn’t right like this, when I know there’s no chance Molly will walk out of the ocean tonight.
Yet I know what Molly feels. I may not remember my human name like she does, but I remember being her. I remember needing to believe the fairy tale, in thinking of hope as a real thing instead of a pretty idea. I swim closer to her.
“Let him go,” I say, trying to sound gentle, comforting. “His people will find him. We need to leave. We don’t belong here.” I feel unsettled without the others on the surface, like I’ve lost a part of myself.
Molly’s fingers are wrapped so tightly around him that I can see his skin starting to bruise. The lights on the beach are moving, growing closer, little by little. A puttering noise bounces toward us—a boat coming from somewhere, probably more searchers. The thing weighing the boy down brushes against my legs, the strings sharp like sea urchin spines, some sort of instrument, I think.
I reach forward and take Molly’s arm, try to pull her away. She struggles, hugs the boy against her chest like she suspects I’m trying to steal him from her. I find myself wishing he’d look at me again, fighting Molly harder and harder, trying to get her away from him.
Molly dives.
Still holding the boy.
Let her go. We all have to try this for ourselves once. It’s the only way Molly will stop fighting and embrace the ocean, embrace our sisters. She needs to kill the boy to love the ocean the way we do.
But the boy’s eyes, I keep thinking about the boy’s eyes. He doesn’t need to die like this.
I sink into the water and swim after her. She’s swimming fast, pulling him to the bottom with such force that the instrument comes loose and drifts to the ocean floor on its own.
“Molly!” I call out. “Let him go! There’s no point! You’ll just kill him!”
“That’s what I’m supposed to do—that’s how I’ll get my soul back!” she snarls. We’re getting deeper, to the part where it’s cold. The boy’s limbs flail back uselessly. His eyes are closed; he’s not even fighting. I think he’s already dead.
Molly slams his head against the sea bottom, frustrated; a little blood curls like smoke in the water. His clothes and hair float around his body as she bows her head and presses her lips against his. Nothing happens, nothing changes, and so she tries again, again, until it looks less like a kiss and more like she’s trying to pull his soul up and out through his lips.
She screams, a curdling, agonizing sound that ripples through the ocean. Molly tightens her fingers on the boy’s clothes—
Enough. I dart forward and grab his arm, yank him away from her. Molly hisses at me, grabs at his sleeve. His shirt rips, but I’m older and stronger than she is. I jettison him to the surface, hold his head up as the air tastes my skin. There has to be a boat nearby now. They’ll find him; they’ll take him back to his own kind, and I can go back to mine. That’s the way of things; it’s what should happen. He’s so limp that he feels fake, like he’s a clump of seaweed instead of a boy.
Molly breaks out of the water beside me. I release him just long enough to shove her away. Her teeth flicker, sharp like an animal’s. Where’s the boat?
They’ve passed us. They’re searching farther from the pier now; I can’t get him there with Molly like this. The shore, it’s the only way. Get him close enough, and the waves will wash him up, someone will find him, he might survive. Molly tries to pull me back; I dodge her and kick her in the back. She spirals off in the water. I’ll have just a moment before she slows herself and returns. I clutch the boy under the arms and drag him toward the dry sand.
The waves help, pushing us over the sandbar—closer to land than I’ve been since I joined my sisters. But there’s someone on the shore; he’ll be found. I hiss in Molly’s direction and grab the boy’s wrist, diving forward, letting the waves throw me closer and closer to the shore with each step. The person on the beach sees me. A girl, running. Take him. Take him and keep him away from us.
Shallow water. I turn back to look for Molly—she’s stopped, waiting for me right where the water becomes deep again, where the waves begin. The girl runs into the water, awkward and clumsy as it splashes around her calves. There’s not enough force behind the waves to pull him forward here. My feet find the sandy bottom, and I rise—