The boy coughs. I turn around, drop back to the sand beside him. His eyes are closed, but he’s breathing, a broken noise, like there’s wet cloth lodged in his throat. The ambulance is rumbling down the tiny road by the pier, the same way I came down. The headlights blind me as it draws close.
“Hang on,” I tell the boy. “You’re fine. They’re here to help you.”
He whispers something, something quiet. I lean closer, drop my face near his lips. “Sing again.”
He’s confused. Of course, I just saw a naked girl with bloody feet run into the ocean, so perhaps I’m not one to talk. The ambulance reaches us, slides to a stop on the sand. I sit back as the paramedics leap out. They run to us, drop down by my side, start talking in codes I don’t understand. I’m jostled out of the way as they lift his body, then rest it down on a board. One paramedic, a younger woman with thin eyes, spots me as two men lift the board and hurry the boy to the ambulance.
“Was he breathing when you found him?”
“Yes. I mean no, no. He started, though.”
“Any idea how long he was in the water?”
“I… four minutes? Five? I don’t know. It all happened so fast. When I ran down here, she was already pulling him up….” I glance back at the pier. A crowd has gathered, pointing at us, gaping.
“She? Is there someone else here?” the woman asks, looking around.
I swallow, look out over the water. The red lights from the ambulance bounce off the waves, like thousands of glistening rubies are hiding under them. “No. There’s no one else here.” It’s not entirely a lie—she’s gone. I can’t explain who she is or where she went to myself, much less to someone else.
“Is she coming?” another paramedic yells.
“Can we take you to the hospital, miss? You might need to get checked out, too,” the woman says, taking a few steps backward, toward the ambulance. “Come on, it won’t take long. Just in case.”
“Yes. Yes, right,” I say hurriedly. I’m fine; I know I’m fine, but I want to know the boy will be okay—and I don’t want to be left out here in the dark, not with the crowd staring, not with a mysterious girl who might come back. I jog with the woman to the ambulance. A male paramedic stretches out a large hand to help me in. I’m quickly moved toward the back, near the boy’s head. There’s a mask over his nose and mouth, bags of fluids are on hooks, things are beeping, moving. It feels like I’m a giant in a city of machines. I bang my elbow on something behind me, grimace, and try to catch my breath.
“Do you know who he is?” an EMT asks me.
“Jude,” I say quickly. I look up. “His name is Jude Wallace. He’s from Lake City.”
“Oh, so you actually know him. I’m sorry—I thought you were just a good Samaritan,” the EMT says, smiling at me. I don’t know what to do, so I just nod. Truth is, I do know him, and rather well. When I put my lips against his to save his life, I saw deeper into his past than I’ve ever seen into anyone’s before. I saw his childhood home, his father leaving, his first job, second job, third job, and the bank account he opened to save up and leave town when he graduated from high school. I saw his first love and his favorite color, thousands of bits and pieces, a kaleidoscope of his life.
It’s the first time my lips have been on someone else’s. Does that count as my first kiss? I’d avoided it for so long, both because most boys want Anne and Jane, but also because of this. Anne and Jane have always said kissing makes their powers strong, that the more intimate the touch, the closer you are, the more you can see. They were telling the truth, it seems.
The ambulance screeches through town, the siren blending in seamlessly with the fanfare of the beach at summer. They’ve stopped working on Jude, and his breathing doesn’t sound painful anymore. The hospital is just outside town, where there are no tourists, no neons, no bathing suits—just sea grass and trailer parks. I watch them fly by, look out the window hoping to see the glow of the hospital’s fluorescent lights ahead….
“You can hold his hand if you want,” the thin-eyed woman says when she sees me staring at him.
“No,” I answer. “It’s fine.” I want to take his hand, to be honest—I don’t want him to be scared. I want him to know someone is there with him, someone is thinking of him, someone wants him to survive. But I’ve already seen so far into his mind, and I don’t want to pry any further.
We arrive, and the boy is rushed off the ambulance and down a hall. They send me to a separate room, but it doesn’t take more than a half hour for them to realize I’m fine. A woman in cat-print scrubs gives me a package of Nutter Butters, then leads me toward a waiting room. She talks the entire time, assuring me that everything will be all right with Jude, that they’ll update me soon, that they will let me know the minute he wakes up. All well-rehearsed lines, delivered with sincerity, but not enough to distract me from the onslaught of Jude’s memories and the strangeness of Naida’s.
I load sugar into a cup of weak tea from a machine and rest in one of the many uncomfortable chairs, trying to tune out the noise from the televisions, the people talking in the hallways. Tune them all out and remember…
I ran down to the shore, past the church. I could see someone in the water. I thought it was the boy, but no… it was her. She was swimming toward me, toward the shore. I remember her face, try to imagine what it would look like in the day instead of illuminated by blue moonlight. I picture the way she slipped into the ocean like the waves were sheets on a bed when she left, and the way she rose from the water when she arrived, pulling Jude like the waves worked with her, not against her. The memories I read when I touched her arm. So strange… Even once I got past the blackness, the memories I saw were like memories of a past lifetime instead of the current one. Bits and pieces, buried so deep that all I got from touching her was her name and the memory of a girl screaming.
Screaming like she was dying.
I play the memory over and over, think about the bloody footprints, the way she vanished. Should I have told them about her? Is it too late now? Should I go back?
An hour later, I still have no idea what happened on the beach.
“He’s going to wake up soon. You can wait, if you want. Is he your boyfriend?” the doctor asks.