Of Poseidon (19 page)

“Galen picking you up for school?”

“No, I’m driving myself.” Vinegar turns to acid. Sure, it’s irritating to take a lukewarm shower when you intended to scald the fl esh from your body. But not being able to see Galen today is more disappointing than not having hot water all winter. And I hate it.

Spending all of yesterday with him slaughtered my intention of keeping him at a distance. Even if he weren’t worthy of his own billboard underwear ad, he’s just too likeable. Except for his habit of almost- kissing me. But his obsession with trying to order me around is too cute. Especially the way his mouth gets all pouty when I don’t listen.

“You two fi ghting already?”

She’s fi shing, but for what I don’t know. Shrugging seems safe until I can fi gure out what she wants to hear.

“Do you fi ght often?”

Shrugging again, I ladle enough oatmeal into my mouth to make talking impossible for at least a minute, which is more than enough time for her to drop it. It doesn’t work. After the exag-gerated minute, I reach for my glass of milk.

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“You know, if he ever hit you—”

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The glass in mid- tilt, I swallow before the milk can escape through my nose. “Mom, he would never hit me!”

“I didn’t say he would.”

“Good, because he wouldn’t. Ever. What’s with you? Do you have to interrogate me about Galen every time you see me?” This time she shrugs. “Seems like the right thing to do.

When you have children, you’ll understand.”

“I’m not stupid. If Galen acts up, I’ll either dump him or kill him. You have my word.”

Mom laughs and butters my muffi n. “I guess I can’t ask for more than that.”

Accepting the muffi

n— and the truce— I say, “Nope. Any-

thing more would be unreasonable.”

“Just remember, I’m watching you like a hawk. Except for right now, because I’m going to bed. Soak your bowl in the sink before you leave.” She kisses the top of my head and yawns before she shuffl

es up the stairs.

I’m exhausted when I get home, even though the school day was the equivalent of a seven- hour yawn without Galen or Chloe.

Mom is darting around the house like an agitated wasp. “Hi, sweetie, how was your day? Have you seen my keys?”

“Nope, sorry. Did you check yesterday’s pockets?” I say, opening the fridge door to pull out some strawberries.

“Good idea!” The carpet on the stairs muffl es her stomping. She reappears a few seconds later as I pop a strawberry in my mouth and hoist myself onto the counter. “I didn’t have

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pockets yesterday,” she says, tugging on her hair to tighten her ponytail.

“Why don’t you just take the Honda? I’ll keep looking for your keys.”

Mom nods. “You don’t need to go anywhere this afternoon?

Still fi ghting with Galen?”

“The only plans I made for to night is make- up work.” That is, after I step out back and try to turn into a fi sh.

When Mom’s doubtful frown doesn’t escalate into another interrogation, I know she’s trying to uphold our truce from this morning. “Okay. There’s leftover stew in the fridge. If Julie doesn’t show up again to night, I’ll be working another double so I might not see you until later tomorrow. Don’t forget to lock up before you go to bed.”

When I hear the Honda’s gears grinding in the driveway, I pick up my cell phone. Galen said Rachel never answers, but she calls back if you leave a message. After an automated woman from Trans- Atlantic Warranty Company gives me the option of leaving a message or calling back during normal business hours, I wait for the beep. “Hey, Rachel, it’s Emma. Tell Toraf he’s off the hook for to night. I can’t make it over there for practice today.

Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow.” NOT. I don’t need a babysitter.

Galen needs to get it through his thicker- than- most head that I’m not one of his royal subjects. Besides, Toraf earned a place on my equivalent- to- zoo- dirt list, forcing Rayna to marry him and all.

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After a few minutes, Rachel makes good on Galen’s promise.

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When I answer the phone, she says, “Hey there, cutie pie. You’re not feeling bad again, are you?”

“No, I’m fi ne. Just a little sore from yesterday, I guess. But Mom had to take my car to work, so I don’t have a way to get over there.”

Contemplation hovers in the silence that follows. I’m surprised when she doesn’t off er to come get me. Maybe she doesn’t like me as much as she lets on. “Give me a call tomorrow, okay?

Galen wants me to check in with you.”

“That’s so sweet of him,” I drawl.

She chuckles. “Give the guy a break. His intentions are good. He hasn’t fi gured out how to handle you yet.”

“I don’t need to be handled.”

“Apparently, he thinks you do. And until he doesn’t, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me.”

I try not to sound curt when I say, “Do you always do what he says?”

“Not always.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Emma, if I always did what I’m told, you’d be locked in a hotel room somewhere while I secured us a private jet to a place of Galen’s choosing. Now get some rest. I’ll be expecting your call tomorrow.”

Tossing my towel in the sand, I get a running start and make a clean dive into the waves. I expect the fi rst plunge to be refreshing, an exhilarating rush of breath- stealing cold, the kind of

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frigid any self- respecting New Jersey autumn would produce. But when I surface, I feel gross. The water is lukewarm. Just like my shower. Just like my love life.

I wade against the swells, and then force myself below the infl uence of the surf. I hold my breath and drift, pressing the start button on Dad’s old stopwatch. And I fi nd one more reason to hate the passage of time: It’s boring. To keep from staring at the minutes dragging by, I recite the alphabet. Then I recite the statistics of the Titanic, just as any obsessed person would do.

A few crabs side- wind beneath me, listening to me compare the number of lifeboats to passengers while the waves wash me to shore.

After fi fteen minutes, my lungs start to tighten. At seven-teen minutes, they feel like a rubberband stretched to max capacity. At twenty minutes, it’s an all- out emergency. I surface and stop the watch.

Twenty minutes, fourteen seconds. Not bad for a human—

the world record is set at thirteen minutes, thirty- two seconds.

But as far as fi sh go, it pretty much sucks. Not that fi sh hold their breath or anything, but I don’t exactly have gills to work with. According to Galen, he doesn’t hold his breath either.

Syrena fi ll their lungs with water and apparently absorb the oxygen they need from it. My faith isn’t strong enough to try.

In fact, growing a tail of my own is the only way to make me a believer. Even breaking a human world record on my fi rst trial run isn’t enough to convince me to inhale seawater. Not gonna

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happen.

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I traipse back to neck- deep and clear the time on the watch.

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Drawing in a lung- packing breath, I press the start button. And then I feel it. It saturates the water around me, thrumming without rhythm. The pulse. Someone is close. Someone I don’t recognize. Slowly, I tiptoe backward, careful not to splash or slosh.

After a few seconds, tiptoeing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

If I can sense them, they can sense me. The pulse is getting stronger. They’re heading straight toward me. Fast.

Leaving caution, etiquette, and Dad’s stopwatch behind, I scramble like a lunatic to shallower water. Suddenly, Galen’s order to stay on dry land doesn’t seem so unreasonable. What was I thinking? The little I know about Syrena is what we crammed into the last twenty- four hours at his house. They have a social structure like humans. Government, laws, family, friendship. Do they have outcasts, too? The same way humans have rapists and serial killers? If so, I’ve just done the human equivalent of wandering into a dark parking lot alone. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Gasping into a wave lets me know my lungs aren’t prepped for water just yet. Sputtering and coughing slows me down a little, but the shore is close, and I’ve got my eye on a stick thicker than my arm just beyond the wet sand. That it will break like a twig over the head of any Syrena is not important.

I’m knee- deep when the hand grabs my ankle. I look down, but my attacker is obviously in blended form, barely making an outline through the waves. The water doesn’t interrupt my scream, but it does shut it off from the human world. The hand is strong and big, pulling me from safety like a rip current. I’m wasting precious air by kicking and screaming at the Blended

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blob, but going without a fi ght just won’t do.

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The ocean bottom is a steep hill. Only a few fi ngers of sunlight splay through to the deep. Those fi ngers disappear as my eyes adjust, casting an afternoon- like glow on everything. The more I struggle, the faster we torpedo through the water— and the tighter my abductor strengthens his hold.

“You’re hurting me!” I wail. We stop fast enough to give me whiplash.

“Oops, sorry,” the blob says, materializing as Toraf. He releases my ankle.

“You!”

“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” We surface against the night sky. Stars fi ll my vision, but I’m not sure if they’re real or the result of running out of oxygen. Toraf shows off by shooting his body out of the water, slicing through the waves on the tip of his tale like a dolphin at Seaworld. “Stop messing around,” I tell him. “How did I do that time? Give me the watch.’ ”

“Twenty seven minutes, nineteen seconds,” he says, placing it in my outstretched hand. He gasps. “Whoa. What’s wrong with your hands?”

“What do you mean?” I turn them over and over, straining to see in the moonlight. No blood, cuts, scrapes. Wiggling all ten fi ngers, I tell him, “There’s nothing wrong with them, see?” His widened eyes make me check again. Still nothing. “Toraf, if this is another joke—”

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“Emma, it’s not a joke. Look at your hands! They’re . . .

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they’re . . . wrinkled!”

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“Yes. That’s because—”

“No way. I’m not going down for this. This isn’t my fault.”

“Toraf—”

“Galen will fi nd some way to blame me though. He always does. ‘You wouldn’t have gotten caught if you didn’t swim so close to that boat, tadpole.’ No, it couldn’t be the human’s fault for fi shing in the fi rst place—”

“Toraf.”

“Or how about, ‘Maybe if you’d stop trying to kiss my sister, she’d stop bashing your head with a rock.’ How does my kissing her have anything to do with her bashing my head with a rock? If you ask me, it’s just a result of poor parenting—”

“Toraf.”

“Oh, and my favorite: ‘If you play with a lionfi sh, you’re going to get pricked.’ I wasn’t playing with it! I was just helping it swim faster by grabbing its fi ns—”

“TOR- AF.”

He stops pacing along the water, even seems to remember that I exist. “Yes, Emma? What were you saying?” I inhale as if I’m about to submerge for the next half hour.

Letting it out slowly, I say, “This isn’t anybody’s fault. My skin gets all wrinkled like that when I stay in the water too long.

Always has.”

“There’s no such thing as staying in the water too long. Not for Syrena. Besides, if your skin wrinkles like that, you’ll never be able to blend.” He holds his hand out to me, shows me his

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palm, smooth as a statue. Then he submerges his hand and it

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disappears. Blended. He crosses his arms, triumphant. The accusation is clear.