Scary Out There (7 page)

She squinted, trying to see him past the glare of his headlights. But, as before, he was nothing but a vague outline filled by shadow. She shook her head.

YOU KNOW THIS STORY.

Her heart pounded harder, as though her chest had tightened around it. She nodded.

YOU KNOW HOW IT ENDS.

She hammered out her response.
Why will it have to end?

EVERYTHING ENDS EVENTUALLY.

Cynthia stepped forward, placing her fingertips against the hood of the car. The metal scorched her skin, but she didn't care. She remembered, now, that his window was rolled down, so she let her phone fall to her side. “You have to know you can't tell someone they matter to you and expect them to walk away,” she said aloud.

She thought she heard him sigh. And she knew then that he wouldn't leave her. Slowly, she eased her way around to the passenger side and leaned through the open window.

The interior was lit only by the shadows of night and the soft glow of his phone, but it was enough for her to realize she recognized him in a vague way she couldn't place. He wasn't from school, of that she was sure. The angles of his face were sharper than the boys she knew, his hair shaggier. He looked to be out of his teens, but how far out she couldn't quite figure.

His jeans were well worn, his leather jacket even more so. His glasses seemed to almost have a tint to them, causing what little light existed in the car to glance off them so that she couldn't see his eyes.

Looking at him made her stomach clench, but whether it was with unease or excitement, she wasn't sure. And she knew, then, that he'd been telling the truth when he'd told her he was an old friend—not in any way that was easy to explain or understand, but in a way that felt like some deeper truth.

She pressed her hand against her chest, reassuring herself of her thundering heart. “I know the question I want you to answer.”

He didn't turn to look at her but continued staring forward, into the illuminated night. But she could feel the tension in him. The set of his shoulders and the grip of his hands around the wheel.

“Where are we going?”

He reached forward and flicked on the radio. It started scratchy before music filled the car. “Does it matter?”

She thought about that a moment, watching the way his fingers drummed against the steering wheel to the beat of the familiar song. She knew what the right answer should be: Yes. That it was stupid to climb into a car with a stranger. It was even more stupid to care what a stranger thought of her. To trust the words of someone she didn't know.

To believe them more than you believe yourself.

But none of that mattered to her. Because he'd come for her. He'd been the only one. Would probably ever be the only one. It was like in the movies, where suddenly someone had
seen
her.

All Cynthia had ever wanted was to matter to someone. And now she did.

She knew how this story ended—she'd read it before. He would take her to a wide field and hold her tight, and she would go willingly because she so badly wanted out of her life.

What did it matter if she was perhaps trading one hell for another?

She opened the door and slid into the car. “No,” she told him. “I don't care where we're going.”

He nodded once, but there was no smile, no semblance of victory for him. As though this was a game he was tired of winning. He flicked the sound of the radio up, and Cynthia sat back, enjoying the way the car's acceleration pushed against her. For once the world was open and wide and unknown before her, even if she knew it wouldn't last.

Carrie Ryan
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Forest of Hands and Teeth series,
Daughter of Deep Silence
, and
Infinity Ring: Divide and Conquer
as well as the editor of
Foretold: 14 Stories of Prophecy and Prediction
. With her husband, John Parke Davis, Carrie writes the The Map to Everywhere middle grade series. Her books have sold in over twenty-two territories, and her first book is in development as a major motion picture. A former litigator, Carrie now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and various pets.

Website:
carrieryan.com

Twitter:
@carrieryan

Facebook:
facebook.com/AuthorCarrieRyan

CHERIE PRIEST

B
ut you never know!” Tammy plunged one hand into the trunk of mismatched shoes and felt around with her fingertips. “We could find buried treasure in here. You can't beat buried treasure for . . . what does the sign say, a nickel?”

Her sister reread the hand scrawled note taped inside the trunk's open lid. “A nickel,” she confirmed with a shake of her head. “Honestly. Who pays a nickel apiece for mismatched shoes?”

“A pirate. One with a peg.”

Elaine picked a blue leather sandal out of the pile and spun it around on her pinky finger. “I'd love to meet the pirate who'd wear one of
these
. Peg or no peg. Hey, speaking of pirates—I hear we get to do
battle
with pirates.”

“Battle? With pirates?”

“That's what Mr. Newton said.”

Once again elbow deep in stale footwear, Tammy laughed. “Mermaids versus pirates. That's going to be
amazing
. Ooh, what's this?” Her hand hooked something down at the
bottom. She yanked it up and out—a shiny silver crown with big, fake-looking gemstones.

“What on earth is that?”

“Buried treasure. I told you we'd find some!” She held it up to the sky and let the afternoon sun beam through it, casting choppy rainbows across the lawn. “This will be perfect for my outfit—look, it's got little clips on it and everything. It'll stay on my head underwater, right?” Without waiting for an answer, she said to herself, “I bet it will. Anyhow, it's worth a nickel to find out.

“Excuse me, ma'am?” She waved her hands and held up the silly tiara. “I found this in the shoe bin.”

The old lady on the porch squinted down at the yard sale and at Tammy with her treasure. “I forgot that was in there. It's part of an old Halloween costume.”

“Great! Now I can wear it with
my
costume.” Tammy grinned big. “We're going to be mermaids. It's our job, starting tomorrow.”

“Oh.” The old lady's face went tight and sour. She put one hand on the porch rail and one on her hip. “Over at the springs, you mean. At Weeki Wachee.”

Elaine nodded and stepped up to stand beside her sister. “Yes, ma'am. We've joined the mermaid show. We got hired yesterday, and we start tomorrow. Mr. Newton's going to teach us how to breathe through the air tubes and everything.”

The woman on the porch sniffed, like whatever the girls were
talking about didn't smell very good. “That's not a decent job.”

“Have you ever
seen
the mermaid show?” Tammy asked, still holding the tiara aloft.

“Of course not.”

“Then, how do you know it isn't decent?”

She crinkled the edge of her nose and frowned harder. “I've seen those girls, running around in their bikinis, flagging down cars to bring people into the springs. I remember when it didn't used to be that way.”

Tammy rubbed her foot into the grass and rolled her eyes. “Ma'am, can I buy the tiara or not?”

“For a dime.”

“But the sign on the trunk said—”

“That was for the shoes. It says the shoes are a nickel, and it doesn't say anything about costume trinkets.”

Tammy gave Elaine a look that asked what she thought about the deal.

Elaine shrugged. “It'll look good with a fish tail. I say you should buy it.”

“All right. Asking a whole dime for this thing is practically highway robbery, but I'll pay it.”

“We don't have no highway here.” One pointed foot at a time, the woman tiptoed down the wood porch steps.

“I guess 19 don't count,” Tammy said of the nearest proper road, wiggling her fingers around in her pocket. She pulled out a dime and made a show of presenting it.

“I guess it don't.” The woman took the coin and pushed it into her purse. “Is that all, then? Y'all don't want anything else?”

“No, ma'am,” the girls said together. “Thank you,” Tammy added.

The old lady nodded and turned her back to them. She went up the porch stairs again, returning to her post, where she could oversee the sale on her broad, green lawn.

Tammy toyed with the tiara as they left, wandering back down into the dirt road and toward U.S. 19, the only paved strip in that part of Florida—a two lane road that ran along the Gulf Coast past all the little towns, joints, and junctures . . . including the springs at Weeki Wachee.

•  •  •

But Weeki Wachee wasn't a proper town; it was just a freshwater pool that a sharp ex-navy man had turned into a roadside attraction. How Frank Newton got the idea to dig an underwater auditorium and fill it with mermaids, no one knew—but word sure did get around about the show. People came from all over the country to see the aquatic acrobatics, and girls came from miles away, hoping to make the cut and wear the fins.

The yard sale lady was right about the bikinis, too. And maybe she was right that it wasn't decent to go running around half-naked all the time, but in 1951 there weren't many visitors passing through that part of Florida. People brought in tourist money however they could, and teenage girls in bikinis brought in a
lot
of tourists.

Besides, neither Tammy nor Elaine had any problem with the skimpy uniform, and if Frank wanted girls to dress that way and chase down cars, that was all right with them.

At least he wasn't weird about it.

Frank was a big guy, wide in the shoulders, with thighs like tree trunks, and the sort of chest where a big tattoo would look right at home. The way he talked—the way he handed out orders and suggestions, the way he taught them how to use the equipment—you could tell he'd been a military man. He wasn't unkind, but he was direct. He wasn't unreasonable, but he was demanding.

Tammy and Elaine caught on quick, and Frank approved.

He liked them not just because they were pretty red-haired sisters, but because they were sturdy farm girls who'd grown up in orchards, climbing orange trees and working hard for a living. Swimming around in the tank was tough, especially with legs bound together in phony fins and only a set of skinny, hidden tubes to breathe from. It didn't matter how pretty a girl was, because if she wasn't hardy enough to swim and smile without much air, she wasn't ready to join the show.

Tammy was all set to swim within one week, and her older sister joined the next.

For their first show together Frank dressed them up the same—passing them off as twins for the sake of the underwater play they were performing.

It worked out well. The girls were only a year apart—“Irish twins”
their mother called them—and with enough of the right greasepaint glitter makeup, at a distance, inside the tank, nobody knew the difference.

The tiara Tammy picked up at the yard sale helped. It gave the audience a way to tell them apart. She twisted the hairpiece into her curls as tight as she could, pushing the metal bobby pins up against her scalp to keep it secure through all the swirling, diving, and splashing. With the tiara perched on her head, that little coronet with the tacky stones, Tammy was the one to watch.

She was the girl with the silver crown.

•  •  •

The shows took on a comfortable, familiar pattern.

Sometimes, the themes were different—pirates, or police, or shipwrecks—but the daily routine was usually the same. Every day, there was practice and training, with Frank barking the story along through a megaphone. Every day, there was time spent sipping from the tiny air hoses and learning to breathe without gasping in front of the audience.

Breathe and smile. Drink a bottle of fizzy Grapette underwater while the kids clapped and their parents wondered
How on earth do they do that?

But they weren't on earth.

They performed beneath it, under the blue skin of the pooled spring and down in front of the enormous, underground window—they frolicked like polar bears in a zoo, with
only the thick and tinted fishbowl glass between them and the wide-eyed watchers.

And all the people in the auditorium sat and shivered, cool as almost ice in the orange-hot heat of a Florida afternoon. Openmouthed, they watched the women in bright bathing suits from a fairy tale—they saw how their fins twisted in the current, how their smiles stayed in place because people had paid good money to see them.

It was magic, and it hid out in the open. The rules were different, there.

•  •  •

“Car!” Frank bellowed through his megaphone.
“Car!”

All the girls knew what to do. The mermaids rallied from the tank with a flurry of flinging water. Wet hair went tied up in scarves or combs, and fins were quickly, carefully stripped. Pruney feet with painted toenails felt about for sandals, and, finding them, they pattered away from the spring.

“Hurry up!” Frank hollered. He pulled a short-sleeved, button-up shirt over his wet chest and retreated toward the ticket office. “Go get 'em, ladies!”

All eight of the mermaids on duty charged out of the dirt and gravel parking lot and over to U.S. 19. And, yes, a brand new '51 Chevrolet was coming in from the north. It was black with chrome and fins shining like silver, and inside it must have been hot as an oven, come noon in July.

The car slowed for the swarm of girls and stopped on the
side of the road. All of the windows were down, so within seconds, each one framed at least two grinning young women wearing not very much in the way of clothes.