Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (23 page)

“Why?” I asked.

Sailor drifted toward us, her face twisted into a scowl. “Because of humans,” she said, pronouncing the last word as if it were filth in her mouth. “We hide who we really are because of their fear of anything different. Because they hate anything that isn’t like them.”

“Not all of them,” Dylan told her.

“Enough that we’re taught that being finfolk is something to be ashamed of,” Sailor insisted. “Enough that we live on land, trying to be as human as we can to keep them happy.”

The look in Sailor’s eyes told me I had stumbled into a part of the finfolk life that hadn’t yet been fully explained.

“Why don’t the finfolk leave?” I asked. “Find another island, like they did before.”

Sailor’s eyes blazed with fury. “You humans would like that, wouldn’t you? You always think that you own everything. You think the only lives that matter are you own, the only rules are the ones you make up. And if you don’t like the way something is, you do everything in your power to destroy it. Finfolk shouldn’t have to run every time humans become afraid of something they don’t understand.”

“Mara is finfolk too,” Dylan said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

But Sailor brushed off his touch. “She’s half-human. And she’s already displayed her talent for coming in and claiming things that belong to someone else. Don’t let her make you forget the promises you’ve already made to
me
.” Then she dove under the water with a splash. She resurfaced several feet away, swimming back in the direction of the shore.

“Sailor!” Dylan called. He started to go after her, but Lake stopped him.

“Let her go,” he said. “She’ll cool off by the time she reaches shore. Right now, you’ll make her even more upset.”

We climbed back into the boat since we’d pulled up all of Lake’s crab pots and he sat down to begin examining his catch for keepers. I wrapped myself in a thick towel once I’d redressed. I had retrieved my camera from my bag, which I’d stowed under the seats, and took photos of the crabs, their claws waving in anger as they were dumped into the plastic tubs.

“Do you make much money catching crabs?” I asked.

Lake shook his head as he passed the empty pot back to Dylan to refill with bait. “Nah, not like the guys you see on TV. Winter is especially slow, because the crabs don’t move around as much right now. Summer is better, but still, I’m a one man operation. Except when I can rope Dylan into helping out.” He shot a grin at Dylan. I snapped a photo of my dad’s smile, his hair blowing into his face in the wind.

“Only because he pays me in crabs,” Dylan told me. “And my mom would kill me if I didn’t bring some home at least once a month.”

“Mostly I sell to local families and restaurants,” Lake said. “It’s not much, but it’s fresh and local. A true Swanser meal.” He paused and the smile slipped from his face. “Well, for the ones that will still buy from me these days.”

He bent back over, hefting one of the crab pots toward him. He didn’t look at me as he said, “I used to bring your mom out here sometimes.”

A chill prickled goosebumps all down my arms under the towel. I buried my chin in the thick terrycloth, not saying anything as Lake’s words soaked into my thoughts. I imagined my mom sitting here, exactly where I sat now, looking out over the same water, at the same orange and purple sunrise.

“Why did she leave?” I asked, unable to look at anything except seagulls flying overhead. They had circled the boat, squawking, ever since they realized we were pulling up crabs, hoping for a handout.

Lake squatted by the open tubs, sitting back on his feet. The wind blew his hair around his head in tangled waves and his unbuttoned plaid shirt whipped against his back.

“I loved your mama,” he said. “I’ve never loved anyone like I loved her. And she loved me. But sometimes, being in love isn’t enough. Sometimes the sacrifices one or both people have to make in order to work things out aren’t good enough. Sometimes the fear of what could be lost overrides that love.”

A tear traced an icy path down my cheek. I scrubbed it away before anyone could see.

“What’s that?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. I pointed to a dark spot several hundred yards away. It quickly grew bigger as I watched.

Lake and Dylan stood, wiping their hands on their pants. “Not again,” Lake muttered.

“What?” I could see now that the shape was a boat, a bigger boat than the one we were on, and the motor roared as it approached.

“It’s Harry Connors,” Dylan told me. His expression was grim as he watched the boat’s arrival. “Elizabeth’s dad.”

We were silent as the other boat drew close. The motor shut off suddenly and the craft drifted toward us, bobbing along on the water.

“Stealing from my pots again, Westray?” I remembered the man standing at the front of the boat from the campfire in front of Moody’s Variety Store, but he looked even more intimidating now. He was tall and wide, a giant of a man, with a thick beard and a worn baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. Behind him, his crew of equally sized men glared across the water at us.

“This is my area, Connors,” Lake said. “Always has been.”

The man on the boat leaned over the railing, his thick arms bulging from the sleeves of his sweater. He looked hard and rough from a life working the water, and he didn’t look the least bit intimidated by Lake.

“I’m not talking about these pots,” Mr. Connors said. “I’m talking about the string of empty ones I just pulled up.” He pointed a fat finger at us. “If I catch you in my waters, stealing from my pots, there’ll be hell to pay. Got that, Westray?”

He didn’t wait for a response. He signaled to the man at the wheel and the boat roared to life, sending our little boat bouncing violently as it sped away.

Lake crouched down again and returned to the task of unloading his crabs from the traps. He flung the empty crab pot back overboard with a fierce look on his face, not even bothering to bait it again.

“What was that about?” I asked.

Lake didn’t say anything, so Dylan looked up at me through his curtain of shaggy hair. His eyes flashed with something between anger and fear. “That was one of the reasons why we only go in the water once a month.”

* * *

Josh’s ATV already sat in the parking lot at Pirate’s Cove when I arrived a little later. Once Lake had brought us back to shore, I’d told Dylan that I had something I had to do before school and had taken off before he could offer to come with me.

I wanted to see Josh after that experience with Mr. Connors’s threats. He would tell me the truth about what was going on and why the Connors family acted that way toward us.

I’d known he would be at Pirate’s Cove, as if that strange connection I felt called me to him. My feet couldn’t move fast enough and I tripped down the path, almost forgetting to duck under the low hanging branches.

My mouth opened when I emerged from the trees, ready to greet Josh, but the sight before me caused my entire body to freeze in place.

Josh stood close to the shore, his jeans rolled up and the water washing around his ankles. But he wasn’t alone. His arms were wrapped around a tall, slender figure with long, dark hair. Her face was pressed into his shoulder and his chin rested on top of her head, but I recognized Sailor even though I couldn’t see her face.

I stumbled backward, retreating into the trees before either of them could see me. Sailor and Josh? The memory of the phone call I’d overheard in the library came suddenly back to the front of my mind. They talked. And apparently they spent time together. Alone. At our beach.

But...it didn’t make sense. My stomach roiled and churned and now the sweet tingle of Josh’s kisses on my lips had turned into a roaring fire. Why had he kissed me the way he did if he were secretly seeing Sailor? The way he held her—they were more than casual acquaintances that went to the same school.

I should have said something, but I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. Was this what Sailor meant? Josh was hers, when all this time I had thought that he wanted to be mine.

Hot tears trickled down my cheeks as I stumbled back down the path, leaving Josh and Sailor in their embrace behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Avoiding Josh at school wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. Swans Landing School was small, but there were still places to lose myself in a crowd or else hide out until I was sure Josh had passed.

Avoiding Sailor, however, was impossible. She and Dylan met me outside our first period classroom. “They’re actually allowing a violent sociopath like you back in school?” she quipped as she stalked past me. I fell into line behind her, with Dylan at my side.

“When I punched Elizabeth, I imagined it was your face,” I told her. “It was very satisfying.”

Sailor shot me a disgusted look over her shoulder as she headed toward her desk. “I liked it better yesterday when you weren’t around. Wasn’t it great, Dylan? Nice and quiet, just the two of us. Like old times. We’ve had a lot of nice, quiet times alone, haven’t we?”

Dylan’s face reddened. “I hear Mr. Venugopal might be giving a pop quiz today,” he said.

Sailor shot me another dirty look and then turned facing forward again, as if pretending I didn’t exist.

That afternoon I headed toward the dreaded appointment with Mr. Richter. As I lifted my hand to knock on the office door, it opened and Josh stood there looking out at me.

I blinked at him. He blinked at me.

“Mara, hello,” Mr. Richter called over Josh’s shoulder. “Come in, please. Josh, I’ll see you next week.”

Josh’s gaze never left mine when he stepped aside allowing me to pass into the office. He had to know that I was avoiding him. Earlier in the day when he passed me in the hall, I had refused to look at him.

But as Mr. Richter closed the door, the urge to look behind me was too great to resist. Josh still stood there, staring back at me, his face unreadable.

I hoped that my own face hadn’t betrayed the way my heart went into a frenzied beat at the sight of him. It had been easy all day to tell myself that if he wanted Sailor he couldn’t have me too.

But in Josh’s presence, my body said differently.

“Please sit,” Mr. Richter said, gesturing toward the chair in front of his desk. He moved behind it and sat in his own black leather chair, leaning back to smile politely at me. “How was your day off?”

“Interesting,” I said. It was the safest answer I could give.

Mr. Richter nodded, pressing his fingertips together. “I hope you had a chance to think over your actions on Monday. Violence is never a solution to our problems.”

Actually, it had felt like a really great solution to my problem called Elizabeth. It would probably make an excellent Sailor-problem solution too.

“Of course, Mr. Richter,” I said, playing up the humbled student act. “I deeply regret what I did and will never do it again.” I was laying it on thick, but Mr. Richter seemed pleased.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he said. “Because part of your coming back to school requires that you apologize to Miss Connors.”

My eyebrows shot halfway up my forehead. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Here at Swans Landing School, we value camaraderie between our students and promote peaceful resolutions to problems. I can set up a meeting tomorrow between yourself and Miss Connors with myself as a mediator so that you can tell her how sorry you are.”

“I assume then that she has to apologize to me too?” I asked.

Mr. Richter blinked at me. “For...?”

“For verbal harassment,” I told him. “She said something to me first. If she’d kept on walking, none of this would have happened.”

Mr. Richter looked grim. “Mara, several of the students who witnessed the incident came to my office to give their account. And all of them corroborated Elizabeth’s story—that she was on her way to work on her English assignment when you attacked her. They all indicated that you and Elizabeth had had a disagreement in the library last week and that may have been the reason for your reaction to her?”

Witnesses? Since when had there been witnesses other than Josh? Despite Josh’s sneaking around with Sailor, I couldn’t believe that he would tell lies to Mr. Richter about me. These witnesses must have been random friends Elizabeth had convinced to lie on her behalf.

“There was no ‘disagreement,’” I said, making air quotes with my fingers. “What happened last week was also caused by Elizabeth running her mouth. It is insane that she can do whatever she wants with no repercussions and
I
have to apologize to her.”

“I understand that it’s difficult moving to a new place,” Mr. Richter said, sighing. His sigh was a long, drawn out hollow sound. “Especially in your situation. I know that being different from most people doesn’t make it any better, but there are rules we’re all expected to follow here, Mara. And since I wasn’t there, I have to go by the information I receive. Four people all told me the same story, yours is the only one that’s different.”

I understood now why Sailor was so angry toward the people of this island. It didn’t matter what the truth was, anyone who was finfolk was to blame for everything that happened.