Sugar Coated

by Shannen Crane Camp

  Glaring out at the endless expanse of water that disappeared into the far, flat horizon, Brynn let out one long frustrated sigh. And then, taking a deep breath, she dove head first into the freezing ocean. At first the force of the temperature took her breath away, making her feel as if she’d been punched in the chest. Immediately after that sensation subsided, her head began to feel pinched as the cold water filled her ears and clouded her vision.

  She clamped her eyes shut under the murky, green water and let her body float in a state of complete weightlessness for a moment, reveling in the feeling of being completely isolated in a place where the Angel with the soothing voice didn’t matter. A place where Aywon was just a word she didn’t care about.

  Living a life full of unanswered questions had always been her burden to bear, but suddenly, her lot didn’t seem fair anymore. It didn’t make any sense that she should be the only one asking questions. If no one was going to answer her, she’d find her own answers, starting with the great mystery surrounding the dangerous ocean. As she floated in the peaceful water, she couldn’t understand the danger everyone feared so much.

  She held her breath in that serene—albeit freezing—place until her lungs burned for air and her fingertips began to tingle. She broke the surface for just a moment, taking in another deep breath before descending once more into the icy depths of the green water. For some reason, amidst the fear and uncertainty she felt in the ocean, she was able to think more clearly than she ever had. She was going to start making things happen for herself. She would take her train trip this month, just as she had every month since she was old enough to travel alone, in the hopes that the train would stop in Aywon once more.

  This thought brought Brynn comfort, simply by knowing she was taking steps to find her own answers in a world full of questions. Her happiness, however, was soon broken by the waves that she had somehow managed to avoid for those few brief moments underwater. Instead of fighting against the tunnel of water that ripped her from her peaceful solitude, she let the force spin her around toward the shore, the world collapsing into total disarray as the ground became the sky.

  Unsure of exactly how it happened, Brynn’s cheek suddenly made contact with the sandy ocean floor and she knew the water was now only a foot or two deep. She got onto all fours and began crawling out of the water, much like she had the first time she’d taken the plunge. This time, however the ocean didn’t seem to want to give her back. A wave crashed down on top of her back, forcing her to lie flat on the rough ground before she was dragged back into the deeper water as she clawed at the soft earth to stop her backwards momentum.

  Still determined not to panic in her newfound area of reflection, she closed her eyes once more, imagining the bright white walls and perfectly clean floors of her dream space amidst the chaos of the turbulent water. She imagined the Angel’s face, her voice, and the things she had said to Brynn the night before. Though the dream had faded the moment she’d woke up, suddenly being caught in a potentially deadly situation seemed to bring the conversation back in vivid detail.

  The Angel wanted to know something. Something Brynn had done. The only problem was, Brynn couldn’t remember what she had apparently done to make the woman so mad. She wasn’t exactly a coward, but Brynn cared about self-preservation just as much as anyone else, despite the very unwise and unsafe decision she was making at that very moment to let the waves take her where they would.

  She continued to ignore the aching in her lungs as they begged to be filled with air. Instead she reveled in the fact that her dream was coming back to her so completely. Something had been wrong with Brynn. She couldn’t talk to the Angel and tell her she didn’t know anything. If she could talk, she probably would have lied to her in order to stay alive, though in that particular situation she wasn’t quite sure if it would have even helped. The woman seemed furious with Brynn and she was almost certain no matter what answer she gave, the whole thing still wouldn’t end well for her.

  But there was something the woman had said that still bothered Brynn. Not quite as much as her lungs were currently bothering her from her apparent lack of concern for their well-being, but it bothered her enough to make her continue ignoring her body to attend to the mental battle she was currently fighting. What had the woman said? Something that was right on the tip of Brynn’s tongue.

  Just as she was certain she couldn’t stand to be without air any longer, she felt something hook under her arms and drag her to the surface. She sputtered a bit as the cold air hit her skin and she greedily sucked in oxygen as if she had been just about to drown. A wave hit her in the face with such force that it brought her surroundings back into painfully dangerous detail.

  What was wrong with her? She had been about to drown and didn’t even care. She was so wrapped up in solving the mystery of her dreams that she didn’t actually take time to make sure she’d be alive to see the problem through to the end once she did solve it.

  The hands that had saved her and were currently dragging her out of the water and up onto the sand were apparently much more logical and concerned with the present than she had been only moments before. She could only imagine how crazy she must have seemed to this person. A girl by herself, running into the ocean like a mad woman then putting up no fight against the waves and just letting herself be dragged under.

  As her head hit the soft, dry sand right next to her discarded boots and jacket, Ty appeared in her line of vision, looking both worried and furious at the same time. The effect was actually quite terrifying. His sandy blonde hair stuck to his forehead in dark clumps and his brown eyes were narrowed as he watched Brynn carefully, looking for signs of any permanent damage.

  “What were you thinking?” he asked in a voice much louder than necessary.

  Being under the water for so long had only made Brynn’s headache worse and his shouting wasn’t helping at all.

  “I just wanted somewhere to think,” she answered shakily.

  Ty saw her shiver and put her dry coat over her, but he wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily.

  “So you decided the freezing cold, violent, deadly ocean would be a good place to do that?” he asked incredulously.

  “Somehow it made more sense when I was doing it,” she said between hiccups from all of the water she had swallowed. “How did you come get me out? You never even set foot on the sand,” she added, knowing that Ty was so terrified of the ocean that the closest he’d ever gotten to it was the top of the sandy hill, and even then, he would look longingly back at the city.

  “I wasn’t going to just let you drown,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  Brynn noted guiltily that his lips were blue from the freezing water he had just braved to save his friend.

  “But can you please not ever do that again? I don’t think I’m up to being brave more than once in my lifetime,” he said, finally calming down a bit as he let his head hit the sand next to hers.

  “I won’t,” she assured him, and for a moment she meant it.

  The water may have cleared her mind and made it easier to remember the things she’d heard in her dream, but almost drowning wasn’t quite worth the memories.

  “Promise?” he asked, hooking her pinky with his and bringing his thumb to his lips.

  “Promise,” she said as she kissed her own thumb.

  She did feel a pang of guilt when she realized that this was a promise she may not keep, but tried to ignore the thought.

  “What are you even doing down here?” she asked him, trying to take her mind off of the way her lungs had ached under the icy water’s surface and the lie she had just told her best friend.

  “Amber wants us to come see her new remodel but none of us could get a hold of you, so I just assumed you were down here again,” he explained, wiping the water off of his face with his free hand and still breathing hard, though she couldn’t tell if it was from the physical exertion of his rescue or simply the terror of being so close to the ocean.
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  Brynn lifted her head slightly to look back at the large waves that she swore were much smaller when she had first braved the water. Dark clouds were forming in the sky ominously, threatening to unleash their wrath and soak Brynn and Ty even more.

  “Do you ever notice that the weather is always perfect in Seaside?” Brynn asked, still staring straight up into the heavy grey clouds overhead.

  “It’s not perfect. We get rain and cloudy days,” Ty said.

  “But not very often.”

  “And that’s a problem?” Ty responded, looking over at her with a smile and trying to stop shivering in the cold wind.

  “It’s not a problem. It’s just weird. It’s always sunny there and the beach is always stormy.”

  “That’s because it’s always overcast near oceans. All of the precipitation,” Ty explained, doing a good job of not sounding like it was an obvious fact that Brynn should know, even though it was.

  “It just seems like such a dramatic difference,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Ty.

  They lay there in silence for a moment longer before Brynn suddenly remembered a question she had been meaning to ask her friend.

  “Have you ever met someone named Jonah?” she asked, looking over at Ty. He turned to her as well, his eyes looking quizzical as he searched her face.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered. “Do you know what his ID number is or just his name? There could be a lot of Jonah’s in this city.”

  “I have no idea what his number is. I just met him in the library. He’s about our age, but I’d never seen him before so I thought maybe you’d know him from games or something.”

  “You give me way too much credit,” Ty answered with a laugh. “I’m not that popular. I don’t just know everyone in the city who’s around our age.” He laid his head back against the sand once more and closed his eyes, letting the faint, infrequent glimpses of sun dry him. “And anyway, what were you doing in the library? Did you break your tablet again, because you know I can fix that, right?”

  Brynn rolled onto her side to playfully punch Ty in the arm.

  “No, you jerk,” she said with a laugh, “I don’t break everything I touch. Just most things. I wanted to look through some real books,” she explained, using the word Jonah had used to describe the feel in the library.

  “Fair enough,” Ty said, putting his hands up in a surrender fashion. “So do you want to run by your house to get a change of dry clothes before we drop by Amber’s? If Bennett and Amber find out you went into the ocean to think, they’re going to put you under constant surveillance. They already think you’ve lost it,” Ty told her, propping himself up on his elbows and looking out with unease at the turbulent ocean. “Also you didn’t pick the best ensemble to wear into the water,” he pointed out, his face flushing lightly as he kept his eyes locked too intently on hers, refusing to look down at her shirt.

  Sure enough, wearing a black bra and white shirt into the ocean hadn’t been Brynn’s most brilliant idea, but at least she knew Ty was gentlemanly enough to pretend not to notice her lack of good judgment.

  “Good idea,” Brynn agreed in embarrassment, pulling her jacket on and zipping it up quickly.

  * * *

  Ty and Brynn were late getting to Amber’s house, which she scolded them for endlessly when they walked through the door. The walk from the beach to Ty’s house was long enough without Brynn needing to change, and then even longer with the two of them missing their bus.

  “I told you it wasn’t our fault. The stupid bus was late,” Ty told Amber as they walked down her long hallway that looked the same as it ever had.

  He was stretching the truth a bit, but Brynn appreciated the effort.

  “The buses are never late,” she said matter-of-factly, obviously having gotten her feelings hurt that her friends didn’t seem to care about her remodel as much as they should.

  “It was actually my fault more than anything,” Brynn interjected. “I went down to the beach for a while and Ty had to walk all the way out there to come and get me because my tablet was turned off.”

  Brynn looked over at Ty with a small smile, knowing that even though she wanted to avoid the topic of her little trip to the beach, it was the only way to distract Amber from her rage at Ty.

  “You were where?” she asked slowly, stopping the long trek through the hallway to look at Brynn, suspicion lining her features.

  “I swear I’m not crazy or anything, even though you think I am. I just wanted to go somewhere to think that wasn’t in the city. Sometimes I get tired of being surrounded by the glass buildings and people…and technology,” Brynn said simply, ticking each thing off on her finger.

  “Well, at least you’re not dead I guess,” Amber said gruffly, turning on her heel and walking once more toward her living room.

  Brynn concealed a smile as she followed suit. Amber liked to pretend that she was mad at Brynn a lot, but she really cared about her. It made Brynn happy to know she had such a good friend.

  “I’m really excited to see what you did to the living room,” Ty said finally, attempting to lighten the mood with a subject change.

  “You should be. It’s pretty amazing,” Amber replied, trying not to let her voice sound like her friends were off the hook for their tardiness, even though they all knew the tension was already gone. “Ready?” she asked, placing her hand on the door to open it.

  Upon swinging the door to the living room open, Brynn and Ty were met with light.

  A lot of it.

  True to her word, Amber had replaced all of her outward facing walls with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in so much natural light it was like being outside. Her interior walls had been painted a sage green, accented with the dozens of plants that were growing right out of little dirt plots that dotted the dark hardwood floors. Though she couldn’t make her ceiling all glass like she’d wanted to, she had painted it a robin’s egg blue, mimicking the sky outside perfectly.

  “Wow,” Brynn said in awe, looking happily around the room.

  “It’s amazing,” Ty agreed, his eyes wide.

  “I can get a tan even when I’m inside,” Amber said with a grin, looking proudly around at her creation.

  “You’ll pretty much never need to go on vacation again,” Bennett said, entering the room from the hallway they’d just come from. “It looks like you’re outside in Southern Tropic,” she continued, clapping her hands at her friend’s accomplishment. “Your party is going to be so awesome.”

  “I figure we’ll have everyone in this room since it’s the biggest,” Amber said, sitting down on one of her sage green sofas and looking around the room as if envisioning the party right at that moment.

  “Brynn, do you want to come shopping with us? We’re going to go make our outfits today,” Bennett said, always excited over an excuse to get out and do something that involved clothes.

  Brynn thought for a moment, trying to come up with a plausible excuse to get out of shopping so that she could sneak back to the library for her next great idea—looking through history books.

  “I’m actually feeling a little sick. I think it’s all that cold ocean air getting to me,” Brynn lied, rubbing her arms for effect.

  “Why don’t you just ask my house for some medicine then?” Amber asked, sounding less suspicious than normal.

  She would have had to be really excited about her party to miss an opportunity to worry about Brynn.

  “I’ll take some medicine when I get home. I just think I need to lie down for a while.”

  “Do you want me to come with you? Make sure you’re okay?” Ty asked, making Brynn feel very guilty with the genuine concern that lined his features.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” Brynn assured him, smiling at her friend who cared so much about her.

  “Well, let’s get moving then! Lots to do,” Bennett said excitedly, leading the group out of Amber’s newly remodeled house.

  “Try not to have too much fun shopping,” Br
ynn whispered to Ty with a sly smile.

  “Nice try, faker. Try not to have too much fun at the library,” he replied.

  Chapter 7: Jonah

  Brynn walked, once more, through the doors of the library with a purpose in mind. At Ty’s house she had selected her default outfit of grey skinny jeans, a black shirt, her turquoise necklace, and her grey fitted jacket, feeling that if she was going to be hunched over books for hours, she wanted to be comfortable.

  Taking a sugar cube out of her messenger bag and popping it into her mouth, she walked up to the woman at the front desk once more with a smile, not feeling the slightest bit intimidated by her now that she had a plan in motion to figure out everything about the city that didn’t make sense. Somehow the sense of purpose gave her confidence that she hadn’t had before.

  “I’m looking for history books,” Brynn said sweetly.

  “You’re not allowed to eat in here,” the woman replied dryly, looking like she was in no mood to talk to Brynn today.

  Feeling the sugar dissolve on her tongue, Brynn opened her mouth wide, like a child showing they had finished all of their meal.

  “All gone,” she said simply.

  “Charming,” the woman answered, giving Brynn a look she was sure could kill.

  “History books?” Brynn asked again, studying the woman’s face.

  There wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary about her besides her eyes. Nothing obvious anyway. There was just something unnatural about her that Brynn couldn’t quite place and it was beginning to drive her crazy. Maybe it really was like Bennett had said—the medicine they gave Workers to improve their reflexes made them move in an unnatural way and that’s what seemed so off about them.

  “First floor. Down one flight of stairs,” she said as she turned her attention back to her tablet.