Promise Bound

by Anne Greenwood Brown

She pulled her hair back into a ponytail, exposing a Chinese symbol tattooed on her neck. Red-and-tan-striped feathers blended effortlessly with the baby-fine strands of hair behind her ears.

  “I need to do some research,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes, saying, “Mmm-hmm,” as if I’d just said I was Neptune’s nephew.

  “No, really.” I rested my forearms on the counter and leaned toward her.

  Unexpectedly, she made a pfff sound and rolled her eyes again. She returned her attention to the papers she was shuffling on her desk. “Of course you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you really want?”

  “A computer. Just point me to—”

  “I suppose this works for you all the time, eh?”

  “You suppose what works?”

  “Come swooping in. Smile. Flash those white teeth of yours. Ask the library girl for a little help? Guys like you never do your own work. Well, I’ve got stuff to do, and you’re not half as cute as you think you are.”

  That was it. I was giving up on girls for good. “You’ve got a serious customer service problem. Just show me how to work the computers and I won’t bother you anymore.”

  She jerked her head in the direction I should go. “There are log-on instructions posted by each terminal.”

  “Thanks”—I read her name tag—“Chelsea. Big help. I got it from here.”

  She gestured with a graceful, though ambiguous, wave of her hand.

  In the next room, several computers with bright blue screens hummed. I sighed at them in resignation. Admittedly, the girl had pegged me correctly (electronics had never been my strong suit), so I sat at the one in the farthest corner, half-shrouded by an overgrown ficus plant, where no one would notice me fumbling around. The table was scattered with scratch paper and short, stubby pencils.

  For a second I just stared at my fingers on the keyboard, poised on the edge of God knows what. What did I know already? One: the name of the boat started with a K or an R. What I didn’t know was if that memory was real or fabricated. If I’d screwed up on that detail, I didn’t stand a chance. Two: registered in Canada to a husband and wife. Probably. And three: it was a sailboat. I was ninety-nine percent sure of that point.

  I followed the instructions on the sheet, typing slowly with two fingers until I got on to the Canadian transit site I’d found last summer. The site logged every vessel, air, and freight carrier registered in Canada. If my parents’ boat was still in service it would be here. I went to the maritime page and plugged in Thunder Bay, then narrowed my search to only those vessels whose names started with a K or an R. Four thousand names popped up, give or take. I further narrowed the list, excluding tugs, freighters, and other commercial vessels. What remained was a startlingly short list:

  Kanton Knees

  Race Me

  Rhapsody in Blue

  Three sailboats. Three. Could it be that easy? I swallowed hard. Was I looking at my last contact with my human life? I wrote each name down and wiped my palms on my pants.

  I stared at the screen for one long second, then, hovering the cursor over Rhapsody in Blue, clicked the mouse. The registered owner’s name and address appeared: McIntyre; Farmer Road. I wrote them down on scratch paper and moved on to the owners of the other two boats.

  I scrubbed away a shiver that ran down my arms. This time tomorrow I could be face to face with my parents. That quick. What would Lily think about that? Didn’t matter. She was probably hoping it would take me longer anyway. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all a ruse because she couldn’t find the heart to break it off with me. She was hoping a long absence would make me forget her.

  Agh. It might be only three sailboats, but it wouldn’t be quick. This time tomorrow, there’d still be three because, as close as I was, it was the final step that I dreaded most: researching myself in connection with any one of these three vessels.

  I didn’t know what would be worse: to sift through all the stories of long-dead children, or to stumble upon my own reported drowning. Or worst yet: to discover there was no story to read at all.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Then, picking out each letter with my index fingers, like two birds pecking at seeds, I typed my first query:

  Lake Superior child drown

  I don’t know what I expected, but a picture of me didn’t pop up. Neither did a Wikipedia article on Little Boy Lost at Sea. I scrolled through the search results until settling on a newspaper archive site. Two hundred stories of drowned children between the years 1980 and 2000. The first was about a ten-year-old girl. And I knew her.

  It was 1988. In my memory, I looked about ten, although by then I’d been in the lake for two decades. It was Big Bay—the same beach on Madeline Island that I’d brought Lily to last spring. I’d forgotten it at the time, but I remembered now. The little girl. Nadia watching from up the shore where we’d beached.

  It had taken twenty years for the natural mermaid disposition to catch up with me. Until then, I hadn’t been touched with even a drop of sorrow. But when it did find me, it hit with a vengeance. For several nights, Mother had been worrying over my crying bouts, trying to pacify my tantrums. Maris convinced her it was time for my first kill; she was sick of me keeping her awake.

  “There,” Mother said. “She looks like a good one,” and we watched the little girl on the beach for almost half an hour before Mother pushed me forward. I ran south along the shore, on uncertain legs, following the wavy line that separated the wet sand from the dry.

  When I finally reached the little girl, my skin was dry and my feet felt solid under me. She was on her hands and knees, crawling around a mound of sand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in my younger voice, a scowl on my face.

  “Building a castle,” she said without looking up. “Want to help?”

  I sat down and scooped at the sand, watching her and what she did, pushing wet sand into a fortified wall and poking it with a stick. I glowered at the misshapen building. If you could even call it that. It didn’t want to keep its form. I stomped on the wall.

  “Hey!” she said. “Don’t do that.”

  “It’s stupid,” I said.

  “You just need more water.” She got up and dug a moat around the castle with a plastic shovel, then ran toward the lake with a bucket, filling it in the surf. Wet sand fell in heavy clumps from the bathing-suit ruffle that ran around her belly like a shrunken skirt. Yellow pinwheels of light swirled from her shoulders and her elbows and her heels as she ran. It almost made me cry out with pain, but I bit down on my tongue instead.

  When she returned, I pressed flat rocks into the side of the still-standing castle wall. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  The little girl didn’t look away from her work. “She’s reading. Up there. By my dad. Where’s yours?”

  “Out there,” I said, looking out toward the water. She didn’t notice.

  “My name’s Ashley Marie Abbott,” she said. “Everyone calls me Lee-Lee. What’s your name?”

  “Calder.”

  “Don’t you have a last name?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  She looked up then, for the first time.

  “Do you need more water in your bucket?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It keeps soaking into the sand. A moat needs to look like a river. Like a doughnut river.” She drew a circle in the air above the castle mound.

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  “I only have one bucket.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” I said, shrugging. “I can get more water for you.”

  She stood up and ran for the lake. I ran behind her. I said, “If you fill your bucket out deeper, it won’t sink into the sand so fast. You’ve been getting the water too close to shore. That’s why it sinks in. It’s not the good kind. It’s already lost all the magic.”

  “Magic?�
�� she asked.

  “The magic water is out deeper,” I said. “I used to be like you, but now I only play in the deeper water.”

  “How deep? Can I still touch?”

  “If you’re scared, you can hold my hand. I won’t let you go.”

  “Promise?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I promise.”

  That’s where the memory ended. Or, almost ended. Even now I could recall the effervescence of her yellow light fizzing in the recesses of my heart, making the world look bright and clean and hopeful again. That was all I let myself remember. I couldn’t do this. There were far too many stories to read through. I didn’t want to face any more names.

  My phone was still blinking. I finally picked it up to see Lily’s response to my last text.

  Dad checked with the hospital. There was a girl who got hurt on the beach but they say she’s fine. Thought you’d want to know.

  I stared at those words, until the salty sting became too much to bear. I balled up my notes and threw them at the table. They bounced once and landed on the floor. When I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, I dropped my head into my hands. Shaking. Grateful there was no one else around. My vision blackened, and my soul swirled through me like water down a drain. I hated my memories. I hated Lily for making me remember. No, it wasn’t Lily. I hated me. If I could, I would have just lain down on the carpet and waited to die.

  The Chelsea girl came up behind me and placed one hand flat on the table. Her nails were bitten down to nubs and painted black. I snapped my phone shut. She leaned in. Her long hair fell over my shoulder. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, my voice rough.

  “Sorry if I was rude before.”

  I refused to look up at her. “S’all right.”

  She didn’t leave. Why didn’t she leave? She kept talking. “You just seemed like one of those guys who thinks the library is some kind of joke.”

  I hunched over the keyboard and nodded.

  “Well, like I said, I’m sorry about before. If I was rude.”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Then I pushed my chair back and stormed out of the library, leaving the computer screen blinking behind me.

  21

  LILY

  I didn’t know a lot about film noir. Actually, I had to look it up on Wikipedia after I hung up with Gabby, but a night of cynical high-crime movies? Well … that seemed like a perfect distraction from the fact I’d just completely bombed with Pavati. Her promise to let Danny think that she loved him rang a little hollow now that I’d stepped away from the dock. It wasn’t anywhere near what I’d set out to get in exchange, and what would I tell Mom?

  So yeah … the distraction of a night out with Gabby, a little escape from reality, seemed like a decent way to kill the evening. Plus there was the added benefit that we wouldn’t have to actually talk to each other, which meant I could avoid another conversation about Jack. Double whew.

  Gabby was standing outside the theater when I pulled up. By the looks of things, the building hadn’t been remodeled in nearly a century. Gabby mentioned it had once been a vaudeville theater, which made sense because the interior was ornate; the high ceiling was decorated with hand-painted cherubs and roses, and a red velveteen curtain with gold fringe covered the movie screen. There were only twelve rows of seats—each broken-spring chair covered in the same velveteen and mounted on a wrought iron base.

  The best spots were already taken by the time we arrived, so we had to sit close to the screen to get seats together.

  “Jack and I liked to go to these Bogart and Bacall marathons together,” Gabby said, leaning into my ear. “Besides parentage, it was about the only thing we had in common. ‘Dangerous love,’ he called it.”

  “Yeah?” So much for a Jack-free night.

  “He appreciated film noir from an artistic point of view,” she said, gesturing dramatically on the word artistic. “I just find it ironic. I’m going to get popcorn. Want some?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  Gabby tossed her sweatshirt onto the seat and left for the lobby. I dug around in my pocket for a half stick of gum I thought I’d left there. Violin music enveloped me as the curtains separated, exposing a screen crowned by an intricately carved proscenium arch. Prominent at the top: a life-sized mermaid, with peeling paint and glass eyes. No wonder Jack loved this theater. It sent the creepy-crawlies up my spine. Or maybe it wasn’t the wooden mermaid at all—something cool and shivery was trailing up my neck.

  “Lily,” a voice whispered from behind me.

  I whipped around and found Maris withdrawing her long, cool fingers.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  “I’m a sucker for Bacall,” said Maris with a thin-lipped smile. Her long blond bangs slipped across her face, and she pushed them back so I could better see her eyes. If she was trying to push her thoughts onto mine, the dim lighting was interfering. I couldn’t feel any invasion of my mind.

  “Be serious,” I said, turning around to face front. I hoped I sounded irritated but controlled, because my heart was anything but. It raced in an uneven pattern of fearful spasms. What was she really doing here?

  Maris leaned farther forward, her chin nearly touching my shoulder. I shuddered. She squeezed my neck with icy fingertips. “Have you ever known me to joke? How do you think we learned to be so perfectly human? Mother brought us to the movies every week. We even practiced our reading at the foreign film festivals. Subtitles, you know.”

  I turned my head only halfway to the left, saying, “I think you need further study when it comes to imitating humans.” But I had to admit, it explained a lot. “Now get out of here. Please.”

  “I can’t. I need to talk to you.”

  I turned around again—this time to the right—as a woman claimed the seat on my left. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Pavati.”

  “She told you?” I asked incredulously. That didn’t seem likely.

  “More or less.”

  Great. Gabby returned and Maris leaned back in her seat. Gabby ripped open a bag of M&M’s and dumped them on top of the popcorn. “This was the way Jack liked to eat it,” she said. She raised the popcorn bucket like she was making a toast. “To Jack.”

  “To Jack,” I said halfheartedly, feeling Maris’s death stare on the back of my head.

  “May he rest in peace,” said Gabby quietly.

  I had a sudden surge of panic as it occurred to me that Gabby might choose this moment to bring up the dagger again. Right here. Right now. With Maris just inches away. We were so screwed. Obviously I couldn’t see Maris’s reaction, but I could feel the electricity in my hair. I whispered, “Gabby, I told you—”

  “It’s all right. We don’t need to talk about this now.” The last light went out in the theater and the projector went clickety clickety as the first silver frames of The Big Sleep appeared on the screen. As the names Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall materialized in stylized script, Gabby leaned against my shoulder again. “You probably didn’t know Jack well enough, but he was a romantic at heart.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “The Big Sleep was his favorite.”

  Überdramatic music swelled like a wave, and the audience fell silent, except for some coughing. I didn’t get past the first scene before understanding what Maris had been talking about. With the exception of hair color, the character of Carmen Sternwood was amazingly Pavati-esque. Or the other way around, I guess. The father, General Sternwood, sat in a wheelchair, requesting a favor.

  Fantastic. So much for an escape from reality.

  There didn’t seem to be much ventilation in the theater, and the seats suddenly felt small and cramped. I pulled at the collar on my shirt and—would you believe it—Bogart’s Detective Marlowe did the same thing.

  Just as the Pavati character was described as a “little child who likes to pull the wings off flies,” Gabby stopped
eating her popcorn, her fingers frozen midair between the bag and her lips. I looked over and noticed a shiny tear trail on her left cheek.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  “I know it’s stupid, but I just wish I’d listened to Jack last year. About the mermaids. I wasn’t a good sister to him.”

  “Hush! We’ve already talked about this. Jack was … confused,” I said. It was the most generous adjective I could find. I sank down low so my head was barely above my seat back. Gabby turned to me expectantly, light and shadow flickering in silver and gray across her face.

  “All those people,” Gabby said. “Dead.” The man sitting to Gabby’s right shushed her, and she waved him off.

  “Let’s not do this right now,” I said. “People are trying to watch the movie.”

  “They do this marathon every year. Everyone here has seen it at least a dozen times.”

  “Well, I’ve never seen it,” I said.

  Gabby said, “Sorry. I’ll be quiet,” just as Maris whispered through the space between my and Gabby’s chairs, “Your friend isn’t going to be a nuisance, is she?”

  Gabby shot Maris a dirty look and said, “Sor-ry!”

  The woman sitting on my left turned to scowl at me, then at Maris. I raised my shoulders apologetically. The last thing I needed was Gabby getting Maris all riled up, or making Maris think Gabby was another threat. I’d been down that Pettit road already.

  “Dad bought a sonar for our boat,” Gabby whispered.

  “Shhh,” I said, elbowing her hard. Maris’s breath was cold on my shoulder.

  When the first movie was over, the projection slipped seamlessly, without an intermission, into Dark Passage. I wanted to go. The seat was lumpy and uncomfortable, but more than that, knowing Maris was right behind me had me sitting so rigidly that by the end, my back ached and my head pounded. But I couldn’t go. Gabby had me under surveillance, looking for the slightest word or gesture that might give her more clues into Jack’s disappearance. And Maris … well, if I walked out, I was afraid she’d follow. Or worse, that she’d say something to Gabby.