Fathomless

by Jackson Pearce

  I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  “So you’re talking to me again, now that you want something?” she says, voice cool.

  “I need you to tell me my future.”

  Anne looks at me for a long time, then turns back to the TV, shaking her head. “Your future with Jude?” There’s maturity in her voice, wisdom that surprises me—the mocking, even the anger, is gone. I’m not used to it, and it makes my stomach coil.

  “No.”

  Anne raises an eyebrow, thinks for a moment. “With Naida, then.”

  “Yes.”

  She crooks an arm around the couch, watches me.

  “And why should I do that, when last time we read you, you stormed out of the house?”

  “Because I’m your sister. And I asked. And you do it all the time to total strangers, and I’ve never asked you before.”

  “That’s the point,” Anne says, shaking her head. “To total strangers.”

  I stare at her blankly.

  “My god, Celia,” she says. “You really are selfish.”

  “What are you talking about?” I snap, abandoning the fact that I need her help.

  “I always thought your power meant you wouldn’t be, because you understood where people came from. But…” Anne presses her tongue to her teeth, drums her fingers like she’s trying not to yell.

  “The powers don’t work for me like they do for you and Jane. I’ve told you that. They aren’t a game, they aren’t cute, because what I find out when I touch someone can’t be changed. The choices are already made, and sometimes they were horrible, and I have to know that. I have to feel it. So now I’m selfish because I won’t use them like some sort of game?”

  Anne’s eyes widen. “You think our powers are a game?”

  “You treat them like a game, and you can, because yours are easier to bear than mine.”

  “Celia…” She looks disgusted, furious. “You know what can’t be changed. I have to know everything that can be. I see someone doing something terrible in their future, something horrible. I see suffering, and I want so badly to warn them that they just need to make a different choice, a new decision, and it’ll all be different…. And sometimes I do, even, but it hardly ever helps. I can’t untangle their lives to tell them what to avoid. I don’t even know when it’s coming….”

  “And so instead you make them buy you ice cream?” I snap. I don’t believe her game of “my power is worse than yours,” not for a minute.

  “Yes!” she says. “Because if I don’t do something stupid with it, then I won’t do anything at all. I’ll just sit here and let it eat me alive. I do something stupid with it because I want to learn how to block the power, whenever I want, so I don’t have to be scared every time I hug you that I’ll find out you die or get hurt or leave….” She slams her hands down on the coffee table, looks away, and blinks back tears furiously. Anne doesn’t cry.

  I look down, try to swallow the heavy guilt on my tongue but fail. Anger is still bright and flickering in my chest, but I don’t know what to say, what to do….

  “Forget it. Come on, then. Let’s do this,” Anne says, sniffling. She tosses down the remote and motions for me to sit near her.

  “Wait, no. You don’t have to….”

  “You need to know?” she says, voice hard. I nod. “Then I’ll do it.” She pauses a moment, and her voice softens. “I’ll do it. Hurry, before I change my mind.”

  I take the cushion beside her. She holds out her palms, waits for me….

  “I’m afraid of Naida sometimes,” I say. I don’t know why I’m confessing this—it has nothing to do with Anne looking into my future. Maybe I just want to admit it to someone, to offer a confession in exchange for all Anne has just told me.

  “Why?” Anne asks.

  “When she remembers, she’s… she’s my friend. She’s the only friend I’ve ever had, other than you and Jane. She makes me want to help her, she makes me feel… powerful.”

  “And when she doesn’t remember?”

  “She’s Lo—she has a different name when she doesn’t remember. She’s a different person. I don’t think she’d hurt me. But I don’t know.”

  “Is that why you want to know the future? To find out if she hurts you?”

  “No. I just need to know if she’ll end up remembering for good or not. If I could just get her to hold on to her memories, she could be Naida all the time….” I shake my head. “It’s not her fault she’s like this. It isn’t fair.”

  “It doesn’t really matter if it’s fair or not,” Anne says. “This is her life now. She has to choose what to do with it. It isn’t fair that our mom died, or that our dad has no idea who we are, or that our brothers get to spend his inheritance while we’re stuck in school. No one has it fair.”

  “But Naida doesn’t really have much of a choice,” I say.

  “Trust me,” Anne says. “With a person’s future, there’s always a choice. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.” She glances around at our dorm room—our home. This isn’t how teenage girls are supposed to live. We should have our exciting, beautiful mother. Our father, all his memories intact. Our house in the woods of Georgia, a regular school, summer jobs at the bookstore in Ellison. We shouldn’t be alone here during the summer. And yet here we are. This is our life. She looks back at me. “The only time you don’t get a choice is if you’re stuck watching the past. Sometimes you have to look away.” She pauses, smiles a little sadly. “Sometimes looking away means tricking a boy into taking you out for fondue.”

  I want to laugh a little, but it doesn’t work, so instead I nod, then push my hands toward Anne. She takes them, rubs her fingers back and forth over the skin on the back of my palm.

  She doesn’t speak; she raises an eyebrow.

  I watch, waiting, blocking the memories that are trying to get from Anne to me—we’re like a river flowing two ways, currents crossing. I sigh, release the wall. A sea of memories comes at me—I’m in nearly all of them. I watch us moving into the dorms for the first time, our brother Samuel helping move in our couch. Our father standing there, saying good-bye, even though he had no idea who we were. The Pavilion, Anne’s first kiss, myself through Anne’s eyes—her not-quite-matched sister who she desperately wants to fix, to make happy, to make fit in seamlessly with her and Jane—

  Anne pulls her hands away.

  “Well?” I ask, trying to shake off the less-than-flattering image of myself.

  Anne’s face is a little pale. She looks at a loss for words, like her tongue is too heavy to articulate what she needs to say.

  “Anne, you’re scaring me,” I whisper.

  “I can’t tell you how it ends, exactly,” she finally says. She puts her head in her hands, winds her fingers into her hair, and pulls.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s nothing there. There’s no future between you and the girl—the water girl. Naida. Whatever she is.”

  “We stop being friends—”

  “You’re not listening,” Anne snaps, and there’s so much worry in her voice that I feel cold. “There’s nothing there, Celia. There’s no future because there’s no ‘you and her.’ It’s blank.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Anne sighs, shakes her head. “What have you gotten yourself into?” she mutters before looking me in the eye. “It means,” she says, voice serious, “either she dies or you do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Lo

  I used to look at my sisters and feel joy. Feel beauty, feel like we were all connected.

  Now I look at them and picture them on the shore, snapping necks, running off with the darkness that made us this way.

  They’re so certain we become angels. If I try to warn them, try to tell them the truth, they’ll ignore me, all but exile me. I’ll spend the last of my time with them alone, like Molly. I want to cry, but it feels so pointless, stupid, almost, so instead I settle in the sand, tilt
my head back, let the ocean rock me. Sometimes it’s easy to think it really does love me.

  If it did, could I stay Lo, stay the shade of gray between Naida’s light and the old one’s dark?

  If I let Naida win, it means Jude will have to die—if he loves me. I don’t know that it’s true, anyhow, but he’s the closest thing either way. He’s the only one there’d be any point trying on.

  If I stay Lo, I’ll wind up like the others. Like the man who changed me. Dark. I wonder if it hurts, or if we can go dark as easily as the sky does. It didn’t look painful for the old one. And a storm is coming, a big one—a hurricane. I’d change fast; it’d be over before I knew it. It’s certainly the easiest choice.

  But it isn’t really a choice.

  I can’t let Jude die, not even for Naida. And if Lo is going to die either way, then I know what I have to do. Tomorrow, when the sun is at its height, I’ll go to shore, and I’ll walk. As far away from the water as possible, no matter the pain, no matter how much my body longs to dive back into the ocean. If it worked at the Pavilion that night, it’ll work even faster in the heat of the day. I’ll fall and dry like any sea thing stuck on land.

  I’ll die. But that’s the only choice I have left—how it’ll happen. I’m not letting someone else—something else—make that final choice for me.

  I let my eyes drift over the Glasgow. Only a few of my sisters are in sight; most are still asleep, but they’ll be up soon. Maybe I should wake them up, tell them. Tell Key, at least—I grimly think about her wistful looks at the surface, about her longing to be an angel. She wouldn’t believe me. She may trust me, but my words aren’t stronger than her dreams. None of them would believe me, really—or they simply wouldn’t care enough to kill themselves rather than become monsters. I suppose that’s fair—I wouldn’t have started caring if I hadn’t remembered Naida. Maybe you have to know your past to look to your future, to make a decision about it. And my sisters have no pasts; they only have the present, this moment, each fleeting second—

  Except Molly.

  I lift my head, look for her. She’s not here; I wager she’s back in the Glasgow’s back bedroom again. She would care. She’s the only one who would care, the only one who would believe me about the “angels”—after all, she remembers how we changed. She knows the man who brought us here wasn’t an angel. She must know we don’t become creatures of the light when we’re old. She deserves to know what does happen.

  I rise, swim silently into the Glasgow. I have trouble remembering the way at first; I look in several open doors, find nothing but decaying furniture, the remains of dishes shattered on the ground. Finally I spot the ancient chandelier and go toward it—yes, Molly is here. I approach the doorway to the back bedroom slowly, prepared for her to surprise me again. She doesn’t. In fact, when I enter the room, it takes me a moment to find her at all….

  But there she is. Shoulders pressed against the wall, legs swinging off the top of a bookcase with ornate molding. I suppose the clumps of brown on the shelf are what used to be books. She looks down at me, and it seems to take her a moment to remember that she hates me.

  “Lo?” she asks.

  “Molly,” I say, and she inhales, closes her eyes.

  “Molly. Yes,” she says. Her shoulders slump a little with relief. She drops down the front of the bookshelf to float in front of me.

  “Did you forget?”

  She doesn’t answer me, and I know what she’s doing—repeating the name to herself over and over and over, just like I did when I first remembered Naida.

  “You can give yourself a new name, if you forget that one,” I say.

  “It’s not the—”

  “I know it’s not the same,” I say, trying to sound gentle when really, I want to shout at her—I know it’s not the same. I know better than anyone else here that it’s not the same. “Do you still remember how we changed?”

  Molly stares at me for a long time, then parts her lips. “Most of it, yes.”

  “I do, too, now. The monster, biting our hearts, bringing us here—” I stop when Molly cries out a little, like hearing the memories articulated stings her mind.

  “You don’t need to explain. I remember,” she says. “I remember that better than I remember my own name.”

  “I saw them,” I say. “The angels. The monsters. The things that changed us.”

  Molly lifts her head, looks at me incredulously. “Where?”

  “On the shore. They really do come back for us. That part is true. It’s just now I know you were right—they aren’t angels. We don’t become angels.” I explain to her what I saw quickly—the old one emerging from the water, joining them. Molly’s face goes from shocked to angry—determined, even.

  “That’s not fair. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to be like this, but I don’t want to be like them, either. Not after what they did to my sister. My sister, my twin…” She balls her hands into fists. “I can’t even remember her name anymore.”

  “That’s something I still don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t remember a twin, and they didn’t kill my older sister. Why did they kill yours?”

  Molly shakes her head, like I’m irritating her. “You had a twin at one point. We all did. It has to be twins—he told me after he killed mine. Twins have one soul split up over two bodies. That’s why when they kill one, the other body can be changed; it’s already becoming soulless. So the monsters followed my sister and me, chased us, they caught her first, killed her, and then they changed me. They killed her so they could have me.” She touches a hand to her chest, where I can see the smallest, faintest remains of a scar.

  “What about triplets?” I ask, Celia’s question flashing through my mind. Of course she doesn’t want to be like me—and if she’s at risk, I have to tell her.

  “What about them?” Molly asks, confused.

  “I have a friend,” I say, swallowing. “The boy I’m meeting on shore—it’s not just a boy. There’s a girl, too. She’s a triplet.”

  Molly laughs coldly, like I’m a child, stupid for meddling on the shore. “Then tell your friend to be careful of angels. I’m sure they’d love to find triplets. Kill one, get two new ocean girls? What a prize.”

  I look down, don’t know what to say. “Look, you’re the only one I thought would want to know about them coming back for us, making us like them,” I finally say. “I don’t want to be like them, either. I’m going to the surface tomorrow. I’m going to walk until I’m too far away from the ocean and I…”

  “Die,” Molly finishes when I can’t.

  I nod weakly. “If you want to… come with me…” It sounds so stupid to say it aloud, but there it is.

  Molly gives me a strange look, and we’re quiet for a long time. Finally, she exhales. “Leave me alone.” It’s not a demand; it’s a request. A plea. Molly sinks down in the spot between the old nightstand and the bed as I back out of the room, turn, and swim to the open center of the ship. I pass most of my sisters, swim to the deck, and find Key asleep by the cherub railing. They will be dark one day, and I can’t help them. I can’t convince them. I can’t stop them, any more than my older sister could stop the monster from taking me. I lie down next to Key silently, but in my head I’m shouting, shouting loud enough for all of my sisters to hear.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Celia

  I’m sitting with Jude on one of the wooden benches that face the Pavilion in the early afternoon sun. It’s the last week of the real summer season, so the crowd is small but rowdy. They leap onto rides like warriors overtaking enemies, down cotton candy and Cokes like they won’t eat for the next few years—they mutter about cutting their vacations short because of the oncoming hurricane, are dedicated to a goal of riding each ride before the park shuts down early in preparation for the evening’s storm. Jude has his guitar, and has played a few songs, collected a few dollars in the case, but now he’s mostly just
making jokes at the tourists’ expense. I’m trying to laugh, but it isn’t working.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” he finally says. His eyes are serious, despite the fact that the noise from the strong-man machine is almost louder than his voice.

  I don’t know how to tell him without telling him everything. All the things I’ve kept from him, the reason we met, what really happened when I pulled him out of the water. My power, even. Instead, all I’ve done is lie.

  He hates lies.

  I want us to be a normal couple. More than that, I don’t want to admit I lied. I don’t want to admit that if he has Nightingale syndrome, it’s for Naida, not me. Jude pushes the guitar to one side, wraps his forearms and hands around mine.

  I inhale. “Remember how I told you about my friend Naida? She…” When I pause, Jude laces his fingers with mine, runs his thumb along the side of my hand. I lean into him even though it’s hot and we’re both sticky with sweat.

  “Something’s wrong. Something serious,” I finally say.

  “What is it?”

  How do you explain that the dark half of a girl who lives underwater seems to be dominating the human part of her personality? I sigh. More lies.

  “She’s different. And she remembers how things used to be a long time ago, and it’s depressing her that she can’t go back to that time. Does that make sense?”

  “A little. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to help her.”

  I rest my head on his shoulder, inhaling the scent of fabric softener and sunscreen as he thinks. “Maybe you can’t,” he finally says.

  “I have to.”

  “But maybe you can’t,” he says. “I tried to help my mom for years, and finally I had to realize that there was nothing more I could do. I tried, I did my best, but… I had to let go of the past, of our past together, and think about the future.”

  “It’s hard for me to let go of the past,” I mutter. “It’s like a phobia.”