“I have to go,” Clio said, handing Elsa back her empty bottle.
“Go where?”
“I have to make another call.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Elsa asked.
“It’s fine,” Clio said quickly. “I just…I’ll be back.”
Clio hurried across the dance floor. Aidan reached out halfheartedly but then let her pass.
Out on the street, Clio took a deep breath of air. It was too warm and heavy. She made her way back to the computer place quickly. Her two euros weren’t even enough to get her another call. It was just enough money to buy ten minutes on one of the computers. When she managed to log on to her e-mail, she found that she had a hundred and seventeen notes in her in-box.
She backtracked into the older mail. She had an e-mail from Ollie somewhere, from months ago. They had been talking about an exhibit that came to a small gallery in the city. It took her a few minutes and a few tries. The connection was slow, but it was there. She hit reply and stared at the screen.
As her precious minutes ticked away, she looked for something in her head, something to express what it was she wanted to say to Ollie. She didn’t want to accuse him. She didn’t want to freak him out. She felt dizzy.
She managed to start typing something about Italy and ink and how she was sorry if her call had been confusing. Nothing made sense. Her sentences wouldn’t go together. She kept deleting and retyping and noticed only at the last second that the timer was at three seconds. In one panicked moment, she hit send.
“Oh my God,” she said aloud. “What did I just do?” The short guy behind the counter glanced at her and shrugged.
As she stumbled back to Fez, Clio looked up between the buildings at the white, full moon. Someone had dangled a fitted bedsheet out of a window. It looked like a lazy ghost, empty and mournful.
Outside the door, Clio showed the host her stamped hand and descended into the smoky, sad depths of Fez. There were five people on the dance floor now. Things were more animated and had graduated to some flailing arm moves.
“It’s a party,” Clio mumbled under her breath.
Elsa and Aidan were not in this particular party. Clio looked around the bar, behind a potted palm. She saw them in a far corner. They had moved back a bit. She started to walk toward them, her head pounding from the music, then realized just how close they were standing to each other. In fact, they were very close. Elsa put her arm behind Aidan’s neck, and the two started kissing.
Clio stood there, dumbstruck. This made perfect sense. She’d seen it coming from the very first moments. It was clearly what Elsa wanted and needed, and therefore, Clio should be happy. It shouldn’t have been a surprise.
But she didn’t feel that way at all. It was a shock—a cold, disgusting shock. Her stomach tumbled. She turned away from the sight and ran out of the club.
Kill It If It Moves
Clio sat on the damp black sand in her skirt, looking out at the cold black water. It was too dark to see the gemstones in the sand now. She was fighting back nausea and swallowing back a bile in her mouth that tasted like warm beer, pasta, and woody aftertones…all mixed with a hint of self-loathing.
So many issues to choose from. Ollie. Her dad. Aidan and Elsa kissing…
The kissing was something that should have been simple. It was something other people, like Elsa and Jackson and…okay, everyone…took for granted. Right now, this very second, the only two people she really knew here were making out. And she was alone, drunk on the beach. Unkissed. And struggling with all her might to keep the sob she felt lodged in her throat from escaping.
Jackson, for instance, was one of those annoying people who could go into any party alone and, if she set her mind to it (and she frequently did), make out with someone reasonably hot. In Jackson’s mind, all guys were in a constant state of readiness to be made out with, and it was a female’s prerogative to select and act. Jackson always said it was a question of focus, of knowing that was what you wanted. She said that Clio simply never committed to the task and that on some level she was sabotaging herself.
But could it have been self-sabotage if, as in Clio’s case, you got pretty much right up to the moment at a party, and then someone set the fire alarm off as a joke, and when everyone had to leave, the prospective kissee’s friends told him that they were leaving? And since he didn’t have a car, he left with them?
No.
Or what about the time she had a long buildup of conversation with a guy at school (Michael Flannigan) that went on for weeks, and when they finally made a plan to go out for coffee, he not only got mono, but post-viral syndrome, and stayed out of school for the next six months?
No.
Or the time that Swiss exchange student had become fixated with Clio’s tattoo, and things were looking good, but then she ate that tuna burger that had been sitting around in the fridge for maybe one day too many. When the barfing was over, he was back in Zurich.
Jackson still insisted that this all had something to do with Clio’s will, a deep, internal resistance, but Clio wasn’t seeing it.
She also couldn’t really even see the boat from where she sat. It was a blue-and-red glowing dot out in the distance. As much as she had hated it only three or four hours before, now she ached for it. She didn’t feel like having the inevitable argument with her father. All she wanted was to get into her side of the bed, pull the comforter over her face, and maybe slip into a coma for a while. Eight weeks would be good.
Clio was sitting on the sand at the edge of the water, letting it lap over her toes. She could just close her eyes and sleep here. Of course, that was dangerous for about a million different reasons, as well as being deeply unappealing. Or she could go and whine to her mother, but there was still no way out of this. She had to go back to the boat. She had been beaten.
The thought struck her, brilliant and simple. She could swim for it. Even if her father was there already, maybe she could just slip on board and make it seem like she’d never left.
She shivered at the thought. It wasn’t the swimming that worried her. She could handle the distance easily. It was the boats. Once you’ve been hit by a boat, you see them differently. But the channel was clear. It looked like most of the boats had come in for the night. Far out, there was some kind of large tourist boat, probably a dinner cruiser. It wasn’t going to pass between her and the Sea Butterfly.
She looked around. No one was in sight. The route itself was straightforward. Out, under the rope that marked the swim area, along the rocks, and then directly to the boat. There were numerous signs up, all in Italian, but not one of them had anything that stood out as being scary, like a big picture of a shark’s fin.
“It’s an easy swim,” she said to herself. “Do it and shut up.”
Before she could give herself any more time to think, Clio walked into the water. The flip-flops sank into the pebbles and stuck; she stepped out of them. They would have to go. The stones cut into her feet and made it slippery and hard to walk, so she kicked off and swam out a bit farther. Now her skirt was a problem, so she wriggled out of it and released it into the water. It was better to lose a few bucks’ worth of clothes than face this night any longer, and her tank top and underwear almost looked like a bathing suit anyway.
There was no going back now—now that she had no shoes and no skirt. That sealed the matter nicely. Nowhere to go but out into the inky darkness.
It was a perfect night for a swim, really. The water was calm, and the moonlight spilled over it. Almost immediately, she felt her head begin to clear. It was impossible to worry about Ollie or wonder why there was something so devastating about the kiss between Aidan and Elsa. There was only a deep breath, then she was facedown in the water, her arms making clean, long strokes.
A few fishing boats like the one they had hitched a ride on were anchored just a short distance out in the surf. Clio swam around them and continued straight out, keeping her eye on a formation of rocks that extended
into the water to keep her path straight. Once she had passed them, she bore right. The Sea Butterfly had transformed from just a blip of light to a shadowy outline. This was easier than she’d thought. After a few minutes, she was halfway there. She had finally done one smart thing today.
She flipped over onto her back. It was magical, actually—the dark sky and endless stars and big moon, the warm water. The swimming had cooled her brain and slowed the churning and the pulsing inside.
A wave rolled her a bit, spilling water onto her face and up her nose. She snorted it out and pulled her head up out of the water to focus on the moon. It was full and marble-white, and she could see faint shadows and depressions on it.
She tried to call the image of Ollie back up in her head. She could see him in his vintage pinstripe dress jacket that he wore with jeans…. She could see him riding down Chestnut Street on his bike, smiling at her as he pulled up in front of the store. Clarity. The water brought clarity.
She flipped herself over, checked her position. The boat was maybe fifteen yards off. It didn’t look like the lights were on. Maybe she had gotten lucky. She could get on board, and no one would be the wiser. If she hurried right now, this night would end peacefully.
She started for it again, swimming hard. She hadn’t gotten more than a few feet when she felt the flick against her leg, a burning slash.
A cramp, she figured. She slowed for a second to let it release itself.
Another flick, much hotter and more painful than the first.
“Ow!” she said out loud. “What just…?”
There was another one. Then down near her butt. And again, in the same spot.
Then she saw them. They were so pretty, like translucent little purple water clouds with yellow lightning trapped inside. Pretty or not, no one wants to find herself surrounded on all sides by jellyfish. There were at least ten or a dozen directly behind her, a few more beyond that, another two to the side, another four to the other side. She had swum directly into them.
Another sting, this one on her elbow.
There was nowhere to go except in the direction that would get her out of the water fastest. The problem was, when she kicked and moved, her legs just chopped into the tentacles more and more. There was slashing and burning over her thighs, her butt, her ankles. As the throbbing got worse, moving got hard. Panic was starting to take over now, exploding into all of her thoughts. She was swimming frantically, feeling her body cramp up and burn. If she stopped, they would keep stinging her, her muscles wouldn’t work, she would drown. Really drown. Her body would stop working and she would sink like a stone, right between the land and her father’s boat. The possibility was very, very real.
So she pushed harder. Now it felt like someone had smashed in her knee with a hot iron. She couldn’t bend it enough to swim as hard as she needed to. She willed it to bend anyway. She took in too much water as she opened her mouth to breathe, and she gagged. The panic made her breathe faster, harder. She took in more water.
There was so much stinging all over her body that it was impossible to tell whether or not the jellyfish were still with her. Her movements had become completely erratic. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had moved forward. The swimming felt unreal now. She had tunnel vision. All she could see was the water, the bobbing back platform, her arms swinging. The boat was close, just a few feet away.
Her legs stopped working once they got the message that the boat had almost been reached. She had to rely on her arms. She started breast-stroking, pulling herself through the water. She screamed out, but there was no one on board to hear her.
To her amazement, she had reached the platform. It was so beautiful, this sheet of white fiberglass. She just had to get up onto it. She tried to lift herself with her arms, but they were worn out and burning now. More force. She needed more force.
“All right,” she told all her muscles. “You have to do this. You have to.”
With one massive effort, she threw her body with as much force as she could muster onto the platform. Her chin slammed painfully into it, making her bite her tongue. She cried out in pain.
She was still mostly in the water. She had to get up the steps into the boat. She tried yelling again, but her voice was giving out, and no one was there anyway.
She dug her fingertips into the ridges of the platform and pulled herself along until she reached the handrail. Clio couldn’t stand. Her legs didn’t want anything to do with her. She just managed to drag herself up, scraping her knees against the rough, tractioned surfaces of the steps. That was the least of her worries. When she got to the top, she rolled herself over and landed unceremoniously on the hard white deck.
Then she fainted.
* * *
The SS Bell Star May 1897
The noise woke Dr. Magwell in the middle of the night. He was a light sleeper. He had been since his wife died. It wasn’t a particularly bad noise or extremely loud. It was just wrong, out of place on a night at sea.
He sat up. He heard it again. A high-pitched note…one that an opera singer might strike. An opera singer would definitely be out of place here.
He got up and felt around in the dark for his dressing gown. The first thing he noticed was that the boat wasn’t moving. The second was that it was leaning quite far to one side. He stumbled, reaching for a chair that used to be closer to the side of the bed.
He found the gown, slipped it on, and opened his door.
The smell in the hall was unlike anything he had ever encountered. It seemed to be the smell of something that could not and should not burn. There was heat from the direction of the stairs that led down to the second-class compartments. The whining noise was the ship. Its fabric cried and whined.
He had always thought he would know death when it came. Maybe this was because he had watched his wife die after Marguerite’s birth, and it had seemed so inevitable. A joy such as a child’s birth almost had to be accompanied by a sorrow just as great. Or perhaps it was because he had worked at Pompeii for so long, chipping away the work on one single morning of destruction. He had constantly envisioned that morning in AD 79 when the mountain that sat above the town suddenly exploded, sending a column of ash and fire into the sky, blocking out the sun, raining down rocks and air that boiled the lungs that breathed it. The shutter had come down on Pompeii, stopping it midday. Its inhabitants had tried to hide in their houses, block it out. But it came.
There was screaming now, cries of both “fire!” and “water!” He couldn’t tell if this last one was a request or an exclamation.
He stepped back into his room and shut the door. It took some reaching around, but he found and lit the oil lamp that was secured next to his bed. If he survived this, two things would need to come with him. The first was the object that sat on the small desk, wrapped in layers of rough cloth. The second was a small alabaster cameo on a gold chain. This was the face of his daughter, Marguerite. She always gave it to him to take on his travels. “For luck,” she said. “So that you are never alone.”
There was another, louder whine, and the Bell Star righted herself, then fell in the other direction, throwing him up against the wall. The bundle slid across the desk, and he just managed to reach over and keep it from falling to the ground.
“Somewhere safe for you,” he said, taking it in his hands. “You need to go somewhere safe.”
There weren’t many options in his small cabin. The best of them was the space under the heavy dresser that was bolted into the corner. The bundle fit under there snugly.
He sat on the floor next to it, listening to the chaos outside his door grow louder. There was heat under his floor and weirdly cheerful popping noises, a long series of them.
“My dear,” he said to the cameo. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”
The cameo smiled its peaceful, sleepy smile.
“I’ve always wondered how it would be,” he said. “The timing is very bad, though. I’ve just found it. I suppose
the gods are unhappy. History wants her secrets kept.”
He was not fearless, but he was resigned. There was no fight he could put up. He would wait for nature and the gods, for history herself, to decide his fate.
* * *
Rescue
Something was jumping around Clio’s head. It was loud, loud like a horse. A horse was dancing around her head.
Except that wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure where she was for a second, and she hadn’t yet opened her eyes, but she knew that noise couldn’t be a horse. That just didn’t make any sense at all. It had to be shoes. Very loud shoes. And behind that noise there was a language she didn’t know. Something was being mumbled.
“Clio!”
She opened her eyes to find Martin, Elsa, and Aidan leaning over her.
“Say something,” Aidan demanded. “Clio. Talk. Say something.”
She found the strength to deliver one short, decisive expletive.
“Good,” Aidan said approvingly. “Try to keep talking. Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere,” she gasped. “Legs. Back. Fingers.”
That was enough talking.
She had known pain before. It had been very painful when she’d gotten hit by the boat. But this—this was something else. This was the pain of something that seemed to hate her. Something that was still seeping into her system and growing. It was oozy and wet, yet it burned. The contradiction was so pronounced that it scared her. Something deeply programmed in Clio’s nervous system told her that this wasn’t good for her, that she needed to be afraid. Her body was shaking, for about six reasons.
In a very loose way, she wondered if she was dying. The thought of dying was less scary somehow. Dying was something that kind of made sense. This pain was confusing.
Girl at Sea Page 14