by Sara Ella
She smirked, a plan forming in her mind.
Her grandmother was right. Coral would return to the library next week. She was a princess. And a princess never broke a promise.
Besides, who better to help her catch a prince than a human boy who would drown her if he ever got the chance?
Twenty-Three
Brooke
After
I never dreamed I’d find my way back here. After three months of recovery and suicide watch at a traditional psychiatric facility, Fathoms Ranch never looked so good.
This is what home is meant to feel like.
I watch Jake from my place in the passenger seat. She has the window rolled down and one arm out, surfing the breeze.
We drove the coast highway, cruising for hours with the sea to the west and the hills to the east. We didn’t talk much and I didn’t mind. What do I say to the woman who saved my life after I tried to end it?
I can’t gather the words, so I keep quiet and hold fast to the stuffed tote bag full of belongings in my lap. The tote bag I have because Jake brought it to me when I was being treated for hypothermia. A popular book quote graces one side.
“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.”
—John Green
I’d ignored—or tried to ignore—whatever message Jake wanted to send with her not-so-subtle gift. But then she produced the bottle.
My beautiful, stupid bottle.
When I’d finally opened my eyes after a week in the intensive care unit, the doctors said it was a miracle I’d survived. Jake’s was the first face I recognized.
“You gave us quite the scare.” She set the corked, frosted, blue sea glass bottle on the table beside my hospital bed.
I stared at it. Why had she saved it? Amid the vases of flowers and balloon bouquets and the dozen cards from the girls at the ranch, it looked . . .
Ordinary.
“You have a visitor,” Jake said that first day I sat up without help.
I knew who she meant, but I’d been too prideful to face the one who’d sent me away. “I don’t want any visitors.”
“Understood,” Jake conceded, palms raised.
She didn’t push me or prod me or try to guilt me into changing my mind.
Which was why I didn’t refuse her visits. Jake showed up every Saturday for the past three months. I didn’t say much and she didn’t ask. When she picked me up this morning, I didn’t question her.
“Hope’s been asking about you,” Jake says now, turning off the ignition and shifting the van into park. “She’s calling you a mermaid. They all are. I’m still stunned you survived those temperatures for that long. The ocean was watching out for you.”
I shoulder my tote bag and exit the car at the same time she does. How do I respond? I still don’t know what to make of all this. Of my vivid hallucination or why I survived. I stick with the safety of my silence and follow Jake inside.
The moment we cross the threshold, a whirlwind of commotion ensues. Two Goldendoodle dogs greet me, jumping and pouncing and licking my hands. Mary shoos them away and hands me a cup of hot cocoa. The girls gather around. A few I recognize from the group session, but new faces have been added to the mix as well.
When Hope, the smallest of all, presses through them, she offers me a dried, wrinkled, and faded paper heart. “You dropped this. I saved it.”
I try to deny it, but even the ocean in all her vast depths doesn’t have as much soul as this little girl has with her genuine tenacity and very real heart.
I clear my throat and meet her eyes. “You saved it all this time? Why?”
She exchanges a knowing look with Jake. “I had a feeling you’d be back.” Hope winks. “Wanted to make sure you remembered.”
She doesn’t have to continue. Because despite my hypothermic hallucinations and the craziness of that January day, Hope’s words stayed with me.
I am not nothing.
“Thank you,” I say. Then, “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “You can be sorry for dropping my heart. You can even be sorry for running away and almost dying. But you don’t get to be sorry for existing anymore. Okay?”
My chest grows tight. My eyes sting. I have no profound words to match her eleven-year-old wisdom, so I nod and repeat, “Okay.”
How fitting this one little word feels as I clutch my quote tote and head upstairs.
When I’m under the spray of the warm shower, alone with nothing but the artificial rain as my soundtrack, I say it again. “Okay.”
And when I’m lying in bed? I breathe the word. Nod as I drift off to sleep. Speak it again.
“Okay.”
Twenty-Four
Merrick
Anxiety grated Merrick’s nerves all the way back to Grim’s.
Coral sought a prince.
He’d given her his word. Promised to help her find one. But as he walked home, doubts weighed in, making Merrick question their entire conversation.
What if his father had sent her? Would Hiroshi send a teenager as a spy? Maybe she wasn’t a teenager. What if she just looked young? Had his father somehow discovered the police report from that terrible January night? If Hiroshi had tracked Merrick down, why didn’t he act?
Merrick frowned as he entered the dark beach house. His first instinct was to check on Maya. He crept upstairs, where he found her sound asleep in Grim’s guest bedroom. Merrick exhaled and made his way back down to the kitchen.
He cursed. Too loudly for this time of night, but who cared? His father would pull a stunt like this. To make Merrick go insane. Leave him wondering if he was being watched or followed.
Eventually, he’d snap.
But that day was not today.
Whoever Coral was, Merrick would find out. If she was a spy, he’d—
“What am I doing?” He hung his head and massaged the bridge of his nose. “This is crazy.” He spoke the words aloud because somehow it made them more concrete. He’d let his father get into his head. Maybe in the city, Merrick had been a hotshot bachelor. Here he was a nobody. It made things simple. Something he’d never experienced.
Grim’s laptop sat on the counter and Merrick pulled it toward him. He logged in to several social media platforms in different tabs and started his nightly keyword search.
“It’s late, man,” a groggy Grim said from the couch. “You should get some shut-eye.”
Merrick picked up the laptop and moved toward the stairs. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you’d fallen asleep down here.”
Grim sat up, rubbed his eyes, and waved him off. “Sit down.” He walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Hungry?”
“I’m good. How was tutoring?”
“Can’t complain, my friend.” Grim took a swig of OJ straight from the carton, then wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “Job’s a job, am I right?”
Merrick nodded and found his place at the counter again. His eyes were dry and he could feel the lack of rest wearing on him. But he didn’t have time to waste. He’d sleep after he found their mom. She would understand what Maya needed and she wouldn’t send her away, like his father had wanted to.
Grim pulled up a bar stool and joined Merrick at the counter. “You forgot the book, didn’t you?”
Merrick winced. “I’ll grab it tomorrow.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Merrick opened a new tab and typed in the address for the next social media platform. “Yeah.”
“Maya’s cuts?”
An inward groan rumbled through him. “Not this again. They’re old.” The site opened and Merrick’s eyes widened. The person who used the device last hadn’t logged out. His sister’s profile photo stared back at him. “Has Maya been on here?”
Grim shrugged. “She wanted to see her friends. I swear, she didn’t post anything.”
Merrick swabbed a hand over his face and scanned her profile. Then he checked her messenger box. Her search history. All looked untouched. Or she’d
covered her tracks. “I don’t want her on here.” Merrick couldn’t prove it, but he’d had a sinking suspicion his sister’s “friends” were part of the problem back home.
“You’re avoiding the question.” Grim nudged him.
Merrick looked up from the screen. “We’ve had this conversation. She’s not cutting. She’s taking classes online under a fake name and address. As soon as I find our mom, we’ll be out of your hair and Maya can get treatment close to home. She’s fine.”
“Hey now, friend, you know this isn’t about that. I have no problem with you staying here or being your wingman when it comes to running from the law. I know your intentions are good. So I’ve taken a risk. And gladly. But your mom—”
“What about her?”
“Did you consider maybe she doesn’t want to be found?”
The question stilled Merrick’s fingers over the keys. “This is my father’s doing.” He resumed typing. Clicked through a few profiles of women who fit his mom’s demographic. Nothing.
“I don’t know, compadre.” Grim rose and returned the carton of OJ to the fridge. “Looks to me like your mom’s the one—”
Merrick logged out and snapped the laptop closed. “You’re right. I should go to bed.”
Grim sighed. “Good night, man. I’m here if you need anything.”
Merrick grumbled a pathetic “Night” and walked upstairs to his futon in the den. When his head hit the pillow, he almost immediately passed out.
He found his mom there in his nightmares—running. Every time he’d catch up to her, she’d back away. He grabbed hold, but she vanished beneath his touch.
When the sun shone through a screen of fog in the morning, a new strategy found him. He needed someone on the inside.
He picked up his phone and dialed the number he’d thankfully memorized.
Merrick could only hope Nikki wouldn’t hate him too much.
Twenty-Five
Coral
If humanity was Coral’s prison, high school was her torture chamber.
She slammed her locker and ducked her head, wishing this place were made of sand. Longing for it to be filled with water so she could swim her way free.
But these walls were concrete and the people between them were stone. Coral had learned how to make herself small and insignificant as the little mermaid she’d once been. But even this didn’t stop some people from blocking her way to the exit.
“Hey, what’s the rush?” some stupid boy with his stupid grin said. Typical human. How could her sister have fallen for one?
Coral tried to distinguish which boy in particular this was. She couldn’t. They were all the same, of course. Each and every one of them were Dukes or princes or kings, or some other version of the men, both below and above, she had grown to loathe.
At least one thing she’d been told about the Disease rang true.
The male species was immune. Deep, soul-worthy emotions they could not fathom.
“I saw your sister the other day,” the boy said, hanging an arm around Coral’s shoulders though she tried to keep walking. “She’s got quite the voice.”
Had he been out on a boat? How did he know about Jordan? Her family’s reputation preceded her when all she wanted to do was disappear. But what did she expect? Jordan’s voice was beautiful. She was famous, as the crown princess had been before her.
“Too bad your other sister offed herself,” the boy added.
Coral spun on him then. “What do you know about it, you worthless urchin?” She spat in his face and stomped on his flip-flopped toe, immediately regretting the action.
Some princess she was. What had she become? Human or not, she had no excuse for acting so improper. She was above this.
“You little witch.” He grabbed her hair and yanked hard.
She jerked, but his grip was too tight.
His bony fingers latched on to her wrist. “What’s this?” He tugged her sister’s pearl bracelet free and held it high in the air. “Looks like money to me.”
“Give that back.” Hysterics threatened to break her. The bracelet was the only thing she had left of the crown princess. “Please.”
“Nah, I think I might take these to the pawn shop. See what they’re—”
“Hey!” Another boy with sloppy clothes but kind eyes jogged toward them from the hallway’s opposite end. This boy was older. Coral guessed he was one of the after-school tutors from the community college.
“Are you looking to be thrown into moving traffic, my friend?” His voice carried through the long corridor. “Because I can certainly make that happen.”
The bully released her as Mr. Tall, Bright, and Lanky approached. He wore a laid-back grin and had shaggy brown hair. He didn’t boast the build of an athlete, but his presence made the hallway feel much smaller.
“Just having a bit of fun.” He dropped the bracelet.
Coral snatched it off the floor and slipped it over her hand, then tugged her sweater sleeve down to cover her wrist.
“I like fun, amigo.” Coral’s hero clapped a hand on the coward’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “How about I have the same kind of fun with you?”
The urchin shrugged him off and stormed away, giving the finger and tugging on the collar of his letterman jacket.
“You all right, ma’am?” The kind boy swept his arm in a horizontal arc and gave a chivalrous bow.
Coral had never been called “ma’am” before, but she had a feeling this guy addressed everyone the same way. With terms of endearment or friendship or respect.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Be careful.” He wagged a finger. “That word is often misused. Name’s Nigel. Can I walk you somewhere, Miss . . . ?” He offered his arm.
“No.” She took a quick step back, not giving her name in return. “I’ll be fine.”
He straightened. “Again with that word.”
She avoided his gaze.
“Okay . . . well, I’m around if you ever need a bodyguard.” He saluted and they went their separate ways.
Soon Coral found herself soaking up the sun on the sidewalk outside the school. The only good thing about the school was that it was situated exactly three blocks from the beach. It was so close, in fact, that grains of sand lingered on the pavement where the humans had tracked it over time. She wanted to run there. But it was May now, and she was no closer to finding her sister’s prince than when she’d started.
“Coral?”
An inner groan ensued. So close, yet so far. She turned to find Miss Brandes with hair piled high and glasses thick as bottles looking right at her.
“Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
No. She didn’t. There were bigger things at stake here. This woman could talk all she wanted, but what would it help? Absolutely nothing. “I came to your group.” What else did she want?
“Yes, and I’m so glad you did. I promise this isn’t about that.” Miss Brandes turned as if Coral had already agreed to follow.
She did, of course. The last thing she needed was her grandmother’s chiding.
Might as well get this over with.
The office was as bland as any other. Cluttered and filled with drab, muted shades of brown and taupe and manila. Coral sat in the seat before the metal desk. Her leg shook and she stilled it with one hand.
“How are you liking your classes?” Miss Brandes asked.
Coral shrugged. She’d spent her entire life splitting time between a class full of students and her private studies at home in the palace. Now that she attended school full time, she longed for the solitude a private tutor brought.
“Your teachers say you’ve been . . . distracted. Want to talk about that?”
“Nope.”
“And your family? Any updates? Have you spoken to them since we talked last?”
Coral eyed her through narrow slits. This woman was venturing dangerously close to the place Coral kept under tight lock and key. “No.”
“I only want to
help.”
Why did everyone keep trying to help her? The Sorceress bringing her here. Then Merrick with his pinky promises. Now Miss Brandes. The only thing that would help Coral was out of reach.
“Your English teacher says you’re quite the writer. He showed me some of your class work.”
A new emotion lowered Coral’s guard. She sat back in her seat. Waited.
Miss Brandes took out a file and opened it flat on the desk before her. She thumbed through some pages and pulled one free. “This piece is particularly good. So good, I’d like to encourage you to submit it to the district-wide Young Literary contest.”
Coral’s ears perked. She sat straighter in her chair. She searched for malice in Miss Brandes’s eyes but found only eagerness.
This human was complimenting her? What was the catch?
“The winning entry goes on to the state competition. From there, first place would get your work published in a nationwide anthology.”
What did Coral care about contests and anthologies? She’d never been good enough to fit within her own family. How was this different?
Miss Brandes closed the file and laced her fingers over it. “You have a chance to start fresh here. Your grandmother filled me in on some things.”
Of course she had. More distrust grew for the woman who’d helped raise her.
“I wonder how you’d feel about me referring you to a therapist. She travels, but she’s in town the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. She also does video chat sessions if that works better for you. Your grandmother says you deal with anxiety? Is that why you didn’t share last night?”
Why must they insist on meddling? Didn’t they know there was no cure for the Disease?
Coral shook her head. “I didn’t want to share.” What would she say? That her sister had been taken by Red Tide and now Coral wished it had taken her instead?
“I see,” Miss Brandes said. “You know, a lot of writers deal with anxiety when speaking in a large group. They find it much easier to express their voices on the page.” She backed away from the desk and rose to her feet. “Consider the contest, okay? I’m here to talk if you need me. And if you change your mind about the therapist, here’s her card.”