Undercurrent

by Tricia Rayburn

  “But—”

  “Vanessa.” She gave me a small smile, squeezed my hand. “I know. It’s hard, and complicated. But it’s also too late.”

  I struggled to return her smile, picturing her in the ocean and choking on salt water before her body finally relented. Unfortunately, my telling her about me only convinced her all the more to go through with it—especially since she thought that together the two of us had a better of shot of defeating the sirens for good. Shortly after I’d left for school and went to Charlotte’s instead, Paige had asked Mom if she could borrow her car to get out of the house, and then she’d driven to Maine.

  She’d found Betty in her room, standing transfixed before the open window, and managed to break the trance by calling out to her, hugging her.

  Apparently, when it came to sirens, love’s power worked on women the same way it did on men. That was actually how Raina and the others had managed to control Betty this time.

  Despite what Simon had sworn time and again, that the sirens couldn’t last two months packed in ice, they’d survived. They were unconscious until the ice began to thaw, but once it did and their bodies absorbed the salt water, they slowly came to. The only ones who didn’t were the sirens the deep-sea divers had found still frozen; they’d been brought up too soon, and the divers paid dearly for their discovery.

  The sirens who survived started with Oliver and used their weakened powers to convince him that if he really loved Betty the way he claimed, then he should do whatever he could to bring Paige home—even though Betty had insisted that being in Boston was best for her granddaughter. Because Oliver’s feelings for Betty were greater than his fear of the sirens, it worked, and he did what they told him to, including building their tubs, helping them heal, tracking their targets—and manipulating Betty to manipulate Paige. Their ultimate plan was to transform Paige so they would have another member in their ranks, and to either convince me to join them… or to kill me.

  Fortunately, once Betty was herself again, Oliver was, too. Reluctant but too weak to refuse, they’d helped Paige transform in the ocean behind their house. Paige had recovered quickly, and she and Betty had listened for the other sirens. After they heard them, they’d alerted the authorities to possible drownings and reached the lake seconds after Charlotte. Caleb, returning home from marina, saw the lake frothing and lights flashing beneath the surface, and joined the others in our backyard.

  “But look on the bright side,” Paige said a moment later, jarring me from my thoughts. “Now we’re more like sisters than ever before.”

  Before I could decide how to respond, the doorbell rang in the distance. Paige jumped up and hurried toward the house.

  “Hope the little monsters don’t mind minty-fresh breath!” she called over her shoulder.

  Little monsters. She referred to trick-or-treaters, but I still found the reference strange. Just like other things we hadn’t wanted to talk about a few weeks ago, we hadn’t really talked about her transformation or what it meant; this last conversation was the most time we’d devoted to the subject. When we finally did discuss it, though, one of my many questions would be how she was able to treat it so lightly. Was it merely a coping mechanism, the way I hoped… or was she really that happy to be one of us?

  “Peppermint?”

  My head snapped toward the voice. Simon stood behind the empty Adirondack chair, fiddling with a pack of gum.

  “I hope you’re saving the good stuff for the kids in costumes,” he added. “You don’t want to be known as the only house in Winter Harbor that cares about cavities on Halloween.”

  I stood, stepped toward him, my heart straining against my ribs. “Simon—”

  He held up one hand, then lowered it, palm side up. I took it carefully, afraid he’d pull away. My eyes welled when he didn’t. We walked silently down the lawn, putting more distance between us and the house.

  After inhaling enough lake water to fill a small pool, Simon had been hospitalized for four days. I’d visited him at least a dozen times, but whenever I did, other people—Caleb, his parents, even old high school teachers—had been there, making it impossible for us to talk. Now I didn’t know where to start.

  “Your glasses are back,” I attempted after several minutes.

  He smiled, absently pushed the black bridge up his nose. “They didn’t make a difference.”

  We stopped at the edge of the dock. “What didn’t?” I asked.

  “Contacts. Riley thought they’d help.”

  “Your vision?”

  “In a way.” He released my hand, slid both of his in his coat pockets. “I saw the way those guys looked at you, Vanessa. At school, in the coffee shop. Of course, then I assumed it was just because you were amazingly beautiful and that any guy who didn’t notice you was blind. I couldn’t blame them—but I could work on my own appearance to keep you from looking back.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to do anything.”

  “Right. You would’ve broken up with me anyway.”

  I started to reach for him but stopped when he tensed. “I was trying to protect you,” I said, my voice wavering. “I didn’t know how to tell you, and I knew as soon as I did we couldn’t be together.”

  “You assumed,” he said quickly. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have without talking to me first.”

  “I get thirsty,” I said, my throat automatically drying. “When I’m happy, excited, stressed, angry—all the time. I have to drink gallons of salt water every day. I have to take saltwater baths and swim in the ocean whenever I can. You don’t want to deal with that. I don’t want you to deal with that.”

  “Vanessa,” he said sadly, “when you love someone, you don’t just deal with her problems. You don’t tolerate them and simply hope they pass. You work through them together—not because you hate being inconvenienced, but because your lives are connected, intertwined. When you’re happy I’m happy, and when you’re not… nothing else matters.”

  I brushed at my watering eyes. “I didn’t think you loved me.”

  “You didn’t—How could you—”

  “I believed you only thought you did. Because of who—what—I am. And I wanted to believe, so much, that that feeling was real… but I didn’t know if it was.”

  He didn’t say anything. When I looked up again, he was staring out at the lake, his jaw clenching and releasing.

  “What I did know,” I continued, my voice barely a whisper, “was that I loved you.”

  His jaw tensed, then froze. His eyelids fluttered closed as his Adam’s apple sank and rose.

  “And that as much as I couldn’t stand the thought of not being with you, I hated the idea of your not having a full, genuine life more. So when you said you were thinking about leaving Bates for BU and changing your entire life for something that might not even be real… I couldn’t let you do it.”

  He opened his eyes. I followed his gaze to the square diving raft, where, days before, I’d clung to him as if our hearts, like our problems, were connected. Intertwined.

  “It was real.” He looked at me, waited for our eyes to meet. “Want to know how I know?”

  I hesitated, nodded.

  “Because when I saw you with that guy. I totally fell apart.”

  That guy. Parker. “Simon, I can explain—”

  “All three times?” The sadness in his voice sharpened. “You can explain what you were doing on his boat, in that picture online, and on the sidewalk in Boston? Not to mention what-ever I didn’t witness firsthand?”

  “Nothing happened,” I said, my chest burning. “We kissed a little, but—”

  “Vanessa.” He shook his head. “I saw you. That wasn’t just kissing. That wasn’t an accident.”

  I tore my gaze away. Did I tell him? About how the attention made me stronger? And why I’d wanted to be stronger? Or did I just let him believe the worst so that he could finally move on?

  “I’m sorry.”

  My hea
d snapped back toward him. He looked at me, tears filling his warm brown eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, “for letting Zara get to me. I’m sorry I kissed her. I’m sorry I told her that I… felt something I’ve only ever felt for you.”

  “Stop.” I stepped toward him, gently placing my hands on his face and wiping away his tears with my thumbs. “It doesn’t matter. You did nothing wrong.”

  He took my hands in his, pulled them away from his face. “It does matter. Because I wouldn’t have done it if my feelings for you were as strong as they’d always been.”

  “But I hurt you,” I insisted. “Whatever I did or didn’t do, I hurt you. Of course you felt differently.”

  “Feel.”

  I watched fresh tears slip from his eyes and slide down his cheeks. “What?” I whispered.

  “I feel differently.” His hands, still holding mine, trembled. “That’s how I know it was real. Because if it wasn’t, your powers would’ve fixed everything already. I would’ve forgotten what you did even before I’d forgiven you.” He paused, took a shallow, shaky breath. “I’d love you now as much as I did before.”

  As our hands slowly lowered, then released, I was vaguely aware of the feeling drifting from my legs, my arms.

  “I do love you, Vanessa,” he said, his voice cracking. “For better or worse, I don’t think anything will ever change that. It’s just, right now, there are other feelings, too. Strong ones. Painful ones.”

  I searched his face, tried to imagine not being able to see it whenever I wanted to, whenever I needed to. “What are you

  saying?” I asked.

  “I’m saying… that I need some time to figure them out.”

  I had no right to ask, but I had to know. “How much time?”

  “I’m not sure. I hope less rather than more.” He looked at me, his eyes full. “But you have Paige. And your family. Things are okay with them, right?”

  Okay, yes. Enough? That was another thing entirely.

  “I’ll be there if you need me,” he said softly, backing away. “But if you could try not to need me for just a little while… I’d really appreciate it.”

  I watched him go. He continued walking backward for several feet before finally turning around and jogging. Instead of going back inside our house, the way he’d come, he cut across the side yard and headed for his own.

  I didn’t move for several minutes. I stood there, barely feeling the cold breeze or hearing the loons crying on the lake, the music playing inside the house, and the trick-or-treaters laughing down the street. I waited for Simon to come sprinting back across the yard, to sweep me up in his arms and tell me he’d made a terrible, awful mistake. That we both had, but that we could work through those mistakes together, since together was what we were supposed to be no matter what.

  But he didn’t. And eventually, as the season’s first snowflakes began floating down from the sky, sprinkling the lake and stinging my hot skin, I stopped expecting him to.

  I started slowly up the lawn. Reaching the house, I went inside and walked through the living room and past the kitchen, waving to Dad, who was wrapping dishes in bubble wrap and stacking them in cardboard boxes. I continued down the hall and up to the second floor, peering through the stairwell windows at Paige tossing packages of gum into the plastic pumpkins of a trio of young witches. Upstairs, I passed my parents’ room and the spare bedroom without glancing inside. At the end of the hall, I turned and stopped in the open doorway.

  Mom was in the room Justine and I had shared, sorting through the summer clothes she’d been unable even to look at when we’d left Winter Harbor at the end of the summer.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She spun around, gave me a quick smile. “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay.” I came into the room, my eyes traveling over the old lobster bake posters and vintage Lake Kantaka postcards taped to the walls. “You?”

  “A little crazed, but fine.” She lifted a stack of folded T-shirts from Justine’s dresser and put them in an open suitcase on the bed. “Did your father tell you that we’ve already received an offer? It’s not official yet, but the buyer said he’s ready to move when we are.” She stopped, rested her hands on her hips. “We just have so much stuff to sort through, there’s no telling when that’ll be.”

  “I still can’t believe you guys are really selling the house.”

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, moving on to a chest of spare blankets, “when the tides change, you have two choices. You can either stand there, letting the water wash over you and your feet sink deeper into the wet sand… or you can get out of the way. You can move up the beach—or off the beach, if you want. The point is not to get stuck.”

  “I don’t want to be stuck.”

  Her mouth set in a straight line. “Me either.”

  After a moment she continued packing, and I leaned against the dresser. I looked across the room, toward the window and the snow falling heavier, faster, outside—and then to the antique hand mirror hanging next to it. The mirror was tarnished silver, but for a brief second, it glinted like new.

  “Do you still have all of that college stuff you bought last year?” I asked, joining Mom by the wooden chest.

  Her hands stilled only briefly before resuming folding. “What stuff?”

  “The mugs and key chains? The umbrellas and sweatshirts?”

  “I might’ve saved a few things,” she said.

  “Good.” I paused. “I think I’m going to need them.”

  She stopped folding and looked at me. “Why?”

  And then, thinking of Justine, Mom and Dad, Charlotte and Paige, Simon and Parker, of facing your fears and confronting ghosts you’d rather pretend weren’t there, I revealed something I’d only just realized I’d been contemplating for months.

  “Because I’m applying,” I said, “to Dartmouth.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TRICIA RAYBURN grew up on the East End of Long Island and was always drawn to the water. She learned how to swim in the Long Island Sound and spent many summers at the beach. But she never went near the open ocean, even though it was only a few minutes away from her home. Spooked by her mother’s stories of being dragged out by riptides and the horrors of the film Jaws (inspired by the true story of a fellow Long Islander), it wasn’t until after she’d graduated from college and returned home that Tricia set foot on an ocean beach.

  To this day, she is wary of the water, afraid of being stung, bitten, or trampled by waves. And yet, she can’t help being drawn to the sea.

  Tricia is the author of Ruby’s Slippers and the Maggie Bean trilogy, as well as Siren, the first book in the Siren trilogy. You can visit her online at www.triciarayburn.com.

  Table of Contents

  Front Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19