Wraith

by Edie Claire

  "Because if I could, I swear I would pick you up, carry you out in the middle of this gorgeous, God-given paradise, and throw you in."

  "You would not."

  His grin was devilish. "Yeah, I would. But I'd be right there to catch you again."

  His dimples were back, in full force. His green eyes sparkled.

  My knees forgot their function.

  I steadied myself with a start and turned my gaze away from him. "I can't do it, Zane."

  Any of it. It's too hard.

  "One step at a time," he said confidently, coming to stand close beside me. "For now, let's just sit on the beach, and you can get used to the feel of the water."

  He dropped down on the sand where the water lapped just high enough to cover his legs. Or at least it would, if he had legs.

  I glanced around. There truly wasn't any danger. No more than a bathtub, anyway. The cove was crowded with tourists—the open water was dotted liberally with snorkeling swimmers, and more than one toddler with inflatable arm bands splashed around happily several yards out from shore. The sea bottom was clearly visible and I could walk out a good twenty feet before the water even reached my waist.

  "Kali…" Zane cajoled.

  "Oh, fine!" I snapped, plopping down beside him with a splash. "Are you happy now?"

  He grinned back. "Ecstatic."

  "As long as we're here," I began, desperate to distract myself from the slightly sick feeling I got as the coolish water soaked through my clothes, "we can do something constructive. You promised me you'd talk about yourself later—and it's later. Now, what have you remembered?"

  Zane let out a sigh. But thankfully, he didn't resist. "I don't really know where to start."

  "Let's start with your mother," I suggested. The water seeping around my butt was uncomfortably cold, but a stream of warmer water had encircled my feet, and I wiggled my toes nervously inside my aqua shoes.

  "Her name was Alisha," he said stiffly. "Alisha Bayne. At least that was her stage name. She had naturally blond hair—curly, like mine, except that she usually straightened it. Her eyes were blue. She was beautiful and she was talented, and she lived a kind of a charmed life… and so did I. For a while."

  "Go on," I said mercilessly. The warm stream had vanished. The sun was behind a cloud. I was cold again, and I shivered.

  Zane made an involuntarily move to circle his arm around my shoulders—but with a frown, quickly aborted it. "My childhood was happy enough," he continued. "But everything changed when my mother turned forty. Her friends had a big party for her; she claimed she never felt better. But three days later, the soap dropped her contract."

  I sucked in a breath. "That's pretty brutal."

  "Acting is a brutal business," he agreed. "She knew that; the modeling work she used to do on the side had dried up long before. But I think she always secretly hoped to beat the odds."

  He was quiet for a moment, and I decided to press. "You had money problems?" I prompted.

  He shook his head. "Not then. Not right away. The child support from my father's estate was generous; we could have lived off that and done fine. It was more about the blow to her self confidence. She tried to find other work and couldn't. Money for the extras dried up. Former "friends" stopped calling. She had a breast cancer scare the same week there was an electrical fire in our apartment. For a while, it seemed like everything was going wrong, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She started feeling desperate."

  He leaned back on his elbows. I watched as the water coursed through him, and realized that I could see sand, even parts of shells, quite clearly on the other side of his torso. In fact, the only solid part of him at the moment was his face.

  "Zane!" I said sharply, alarmed.

  "What?" he answered, springing up. He looked out at the ocean first, perhaps expecting to see a rogue wave—then focused his eyes back on me. "What is it?"

  His form was solid again. His arms were still iffy and one leg was gone, but for the most part, he was back to normal.

  "You—" I faltered. "You went all transparent on me. Cut that out!"

  He looked down at himself quizzically. "Really? I didn't notice." His eyes caught mine. "I don't think I can control that. Sorry if I scared you."

  "You didn't—" I cut myself off again. Who was I kidding? Seeing him faded away like that had scared me. It had scared me a lot.

  "Sorry if I yelled at you," I apologized. "I was just startled, I guess."

  The intensity of his gaze was unnerving.

  I grabbed the raft and stepped a few feet out into the water. "Are we going to do this thing, or not?" I blurted, my heart beating fast. "I believe I was promised fish?"

  His eyes stayed on me as he came to my side. "And fish you shall see. Stay right here a minute. Don't go any deeper."

  Like that was a possibility!

  He disappeared in another blur, and from time to time I could see him underwater, poking around the convoluted ridges of coral and lava rock that protruded from the sea floor, making wandering around the cove all but impossible for anyone without water shoes.

  The sun remained in hiding, and I dropped down to a squat to put more of myself in the water, which at the moment felt considerably warmer than the air. When standing, the ocean came to just above my knees, so I wasn't too nervous.

  When Zane reappeared at my side again, he was smiling. "You're going to love this. Follow me."

  I picked my way over the uneven surface, wary of the shifting currents and bizarre difference in temperature between indistinguishable streams. I had never been in the ocean before—not even to knee high—before a couple nights ago. Surprisingly, I wasn't as afraid now as I thought I would be.

  "What you do," Zane instructed, stopping near a stand of twisted lava spires that just breached the surface, "is put the board on the surface of the water, right around here." He pointed. "Then lower yourself enough to look through the window."

  The lapping water pitched suddenly against the breaching spire of lava, sending up a blip of water that splashed onto my waist. I hesitated.

  "Kali," Zane prompted gently, "Trust me. It'll be worth it."

  His voice radiated with something so warm and beguiling that a flush of heat sprang from my toes and flooded clear to the roots of my hair. My eyes were drawn involuntarily to his—but I could look at him for only a second. It was all I could stand without launching myself through empty space in a hopeless quest to touch him.

  The sun reappeared at last, and as the air began to warm I gathered my nerve and dropped down onto the water—my feet and knees drifting on the ocean floor while my upper body rested on the raft. I stared into the plastic window.

  My breath caught.

  There really were fish here. And not just one or two dull gray ones, either. Dozens of brightly colored, curiously shaped ocean fish milled around the twists and turns of lava, nibbling at the equally colorful spreads of plant life that clung to the rock's chaotic contours. Things that looked like anemones shot out their eerie looking tentacles to sway in the currents, while more hesitant fish poked their noses out of a honeycomb of tiny lava caves, ready to retreat at the first sign of danger. It was not an aquarium. It was not a movie. All these awesome creatures were real, they were living, and their watery home went on and on… stretching far beyond me and this cove… clear to the ends of the earth.

  It was totally, freakin', amazing.

  I found myself slowly moving, turning and reorienting the board toward other interesting things I saw in the distance. It was as if an entirely new world was unfolding before me—a world I had previously been blind to. When at last I heard Zane's voice, it took me by surprise. I had no idea how long I had scooted and stepped and splashed around, eager to get closer to the main stands of lava rock on the west side of the cove, which housed even more fish. It was tough going without scratching myself on the coral, but I was managing so far.

  "Careful, Kali," he warned. "You're not paying attention to the depth."


  I stood up sharply, and realized that I was standing in water to mid-thigh. A couple more steps in the direction I was headed, and I would be up to my waist.

  "Crap!" I exclaimed, splashing back into safer territory. "Why didn't you warn me?"

  "I did!" he protested, chuckling. "I'm glad you're getting comfortable."

  I looked back toward the beach, which was considerably farther away than I would have guessed. But I was okay. The water was just above my knees, and though there were deeper pits here and there, I could see exactly where I was stepping.

  "Oh, wow," Zane said suddenly, looking off toward the resort. "You're going to love this."

  He led me a few steps away into water that was no deeper, but considerably harder to maneuver through because of thicker lava formations. "You don't need the board," he instructed. "Just look."

  My gaze followed the direction he was pointing to see a familiar smooth, dark shape gliding serenely just beneath the surface.

  "A sea turtle!" I exclaimed. "A giant sea turtle!"

  The creature, which gleamed greenish yellow in the sun, was hardly a giant of its species, sporting a shell about a foot and a half long. But to me, seeing it swim around in the wild waters of the ocean while I was standing right there next to it was too cool for words.

  "Have you ever seen one before?" Zane asked.

  I shook my head. "Only in zoo aquariums. I can’t believe there's one right here in this cove—with all these people around!"

  "I've seen turtles here before," he remarked matter-of-factly. "But not usually this time of day. There are even more in Kawela Bay."

  We stood a long time, watching the turtle tool around in the gentle current, unconcernedly exploring the curls and caverns of lava rock. Zane, of course, could get as close to it as he wanted, but although the turtle didn't seem to mind my presence in the general area, whenever I got within a few feet, it would flipper slowly away.

  "That's far enough," Zane warned again as, transfixed by the turtle's hypnotic, gliding movement, I found myself unthinkingly following it. "The water gets deeper that way."

  I stopped in my tracks. I had been paying no attention whatsoever, which was so unlike me, it was absurd. Yet here I was—doing something I had never before in my life had the nerve to try. I threw Zane a sheepish look. Maybe he was right. Maybe, given enough time, he really could teach me to swim.

  If we had time.

  I turned back to the turtle.

  It had disappeared.

  The sun moved behind a cloud again, and I gazed upward to note its position. It was afternoon already. Where had the day gone?

  My parents were due back by five o'clock, after which we were all going to Matt's house for dinner. He was excited about it; that was why he had texted me. I thought it would be fun, too. But I had hoped to accomplish something first. Something a lot more important than my seeing a giant sea turtle.

  "Let's go in," I said to Zane, feigning a cheerfulness I didn't feel. "You've accomplished your goal—I no longer fear the ocean. At least, not all of it. But it's getting kind of cold."

  Standing up in the water with wet skin and no sun, I had no trouble producing another shiver. But I wasn't really cold this time.

  Just worried.

  ***

  A half hour later I was back in dry clothes, being led by Zane on a scenic tour of the rest of the resort grounds. We walked around the shore of Turtle Bay proper and then out onto a narrow land spit that hosted a curious concrete block structure.

  "It's a bunker, from World War II," Zane explained, answering my unspoken question as I examined the tiny square building, which was laid half-in, half-out of the sand. It had a solid roof and open doorway in the back, while inside two open windows were strategically placed to offer views of the ocean North and West. The inside was dank and cool, but the concrete roof was doing a nice job of catching the fickle sunshine, and I climbed up on it and sat down.

  Zane stood a few feet away, watching me curiously.

  "What?" I asked.

  His brow furrowed. "Don't you see anything here? I mean, like shadows?"

  I glanced around. I hadn't felt anything. As for what I saw, I had successfully blocked it out as it happened—a feat that was easy when I was preoccupied. "There's a man and a little boy, playing," I answered. "The usual amount of fainter Polynesian shadows… they're always around. A woman is taking a picture a couple of feet away from you—camera's huge, probably something from the seventies. That's about it, right here. Why?"

  He blinked at me. "You see all that?"

  I nodded.

  "But you don't see anything… military?"

  I was puzzled for a moment, but then understood. "Oh. You mean because of the bunker. You thought I would see history reenacted?"

  He let out a breath. "I guess so, yes. That's… kind of why I wanted to walk this way."

  "Disappointed?" I teased. "I told you, the ability is worthless. I don't see things I want to see, or the kind of things historians think are important. It's more about the shadows themselves—their emotions. Every time I think I have it figured out, I see a shadow that doesn't fit. But for the most part, I think that what I'm seeing are moments that were turning points for people—what they would remember most about their lives."

  Zane came and sat next to me on the bunker roof. "It is a gift, Kali," he insisted, "even if you can't always see the value in it. I wish you would realize that."

  My lips twisted. "Look, you got me out in the ocean today, didn't you? That's a pretty big accomplishment in the Kali improvement program. Don’t even try to make me happy I see dead people. You're good, but lightning isn't going to strike twice. Give it up."

  He grinned. "I'll never give up."

  I swallowed. For the hundredth time, I found myself biting back something I wanted to say. Something about how much I looked forward to his teaching me to swim—or, what the heck?—to surf. Something about how incredibly fun and exhilarating this day, and every other day I had spent with him, had been. About how often my subconscious mind turned to thoughts of doing other fun things with him—biking, hiking, taking a flight across the Pacific, exploring Cheyenne, meeting my friends, taking up ballroom dancing and performing a ridiculously sexy salsa routine at prom. I wanted to take walks, sip cool drinks, cuddle up on a couch and watch a movie, play cards, write stories, go out to dinner, pack a picnic lunch, have a fight and make up, take a road trip…

  We would never do any of it.

  "Zane," I said heavily. "I don't know how much time I have left here. For all I know, my parents are deciding on a house right now. I want to help you out of this… this limbo that you're in. But you have to cooperate. No more distractions. And absolutely no more putting me and my stupid issues first—no matter how much I like it and how pathetically easy it is to get me off point. Okay?"

  Zane laid back flat on the bunker, both his face and voice expressionless. "Okay. Thanks. What do you want me to do?"

  Hold me.

  "I want you to finish telling me everything you've remembered about yourself." I answered. "Starting where you left off before. When your mother lost her job. What happened next? How old were you?"

  It took a moment for him to answer. "I was midway through high school," he said in a monotone, the solidness of his chest wavering again, "when I realized my mother was a drug addict."

  Chapter 18

  "Your mother started taking drugs?" I asked, my voice thin. "What kind of drugs?"

  He shrugged. "I'm not sure what she started with. But she ended up on heroin. And there were pills, too. At the end, she wasn't particularly picky."

  I swallowed. I had no idea what to say. Maybe I didn't need to say anything. For once, he seemed willing to share without prompting.

  "My mother was a really wonderful person," he said quietly. "And I loved her. But even as a kid, I could tell she wasn't strong. She was talented and successful and charming, but she never had any real confidence in herself."


  Zane looked away from me, seemingly embarrassed. "My mother was the kind of woman who had to have a man around. Always. She could manage her own finances, cook her own meals, raise a child… she was perfectly capable of doing everything any other single person had to do. But she couldn't stand being alone. She needed the constant attention, the adoration, the ego boosting. She needed to feel like she was part of a couple, be seen as part of a couple. Having a man around was as crucial to her as having heat and electricity."

  He squelched a sigh, then continued.

  "When she was successful, she dated successful men, and they more or less treated her well, until they got tired of her. And they all got tired of her. They got tired because they were prescreened to be operators who feared commitment and craved variety. The kind of man who was looking for a long-term relationship was never the kind of man she was attracted to. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I never could figure it out. When I got old enough to see what was happening I used to do a little matchmaking. You know… my widowed biology teacher, the engineer two floors down. Honest, solid guys who I thought would respect her.

  "She was never interested. She wanted Antonio from the club, Richard the indicted broker, Ryan the anchorman. And, at the end, Devon, the unemployed playwright-cum-pusher. When her self-esteem suffered from being out of work, her standards in men sunk even lower. She used to be reasonably careful about who she brought home, how long they stayed, and whether or not I was comfortable with them being there. But once she started using, she didn't care about anything anymore except making herself feel good."

  My heart beat fast. Zane's form was as transparent as I had ever seen it. Even his voice wavered from clear to faint as he talked.

  "Things got really bad, then. I didn't realize she was using at first. But I saw the kind of men she was bringing home, and it made me angry. My room smelled like cigarettes; there was trash everywhere. She never cooked anymore; half the time, I had no idea where she was. I got a part-time job and fed myself. I stayed away as much as I could."

  He paused, and his voice caught. "That was selfish of me, I know. If only I'd paid a little more attention to what was happening with her—"