Garrett polished off the remaining chips. He crumpled the bag, threw it at the trash bin. Missed. Of course.
“Gare, honey?” Cristina said from behind his bedroom door. “Can I come in?”
Garrett closed his laptop. “Yeah, what’s up?”
Cristina pushed the door open. “That was Sydney on the phone. She couldn’t reach you on your cell so she called me instead. Wanted to know if you might like a visitor.” She smirked.
“Don’t do that, Mom.”
“Do what?”
“Act like Sydney wants to come over because she’s into me. She’s probably just doing it because she’s class president, or she wants me to vote her onto some prom committee or something.”
“Oh, I don’t think Sydney’s like that.” Cristina sat on the edge of his bed. “Maybe she really does want to make sure you’re all right. You two have gotten awfully close since she started dropping you off after tennis practice.”
“Yeah, because she feels sorry for me.”
“Maybe,” Cristina said. “I feel sorry for you too.”
Garrett felt like he’d been slapped. “Huh? Why?”
“Because you’re being silly. Honestly, just assuming a pretty girl like Sydney won’t like you. You have a lot to offer you know.”
“Sure I do. I have loads to offer the hottest girl in school.”
“You do. You’re smart, funny, handsome—”
Garrett shook his head. “You’re only saying that because you’re my mom.”
“That’s not true. Moms have eyes too you know. I see girls look at you all the time.”
“Yeah, because of my skin.”
Cristina grabbed him by the chin, forced him to look into her eyes. “Can you read minds?”
“No…”
“Then you don’t know what people think when they look at you.” She let him go. “And if you write them off as just seeing your disorder, does that make you a better person?”
“No, Mom.”
Garrett’s phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, dismissed it.
“Hickey again?” Cristina asked.
Garrett nodded. “He’s called like ten times already.”
“Maybe you should call him back. He probably just wants to know you’re okay too.”
“Yeah.”
Garrett tossed his phone back onto his pillow but gave it a little more umph than he intended. The phone slid off the other side and knocked the picture frame on his desk over. Garrett reached for the frame and stood it back up.
The picture had been taken at the Indianapolis Zoo on Garrett’s 1st grade field trip, the only one his dad ever chaperoned. The bear of a man had six-year-old Garrett wrapped around one leg, around his other, a little Chinese girl with her hair tied in ponytails. Both stood on Tom Weaver’s shoes, their mouths agape in what could only be laughter.
Garrett heard sniffling behind him.
“He loved that day,” she said when Garrett turned back to her. “He wished he could have done more things like that with you. He just wanted…just wanted to make a better life for you.”
“I know he did, Mom.”
She pulled Garrett in for hug number one thousand and one.
“Don’t you go anywhere on me,” she said. “Promise?”
“I promise, Mom.”
She sat back, wiped her tears away. “Death has a way of making you think about all the things you should have said and done.”
“I’m not dead.” Garrett said.
“No, you’re not.” She kissed his forehead. “You call your friends back. It’s not everyone who gets a second chance to tell the ones they love how they really feel.”
“Okay.”
Cristina kissed him again then left Garrett alone.
Garrett picked up his phone, unlocked it with the passcode. He went to favorites, his thumb paused above Sydney’s name. He thought back on all that his mom had said, especially the part about the things one should have said and done.
Garrett sat up straight. He cleared the favorite numbers away and pulled up a new text instead. His fingers flew across the screen. He read it once, twice, then hit send. Garrett sighed, slumped back into the pillows.
For the first time since early that morning, he felt normal again.
CHIDI
The sun had nearly set by the time they reached the rally point, an empty stretch of coastline dunes just north of Chesterton, Indiana.
A lone sentinel awaited them at the beach.
Chidi could feel his watchful eyes even from fifty yards out. She picked up speed on the way in, then stopped—releasing Oscar—and let her wake carry him into the shallows. She beached herself, gently bit down on his shoulder, and dragged Oscar to where the waters no longer touched him.
Chidi collapsed.
The hard and crusty lakeside sand did not easily give way like that of ocean beaches. She closed her seal eyes, listened for the sounds of gulls like she used to hear in her native Sierra Leone. She found none here, only the wind mocking her plight and the tuft of breaking sand that marked someone’s approach.
Henry’s fists will come. Her jaw instinctively clenched. At least this way I might hurt his hands.
Instead, two human fingers slipped under her upper seal lip. They tugged up, then back, and Chidi felt her seal head peel away. Seconds later, she shivered without the seal’s blubbery skin to warm her. She looked up.
“Thank you, Paulo,” she said quietly.
He winked back then lifted Oscar’s body and carried him up the beach like a shepherd boy with an injured lamb.
A small part of Chidi desired to follow him and rejoin the crew. She remained in the sand to delay the reunion with her owner.
When the sun poked through the grey skies, Chidi tilted her face upward to take in its small warmth. A moment later, the wind returned and swept loose top sand at her. Chidi heard arguing as she brushed the sand away.
Up the beach, Paulo stood between her and Henry Boucher.
Her owner wore the charcoal-spotted and grey-backed skin of a Leopard Seal. He had earned it, to hear him tell others, just as he had earned everything else in life. Chidi knew better.
She watched Henry feign ignorance to Paulo’s warning. She had seen him perform the same act for countless others. And any who believed it for long wound up losing more than just their holdings and anemonies.
“You stay there,” Paulo said to Henry, “and guard him.”
Him being the mousey man. His once dignified, styled hair now lay flatly plastered against his forehead. He wrapped his arms around his chest, hugging himself, cowering behind raised knees.
Hope your vision isn’t too bad. You lost your glasses to the lake bottom.
Henry caught her attention. His thin lips parted in a salacious grin. “Bonjour, mon amour.”
Chidi risked turning away.
A seal with disproportionate white circles scattered across its grey back waddled onto shore. No bigger than a Labrador, its small size and sad black eyes almost made it appear it cuddly—until it clacked its jaws and growled.
Paulo made his way over as if bidden by an unheard voice. He stuck his meaty fingers in the seal’s mouth, pulled up and back, and freed the dwarf of his Selkie form.
The moment he had his human tongue back, Lenny let fly a string of profanities the likes of which Chidi had sadly grown accustomed. She watched him stomp up the beach with Paulo in tow to confront Henry.
“Paulie, when I tell ya to stay in the water, whattaya do?”
“Stay in the water.”
Racer, Lenny broadcast his thoughts to the entire crew. Whattaya do when I tell ya to stay in the water?
Twenty-five yards out into the lake, Chidi saw a California Sea Lion leap out of the water, then reenter with a noisy splash.
I, uh, stay in the water, Racer said.
Chidi would have smiled if she thought Henry wouldn’t see. Racer’s swim signified to her he had never done so, alone, without taskmasters to keep watc
h over him. He didn’t seem to mind that the lake water shared neither the clearness nor depths as the oceans. Racer wouldn’t leave the water until Lenny ordered him, she knew.
“So when I tell ya—” Lenny poked Henry’s stomach. “That I want ya in the water. Whattaya think ya should do?”
“I should ‘ave stayed in ze water, I suppose,” Henry said coolly. “But I confess, I deed not know to whom I should leesin.”
“Ya listen to me, Frenchy! I assigned ya—”
“Oui. You assign me to ze water, but Monsieur Oscar told me to take ‘is post. Take ‘eet up with ‘im.”
“Oscar told ya to move?”
Henry nodded.
“I make the calls here,” Lenny said. “Not him.”
Henry raised a defiant eyebrow. “I am only a poor, ‘umble Selkie. Ze Crayfish pays me to leesin and guard ‘is son.”
“Well, ya not doin’ a very good job, huh?” Lenny pointed to where Paulo had dropped Oscar. “Ya pup got knocked out back there. Meantime, I’m still standin’ and givin’ orders.”
Henry shrugged. “Maybe if you paid me, I would leesin to you. Can you pay me more, leetle Lenny?”
It wouldn’t matter how much someone paid you, Chidi kept the thought to herself. Nothing will ever be enough.
“Ya know slaves don’t get paid for what we do,” Lenny said. “I catch runnas ‘cause I have to. Ya doin’ it for the money and ‘cause ya like it.”
“As I said, I am only a poor, ‘umble Selkie. And ‘eef you cannot pay me, zen I weel ‘ave to leesin to Monsieur Oscar.”
Henry turned his back to them then. Speaking his native French, he barked at Chidi to carry Oscar’s body to the bus. When she obeyed without question, he fell in beside her to whisper things that would have made her cringe before she had been Salted.
Chidi instead focused all her attention on the mammoth bus parked along the abandoned access road. Designed for transporting tourists, it rivaled the size of an eighteen-wheeler semi. A line of faded blue ran around the middle, cutting through the otherwise chipping grey paint everywhere else. Nine windows lined each side, each blacked out.
Chidi still remembered learning in school how her fellow Africans had been brought to the Americas on slave ships. Packed and stacked together, carried across the ocean in the bellies of wooden beasts. She had not been long in her Salt life before discovering where humans stole the idea.
The bus in front of her shared the same purpose its seafaring forefathers did. Its lower half had been converted to transport captured runners and new slaves on their journey back to the Salt. Chidi estimated the bus could fit thirty upon first seeing it. Oscar had laughingly told her she lacked imagination; the holds could fit sixty-five slaves when properly stacked.
Henry rubbed his clammy fingers about her neck, massaging it as they walked.
Chidi’s stomach churned.
The bus door swung outward as they approached. Ellie Briceño, an older teen slightly smaller than Paulo, sat in the driver’s seat with her feet propped on the dashboard. Eating pretzels by the handful, she watched a small television hung above the rear view mirror.
“…we’re coming to you live from the Shedd Aquarium, where a teenaged gunman opened fire and fled the scene. Details—”
Ellie paused it. “Lenny, they have a sketch of Oscar’s description from the Drybacks who made it outside. We should get moving.”
Lenny boldly stepped in front of the bus door, blocking Chidi from entering. “Where ya goin’, Cheeds?”
Henry pulled her closer. “She ‘eez going to ze bus as I told ‘er.”
“And, uh…do ya captain this merry band, Henry?”
“No.” Henry stroked Chidi’s cheek. “But she does what she ‘eez told like a good leetle girl. Why? Because I own ‘er.”
“And the Crayfish owns y—”
“No one owns me!” Henry snarled. “‘E only pays me—for now.”
“How ya think August Collins earned the nickname Crayfish?” Lenny asked. “Just ‘cause he says he’s gonna pay ya don’t mean he will. And the Crayfish put me in charge.”
“Monsieur Oscar—”
Lenny lifted a finger to his own ear. “Hmm. I don’t hear much outta Oscar right now. Guess what I say goes.”
Chidi prayed Lenny wouldn’t ask her to translate the things her owner muttered in French. Worse, she knew Henry would have little qualm about making good on the deadly things his words promised.
“Get goin’,” said Lenny. “And take Oscar with ya. After all, that’s what ya were hired for, right Henry? To protect him?”
Chidi’s heart raced when Henry knelt. She had seen him move quicker than most would give him credit for. His hands came far closer to the Selkie pocket in which he hid his dagger than she would have liked. The moment passed without incident, however, and Henry climbed the steps with Oscar slung over his shoulder. Both disappeared into the back.
“Lenny,” said Ellie. “Did you not hear what I said? They have Oscar’s description and—”
“I heard ya.”
Paulo glanced at the mousey man. “What should we do with this one?”
“Ask him some questions.” Lenny shuffled over. “How do ya know Marisa Bourgeois?”
The captive seemed not to have heard him. He looked a tired thing, to Chidi’s mind. Worn and beaten by the swim…or frightened we might take him back to the Salt and sell him?
“Hey!” Lenny kicked the mousey man’s shin. “What’s ya name?”
“Z-Z-Zymon…G-Gorski. Please!” he whimpered. “Please. I don’t know what you want, but I’ll tell you anything. Only let me go!”
“How do ya know Marisa Bourgeois?”
“P-p-please, I don’t know anyone named by that name,” Zymon said. “I need to see my family. I don’t know anyone named—”
Lenny made a fist. “Gorski, I swear to the Ancients, ya lie to me one more time and I’ll call Henry back out here to deal with—”
“Len, don’t—”
“Shuddup, Cheeds!”
Chidi shrunk back.
“How do ya know her?” Lenny asked again.
Paulo squeezed another yelp out of Zymon before the answer came. “M—my contact told me her name was Cole…C—Colette Chaput. I never met her in person before. Please, I’m an accountant now. I’ve been free for ten years. Started a new family. Please…don’t take me back. Don’t make me a slave again.”
“How did ya get ya suit off in the first place?”
“I paid a Mer—Merrow,” Zymon said. “Do you want his name? I’ll give it to you…only let me go—”
“We’re not interested. None of us run. We don’t abandon others to take our punishment.”
“I have a question,” Paulo said. “If you didn’t wanna end up back in the Salt, why’d you keep the sealskin?”
Zymon rubbed snot from his nose. “I-I still like to swim…s-sometimes.”
“So why do ya have it here, out in the open, for all to see? Why’d ya take it to that meetin’?”
Zymon’s body shuddered. “To give it to the boy.”
Boy? Chidi had no memory of any boy with him at the Shedd Aquarium. She looked at her crewmates.
Only Ellie seemed unbothered. “I put him in the under,” she said. Upending the bag of pretzels, she shook the crumbled remains into her wide mouth. Then she pitched the bag aside and thundered down the bus steps. “Here, Len,” she tossed him a black notebook.
Lenny caught it. “What’s this? What boy is he talkin’ about?”
“That is a notebook. One of the few the kid carried in his pack. I think they belonged to Marisa, but I can’t read most of the words. She wrote in a bunch of other languages and symbols and crap. Anyway, Marisa used the boy as her decoy. I got all the way back to the bus with him before I realized he wasn’t a she.” Ellie chuckled. “Looks like our runner’s a smart one.”
Lenny turned his hard stare on Chidi. “I saw ya chase her outta the cafeteria…which means ya were the last to
see her.”
He thinks I let her go. The realization hurt almost as much as the truth; that it had been her to lose sight of Marisa in the hallway.
“I was behind her the whole time…” said Chidi. “I-I never lost sight of her.”
“Ya must have somewhere along the way. How else did she wind up on the ledge?”
Chidi had no answer for him.
Fortunately, Ellie did. “The kid stunk like he bathed in squid ink. Chidi choked on the stuff too when I saw her chasing him. Marisa must have used a Squid Ball, huh?”
“Yes,” Chidi quietly agreed. “You can probably still smell it on me, too. Here,” she extended her arm toward Lenny. “Smell.”
That Lenny obliged her so fast told Chidi she had lost whatever grounds of trust the two had built thus far. “All right, Cheeds…I believe ya.”
This time. Chidi finished what the skeptical captain did not say, nor need to.
While Lenny kept watch over Zymon, Paulo held the hold door open for Ellie. She reached into the blackness and dragged the captive out by his ankles. The boy winced at the sudden light.
He’s from Africa...like me. Chidi knew it in her soul just by looking into his eyes. In them she saw life bursting bright and clear, even if he looked around as one lost to his surroundings. She could not recall the last time she had felt such stirrings in her heart, not those of love nor passion, but kinship.
The boy’s head had been shaved, most likely by Marissa to trick any of her would-be captors. He wore the same hoodie she had, a shaggy Cape Fur, and shared the same coal-colored skin as Marisa.
Lenny turned Zymon over to Paulo. “Hey, pup.” He stepped toward the kid. “Ya speak any English? What’s ya name, huh?”
“My name is Allambee Omondi,” the boy answered without the slightest touch of fear or worry. Then he grinned at Lenny, as broad of one as any Chidi had ever seen. “Are you da one come to help me?”
Lenny scoffed. “Helpin’ ya? We don’t even know ya. How we supposed to help ya?”
“I don’t know,” Allambee said. “But Marisa told me a little magic man named Dolan could help me find my fatha.”
Paulo snickered. “Know any magic, Len?”
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