by Annie Cosby
And that’s the unfortunate moment when Mrs. O’Brien approached us to say hello. I was polite, and I was overly friendly, but even when she had wandered away, the chance was gone. It didn’t feel right to talk about Mrs. O’Leary here, among everyone having a wonderful time without her.
Behind me, I heard snorts of derision from Blondie, in response to who-knows-what. It felt unnatural and out of place, her being here.
“You’ll all be going home soon,” Rory said absently.
“That will hardly be a tragedy for you.”
Rory grinned. I loved the way he grinned. The corners of his mouth drew up sharply and his lips grew tight, revealing just the barest hint of white teeth beneath. “I think I’ll miss some people,” he said.
I heard Blondie call my name from somewhere behind me, but I blocked it out.
“Oh?” I said breathlessly.
Rory nodded and was silent a beat before saying, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah?” I was already dreading it. He had a knack for embarrassing me.
“That night at the jetty, why were you crying?” he said. “I mean, you were crying before Princess ever fell in the water.”
I stared at the floor, willing myself to disappear and miraculously reappear somewhere far, far away. Like St. Louis. Or China. Perhaps Jupiter.
“And, I mean, I know I’ve thrown around my fair share of insults,” he went on, “but they never fazed you. And, I do consider myself rather clever. So if my wit couldn’t unsettle you, make you cry—not that I was trying! Anyway, I just … well, I just didn’t know what on earth could get to you like that.”
His insults never fazed me? If he only knew! I wanted to come up with a really good lie about the tears, but none of them seemed good enough for Rory.
“If you don’t want to tell me,” he finally said, “it’s seriously okay.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I was just having a fight with someone.” My eyes involuntarily flitted in the direction of Owen where he was talking to a group of local girls. To my dismay, Rory followed this.
“Oh,” he said, nodding his head slowly in a Mrs. O’Leary fashion. I watched as Blondie and the bimbo and Benjamin gathered around Owen, looking bored. “So he’s your boyfriend?”
“What? I … no. No, no, he’s not.” I knew I was blushing, but perhaps it was too dark for him to notice. I waited a beat. “Is Jen …?”
“No,” Rory said. “She’s a good friend. The sister type.”
I nodded. What was the appropriate follow-up to such a brazen question as that?
“It looks like that means we’re both free to dance,” Rory said. “That is, if you dance?” My stomach took flight. A slow song had just come on, that was certainly something I could muster up some dancing skills for, at least some mediocre swaying. But Owen suddenly moved in my peripheral vision. He had removed himself from the local girls, and the others were looking around for me.
“Um …”
“Cora!” Blondie was gesturing for me to join her as the others headed for the exit. She looked incredulous that I was taking this long to disengage myself from a local boy. Owen saw her gesturing and his eyes zeroed in on what he could only assume was an unnecessarily long conversation with Rory.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Rory said softly, almost inaudibly.
The little lights were making everything glow in a strangely surreal way. There were lightning bugs dotting the darkness beyond the party, giving the night a soft friendly glow.
But in looking at Owen across the patio, I could hear echoes of my mother’s angry voice.
But Jesus! Rory’s eyes were gorgeous. So big, so brown. So very, very big and brown.
“I don’t think I can.” I spoke just as quietly as he had.
I turned quickly away, avoiding his magical eyes. I just barely saw him nodding slowly, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back as I joined the others, loitering near the gate. A few were already pushing down the walkway toward the boardwalk. They were loud and unapologetic.
“God that was so boring,” Blondie said.
“Did you see that girl with the pink dress?” the bimbo shrieked. “It looked like a Barbie dress. Seriously, I had one just like it for my Barbies.”
Aidan O’Brien stood leaning against the fence with two other boys I didn’t recognize. I caught him looking at me as we walked past. I walked as quickly as possible out of his sight.
When we reached the boardwalk, I felt it was safe to glance back. Aidan and friends were joining the party again. Rory was standing right where I’d left him, on the edge of the patio, gazing absently into the throng of dancing couples. He had the tiniest trace of a lost smile on his lips, and his hands were resting in his pockets. But the effect was quite different from Owen’s signature stance. Owen always looked like he was posing. Rory looked, well, dejected. And for some twisted reason, this made my stomach do a few happy somersaults.
Ina Coilíneacht
A Colony
Outside on the boardwalk, it became apparent that Benjamin Huston was harboring a great number of beers under his polo shirt. It became apparent because he tripped and they all came spilling out onto the boardwalk with a series of unbroken thuds. He tried to hand the bottles out to the group, but the ones on the ground were already rolling away.
“Shh!” the bimbo spluttered drunkenly.
“You stole their beer?” Owen said. He’d taken the words right out of my mouth. But there was a smile on his face.
“That was really rude,” I said.
Benjamin hadn’t even heard me, but the bimbo was incredulous that I would dare to insult her hero.
“That was rude of you to say that,” she shot back.
“I just don’t think you need to steal from people who …” I trailed off. Who had less than us.
The unspoken words twisted in my throat. Did I really regard the people back there as a charity case? Rory and his family and his friends and neighbors?
“Who what?” the bimbo demanded, daring me to finish that complicated sentence. When I didn’t answer she stalked off ahead of me.
We were passing Mrs. O’Leary’s house, and I slowed unconsciously. The little yellow house was dark. What was she doing in there by herself while the rest of the town was at a party? She’s nearly always alone. What does she do?
“Hey, forget about it all,” Owen said, breaking into my consciousness. I was obviously trying very hard to do just that. I looked at him blankly. “They’re nice people, and you have a huge heart.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go have some fun,” he said.
The rest of the group had stopped to wait for us a little ahead, but they were all tangled in their own conversations. Only the bimbo still glared at me between watching Benjamin stumble around as he tried to stand still.
“Hey—Cora.” Owen turned my chin to face him. I was disappointed that he could read my thoughts so clearly. “Forget about them. All of them.” He waved vaguely toward the others. “They’re drunk and annoying, I know. Let’s go back to my place, just you and me.”
I didn’t resist as he steered me after the others. “My parents are gone for the weekend,” he went on. My back stiffened. “You can spend the night, just you and me, and I’ll walk you home in the morning.” I stopped walking.
Was that why he’d been hanging around me all summer? He wanted to sleep with me? Little did he know I was a virgin, one with little experience in any of the romantic arts. And—
“Oh my God!” Benjamin yelled. To my utter horror, he had been listening. He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Will you sleep with the guy already? We’ve been listening to him whining about it all freaking summer! We’re so sick of it!”
A cold crept over my heart as I realized all the thoughts and evenings and laughs I’d wasted on Owen Carlton that summer. A nice guy was the conclusion I had drawn. Different from the others. When in fact, he had been going around babbling to his friends about
how I wouldn’t sleep with him. We weren’t even in a relationship!
Everything in my body froze. I was waiting for Owen to protest, to debunk it as a drunken lie. Or even to half-heartedly tell Benjamin to shut up. Even that would have been enough. But he didn’t.
Instead, he laughed.
I tore away from Owen and stalked away from the group. There was only one way to avoid them: I headed south toward my refuge.
“Cora—Cora, hey—come on, Cora!” Owen called after me.
Benjamin’s voice was the last thing I heard. “Oh, let her go, she’s such a freaking tease.”
At the pier, I sat down right at the edge where it sloped into the water. The surface of the water was rather still in the hot night, but it still lapped gently over the edge and onto my bare legs. The waves were unnaturally warm.
I didn’t want to cry, I had been crying so damn much lately. Which was not how it was supposed to be. Rosie had always regarded me as some kind of stonehearted fortress. She was always crying over boys, and I never was. Well this summer would have provided a nice role reversal. I didn’t really think I would cry this time—I wasn’t sad, I was angry. Angry as hell. But that just brought angry tears to my eyes. It wasn’t long before I was huffing and heaving, expending most of my energy trying to fight back the tears. For some reason my sorrow always brought me back to Mrs. O’Leary. Visions of dead bodies and seals and ashrays danced before my eyes, mingling with the tears. Selkies and more dead bodies and Jen Johnson.
“Hey, do you have a death wish?”
I nearly toppled off the edge of the pier in fright.
“As I recall, you can’t swim.”
I looked over my shoulder, eyes puffy and nose dripping despite my best efforts. “How do you do that?” I demanded. “Whenever I turn into a crumpling mess, whenever I shed a tear—there you are! It’s like you always catch me at my worst!”
He didn’t answer. He came and sat down next to me. The smile was gone from his face. “I didn’t know you were crying this time,” he said.
I wiped my eyes and sniffed loudly. “I’m not crying,” I said.
His face cracked into that grin of his. He tried to stifle it. “It’s okay; I get caught not crying all the time.”
There was a marked difference in him. He was so much calmer here on the pier.
“How did you know?” I said. “That night when Princess fell in, I mean. How did you know I was crying? You appeared out of nowhere.”
“You’re on my jetty, you know,” he said. “Such a little princess. Goes wherever she wants. I guess it’s my fault for not marking it properly. I’ll have to invest in some signs.” His jetty. No wonder he was so calm here.
I snorted and he nudged me with his elbow. I rocked sideways into the water and righted myself. My toes were warm in the water.
“Are we done not crying? It gets tiring.”
“I think we’re done,” I said. I sniffed loudly.
We sat in silence as my mind wandered to every corner of my being, searching for something interesting to say. Rory was comfortable in the silence, but my body was bursting with too many emotions to be silent. I finally asked, “What’s spring tide?”
Rory chortled a bit. “Uh, I think it’s around the full moon and the new moon, when the tide gets the highest and lowest. That’s when it has the longest range. Why? Is that what you were crying about?”
“Not crying,” I clarified once again. “I was just thinking of Mrs. O’Leary. She told me once that that’s the only time the selkies can change.” I paused, wondering if he thought about Mrs. O’Leary’s fairytales as much as I did. Or at all. For some reason, I knew that I would be disappointed if I learned that he didn’t. “Do you think Seamus’s soul is down there? In a merman’s cage?”
“Jesus, you do need cheering up,” he laughed gruffly.
“Have any of the other sailors been found? Mr. Hall said there were two left.”
Rory sighed. “Todd Phillips was. Washed up on shore.”
I was silent. Another body on land, another soul in the cage, lodged in the sand of the ocean bottom. Was there a woman somewhere who was still madly in love with Todd Phillips?
“Hey, you’re really depressing me. Do you want to see something that might cheer you up?” Rory said. “I mean, it’s pretty warm tonight, it should be good.”
I wiped my eyes and rubbed my cheeks. The tears had run dry, though my face was still wet. And I could tell he wanted desperately to avoid more of my tears. “Sure,” I half-said, half-sniffed.
He jumped up and grabbed my still-wet hand. Even through my haze of tears and confused sadness, something magical shot through my arm like electricity. This wasn’t like when Owen held my hand. This … this was magical. I got up and let him pull me down the pier and farther south, away from the big houses and away from town. He was nearly running.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He stopped abruptly and spun around. “Two things,” he said. He held up one finger, “Do not talk.” He held up another finger, “Do not make a sound.”
I smirked. “That’s kind of the same thing.”
“Just promise,” he demanded.
“Okay.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I promise?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“I pinky promise?” I tried again.
He extended a pinky, and I linked mine around his. “There is nothing in this world more binding than a pinky promise.”
He whirled off again, his hand firmly holding mine. We stumbled awkwardly, half-running, for just a few more minutes. The beach was rocky here, but we came to a great sand dune perched on a small piece of land that jutted out into the ocean. Here, he stopped and began to carefully climb the dune. He pressed a finger to his lips as a reminder and moved stealthily.
Near the middle of the dune, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the top. There, he lay flat on his belly and peeked over.
I stood at the bottom, watching him. When he realized I wasn’t following, he looked at me with a grin that made my knees weak and gestured for me to follow, nodding over the crest of the dune.
I scrambled up after him. Near the top, I crouched down next to him and peeked over. A gasp escaped involuntarily, and despite his rules, Rory grinned.
Below stretched a long wall of the dune that swept toward the sea and ended in a rocky jumble near the water. But below us, amid a group of smooth rocks at the meeting of the dune and the coast, was a small knot of sleeping seals. They were all bunched up, almost like they were cuddling. There were little clusters of them, snuggling. One was even laying on top of two others. They were still and silent, and I felt like we were intruding on something sacred.
Rory nodded toward the water. There in the dark, on a wet rock that jutted out into the waves, was a lone seal. He wasn’t sleeping, and his eyes, looking in our direction, glowed in the night. The moon reflected a deep golden color in them. He must not have seen us, for he didn’t react. I waited for him to bark—or make whatever noise seals make—and wake the others. But he didn’t. Eventually he turned back to the water.
I was watching the seals, but I was very conscious of how close I was to Rory. His left arm was curled around my back, so that his mouth was perfectly even with my ear. I felt warm and protected against him, with the wind whipping ruthlessly around us. It couldn’t touch me.
When he breathed, it tickled my ear.
“How many do you think are selkies?” He had said it so quietly, so close to my ear, it was more like breathing. Like we didn’t need to talk to communicate.
I couldn’t answer, considering I’d been sworn to silence, but when I craned my neck around, Rory was watching me, not the seals.
For a brief millisecond, I thought we were going to kiss. But then he swallowed and looked back out at the peaceful scene in front of us. I let myself relax into the sand beneath his arm, protected from the wind and the swirling sand, and watc
hed the seals sleep.
Suddenly, Rory plucked something from the sand right beside me. One of the tin whistles had fallen out of my pocket. His face was lit with excitement. “Where did you get this?” he mouthed.
I put my finger to my lips, mocking his rules. He shook his head and twirled the whistle deftly around his fingers like he was performing a practiced trick.
I would never have tired of that, lying there pressed into his side, watching the seals sleep. But he eventually motioned for us to go. He turned away and climbed down the dune without looking back, no parting glance for the seals, as if he did this all the time. I, however, kept looking over my shoulder for one last peaceful glance until they were out of sight.
When we were far enough not to disturb the animals, Rory turned to me, wielding the whistle. “You little thief!” His face was bright with a smile. “Where did you find this?”
“On the jetty,” I said. “Is it yours?”
He didn’t answer, but banged the whistle on his palm, holes facing down. Then he picked at the holes with a fingernail and banged it some more. When we were back in familiar territory, he seemed to be satisfied. He stopped and blew into the whistle, hard and sure. Sand puffed out, and he dashed to the water and dunked it in the waves. He put it to his lips again and embarked upon a litany of clear, high-pitched notes. It was, somehow, exactly how I’d expected it to sound, when played correctly, but at the same time completely foreign.
He raised his eyebrows as he played, as if to ask my approval. Approval was an understatement. The music seeped through my skin, went right to my veins. My courage was lifted past any previous level in my life by the little ditty that mixed and broke away from the sounds of the ocean and distant sounds of revelry. It was as if what I was about to do next was preordained.
I grabbed the whistle from his mouth a little too roughly. Playfully, he held on, but then I kissed him and both our hands fell gently to our sides. I just leaned over and kissed him! Rosie would never believe it.
His lips were soft and both of our lips tasted fleetingly of salt. He kissed gently, as if to heal every time he’d ever caught me with tears in my eyes. His left hand skimmed my arm and landed next to my neck, just the tips of his fingers rested against my throat. My whole body warmed under that touch, slight though it was.