Waking Storms (36 page)

The barker was standing next to a contraption that Luce couldn’t identify, something tall and skinny and skeletal. But as they drew closer Luce clearly saw the word “Forget” winking in pink neon at its base.

“You want to play, don’t you, Luce?” her father asked. He sounded inexplicably sarcastic, even bitter. “We’ve still got all these tickets. Might as well use them up. Every last one of ’em. God knows there won’t be any more soon enough.”

Luce glanced at him shyly. She didn’t know why he was in such a foul mood, and she was afraid he’d get mad at her if she lost the game. And she would surely lose, one way or another. But it would be even worse if she refused to try. “Okay.”

Her father tore off one ticket for the barker, and a huge glittery mallet slipped into Luce’s hand. It was too heavy for her, and she staggered as she approached the machine. It had a tall column of light bulbs like grayish vertebrae and a big red button at the bottom, just above the blinking FORGET. Luce looked around for her father, but he wasn’t there anymore. Only the barker still stood behind her, and she was much taller than she’d been before and oddly spiny-looking.

“Forget right here!” the barker breathed mournfully. She didn’t sound encouraging. “Forget
me.
At least forget me enough, just enough ... my Lucette, my little light...”

I
don’t want to forget you, though!
Luce thought, but she couldn’t say it. Instead she swung the mallet. It thudded down awkwardly, just grazing the side of the red button. Only two of the light bulbs flashed a feeble yellow before going out again. Again she glanced around. Now in place of the barker there was a fizzling, hissing, dead tree. The strip of tickets dangled from its naked branches, high up, and Luce could hear the moaning of seals.

“Do you think I can try again?” Luce asked nervously.

The tree didn’t answer, but the pink paper tickets gusted back and forth. Luce decided to take that as a yes, and she brought the mallet up. It almost flew out of her hands as if some unexpected force was aggressively tugging it skyward, and Luce jerked back. She was determined to keep her grip on the mallet, determined to bring it smashing down...

“Forget,” the lights winked. “Forget.” There was a clang as the mallet hurled down onto the button, and a chain of golden lights shot up. Just for an instant Luce saw two more words illuminated in the darkness far above her.

TO REMEMBER! the machine flashed out at her in scarlet letters. The letters glowed and vanished so quickly that they were hardly more than a momentary burn on Luce’s retinas, but she was sure she’d seen them. The park around her went black, engulfed by a swirl of midnight water, and Luce began to run frantically away. Cold water gripped her legs. She had to find her father before he drowned...

Luce woke panting. The sky was soft with amber dawn, and a pod of seals was playing in the waves just beyond her cove. She could see their sleek, brown bodies dipping and the curious gleam of black glass eyes watching her. One of them swam closer and snuffled gently at her tail.

“With you here,”
the old, broken voice had told her,
“the man forgets sometimes to remember.”

She finally knew what she had to do.

22

Being Human

Ryan’s parents were away. It was a perfect opportunity to practice as much as they wanted with no one complaining, so Dorian was annoyed to see that Steve and Ryan seemed more interested in bullshitting, then eating everything in sight, then playing video games. The band was always going to suck at this rate, and Dorian finally stalked into the kitchen and leaned irritably on the counter, staring out the window at the lashing rain. He couldn’t even return home until Steve decided he was ready to drive back. He couldn’t sit on the beach getting soaked, jumping at every flicker of light on the water, constantly imagining that each shifting reflection was a long silvery green tail or a pale reaching hand just about to break through. The shore was almost completely free of clinging ice now, and still Luce didn’t come. Maybe she was dead or maybe she just didn’t care anymore...

“Heya.” It was Zoe, of course. She’d come up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Dorian? Are you okay?”

Dorian felt like snapping at her and almost instantly realized that he wanted to lash out because he was mad at Luce. It wasn’t Zoe’s fault that his crazy mermaid girlfriend had either abandoned him or else gone and gotten herself killed. Dorian glanced over his shoulder. Zoe’s sleeve had slipped back, and just for an instant Dorian could see her bare arm for the first time, blotched here and there with little round white scars. They might have been left by the tip of a burning cigarette.

Maybe she was one of those girls who maimed themselves to prove how punk they were? Zoe caught his look and jerked her hand away, and the huge fuzzy sweater flopped back into place. She was staring down now, but the tension on her face seemed like a warning not to say anything. After a moment’s hesitation Dorian decided to ignore the warning. Zoe was so close that her body grazed against his as he turned to face her. She wouldn’t look at him, but she didn’t step back either.

“Did you do that to yourself?” Dorian asked. “Your arm?”

“Did
you
like to throw yourself down the stairs as a kid?” Zoe’s voice was hostile, and she was glaring off to the side. But she was standing even closer now, tipped so that her cheek was less than an inch from Dorian’s shoulder. Dorian thought of putting his arms around her—just as a friend, of course—but then he stayed where he was.

“I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, Zoe...” He’d said the wrong thing, Dorian realized. And the fact that it
was
wrong carried implications he was barely willing to think about.

“Well, if you didn’t have some serious
brain
damage, you wouldn’t ask me that!” Zoe sounded furious, but even so she suddenly pressed in and hugged him, nestling her face against his chest. Her body felt almost feverish compared to Luce’s sleek chill. “If you’re going to keep asking me stupid questions, we should really go somewhere else. I don’t want Steve and Ryan to hear this...”

Dorian considered this. His brain was humming with disbelief at how horrible life could be, with vague boiling anger at whoever had hurt her and at the relentless emptiness of the world where he somehow kept on living. But for all Zoe’s aggressive tone, he thought, she obviously wanted to talk in privacy. “Okay.”

She caught his hand and towed him toward the little back foyer then up the stairs. It was a small house with a bedroom at each end of a narrow hallway: the one Ryan shared with his little brother to the right, their parents’ room on the left. Zoe headed left and Dorian followed, feeling a little awkward now. She shut the door behind them and Dorian stared around the wood-paneled room. It was crowded with oversized furniture and knickknacks. He stood to one side as Zoe unlaced her paint-spattered boots, tossing them across the floor, and then scooted to the center of the big double bed. After a moment he sat down, trying to strike the right balance: far enough back that she wouldn’t think he was hitting on her, close enough that it wouldn’t seem cold. The bedspread under them was avocado green with sprouting tufts of yarn. Zoe was looking down, her freshly pink-dyed hair dragging in front of her eyes. She was twisting the tufts a little nervously. “So. What other fucked-up things do you want to ask me?”

There
was
one huge question pressing up in Dorian, but he didn’t know how to ask it without sounding insane. If Zoe hadn’t burned herself, if it had been someone else, then why was she still sitting there with human legs folded under her? Why hadn’t she let go of her human life and flowed away into the sea with the other broken girls, with Luce and Dana and Nausicaa? Zoe watched him for a minute.

“I bet you want to ask who did it? My stepdad. He’s gone now, thank
Gawd,
but my mom keeps taking him back. They’ve split up like a million times already.” Her tone was sassy and hard, but Dorian could hear the slight wavering hidden inside it. She was back to tugging at the bedspread, staring down at it as if nothing could be more fascinating.

“At least he’s not around to fuck you up now.” Dorian wanted her to look at him again, but he didn’t want to admit it. Now that he was paying closer attention to her, maybe there
was
something in Zoe’s face, a kind of wounded defensiveness, that reminded him of the mermaids’ faces. “But that isn’t what I was wondering, actually.” How could he say this? The urge to know pulsed in him, painfully strong. She must have felt something, some hint of the transformation, but for some reason she hadn’t given in to it. Why?

“Yeah? What is it, then? You want to know if I
liked
it? You think I’m one of those masochists who gets
off
on that stuff?”

She was being deliberately bitchy. Trying to provoke him. Dorian’s shoulders heaved a little as if Zoe’s words were something gummy and awful sticking to his body. “Zoe, cut it
out.”
It was odd to hear how weary his voice sounded.

“What?” In spite of the pissy tone she was looking at him again, and there was a sharp flash of frightened expectation in her eyes. He couldn’t help thinking that she was hoping he would say something important and afraid at the same time to let herself really hope for anything. For half a minute they just stared at each other.

“When your stepdad
did
that...” Dorian tried, then paused. “This might sound crazy.” Zoe’s eyes were rounder than ever, waiting. He tried to remember exactly how Luce had described it. “When he hurt you, like when it was the absolute worst, did you ever feel ... like this cold feeling? Almost like your body was turning into water and you could just flow away? Get out and forget everything?”

Zoe was quiet for several seconds, but the hard front she kept up was completely gone. She looked as soft as dough, hungry and wondering. Dorian half imagined that he could see a cloud of dark sparkling hinting at itself in the air around her head. “How can you
know
about that?” she asked at last. Quietly, almost ashamed-sounding. Her eyes flicked over his body, obviously wondering if he was also hiding scars. “Was it ... Like, were you...”

“Not
that
way.” Dorian shook his head. “I’ll tell you some shit sometime, but I never ... I just
heard
about how it feels.” He hesitated. “From my girlfriend.”

Zoe hardened again, but the toughness had something pitiful in it. “Steve
said
you pretend you still have some girlfriend back in Chicago. You thought that was such a great idea, right, telling him so he’d tell me?” Her head was tipped back now, her gaze narrowed. “I know it’s bullshit, okay?”

“It’s not—”

“It’s just some Mr. Sensitive crap so you don’t have to hurt my feelings. It hurts a lot worse to be lied to, though.” She glowered at him. “Just
say
you don’t want me.”

Dorian felt angrier at this than he could quite explain to himself. “Then how do I know about the whole turning-into-water thing? You’ve never told anyone about that, have you? And I’m telling you exactly how it felt for you. You didn’t give in to it. But I know what would have happened if you had...”

Zoe lowered her face; Dorian thought that she was trying to hide her fascination. “Oh, yeah?” The bratty tone was back. “Because whatever it was also happened to your
girlfriend?”

“Yes.” Dorian still felt angry, volatile. If Luce couldn’t be bothered to keep her promises, then why shouldn’t he say whatever he felt like? Still, there was the question of how ridiculous it would sound.

“Awesome. What would have happened? This way the next time that bastard shoves a cigarette into my arm I’ll know what my
choices
are.” She sounded like she was joking, but her eyes contradicted the blithe tone; they were worried, eager, and guarded, as if she was afraid that Dorian actually knew the answer.

He looked up sharply. Her
choices.
He hadn’t thought about that, but that was obviously the most important issue. Just because Zoe had stayed human so far didn’t mean she would next time!

Zoe tried harder to cover her emotion. “Spill already! I’m waiting. You get so cold inside you feel like you’re melting. Then what?”

Dorian kept his face hard so there was no way she could think he was kidding. “You change. If you go with the feeling, then you change. And you can’t take it back, either.”

“You change?” Zoe didn’t exactly sound as if this came as a surprise to her; more as if it confirmed something she’d sensed all along.

“Into something else.” Now Dorian was afraid she might decide he was lying, playing games with her when she was already so hurt. The idea stopped him for a moment.

“Okay.” She actually smiled now, though there was something grim about it. “Like what?”

“You can’t tell anyone, Zoe.”

“Like
what?”

Dorian gazed at her for a second. Maybe he’d sound like an asshole, but she needed to know the truth. It was horrible, he thought, that the girls who made that choice didn’t know what they were getting into. Proteus tricked all of them, made them think that they were going to be safe and free when really they were trapped into becoming murderers; even worse, they were trapped that way forever, cold and lost and lonely. But maybe, just maybe, he could protect Zoe from that. If her stepfather came back...“A mermaid. The girls where that happens to them. They become mermaids. And ... they kill a lot of people, Zoe.”

What did it matter if it sounded ridiculous? Dorian thought angrily. It was true. He was telling Zoe the truth, and there was one thing certain: nobody else would. At least she’d know what she was facing.

“Mermaids. Like your girlfriend? That’s what she is?” Zoe was obviously trying to make fun of him, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Dorian stared flatly into her awkward smirk. She was struggling not to accept the truth, he thought, but she couldn’t keep herself from partly believing him. “She’s the one you’re always drawing?”