chapter twenty-eight
Cold.
That’s all I feel at first.
Heart-freezing, brain-blurring cold.
Shock fills my whole body. It takes all my concentration not to open my mouth and gasp water into my lungs. I press my lips together, squeeze my eyes shut as I drift down… down… down…
Finally, the cold settles around my heart like a blanket, and my body wakes back up, moves around a little to get used to its new surroundings.
I open my eyes.
Deep blue all around.
Quiet.
Calm.
For a second, all I feel is relief. I’m here. I’m in the sea, right where I belong, and I don’t feel any fear. I don’t feel any worry. I just feel right. Like coming home after a long time away. I wave my arms through the water, spin my body like a ballerina. I look down, waiting for my legs to meld together, beautiful iridescent flukes unfurling where my feet used to be, waiting to change so when I go back up to the surface, I’ll fit. I’ll know what to do, how to be.
None of that happens, though, and for a split second, I’m surprised. Something like disappointment settles into my chest. I swish my legs around, as though I could coax them into some magical metamorphosis. I’ve already changed. I’m already barely me. So why not this? Even while my brain knows it’s impossible, I still want it to happen. I want my body to match my heart, to change and shift and mold into something untouchable, something that could never lose everything again.
But nothing happens. My heart beats in my chest, alone and altered while the rest of me stays the same. I go to take a deep breath, to think of what to do next, how to get rid of this cold, immovable heart, but I can’t. I’ve still got lungs. Legs. I don’t fit here, either.
I squeeze my eyes shut, twist my body again, trying to make it work in its new home.
Home, I think as hard as I can. Home, home, home.
But then something happens.
Pictures bloom in my head. Not of the sea or 39 Camelia Street, but Lemon’s tear-streaked face on her birthday, her hand in mine as we gazed out at the sea and talked about mermaids.
Faces—new faces I didn’t even know three months ago, Kiko and Lemon and Jules—breaking into smiles and then laughter on a museum’s back porch, chasing ghosts who ended up being friends.
Peach running toward the sea, kicking her feet in the waves and shrieking from the wonder of it, the hugeness of the ocean, loving with her whole heart all the time no matter what.
Mama.
My mama.
Smiling at her phone. Typing up a new story. Slow-dancing with Mum. Resting her forehead against Claire’s. Crying on the couch back in California after Mum’s funeral when she thought I was asleep, hiding all her memories in a trunk, sipping her morning tea on the porch wrapped in the Sister Quilt, watching the Atlantic roll over the earth.
Jules smiling at me, talking about sadness and change while staring at a creepy toothbrush.
Sparkly eyeshadow swept over my eyelids.
Blanket forts filled with stars.
Lemon’s huge, squashy couch.
Mermaid cakes and mermaid T-shirts and mermaids who look just like me.
Mum’s paintings. Mama’s books. Peach’s little bracelets.
Home.
My eyes fly open, deep blue everywhere. Just the ocean. Power and mystery. Beauty and fear and serenity and violence, but the sea nonetheless. Not love, not a person or a family or a friend.
I twist around, looking up and down for light, but it’s all dark blue. Nothing but dark blue melting into darker and deeper blue above and below. I can’t find the surface, the waves, have no idea which way I’m facing. My lungs feel like they’re shrinking. I flail, swimming one way, then another, but I have no idea which way to go.
It’s too late.
I’m lost.
I’m alone.
Panic begins filling me up, darkening my vision. I need to scream, to cry, tell Mama I’m sorry. I open my mouth, to tell the ocean instead, but then I see a flicker of color.
A flash, that’s all it is, but it’s bright in all this navy. It’s enough to shock me into calm, into watching and waiting. The color grows and grows, swirls of silver white in the dark. It gets closer, swimming toward me, and I realize that all that silver white is hair.
A girl’s hair.
No. Not a girl.
She swims toward me, her face like mine, slender body covered in a tattered blue dress. Lace at her throat. Her tail flicks out behind her, two beautiful flukes pushing at the sea to get to me.
And then she’s there. Right in front of me. We stare at each other, blue eyes for blue eyes, pale hair for pale hair.
I’m not like you.
She reaches out a hand and places it on my scarred cheek, shakes her head as though she heard me even though I know the words were only in my mind. She frames my face with both of her hands. Her palms are cold as she touches our foreheads together.
If you find her, beware.
If you find her, be keen.
She’ll sing you into madness
or grant you one dream.
Terror fills my heart and I shake my head. I just want air. I want Mama, Lemon, Peach. I thrash, trying to escape her, but she braces her hands around my arms, holding on tight, shaking her head and frowning. Something slips from my finger—Mama’s and Mum’s wedding rings, escaping into the deep.
No!
I scream it, reach for the rings, but the ocean swallows my voice, the cold freezes my body.
She squeezes my arms and then… she leans forward and kisses my scarred cheek. When she pulls back, I see the faintest trace of a smile on her mouth, but then the ocean is moving. Soaring and swirling around me, dark blue shifting into lighter. Her hands grip my arms, pulling and pushing, and I realize it’s not the sea that’s moving.
It’s me.
Light flashes above me. Red and blue circling around a dark shape. My body breaks the surface. I feel arms around me. Stronger than Rosemary’s. Deep voices shout words I can’t make out. A boat bobs in the water. Not mine, but a ship, huge and haunting. I’m hauled out of the sea, blankets piled around me as a clear mask is strapped to my face. Air flows, clear and clean and real.
A woman in a beautiful dress and dark, curly hair breaks through all the unfamiliar faces. Mama. My mama. I try to call out to her, try to tell her I’m back. I’m here.
I’m here.
I’m here.
I’m here.
But my voice is gone, swallowed up by lungs desperate for more, more, more air.
“Hazel,” she says. Just that. My name. The one she and Mum gave me, only me. For the first time in two years, she pulls me into her arms. For the first time in two years, she buries her face in my hair, hugs me tight with all her strength. For the first time in two years, I wrap my whole self around her, cry into her neck like a little girl, like a daughter who needs her mom. For the first time in two years, right here in the middle of the sea, I’m finally home again.