Chapter Fifty-Two

Gone

The air smelled singed. My breath came in short, sharp gasps. The boat keys lay splayed on the floor by Maggie’s chair.

What had I done?

The open door swayed back and forth in the wind. The bottle rolled at my feet. The bottle I’d been about to crash down on Jack’s head.

I crumpled over. What had happened to me? What was I turning into?

“No,” I whispered.

I should have stayed calm. I should have pulled out the words trapped in my throat. But I’d let that rage blind me. I made Maggie scream.

The human side of me was taking hold. I shivered. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. I had to get out.

I was halfway across the room when I remembered my knife. I ran back to Tommy’s room, shoved the boxes aside, and pulled it from the gap. My hands trembling, I strapped on the sheath—I had to jerk the cord, it had grown so tight—and then I ran outside into the wind.

I ran through the tossing trees, the late afternoon sky low and dark, my feet pounding a raw path. I ran blind, until I skidded around a rock—the whale rock. Now I knew where I was going. Nellie’s.

I burst through the trees and pounded on her door. “Nellie!” I cried. There was no answer. I grabbed the knob; it didn’t turn. “Nellie, let me in!”

I ran around the house trying every window. Nellie’s slid open. I hoisted myself to the sill and jumped down into her room.

The bed wasn’t its usual tumble of pillows; the covers were pulled crisp. She’d shoved the piles of clothes from the floor into the closet. I pulled them out, searching—her backpack was gone. On the bedside table, the picture of her parents was set at a careful angle beside the lamp. What was it she’d said in the tree cave? Something about talking to her parents . . . and going to the big island . . .

I ran into the living room. The fire was dead. The house echoed around me, as empty as an abandoned nest.

They were gone.

A sob wrenched from my throat. I stumbled toward the door.

Nellie said being human wasn’t so bad. But that fury had burned through my veins. Just like the men in all the stories. I’d let my human side out, and now look what I’d done. I couldn’t let it take hold. I wasn’t human. I wouldn’t be.

Somehow the door was open behind me. There was grass underfoot, then rock . . .

Waves rushed over my ankles. I was standing on the cusp of Nellie’s cove.

This was where Nellie and I searched for blue. Where I found the pearl and put it in the mussel shell. The light had shimmered between them like they belonged together.

But it was a lie. You couldn’t live in a borrowed shell.

The waves crashed over my legs. My waist. My chest. A whitecap rose higher and higher, foam flying, until it towered over me in a roaring arc.

I dove.

And then I swam, leaving Spindle Island, and my life as a human, behind me forever.