Hailey Piper
On the third morning at Cherry Point, Morgan met the unkindly girls. Dawn had hardly touched the beach, giving the sand a grayish tone. Red rocks dotted the stone path from their small white beach house down to the water. Up the shore, a fishing boat cast off.
Morgan wore the ugliest swimsuit. Dad’s decision—a one-piece, dull maroon abomination with sleeves and shorts. She’d never been allowed to wear a bikini, but in the past her swimsuits had looked presentable. The designer must’ve thought the faintest hint of shoulders and butt would draw too many wandering eyes.
Dad probably agreed. “You’re still my baby girl,” he’d said when Morgan complained. Six years old versus sixteen made little difference to him. He would scoff when he saw women and girls wear more revealing swimsuits. He’d call them unkindly—one of his favorite words, as if to look appealing meant flipping him off.
But Morgan had spent her life at his side and had seen him lick those chastising lips. She was not to become an unkindly girl. Never.
“You wouldn’t do that to dear old Dad, Morgie,” he’d say.
She’d come out early to dip into the water, but with so few people wandering the beach, she had her pick of seashells. The more colorful, the better. Hunting for them used to be a treat. Dad would only let her keep three per trip. He said to take too many would damage the ecosystem or something, but the hunt was the fun part.
Now, every shell that sparkled on the beach turned dull in her hands. She let them tumble back to the sand, one by one. A lot had changed at home since last summer. Try as she might to leave it behind, the change had followed her to Cherry Point.
“That is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Morgan dropped her last lackluster seashell and looked down the beach, where two girls her age walked the damp sand. One’s face was all angles and wreathed in dark hair. The other flashed a soft smile; white stripes patterned her red hair where she’d bleached it. They wore dark, baggy pants and loose-fitting blouses that bared their chests.
Unkindly. The word popped unwanted into Morgan’s head. She’d never glanced at other girls’ chests the previous summers, but now Dad’s eyes dominated hers.
“Like wearing blood,” said the pointy-faced girl, still fixated on the swimsuit. “Sickening.”
“Isn’t it?” Morgan asked, tugging one stunted sleeve. “That’s what the tag says. Ugliest Swimsuit, one size fits none.”
The two girls giggled, and then the pointy-faced one beckoned Morgan. “I’m Blue, and the redhead’s Clown. Follow us. We’ll fix you up.”
Morgan smiled to herself and obeyed. This wasn’t unusual for summer vacation. Somehow, she always made at least one friend.
Neighbor houses squatted a couple hundred feet from each other, but closer to the wet sand stood a dull wooden shop. Water damage darkened its lower walls, and the discoloration gave the shop a sea-worn feel.
Blue and Clown led Morgan inside. Plastic shovels and pails dangled from nails, snorkels lined a metal tray, and bathing suits hung on a circular clothing rack. Plus, there were shelves of the usual gift shop garbage. A tacky ceramic crab clutching a flag in its claw read, “Ain’t Life a Beach?”
The shopkeeper, a balding man with a scraggly goatee, let his eyes wander up and down the other girls’ bodies. Morgan thought of Dad and how he’d never be so obvious. His shame always forced him to avert his gaze.
Fabric swatted her arm, tearing her gaze from the shopkeeper. Clown shook a plastic hanger, dangling an aquamarine two-piece swimsuit with navy-blue striping. Shiny sequins lay trapped between layers in the trim. They looked almost like scales and made Morgan think of mermaids.
“Lovely, yes?” Blue asked. Her smile was all teeth.
Morgan shrugged, but Blue was right. It was gorgeous.
Blue guided the bikini to Morgan’s front. “On you. To die for, yes?”
Exactly Morgan’s thinking. Dad would kill her.
Morgan stepped back, letting the two-piece dangle again. “It’s pretty, but I don’t have money.”
“We’ll spot you,” Blue said, taking the hanger from Clown. “In return, you hang with us tonight on the beach. Agreed?”
Morgan shrank inside. If only it weren’t so easy to make friends, Dad would have no one to chastise, and these would be peaceful vacations, nothing more.
Blue laid the swimsuit on the counter. The shopkeeper didn’t look at her now, his eyes sharply focused on the cash register. Clown reached inside her blouse and pulled out a black purse. Dollar coins thudded on the checkout counter. Morgan couldn’t see their faces, but they made her think of pirate doubloons.
Blue pressed the swimsuit into Morgan’s arms. “At the beach, just before sunset.” She marched past, and Clown trailed her.
Morgan began to follow them out.
The shopkeeper cleared his throat. “Watch out for them two.”
Morgan turned to him. “What?”
He ran his fingernails from temple to goatee, scratching an itch he couldn’t catch. “Every summer, they come to Cherry Point and sell dope up and down the beach. Don’t get caught in their mess.” He began to fiddle with a coin, but his eyes focused on Blue and Clown as they sauntered out the door.
Vacationers, not locals.
They were just the kind of girls who’d make Dad avert his eyes.
If they would stop going to the beach each summer, maybe he wouldn’t have to see any unkindly girls. Sometimes he saw them at the pool in Syracuse, but nothing would come of that. Too close to home.
When Morgan was little, she’d thought their beach trips were a fun way to spend each summer together after Mom died. Cape Cod, Miami Beach, La Jolla. Different coasts, different kinds of beaches, but always full of sand castles, ice cream, and splashing in the shallows, though ever past the sea shelf where the undertow might suck her into the deep. Safety first was one of Dad’s rules.
At each beach, Morgan made a friend. She never meant to. They would stumble into each other, or Morgan would see the other girl wearing something pretty. A day would pass, Dad would disappear for a night, and then they would head home.
Morgan tiptoed through the beach house and into her room, where she stashed the aquamarine bikini beneath her sagging mattress. Cool salty air swept through an open window and across her arms. She stripped out of her maroon one-piece and dressed in a tank and shorts. She’d meant to swim, but now a grimmer outlook haunted her thoughts.
She would have to tell Dad about the girls. Since Mom was gone, she’d told him everything, even after she realized he hadn’t been telling her everything in return.
Utensils clinked in the kitchen. He was awake.
She stared at her window, thinking about sneaking out, but Cherry Point lay hundreds of miles from Syracuse. If she ran away, she’d just have to come back. He would think her unkindly for worrying him, and he might then worry that she knew his secret.
She traipsed into the kitchen. Dad loomed over the stovetop, his thick yet dexterous fingers sliding an egg from bowl to rim to pan. He wore a blue-and-white Hawaiian pattern shirt, khaki shorts, and white sandals. Harmless middle class vacation father—his best costume.
“Morning, Morgie,” he said. “Out early?”
“I wanted to swim while it was cool,” she said, plopping down on a stool by the kitchen island. The pedestal creaked around a loose screw.
“Your hair’s dry.” Dad didn’t look at her. Somehow he just knew these things. Another egg cracked and sizzled.
“I didn’t get a chance. I made a friend.”
Dad focused hard on his hands as he slid his graceful spatula beneath the omelet. It flipped and hissed against the pan. “That’s nice.”
“A couple friends, actually.” The cold marble countertop felt soothing under Morgan’s palms. If she kept them there, could she keep from getting blood on her hands?
Dad picked up a knife. Its blade slid around the omelet, sawing off brown arms of crust. “Staying safe, right?” he asked, working magic with pepper and cheese. “Staying kindly?”
Dad laid a plate on the countertop. The omelet was perfect, all signs of burning and crust cut close as could be without losing any of the cheesy yellow center.
Morgan swallowed before biting. “Yes, Daddy. Always.”
He would watch her leave tonight. He would see Blue and Clown, and then lick his chastising lips.
Morgan didn’t say goodbye in the evening. They wouldn’t really be apart, after all, though only she would approach the beach, where the unkindly girls sat around a small fire just outside the tide’s reach. Coastal winds batted at the flames. A storm was coming.
“Now what are you wearing?” Blue asked. She and Clown had not changed out of loose-fitting blouses.
Morgan wore baggy jeans and a hoodie. She’d told Dad that it was going to be chilly this close to the water tonight.
“Where’s your swimsuit?”
“Under my clothes, same as yours,” Morgan said. The girls tittered, and she realized their cleavage was still on display, no hint of bikini tops underneath.
Clown tugged a large brown bottle from the sand beside her feet, took a swig, and passed it around the fire, first to Blue and then to Morgan. There was no label. Brine clung to the bottom, as if the glass had been trapped in a shipwreck for a hundred years.
She thought of Dad and passed the bottle back to Clown. “Anything fresher?”
“We’ll have something fresher after sunset,” Blue said. She and Clown tittered again, the only sound Clown seemed to make. Her hair caught the firelight; its shadows twitched this way and that, as if alive.
As red and purple dusk gave way to black, cloud-covered night, the small fire became an island of light on the beach. Windows glowed down the beach, except at Morgan’s house, but the rest of the world was dark. She wondered exactly where Dad was holed up. He could be anywhere the light didn’t touch while the campfire illuminated the girls for him.
She’d figured things out after last summer. It wasn’t like in the movies where he might’ve accidentally left out some crucial clue that grabbed her attention or a serendipitous news article happened to link their past vacation locales. She was older now and getting attention from boys at school. The way they looked at her wasn’t so different from her father. They were just too juvenile to feel shame. Then there were his comments, his averted eyes, and the nights he’d go out before they left their vacation spots for home. Her brain had linked the chains.
Now she wrapped those chains around her legs. She wondered what heavy thing she’d tether them to and throw into the ocean to drag her down.
“The night’s ready, girls,” Blue said, standing up and turning to Morgan. “Fancy a swim?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just tromped toward the water and expected the others to follow.
They did. Where the tide lapped at their feet, Clown spun around and held out a fist to Morgan. She took the offering, a coarse square that reminded her of dehydrated fruit.
“Ever been swimming high?” Blue asked. “Unforgettable.”
And unkindly. Morgan made to pass the square back, but Clown was already running into the tide.
The light was gone. Dad would never know, same as he’d never know about the sequined bikini. Morgan lifted her palm to her mouth, and her lips closed around the square.
“Melts on your tongue,” Blue said. She was already knee-deep, the tide drenching her clothes.
Morgan stripped and followed. Salt spray stung her nose. Her mouth filled with the static that blew from Dad’s radio when he let her switch between stations. The other girls bobbed, dark driftwood on black waves.
Vague warnings slid beneath Morgan’s thoughts. “The shelf. The undertow.”
Thunder and waves drowned her out. The girls drifted farther. Morgan meant to follow. Only the thought of Dad anchored her to land. She wasn’t an unkindly girl. Never.
Waves rolled toward her. She took a deep breath, stinking of seawater, and plunged beneath the surface. She couldn’t see underneath, but somehow she knew that Blue and Clown were diving, too. The ocean became less an undulating wave, more a hand that grabbed Morgan and yanked her deep.
She floated beneath the creaking hull of an aging ship, its underside as glassy and coated in barnacles as the bottle passed between Blue and Clown. Inside, pirates dragged helpless hook hands against smooth walls. Their glass prison was filled with seawater and beer, and their pockets were so loaded with doubloons that they couldn’t swim away.
Blue and Clown beckoned Morgan to the surface, their scaly turquoise and orange tails flapping. Neither mermaid seemed unkindly. They just wanted to see selfish men die.
An enormous golden tail rocked the drowning ship. The black sky flickered alive with lightning, painting the silhouette of an enormous woman against the clouds. If Blue and Clown were guppies, she was a shark. Plains of kelp matted her scaly head, and coral coated her arms. One gargantuan hand grabbed the bottle by the neck and slung it at the sky. It shattered in thunder, and its shards sliced every pirate to pieces. Their lungs flopped atop the water’s surface, helpless as fish on land.
“Unforgettable,” Blue said.
Morgan dug her hands into wet sand and hauled herself onto the beach. The tide splashed across her back, spraying saltwater into her mouth, but her muscles felt too worn to move another inch. Rain pattered the sand. The storm that swirled out on the water had almost reached Cherry Point. Whatever drug Clown had given to Morgan, it seemed to be losing its effect.
Lightning forked overhead, illuminating a smoking mound where the campfire once burned. Morgan thought she saw other shapes closer to the water. She stared hard at black on black outlines until the sky lit in another blue flicker.
Two naked bodies lay in the surf, red and white hair swirled around one’s head. A bulky figure kneeled beside them. The flicker faded as he turned to Morgan, and he stared until lightning again tore across the sky. Its flash lit his familiar eyes and made his chastising lips glisten.
“I’m sorry, Morgie, but they were unkindly,” Dad said. Thunder rumbled, and he paused for it to pass. “You know, don’t you? I thought you knew when you told me about them.” He started toward her.
Morgan’s chest ached against the sand. She wanted to slither back into the water. She felt the lightning coming, the sky’s tattling forked tongue, and the beach glowed as blue as her swimsuit. He could see her clear as day.
She lifted her head. “Dad—”
“What are you wearing, Morgie?” he asked, but he didn’t say it like a question. He sounded the same as when she was six, the day he told her Mom wasn’t coming home. Thoughts of him had shriveled out on the water, but now he was here and real, and he dwarfed every fantastical ocean.
“I-I-I—” Morgan tried to stand, but her legs felt waterlogged. She wondered if that was the drug’s doing. She managed to sit up and wrap her gooseflesh-covered arms around her chest.
“It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?” He sounded calm, almost peaceful. He squatted down, drew her into his firm arms, and scooped her up against his chest. Fire beat inside in time to the spitting rain. “You had to grow up someday.”
Morgan closed her eyes and tried to forget everything she’d realized since last summer. Dad used to be a good man, or at least that’s what she’d believed. She could believe it again, couldn’t she? If he just held her like this and warmed her bones against every chilly seaborne wind, she would believe anything he wanted.
“Daddy, carry me home,” she said. Lightning flickered past her eyelids. “It can be like it was.” She felt him walking, but he hadn’t turned around.
“It can’t,” he said.
Water slopped at her dangling feet. She opened her eyes. The world lay dark between lightning flickers, but she made out frothing waves that encircled them, churned ugly by harsh wind. Dad was walking into the sea.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I can’t feel the way I feel about unkindly girls for you!” he shouted, loud as thunder. “Not my baby girl. Never.”
She squirmed, but she’d exhausted herself, and he held her tight. Rain and sea crashed across her, plastering her swimsuit against her skin. He didn’t look at her, averting his eyes for when lightning next lit the coast.
He didn’t have to avert them for long. Chest-deep in the water, he plunged her under. One hand grasped her shoulder; the other shoved hard against her head. She clawed at his unyielding wrists and kicked at his legs and groin, but her feet were heavy, the water weighing them down. Lightning reflected in Dad’s eyes. The storm would watch her die.
Was this how he’d killed the other girls, every summer vacation past? Had he held them first so that they might know a loving embrace before drowning them? Always far from home, those unkindly girls. They were vacationers who might’ve met anyone on the beach, but instead they’d met Morgan and her father. Dead summer friends were coming to collect. She had been his accomplice, knowing or not, and she would join them beneath the sea. He hadn’t been caught for murdering them; would someone wonder why he returned to Syracuse alone this time? Would neighbors ask if Morgan died kindly?
He would tell them so. Someone would come to collect him, and he’d say his daughter died still his baby girl. Always.
Morgan stopped fighting. Her lungs screamed to keep thrashing, but she had to catch his gaze. She stared up at him, bubbles slipping from her lips. The sea calmed for a moment, as if anticipating a mighty wave. Dad glanced down at her.
Lightning flashed. She slipped her fingers beneath the lower rim of her bikini top and yanked it up.
Had he waited, the lightning would have faded and he wouldn’t have seen, but even a glimpse seemed too much. His body shuddered backward. He turned his head, eyelids squeezed shut, the sight threatening to drive nails through his eyeballs.
The tide crashed across them, shoving him back and taking her under. It bought her time to break from the shallows. She dove under the next wave. Thunder crashed, but it came warped and uncertain underwater. She thought she might be swimming over the sea shelf by now. Her skin stung with cold as she surfaced.
“Morgie!”
Dad swam against the waves. His drenched clothing tugged at him, but she’d been fighting the ocean for an unknown time, whereas he had a fresh start. He could manage. His fingers snatched her ankle.
If he tried to drown her this far from shore, he’d probably kill them both. Would keeping her kindly be worth the sacrifice?
She looked out to sea for the miracle she’d seen earlier, but there was no static in her mouth, only her tongue. The drug had worn off. No mermaid was coming to save her, same as no one had saved her summer friends in every year past.
She let Dad draw her close and wrapped both arms around his trunk. He embraced her, too. He might’ve thought she was trying to hug him, one last desperate grasp for sympathy.
She sucked in a deep breath and thrust downward hard as she could. Flexing her legs, she kicked herself and Dad into the next wave, where the undertow pulled them under. He was stronger and larger, but freed of land, she could move him.
He shoved at her face. Lightning revealed his flailing limbs—he must’ve missed the chance to take a breath before submerging.
She didn’t let go. Her lungs burned again, still faint from the first attempted drowning. She promised them this would be the last. Fighting him wasn’t just about Blue and Clown. It was about all the unkindly girls he had already killed and all the ones who might die yet. No more.
Burning faded from her chest, her lungs at last giving out. The surface seemed far away, and she was tired. Ghostly cold ate through her muscles. One more unkindly girl drowned in the deep.
Lightning burned in ferocious flashes, the sky playing catch between two clouds, and the world flickered black and blue. An ocean of fish and seaweed appeared. Vanished. Returned full of faces. Morgan might’ve believed they belonged to mermaids or dead pirates, but when the next lightning flash brought them closer, she recognized them.
They were easy to remember; none had aged since she’d last seen them. Little girls, adolescents, teens, Blue and Clown among them. All her summer friends.
And there were strangers who crowded beyond, more than Dad should’ve murdered in the ten years he’d been taking Morgan on summer vacation, more unkindly girls than years in her life. Some were women who might’ve been Mom’s age. Others he must’ve met when he was younger.
He had been finding unkindly girls for a long time. Noticing them and averting his gaze, he poured his strength into unlatching Morgan’s legs. He didn’t seem to realize she was good as dead.
The ocean formed hands in the uncertain darkness between lightning flashes. They hugged him, hugged her. The undertow, the dead—she couldn’t tell what helped her hold him anymore. The difference mattered little to an almost-ghost. No more breathing, eating, or sleeping. No more distracting life functions. She could focus now, all secrets bare, and bend her will and body to one last purpose.
The dead wanted him, and she wouldn’t let go.