The phone was ringing.

It just kept ringing.

The wind blew. The rain drummed. The phone rang.

I listened as Dad crunched down the stairs. There was a click. It rang out over the storm.

Dad coughed, then, “Hello.” The word crackled with sleep. “What?” There was alarm in his voice.

I stared straight up at the emptiness above where Ned was not.

“What do you mean?”

I knew it was Mum on the end of the line and I thought I knew what she was saying. I thought I knew what Ned felt was coming. I thought I knew until…

“Where’s he gone? Why’s he not in his bed?”

I pushed myself up and rubbed my eyes on the duvet.

“I’m coming,” Dad shouted, then the phone clunked down. I was out of my room when Dad called, “Jamie!”

“Ned’s gone?” I asked.

Dad coughed again as if to fill the silence Ned left. “We’ve got to go.”

We stayed in our pajamas, coats over the top, flapping cuffs tucked into socks.

“Where would he go, Jamie?” Dad said as he laced up his work boots.

A hundred places flashed through my mind. Hills and fields. Beaches and hidden coves.

Dad pulled the door open. A wind blew in. The rain still drummed, fingers on the roof and windows. The sea roared. And through it all I heard a woven note, a song.

I knew then, without a doubt, where my brother was. I knew whose voices were carried on the wind. I understood then, Leonard and mermaids and everything. I knew what happened at the end of all those stories.

Ned was right. No one got better. Not Mathew. Not Perla. Not the Japanese captain.

I was right too. In the stories, when the mermaids came, they did take the sickness. But they took the people too. The waves swallowed them. The sea washed them away and left just a song, just a shadow, just an imprint in your eyes.

I ran. The rain swallowed me. The emptiness left and the song filled me.

The song filled me and lifted me. I swam through the rain. I didn’t bother with Ned’s bike. I followed the song and Dad followed me, calling.

He didn’t know the path like I did. He had not sped down it in the rain just a few days before.

Thunder rumbled.

Dad called, “Jamie!”

I ran and Dad chased.

As I grew closer, the song grew louder. The rain’s pitter-patter became its beat, and the roar of the sea melted into those notes. Those voices sung together. Thunder was their crashing cymbal.

I slipped and skidded down the path.

Dad called, “Jamie.”

I called, “Ned.”

Our voices clashed with the song. We had no part in that melody.

I did not miss the turn this time. I was off the path and on the rocks, calling behind me, “This way, Dad.”

As I skipped across the wet slabs, the clouds broke. A splinter of moonlight shone down and its beams bounced off the water and reflected off two slick bodies, two tiny frames, crouched on the edge of the platform, where my world ended and the sea began.

Déjà vu. That’s French for “already seen”—a moment you’ve already experienced.

I shouted, “No!” As I called, the thunder pealed and my voice was lost.

That was the final crash. The cymbals rang out. The sea’s roar died. The rain became a hiss. Tiny limbs stretched out. Together they dived. Ned and Leonard, Leonard and Ned hit the sea as one.

There was silence.