that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - James The Mermaid 2.0

Even with my eyes closed, my hands found the dress in the back of the closet easily; I knew the weight and feel of it like I knew the smoothness of my skin, the kinks and curls in my hair. Sometimes the dress felt as if it were just as equal a part of me. Just as real.

Katie hadn't returned to my bedroom since our fight last night, and I hadn't ventured out to look for her. After a restless night I'd spent this morning in a trance, twisting my hair into a cascade of braids secured with jeweled starfish, painting my face to look like a beautiful, dangerous creature from the sea. It was the mask I'd worn on the last best day of my life, and I'd seen so many pictures and videos that I'd memorized it. Recreating it was, like finding the dress, instinctual, a known thing that since that day back in Bluever had lain dormant within me but not forgotten.

It was an old trick. Sometimes, after a stupid fight with Rachel or Grams, I'd don a different mask, the hair and full makeup and jewels, and pretend I really was a mermaid queen, or an angel, or a butterfly. It was both relaxing and exciting, watching myself transform before the mirror, waiting to see the costumes Grams had picked out for each performance. She always liked to surprise us, and each one was more beautiful than the last. All the way up to the mermaid dress.

Now, hanging on a hook on the back of the bedroom door and absent its twin, the dress seemed sad in a way that clothing couldn't possibly be. It was as if the fabric carried with it my own shame and fear, prickly guilt about hiding from Rachel, all of it weighing unfairly on its delicate embellishments. Still, time and neglect had stolen none of its elegance. It took my breath away. It was everything I was supposed to be, everything I used to be. Each tiny sequin, every glittering rhinestone, the slip of deep blue silk, all of it held magic.

It was the most beautiful dress in the world.

It was the dress I'd sworn I'd never wear again. The dress that belonged only to the past.

I slipped it from the hook, gathered the fabric in my fists. It would've been so easy to put it back. To stuff it into a plastic bag and bury it in the bottom of the closet under the shoes and Candy's old books and too many umbrellas. Or better, to shove it into the box with the letter Granna had sent and the chocolates and everything else from my old life, taped up and forgotten.

Katie was right. I was living in the past. Part of me, anyway. Still locked up with my old videos and music and faults and regrets. I didn't want to live there anymore. I didn't want to live in the dark. Afraid. Alone.

I stepped into the pool of silk, gliding it gently over my thighs. It pulled across my hips a bit more snugly than I remembered, but it still felt familiar, as if it had been waiting for me, for this moment, when we'd be reunited. It hugged me, cool and smooth as water, and though I'd assembled my hair and makeup before the mirror in my bedroom, I couldn't bring myself to look at the reflection of the dress.

I had to go on instinct now, to trust that it looked right, despite its new tightness. I took a deep breath—as much as the dress would allow—and opened the bedroom door, took small steps to the kitchen.

When she saw me standing before the windows that looked out across the sea, Katie gasped and dropped her lip gloss. "Holy. F*ck."

For the first time since the accident, I really, truly laughed.

Not just a fading smile, a quick breath puffed through my cheeks, but a deep-from-the-belly laugh. It didn't sound like much—a series of wheezes and squawks that reminded me of the gulls fighting over stale bread, and it felt raw and edgy in my throat. But it was mine, a real laugh, a warm laugh, the kind that folded me in half and had me pinching my eyes closed to avoid makeup-ruining tears.