Cass met the others back at the docks, carrying the sheaf of printed pages folded in her hand like a shield. She felt-empty.
Maybe when you wished for something for so long and so hard, it could only be a disappointment.
The others didn't notice. They loaded the boat and pushed off, full of talk about some friends they ran into in the grocery store and who was coming to the party and whether so-and-so would manage to sneak booze past Jason's grandfather who was, apparently, chaperoning the event. They were noisy enough to make up for Cass's silence. She settled at the front of the boat where she could hug her knees to her chest and watch the water; even as her thoughts played and replayed what she'd read, her eyes searched for a familiar fin, or a head of pale red hair. She couldn't help it. It was that intermittent feedback thing: she'd been rewarded by glimpses of orcas and Selena just often enough that every time her eyes caught the water she started searching for them.
She shivered, wishing she would see Selena. Then she'd know her sister wasn't hurting anyone else.
"You cold?" Jason called. The wind of their movement ripped away his voice so that Cass only realized he'd spoken to her a beat afterward, when her brain fit the pieces of his words into a pattern and translated.
She shook her head.
They were moving quickly, jouncing and bumping across the waves. Ahead, she could just make out the ferry, on its way to Canada. A broad "V" marked the water behind it.
"Come on back." Jason gave Reis a shove and patted the spot beside him on the bench. Reis and Evie scooted forward, spinning their legs out of the way so she could pass.
She didn't really want to join them, but if she made a big deal of it everyone would want to know what was wrong and she didn't want to get into that, either; so she clambered over the groceries and squeezed past the others and settled gingerly on the seat beside Jason. She couldn't relax. Jason was the only guy in the world who had ever kissed her. She couldn't exist this close to him without every sense coming alive, without becoming hyper-aware of his breathing, of the way he sat and the tilt of his head-and he didn't even remember kissing her. It hurt. After reading articles about murder and death all evening, she didn't have space for more hurt.
"I was thinking about 'Marionettes.' You remember that song?" Jason asked. He didn't wait for her answer. "I wondered how you'd feel about trying something different between the verses, kind of using your voice as an instrument-singing without words."
He went on to demonstrate, trying to sing two parts at once until it finally made her laugh. Memories and confusion still hunched at the back of her mind, ready to pounce, but the distraction was a relief.
He flashed a grin. "Fine. Laugh at me. But try it, okay?"
"Sure." Sigh. It was hard to stay mad at Jason. Even if he was the epitome of confusion.
He started singing the fiddle line-do-do-do-do bum-pa bum-pa-and after a second Reis joined him, drumming on the metal bench seat, while Evie sang harmony. Cass joined with a hum that grew quickly to something full-throated and wordless. It was fun, singing like this, belting counter-rhythms to the waves and the engine's cycling whine. Found music. That's what this should be called, because only a bit of it came from the four of them. The rest sprang from water, metal, and wind.
"Sweet," Jason crowed. "Let's go again!"
Her voice mixed easily with theirs. She sounded so...unremarkable, so normal, that it seemed outrageous to think something about her voice had made the others believe her earlier. Selena could do the mind-bending thing, but she'd had years to practice. In Cass's case, it was more likely that the others had realized they were overreacting. They had to know she wasn't the kind of girl who would tell someone to jump off a cliff. Not if she thought they'd do it, anyway.
She sang more softly; if she closed her eyes, she could imagine the sound emerging from her lips as a ribbon of light, silver and opal, pale and iridescent, unfolding before her. When she got it just right, she felt the song as a trio of wires that connected her gut, her throat, her mind. The light emerged only when the three twined together just so, each melding perfectly with the others, each disappearing into the whole. If only she could show the truth with her voice, she could break whatever hold Selena had on Jason and make him remember what had really happened.
The others trailed off into silence.
Cass opened her eyes and let the song fade. Suddenly, she felt her exhaustion. Her head ached after the long, crazy day.
Reis was watching her with a dreamy expression while, beside him, Evie stared off into space.
Jason shook himself. "What was I saying?"
A band tightened around Cass's middle, because something had just happened. Again. Something about her, something about her voice, affected people.
Reis let out a yawn. "I totally spaced out there. I'm beat."
Jason looked at her again. Lines furrowed his forehead. "Cass...." He trailed off, voice uncertain. "Have I been acting weird the past few days?"
Cass's mouth dropped open. She could tell, because the wind whipped hair into it and she had to spit it out. "Yeah. You could say that."
He bent nearer. "Did I kiss you?" he asks.
She nodded, afraid to breathe.
His forehead touched hers. "That night, walking back with you after our first practice-it's like a dream. A moment ago, I didn't even remember it. How could I not remember?"
"Dude," Reis cut in. "None of that! Eyes on the road, man!"
Cass jumped at his voice, but Reis laughed and shoved Jason away from the wheel. "Let me take it. You lovey-birds go sit up front and make up."
Jason pulled her to the boat's nose, where the skinny bench forced them to squeeze hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. The evening wind twisted strands of Cass's hair free and set them flying.
Jason caught one and tucked it behind her ear. "It matches the sunset," he said.
Cass looked to the west to see the sky painted copper and crimson and struck through with threads of pale orange that were, in fact, just the same color as her hair.
She spent the rest of the boat ride back telling Jason everything that had happened: how he walked back to the Andiamo with her that first night, how she found Selena with her knife at Jen's throat, how the woman on the beach sent her out to drown, how he found her and helped her back to shore. She told him of Selena and her warning for Cass to stay away from him. She told him how Selena had changed his memory so that he thought she'd saved him instead of trying to drown him.
"I remember that she took me underwater and kept me there until I ran out of air," he said slowly, "but I also remember her saving me, pulling her out of the ocean when I was already drowning. They can't both be true."
"I think she planted a false memory on top of the real one," Cass said. "You said that she's been coming every night. Last night, did she?"
He shook his head. "No, for the first time in weeks. Do you think that's why I can remember the truth? It's weird. I remember everything I did, everything I said or felt for the past few days, but it's like remembering someone else's life."
Cass hesitated. She thought it was more than that, that she'd somehow weakened Selena's grip on his mind when she was singing-but it sounded crazy. And if it was true, she was just as much of a freak as Selena.
He brushed swirling hair away from her face. "She mind-controlled me into forgetting how much I like you. I think that's worse than trying to drown me." He cupped her cheek in one hand and touched his lips to hers.
It was wonderful and sweet and romantic, and Cass couldn't help wondering if he would still kiss her if he knew that she had just manipulated his mind, too.
Then Reis crowed and cat-called until Evie thumped him on the head with a bag of pretzels, which exploded everywhere, and they spent the rest of the ride back to harbor pitching broken pretzels into the water.
#
After they carried groceries up to the marina office, Reis and Evie took off, leaving Cass and Jason sitting on the office desk, feeling awkward. At least, Cass felt awkward. Even though Jason had been perfectly sweet for the past hour, part of her kept waiting for him to revert to weirdness.
"What will you do if she comes back?" she asked.
He wrapped his arms around himself as if cold. "I don't know, and it scares me. Cover my ears, maybe?"
"I don't think that will work." She tried to think how to explain. "When she used her voice on me-"
"I didn't know she did this to you, too," he interrupted.
"The night I found her on the Andiamo. She used Voice-that's how I think of it," she explained sheepishly, "Voice with a capital "V." She used it to tell me to forget she'd been there and to stay away from you."
"But you didn't stay away. And you obviously didn't forget her, either. Why not?"
Cass shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'm not as susceptible, because I'm her sister. My grandmother had no trouble controlling me."
Jason bit his lip. "I hate this," he said. "I should be able to control my own mind. How can I stop her from just doing this again?"
The rawness in his eyes tore at her. "I could stay with you," Cass said. "It sounds crazy, but why not? I could hide in the boathouse for a few days and make sure she doesn't get near you."
"And then what? You can't move in with me, Cass." His lips quirked. "Not that I'd mind, necessarily, but I think our folks would object. Besides, she'd probably just wait until you weren't around. Or go after someone else, instead."
He paced to the window. Outside, the last of the sunset had drained from the sky. "I wish I knew what she wanted."
Cass felt warmth spread across her face. "I think she might want to...to reproduce with you."
"Reproduce?"
"Have sex with you," she clarified. Now her cheeks were definitely burning.
Jason took this in, slack-jawed. "You're kidding, right?"
Cass shook her head.
"But why would she need me to disappear for that? Why not just....do it while she had me under her control?"
"Are you sure she didn't?"
Even in the half-light, she could see his face darken. "I'm sure. I can remember everything that happened while she was messing with my mind, and nothing like that happened. But if that's all she wants, it seems like she's going to an awfully lot of effort to make it happen."
"I want you to write yourself a letter," Cass said slowly. "I want you to write down everything we just talked about, and tell yourself that if you're doing what Selena said, then she's controlling your mind again."
"Yes! I'll put something in it that only I would know and seal it in an envelope with my signature on it."
"If you start acting weird again, I'll give it to you."
He grabbed her in a rib-crushing hug before whirling off to dig for writing materials. It took only a few minutes for him to dash off a note, sign it, stuff it into an envelope, and seal it. On the outside, he scrawled: To Jason, From Jason. IMPORTANT! Read this!!!
He gave it to her. "You're a good friend, you know that Cassidy Fort?"
She tucked the envelope into her jeans pocket, feeling more hopeful than she had in days.
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A/N - Thanks for all your votes and comments! I really appreciate it--reminds me to keep writing & posting :). Love hearing from you!!!