Chapter Thirty-Three
The three of us stared at the trees where he had vanished for several long moments in silence. The wind whipped my hair into my face, wiping away the tears that fell down my cheeks.
Then Sailor rounded on me, charging across the sand.
“This is all your fault!” She crashed into me before I had a chance to brace myself for the impact, knocking me backward onto the beach. She straddled my stomach, pulling at my hair and pushing my head down into the earth.
I tried to fight back, but Sailor was a dizzying tornado of limbs and claws. Just as I started to get my bearings, she was lifted from my body, kicking and punching into the air.
Josh held her against him, squeezing as she fought to break free. “Sailor, stop!” he shouted in her ear.
Sailor stopped squirming, but her gaze was locked on me. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she panted through her bared teeth. “It’s not fair,” she said, her voice thick with a sob. “Ever since she got here, she’s messed everything up. First she took Dylan from me and then you and then Grandma.”
I stood, rubbing at the scratch across my cheek from her nails. “You drove everyone away,” I told her.
Her body went limp in Josh’s arms, her head falling forward. I didn’t realize she was crying until I heard her sniffle. “I want to go back,” she said. “I want my mama back. I want everything to be like it was in Grandma’s pictures, before all of this happened.”
I choked down the lump that Sailor’s words caused in my own throat. I wanted that too, more than anything else. The one person of our group unaffected by death, the one person who could maybe be strong enough to hold us all together, was the one person we had all managed to drive away.
“Come on, Sailor,” Josh said to her in a soft voice. “Let’s go home, okay?”
She nodded, keeping her head hung low.
I led the way back through the forest while Josh walked with Sailor at his side. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that Sailor was Josh’s sister. Half-sister. It seemed that I would be forever destined to have my life entwined with Sailor’s, as long as both of us held a connection to Josh.
I saw the group sitting outside Moody’s Variety Store about a second before they spotted us. My feet shuffled along the ground when I hesitated, uncertain whether to turn back or keep going. But I had Josh with me and his presence gave me strength, so I held my shoulders back and continued walking, bridging the distance between us.
“Hey look,” Elizabeth said to her friends, “I think the new girl is in need of another Diet Coke shower.”
Jackie and the other two giggled behind her, taking loud slurps from their own drinks. Jim, the old man from the store, sat nearby in his wooden chair, polishing his harmonica on his shirt as he looked at us over the fire blazing in the old metal barrel. Mr. Connors sat next to him, scratching his beard and watching our approach.
“It’s a public street,” I snapped. “So move aside unless you want another fat lip to match the one you’ve already got.”
Elizabeth’s face twisted into an ugly sneer at me. “Hit me again and I’ll see to it that you’re never welcome back into school,” she threatened. She looked over my shoulder at Josh and Sailor, and her expression tightened. “What are you doing with them, Josh?”
“We’re just passing through,” Josh told her. “Let us by and we’ll leave you alone.”
She stared incredulously at him. “Have you forgotten what we’re fighting for? They killed your father.”
“Then it’s my fight, not yours,” he said in a calm voice. “Let us pass.”
Elizabeth glared at us for a long time, her fingers clenched around her drink. She drew her arm back slightly and I braced myself for the impact of the ice and liquid.
“You throw that drink and don’t expect you’ll get another one for free,” Jim growled. He played a few notes on his harmonica. “I ain’t giving away drinks for y’all to waste. So don’t throw it unless your daddy is willing to buy you another one.”
Mr. Connors’s eyes moved over us slowly, scrutinizing. “How’s your mother, Josh? I heard she had a real bad spell recently. At the Westray house, I believe it was.”
I hadn’t planned to tell Josh about his mom screaming in our front yard. I didn’t think it was something that would make him feel any better about her condition.
“She’s fine,” Josh said in a tight, controlled voice. I could hear the hurt in his tone and I regretted not telling him.
“Yes, well,” Mr. Connors said, frowning deeply and rubbing at his chin, “your mama was such a different woman back before your daddy died. One of the brightest and funniest women on the island. She had so many dreams for the future. But when your daddy died...” He paused and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I meant when your daddy was murdered.” His venomous gaze slid to Sailor and then me. “Well, you see what your mama is now, don’t you?”
His tone indicated the words he didn’t say. That Josh should hold a personal vendetta against our kind for taking his parents away from him. That he should be the one to fuel the fire that the people like Mr. Connors had held against the finfolk all these years for him.
I waited for Josh to say something, my muscles tensed and ready to react at a moment’s notice. Elizabeth still held her drink in a raised threat, smiling smugly at me from the protection of her circle. Somewhere in the distance, a bird’s shriek shattered the silence.
“We’re just trying to get home,” Josh said.
“You heard him, girls,” Jim barked. “Let them by. Come back with your guitar if you want to play tonight, Josh.”
Elizabeth dutifully stepped aside and her friends followed suit. I kept my gaze locked on hers as I walked by, my fists clenched at my sides.
When we had turned the corner toward Sailor’s house, I finally said what had been eating at me during the entire exchange.
“Why didn’t you tell them you’re finfolk too?” I demanded, whirling around to face Josh.
He blinked at me, hugging Sailor to his side. “My mom has hated the finfolk ever since she found out about my dad’s affair. She blames them for his death. She always told me that if anyone knew, they would treat me the same way they do the others.”
“So living a lie is better than admitting the truth?” I asked.
Josh let out a long sigh. “The truth isn’t easy.”
“No kidding,” I said. “But after all the secrets people have kept from me lately, I can say honestly that having the truth out there is better than constantly wondering what is real and what isn’t.” Anger began to bubble up inside me as I thought about all the many lies and half-truths people had told me. Not just since my arrival in Swans Landing, but since the day my mom had taken me away long ago. “You’re living a half-life. You walk around here every day with people like Elizabeth, pretending to be one of them. You let them say whatever they want about people like us and you do nothing to stop it.”
“It would crush my mom if people knew the truth,” Josh protested.
Who was this person standing in front of me? I felt as if I’d never even really known him at all. There was the Josh who had spent secret hours with me at Pirate’s Cove, and then the mask Josh presented to the rest of the world.
Which one was real?
How would things have been different if Josh’s dad had never died? Mom might have stayed in Swans Landing and let me grow up living on both land and water. Josh’s secret might have been known by everyone all along. And where would that have led us? My head spun the with the possibilities, the what-ifs that would never have an answer.
That first day we’d met, his eyes had issued a challenge to me. Since then, I had thought that the challenge was stepping over my own boundaries and being with him, convincing him to leave with me.
But now I realized that I’d gotten it entirely wrong. The challenge wasn’t getting closer to him.
It was walking away.
“I won’t live a lie anymore.” My voice trembled slightly as I spoke, but I sucked in a deep breath, the smell of the salt in the air giving me strength.
“Mara,” Josh said, his features crinkling into a painful scowl.
“Good-bye, Josh,” I said. Then I turned around and ran through the fading sunlight, painfully closing the last door on my connection to Josh.