Tides Page 11

  “Good morning,” he said. He fiddled with a large key chain, and a circle of luminous, dark leather on it caught Lo’s eye. It glowed with an almost patent shine.

  She realized Professor Foster was watching her. She forced herself to stop looking at his key chain, and she smiled at him. “I’m here for the filing job,” she said. “Hello.”

  His eyebrow curled up just a tiny bit. “I thought you were bringing your sister,” he said to Noah, his tone still carefully friendly.

  Noah’s eyes flashed. Lo closed hers; there wasn’t much that could get Noah to raise his voice, but this was one of the things that usually could.

  “This is my sister,” he said. Lo had expected him to shout, but his voice was low and icy. “Lo,” he said, almost whispering, “meet Professor Foster, the Center’s director.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Professor Foster quickly, taking Lo’s hand and shaking it. His grip was very strong. “Forgive me, Miss Gallagher. Mixed-race adoption was not so . . . common in my day.”

  Noah’s mouth gaped.

  Lo spoke quickly, before her brother had the chance. “I was so glad to get this opportunity,” she told Professor Foster, smiling. “I’ve been wishing for something to organize. My brother never lets me in his room because he knows I’ll alphabetize his bookshelves when the impulse takes me.”

  Noah let out a grumble that could almost have been a laugh.

  “Well, we’re glad to have you,” said Professor Foster, “believe me. I think your brother can explain the filing system to you—right, Mr. Gallagher?”

  Lo swept in again. “Of course he can. He already explained a lot this morning.” Which was true; Noah had gone over the system in excruciating detail over breakfast, and again in the Gull. But even if he hadn’t, she wanted to get him away from the director before he said something he’d regret.

  She grabbed her brother’s arm and dragged him away from the office, down the corridor. “Nice to meet you, Professor Foster!” she called over her shoulder.

  “I just need to say something to him,” Noah growled.

  “No, you don’t.” Lo sighed. “You really, really don’t. You’ll just make him mad, and there’s no point. He really didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “You’re my sister,” Noah protested, but Lo could tell his temper was receding. “I don’t care what he meant.”

  She shook her head. “I just don’t want to get you in trouble, is all. At least not on my first day.”

  She realized she was still leading him, but she had no idea where they were going. “Is the filing room nearby?”

  Noah pointed to a peeling plywood door a few feet away.

  He opened it for her. It creaked. Everything was dark inside.

  “Well, this is it.” She saw the corners of Noah’s mouth twitch up. As angry as he’d been, Lo could tell he was thrilled she was taking over this job for him.

  They walked in together, and Lo groped for the switch. Flat, fluorescent light sputtered over the room.

  Noah squinted at her. “Let’s go over it again,” he said. He moved toward one of the boxes.

  “Oh, please, no. You’ve only explained it five times already.” She grinned. “I’m fine, Noah. Go ahead if you want.” She gave him one of his old Boy Scout salutes.

  He hadn’t been a Scout for years, but he saluted right back. He patted her shoulder and turned to leave.

  Lo lifted a box onto the ancient desk. She breathed in the smell of dust and old paper. It was no wonder Noah hated this job; he was interested only in things that breathed and moved. He was interested in life.

  Lo wasn’t so limited. She understood the value of preservation, of detail. She loved the smell of old paper. As she bent over the box and pulled apart the folded cardboard overlaps on top, she imagined the smell of her sketchbooks, a hundred years in the future. She imagined her great-granddaughter sifting through their pages, smiling when she recognized an expression, a setting, the feeling Lo preserved forever in the way she drew the curve of a lip or the sharp frill of a dry leaf. Her art was, in part, a gift for that unborn girl.

  Warmth grew behind Lo’s breastbone. Yes, even these old papers were important, were beautiful. They let her see the unbroken line of things.

  By lunchtime she’d sorted and filed the contents of three and a half boxes. She went to look for Noah in the lab, but he wasn’t at any of the stations.

  He had her lunch, and she thought with relief that if she didn’t find him, at least she wouldn’t have to eat. No, she reminded herself, that would be bad. She thought of what Gemm had told her and reached for her wrist, feeling for her pulse.

  She wondered if Noah might have met Mara for lunch. Making a lunch date seemed an incredibly mundane thing for a selkie to do. Still, she and Noah had seemed pretty cozy last night. She’d even worn his sweatshirt, which was ridiculous because it had been at least seventy-five degrees out. Lo scowled.

  She wandered outside, looking for her brother and their sandwiches. She circled the Center, unable to find any clues as to where he might have gone. Her belly grumbled at her. She ignored it until it started to clench.

  She dug into her purse and found the bag of cookies she’d stashed from Gemm’s cabinet. She pulled them one by one from the bag without looking, still walking, still keeping her eyes on the shoreline. She didn’t have to think about anything until her fingers brushed the crumbs at the bottom of the bag, and she realized she’d finished all of them.

  Her belly clenched again, a different feeling now that she was full, a sort of preemptive wince. But she wasn’t going to throw up, she told herself. She was trying to get better again.

  She ignored the memories of all the other times she’d thought she’d gotten better. She tried to smile. When her mouth wouldn’t turn up, she wet her fingers and dug back into the bag, then sucked on the crumbly sweetness at their tips.

  But she could still feel the food settling in her belly, and already her throat widened, ready to bring it back up.

  She dodged back into the Center and found the rusty old water fountain by the bathrooms. She took a gulp of tepid water and told her heartbeat to slow down. There was a flyer over the fountain, with a picture of a moon and a star and an advertisement for a dance at the hotel. She tried to focus on reading the words.

  Her head swam. She couldn’t let herself be sick; she couldn’t. She just needed to be alone for a minute.

  She retreated to the dark security of the filing room and shut the door behind her, breathing hard. She pressed her lips tight and swallowed, again and again, willing her stomach to be still. Finally it listened enough that she could open her mouth without fear.

  She sank down into the old vinyl desk chair, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. She pushed her fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp. She’d never felt sick like this by accident before.

  She thought of what Gemm had said. After they’d talked, Lo had thought she’d try harder to stop. She’d told herself she wasn’t planning to throw up after lunch today, even though a niggling twinge in her throat told her she might be lying to herself.

  She slumped forward, letting her forehead rest on her knees. She locked her hands around the back of her neck.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Lo sat up so quickly, her vision crackled into darkness. She gulped from the water bottle on her desk, and her sight cleared. “Hello?”

  Noah came in, his face lined with worry. He flipped on the light switch. “Professor Foster saw you,” he said. “He told me you looked sick.”

  Lo waited for him to launch into another self-righteous speech about how she was hurting herself; it was wrong; couldn’t she see what she was doing—his usual, in other words.

  Instead, he crouched down beside her and placed his hand on her back. “Is it too much, coming here?” he asked quietly. “I shouldn’t have volunteered you without checking first. If you want, I can tell Professor Foster you won’t be coming in anymore. I can row you
home right now.” He shook his head. “I was just thinking about myself, I guess. Lo, I’m so sorry.”

  She felt tears start in her eyes. What had changed, that she could cry in front of family now?

  She breathed in the office air, the scent of old paper. “No, I want to stay,” she said. “I know I can be good at this job.” She smiled at him, thinking that a few minutes ago she hadn’t been able to make herself smile. She leaned into the support of his hand. “Besides, we both know I’m better at it than you are.”

  “True.” Noah laughed and slowly stood up. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Take care of yourself.”

  “You do it pretty well for me.”

  Noah shook his head. He took a step toward the door.

  Lo remembered the flyer she’d seen just before she’d come back to the filing room. “Oh, Noah?”

  He turned.

  “Do you know about the dance coming up, the one on Star?”

  Noah sighed. “You already know more about the social scene than I do,” he said, his mouth curving up in a slow grin.

  “Well, it’s two weeks away. I thought it might be fun to go, but . . .” Lo couldn’t believe she was actually going to ask him to come so she’d be less nervous. But no—she wouldn’t. She’d think of something else that would make him want to go. At last she wrinkled her nose and said, “I guess I thought you might ask Mara.”

  Noah jumped back a little. “Why would I want to do that?” He ran a hand through his hair, its tufts rising like bits of flame.

  Lo hadn’t realized until now how much the island sun had already lightened his hair. She still felt as if they’d just arrived, but Noah’s hair and both their suntans meant that summer had already had time to sink into them.

  “Why would you want to ask Mara?” Lo rolled her eyes. “I have no idea.”

  twenty-one

  SUNSET

  THIS time, Noah knew as soon as he landed on Star that she was there.

  He’d come to run again, and Lo had asked him to pick her up at the Center afterward—she wanted to finish filing one more box. She’d really seemed to plunge herself into the internship, and Noah was glad, though he couldn’t fathom how anyone could actually enjoy it.

  But as he walked up from the pier, he found he couldn’t focus on Lo or his job. He didn’t know what it was, but some tendril, some invisible thread thrummed in him, and what it told him was Mara. More than that, it told him she was nearby, and she was happy.

  He stepped around the corner of the hotel, and two cool hands closed over his eyes.

  He grinned. “Hello, Mara,” he said.

  The hands drew away. He turned around and saw Mara scowling, her arms crossed.

  “I wanted to surprise you.” She shook her head. “But you ruined it.”

  “I did?”

  “You knew I was there!”

  “I did.” It seemed strange to him, then, how sure he’d been.

  Mara’s dark eyebrows drew toward each other. “I didn’t think you could—”

  “I recognized your hands.” It was true, after all. He’d seen the webbing.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll surprise you another time.”

  Noah thought she might reach for his hand, but she turned away from him and set off toward the ledge where he’d first seen her.

  “Well, come on,” she called, and Noah realized he was standing still, just watching her. He jogged to catch up, and the ground squished under his feet. Had it rained since lunch? He’d been too busy learning the ropes on the equipment the older interns showed him to notice.

  The rocky ledge was dark and glassy with wet, and small pools trembled in its hollows. The grass shone with color. Noah had thought his new job would mean more time outdoors, but he’d spent all afternoon in the lab. Maybe he’d ask Lo to eat outside with him sometime. Or maybe . . . “Mara?”

  “Mmm,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes on a large rock a ways out to sea, stuck through the middle with a jutting iron pole. Noah remembered from the charts at the Center that it was called Whale Rock, named after its resemblance to a harpooned sperm whale.

  He sat down with her, but his spine felt so tight, he couldn’t lean back or relax. “Do you want to come here with me for lunch sometime?” The question came out in a rush. Noah told himself he was just lonely for some company other than Lo’s, but he knew he had the other students for that.

  “I can’t.” Mara didn’t elaborate. She just kept staring at Whale Rock. That tendril he’d felt before shrank and faded.

  “Oh.” It was stupid to feel so rejected. She had been waiting here for him, hadn’t she? Didn’t that mean she wanted to see him?

  He looked out to the ocean with her. Dark shapes circled the far-off rock, ducking under and rising again with the waves. One of them hoisted itself out of the water, nudging its body toward the rusty pole.

  They sat there, quietly, for a long time. Eventually Noah felt as if he ought to speak again.

  “Are those—” He cleared his throat. “Are they your family?”

  “They’re my pod,” said Mara, with a deeper affection in her voice than Noah had ever heard from someone his age. “My family, although we’re not all related by blood.”

  “Blood doesn’t matter.” Noah remembered the day his mother picked him up at preschool with six-month-old Lo asleep in the back, tucked into a car seat. They had just gotten back from China that morning, and it was Noah’s first time seeing her. She had been so small, so soft and squishy-looking, that at first he’d thought she didn’t have any bones. Despite his mother’s assurances to the contrary, he’d felt an intense need to protect his little boneless sister. That feeling had never really gone away.

  “You’re right,” said Mara. “Blood doesn’t matter. I wasn’t sure if humans knew that.” She pointed to the largest seal as it chased two little ones in a playful circle. “My older brother.” She still spoke lovingly, but Noah heard her voice tighten.

  “Conan, right?” He knew she’d mentioned his name the last time they’d sat here and talked.

  “Ronan.” Mara laughed. “Is Conan a human name?”

  “It’s my dad’s middle name,” said Noah.

  “Middle name?”

  “Yeah, you know, Thomas Conan Gallagher. I’m Noah Christian Gallagher.”

  Mara cocked her head to one side, considering. “We have two names,” she said, “but we are called by the second one.”

  “Maelinn Mara.” Noah rolled it around in his mouth.

  “The first part of our Elder’s name, and the ‘linn’ sound, which means ‘from.’”

  “So you’re all named after Maebh?”

  Mara nodded. “Now we are. There used to be—well, Maebh wasn’t always the Elder. Our pod was once much larger.”

  He wanted to ask her what had happened. That tendril of understanding had snuck up between them again, though, and somehow he knew she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I think Ronan is a human name, too,” said Mara. “In every generation, one of our pod’s males is given that name. There is a story of a kind man named Ronan who came over from Ireland on the same ship as our ancestors. He lived on the Shoals for many years, but he never told their secret or stole their skins.”

  “People really do that?” He had a feeling she wouldn’t like the question, but he had to ask.

  Her eyes flashed. She finally looked at him, but with so much anger in her face that he wished she’d turn away again. “What do you think?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered where I leave mine, or what would happen if you took it.”

  Noah looked back at her. He said nothing.

  “I’m sorry.” She sighed, and her fingers darted toward him again, just a little, as if she meant to take his hand but then decided against it. She kept looking into his eyes. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he agreed.

  Mara stretched out her legs, and one end of the rope around her waist dropp
ed onto Noah’s thigh. She didn’t notice, and he didn’t want to move lest she did.

  The horizon had almost swallowed the sun. The ocean stretched in front of them in cool, thin strips of silver and blue.

  “I wish I could come here more often,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” He didn’t need to hear her explain her rejection.

  “It’s the pod,” she said, looking out at Whale Rock again. “Someone always has to look after the younglings, and there are only the three of us to do it. We take shifts.” She counted off the times of day on her webbed fingers. “Ronan leaves at midday, and Maebh always wants nights, though I didn’t know why until recently.” She laughed under her breath. “So that leaves me with dusk or dawn, and you can see which I prefer. I can come here when the sun is still high, but when it gets dark, I know I have to leave.” She picked at a stray thread on one of her too-small sandals. “I can’t really appreciate the sunset anymore, because it only means it’s time to go.”

  Noah didn’t see what was so wonderful about coming on land when Mara could swim the ocean as a seal, could see and do things he had no hope of experiencing. But he said nothing. He couldn’t tell what would make her angry.

  They sat still in the darkening air, their breaths coming in and out together. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, but he watched her. The wind divided her short hair into swirls and spikes. Her skin glowed even paler in the fading light. This night was warmer than the last time they’d been together, but he still felt as if he could see her breath hanging in the air after each quiet exhalation. The moon rose behind her like a cloudy halo.

  Noah remembered something else he wanted to ask. She’d already rejected him once that night, so he chose his words carefully.

  “Mara?” He tried to relax, tried to look as if this idea had just occurred to him.

  “Mmm,” she said again, but this time she looked at him instead of out to sea, and her voice was softer.

  “The Oceanic Hotel . . .” He cleared his throat. “They have a party next weekend—for Midsummer—they have it every year, but I guess you probably know that . . .” How to say it? He knew he was babbling. “Lo told me about it. I think she really wants to go, but she’s afraid she won’t know anyone—”