Lost Voices (28 page)

“And why would you want to do that?” This was an im-provement in one way, Luce realized: it was the first time in days that Catarina seemed to be actually listening to anything Luce said at all.

“Because I’m your friend!” But Luce didn’t really mean it, not anymore, and the dishonesty of her tone was obvious.

Catarina bit her lip and watched Luce in a way that was both nasty and quizzical. “And, I mean, you’re so much older than me, and you’re so good at at keeping the tribe together and keeping everyone safe. You always know what to do . . .” Catarina’s look was still unyielding, and Luce stammered on with growing desperation. “And anyway, Cat, you
are
our best singer! Even if I can do that thing with the waves, I mean, I never sound as gorgeous as you do. I’m not even close . . .”

“Do you really believe that, Luce?” The tone was as slick and cold as ever; why was nothing she said ever enough? “Then challenge me. Sing your very best, in front of the whole tribe, and make them decide. What frightens you so much, little coward? The responsibility? Or because you’ve decided, too late, to feel
guilty
. . .”

Luce was in a bind. Now, if she still refused it would sound either like she thought Catarina couldn’t actually defeat her or else like she really was too afraid. Luce felt a surge of resentment at being manipulated this way.

i 237

“No.”
Catarina’s brows shot up, and Luce scrambled to come up with an excuse. “I don’t want anyone to go around saying that I even
thought
I could beat you. And I’d just embarrass myself . . .” Catarina’s strained smile ratcheted into a sudden grimace; she actually bared her teeth.

“We have no queen now, Luce.
I
know the truth, no matter what the others all think. Do you even realize what that could mean?”

“You’re my queen, Catarina.” Luce heard that her tone sounded more resentful than loyal, though. “You always will be.”

“I won’t pretend for you, Luce.” It came out in a dull hiss.

Then there was a lashing of fins, a smear of silver light, and Catarina was gone. Luce kept heading toward the dining beach but slowly. Her movements were heavy, weighed down by sadness. She’d depleted her air supply by talking, and slipped up to breathe. She was in a blue bowl, ringed by soaring cliffs and even vaster distances.

* * *

Anais was talking, loudly, as Luce broke through the waves where they were all cracking mussels on the rocks. “ Samantha and I went scouting this morning, and there’s a pretty nice little cruise ship heading our way! They’ve stopped at some island, but in a few hours . . . Maybe the people on it aren’t all
that
classy, really, not like the last one we got, but there might be some stuff worth checking out. I say we snag it!” Catarina whacked a mussel. She was staring off into the distance, toward the island where the Coast Guard boat had sunk. Luce waited for her to tell Anais not to do it. Anais and 238 i LOST VOICES

her followers had taken down another yacht just two days before. It was insanely dangerous; if they kept on this way they’d attract more and more human investigators to their area, and soon enough they’d
all
get killed.

Instead Catarina just shot Luce a razor- sharp look, daring her to say something, and suddenly Luce understood what Catarina was telling her, although without words.
If you don’t like it, Luce,
then challenge me. You think you can do better? Take over as queen, and
you can stop them from doing this . . .
Luce stared down at the wisps of seafoam curving out around her body. Was Catarina prepared to see her tribe destroyed simply to force Luce into a final confrontation?

Almost all the mermaids were wearing plundered clothes and jewelry now, in vivid colors that clashed with their shimmering tails and with the greenish silver of the water. Even Luce was still wearing the long pearl necklace, since she couldn’t think of a way to get rid of it without hurting Dana’s feelings. Only Catarina was still sleekly naked. She looked marvelously free beside the other mermaids, their arms now tangled in sodden spangled blouses that dragged haphazardly back and forth with the currents. The cave was getting so cluttered, too.

Anais had finally talked a pack of girls into towing a large flat- screen TV back to the cave; it leaned forlornly against the craggy wall, its cord slopping around like the tail of a dead rat in the water.

“I think I’d rather go off for a swim by myself,” Catarina finally announced in such an exaggeratedly lazy, dreamy way that Luce was sure she was really going hunting for a young man canoeing or sailing on his own.

i 239

“Wow, Cat!” Anais chirped; Luce flinched at the impu-dence in her voice. “You’ve been spending so much time alone!

Are you sure it’s, you know, healthy? I mean, you wouldn’t want to turn into one of these weird loners, would you? Not like . . .” She darted a look at Luce fast but not so fast that everyone wouldn’t notice.

Samantha giggled in the toadying way that she used now whenever Anais insulted Luce. That was happening more often, too. If only she
were
queen, Luce thought, she’d find a reason to banish Anais, orcas or no. The girl was poison; she was ruining the whole tribe.

No, Luce realized. It wouldn’t work. The rest of the girls were too taken in by Anais; the frequent attacks on ships seemed to affect them all like a drug. They didn’t care at all how reckless it was. Luce was beginning to appreciate just how effectively Catarina had kept the tribe disciplined; she’d held their wildest, most destructive urges in check, but now . . .

If they were ever going to get rid of Anais, she and Catarina would definitely have to work together. And with the way things were between them now Luce didn’t see how that could ever happen.

Catarina didn’t respond. She just leaned out on top of the water in a drowsy way, her eyes half closed, then after a moment skimmed deeper, heading out to sea.

Luce hadn’t been eating enough for days, and now her hunger was catching up with her. She sat methodically smacking mussels on the rocks. She’d made a terrible mistake, singing that way in front of Catarina, but she still couldn’t understand why Catarina was refusing to get over it. Why couldn’t they just forget it had ever happened?

240 i LOST VOICES

“You know, I feel like I could use a little stretch, too,” Anais said after a minute. “That cruise ship isn’t going to be moving for a while. It’s too boring just waiting around all the time.”

“Can I come with you?” It seemed like Samantha couldn’t stand to be away from Anais, not even for a few minutes. She followed her everywhere, clinging to her elbow, laughing at everything she said, and Anais seemed to take her adoration as the most natural thing in the world. Luce was surprised when Anais shook her head.

“God, Samantha, can’t you ever let me have some private time? You just want to talk and talk all day. Maybe I want to go for a swim by myself !” Samantha’s face fell, and Luce felt a fleet-ing chill, a kind of dark cloud slipping through her. Anais’s body sliced like a bloodred shadow under the waves, the hem of her dress a pulsing silk jellyfish around her azure tail.

There was one good thing about Catarina being so furious with her: Luce could practice singing again, since it didn’t seem like Cat could get any angrier. “I’m going back to my cave, if anyone wants to find me,” Luce announced coolly. “I’m going to work on some new singing tricks I’ve discovered.” Half the tribe stared at her with disoriented expressions, but, Luce thought, if the idea of practicing was so strange to them, wasn’t that their problem?

And there was no point anymore in trying to suppress her new ability to call the waves either, not now that Catarina knew. She might as well try to get really good at it.

* * *

In the early evening she swam back to the main cave. Now the sunset came late, and the light would turn a milky twilight i 241

blue, but the sky never became completely dark. Instead the sunset would slowly roll around the edge of the horizon until it merged into dawn. Luce told herself that she shouldn’t let it bother her that Catarina had called her a coward hadn’t she been braver than anyone in the tribe that time she’d crawled on shore and saved Violet? But the comment still rankled, and it would be unbearable to let Catarina think Luce was avoiding her out of fear.

The voices in the cave were loud, uproarious, like a human party. Luce wasn’t particularly surprised to see that they’d stolen a few bottles of liquor from the cruise ship; girls were passing bottles of scotch and vodka from hand to hand, pitching drunkenly in the water, their tails swinging haphazardly and sending up salt spray everywhere. The slurred voices sent prickles of anxiety down her back. They reminded her too much of her uncle. Miriam lay alone in a dark corner, and Catarina was reclining with regal disinterest and a sleepy, satisfied look on her face, but everyone else was in tumult, squealing over the enormous heaps of clothes and trinkets on the beach, trying them on, sometimes ripping the tight dresses and tops as they thrashed into them with limbs sloppy from alcohol . . .

“No way!” Anais screamed, snatching something away from Violet. “No way! Those are so completely mine! I saw them first!

God, who ever would have thought that those cheap losers on that ship would have had something this great!” Luce’s eyes went wide; Anais was waving a pair of strappy, spike- heeled sandals around her head. The straps were dense with colored rhinestones glittering maniacally in the dimness. “Manolos! Real Manolos out in this crappy place! Oh, and I think they’re even my size!” 242 i LOST VOICES

Luce was flabbergasted. Why didn’t anyone say anything?

“Can I just hold them for a minute, though?” Violet asked shyly. Anais just pouted and jerked the sandals farther back.

“Nobody is
touching
my Manolos! Everybody heard that, right? If I catch any of you putting even one sneaky finger on these . . .”

Luce couldn’t restrain herself anymore. “Anais!” she yelled, almost before she’d realized what she was doing.

The ruckus in the cave collapsed into sudden quiet. Everyone was staring at her as if she were a stranger intruding on them. They obviously hadn’t noticed her arrival.

“Yes, Luce?” Anais sneered after a moment. “That goes for you, too, naturally. If you even
breathe
on my Manolos ”

“Anais,” Luce said quietly. “You have a
tail
.” The silence only got thicker, and suddenly Luce was laughing bitterly. “Are you planning to wear those on your
head?
” A few mermaids laughed with her but only a few. Anais shot a contemptuous glance around at them.

“What part of ‘Manolo Blahnik’ don’t you understand, Luce? My God, anybody would think you’d been living in a cave your whole life!” More girls laughed at this: Jenna and Samantha.

But even they sounded a bit halfhearted. Luce could feel something unexpected swelling in her chest: a kind of dark, biting strength, a serene fury. The sneers didn’t bother her at all, and she smiled.

“Actually,” Luce said, “I grew up in a van.” Her voice was still fairly quiet but very distinct. She knew everyone in the cave could hear her. There was a kind of flutter of consternation, and the silence grew like something alive. Even Catarina had i 243

raised her drowsy eyes to stare at Luce, and Miriam rolled over and sat up.

But as usual there was no silence so deep that Anais wouldn’t break it. “Oh my God! You mean your parents were
homeless,
Luce?” She let out a piercing shriek of laughter. “You grew up as a
bum?
Well, I guess that explains some things.” Luce shook her head. “My mom died when I was four. I was mostly just with my father. And sometimes we got an apartment for a while, or we stayed in motels. But there were a lot of nights when we slept in the van. I didn’t mind, though. I liked traveling. We almost always had fun.” As Luce spoke, she could see it.

The inside of the red van filled her eyes and the odd flitting lights cast by the mobile made from tiny round mirrors that hung in the back, and she breathed in the slightly musty scent of their sleeping bags spread out on the floor . . . There was the sound of her father’s warm laughter as he taught her to cook chili and fried cornbread on a camping stove. All at once it was realer to her than the dark cave, the circle of mermaids staring and listening to her so intently that she could almost hear the hum of their concentration. “If that makes someone a bum, then I guess you could call us that. But really my dad was a repairman. And a thief.” Anais squealed with laughter again, but apart from that the cave was perfectly quiet. A single drop of water from a stalactite splashed down. The echoes persisted for a very long time.

“Well, Luce! Well, I guess this really shows the difference between you and me now, doesn’t it?” Anais was sneering broadly, trying to make everyone crack up, but it didn’t work.

When Luce glanced around, the dimness of the cave shone with widened eyes.

244 i LOST VOICES

“You’re right, Anais,” Luce agreed. She couldn’t believe how powerful she sounded. Her speaking voice was never this strong; she had this kind of cutting force only when she sang! “It shows exactly the difference between us. You see, I
cared
when my father died.” A few low gasps escaped in the shadows; of course everyone remembered what Anais had said when she’d first changed. Who could forget something like that? “I cared a lot. I still miss him every day.” For the briefest of moments Luce saw Anais’s face buckle, but then she mastered herself again.

Her sneer became shriller.

“Poor little baby- waby misses her scumbag, crook, loser father! See, Luce, you’re just the kind of girl who loves nobod-ies like that. Because you’re a nobody yourself !” No one seemed to be paying much attention to Anais now, though. Violet let out an abrupt sob.

“Is that why you had to live with your uncle, Luce?” Violet didn’t sound nearly as meek as usual. She was almost howling. “Your father died, so you had to live with that uncle who who beat you and who tried . . . Like they did to my brother . . .”