Promise Bound (21 page)

I thought I caught the blue sequined sparkle of Pavati’s tail. But it could have just been sunlight on the water.

“I came here to ask you a question,” Gabby said. “You don’t have to admit anything. Just tell me if I’m completely off base.”

I fidgeted. “Try me.”

“How long have you been practicing holding your breath?”

That seemed like a safe enough question. Hadn’t I been doing that long before I knew my mer-potential? “A while,” I said. “Just for fun. I like a challenge.”

Gabby nodded. “Do you want to be a mermaid?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Just answer the question,” Gabby said with an exasperated sigh. Her dark hair was growing out again, and the wind pushed it up and around her face so I couldn’t see her expression. I played it safe.

“If being a mermaid is like being in one of Tennyson’s poems, then yeah. Maybe.”

“Who?” Gabby asked, finally looking at me.

I changed references. “If it’s like Disney, maybe. I always liked that singing crab.”

“But it’s not like Disney,” Gabby said.

“Gabby,” I said, like a warning. It was time for this conversation to end.

“Could Jack hold his breath as long as you?”

I didn’t answer that, and Gabby picked up the dagger. She rolled it over and over between her hands as she considered her next question, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t answered her last. Or maybe she took my silence as an affirmation. She handed the dagger to me, and my fingertips prickled at the contact. The thing practically hummed.

“Do you see that?” Gabby asked, pointing out some of the markings along the handle. “It’s an ancient language, but one of my dad’s friends can read it.”

“Dr. Coyote?” I asked.

Gabby raised her eyebrows at me. “How did you know?”

I shrugged. “He’s my dentist.”

“Well, yeah. Dr. Coyote took a huge interest in it. Asked me where I found it. Told me what it says.”

“Which is?”

“This first part here”—she indicated with her finger—“is a name. Sheshebens.”

Small duck
, I thought.

“This other part took him longer to figure out, but he decided it says
Safe passage home
.”

“Hmm,” I said. I was already familiar with the story. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Dr. Coyote asked me the same thing.”

“If he thinks it has historical significance, you should give it to my dad. He could take it to the college and get it submitted to a museum.” I really hoped Gabby would be open to the suggestion, so I played it as cool as I could, as if I didn’t care.

“I think I’ll keep it for now. Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So I have a theory,” Gabby said.

I scooped wet sand with my hands and buried my feet up to my ankles.

“The dagger clearly means something.” For a second she was distracted by it, and said, “It feels weird in my hand. It hums. Can you hear it?”

“No,” I lied. “I think that’s your imagination.”

Gabby groaned. “Well, I think Jack understood it was connected to the …” She hesitated on the word, old doubts persisting. “Mermaids. At first I thought he was dead—that they might have even killed him with it—but I’ve changed my mind.… I think he left this as a clue for me. I think it means that he found them, and that he used the dagger for safe passage. Like a peace offering.”

“Ironic, don’t you think?” I couldn’t help myself. My mouth was quicker than my brain.

“How do you mean?”

“A dagger as a sign of peace?”

“I think he went to them,” she said. “I think they changed
him. Listen, Lily, I know you’re not going to admit it to me, but my guess is, with what you were just doing, holding your breath like that, that you’re planning to go to them, too.”

I started to protest, but she put up her hand, saying, “That’s why I’m not going to give you the dagger. I can’t let another family go through what mine has. No one else gets a ‘safe passage.’ ”

I still wanted to get Sheshebens’s dagger back, but I took comfort in the fact that Gabby had come up with an explanation for Jack’s disappearance that (a) satisfied her, and (b) required no retribution on her part. The last thing any of us needed was another Pettit on a crazed mermaid hunt. In her mind, Jack was still alive. Happy, even. And there was no one to blame for his disappearance but his own bad choices. That much was spot on.

I looked Gabby in the eyes and spoke solemnly. “I don’t know if what you’re saying is true, but I won’t argue against it. And I promise you this: with or without that dagger, I won’t abandon my family for a fantasy—real or imagined.”

“Promise?” she asked. She stood up and slipped Sheshebens’s dagger back into her pocket.

“Pinky swear.”

A
cactus garden grew around a crumbling concrete wishing well that stood by the front door of the Tijuana Grille. Scattered pennies lay below the few inches of stagnant water. My stomach constricted at the memory of Lily’s and my hunt for Maighdean Mara; Lily sprinkling old copper pennies onto the lake, shiny and patinaed circles both chasing the stony mermaid to her resting place. Man, I missed Lily. I wondered what she was doing right now.

I closed my eyes and pushed all curiosity out of my head so I could focus on the task ahead.
Look forward
, I told myself.
Not back
.

The hostess led us to a tiny table in the center of the darkened room. The walls were painted a deep purple. At least I thought they were, it was too dark to really know. The only glimmer of light came from the votive candles on the tables and the tiny white Christmas lights that hung in looping lines around the perimeter of the ceiling. Our table was uneven and rocked when I leaned my elbows on it.

“So,” Chelsea said.

“So,” I said.

A waitress wearing a poncho, a sombrero, and a just-kill-me-now expression stopped at our table with two glasses of water. I guzzled mine without taking a breath.

“Thirsty much?” Chelsea asked.

“Do you know what you want?” the waitress asked. Chelsea raised her eyebrows to suggest I go first.

“Why don’t you order for us,” I said. “You’re buying.”

“Two pops,” she said to the waitress. “Coke okay?” she asked me. I nodded and swiped my finger through the votive candle’s flame. “We’ll have one burrito special. Two forks.”

The waitress flicked her pen against her order pad, then walked off.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing,” Chelsea said.

I shook my head. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Now, I know you’re not from around here, but the traditional exchange for the burrito special is one life story.”

I grunted at her.

“Spill it. What’s so special about McIntyre’s uncles having children born in the sixties?” She picked up a chip and bit down hard with her front teeth. The chip snapped in half.

I stared at her, my mind buzzing as I tried to think up an explanation.

“What?” she asked, chomping down on two more chips. “You can’t expect me not to ask. What’s with all the weird questions, eh?”

I passed my finger through the candle flame a couple more times, trying to come up with a semi-reasonable answer.

She pressed on. “Do the sixties have something to do with the drowning stories you were researching the other day?”

I knew it was a mistake to accept her help.

“Come on. Tell me why you care if that guy’s uncles had kids.”

I searched the restaurant for some lie-composing material. It wasn’t like I could explain that the kid I had asked about was
me
. She’d write me off as a nut job, and until I got my window fixed I needed a driver. My gaze landed on a Day of the Dead diorama mounted on the wall. A pair of male and female skeletons dressed in wedding clothes, the male complete with top hat, danced around a red crepe-paper fire. Inspiration hit.

“There’s something wrong with me,” I said.

She smiled a little. “I figured that out for myself, thank you very much.”

“It’s not a joke. I’m … I’m dying.”

Chelsea’s hand drifted to her mouth, and her eyebrows rose toward her hairline.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just that two months ago I was diagnosed with a rare blood disease. My best chance is a bone marrow transplant, and the doctors say I’ll have the most luck at finding a match with a close relative. Trouble
is, my biological parents died when I was young, and I was adopted.”

“Oh my God,” Chelsea said.

“I’m trying to find my biological grandparents,” I said, my foot bouncing uncontrollably under the table. I hoped Chelsea didn’t notice the vibration in her water glass.

“It was a closed adoption, so I don’t even know their names. But I’m hoping, if I find them, that they’ll be able to help me … even though they really don’t know me from Adam. I know the chances of this going well are pretty slim,” I said, and swallowed hard. Chelsea interpreted it as desperation and leaned across the table toward me. “I guess that’s what made me hesitant to talk to that guy,” I continued. “You asked me about that. I mean … what do you say? How do you make that kind of introduction?”

Chelsea sat back—hard—against the wooden chair. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard if I’d known.”

“Why should
you
be sorry?”

She gave me a funny look, then her mood swung like a pendulum from sadness to … anger? Confusion? Ridicule? I couldn’t place it. She said, “You tell me you’re sick. I’m sorry to hear that. So sue me.”

The waitress placed a white oblong plate in front of us. Whatever was on it was unrecognizable. Large. Yellow. Gloppy. Why do humans hide their food under so much sludge? Chelsea dug in, and long strands of what appeared to be cheese led from the plate to her mouth. I picked at the shreds of lettuce around the edge of the plate.

Chelsea took another bite and pulled the fork slowly between her lips. “Are you going to have any?”

I poked at the lifeless mound with a fork. “What is it again?”

“Seriously? It’s a burrito.”

“I guess I’m not that hungry.” I scowled at the plate and pushed it closer to her. “One of the side effects of my disease: poor appetite.”

She leaned across the table again. “So what do you have to go on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Clues. Documents.”

The trouble with lies was that the more complicated they got, the more likely they were to unravel. I knew this. So what happened next was inexcusable. I said, “The only clue I’ve got is an old photograph of my biological mom as a little girl on a sailboat. I’m not even positive her parents were from Thunder Bay, but the boat had a Canadian flag and the name of the boat started with a
K
or an
R
. The year nineteen sixty-seven is written on the back of the photo.”

She nodded and swallowed another bite. “Let me see it.”

“See what?”

“The photo,” she said, wiping her hands on a napkin and reaching across the table.

“I don’t have it.”

Her hand froze in midair. “You’re kidding, right?”

I kept my expression blank.

Chelsea withdrew her hand and clicked her tongue in disgust. She folded her arms over her chest. “You mean to tell me the only clue you have to finding your family—and
finding a cure
—isn’t in your wallet?”

I shrugged. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“You are seriously the weirdest guy I’ve ever met.” She tossed her hands up. “Shoot, most people would have posted it on Facebook, made an appeal for bone marrow on YouTube. Instead, you’re running around a strange town, digging around in a freakin’ library, and you didn’t bring the only clue you have
with you
? Doesn’t that sound a little unprepared? Are you sure you really want to do this?”

I looked away. I didn’t want her to know that she’d nailed it. I didn’t want to do this, but I’d bound myself to a promise and now I had to see it through. I couldn’t even begin to get Lily back if I didn’t at least try.

I flinched—startled by that bit of hope left clinging to my heart. It distracted me from the job of making my lie more convincing.

“There was a fire,” I said.

“A fire?”

“I mean a flood.”
Damn it
. “My basement flooded and the photo got ruined with a bunch of other things in storage. It took weeks to get all the boxes out of there. The cardboard was all soggy, kept ripping open …” I swallowed hard. “I had to do it all because my—”

“Exactly where are you from?” Chelsea asked.

Her interrogation was getting tiresome. My skin felt tight across my cheekbones, and my muscles uncomfortably dry. My bottom lip was split with hairline fissures. I didn’t have the time, the patience, or the interest in discussing my past with this girl.

I leaned across the table toward her, watching as her
brown eyes melted like chocolate—so dark the pupils nearly disappeared. I looked through those expanding dark windows and pushed guilt into her mind and a little bit of embarrassment, too. She’d asked enough questions for one night.

Chelsea’s cheeks flashed pink and she said, “Hey, forget about all those homeless cracks earlier, eh?” She reached forward tentatively and her fingers rested gently on top of my hand. It was an unusual color that hummed between her fingers and sifted across the back of my hand. I’d never seen anything like it before: light blue that faded to gray, then surged blue again.

“I really am sorry,” she said.

Ugh. Pity. That’s what that strange blue color was. I’d seen humans’ excitement, joy, optimism, adventure, worry, fear … but never, in all my years, pity. I didn’t like how that made me feel: small and powerless.

I was not to be pitied.

Behind me, the door opened and a cool rush of air blew into the room. It pushed a shiver up my spine and over my shoulders. I hunched my back to the cold and, without meaning to, leaned farther across the table toward Chelsea.

Two pairs of feet hit the terra-cotta tile in the entryway. Chelsea’s eyes opened wide. “Kiss me!” she whispered, blue giving way to a surprised shade of flashing orange.

“What?” I growled.

“Kiss me! Quick! My ex just walked in with his new girlfriend.”

Before I could respond, she grabbed me behind the neck and yanked me close. The table edge cut into my ribs. She
kissed me hard. The salt on her lips burned through a crack in mine.