Sugar Coated (6 page)

“That was very rude,” she heard Charl
ie say in a huffy voice.

“Sorry, there was an emergency,” Brynn lied, putting the heavy book back on the bookshelf. “I need you to do me a favor
, Charlie.”

“I’m not going to try to talk to any more stuffy, stuck-up library computers today, so don’t bother asking,” her house replied, never losin
g the indignation in her voice.

“No it’s not that, relax. I need you to move my monthly trip to Central Wildwood up so that I depart next week after Amber’s party. And get me a seat near the front.”

Chapter 6: Clarity

Brynn was flat on her back looking up at a blindingly white ceiling. She couldn’t quite tell where the ceiling ended and the wall began, but she knew that it must
meet somehow, because a slight pressure on her left arm told her she was lying against the wall. The room came in and out of focus as her foggy mind tried to cling onto consciousness and keep her in the here-and-now.

She could hear a sliding door open somewhere to her right, but was surprised to see a figure standing over her a moment later without ever having heard footsteps. Using all of her willpower to get her eyes to stop rolling wildly around in her head, she focused on the figure above her.

Her Angel.

Though Brynn was the only one who described them as Angels, she was beginning to think the description would need to be altered. This woman
, whom she’d met so many times before, was looking down at her in a manner that was anything but angelic. She could see a storm raging in her violet eyes, though her face remained calm and controlled. Her white-blonde asymmetrical bob fell across her cheek as she looked down at Brynn’s immobile form.

“Are you going to be cooperative today?” the woman asked in that voice
that maddened Brynn to no end.

It was frustrating to want to trust this woman so much because of her deep, rich voice, when Brynn knew she only meant her harm. Still, her voice did relax Brynn as she lay there unable to move her limbs.
She tried to open her mouth to respond to the woman, but her lips felt as though they were so swollen that she wouldn’t be able to get any actual words out.

“Oh, sorry about that,” the Angel said to her in her slow, golden voice, giving Brynn the smallest of satisfied smiles. “The medicine we gave you sometimes makes your lips a bit numb. I expect your response to my
inquiry won’t be the most eloquent sentence ever constructed, but since when has that stopped you from opening that plump little mouth of yours?”

Brynn tried once more to make sound escape her lips, but still found it impossible. She thought that maybe if she could somehow communicate with this woman she could talk her out of hurting her. It wasn’t as if Brynn knew anything valuable. There was no reason for
the Angel to want to kill her.

She tried to lift her finger to ask for a tablet to write on, but even the effort of that small task seemed too great at the moment, so she simply continued to stare into the vibrant
, violet eyes of the terrifying woman in her white ensemble.

“Listen,” the woman said, sitting down on a white chair beside Brynn so that she could be closer to her level. “You and I both know you did somet
hing against the rules. I know it may not seem like it, but I’m all for bending the rules for the greater good. For progress,” she added as an afterthought, saying those two words as if they were a mantra she commonly chanted.

“Whatever you did needs to be revealed to me alone. I won’t tell the others in charge, I’ll just use that knowledge to make sure progress can still be made
, within protocol. Do we have an understanding?” she asked, raising one perfectly arched pale blonde eyebrow until it disappeared into the sharp line created by her bangs.

Unable to use her voice, Brynn attempted to nod at the woman. She may not have known anything about what she supposedly did, but she wasn’t an idiot. If whatever information this woman wanted was the key to staying alive, she was going to use that to her advantage. However, try as she might, Brynn was unable to make her body listen to her and her sma
ll nod proved to be impossible.

Anger flashed through the Angel’s eyes briefly at Brynn’s silence and sh
e stood abruptly from her seat.

“Perhaps I’ll come back when you’re feeling a bit more talkative,” the woman said icily. “Until then I think you need to sleep for a while. So try to get some rest while I decide what we’ll do with you. For progress.”

* * *

Eyes pressed firmly closed, Brynn tried to ignore the bead of sweat that ran down her temple and the pounding headache she had woken with.
Instead, she tried to recreate the soothing voice she’d heard in her dreams, but the memory was already fading away.

She couldn’t remember much about her dream that night, only that she’d been face-to-face with her Angel once more and that there was some bit of information she was looking for. Even those details were already slipping away like the last bit of
darkness succumbing to the sun.

Brynn sat up in her large bed and looked out the window behind her. The sky was just starting to lighten as the sun rose on the eastern side of the city, light
ing a path to the ocean beyond.

“Clarity,” she said quietly to herself, glad (for some reason that she didn’t quite understand) that her voice was working. “That’s what I need. Some clarity.”

She didn’t bother asking Charlie to get her some new clothes. Instead she pulled her black boots over the stretchy black pants she’d slept in. She grabbed her grey fitted jacket from the floor and put it on over the baggy white T-shirt she wore while tying her hair up into a bun on top of her head.

It didn’t take long for her to reach the sandy beach right over the hill of waxy
, green plants. Despite the chilly wind that blew in from the ocean, a light mask of sweat sprang up on Brynn’s face from the effort of climbing over the hill in the morning sun.

Without a second thought about what had happened the last time she tried to prove that the ocean wasn’t dangerous, she stripped off her coat, pulled her boots off, and walked straight at the ominous force of the crashing waves. Even if she’d hit a dead end with everything else so far, she could still find som
e way to break out of the norm.

The freezing water that hit violently against her ankles as she stormed into the ocean was almost painful in its iciness. It made her bones ache and instantly turned her skin bright red. The last time she’d taken a dip in the sea, the water was much warmer, though the time of day probably had a large part to play in that.

Ignoring the pain, Brynn pushed through until she was up to her waist in the arctic liquid. Her breathing was rapid as she tried to keep her body from freezing. This time she wasn’t going to let the ocean take her feet out from under her. She was in control. It didn’t matter that the library trip had been a failure or that she still couldn’t find her lost city. It didn’t matter that the Angel she dreamed about every night still didn’t make any sense to her. What she was doing at that very moment was something she had complete control over. There was no one out at the beach to tell her she couldn’t dive into the water. This was a choice she could make on her own.

Glaring out at the endless expanse of water that disappeared into the far, flat horizon, Brynn let out one long frustrated sigh
. And then, taking a deep breath, she dove head first into the freezing ocean. At first the force of the temperature took her breath away, making her feel as if she’d been punched in the chest. Immediately after that sensation subsided, her head began to feel pinched as the cold water filled her ears and clouded her vision.

She clamped her eyes shut under the murky
, green water and let her body float in a state of complete weightlessness for a moment, reveling in the feeling of being completely isolated in a place where the Angel with the soothing voice didn’t matter. A place where Aywon was just a word she didn’t care about.

Living a life full of unanswered questions had always been her burden to bear
, but suddenly, her lot didn’t seem fair anymore. It didn’t make any sense that she should be the only one asking questions. If no one was going to answer her, she’d find her own answers, starting with the great mystery surrounding the dangerous ocean. As she floated in the peaceful water, she couldn’t understand the danger everyone feared so much.

She held her breath in that serene—albeit freezing—place until her lungs burned for air and her fingertips began to tingle. She broke the surface for just a moment, taking in another deep breath before descending once more into the icy depths of the green water. For some reason, amidst the fear and uncertainty she felt in the ocean, she was able to think more clearly than she ever had. She was going to start making things happen for herself. She would take her train trip this month, just as she had every month since she was old enough to travel alone, in the hopes that the train
would stop in Aywon once more.

This thought brought Brynn comfort, simply by knowing she was taking steps to find her own answers in a world full of questions. Her happiness, however, was soon broken by the waves that she had somehow managed to avoid for those few brief moments underwater. Instead of fighting against the tunnel of water that ripped her from her peaceful solitude, she let the force spin her around toward the shore, the world collapsing into total disarray
as the ground became the sky.

Unsure of exactly how it happened, Brynn’s cheek suddenly made contact with the sandy ocean floor and she knew the water was now only a foot or two deep. She got onto all fours and began crawling out of the water, much like she had the first time she’d taken the plunge. This time, however the ocean didn’t seem to want to give her back. A wave crashed down on top of her back, forcing her to lie flat on the rough ground before she was dragged back into the deeper water as she clawed at the soft earth to stop her backwards momentum.

Still determined not to panic in her newfound area of reflection, she closed her eyes once more, imagining the bright white walls and perfectly clean floors of her dream space amidst the chaos of the turbulent water. She imagined the Angel’s face, her voice, and the things she had said to Brynn the night before. Though the dream had faded the moment she’d woke up, suddenly being caught in a potentially deadly situation seemed to bring the conversation back in vivid detail.

The Angel wanted to know something. Something Brynn had done. The only problem was, Brynn couldn’t remember what she had apparently done to make the woman so mad. She wasn’t exactly a coward, but Brynn cared about self-preservation just as much as anyone else, despite the very unwise and unsafe decision she was making at that very moment to let the w
aves take her where they would.

She continued to ignore the aching in her lungs as they begged to be filled with air. Instead she reveled in the fact that her dream was coming back to her so completely. Something had been wrong with Brynn. She couldn’t talk to the Angel and tell her she didn’t know anything. If she could talk, she probably would have lied to her in order to stay alive, though in that particular situation she wasn’t quite sure if it would have even helped. The woman seemed furious with Brynn and she was almost certain no matter what answer she gave, the whole thing s
till wouldn’t end well for her.

But there was something the woman had said that still bothered Brynn. Not quite as much as her lungs were currently bothering her from her apparent lack of concern for their well-being, but it bothered her enough to make her continue ignoring her body to attend to the mental battle she was currently fighting. What had the woman said? Something that was ri
ght on the tip of Brynn’s tongue.

Just as she was certain she couldn’t stand to be without air any longer, she felt something hook under her arms and drag her to the surface. She sputtered a bit as the cold air hit her skin and she greedily sucked in oxygen as if she had been just about to drown. A wave hit her in the face with such force that it brought her surroundings back i
nto painfully dangerous detail.

What was wrong with her? She had been about to drown and didn’t even care. She was so wrapped up in solving the mystery of her dreams that she didn’t actually take time to make sure she’d be alive to see the problem through to
the end once she did solve it.

The hands that had saved her and were currently dragging her out of the water and up onto the sand were apparently much more logical and concerned with the present than she had been only moments before. She could only imagine how crazy she must have seemed to this person. A girl by herself, running into the ocean like a mad woman then putting up no fight against the waves and just le
tting herself be dragged under.

As her head hit the soft, dry sand right next to her discarded boots and jacket, Ty appeared in her line of vision, looking both worried and furious at the same time. The effect was actually quite terrifying. His sandy blonde hair stuck to his forehead in dark clumps and his brown eyes were narrowed as he watched Brynn carefully, looking for signs of any permanent damage.

“What were you thinking?” he asked in a voice much louder than necessary.

Being under the water for so long had only made Brynn’s headache worse and his
shouting wasn’t helping at all.

“I just wanted somewhere t
o think,” she answered shakily.

Ty saw her shiver and put her dry coat over her, but he wasn’t going to le
t her off the hook that easily.

“So you decided the freezing cold, violent, deadly ocean would be a good place to do
that?” he asked incredulously.

“Somehow it made more sense when I was doing it,” she said between hiccups from all of the water she had swallowed. “How did you come get me out? You never even set foot on the sand,” she added, knowing that Ty was so terrified of the ocean that the closest he’d ever gotten to it was the top of the sandy hill, and even then, he would look longingly back at the city.