Waterborn (The Emerald Series Book 1) (5 page)

M
y nightmare followed
me into the next day. There were small moments of time when I would feel it—whatever it was—steal my breath. I would literally have to stop what I was doing and force myself to breathe. It was like every breath was a conscious thought, as though my body had forgotten how to breathe. I was beginning to wonder whether I was suffering from panic attacks.

I had a friend sophomore year who’d been clinically depressed and suffered from panic attacks. I remember having to take her home from a party one night after the music got too loud, the room too hot. She had turned ghostly pale, complaining that her chest hurt, and even after taking her out into the cool winter night, she’d been unable to stop sweating. She’d been genuinely scared and I had too. We’d thought she was having a heart attack.

I didn’t feel depressed though. I knew things weren’t exactly right, but honestly, so what if my hair wouldn’t grow? So what if I couldn’t swim? Lots of people couldn’t swim. And really, so what if I grew up without a mother? It’s not like I had ever known her to miss her. All I had of her was a picture. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had.

So instead of continuing to sit on my balcony contemplating my rather bizarre but inconsequential list of genetic quirks, I went in search of cute animals. Usually, I would head straight to YouTube and watch a gazillion puppy and kitten videos, but I needed to get out of the house. So I ended up at the local aquarium.

The giant wall murals of smiling dolphins already had me feeling better. I watched a sea lion show while eating a box of popcorn and sipping a cherry Icee, surrounded by red-faced tourists smelling of piña coladas. I skimmed my hand under the water of the “petting zoo,” a shallow tank housing stingrays and horseshoe crabs gliding under the surface. I lifted my hand when a small shark swam by, not quite trusting the thing not to make a snack of one of my fingers. The sign said it was a nurse shark, which sounded like an oxymoron to me.

The aquarium was nestled against the beach with a wooden fence running along the back of the complex that separated it from the white dunes and the masses of beachgoers. The Gulf was a flat, smooth sheet of tie-dyed glass. I was able to relax more when the surf was quiet, when I didn’t hear my name in the turn of the waves. I didn’t feel as crazy today.

The sound of laughter brought my head around. I watched two girls about my age sitting at one of the picnic tables in front of a silver trailer where they sold hamburgers, and hot dogs, and other greasy overpriced snacks. The hamburgers smelled particularly mouth watering.

Both girls wore the same blue polo shirt with an embroidered dolphin leaping over the left side of their chests. I had spied them in the gift shop on my way inside the complex. The blonde was rather chatty, picking at her food between wild gestures and “Oh my Gods.” She had beach-wave hair and her skin was the perfect shade of bronze, not a fake bake, but a tan that could only be the result of hours spent in the sun.

Her friend had her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, and she was easily the prettiest girl I had ever seen in real life. Even from where I stood—maybe I was staring—I could tell she had flawlessly smooth skin. She wore a pair of those sunglasses with the big round lenses that would make me look like an alien but made her look like a movie star. She wasn’t saying much. She smiled occasionally whenever her friend laughed, which was a lot. Apparently, Blondie was a real comedian. The dark-haired girl seemed distracted though. Every now and then she would look out toward the beach, and I imagined I could hear her sigh every time. At one point, Blondie put her arm around her shoulders, squeezing her close and whispering something in her ear. They both laughed and I watched as the dark-haired girl wiped at her eyes under her lenses.

I suddenly felt intrusive and I had to admit to being a little jealous. I’d never had a best friend before. I’d had plenty of acquaintances, been invited to all the parties back home, even had a boyfriend or two. Since I’d been here, I might have texted my friend Molly a half a dozen times, but there wasn’t anybody I really missed. By the end of the summer, everyone would have forgotten about me, and I them.

On that depressing note, instead of following the herd of people to the next dolphin show, I wandered to the back of the complex.

Ahhh, there it was, just the place I was looking for. Nestled in the back of the complex was a small rise of bleachers with its own tin roof. I helped myself through the wooden gate. My flip-flops echoed off the aluminum bleachers, but otherwise it was quiet and peaceful. I sat high enough to catch the slight breeze coming over the fence. The bleachers faced a tank that appeared empty. I slung my backpack off my shoulder and rummaged for a pack of peanut butter crackers and a bottle of water.

I was on my third cracker when the gate squeaked on its hinges. I looked up and nearly choked. I immediately recognized the guy coming through the gate. Pretty Boy. The guy who'd received an involuntary haircut. The one I'd saved from a gang of bullies. The one I had given a ride to and hadn’t even gotten so much as a thank you in return. He didn’t deserve to be in my dreams but he had been. I was kind of regretting my choice of paint color. It had made him impossible to forget.

He looked different. Maybe it was because he could walk a straight line. He appeared fuller, and his hair was already skimming over the tops of his shoulders. He had on a shirt this time, a wife beater, and while wife beaters and guys who wore them usually weren’t my thing, I wasn't against enjoying a little arm candy—cannonball shoulders tapering into finely sculpted biceps with that traceable vein running down its length.

He crouched on the platform beside the tank and dangled the fingers of one hand in the water. Then he waited, and waited, oblivious to the fact that I was watching. It was then that I realized the tank wasn’t empty like I’d first supposed. I’d heard the high-pitched staticky sound when I'd sat down and assumed it had been coming from the speaker system, but now I realized it was coming from inside the tank. I craned my neck and saw a gray mass floating against the side of the tank closest to me. Pretty Boy splashed his hand, creating ripples over the pool. If he was trying to get the dolphin’s attention, it wasn’t working. The dolphin didn’t move. Pretty Boy’s shoulders slumped in obvious disappointment, though he sat patiently with his elbows resting on the tops of his bent knees. He wore a stack of bracelets on each wrist, thick bands of leather strung with what looked like tiny pearls.

Heaving a sigh, he rose to his feet and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head. I’d seen this guy’s chest before along with his ridged abs and his perfectly smooth, sun-browned skin. I’d had my hands on that skin for a few short moments, which I’d admittedly replayed in my head a few times since.

Before I could ogle further, he dove into the water in a perfect display of agility and grace. Ten! I wanted to yell, but so delicious was this venture into voyeurism that I remained quiet.

He glided under the surface of the water so smoothly that if I hadn’t seen him dive in, I wouldn’t believe him to be human at all. The dolphin was not immune either. It took a bit of coaxing, but eventually the dolphin responded, venturing from its corner. I held an anxious breath. This was important somehow and I inwardly offered the dolphin encouragement.

They started off with lazy circles around the perimeter of the pool. Gradually they built up speed, but the dolphin held back, and I wondered if maybe she was sick. I didn’t know how I knew she was a girl, but I was certain she was. There was something in that high-pitched noise she made that sounded sad, almost lonely.

Just about the time I started to wonder when Dolphin Boy would come up for air, he propelled himself onto the platform in one swift motion. He landed on the edge, feet dangling in the water. He stared straight at me as if he had known I was sitting there, and he didn’t look too happy about it.

“Enjoying the show?”

There wasn’t a hint of humor in his question, so instead of saying yes, I stammered, “Ahhh… well.” And then like an idiot, I looked around the empty bleachers as if there were someone else who could help me out with the correct answer.

“What are you doing back here?”

His unwavering gaze never left my face, and I detected a small amount of hostility. Maybe he didn’t recognize me as the girl who had saved his ass the other day. Maybe he didn’t remember me, which would be a bummer because I remembered him. And if this was some kind of test, I was failing. He sprang to his feet, the movement so sudden I stood in response.

“Eating crackers?” I offered, holding up my half-eaten pack of crackers as though he required evidence.

“Didn’t you see the sign?” He walked toward the gate with long purposeful strides. So different from the fumbling foal he had been the other day. I didn’t quite like him as much like this.

“What sign?” I looked around, searching frantically, afraid I looked as dumb as I felt. I couldn’t read it from the inside, but I could see it hanging on the back of the gate through the wooden slats. Pretty hard to have missed, actually. “Oh, that sign.”

He pulled the gate open in an irritatingly dramatic fashion so I could read it. My lips moved silently over the words “Authorized Personnel Only” written in big red letters and underlined. It was suddenly unbearably hot. Rivulets of sweat trickled down my back.

He glared at me, as if his eyes weren’t just eyes, but laser beams.

Okie-dokey.

Without looking down, I grabbed my pack and slung it over my shoulder, flopping my way down the bleachers, making sure I made as much noise as possible in protest of his rudeness.

“Don’t forget your trash,” he said with a slight nod, and that dumb hair of his fell over his shoulder and I wanted to tell him to get another haircut. I turned around to see my discarded cracker paper and water bottle right where I’d left them.

I felt his eyes boring a hole in my back when I went to retrieve the offensive trash, dumping it in the gray, plastic trashcan at the bottom of the bleachers, then held my hands up as if to say, “Are you happy now?”

He didn’t look it.

“Thanks,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. Why did all the pretty ones have to be such jerks?

He was still holding the gate open and I didn’t need to be told twice. I marched through without giving him so much as a glance, which took a monumental amount of self-control. The gate slammed behind me. I walked back through the complex with two thoughts on my mind:

First, I really needed to repaint my room. And second, apparently I could speak dolphin.

I
ducked
into the bathroom before heading home. The stamp on my hand was good for all day, but this place had lost its appeal. And not just because of a certain rude dolphin trainer or whatever he was. I kind of felt sorry for the animals, trapped in cages; concrete tanks that were in reality just giant fish bowls, with the open water and freedom only a hundred yards away. It seemed unusually cruel, maybe because I could somehow relate, as I was faced with the reality of the water everyday, the way it drew me in and stole my attention, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I was trapped by my inability to swim.

After using the bathroom, I stood at the sink, washing my hands. Looking in the mirror, I saw one of the stall doors open and the dark-haired girl I had seen at the picnic tables walked up to the sink next to me. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She had pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and she was even prettier up close, with big brown eyes set in a perfectly symmetrical face. She pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse and before she could put it on, her phone buzzed from somewhere in the depths of her soft leather purse. As she dug for it, she fumbled the lipstick to the floor. It skidded under my sink.

“Frak,” she said to herself in the mirror.

I bent over and picked the lipstick off the floor, smiling when I handed it back to her. I must have looked a little creepy—and I had to admit, I kind of had a girl crush going—because when she took it out of my hand, her eyes narrowed at me.

“What?” she asked.

“You said frak.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed at the ceiling. “Sorry. My dad is kind of a sci-fi geek.”

“No, I understand completely,” I said to her reflection. “I’ve got one of those too.”

“Yeah, we spent all last weekend watching the first season for the third time.”

“Christmas break here.” I toweled off my hands as we continued to bond over Battlestar Galactica and geeky dads.

“Are you here on vacation?”

What gave me away? The pink tint on my skin? I had noticed a new scattering of freckles while looking in the mirror. It reminded me of strawberry ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. Why couldn’t I turn a nice golden brown like the girl in the mirror next to me? I looked like a dessert.

“Sort of. We’re staying the whole summer. So, I don’t know. It feels semi-permanent.”

“Where are you from?” She leaned close to the mirror and applied a layer of lipstick, smacking her lips together when she finished.

“Kentucky?” Every time I said it, it sounded so wrong.

“Wait, your last name’s not Harper, is it?” She looked up at me, eyebrows arched, a hint of excitement in her voice.

“Yeah.” I dragged the word out to at least three syllables.

“I think I met your dad the other day at my dad’s office. Patrick Harper?”

“That’s him.”

We gave ourselves one last look in the mirror before heading for the door. I held the door open for her then followed her out into the breezeway.

“Cool.” She faced me and walked backward up the sidewalk. “Give me your number. Maybe we can hang sometime.”

“Sounds good.” I recited my number and she immediately pushed send. I heard my phone ring from the recesses of my backpack.

“Now you have mine. My name’s Erin, by the way.”

“I’m Caris.”

Girl handshakes were always so awkward.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Caris. Now I have to get back in there.“ She pointed to the entrance to the gift shop. “Ally’s probably wondering what happened to me.”