Waterfell

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Breathless, I lie on my board way past the lineup where the ocean is only a gentle swell, dangling my arm into the water and feeling the fine layer of salt crusting on my face. I’m not tired, but it has taken more effort than usual to control my impulses. On top of my volatile feelings with Lo, I know I’m playing with fire because being in the ocean this close to the full moon is risky, when the call of the sea is so strong.

The others are still going strong. I can see Speio in the distance doing a sharp cutback on a wave and Sawyer paddling out to the lineup. I don’t see Lo. I’ve done everything possible to stay out of his way, especially after that moment up top. I need time to process what this thing is—if anything—between us. Speio, thank goodness, hasn’t said a word to me about the earlier interaction but I’m sure he’s saving it for the ride home.

Great.

Staring down into the blue depths below me, I want to dive down and keep going until I meet the ocean bottom. The pull of the deep is as seductive as the sea salt on my skin. Maybe I can cheat just a little. There’s no one out here, anyway. I wiggle my fingers under the water and relax, letting the ocean seep past my human skin, watching as tiny rivers of gold-and-green light shimmer up my wrist and my arm. The feel of it is drugging, making me light-headed and dizzy.

I close my eyes only to have them snap open at the feel of steel fingers digging into my upper arm.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” Speio mutters, wrenching my hand out of the water. I didn’t even hear him paddle out to me. “Get it together!”

“I’m sorry—”

“Nerissa, I warned you that you had to be careful. I felt it the second you let go,” Speio says, looking around us nervously. “Other predators will, too. And we’re around people.”

“I know. I said I was sorry, and it was only for a second,” I say, rubbing my tingling arm with my other hand. My skin still glows a little, but nowhere near as brightly as when it had been submerged. “I couldn’t help it. The call was impossible to resist. I wanted to, just for a second.” My voice is beseeching.

Speio’s stern face relaxes. He straddles his board, sitting upright, and reaches across to place his fingers against my skin. Almost immediately, I can feel the sharp tug of the ocean, only through Speio’s body. It’s nearly violent. My eyes widen.

“Feel that?” he asks gently. When I nod, he says, “That’s what I have to deal with being in the water, worse when I sense another like me. In this case, you. That’s Dvija. Every part of me is open and calling out to that missing piece. You asked me about it earlier at school. It’s this—one part pleasure, a hundred parts pain. Even as a human. And it’s a thousand times worse in Aquarathi form.”

“Oh,” I say, stricken. “I didn’t know. How can I help? What can I do? Do you want me try Sanctum?”

When I was younger my father told me that part of the responsibility of being an Aquarathi leader is being able to preserve our people’s well-being, by emotional intervention if necessary. He called it Sanctum, and I only ever saw him do it once. I still remember the feeling of bliss emanating from every Aquarathi around him. His power and reach were awe-inspiring.

“Thanks, but it’s too dangerous in human form. Plus, you’re not a queen yet.” Speio smiles a wistful smile. “Bonding makes all the pain go away.”

Speio’s reality hits me with the force of a sledgehammer. My voice wavers as I put two and two together. “So because of me, you have to deal with feeling like this anytime you’re in the water. Or around me. That’s why you got so angry before when you found out that I’d never planned on going back.”

“Sort of.”

“I’ll fix this, Speio. I promise.”

My throat is constricted. Speio is right. I’ve been more selfish than I could have ever imagined. I had no idea of the pain he was in every time he was in the water or in proximity to me. And that night in the pool must have been torture for him, but he still stayed there.

To earn my forgiveness.

Suddenly, I feel so small and powerless, even though I’m supposed to be the one with all the power...the one they’re all supposed to come to for strength. I’m utterly useless. Speio’s words in the parking lot at Dover were hurtful, but nothing he said was untrue. I am weak and self-seeking. I am stupid, blindly so.

A tear slips down, tracking its way through the salt on my face, and I grip the sides of my board until my fingers go numb. I hate feeling sorry for myself more than anything. Speio hunches over and presses his forehead to mine. “Stop,” he whispers. “You’ll make it worse if you cry. It’ll be okay.”

“What if it won’t?” I sniff. “What then?”

“We’ll deal with that if we have to,” Speio says against my hair, and then yanks a fistful of it and shoves me off my board into the water with a playful grin. “Now if you want to stop being such a sniveling baby, maybe we can get a few more waves in.”

Drenched and spluttering, I glare at him and climb back on my surfboard. “I wasn’t sniveling. I was crying in a perfectly dignified manner.”

Speio makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort and rolls his eyes. And snorts again. In the next second, I’m laughing so hard that my sides are aching and good tears instead of sad ones are pooling in my eyes.

“You’re so dumb.” I giggle.

“Hey, you two. What’s up?”

Lo. My entire body tenses and flutters at that velvety voice. I try to hide my immediate visceral response but it’s like trying to stop a freight train with a feather. Speio’s expression stiffens, the levity between us disappearing in the wind.

I’d forgotten.

With the water channeling between us, he can feel whatever it is that I’m feeling. Everything that I’m feeling. Blushing furiously at the thought of anyone—especially Speio—knowing what this boy is doing to me, I force myself to control my body’s responses, severing any link with the ocean and Speio, and reinforcing my human shell. Almost immediately, the connection weakens until there’s nothing but a shimmer of wind between us.

Oddly, I feel a sense of loss. I liked being linked to Speio—it made me feel less alone. Without a word, Speio sends a dark scowl in Lo’s direction, then spins on his board and paddles off. Obviously, he felt the same.

“What’s his problem?” Lo asks, his voice husky.

“Nothing. He’s just...protective.”

“Of you?”

“I guess. We’ve known each other a very long time so it comes with the territory,” I say, noticing that the fading sunlight makes his wet hair look like burnished metal. His hair is such an odd color. It’s not reddish-blond like mine, but it’s not gold or silver, either. It’s more of a mix of the two. The only thing I can think of to describe it is wet sand.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Lo asks, tilting his head. “Like I have seaweed on my head or something?”

I flush and tear my gaze away. “You have strange hair.”

“Um, thanks. I think,” Lo says, and then chuckles. “Made it myself.”

“No, I meant. It’s a nice color. I like hair,” I finish lamely, and want to kick myself. I like hair? Could I be any more of a loser? “I mean, I don’t like hair.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

“So do you or don’t you?” Although his face is deadpan serious, I can hear the thread of amusement in his voice and I feel myself bristling. “Like hair?”

“Could we just drop it, the hair thing? You have nice hair. Happy?” I snap, and start paddling back into the lineup.

At least I’ve worked out that when Lo opens his mouth, it’s a great way to keep me aggravated enough with him so that the other things, like the annoying treacherous butterflies, cease to matter. Despite the physical attraction, which I admit is there, I could never fall for a boy like Lo. He’s too self-confident and too amused all the time, like everything is part of some big joke.

“Come back, Nerissa. I’m sorry,” Lo says, keeping pace with me easily, his arms cleaving through the water like pistons. I’m just about to tell him where he can stuff it when I notice his eyes widen at something behind me. I glance over my shoulder, but all I can see is a ripple on the water as if something had just clipped the surface and then resubmerged.

“What the hell was that?” Lo says. He noticed, too.

“I didn’t see anything.” But just as I say it, something heavy brushes against my right arm dangling in the water, and a jolt staggers through me at the contact of flesh on flesh. Speio was right. My reckless little dance with the ocean probably summoned the thing.

“There it is again! You see it? A fin?” Lo’s voice has now turned wary and I bite back the urge to laugh at the nervous look on his face. It could be a dolphin, not a shark, even though I’m guessing it’s the latter. Guys—they can be so macho all the time, and the minute they see a fin it’s all over. I don’t blame them, though. Sharks are terrifying. I’ve seen fifty-foot ones that look like prehistoric monsters down in the depths of the ocean, but I can never tell anyone that, of course.

I press down onto the tip of my board so that my head and chest submerge along with it and nearly swallow a mouthful of water. My eyes widen and I pull my board back up. It’s no dolphin. And it’s no shark, either.

It’s lots of them.

Their gray shapes are murky dark shadows, milling in the darkening waters, and I know that more of them will come. Even though Aquarathi pheromones are pacifying, all it will take is one drop of our blood to whip things into a violent food frenzy. Not that I’d be at any risk, but all of the others would be...including Lo. So the sooner we get out of there, the better. I look around for the others. Jenna and Sawyer have their arms around each other on shore. Speio, standing near them, is glaring at me.

“No, I don’t see anything,” I lie to Lo, paddling away from him with deft strokes. “But it could be a dolphin or a shark. It’s nearly twilight, feeding time, after all. Think you can make it back without falling and being fish bait?”

My grin is challenging. To my surprise, a slow smile breaks across Lo’s face at my dare. It’s such a swift change from the wariness that it confuses me. Isn’t he afraid? Or have I misinterpreted his expression about the shark?

“You in?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

“See you on the beach, surfer girl.”

Digging my palms into the water, I paddle as fast as I can to get ahead of the next building wave but Lo is right there with me. Exhilarated, I watch him stroke alongside, keeping up with no trouble. His face is determined, but I know that mine is, too.

“Don’t you dare drop in on me!” I yell, grinning.

“You have to catch it first for me to drop in,” he shouts back. “Or do I need to school you on wave etiquette?”

“Just try to catch me!”

We’re neck and neck as the wave fattens, taking both our boards with it in unison as we furiously paddle to keep up with the wave’s speed. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a silvery shimmer on top of the water to my left near Lo just as the wave begins to crest, but it’s gone before I can even blink.

The wave’s pressure builds beneath me, picking up momentum in a matter of breaths. Gripping the sides of my board, I hop to my feet and angle my surfboard across the wave’s face, only to see that Lo is in the exact same position, with a huge grin on his face. Just a few feet apart, we’re flying at the speed of the wind on the same wave, and for a second, we share an incredible moment of perfect synchronicity.

Then the lip of the wave curls over us and we are inside a shimmering tunnel, the outside world visible only through the sheer wall of curling water. I can hear the tremendous roar as seconds merge into one another and time slows to a trickle. Suspended in a moving bubble, we glide along the wave, nothing between us but water and the swell beneath our feet. Every cell in my body is responding to the water rushing around me, so much so that it’s hard to control my Aquarathi instincts, to pull myself in...to not give in to the ocean’s insistent call. I’m tingling from head to toe.

Lo’s eyes catch mine and everything inside me electrifies.

And then the tingles are everywhere, spreading to the tips of my fingers, my neck, my ears, my spine. Frowning, I look away with effort, digging my toes into the deck of my board and leaning forward to skim past his board. I gasp as the front lip of water curls into my neck and my board glides scant inches from his, but then I’m past him and flying upward to rip a cutback along the top of the wave.

When I glance back over my shoulder, he’s still staring at me, a sliver of a smile on his face. His eyes are dark and knowing as if he senses the effect he’s having on me. I turn away, breathing harshly, focused on getting to the beach. I can’t get far enough away from this boy who makes me feel so disconnected, like I’m nothing but liquid around him.

I don’t even care about the threat of the sharks below us. I’m more afraid of Lo than anything else...of the way he makes everything inside me react to him like I’m some kind of puppet on a string. Even now, I can feel him behind me, his presence like a tangible force drawing me to him. For a second, I wonder whether Speio and all the others feel the same way when they have to reveal themselves to me, like the pull of something formidable.

It terrifies me.

It’s kind of absurd that I want to escape the ocean more than anything right now, when it’s been my safe haven forever, just to get my feet on solid ground. There, I won’t be susceptible to the lure of the sea or its gilded fantasies where Lo is concerned. I’m letting the full moon and the embrace of the ocean affect me more than they should.

I let the wave take me almost into the beach to where the others are waiting on the sand, watching over my shoulder as Lo paddles out for another. Avoiding the death glare on Speio’s face, I grab my board and head toward where Jenna is sitting next to Sawyer, looking at the photos she’d taken of him on his last ride.

“Nice pipe,” Sawyer says, high-fiving me. “Amazing that you two were in it at the same time! Sweet!”

“Yeah,” Jenna echoes, waggling her eyebrows and snapping a photo of my face. “Sweet.” I shoot her a nasty glare as I undo the tie from my ankle and wrap it around the tail of the board.

“I think I’m done,” I say.

Sawyer flashes me a disbelieving look and chugs a bottle of water. “Really? One good wave and that’s all you got?”

I nod and lie back on the sand. Better out here than in there. The sharks will move on once they realize I’m gone. Plus, being anywhere near Lo is not a good idea. I can still feel the way his body moved next to mine, see the expression in the endless depths of his eyes...the pull of them like the ocean, compelling and deep. Lo makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. And it scares the heck out of me.

Sawyer looks to Speio. “You in, bro? Come on. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“Sure,” Speio says, grabbing his board and shooting me a look that clearly says I should stay put. I roll my eyes but I have no plans to move. Leaning on my elbows, I watch the boys paddle out, but Lo catches my eye as he rounds the crest of a particularly large wave. Just as he pops up on the board, my heart stops in my chest as the wave starts to close out almost immediately. Even though he’s a capable surfer, nothing but glue or a miracle can keep him upright as the force of a barreling truck bears down on him, throwing him off the board like he’s a piece of lint.

“Ouch,” Jenna says. “Wish I’d gotten a shot of that.” She stares at me with a grin. “Or the look on your face when he fell.”

“Why don’t you shut it and go do something useful?”

“Why so grumpy?”

I shoot her a glare that could incinerate ice, but she ignores me with a wink, walking down the beach to snap some more shots. Scowling, I reach into my backpack for a bottle of water. The wind threatens to rip some of my papers from the top of the bag, and I just manage to grab hold of an escaping flyer that I’d tucked in there the day before. Taking a swig of water, I study the flyer fluttering beneath my fingertips on the sand. It’s from the San Diego Ocean Foundation for a marine conservancy drive event.

I should have been involved in something like this from the day I stepped onto land, but I’ve been so caught up in escaping who I am that I’ve ignored my real responsibilities. Instead, without a care in the world, I’ve enjoyed everything human youth had to offer...while my people paid the price for my freedom. At least now, I can do something worthwhile. I can try to ensure that those who are left in Waterfell have a future.

“Hey, Jenna,” I yell out. “Can I talk to you about something?”

She stops snapping pics and walks over to sit next to me cross-legged on the sand. “Sure. What’s up?”

I don’t need her help, but it would be fun to do it with someone else. “Check this out. There’s an ocean conservancy drive happening in a few weeks, and I want to get involved.”

“Since when are you interested in ocean conservancy?” Jenna’s words aren’t sarcastic, they’re curious, but I can’t help the immediate pang in my belly. She’s right. I haven’t been, when it should have been the one thing that I was interested in. My father had said to stay away, and that’s what I’ve done, playing hockey and pretending to be human here on land. I’ve shirked every responsibility ever given to me and forgotten about the ocean. It’s the only home the Aquarathi have, and all I’ve done is turn my back on it...and on my people. And who knows what Ehmora is planning, now that my father is out of the picture.

“I’m interested now,” I say.

“But what about hockey and practice? It’s not like you have a ton of free time.”

“It won’t interfere, I promise.” I stare at her. “I really need to do this, Jenna. It’s important to me. And I’d be so happy if you wanted to do it with me, but I totally understand if you have too many things on your plate.” I pause. “But I need to.”

“How come?”

“It’s kind of a family thing. Complicated.”

Jenna shoots me a look. She knows that I don’t really talk about my family so she doesn’t press the issue. Her expression turns thoughtful. “Okay, I’m in.”

I can’t believe how easily she gives her friendship, incorporating my needs with hers as if she doesn’t even question whether I’m worthy of it. It’s humbling. For about the five hundredth time, I feel like I want to return the favor and tell her everything. Confide the truth of who I am and everything else that I’ve hidden from her for so many years. The Nerissa she knows is a mere shadow of who I really am. But I can’t—revealing who we are to humans is against all of our laws, an offense punishable by death, even for me.

“Text me the details, okay?” she says, and stands, dusting the sand off her shorts. “Oh, here comes your boyfriend. I’m going for a walk.”

“No, wait—” I begin, but it’s too late as a long shadow falls over me and I look up, shading my eyes with one hand. Lo dumps his board facedown on the sand and collapses next to me, breathing hard. He runs a hand through his damp, windblown hair. His cheeks are red and his eyes are glowing. Every part of me comes alive in response to his nearness.

“Hey,” he says, his dark eyes searching. “Why’d you come in?”

“Tired,” I say tersely.

“Me, too,” he says, touching the side of his head. “Got worked on a big one, though.”

“Sorry.” I manage to keep my voice cool, detached.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Okay,” he says with a puzzled look, but falls silent.