Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(11)

My father is in the next picture, the man Bex calls the Big Guy. He’s giving me a tired expression as he eats a bowl of cereal in his cop uniform. He loved to ham up his exasperated looks whenever I took his picture, but he’s probably the most patient man I know. He’s solid and honest and brave, but the last time I saw him, he was seriously hurt. I worry about the broken ribs he probably got when we wrecked the car. He begged us to go on without him. I will always regret that we did.

I flip through more pictures, feeling tears leaking down my face. Here they are, the two of them trying to decipher the instructions for it; the Big Guy’s annoyed expression after he broke the IKEA coffee table; my mother standing off to the side, stifling a laugh. Here they are walking hand in hand along the sand, not knowing their daughter was capturing the moment on her phone. Here’s Mom glowing in the sunshine. Here’s Dad burning breakfast.

“I’m coming. Just hold on,” I whisper, hoping the words drift out into the night and find their way to my parents’ ears.

I skip forward to a photo of Bex and me, lying on my bed with our heads pressed close together so we can take a picture together. Our eyes are smiling and our mouths are puckered into duck lips. I don’t remember when it was taken. It could have happened on a thousand different afternoons. We were inseparable then—so close, we didn’t need other girlfriends. Here she is bumming cigarettes from the bouncer at Rudy’s, and here is the time we tried to learn to skateboard, and here she is trying on a fur coat we found at the Salvation Army. I told her she looked like a polar bear. We laughed about it for weeks. I miss the girls in these pictures.

The camera roll ends with one of the last shots I snapped, and it steals my breath. Fathom and I are pressed close to each other in the bright Coney Island light. All six-foot-plus of him looks awkward and confused. I’m holding the camera and looking mischievous. I snapped it without warning, and when I showed him the result, his hard, suspicious features fell and a boyish version I never knew existed took their place. Was it magic? he wondered. Did I know how lucky I was to have a machine that recreated the faces of the people I love?

I do now.

What is it about you? Most of our days you were grouchy, or pensive, or just mean, but then you could be so kind. When you stepped close to me and locked your eyes with mine, I felt like I could melt onto the floor. Even now, this picture of you is enough to make me dizzy.

Could you really be gone? Arcade thinks so. She’s packed you up and put you in storage like a stack of old sweaters she no longer needs. As cold as she is, maybe she’s living in reality.

“I’m not ready to let you go,” I whisper.

“We should train.”

Arcade has materialized behind me, and I let out a little yelp of surprise.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I cry. I fumble with the phone, not wanting her to see my photograph. I stuff it into my pocket and spring to my feet.

Arcade looks around at the deserted parking lot and the tree line behind the bathrooms. I take the opportunity to wipe the tearstains off my face.

“We do not have much time left,” she says. “How long before we find the camp?”

“We’ve got about a half a tank of gas left, but it’ll run out and we’ll need another car. If we get lucky and all goes perfect, we could be at Tempest in three days.”

She nods, then walks across the field toward the woods.

“Come,” she calls to me over her shoulder.

“Can we cut the prayer down to fifteen minutes tonight?” I cry after her, but she says nothing.

I give the zipper on my hoodie another tug. It’s going to be a long, cold night.





Chapter Five


ON MOST NIGHTS I AM EAGER TO GO TO SLEEP, even if it is in the back seat of a stolen car. In my dreams, Fathom and I are together. He is healthy and alive. We are wildly in love. It is like the worst YA novel of all time, and it is absolutely delicious.

Tonight, we’re lying on a beach, not the gross Coney Island beach littered with cigarette butts and hypodermic needles, but a tropical island. It’s warm and bright, and the tide massages our toes. My cheek rides the rise and fall of his chest, and he clings to me like a drowning man holds a life preserver. Together we bake in the afterglow.

Or, at least what I think the afterglow must be like. I am still technically beforeglow, at least in the waking world. In my dreams, Fathom and I have been glowing almost every night—it’s all hands and fingers and lips and arms and legs and then the fade to black. The nocturne gives me what the real world will not.

Fathom watches me with his hurricane eyes. His fingers rake through my hair, and I lean into his hand, craving the tickles it conjures. He says something, but it’s gibberish, as if this dream has spent all its creative energy and is slowly unraveling. I feel a pang of anxiety. I’m happy. I don’t want to go. I like it here.

“Listen,” he says, his voice suddenly clear.

“Listen to what?”

He sits up abruptly and scans the milky tide with narrowing eyes.

“I don’t hear anything,” I say, holding his arm like he might suddenly be pulled away into another dream.

“They’re coming, Lyric Walker.”

“Who?”

Fathom leaps to his feet, takes my hands, and pulls me to my own.

“The monsters!” he shouts at me, his voice barely audible over a rising shriek that is all at once everywhere and growing with intensity. I turn to the ocean, only to see it rise, higher and higher like a black titan, a looming giant of wrath standing hundreds of feet over my head. It’s boiling and indignant, but I stand my ground, staring it down, daring it to come any farther. I plant my feet in the sand. My fists clench until they are red. My chin juts forward defiantly. In the water, I see forms emerge: arms, legs, claws, teeth.