The Light Pirate(27)
“Yeah, we’re just messing,” Mick says.
“Stop, seriously.” Brie steps forward, as if to stop him herself, but then—the sixth graders are unable to explain what happens next. Below the ocean’s gray surface, something unusual is occurring. The struggling shadow that is Wanda’s flailing, submerged body brightens. It isn’t the sun, which is hidden behind a thick pile of cloud. It is…something else. In the moment that it takes the sixth graders to witness this change, to examine each of the possible explanations and discard them, the light spreads, consuming the waves in streaks, until it looks like the entire ocean is shining in a way these four children have never seen. It’s as though the water has swallowed a swirling, living galaxy: a trillion stars, burning cool blue or pale yellow or a hot, flickering violet. It’s hard to say what color it is because it’s every color and none at all.
Underwater, Wanda can’t see any of this. She can’t see anything—but she can feel something strange occurring in her body, a sensation she can’t name rising to the surface of her skin. Corey releases Wanda’s head in his surprise and she claws her way back up, spitting water, sucking air, grasping for the Edge so desperately it looks like she has four arms instead of two. He backs away from her and the light goes out. The water is the same gray it was before. It was only seconds, there and then gone. The older kids glance at each other, sheepish, unsure.
“Did you…” Mick begins.
“Yeah.” Amanda nods. “That was—”
“Freaky.” Corey’s shorts are wet where Wanda splashed them, but he doesn’t notice. “She’s a freak. I told you.”
Brie just stares: at Wanda, at the water. Trying to make sense of the two.
“Let’s go,” Amanda says, and the others nod, an unspoken consensus that they have crept too close to something they don’t understand. Brie pauses as they hurry away from the Edge. For a second Wanda thinks the older girl might ask if she’s all right, might help her up, but in the end she just looks at the ground, mutters, “Sorry,” and runs to catch up with the others. Wanda is left alone, clinging to the broken edge of Beachside Drive, coughing up water and mucus. Eventually, she hauls herself back onto the pavement and sprawls there on her stomach. Her chest heaves against the road and she contemplates the particles of sea salt that have been caught by the fine hair on her forearms, stars trapped in a sun-bleached, gossamer net. She lies there for longer than she intends. The water slips up over her legs like a blanket, then back down, again and again. She’s aware that something strange has happened, but doesn’t know what. All she knows is that she feels different, like something inside her that used to be closed is now open.
Chapter 32
Lucas watches his father pace, the veins pulsing in Kirby’s forehead like a subterranean river system. Wanda wasn’t here when they got home and neither was her bike. The quiet panic of these two men continues to mount with every second she does not appear: Kirby’s face reddening, shade by shade; Lucas’s fingernails floating up to his mouth, his teeth gnawing closer and closer to the quick.
“I’ll go,” Kirby says. “You wait here. Maybe she’s…” Neither one of them wants him to finish his sentence.
“Try the creek first. She always wants to go looking for crawdads.”
“Right, right.” Kirby palms his keys. “The creek.” Lucas watches as all kinds of horrors flicker behind Kirby’s eyes. These two are skilled at imagining the worst. It’s muscle memory. There is no comfort found in the usual reservoirs of hope: what are the odds, it’s probably nothing, pray for the best. None at all.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t look, too?” Lucas asks. “On the road. Or on the other side of the nature reserve.” Confronted with the idea of waiting here in the empty house, he can feel his intestines twist.
“No,” Kirby says. “Stay here. She could come back. I need you to call me if she comes back.” Lucas nods and resigns himself to following Kirby’s instructions. He’s been following Kirby’s instructions faithfully for many years now. Whatever part of him wanted to rebel died with his little brother. Now he does what is asked of him.
But in the end, Kirby’s instructions are moot because at that moment Wanda rides into the driveway. Lucas sees her first, through the kitchen window, over Kirby’s shoulder. Water drips from her clothes and her hair is matted, its volume diminished. He runs outside and Kirby follows. “Are you okay?” they both shout at the same time. She climbs off her bike and lets it fall on the ground, kickstand forgotten.
“Where have you been?” Kirby demands. Lucas watches her face carefully, trying to figure out an expression lingering there that he doesn’t recognize. She looks different somehow. Older. “Why are you wet?” Kirby continues, not quite yelling, not quite speaking. A crack in his voice forms, then deepens, a chasm of helplessness revealed. “Was I not clear that you do not leave this property?” Wanda hesitates. “Where were you?” Kirby is almost begging now. Lucas tries to catch her eye, but she’s staring at the ground, toeing the still-spinning wheel of her fallen bicycle.
“The Edge,” she finally says. “I’m sorry, I rode my bike to the Edge.”
“To the Edge.” Kirby is aghast. He says it again, as if he can’t quite believe it. “To the Edge.”