dogs are getting cold.”
I set the papers in my lap, but I can’t concentrate. I wonder
where Sarabell is. What if she stands me up and I never get to find
out anything about Adaro? Sitting down here, I can watch the crowds
without being noticed. Tons of young hipsters with top hats and
clothes that don’t match on purpose. A mother tries to keep all six of
her kids from killing each other over a volleyball. Some photographer
directs a model to pout as she contours herself across a hand-painted
garbage can. An old man power-walks in nothing but neon-green spandex
shorts.
Then there are the things not everyone can see. I rub my eyes and
squint against the sun. There’s a girl with tattooed wings on her
back. At just the right angle, I can see that the wings are real,
white feathery things retracted against her snowy white shoulders. She
holds her ice cream cone to her boyfriend’s lips, the vanilla rolling
down his brown skin.
I rub my eyes again and see what he really is, with skin like
copper blood. His lips smile and take a giant bite of her ice cream
with sharp teeth. Two small horns poke out of his forehead. Something
passes over his angular face, and he finds what’s troubling him-me. He
can feel me staring. To my surprise, he doesn’t flip me off. Instead
he nods once, as if to just acknowledge me, then slings his arm around
his angel girl, grazing the down feathers as he leads her farther down
the boardwalk.
“Are you paying attention?” Kurt asks.
“You see that?”
He follows my stare to the heavenly hellish couple and shrugs. I
guess he’s too cool and has seen everything under the sun.
A familiar boy runs down the boardwalk. When I point out, “Hey, is
that Timmy?” a new horde of beachgoers barrels past us, obscuring our
view.
“Timmy!” I call out, but my voice is drowned out by a boom box
strapped to the back of a bike zooming by. Timmy runs into his mom’s
arms. His mother, Penny, scoops him up and rubs the hard shell of his
back. From here, he seems to be a kid with a weird backpack. When I
met them on Arion’s ship, I discovered it’s a part of him. Penny, on
the other hand, has arms that shift into tentacles. They’re the
landlocked. Here in Coney Island, they don’t seem so out of place.
Penny shields the sun from her eyes, scanning the crowd for
someone. I shout her name, but she doesn’t see me.
Kurt buries his nose back in the papers. He’s not exactly a lover
of the landlocked. But Penny clued us in on what the merrows were
after they attacked my school. Penny and Timmy embrace a green-haired
girl. “What’s Thalia doing here?”
When I mention her name, Kurt snaps to attention.
“What? Where?” He gets up for a better view of them, but in the
shifting crowd, I’ve already lost them.
Suddenly a man gets in my face. He’s stick skinny with skin like
used charcoal. He nods at the food on my tray. “You gonna finish
that?”
Kurt rolls the parchment papers into a tube and tries to catch up
to Thalia, but he’s going against the current of beachgoers.
Then the man looks at me. I mean, really looks at me, and
backpedals. “I’m-I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t mean-”
There are scabs around his neck and ribs. They could be scars or
dried acne or, in his case, leprosy, but I know better. They’re what
remain of his gills. His eyes are sharp sapphires framed by a face
that is gaunt and poreless. His ’fro is untamed. His pants are filthy
and ripped, and right at the center of his chest is a keloid in the
shape of a trident. Just like my mom’s scar. Just like the tattoo
between my shoulder blades.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats louder, still eyeing my food.
I hand my tray to the old man in a hurry. “Take it.”
“I couldn’t.” His voice is hoarse and dry like paper.
“Please, take it. I’m not hungry.” It’s not exactly what I want to
say. I want to say, “I’m sorry that this happened to you. I wish I
could fix it.” I should sound nicer, soothing.
The man takes the food, ripping bread and meat and shoving it into
his mouth. Between swallows he manages, “Thank you, sire. Thank you.”
Kurt has stopped in the middle of a crowd, shielding his eyes from
the sun. People shove him out of the way, but he keeps standing his
ground. The boom-box bicycle speeds back the other way. More children
are crying. The photographer is snapping away. I stuff my garbage in a
plastic bag.
“I lost them,” Kurt says.
The fat, oily man on the bench beside me taps my shoulder.
“What?” I don’t mean to sound so exasperated, but that’s how it
comes out.
“You shouldn’t do that, you know.”
“Relax, I’m not littering,” I say, showing him my bag of garbage.
But he grabs my hand. If people keep grabbing me, I’m bound to start
chopping off hands-like a real king.
“I meant feed them. You shouldn’t do that. They’re like pigeons.”
I pull out of his hold and start walking to where Kurt is waiting
with a worried look on his face. The fat, oily man keeps shouting
after me. “You give them a little, and they just keep coming back for
more.”
Kurt pulls me away, farther into the crowd. “I don’t want Thalia
with those people. I have to find her.”
I hate the way he says this, like somehow we’re better. I keep a
steady pace beside him, weaving through the throngs.
Suddenly I flinch. A hand comes out of my blind spot and smacks me
across the face. I stumble into a group of angry dudes who push me
back. I fall at her feet. I follow the slender ankles, the bare legs
beneath a sheer dress. Her hair billows wildly in the breeze, framing
radiating amber eyes.
When I stand, I’m a foot taller than her, but somehow she makes me
feel small.
Her full lips part slowly and growl, “You’re late.”
“How am I late?” I press my hand to the hot sting on my cheek. “We
said afternoon.”
She points at the sky. People are starting to look. I grab her as
lightly as possible by the shoulders and walk her toward the railing
separating the boardwalk and the sand.
“It was high noon two hours ago!” She crosses her arms over her
chest. “I’ve been here surrounded by the beastliest of creatures. I’m
hungry. My legs hurt. Do you know what that feels like?”
“Sara-”
“Do you even care?” She presses a slender hand over her chest.
“Oh boy.” I look to Kurt who can’t do anything more than scratch
his head.
“Well?”
This girl, this incredibly beautiful girl, is seething in my face.
Her shoulders are hot under my hands.
“Of course,” I say. “Of course I care.”
Her eyes soften. “You do?”
“I was just looking for you.” I run my hands through my hair.
“There are so many people, you know?” I try my most charming smile,
the kind that’s gotten me in (and out of) trouble in the past. I
pretend I’m smiling at Layla and it becomes easy. Sure, there’s a
nasty knot in my gut, but I have to push through. Since leaving the
Vanishing Cove, I’ve felt like I have a bunch of broken pieces in my
hands. If Sarabell can point me in the right direction, I’m going for
it.
“Come.” I take her hand. She crosses her fingers with mine, and I
resist the urge to pull away. “Let’s swim.”
***
This is the girl who’s supposed to get me closer to Adaro and the
next oracle?
They might as well lock me in a cage with a hungry tiger. Sarabell
is all smiles now, raising a proud chin to the sky and turning her
mischievous eyes to me. “You appear nervous, Lord Sea.”