Read A Thing As Good As Sunshine Online

Authors: Juliet Nordeen

A Thing As Good As Sunshine (6 page)

But, no,
that was wrong. My sleepy, foggy brain fought that idea. I'd felt whole with
Momma.

Knowing
it might not work, I curled-up and then tossed my arms out to the side, over
and over, in an attempt to turn my back on the sun. The cold sapped my energy
as vacuum pulled at my life. My lungs screamed for air and my arms grew
incredibly weak, but I willed my brain to stay conscious for just a few moments
as I slowly, slowly, slowly rotated. I felt the sun's warmth on my skin move
from my front to my side to my back, and when I was sure I faced Perseus Two
again I opened my throbbing eyes to see Momma one last time.

My Momma,
who was better than any sunshine.

 

THE END

 

 

About the Author

 

Juliet Nordeen lives on the Kitsap Peninsula of
Washington state with her husband and multi-species family. When Juliet is not
writing she's training her German Shepherd pup in Schutzhund, designing quilts,
and baking the best pizza west of the Rockies. You can check on news and story
updates at www.JulietNordeen.com.

 

A Sneak Preview of

Blue Suede Darlin'

By Juliet Nordeen

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

After feeling
like I'd been riding a rollercoaster through an earthquake for two and a half
days, the inky Gulf waters finally settled down around our little wooden
lifeboat. The calmer swells rocked us with a down-beat of gentle rollers topped
off by a 4/4 tempo of lapping wavelets. The breeze that chilled the clammy skin
of my bare shoulders drove the thick storm clouds eastward and the stars did
their best to twinkle through the oppressively humid September air.

My
four best friends slept, heads resting at awkward angles on each others' arms
and torsos, trying to get comfortable in the little space the lifeboat allowed.
I couldn't blame them. Since the rough seas calmed, I wished I could sleep,
too.

But it
was my turn to watch.

I scanned
the horizon all around for the lights of fishing trawlers or the giant gouts of
flame burning atop offshore drilling platforms. Between passes of the distant horizon
I scanned the surface of the water closer to the boat, wary of fins. Occasionally
I stretched out the kinks in my neck and glanced toward the stars, hoping to
orient myself by a familiar constellation, but I couldn't find one.

Mostly
I watched the four people I loved most in the world sleep. Exhausted, pruney, rain-sodden,
and getting awfully close to that place where all hope for rescue and seeing
dry land ever again is lost.

Even
in their sleep, my bandmates kept a natural rhythm with each other. JoJo's un-lady-like,
deep-throated snore set the bass line that Cooper's steady rhythm and Paulo's melodic
snores riffed across, as if they were jamming on stage, rather than lost at sea.
Maria — always the quiet one, unless she was pounding on the keys of her piano
— held her snore-ful comments until the rare occasion when the other three fell
silent, and then like Gracie Allen delivering the punch line to a perfectly-timed
George Burns joke, she'd let out a snort from down deep in her gut and shift
position.

I
might have laughed if I could find something the least bit funny about being
lost and adrift somewhere in the western reaches of the Gulf of Mexico in a
twelve-foot lifeboat without food and nearly out of rainwater.

Then
again, just smiling would've been bad for my dry, cracked, burning lips. What I
wouldn't have given for a tube of cherry Chapstick to soothe them. I knew licking
them each time they dried just made it worse, but I couldn't help myself.

And a
toothbrush, I'd have killed for three minutes with a toothbrush. My tongue felt
like it had gone-in-halfsies with my teeth for a set of custom-fit fuzzy
slipcovers. Not pleasant.

But
perhaps worst of all was the way the fabric of my favorite red polka-dot swing dress,
stiff from soaking and drying and soaking and drying, chafed at my skin every
time I moved. And it stunk — mildew, salt, too much time without a shower. I
would have to throw it out if we ever got...home.

Being
adrift sucked in every way, but it was less frightening than being sucked into
the water in a capsizing boat.

Those
ten minutes after a rogue wave had flipped-over our new record label's
forty-foot yacht had been the most horrifying of my life. The three attempts it
took Cooper to dive down and cut the lifeboat loose from the sinking behemoth had
just about driven my heart out of my chest with panic. Three days of paddling
the little boat with our hands, screaming out for help, and drinking rainwater
squeezed from our clothes had forced me into a place of numbness where I
stopped feeling much of anything.

Except
love. And fear. Love and fear were all I had left.

I
loved my bandmates; I called them my phamily — short for pseudo family. We'd
been each others' rocks since I was fourteen years old, and I was scared to the
depths of my soul that our final legacy on this planet would be a three
paragraph article on the Austin Chronicle's news website with the headline:
Hometown
Rockabilly Band Lost at Sea
. Billy's Asylum Rats — that up-and-coming,
just-landed-a-recording-deal band of hep cats also known as me, JoJo, Cooper,
Maria and Paulo — were as tight as friends and bandmates could be, and I hated
this shitty situation and how helpless I was to do anything for them.

Lifting
my watchful eyes again to the stars, I picked out the brightest one I could find.
"I don't know if there's anyone out there listening, but we could really
use some help," I said quietly.

"None
of us is perfect," I told the sky. "We don't go to church or pay all
of our taxes, and I think I might hold some record for time spent chasing
carnal pleasure, but we rock hard, love deep and live big. That's got to count
for something."

Maria
snorted in her sleep and wriggled to find a more comfortable position resting on
Cooper's shoulder. Her adjustment cascaded around the lifeboat — hand bumping
hip shifting shoulder turning head — but they soon settled, each into a new,
equally uncomfortable-looking position.

I needed
to cry so badly. For them. For myself. Agony gripped every sorrow-expressing
portion of my body — shoulders wanted to shake, throat wanted to cry, belly
wanted to bawl — but I simply didn't have any more tears left to shed. I knew
that meant I had lost all hope of being rescued.

"Please,"
I begged the sky. "Please, we're not done yet. I'll do anything to keep
them safe."

When the
brightest star in the sky started falling toward the rolling waters of the
Gulf, I thought it was an illusion brought on by the upward roll of the
lifeboat and the darkness surrounding us. But when the boat nosed down into the
next trough and the star continued to drift lower, I knew something amazing was
happening. My heart raced into my throat like the kids charging the dance floor
at the start of one of our shows when Cooper lays down the first lines of
Blue
Suede Shoes
.

Help
was finally on the way. A rescue plane, or maybe better, a helicopter! I waved
my arms, even though I knew they were too far away to see me.

The
light blazed brighter and whiter as it grew closer to our little boat. I was
about to reach over and shake Maria's shoulder to wake her so we could watch
together, when I realized that the aircraft, whatever it was, couldn't hold altitude
and was hurtling straight at us. A morbid part of my brain wondered if it would
clobber the lifeboat as it splashed down into the Gulf. We could trade starving
to death for getting pulverized.

The orb
of light grew to about the size of a snare-drum skin held at arm's length and
then silently, splashlessly, met the water and submerged into the black. I had
a hard time guessing the distance between me and the point of impact in the
darkness, but I saw the glow rise up under the surface of the water as it continued
in our direction. In a few moments it closed the distance to the back of the
lifeboat across which Paulo lay sleeping, and showed no signs of slowing. Acting
on instinct I braced for an impact; one hand against the inside of the prow of
the boat and the other clamped onto Maria's shoulder.

But no
impact came; no splintering wood, drenching spray, or upended lifeboat. Instead
I heard a small gurgle, like bubbles rising from an aquarium aerator, and then
a gentle splash warned me something had breached the surface and was about to approach
our little boat. I held my breath and attempted to look everywhere at once,
trying to catch the first hint of any movement in the darkness. Fight-or-flight
instincts primed my muscles with adrenaline; I was ready to pounce the length
of the lifeboat if whatever was about to come out of the water made one wrong
move toward Paulo.

One pale
set of fingers, and then a second, rose up over the edge of the stern and then
clamped on. The digits were long, though not inhumanly so, elegantly strong and
tipped with manicured nails that reflected the silver of the starlight. Fingers
became hands became wrists and forearms and then a full head of glossy, dark hair
rose into view. A woman, maybe a few years older than me or Maria, pulled
herself up on the edge of the boat until she could tuck both arms over the
edge.

She
was gorgeous — 1940s Hollywood gorgeous — with ebony hair, milk-white skin, and
light eyes in a shade of gray or blue that I couldn't make out in the darkness.
She was bone dry and her make-up was perfect as if she hadn't just surfaced
from the water, though I knew in my gut that she had. My sense about it was
that she appeared that way for no other reason than
that's exactly how she
wanted it
, as if a drowned-rat entrance to begin a rescue was both beneath
her and impolite. She smiled at me in a way that filled her whole being with a
glow and warmed me to the depths of my frightened soul. Hope flooded back into
me so quickly that my toes tingled.

"Bailey
Faye Michaels," she said, more as a statement to confirm my identity than a
question.

I
nodded because my mouth hung open too widely to form words.

She took
in the state of my phamily — obviously knocked-out by exhaustion — the empty
oar-locks of the lifeboat, and the expanse of dark water stretching to the
horizon in every direction. "Oh, my. You do need some help. It's a good
thing I've come."

Relief
filled my body at her words, ushering the adrenaline out of my overly-tense
muscles like a bouncer herding drunks after last call. I reached out to wake Maria,
who was closest to me, hoping she could confirm whether I was hallucinating or
if there really was a beautiful woman with a trillion-watt-smile hanging off
the back of our lifeboat. But our visitor stopped me.

"Better
to let them sleep," she said. Her voice carried a bell-like, soothing
quality that made me wonder how I could have doubted my eyes. "They've had
such a terrible few days."

Wasn't
that the truth? I could shout three
Ooby Doobys
and a
Go, Cat Go!
in support of that little assessment of our recent events. The omniscient
sympathy in her voice immediately made me certain that all I'd believed about
Higher Powers my whole life was wrong and I was truly in the presence of a
godlike being.

A
goddess. There was a goddess hanging off the back of our boat in answer to my plea.

I
forgot my manners and simply stared for minutes on end. Like a starlet addicted
to the adoration of the paparazzi she absorbed my attention, apparently content
to wait, bobbing up and down with the motion of the lifeboat.

My
brain fought with itself. If she were a goddess, why would she arrive like that
— splashing into the water and threatening to torpedo our little boat? Why not
just appear, hovering in a glow of ethereal light? And what was she waiting
for? Why didn't she just snap her fingers and teleport us all to the shore?
Doubts of her divine power tickled my intuition and my mind came back to
reality. I found my voice. "What are you?"

"I'm
Laume." She pronounced it
l-oww-may
, with an Eastern European
accent which would be all growly and clipped if she had been a man. On her it
was intriguing; as different as you could get from a Texas drawl, but compelling
in a similarly lazy way.

"Laume,"
I repeated, trying to get the unusual name to stick in my brain. "But,
what are you?"

Laume
tilted her head to the side and smiled at me like I was a puppy or particularly
dim-witted child. "I'm here to help you."

She boosted
herself higher on the back of the boat until her waist rested on its edge. Her
long dark hair draped onto Paulo's chest as she leaned forward, her gaze
holding more intensity than I've felt from anyone since my dad found out I'd
started a band with four other kids from the state mental hospital.

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