Authors: Stacey Jay
I scowl. Blushing is one thing, but longing I can’t afford. This is Ariel’s life, not mine. Longing is futile, even if I had time to spend on pretty boys with dark eyes and gentle hands. Which I don’t.
“I’m fine.” I lean to the right, carefully untangling my legs as I fall into the passenger’s seat, ignoring the strange clenching in my chest.
The boy keeps his gaze on the road, only glancing over when I’ve clicked on my seat belt. “So he’s not your boyfriend.”
“No.”
“
Ex
-boyfriend?”
“Just a bad date.”
He snorts, shoots me a vaguely amused look. “Yeah. I’d say.” He shakes his head, amusement fading. “That freak is
crazy
. He probably just broke half the bones in his hand. Did he do that to your head?”
My fingers brush my temple. The wound has nearly healed, but blood still glues my hair to the side of my head and clings—sticky and damp—to my face. “No. We had a car accident, but I’ll be fine.”
I make a mental note to find someplace to clean up before I go home. Otherwise, Ariel’s mom will certainly take me to the hospital where she works, and the last place I want to spend the night is the ER.
“How bad an accident? You need to go to the hospital?”
“No. Really. I hate hospitals.”
“Then what about the cops? I know good cops, not the kind who don’t listen,” the boy says. “My brother works for the sheriff’s department in Solvang. He’s not on duty, but I can call him. I know he’d—”
“No. I’m fine. It was just a little accident, a little fight.”
“A
little
accident and a
little
fight.” He grunts. “Your head is covered in blood and you were running from that guy like he was carrying a chain saw. Not to call you out or anything—”
“Okay, it was a big fight. But I don’t want to go to the police.”
“Why not?” The boy divides his attention between the road and the passenger’s seat as he takes the right turn into Los Olivos.
By the light of antique streetlamps, his features come into clearer view—brown eyes a shade paler than his skin, a strong, square jaw, and full lips that would make any woman jealous. If it weren’t for the imperfection of his nose—which veers slightly to the left, as if it’s been broken and reset poorly—he would be breathtaking.
Would be?
All right. He
is
breathtaking. I stare at him and can’t seem to look away, but it’s not because he’s beautiful. It’s something more, something in his eyes, a spark so familiar it’s almost as if … as if I
know
him.
“You don’t have to be scared,” he says, and I shiver because I would
swear
I’ve heard him say the same thing before.
Swear it
, though I know it’s impossible. “You hear me?”
“I hear you.” I swallow, pushing the strange feeling away. He’s familiar because he looks like the boys I grew up
with—olive skin, sparkling eyes, and lips sculptors would swoon over. This is just a nasty case of déjà vu. Nothing more. “I’m not scared. I wasn’t scared before.”
“Then why were you running?”
“I told you.” I lift one shoulder and let it drop. “It was a bad date.”
“He smashed his hand
through a window
,” the boy says. “That’s not a bad date, that’s—”
“Please, I’ll pay for the window, I just—”
“I don’t care about the window!” he says, slamming his palm on the steering wheel. “I care about you!”
“You don’t even
know
me!” My voice hits a sharp note that rings in the silence that follows.
The boy’s jaw clenches, making a muscle there twitch. I fight the urge to still it with a finger to his cheek, ignoring the crazy feeling that I’ve done the same thing before, the certainty that I already know how scratchy-soft his skin will feel.
This is ridiculous. I don’t have time to be distracted by this …
boy
.
“You’re right,” I say, determined to put an end to the conversation. “Dylan is crazy, and at
that
moment, he might have hurt me.”
And you
. “You helped me out. A lot.”
He pulls to a stop at the last intersection in town, waiting for the red light to turn green, scowling at the empty road ahead.
“I just don’t
need
to go to the hospital, and I don’t
want
to go to the police. It has nothing to do with being afraid of anybody. I just … don’t like police stations.”
“Why? You got a criminal record or something?” he asks.
I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes. I’m a carjacker. Give me all your money and I’ll consider sparing your life.”
A surprised burst of laughter fills the car. The boy smiles, revealing crooked teeth that match his nose, making a crooked kind of sense on his face. “Then this really isn’t your lucky night,
chica
. I just spent my last ten bucks on gas.” I’m aware of an ache in my jaw, but it takes a moment to realize it’s inspired by my own smile. “All I’ve got is a coupon for a car wash and half a bottle of Mountain Dew that’s been in the backseat a few days.”
“Well,” I say, keeping my tone light. “I
am
thirsty.…”
“I already drank out of the bottle. It has my germs.”
“Wouldn’t want to catch those.” I smile again, hoping we’ve left the subject of the police behind as he pulls through the intersection. “Guess I’ll have to settle for a ride home.” I take a moment to visualize the exact location of Ariel’s house in my mind. “I live in Solvang, behind the Natural Foods. On El Camino.”
“The road named after a road.”
“You know where it is?”
“Yeah. I know. And I’ll take you there, even though you know where
I
think you should go.”
“I do. I … Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He accelerates past a line of antebellum houses with lights burning on cozy porches, driving in a silence that gets more comfortable as we leave Los Olivos behind. “That store by your house has really good
pan
.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ll bring you some next time I go,” he says. “I only moved in with my brother a few days ago, but my sister-in-law already sent me to that store twice. The normal milk on our side of town isn’t good enough for my niece. She has to have the organic, hormone-free, milked-by-free-range-farmers milk.”
His easy assumption that we’ll be friends, the warmth in his voice when he talks about his family, make me wonder how I could have thought he was dangerous—even for a moment.
He’s actually sweet in a bossy kind of way. Ariel could use someone like him in her life. She and Gemma, her only friend, have been growing apart. It would be good for her to have someone else to turn to when she reclaims her body, even if her memories of meeting the boy with the crooked smile will be different from mine.
None of the bodies I inhabit recall anything about me, Romeo, or the work of the Ambassadors and Mercenaries. Their minds take the memories I make, modify them, and claim them as their own, keeping our secrets from the world.
“So do you have a name,
rubia
?” the boy asks, taking a left onto a narrow country highway.
I’ve spent shifts in people who spoke Spanish, but the ability left me when I was summoned back to the mist. Still, I can guess he’s called me “blondie.” A nickname. I think that will please Ariel. She’s never had a nickname before—at least, not one she liked.
“Ariel. What about you?”
“Ben.” He smiles. “Ariel, like the mermaid.”
“Or the fairy in
The Tempest.
”
He winces. “Stick with mermaid. I hate Shakespeare.”
“Me too.” I surprise myself with a laugh. “I mean,
hate
may be the wrong word, but I don’t like the tragedies. Especially the love stories.”
“I can barely understand what the people are saying.” Ben shrugs. “But some of Shakespeare’s sonnets are cool. We had to read them last year in Remedial Junior English for Dumb Kids.”
“You don’t seem dumb.”
“Thanks,” he says. “It was the word
remedial
, right? Made me sound smart?”
“It was more that you knew
The Tempest
was by Shakespeare,” I say, “but remedial
is
a fancy word.”
He laughs softly. “I like that.”
“Like what?”
“The way you say
fancy.
”
“Thanks.” I know I should feel uncomfortable with the hint of affection in his voice, but I don’t. There’s just something … natural about being with Ben.
“So which turn is it? I’ve never been this way in the dark.” He slows as we pass the church at the edge of town and a playground dotted with plastic turrets.
The Castle Playground. Ariel played there when she was a kid, but her mother made her wait until sunset to walk from their house to the maze of slides and swings. She said she was worried about the sun hurting Ariel’s raw skin, but she just wanted to avoid the busiest time at the park. Melanie didn’t like it when the other kids stared and asked questions. It made her lips press into a thin line, made her jerk Ariel away from the others, tug her down the street, back to the house with the closed shades.
“It’s the second street on the left,” I say, finding it harder to swallow. I’m not looking forward to meeting Ariel’s mother, not if the memories I have are reliable.
I comfort myself with the assurance that memories are always colored by perception. What Ariel remembers about her life will have been informed by her feelings and fears as much as by facts. There’s a chance Melanie Dragland isn’t as bad as I’m expecting.
“You okay?” Ben asks, slowing even more, as if he can sense my reluctance.
“I was just thinking about my mom. She’s going to lose it when I walk in with blood everywhere.”
“No worries. This is my sister-in-law’s car. There are baby wipes and diapers in the backseat.” He winks at me. “Baby wipes are magic. They clean everything—poop, puke, dirt, spilled juice, blood. We’ll pull over and you can clean up before you go in.”
Relief soothes the edges of my anxiety as he pulls to the side of the road a few blocks down from Ariel’s house. “Thanks. Again.”
“No problem.” He cuts the ignition and reaches over the seat, grabbing a plastic bin. The air blooms with the smell of baby lotion as he tugs damp cloths from the dispenser and drops them into my hand. “I’m out past my new school-night curfew anyway.” The way he hits the word
curfew
makes it clear he considers the idea ridiculous. “I might as well make the most of it and really piss my brother off.”
“So you live with your brother?” I swipe at the side of my head, staining the pure white cloth pink and then red.
“Yeah. I used to live with my cousins in Lompoc. It seemed stupid to switch schools only a few months from graduation, but … it wasn’t working out.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs. “My cousins are older. They party a lot, and they’re getting into things I’m not into.”
“Like what?”
“Like gangs.” He rolls his eyes. “They wanted me to get initiated; I wanted to live. It was a conflict of interest. Plus, my
brother found out, and with him being a cop, there was no way staying there was going to fly. Even for a few more months.”
“What about your parents? Are they …”
“My dad went back to Mexico when I was little. He used to send letters sometimes, but …” He turns to glance through the windshield, watching a cat scurry across the street. When he speaks again his voice is softer. “And my mom died about a year ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry a lot,” he says, smiling as the cat disappears.
I reach for another wipe. “Not really.”
“You
say
you’re sorry a lot.”
“I guess I don’t mean I’m
sorry
as much as …” I pause, the wipe hovering between my forehead and cheek. “I guess I just … wish things were different, that people’s lives weren’t so hard.”
“Me too,” he says, a hitch in his voice. He turns and our eyes meet, and that sense of
knowing
him hits again, catching me in my empty gut. For a moment, the sadness and pain in his eyes is
my
pain, and I desperately want to make it better. I want to reach for him, hold him, whisper into the warm crook of his neck that everything is going to be okay, that I’ll make it that way.
But I don’t. Because I can’t.
Because that whisper would be a lie. And because I know if I touch him again, I might forget who I’m not.
I
fist the damp wipe in my hand, reining in the part of me that aches for this boy with the big brown eyes.
I might feel an instant connection to Ben, but
I
don’t matter, and Ariel isn’t ready to love anyone. She pulled a car off the road and killed her first date, for god’s sake. She needs to pull herself together, and Ben deserves a girl who won’t load him down with emotional baggage.
Even after ten minutes, I can tell he’s special, a kind, decent person in a world where people like him are becoming as rare as soul mates.
“Ariel?” he asks.
“What?”
“You missed a spot.”
I lean over to look in the rearview mirror, swipe at a sticky place near my hairline.
“On the other side. Over by— Here, I’ll get it.” He pulls a wipe from the bin and brings it to my cheek, easing it over my jaw with the confidence of someone who has experience looking after people.
I freeze, mesmerized by his touch. It’s been so long since anyone has touched me like this, with such … care. I always keep to myself in my temporary bodies. Living in borrowed skin doesn’t encourage physical contact, at least not for me. I can’t remember the last time I’ve taken comfort from someone’s touch.
But at this moment, I do, so much so that it’s painful. I don’t want to think about how good this simple contact feels, or how long it will be before anyone touches me again.
Never. No one ever will, because
you
don’t exist
.
“There. Got it.” He holds the wipe, now smeared with a streak of red, in the air between us. “You okay, Mermaid?”
“Yeah.” My voice is rough. I clear my throat, smoothing out the wrinkles. This is the way things are. I know this. I’ve known from the beginning. “I’m fine.”