The Waters & the Wild Read online

  She loved Deena in her way, but there was always this sensation of longing. As if another mother existed somewhere, like those women you heard about on the news whose children had been abducted in malls or parks, just vanished. Women who could do nothing anymore except wait to die.

  Bee sat down on the dirty sand and scowled out over the gray water. She repressed an impulse to gather the chips of shell, put them in her mouth and crunch them to bits; pop seaweed pods and suck the salt; bury her body in the sand like a corpse in a sarcophagus. Sandpipers paraded up and down, and gulls shrieked. A rumpled, dirt-caked guy searched for coins with his metal detector. There were even a few surfers out there in their wet suits, long hair matted with salt, bodies shiny and sleek as seals. Sometimes you saw dolphins, but it didn’t seem beautiful to Bee. Just sad, and sometimes, when the sun burned through so hot you could fry your skin in minutes, almost apocalyptic. But she felt safer here than at home somehow. Her doppelganger would never appear on a public beach like this, standing over Bee wrapped in windy strands of hair. Would she?

  When Bee looked up, someone was standing there, watching her.

  He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and squinting without his glasses so she hardly recognized him. Haze?

  “What are you doing?”

  “I stopped by your h-h-house. Your mom said you were at the beach. She told me which lifeguard stand you usually h-h-hang out at.”

  “You came to my house? At eight on a Saturday? How do you know where I live?”

  “I hacked the school computer system. It’s really easy.”

  “What? Why?”

  He sat down next to her, looking out at the waves, not at her, hunched in his sweatshirt. He had long, awkward legs and he didn’t seem to know where to place them.

  “I just wanted to t-t-talk.”

  It figured Deena would have told him where she was. Her mother was always trying to get Bee to talk to boys, make friends. Well, she’d done it in the last week, hadn’t she? And he’d told her in the first few minutes of their conversation that death wasn’t that bad.

  Who was Haze? He could be anyone.

  He was holding a skateboard; she hadn’t seen him skate before. Her mother probably liked that; it made him seem cool. On the bottom he’d drawn a picture of a creature with big eyes, a Mohawk, long eyelashes and long, trailing fingers, like a sexy punk E.T.

  “About what?” She wasn’t going to trust him that easily. Just because he was an outsider like herself. With pretty eyes.

  “I don’t know. Not everyone talks to me about doppelgangers. You seem interesting. More than most people.”

  “Thanks.” She frowned at him. “That’s quite a compliment.”

  “You kn-n-now what I mean.”

  He turned to look at her profile; she could feel his gaze. Her hair whipped against her neck and shoulders. It just kept growing, was down to her hips now. And her eyes scared people. They were widely spaced, big and bright, with strangely large pupils. She was too skinny, no breasts to speak of. But men looked at her anyway, even when she dressed in baggy boy clothes. She didn’t want men to look at her. It didn’t help to be pretty, or whatever word you wanted to use. She was still unpopular, still a freak.

  A freak with a twin—a fetch who visited her in the night.

  “I gotta go home now,” she said, getting up. He followed her.

  “Have you seen her again?”

  “Who?”

  “Your doppelganger.”

  “Who says I saw one?”

  “You did. B-b-basically.”

  “I was just asking you about it. For…something I’m working on.”

  “So, in this thing you’re working on does the girl see her evil twin again?”

  “No,” said Bee. “Not yet. But I think she will.”

  Later they were on the boardwalk. It was more crowded now, Haze skating while she walked beside him, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. As if she were trying to prevent him having any further access to her heart. She didn’t need the complication.

  But: “Who’s that face on the bottom of your board?” she asked anyway, in spite of herself. “An alien?”

  He nodded. “A self-portrait.”

  “So you’re an extraterrestrial?” It was a joke, of course, but his expression remained serious, drawn.

  “M-m-maybe.”

  Why should she be surprised? She had seen her double standing at the window. Nothing was certain.

  “So, what’s your story?”

  He kept skating while he talked, didn’t look at her. The rough sandpaper sound of skateboard wheels on cement. “My mom was impregnated by one. He came in a spaceship and did it and left. That’s how they plan to take over our planet.”

  “Take over the…”

  “Yeah. I know. You asked.”

  She had asked. She turned off the boardwalk through the alley that led back to her house. He followed her. Past the colorful old cottages with stacks of surfboards in front, their stained-glass windows and beds of shells and lilies; gardenias, dahlias and rhododendrons in Chinese cloisonné pots. He had put his glasses on again, to skate, but he didn’t look like the kid from school. He was gracefully balanced on the board, hipbones showing through his T-shirt above the low rise of his jeans, baggy knees, chunky sneakers. Joseph Hayes was a hottie. Who knew?

  She stopped at her gate and he hesitated; she could tell he wanted to come inside. But she wasn’t going to let him. It was all too weird lately.

  “Good-bye,” she said, pulling the string that released the lock and stepping into the rambling garden. Sandy the golden met her at the gate, wagging, his mouth open in a perpetual smile. She could smell pancakes and syrup, scrambled eggs, sausages. Her mother’s weekend extravaganzas. She hadn’t felt like eating much lately, but she had an appetite now. The sun was just starting to come out, clouds moving to reveal the sea-blue color. The roses in Deena’s garden were sugar pink against the pale green wall. Not everyone got to live with roses like that, got to walk to the ocean before breakfast.

  Did this new way of seeing have to do with Haze? With the appearance of the girl?

  Either way, something was different—what? Something was changing.

  5

  Fetch

  The dream: She was walking down a sidewalk with a two-year-old girl. The child was round everywhere, with dimpled wrists and blond curls. She looked up at Bee with her round, lashy blue eyes shining above full pink cheeks you wanted to squish.

  “Shoo-shoo,” she said.

  Bee knew what it meant. “You have to go shoo-shoo? Let’s find a potty.”

  She turned her head, and the girl let go of her hand. When she looked back, Bee saw her sliding down through the sewer opening under the gutter.

  Bee flung herself on her belly and slid down after her. There was a large, dark room with pipes lining the walls. She clung to the pipes, staring down into the shadows, calling for the girl.

  There she was! Suspended by her arms on one of the pipes, like she was on a climbing structure at the park. Bee heard her say “Shoo-shoo” again and the stream of her pee on the cement below them. Bee swung along the pipes toward her.

  “I’m coming, baby, don’t worry.”

  But when she got there, she did not find the child at all. Only a small doll swinging from the pipe.

  The room was mostly dark, just a seashell night-light illuminating the tiny bathroom she shared with her mom and Lew. She was at the sink, splashing cold water on her face, trying to wash away the nightmare, the nausea, the pounding sensation in her head. A tapping sound and she looked up, into the mirror. She thought of that game they used to play when they were kids: “I believe in Mary Mack.” If you said it into the mirror enough times you were supposed to see the witch Bloody Mary, who would scratch your face off and then you would die. Or maybe you would learn something important about yourself if you survived; who knew?

  “I believe,” Bee whispered, suddenly wanting to understand, no ma
tter how dangerous it turned out to be.

  There was a long silence. Bee gripped the countertop, forcing herself not to run out of the room.

  “You have my life,” said a hazy light in the mirror. “Give it the hell back.”

  6

  The Peculiar Institution

  “Stephanie,” Sarah’s grandmother called. “Is that you?”

  Her name was not Stephanie. Sometimes she forgot that they still called her that and it took her a while to understand to whom they were speaking. This happened at school, all the time. Stephanie; Stephanie Caldwell. And she just sat there staring at them so that they thought she was an idiot or on drugs.

  There was no reason to be so unhappy, she reasoned as she threw her backpack on the couch. So they didn’t understand her; so what? There were worse things. She lived in a pleasant house that her father had redone himself. Her grandmother took good care of them. Sarah was well fed. She always had the things she needed, although people thought she didn’t because she refused to wear the dresses her grandmother bought for her, insisted on the cotton thrift-shop house-dresses instead. Yes, her mother had died, but it was so long ago she could hardly remember her at all.

  So here she was, in for another night of homework and dinner—baked chicken, salad, potatoes, ice cream for dessert—reality TV. After that she might go online and study the Civil War, slavery, searching pictures of men with whipping welts like giant trees of flesh and blood on their backs. Searching slave girls from that time. Trying to find more about the one she had been.

  It sounded depressing, but actually, it was strangely comforting. It was the only way she knew to find meaning, find out who she really was.

  Today she had learned that some slave owners called slavery “the peculiar institution.” Wasn’t that the understatement of that century?

  The worst part was the dreams. They were so real, unrelenting. The squeal of the hogs as the men slashed their throats, the hot smell of blood in the dust, the carcasses dangling upside down. The master who came to her at night, slipped into her bed, his clammy hands with fingers like giant maggots covering her mouth. Now, at last, she had someone to tell: that thin girl with the big eyes. Sarah somehow knew instinctively she would understand.

  “Stephanie!”

  “Yes, Gramma. I’m home.” But no, not Stephanie. Stephanie wasn’t.

  Bee saw Sarah again on Monday, still singing her “Strange Fruit” song.

  “Hello!” Sarah said, interrupting herself. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Me, too,” said Bee. “About you.” At home she had played the original Billie Holiday version and thought that Sarah’s was just about as good. It was amazing, really, that no one had discovered her yet, swooped down, scooped her up and put her on that crazy TV show where you had to sing in front of a panel of judges with personality disorders.

  “Do you want to eat lunch?” Bee asked her. She had the distinct and novel knowing that she needed people around her now, as often as possible. Strange, strong people who understood her.

  As if he had heard her thoughts, Haze walked up and joined them without asking, just slid onto the bench and sat there, not meeting their eyes.

  “Hello,” Sarah said.

  “This is Haze,” said Bee. “Haze, Sarah.”

  “Hi,” he managed. He even looked up at them. His glasses were taped together in the middle.

  “What happened to your specs?”

  “S-s-some kids smashed them.”

  “You should have stopped them with your alien superpowers.”

  She could tell this hurt his feelings and she felt bad, but it was too late.

  “Are you an alien?” Sarah asked. Perfectly serious and composed. She wasn’t taunting him at all.

  He seemed to relax a little.

  “I’m actually a slave girl from the 1800s,” she went on. “Reincarnated. Now, nobody seems to believe that, you know, but it doesn’t matter; I know it is the truth.”

  Bee thought, My life just keeps getting odder every day.

  “Now, B-b-bee here isn’t freaky like us. Are you, Bee? Except that she sees herself walking around every once in a while. But that’s n-n-normal.”

  “Okay. I get it. Sorry I said that.”

  He shrugged an acceptance to her apology. Sarah smiled at them. White, white teeth between her lush lips. “It looks as if we have found our kindred,” she said.

  A few months ago this would have been the answer to all Bee’s problems, but things were different now. Not only the difference she had noticed that day when Haze surprised her at the beach, beauty revealing itself suddenly in ways she had never noticed before.

  She hadn’t told Sarah and Haze about the second encounter with the girl. Or about the latest thing that had happened.

  In her bed that morning there was a wormy piece of wood with some yarn taped to the top and a piece of gray fabric tied around the bottom.

  When Bee put on her sweatshirt to leave for school, she noticed that one cuff had been ripped off. Her gray sweatshirt, the one she always wore.

  7

  Invisible

  For the last two weeks they had hung out together. The three of them. Haze and Sarah and Bee. They had their own table. No one bothered them anymore.

  Sarah ate cafeteria food—French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches. Haze brought avocado on pita from home. Bee sipped a 7UP; most food made her feel sick lately. Deena worried that she was losing weight, but Bee figured it was just a stage, maybe hormonal, or maybe she was just excited to finally have friends. When she looked at Sarah and Haze she saw halos of fuzzy blue light around their heads, their glamorous auras.

  One day, Lindsey Carlisle came over with two other girls. Her blond hair and ice-cube eyes and symmetrical features. Big chest; little, belligerent butt. She paraded up to them and held out a piece of paper.

  “Let’s see, what do we have here? An invitation! To a party! But there’s a checklist on the back. I better take a look at this. You can come to this party if you are good-looking. Uh, no. Popular? Double no. Not fat? One is fat. Not a freak or a candidate for worst dressed? Oops. Sorry. No invite.”

  Bee wondered why a cruel nature seemed to be a requirement of popularity. Even more than beauty, sometimes. It made no sense, but neither did most things.

  “How about if you’re mean and rude?” Bee heard herself saying. “Do you get to come then? Or is that only the hostess?”

  Lindsey flipped her off and walked away.

  “You go, girl,” said Sarah.

  “Yeah, we’re all going.”

  “What?”

  “To Lindsey Carlisle’s party,” Bee said. “And since when do you talk like a twenty-first-century girl?”

  Sarah smiled. “Change is in the air.”

  It was all a matter of believing in things. Haze believed he was an alien. Sarah was the present-day reincarnation of a slave girl. Bee was—something, she wasn’t sure what.

  “We’re more powerful than we think,” Bee said. “We just haven’t explored it yet.”

  “What does that have to do with Lindsey Carlisle’s party?”

  They were gathered in Bee’s mother’s gazebo with the tattered saris hanging from the splintery wood. It was a hot afternoon, no breeze in the silk.

  “Have you ever wanted to be invisible?” Bee asked.

  “Of course,” said Sarah. “What child hasn’t?”

  “So let’s do a spell. Even if it doesn’t work, if we believe it enough we can walk in anywhere and no one will have the guts to mess with us.”

  “H-h-how do you figure that?” Haze asked. He was gazing at her steadily through his glasses the way he always did, as if she were something miraculous and frightening, like a cat that had started to speak.

  “We’ll be holding our invisible heads high. But we’ll be subtle, quiet. They won’t notice us. If we all believe it, it’ll work.”

  Bee had another reason for wanting to be invisible. The more magical protec
tion from unseen forces she could acquire, the better.

  The night of the party they all wore black and stood in a circle in Bee’s room. A black candle burned in the center. It smelled like melting licorice.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Bee.

  “I have an idea.”

  The girls both looked at Haze.

  “In physics, the only reason we can see something is because the atoms are vibrating slow enough. So if they started vibrating faster, we couldn’t see it.”

  “Wow, you really are smart!”

  Haze met Bee’s eyes for a moment before he glanced down at the floor.

  “But what are we supposed to do?” she asked.

  “Maybe just stare at the flame and imagine your body as particles of light. Then imagine the particles jumping really fast.” When he was talking about things like this, Haze never stammered.

  “I think we should spin,” Sarah said.

  “Spin?”

  “Yes. Spin around with our arms out. Like this.” She turned in a circle. “If we go really quickly, it might speed something up in our particles.”

  “Okay,” said Bee, “it’s worth a try.”

  So they imagined themselves as fast-moving particles and they spun and spun while shadows from the candle flame danced on the walls like Balinese stick puppets in the hands of frantic puppeteers, and they laughed, too, until they fell dizzily to the ground, buzzing with light.