Slipping - Book 1.5 in the Swans Landing series

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

The thought of spending all day in school filled me with a suffocating heaviness in my chest. I wanted to be outside, to breathe in the salt air.

What had happened to Mara the day before? I couldn’t stop thinking about her as I rode my ATV toward Pirate’s Cove that morning instead of heading toward the school. My guess was that she had been suspended, at least for one day. But maybe Mr. Richter had gone easy on her since she was new. Maybe she was walking into school right then. Maybe she was looking for me. Would she be disappointed that I wasn’t there?

I hadn’t yet figured Mara out. Sometimes it seemed like she felt the same things I did when I looked at her. Other times it was like she wanted nothing at all to do with me and couldn’t get away fast enough.

When I broke through the forest onto the beach at Pirate’s Cove, I saw someone already sitting on the sand, her face turned toward the water. I let out a sigh of relief.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Mara asked as I approached. She didn’t turn to look at me.

I sat down next to her and scanned the ocean’s surface. “Probably.”

Mara turned toward me, staring at me for a long time, as if she were imprinting my face in her memory. “So?” she asked.

“So I didn’t feel like going,” I answered.

“Couldn’t stand a day in school knowing I wasn’t there?” Mara asked.

I smiled. “You do have a way of livening up an otherwise mind-numbing place.”

“If you’re so interested in my presence, maybe you should have done something other than stand there yesterday while your girlfriend ran her mouth. Maybe then I wouldn’t have punched her.”

“Maybe she’s not my girlfriend. And maybe I thought she could use a fat lip too.”

Mara laughed and tension melted from my shoulders at the sound. We sat side by side for a long time, just watching birds flying over the water.

Mara broke the silence. “So what was that the other night?”

“What?” I asked.

She looked at me again, but I didn’t turn toward her. “That humming we heard. And the fact that I saw...” She paused. “I saw my dead mom.”

“You saw a memory,” I told her. “It wasn’t really her.”

“How?” she asked.

I raked my fingers through the sand, drawing sloppy pictures of birds and clouds. Mara added wavy lines under my clouds—the ocean.

“I read that book you told me about,” she said. “I know about finfolk.”

I held my breath, waiting for her to say more.

“I know they exist,” she added.

“And how do you know that?”

She took a deep breath before saying, “Because I am one.”

So she did know. When had she found out? How?

“There aren’t many finfolk left here,” I said.

“Why does everyone hate them so much?”

I shifted in the sand, letting my fingers draw aimless lines again. “It was a finfolk song,” I told her.

“What?”

“The other night, during the new moon. You heard a finfolk song.”

“Where were they?” Mara asked.