Shining Sea Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Mimi Cross

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Skyscape

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Lyrics from “Alive” written by Pete Yorn © 2006 reproduced with kind permission of the artist. All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9781503935532

  ISBN-10: 1503935531

  Book design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant

  To my parents.

  Thank you for a lifetime of sun and sand and swimming in the sea.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  GOODBYE

  VIEW

  MISSING

  MIRROR

  THE THING CALLED LOVE

  LIBRARY CARDS

  CENTRIPETAL

  SPEED

  SKIN

  SHATTER

  IMMERSION

  FALSE FRONT

  BEACH WALK

  ECHO

  SUNSET

  CLOSER

  TARRADIDDLE

  QUESTIONS

  REGISTRATION

  SWIM TEST

  MENTOR

  SALT

  TIMING

  TABLE TALK

  STARGAZER

  PHANTASM

  RESEARCH

  ART

  NETHERWORLD

  PROMISE

  INTRUDER

  PURSUIT

  SECRETS

  SNARL

  SUSHI

  NIGHT

  SYMPTOMS

  TIDAL

  CHOICE

  INQUISITION

  INTERVENTION

  CLUBBING

  PLAYER

  DANCE FLOOR

  CAGE

  FIRE DRILL

  PEARL

  TORN

  BREATHE

  FOREVER

  NEW BLOOD

  SCENT

  SUMMERS COVE

  RADIO ARION

  CUTTING EDGE

  HOMEROOM

  PASSAGE

  BIRDS

  POEM

  PORTRAIT

  EVIDENCE

  USING

  WAVE

  BLINDFOLD

  CONTROL

  TRUST

  BODYGUARD

  TRIO

  AEGIS

  LIGHTS OUT

  DISSENT

  RISING TIDE

  GEMINI

  SIREN

  BLACK SEA

  BREAKWATER

  FREEDIVERS

  BLINK; FLASH

  KILLER

  DRUG

  THRESHOLD

  UNDERTAKING

  MONSTER

  BACKBONE

  FALL

  PACIFIC TIME

  WASTEPAPER BASKET

  FLOOD

  PORTAL

  SISTERS

  VISITOR

  BLUE HOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I to the world am like a drop of water

  That in the ocean seeks another drop,

  Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,

  Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.

  —William Shakespeare

  Your senses are sacred thresholds.

  —John O’Donohue

  GOODBYE

  Tuneless humming is coming from the bedroom next to mine. I’ve always been the better singer, no secret. Even before I could talk, I sang. To me, singing feels like . . . flying.

  As a little kid I sang in the church choir, later on in the choruses at school, and about six months ago I started writing songs—not that I’d call myself a songwriter yet. My first gig was last week, down in the Mission District. Standing on the spotlit stage of the black box performance space, I played one long set—twelve tunes total—while hipsters watched with crossed arms.

  Performing in front of an audience is a good way to tell if your songs are finished.

  Or not.

  The song I’m trying to capture now definitely falls into the not category.

  I give the guitar a soft strum—a ghost of a chord slips out. Playing the haunting notes a little louder, I listen for the melody. It’ll come, eventually, but we’re leaving any minute.

  Not just leaving . . . moving.

  “Do you know,” I whisper sing, “where lost things go?”

  In the next room Lilah falls silent. The lyrics tangle in my throat.

  My fingers fumble, then jerk—playing a rhythmic pattern atop a single minor chord: one and two, one and two. Words tumble out of me.

  “Saint Anthony, can you come around? There’s something lost, and it can’t be found.”

  Saint Anthony—is he the one?

  A quick Google search on the laptop perched at the end of my bed tells me he is. Saint Anthony is invoked as the finder of lost things. Pulling my guitar closer, I play the line over and over.

  “Arion? You up there?”

  Dad. After shoving the laptop into my backpack, I shut the guitar in its case and head into the hall. Hands full, I stand in my sister’s doorway.

  She doesn’t see me.

  Even as thin as she is, even with the ever-present dark shadows beneath her eyes, Lilah is beautiful. Her features are regular and in proportion. Mine . . . are slightly exaggerated. Nose longer, lips fuller. Now, without music to distract me, the tears I’d vowed not to cry fill my eyes. Brown eyes. On a good day, they’re hazel. Maybe.

  There’s no mistaking the color of my sister’s eyes. Bright blue. Her hair is black and shiny, cut straight across her forehead and blunt at her shoulders in a way that has always made me think of Cleopatra, but especially since the accident, when she became a mystery to me. Lilah no longer tells me her every thought. She can’t.

  My sister blinks her bellflower eyes now, and for a split second—seems to focus on me.

  But the illusion vanishes just as quickly. I swallow around the lump in my throat, wondering for the millionth time if she has any idea what’s going on.

  Her bed is up against the window. In the distance—over a nearly invisible San Francisco Bay—the Golden Gate Bridge hovers in fog. Sitting down beside her on the bed, I lay a hand on one of her legs—feel bones, atrophied muscles. A raw feeling spreads through me, like a dull blade is scraping the underside of my skin.

  “So . . . guess it’s time for goodbye.” I take a deep breath in, let it out slowly—which doesn’t help at all. “I’ll see you in Rock Hook Harbor. Dad’s one-horse hometown . . . Sounds happening, huh?” My attempt at lightheartedness fails completely. The words drop like bricks.

  Leaning in, I kiss her cheek.

  She turns away, as if looking toward the ghostly water. Or, is she looking at the water? Or just staring blankly?

  I so want it to be the former. The doctors say it’s the latter.

  In my chest, a hairline fissure I’ve fused together with lyrics and chords pops open.

  “I love you,” I choke out.

  She doesn’t answer. Of course she doesn’t.

  Biting down hard on my lip, I stand up, trying not to feel like I’m leaving my best friend stranded. But I am. She is. Stranded. She’s been stranded, for a year.

  Swiping at my eyes, I take a few steps down the hall—then turn suddenly into my parents’ room, which is mostly Mom’s room now. Dad spends the nights he’s
here on the living room couch, where, after dinner—usually something complicated he’s cooked up involving lots of pots and pans—he falls asleep with the TV on. Blue screen to white noise; maybe the sound helps him. Music works better for me. Or, it used to. I used to lie in bed at night and sing. Lately, all I want to do is sleep.

  Like the rest of the house, my parents’ bedroom is crowded with canvases. Filled with slashes of color and geometric shapes, each painting has the name “Cici” scrawled in large letters down in the right-hand corner. Mom’s pictures pulse with unfamiliar energy, and my nostrils flare at the scent of paint fumes as I move a half-finished piece—an abstract portrait of a girl, I think—that’s leaning up against the glass door. Slipping out onto the balcony, I clutch the cold railing and eye a moldering stack of Psychology Today magazines. Therapy is Mom’s religion.

  A pair of paint-splattered jeans hangs off a chair. A handful of paintbrushes soak in a bucket. There’s no sign of Dad.

  My parents are like a couple of unmoored boats. Drifting. One of the few things they agreed on this past year? The accident was Dad’s fault. A pretty stupid conclusion, really, considering he hadn’t even been on the boat. But he’s a ship’s captain. Lilah and I inherited our love of the water from him.

  Water. I hate it now. Because of the water, I’m on this balcony almost every day, drawn out here as if for a long-standing appointment, some prearranged meeting between me and my broken heart. I cry here; sometimes I yell. Sometimes I write, and one day, I nearly threw my guitar over the railing.

  Splintered wood, snapped strings, I’m interested in broken things.

  The circling song lyrics fade at the sound of Mom’s strained voice.

  “Arion, have you finished saying goodbye to Delilah? Your dad’s ready to go.”

  I stay another second, then scoop up a stray guitar pick from the terracotta tiles and head inside, not paying any attention to the paintings now, just intent on leaving before I get any more upset.

  But then I’m passing Lilah’s room—and I see it.

  The slim black notebook I’ve searched for probably a hundred times over the past year.

  Oh, I’ve seen the palm-size Moleskine with its curled cover, seen it clutched in Lilah’s fist, watched as she whisked the small black book beneath her quilt, or shoved it between her sheets. I just haven’t been able to get my hands on it, and I’ve wanted to, desperately.

  So many times I’ve seen her slip the notebook between the oversize pages of the art books that Mom insists on bringing home from the library. She’ll hug the book close then—her treasure safe inside—but she’ll never actually look at the glossy pages. Not like she looks at that notebook. She looks at that black book like it’s the only thing she recognizes.

  It’s definitely some kind of diary. Not that I ever see her writing in it, not since before. But she’s always got it on her.

  Only, she doesn’t have it on her now.

  Now, there it is, on the floor next to her bed. And Lilah, there she is, still looking but not looking out the window. Transfixed, it would seem, by the gray bay. As I watch, she lifts one hand, bringing her fingertips to the glass—as if there’s something out there she wants to touch.

  It’s kind of amazing how I do it, how I steal her most precious possession without breaking my stride. How I silently sweep into the room and, bending low, snatch it up—then keep on walking like nothing’s happened. Like I’m ten-year-old Lilah herself, that time at the rock and gem shop down near the beach, trying on one sterling silver ring, then another. I’ll never forget it, how she smiled at the shopkeeper—maybe even said thank you—then practically skipped out the door, still wearing at least one of the rings. Once outside, she tossed a half-dozen more rings onto the pebbles that served as the shop’s front yard, so that she could retrieve them that night when the gem shop was closed, so that we could retrieve them.

  Eight-year-old me, I’d held the flashlight for her. She’d given me one of the rings as my reward, but only one.

  I feel bad taking the book; if I could read it and leave it, I would. But there’s no time. Through the hall window I can see Dad standing down in the driveway by the old green Jeep Cherokee, the car that will be mine once we get to Maine.

  So I slide the notebook into the pocket of my backpack where it burns a hole so big I think it will surely fall out—pages fluttering like fiery wings—and slap the floor with a sound so sharp, Lilah will shudder to life. She’ll spring up and shout at me, her old self at last.

  But nothing like this happens.

  Leaving Lilah. Taking the notebook. My skin ripples with guilt. But we have to go on ahead. School’s starting in a few weeks, plus Dad’s new job—they won’t hold it any longer.

  And really, I have to take the book. I need to know what happened.

  Out in the driveway, I crane my neck, trying to see if Lilah’s still at the window.

  “Hold on,” Mom shouts from the house, “I almost forgot!”

  Time seems suspended as Dad and I wait by the car, the limbo of the long ride already upon us . . .

  Mom reappears holding a square box wrapped in gold paper and a purple ribbon. Balanced on top is a fat cupcake with pink frosting.

  “Happy birthday, Arion.” Her flinty blue eyes soften. She hands me the awkward duo and gives me an equally awkward hug. “From both of us.”

  Dad smiles, shakes his head. “Seventeen.” He’s always been a man of few words.

  “Thanks, Mom. Dad.” Swallowing hard, I climb into the car with the gifts on my lap. Mom pecks Dad on the cheek, and he gets behind the wheel. As we pull away, she blows me a kiss.

  Twisting in my seat, I wave—then look up at the second story.

  No Lilah.

  My chest hurts so much—I actually glance down. But there’s nothing except a smear of pink icing on my shirt, where I’d leaned into the cupcake.

  We’ll fly back close to Thanksgiving, when Lilah is scheduled for the operation that my parents have finally decided is her best bet: a surgical procedure to implant a device in her brain.

  It’s not as sci-fi as it sounds. The battery-operated device is kind of like a pacemaker, only for your brain instead of your heart. This kind of surgery is used to treat a variety of disabling neurological symptoms, although I think whoever came up with DBS—deep brain stimulation—was thinking of people with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, not, well, whatever’s wrong with Lilah. Her case is—entirely different.

  I’m not going to pretend: I’m scared. But the plan is, we’ll all be together in Maine by Christmas, so that’s what I’m trying to focus on.

  I’ll miss Lilah. Mom too. But I’m glad to be leaving San Francisco. My life here . . . is on hold—except for my music. The rest is a waiting game.

  We’ve all been waiting for Lilah to find what she lost. As if she can look for it.

  VIEW

  Breathtaking.

  That’s the only way to describe the vast, endless view from Rock Hook Lighthouse.

  None of the wonders, none of the famous landmarks we saw on our trip across the country compare to this view, not even our stop in Wyoming, where we hiked at the base of the Tetons, stunning snowcapped mountains that made something shift inside of me.

  Unfortunately, the night we arrived here, the silver-edged mountains that the full moon conjured out of the dark sea made my chest tighten in terror. The crashing waves just kept coming, watery walls with sharp crests that shattered into fountains of moonlit sea spray as they hit the breakwater below the lighthouse.

  That was nearly three weeks ago, and since then? Pretty much all I’ve done here at the light station is play guitar. Inside.

  But today it’s almost like I’ve been pulled out here, like I just suddenly have to climb the gazillion steps to the cast-iron gallery deck of the black-and-white-striped tower.

  Now, nearly two hundred feet up in the air—

  The mournful shriek of a seagull startles me, and I almost drop the heavy binocular
s—the birthday present from my parents. Like I need a better view of the water.

  With its slanting drizzle, this afternoon looks like every other. I’d used the weather as an excuse to stay inside, but now, dampness beads on my clothes, my hair, my skin, and I barely feel it as I lean against the slick railing with its ornate iron bars. The Atlantic heaves below me. The closely spaced bars are meant to ensure safety—only I don’t feel safe. I close my eyes. Can’t seem to bring myself to go back inside despite my discomfort.

  Lilah. She hadn’t been safe. Not on that boat. And maybe . . . not on land either. Even before the accident, something was going on with her. I know that now, because of the notebook, because of its contents, which are both disturbing and deeply disappointing.

  I wanted more. Wanted an answer, some way to fix things, to help her. But the notebook didn’t tell me anything, not really, despite its obvious importance to Lilah. She’d held it compulsively in her grip for the last year or kept it hidden away, but she’d written in it too, obsessively, in those couple of days before the accident. That’s why I wanted it so badly.

  I remember the way she bent over it, like she couldn’t get close enough, like she didn’t want anyone to see what she was writing, writing, writing . . .

  Turns out, she’d written obsessively because she was obsessed. Obsessed with some guy she’d met here, on Rock Hook. It had to be here, because where else? The airport? The plane? Even Lilah couldn’t fall in love that fast. But a week? No problem.

  Not that she wrote anything about love. The book’s first entry, if you can call it that, is a string of complaints. Verbal eye rolling, basically, about having to go to Maine at all, let alone for an entire week with nothing to do while Dad did whatever he was doing. Visiting the harbor, seeing old friends—it’s clear from what she wrote that Lilah had no idea that Dad was looking for work. I don’t remember if I knew or not. I was at music camp at Sonoma State that week, a program my sister wouldn’t lower herself to attend.

  Mom was part of a group exhibit downtown, so she didn’t go on the trip either. It was just Lilah and Dad, gone and then back, Lilah with her new appendage, the black Moleskine.

  Lilah was never into journaling—that’s me. But it makes sense that she might have wanted to keep a record of her trip, although more likely she was just bored. What’s bizarre is that after the eye-rolling entry, there’s only one more entry, and then Lilah’s handwriting changes. It’s definitely still her writing, but the words are much smaller, like she wanted to save space, wanted to fit as much as she could on each page.