Page 28 of Love at Full Tilt
Neptune’s Launch Aquarium
Atalantia, Fableland
Orlando, FL
—FablelandNow.com, “Fableland’s Best-Kept Secrets”
Mason’s lips are magic spells.
They melt against mine as soon as our mouths meet, and my body sinks into his. Every part of me aches to find every part of him, but I mobilize all my willpower to remain still. Only my fingers move, grazing the nape of his neck as if I might be able to memorize it like a map.
I part my lips the smallest bit, but at the same time, the rush of blood in my ears starts to thin, and I remember that we’re in an aquarium teeming with little kids and probably a lot of disapproving parents.
My mother would pass out if she caught me making out in public.
Then I’d get a three-week lecture on sanitation and safety as she bolted the door of my room closed.
The idea is enough for me to pull my face from Mason’s.
Invisible fire crackles between us as we separate. I never knew absence could feel so… present.
His eyes, sleepy and hooded, take me in, and his right arm hangs around my hips, one of his fingers hooked in a belt loop on my shorts. I still have a hand knotted in his shirt. I can’t seem to let it go.
The air drapes heavily over us, weighty with significance. As if one tiny kiss has sent the entire world spinning backward on its axis.
His face is impossible to read, and a sudden rush of doubt makes me dizzy. Is he not feeling what I’m feeling? Was the kiss bad? I scoot back before the questions spill from my lips.
That wakes him from his daze, and he smiles. “Hi.” His voice is fragile, and it cracks.
I force my eyes to meet his. “That was…wow.”
Pink blooms in his cheeks, and his eyes skip back to the jellyfish tank as he stands. It takes him long enough to say something that my heart begins to sputter.
“This is now officially not just my favorite spot in the park, but in the whole world.”
“What? This tank of”—I lean over and squint at the small placard beside it—“Australian spotted jellyfish?”
He huffs out something breathy that I think is meant to be a laugh, then tugs me beside him. “This spot on the floor, right here.” His voice comes out husky but delicate.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I want to ask him if he’ll visit it when I’m gone. If he’ll think about the kiss as much as I will. Because I’m leaving. It finally, really hits me. No matter what happens, I’m gone in three days. And the only way I can come back is if I win this contest and he doesn’t.
The reality is ice in my veins. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid. Wanting something else I can’t have. Another thing that will slip through my fingers like air.
But it’s too late. Now that I’ve kissed Mason, it would be impossible to pack up my feelings again and hide them away. My heart is Pandora’s box, and I broke it open.
“Maybe we should never leave here, then,” I say. Probably, that’s the only way this thing between us could work.
He grins. “All right, but Remy might get jealous.”
I laugh, and the movement of my shoulders rolls through his body too, like we’re connected.
“Shit. Twenty people are done now.”
After taking another minute to chase off the haze from our kiss, Mason dropped reality’s hammer on us by checking the contest app on his phone.
There are only forty spots left. And it seems like people are starting to figure out the last clue. Even as we stare at Mason’s phone, two more people move up the list.
Thirty-eight spots left.
Panic jets through my veins.
Mason must see it on my face because he asks, “Do you want me to show you where the QR code is?” When I frown, he adds, “You did the same for me earlier.”
“I like puzzling them out myself.” I’m too competitive for my own good, but it’s in my DNA, the same as my light-blue eyes and dark hair.
“What do you have so far?”
“That it’s got to be in here.” Tess, Issy, and I deduced that by process of elimination earlier. We’ve looked literally everywhereelse.
I also found a really old post on a different fan forum that talked about a secret mermaid in a tank somewhere in this building. “And that the fantasy creature is a mermaid.”
Mason nods.
“I just don’t know what the sink of an anchor means.” I turn and glance around us. “There’s plenty of water and fish, but nothing nautical themed.”
“What about a hint?” he offers as we head back to the outer atrium. Neptune’s Launch is set up like a series of concentric circles, almost like the spirals on the inside of a conch shell.
The outside loop is lined with tropical fish.
They flutter and flit through turquoise water, darting in and out of fissures in the pastel-hued coral and the gaps between rocks and seaweed.
Some of them drift along in schools so big they look like curtains of bright color swaying in an invisible breeze.
I turn my phone on so I’m ready to scan the code as soon as we find it. A strangled noise pushes out of my mouth when my screen lights up.
Mom
Where did you girls go for breakfast? What about lunch?
(12:25 PM)
Mom
Was it good?
(12:27 PM)
Mom
What are you up to now?
(12:30 PM)
Mom
It’s been a while since you checked in.
(12:32 PM)
Mom
Missed call
(12:37 PM)
Mom
Missed call
(12:38 PM)
Mom
Missed call
(12:40 PM)
Mom
Lia, I am starting to get worried now.
(12:47 PM)
Mom
Please call me as soon as you see this.
(12:51 PM)
Mom
Your father says you are probably seeing a live show and that’s why your phone is off so I am going to wait a little while and hope you check in soon.
(12:55 PM)
I try to keep the alarm from my face as I glance over at Mason. “I need to make a quick call,” I say, stepping toward the railing.
Mom picks up on the first ring.
“Lia.” Her voice has the cadence of a record being scratched. “I was so worried.”
“I’m sorry. But I told you I can’t have my phone on all the time.” I stop myself before I say what I’m thinking: I need to breathe.
Mason appears next to me and slips his fingers between my clenched ones.
He doesn’t stop me from moving, just stands there as I stalk back and forth like a lion at the zoo.
His face is unreadable, but his blue eyes are soft as they squint at me.
He offers me an encouraging smile when our gazes catch.
I let his touch tether me here, in Fableland, in this moment. I’m not at home. My mother can call all she wants, but that’s the only thing she can do.
“I didn’t know where you were, Lia.” Her voice spikes. Her knuckles are probably white from how tightly she’s clutching the phone.
My father would want me to agree. It’s the easiest way to calm her down. But I’m not feeling easy today. I’m perched on the tip of a knife, my whole body alert in a painful way.
“You do know where I am. I’m here. At the park. I called you as soon as I turned my phone back on. I’ve been fine for three days. I am still fine.”
“But I can’t know that if I don’t hear from you.”
I inhale deep and slow, then let the air buzz out through my teeth. “Mom, you can’t know where I am every second of the day. Unless you never want me to leave the house.” I say it as gently as I can. I don’t normally talk back this way, but placating her isn’t working.
Her cough is phlegmy and fractured, like she’s crying. My father’s voice murmurs in the background. Without letting myself think too much about it, I step over to Mason and curl into his chest. Like he’s a cave I can hide in.
Mom clears her throat. Coughs again. The sound makes me jump. “We can’t keep doing this,” she says.
“I agree.” My voice is hoarse. My heart hammers against myribs.
Mason’s hand smooths my hair, and he rests his chin on top of my head. For a moment, I let myself believe that my mother no longer has the power to make my life explode.
Then she speaks again. “If you aren’t going to keep your phone on, I’m going to have to come down there.”
Forget an explosion. Those words are an apocalyptic event. DEFCON1. Code red. Avengers assemble.
I jerk away from Mason and stride to one end of the hallway. “What?” I croak.
“I have to be able to talk to you when I need to, or I’m going to have to come down there.”
I’m shaking. No, more than that. Quaking. As if it’s the ground, not me, that’s moving. “You can’t be serious.”
“I wouldn’t make you come home, but I could stay, make sure you girls are okay.” There’s hope in her voice. She wants this to happen. Like I’m a little kid.
She can’t come here. She can’t come here. She can’t come here. I can’t speak, the words playing on an endless loop in myhead.
My silence urges her on. “I could tag along at the parks. I used to love rides. We could even get cotton can—”
“No.” The word rips out of my mouth.
“What?”
Above me, the sky spins. My muscles are ice, ready to crack.
“Lia?”
My mother and Mason say my name at the exact same time. Echoes from two different lives yanking me in two different directions.
I close my eyes, keeping my back to Mason as I fist the hem of my shorts in my free hand. It takes me ages to find one steady breath. “You don’t need to do that. Everything’s fine.”
“I can’t know that if you don’t answer your phone.”
“I’ll answer it.” It feels like a concession. A million agonizing little sacrifices.
“You promise?”
My teeth grind. “Yes. But, please, Mom, give me some space, okay? I’m here with my friends. We don’t have much more time before they leave for school. I don’t want to waste it all checking my phone.”
My stomach twists. But I can’t tell Mom about Mason. About his watercolor eyes or his smile that folds my heart into hummingbird wings or how everything I want means he can’t have what he needs and I don’t know what to do with that.
I glance at him. He hasn’t moved. His eyes still guard myface.
“I want you to check in every four hours.” Her voice is firm. It hits me like a stone.
“Okay.”
“I expect to hear from you at five. No later.”
“Okay.”
Get through four hours at a time. I can do that. I can keep her there. Keep me here.
“I love you, sweetie.”