Page 34 of Waters that Drown Us

“I’m sorry if it seemed like I left. I should have called and left a message at the ticket booth.” The words are genuine butrushed, like she’s trying to force me to hear them before I run away from her. “I wouldn’t leave you here.”

“Without saying goodbye?”

The words slip from my lips before I can reel them back in. Why would I say that? How could I demand such compassion when I know how this will end? It makes me cruel, perhaps as bad as my father and Ilya, to manipulate her like this. To force this level of intimacy when our closeness may well be her demise.

Emily wipes away tears I can’t hold back as she stares into my eyes. She’s so pretty. Skin so smooth, lashes so dark, jaw so strong. There are little gold flecks in her irises that I usually only see in the sunlight. But I’m so close to her right now, I can see everything.

“Maybe we…” she stutters, something shifting in her expression. Stronger, more resolute, more desperate. “What if we didn’t have to say goodbye?”

Is this heartbreak? I thought I knew what that felt like. When my father told me my mother died. Learning his role in her death. Ilya’s words to me that night. I thought those all broke my heart into the pieces that rattle around in my chest now.

But this feels different. Knowing something is just out of reach. Learning something is possible, but not for you. Seeing the thing you want most want you back, and having to deny yourself of it.

“Your research will be done in a few weeks,” I say, a weak excuse. I want her to stay, or to take me with her, but I’ve already knocked over the first domino that will eventually bring Ilya to my doorstep. He will hunt me to the ends of the Earth, because his pride demands it. And I’ve spent so much time finding a place where the fewest number people possible will get hurt in the ensuing chaos. I can’t keep her here, and I can’t go with her, bringing more innocent bystanders into the line of fire.

“We haven’t found the jellies yet,” she argues softly, her voice cracking slightly. “You could come with me, help me find them. You could keep teaching me how to be brave.”

My chest constricts, and I realize I’m not really breathing. Not deep enough. She’s so beautiful and smart and strong and kind, and I’m going to be the reason she’s wiped from the planet.

“I can’t go with you,” I say, even though I want nothing more than to turn back time and stop myself from making that first call, dropping that first hint to my father’s enterprise that I might be alive. I wanted revenge, I wanted to have the chance that one day I might not have to live in fear, or die trying.

Now, I’d give anything to be the invisible woman following Emily around the world.

“Please, Alice,” she begs, which only makes things so much worse. So much harder. “I know there are probably things you haven’t told me, about why you’re here and what happened to you. And there’s so much I haven’t told you. But we can figure this out. I can protect you.”

I laugh. So hard that my belly aches, and more tears fall from my eyes. So many that my tee shirt is dotted with droplets. She can protect me?

“You can’t…” I try to say through hyperventilated breaths, but Emily pulls me so I’m tucked under her arm.

“I can, Alice. From anything.”

I want her words to be soothing. I want tobelievethem. But they’re so patently untrue, and my guilt is morphing into something much more angry. Rageful.

“Why do you thinkI’mthe one who needs protecting?” I nearly yell, liquor churning in my stomach as I push away from her warm embrace. “Because I’m so delicate? So fragile? Big, strong Emily needs to come save me from something she doesn’t even understand? Maybeyou’rethe one who needs protecting, did you ever think about that?”

The fire in my chest, fueled by alcohol and grief and rage and contrition, grows out of my control. I down the last of my drink quickly, forgoing the straw in favor of getting as much numbing elixir into my system as efficiently as I can. I push off the stool, nearly falling as my feet drop to the floor. Emily’s hand steadies me, but I shake her off and start to stalk out of the dark bar, leaving a wad of cash that I don’t count on the counter. Gen will tell me if I owe her.

“Alis–Alice, wait,” Emily calls after me, and my heart hammers in my chest even harder than before. It was almost as if she…

Her footsteps grow louder behind me as I stumble out of the bar. It’s twilight, but the moon is high, giving me enough light to avoid tripping over the cracks and rifts in the sidewalk if I watch my feet very carefully. “There’s a lot you don’t understand, let me explain…”

“Oh, so I’m both weakandstupid now, is that it?” I scream. I don’t stop walking, even though I can feel her right behind me. I can’t look at her, can’t have her see the truth in my eyes. That the thing she needed to protect herself from was me, and I never gave her the chance.

“Pecas, that’s not what I meant,” she says, her tone begging again. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you. Please give me the chance to explain.”

“No,” I reply, the sense of finality I was trying to imbue less intense than I intended. “I don’t need your explanation or your protection. I can’t leave, and I don’t need your protection.”

“But youdo,” she insists, bringing my boiling blood to record temperatures. “Please, let me explain.”

“Enough,” I demand, stopping in my tracks and whipping around toward her, the world spinning with the movement. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, trying to will the ground to stabilize beneath me. “I am not this brittle shell of awoman who needs your protection, and I refuse to be treated like I am. If you refuse to accept that, you need to leave.”

“Pecas…” she says again, grabbing my elbow.

“??????.”

Finally, the world is still. The silence surrounding Emily and I is deafening. Leaves skitter on the asphalt, my heart thumps in my chest. But it’s all muffled, like I’m under water again.

??????. To her ears,medusa. Jellyfish, the word we agreed to say if we wanted to stop. Because I needed her to stop.