Girl at Sea (2 page)

“Marguerite, I—”

There was another enormous crack overhead. The heavens were screaming. It was as if the waters were coming for her as well. The whole world would drown.

“He’s gone,” she said.

4

The Secret That Dare Not

Speak Its Name

Ollie was in aisle five of Galaxy Art Supply stocking oil paints when Clio Ford emerged from the manager’s office. From her vantage spot by the modeling clay, she could watch him for a moment, drink it all in.

Ollie Myers. Absurdly tall at six-foot five. His hair was shaggy today. He was wearing a deep navy blue button-down shirt and a wide, seventies-style tie. He looked down over the slots that the little tubes went into, carefully making sure that the right colors went into the right places. He cared about that, and it killed her. It really did. She could watch him putting paints away all day. Sad, but extremely true.

Time for the show.

She was standing straight, so she slumped a little and arranged her face into a mask of minor melancholy. She approached slowly.

“Hey,” she said.

5

Ollie turned. Good reflexes. (He used to do all-terrain skateboarding. Very badly, he said. Very,
very
badly. Humble as well. Could you ask for more in a man? No. It was impossible.

All human wants had been fulfilled in him.) Which was why this could never work. She had to be dreaming.

“Well?” he said.

“Well . . .” Clio began. “I’m only a junior in high school, and apparently, most Galaxy employees are in college. And I have no retail experience. No job experience at all, actually.”

“Oh,” Ollie said. His face fell.

“But . . .” Clio went on. “I have this.”

She held up her arm, showing the long tattoo that wound around her right forearm: an electric-blue-and-pink zipper with three yellow-and-black stars flying out of the toggle.

“You got the job!” he said.

“You know it!” Clio said, feeling herself beaming.

Clio had prepared for the interview with her typical precision.

White jeans, gently streaked with lavender paint from when she repainted her room. A pink short-sleeved T-shirt from a manga publisher. A chunky belt she’d made herself by attaching laminated matchbook covers to a plain old leather belt from a thrift store. Long, honey-brown hair worn up, pinned in place with two green cloisonné chopsticks. And the master stroke, her tattoo boldly on display. No long sleeves, no arm warmers, no sticking her arm behind her back. No excuses. The freak flag was flying at full mast.

Her cell phone buzzed in her bag. It had gone off four times during the interview. She ignored it.

“I’m still amazed,” she said. “I didn’t think they liked to see 6

tattoos at job interviews. Unless you’re applying to work at a meth lab. Or a tattoo parlor. I guess
that
would make sense. . . .”

“Or an art store,” he said. “I told you that tattoo would do it.

Daphne loves Masahiro Sato. You were in the second she heard he drew that.”

“She did get excited,” Clio said, remembering the glow in the store manager’s eyes when she said the name of the man who had drawn her tattoo. He was one of Tokyo’s most famous manga artists. He had a massive cult following.

“This may be a historical moment,” she said. “This is the first time one of my dad’s insane impulses actually worked out for me.”

“Your dad wanted you to get the tattoo?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Clio said. “It’s a long story. A long, boring story.”

“I doubt that,” he answered. “I guess I’ll have to make your name tag. I can even make it now. Want a name tag?”

Ollie was from Texas, and he had a voice that dripped low and slow into Clio’s ear. He could draw out the words
name tag
and make it sound like something you would deeply want and cherish forever. She found herself nodding heavily. He took her to a back corner of the store, where there was a small cabinet and a computer. He reached into the cabinet and produced a little machine.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s
C-l-e-o,
right?”

“C-l-i-o.”

“Is that a family name or something?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Clio said. “I was named after a Muse.”

“A Muse? As in the Greek Muses?”

7

“Yep,” Clio said. “Weird parents. What can I tell you?”

“You’re a muse,” he said. “I’ve always wanted a muse. Can you help me paint?”

“I’m the muse of history,” she said. “Is that any help?”

“A muse is always a help,” he said, typing into the label maker.

Muuuuse.
How had she never noticed the magical power of the Southern accent before? In the eight months that she had known Ollie, she had realized that it was attractive, but she hadn’t heard it much. Their exchanges took place at the counter, when he was telling her how much stuff cost. Even still, he could make things that cost “eight dollars and sixty-four cents” seem worth every penny.

It wasn’t until this last month, when he started talking to her as he restocked the shelves, that she got to hear the accent in all its glory. He was a painter and a freshman at Penn. He shared her obsessive love of beautiful, rich inks. He usually wore a vintage pinstripe jacket, rode an old purple bicycle, and smelled like an art studio—a faintly chemical, extremely familiar and homey smell. He missed his sisters in Austin, had no spare cash, and wasn’t above attending openings of art exhibitions he didn’t like just to get the snacks.

Clio, on the other hand, was a high school junior with a past and yet very little to say about the present. She tended to make her own clothes. (Out of other clothes, so it didn’t really count.

It wasn’t like she was wearing homespun or sweaters she had knitted herself.) She lived in a massive, messy Victorian right near the Penn campus. And once upon a time, her parents had been married, and she and her father had invented a little game 8

called Dive!, which turned into a very big deal. Once upon a time, she had been almost rich, not exactly famous, and totally happy. Her life had been unusual. There was a lot of traveling. A Japanese comic book artist had drawn on her arm. Things like that.

But an unusual life is not, by definition, a great one. And now, at seventeen, she felt the deficiencies had been made painfully clear. And there was one that was bothering Clio more than any other.

She had never been kissed.

It was shocking. It was embarrassing. It was largely inexplicable, but Clio knew the general place where the blame could be cast. But that was a long story, too. One that was about to end, she hoped.

The phone buzzed again. She shoved it farther down in her bag.

Ollie carefully tore off the clear sticky strip with Clio’s name printed on it and stuck it to his cheek as he went rummaging in a box for a blank tag. Once he found one, he applied the sticker to it with extreme care. The tag was tiny in his massive hands.

“Here we go,” he said. “Do I get to pin it on you?”

“Sure,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from cracking.

He leaned down to her, which genuinely took some effort, considering he was a foot taller than she was. Now he was at face level with her. He gently pinched up some of her shirt, choosing his spot carefully, just under the left shoulder, directly above her heart. She watched his face as he delicately pierced the fabric; he bit the corner of his lower lip while he worked. The pin shut 9

with a snap, but he didn’t move. He just looked her right in the eye.

Was this it? The kiss? The one she’d been waiting her whole pathetic life for? Here? Now? In the aisle of an art store? Was that possible? It certainly looked like he was in the right position. Levels correct. Expression correct.

Pretend you know what you’re doing,
she told herself quickly.

This is a good general rule in life. When in doubt, pretend that you
know what you’re doing. Just go with it. Do something. Fake it until
you catch on.

A man came around the corner and stood behind Clio, waiting patiently. Ollie looked at him over Clio’s head and backed up.

“Have to help the next person,” he said, a trace of regret on his face. “When do you come in again?”

“I start training tomorrow,” she said.

“I’ll train you myself,” he said. “If that’s okay. But you already know your way around pretty well. Probably better than anyone here.”

He smiled that slow, Southern smile.

Her phone buzzed again.

“Someone really wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I get that,” he said, closing with a smile before turning his attention to the man, who was already mumbling something about looking for a reliable adhesive for small tiles.

The phone continued to buzz and shake and generally rattle itself to pieces as Clio walked home. She looked at the display.

10

Unknown caller.

Unknown caller.

Unknown caller.

Mom.

Jackson.

Unknown caller four more times.

She was popular today, at least with the unknown caller, who wasn’t unknown at all. That was her dad. Unknown caller plus insane repetition equaled dad, every time. He could get on a calling jag and be relentless about it. He was like a little kid—

once he got an idea in his head, he made a big fuss until he got what he was screaming for.

Well, he could wait. She needed time to savor this blissful moment. It was a light, gorgeous late afternoon in the springtime, and she wanted to play her favorite fantasy in her head. . . .

They were at the beach, she and Ollie. They were sharing that brown-and-orange blanket that Clio had gotten in Peru for five dollars—the one she thought would make such a good beach blanket, except she had never taken it to the beach. It covered the bamboo chair in the corner of her room. Ollie wore long, blue trunks with a pattern of flames coming from the bottom of each leg. She wore a red bikini. She didn’t own a red bikini, but she was wearing one. Sometimes her brain misfired in the fantasy and gave her red boots as well, and she would have to fix the image and start again.

Anyway, they were on the beach, sharing the blanket. Clio’s best friend, Jackson, was there on a towel next to them. Jackson would be trying to read her magazine, but every time she looked 11

up, Clio and Ollie would be kissing again. Obviously, because he was so tall—he was like Mr. Torso—he would have to crane his neck down to kiss her.

“Seriously,” Jackson would say. “You guys. You have to stop.”

“I can’t,” Ollie would say. “Come on, look at her! I can’t.”

And then something would happen—Clio couldn’t figure out what, but something—that would pull Ollie away for a minute.

Maybe he would rescue a small child from a giant tangle of killer New Jersey seaweed. Jackson would move closer and say, “Sorry.

It’s just jealousy. You guys are so perfect together. It’s not fair.”

“Yeah . . .” Clio would answer. “I know.”

Long sigh here.

“You were right to wait seventeen years for the perfect, kissable guy,” Jackson would go on. “I just dated whichever guy crossed my path. I feel dirty now. Cheap. Like a balled-up napkin from a coffee place that you find at the bottom of your purse, and it’s kind of . . . hard. And you don’t know why. That’s what I feel like. The mystery napkin.”

Clio would smile benevolently.

Admittedly, the real Jackson would never say this, not in a million years. The real Jackson considered herself a connoisseur of kisses. In fact, she classified them using the same method normally employed by wine tasters. She claimed this was the best way. A look test. A sniff test. A taste test. A consistency test.

Some guys, she explained, had a thin, smooth technique.

Quick, darting moves. They tended to taste of mint because they were obsessed with technique and chewed gum com-pulsively if they thought they had any shot at all. Some were more 12

full-bodied. With them, it was a slower experience, one that Jackson always said had “woody aftertones.”

She stopped short of the swilling-and-spitting part of the wine-tasting metaphor because it kind of fell apart there.