Raging Sea (2 page)

“So you knew my family?” I ask. “All my mother really told me is that they were important figures in the Alpha government. I didn’t know they were famous.”

“As counselors and consorts, they were widely regarded, but it was their warrior instincts that earned them respect. You dishonor them with your halfhearted efforts.”

“I’m getting better!” I argue.

Water ruptures from the soil and curls around my neck like an anaconda. It jerks me off the ground nearly ten feet. I dangle and kick for freedom. She could kill me right here. She just might.

“Better is not good enough, Lyric Walker,” she says casually, as if she’s not strangling the life out of me. “We march to Tempest to free our people. Your pathetic efforts will intimidate no one. Is there no ferocity in you?”

The air slowly leaves my lungs. My legs search for land that isn’t there.

“Your city has been demolished. Your friends are dead and gone. Enemies roam your lands. Soldiers have taken your people, torn them from the arms of their mothers, all to cut them open and see how they work! Does none of this burn your passions? Where is your fury?”

“I can’t breathe!” I croak.

She frowns, and just like that, the water releases me. It rains to the ground, taking me along with it, and I land in the sand, gasping for oxygen. She stands over me with the sun behind her, so I cannot see her expression, but I don’t need to see it to know it is full of disgust.

“I have fury.” I choke.

“Then why don’t I fear you? Do you know why I am so much stronger than you with this glove? It’s because, as the humans say, I have scores to settle. My people were obliterated, reduced from millions to thousands. We suffered the indignation of living like rats in your surface world, to be spied on and attacked by human filth. We humiliated ourselves, cowering on your beach, and it was all for nothing! The Rusalka found us. We were easy targets. They slaughtered even more of our people, taking us from thousands to hundreds, and among those broken souls was my selfsame. Fathom’s death will not have been in vain. This weapon I wear burns bright with revenge, and I will use it to crush those responsible—the Rusalka, the prime, and the people at Tempest.”

Fathom.
Hearing his name is a punch in the belly. In the two weeks that Arcade and I have traveled together, she has never mentioned him once, not in passing, nothing. I’ve been smart enough to keep my mouth shut too. After all, we’re both in love with him. I suddenly suspect that all this training is an excuse to get me out into the middle of nowhere so she can kill me. She would be justified, I suppose.

“He’s not dead,” I croak.

“Of course he is,” she says, watching me like I’ve said something crazy. “The prime and his consort cut him down in the water. If the Rusalka didn’t track him and feed on his body, then the sharks devoured him for sure. No, he did not survive. He has gone on to join the Great Abyss.”

I’m incensed by her certainty that the boy we both love did not survive. I saw the wound on his side and the blood that leaked from it, and I saw the goodbye in his eyes when he kissed me and swam away, but I can’t give up hope. I cannot accept a world in which he’s not alive.

The glove glows brighter on my hand. Yes, I do have something that fuels it. It’s regret for not holding on to him tighter. I should have held him and never let him go. I was a fool to respect their relationship. She didn’t . . . doesn’t love him. When you love a person, you don’t shrug your shoulders at their loss. You don’t just move on.

A funnel of water shoots out of the ground and catches Arcade, catapulting her into the sky. I wrap her in silt and mud and bring her down to the ground like a pile driver. This time I don’t hold back, so when she hits, there’s a bang I’m sure can be heard for miles.

I walk over to her limp body as she recovers. Instead of a fiery anger, I see the faintest hint of a smile.

“There is a fighter inside you, Lyric Walker,” Arcade says. “Tempest may tremble before you after all.”

I hear someone clear her throat behind us. When I turn, I find Bex standing a few yards away, holding my empty backpack. She’s wearing a miniskirt, a Superman T-shirt, and a pair of Mary Janes that add two inches to her already-tall frame. She’d look hot if it weren’t for the impatient crease between her eyes.

“We’re out of food,” she says. “If you’re done killing each other, we need to go shopping.”

I
KNOW IT’S NOT SOMETHING I SHOULD BRAG ABOUT,
but I’m really good at shoplifting.

Of course, I had to learn the hard way. My first attempts were embarrassing. I was too nervous, fumbling with my backpack and looking around suspiciously. I got caught six times in a row! On one of my first tries, the Korean owner of a convenience store chased Bex and me into the woods with a shotgun. We had to hide in a wetland all night while he shouted Korean profanities and mosquitoes dined on our skin.

Anyway, I learned some things from those experiences, like to avoid stores where the guy behind the counter is also the guy who owns the shop. This is how he pays his bills, and it means a lot to him. Big chain stores like 7-Eleven and Wawa don’t pay their employees enough to care if you walk out with a case of Slim Jims, so they don’t when you do.

Making a list is also helpful. My mom used to make them when we went for groceries at C-Town. She said it helped her stay focused. She was right. The stores I’m ripping off have a rainbow of colorful distractions and can hypnotize you with their endless varieties of corn-syrup-soaked foodlike products. When I go in, I know what I want to take, and if it isn’t on the list, then it stays on the shelf.

But the real secret to my success is what I call the four simple steps:

1. Find a store with a male cashier, somewhere between the ages of nineteen and fifty-five.

2. Dress Bex in some hoochie clothes.

3. While the cashier/pervert is drooling over her, fill up the backpack with necessities.

4. Run like maniacs.

For the most part, the four simple steps are foolproof, just so long as Bex has Cashier Boy’s attention. Unfortunately, today’s “shopping trip” has a bit of a snag in it. Bex is in a mood and not talking to me.

“It’s nothing,” Bex says as she applies a thick layer of eyeliner in the side-view mirror of our Dodge Caravan.

“It’s something,” I mutter. The tension between us grows like weeds these days. I assumed it was due to sleeping in construction sites and wearing the same clothes for days on end. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to think. My friend is an enigma, the queen of the emotional stiff-arm, and few can see the trouble behind her happy eyes. I’ve learned ways to get around it, but nothing seems to work now. All I know for certain is that “nothing” is about me.

“Forget it, Lyric,” she whispers as she touches up her lip gloss, then steps back to get a better look at herself in the tiny mirror. She looks like she just stepped out of
Lolita
. When you combine all the tiny clothing, makeup, and her natural sun-kissed California-girl face, she’s impossible not to notice and, we hope, impossible to resist.

“How is it that we have both been washing our hair in park fountains, eating the same diet of Snapple and Swedish Fish, and yet you look like you’re ready for the runway, while I look like that thing that lives in the folds of Jabba the Hutt’s skin?”

“Let’s get this over with, all right?” she says, then walks across the empty street.

“I do not approve of this behavior,” Arcade seethes. She sits on the hood of the Dodge, staring at our target, the Piggly Wiggly across the street. Unlike Bex, Arcade’s stiff-arms are not so emotional. They’re more like angry uppercuts. There’s no beating around the bush with her feelings. Right now she’s looking at me like I’m something on the bottom of her boot.

“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Arcade. We’ve got to eat,” I explain, reaching into the back of the Caravan for my water bottle. I eyeball it to make sure it’s full, then slip it into my backpack.

“There is honor in hunger.”

“If we starve to death before we get to Tempest, that would be disappointing.”

She grunts.

“In the hunting grounds, my people threw thieves into the black chasm to feed the Leviathan.”

“Leviathan?”

“A mammoth beast as big as a ship with a thousand teeth and a taste for brains,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Is there anything where you’re from that’s not gross?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she turns her disapproving gaze back toward the store. Out front is a sign featuring a cartoon pig with a big “Come on in, folks!” grin on his fat pink face. I don’t think he’d be smiling if he knew what I’m planning.

“Stay in the car and try to stay out of sight,” I beg her. Like Bex, Arcade is a beauty, but there is something slightly nonhuman about her appearance that draws a lot of attention.

“A Daughter of Triton does not hide,” she barks.

There’s no point in arguing with her, so I hurry to catch up with Bex.

I find her out front peering through the store’s big windows. A large
NO COASTERS!
sign is taped to the glass.

“He’s perfect,” she says.

I take a peek. The cashier inside is watching a football game on a tiny TV set he’s propped up on the counter. He’s in his late twenties, chubby, balding, and pink, not unlike the pig on the sign. He’s exactly what we hope for when we do this. Teenage boys are nervous as pigeons around Bex; same with the sad forty-year-olds we sometimes come across. The mid-twenties guy is our sweet spot. He’s trapped in a dead-end job, insecure about it, and desperate for some attention from a pretty girl.

“Lyric, make me a promise,” Bex asks as she reaches for the door. “Once you do your thing with the water bottle, turn off the magic mitten.”

“Why?” I say. I can hear the defensiveness in my voice.

“You scared the guy at the last store.”

I laugh.

“When that Slushy machine blew up, I thought he was going to have a heart attack,” I say.

“It wasn’t funny.” She’s dead serious.

“Bex, he wasn’t hurt, and besides, I need the practice for when we get to Tempest.”

She scowls and shakes her head.

“Promise me you won’t use it in here, or I’m not going in,” she says, and I can tell she means it. She takes her hand off the door as if she might march right back to the car.

“Okay,” I say. I hide the glove behind my back.

She nods a thank-you, then steps into the frosty, over-air-conditioned shop. The bell tied to the door jingles a hello. I watch her approach the counter, suddenly wearing a smile she used to wear for me. She says something, bats her eyelashes, reaches out, and touches the cashier’s arm, throwing out the bait. A grin stretches across his face as wide as the Rio Grande.
Reel him in, Bex.

It’s time for me to get to work. I unscrew the cap on my water bottle and pour the contents onto the sidewalk. Then I shove my hand up under my shirt and, with the slightest amount of concentration, turn on the “magic mitten.” The metal glows blue but, hidden beneath the fabric, it’s not so noticeable if someone happens to drive by right now. Above the crackling power, I hear voices fluttering in my ear.

What would you have us do?

“Make some mischief.”

I send the puddle into action, watching it seep under the crack of the door and into the store. I nudge it along so that it crawls up the wall to the ceiling, leaving a wet zigzag trail behind, until it finds its target, one of the dozen surveillance cameras mounted on the walls. The liquid invades the lens, swirls around in its electrical guts, and shorts out the entire system. A moment later it’s blind, and I direct my little wet sidekick to the next camera, then the next, then the next, until all twelve are busted. Proud of myself, I power down my glove and push open the door.

The bell on the door announces my arrival. This is the moment when everything can fall apart and it’s best to abandon the plan and look for another store. The jingle distracts the cashier, and he tears his eyes away from Bex and sends them my way. It is now that he will decide whether I’m suspicious or merely disappointing to look at. This part of the plan is hard on my ego. I don’t get to be the hot one when we shoplift. I have to be the Plain Jane, only this Plain Jane looks like she sleeps beneath an underpass—no makeup, ratty hair, and a pimple on the end of my chin that could take out Pompeii. I tell myself that I am unattractive on purpose. If I strutted into this store looking all kinds of yummy, the plan would not work. Secretly, I hope that he can see past the grime. It hurts when they don’t, but it means we’ll eat.

He gives me the once-over. Blinks. Sniffs. Then turns back to Bex. Sigh.

“I am so lost,” she coos.

“Well, maybe I can help,” he says.

The Piggly Wiggly has four aisles and refrigerator cases on three walls. There’s a soda machine and a microwave and a hot dog carousel. In my experience, the necessities are in the farthest aisle and the stuff that gives you diabetes is front and center, stocked on low shelves so little kids can grab it before their parents can say no. I hurry to the far back corner, where I find the first thing on my list—soap. You don’t know how important soap is until you don’t have it. Two bars of Ivory go into my pack, then a tube of Crest, a small bottle of green mouthwash, and—oh!—I can’t believe they have dental floss! That’s been on the list since I started making a list. A couple rolls of toilet paper are making things crowded, but after weeks of using gas-station t.p. . . . well, that’s TMI.

You’re stealing again, Lyric? I taught you better.

Oh, hey, Dad! I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up to make me feel guilty. Yeah, I’m shoplifting again, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and these are the desperate-est of the desperate times. I’m living in a car. I’m dead broke. I’m on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

The second aisle is where the term
food
is thrown about with loose abandon. Here I find peanuts coated in honey, peanuts coated in peanut butter, peanut-butter-flavored protein bars, yogurt-covered raisins, “diet” desserts. This is the stuff that’s killing me, but it’s easy to carry and never goes bad. I stuff as many as I can into the pack.