She was babbling.Everything that came out of her mouth was pure vitriol.Only now, when she saw “corruption” in him, was she at fault for anything—and she still somehow managed to make herself out to be the victim.
Fury boiled to life in Adrien’s chest.Marcos had been the best thing that had ever happened to him, the only person who had ever told him that he deserved to be more than his mother’s servant and punching bag.In their few months together, Marcos had been better to Adrien than Joyce had been to him his entire life.Hehad treated Adrien with nothing more than utmost love and patience.They had never done anything wrong, neither of them.
And here his mother was, dying and cursing his love.His heart.His personhood.His verybeing.Saying that he was confused and dangerous and sick in both mind and body.
He was done.
He didn’t have anything else to say to her.He turned around and left the apartment.
And maybe heshouldhave turned around and left six years earlier.It probably would have been for the best.She had been selfish her whole life, why couldn’t he have been greedy for one moment?
He didn’t say goodbye to Jessica or David.There was no reason to explain why he was leaving.They’d listened to what their mother had said, had heard her screams from the other side of the door.Besides that, he didn’t know if he could bring himself to say goodbye without breaking down.
Evening found him walking along Ocean Beach.It was halfway through October—“second summer”, as the locals called it, which always brought the tourists in.They were all crowded on the breakwater terraces at the bottom of the Great Highway seawall, drinking beer, listening to music, and laughing.A kid barely out of toddlerhood was carrying bucketfuls of wet sand up from the shore and dumping it all over the concrete.
“Careful of the waves, kiddo,” his dad slurred as the kid went back down to the sea for more.The tide was getting high and the kid would get thrown up against the seawall if he wasn’t careful.
Adrien sat on the steps and looked out over the ocean.His eyes fell to the rubble of the breakwater, composed out of debris and discarded gravestones.He’d known about them long before Marcos had told him about the water organ.They had freaked him out as a child and his initial thought was that someone had thrown the whole grave—body and all—into the sea.
He’d run into his father’s arms crying, pointing at the fragments of the headstones.As calm as ever, his dad had taken him by the hand and led him to where the shore met the waves, peering out at them.
“It’s a little scary to see a grave in such a weird place, huh?”he’d said, tone gentle.“Don’t worry, nothing bad happened.They’re left over from a long time ago.”
“What happened to the bodies, Dad?”Adrien asked, eyes round and fearful.
“Well,” his father began in a patient tone.“A long time ago there used to be a lot of cemeteries here in San Francisco, but since they took up so much land, there was no room for new houses to be built for all the living people.So what happened was the city had to dig up all the graves and move them down south to Colma to bury them again.”
“Theydug them up?!”little Adrien choked, aghast.
“They did,” his father confirmed with a nod.“It’s because there was lots of room down there and not enough up here.So when they buried the bodies in Colma, they used some of the old graves to make the breakwater: that way it would help protect the people living close to the beach from big waves.”
“So… the dead helped the living?”Adrien asked.
“Yeah, I guess they did,” his dad said with a smile.
It was a morbid memory, but one of the clearest Adrien had of his father before he died.
When he got a little older, he sometimes wished his mom had died instead of his dad.The thought had made him so guilty that he could have thrown up.
Because his mom hadn’t always been a bad woman.He had some fond memories of her—mostly her smiling and laughing with her friends, dancing with their dad in the kitchen, playing with him, his siblings, and their dog.But that was all from before his dad died, and all of his mother’s happiness and kindness had disappeared with him—
“MY SON!”
Adrien looked up just in time to see the little boy disappear below the waves.The plastic bucket that he’d been gripping bobbed in the water above him.The tourists on the terraces were standing up, gasping and pointing at the water.
Adrien didn’t have time to wait for any of them to act.
He hit the water before he realized what he was doing.
It took everything in him to prevent his tail from coming out.Pouring his focus into preventing its formation, he was unable to navigate the suction of the undertow.Without the aid of his tail, the tide thrashed him about, sending his body rolling.He let himself be pushed back to the shallows before diving below the waves again.The frothy water, tangled with seaweed and trash, endlessly assaulted him from all angles.Every now and then he could see a head, a leg, a hand sticking up out of the waves, flailing violently.
If only he had his tail, his extra limbs, he could slice through the seaweed, break through the violent tide.But he couldn’t risk being seen, couldn’t risk exposing himself.
Back down into the ocean he went, limbs questing until they secured around the thrashing form of the child.He held on despite himself, getting pelted with slaps and splashes—another wave hit him and—
And
An image of Jessica and David standing in the apartment hallway burst like fireworks over his mind’s eye.He hadn’t even said goodbye to them.He wished he’d said goodbye to them.
