Mother always disapproved of our friendship, but it was with thoughtful intentions. To keep people safe from me, and me safe from others, Mother’s only motive was to cure me. She had never been able to accept me for what I was, this creature she had birthed.
As long as my face was covered, I would remain benign.
I was no more harmful than a man with two fists and a temper.
Though hardly a soul had given me a chance to prove myself otherwise.
It had always and only been Mother and me, but at what point had I begun to long for things I would never have? Was it selfish to be thirteen and wonder what it would be like to be a part of something more than this? Would it be so wrong to live like this, bethis, and want more of everything?
Each night I read chapters of my twenty-first book before falling asleep. The spiders alerted me in my dreams, and I would open my eyes to the present surrounding me again. I lay awake, knowing the spiders were reminding me of things, of greatness pressing inside me, and I would get this powerful sense that someone was out there waiting for me.
CHAPTER 2
ADORA
Morning of the New Moon
The Sullivan Cottage
November 15, 2020
The sea wasa collector of things.
My earliest memory was when I was six. Mom had carried me on her hip in the sea, even though she was unable to touch the ocean floor. Violent waves toppled over us again and again, and it had become a struggle to keep our heads above water. But I remembered her crying. It had been a manic sort of cry. The kind nothing could stop.
I’d never told her that when she was crying, the ocean was curling its salty fingers into my hair, ripping away my favorite lilac hair clip. Or that my sea was shoving her salty fingers down my throat, stealing away my breath.
When I was eight, my sisters, and my best friend, Adeline, and I had matching pastel two-pieces. One June, after Mom could no longer speak, we waded in the shallow while Dad held Mom in the deep. Mom returned with puffy eyes and no smile, and Dad returned without his wedding band. He’d said a wave slipped it right off his finger. After all this time, the ocean never returned her smile or his wedding band.
When I was ten, I awoke on the shore the morning after Adeline died. I had my head lying on praying hands and was consumed with the kind of grief that made everything hurt. The tide had come up and over me like a blanket, wiping away my tears.
On a cold October night when I was fourteen, after Mom could no longer walk, my sisters and I built tents with driftwood and worn tarps from Dad’s fishing shed. We camped through the night on shore and didn’t make it to morning. The tide had rolled in and choked our fire, and as her waters slipped back into the ocean, she took my purple glitter jelly sandals with her.
I haven’t seen them since.
The sea was a collector of things. It took things we cherished—most things we’d forgotten—and I still found myself drawn to her, unable to resist her call, needing to step into the graveyard of the lost, wild, and treasured.
My foot let off the last step of the stone stairway, and I laid my hands on the weathered gate, feeling the sharp imperfections scratch against my palm. There, I looked out into the expansive, milky-white horizon, my gaze falling upon my beloved black sea.
A sliver of wood pierced my skin, and I sucked in a sharp breath, turning my hand over to find a splinter in my finger. Deep and stuck. Ugly and imperfect. I pressed against it, and the slight burn was somewhat satisfying, like a tiny knife cutting into me every time I flicked my fingernail against it.
There was pleasure in pain for someone like me—someone who was a pretty shell holding in an ocean of rage. So, I closed my fist and decided to keep the splinter for as long as I could. Until I wouldn’t need it any longer. Perhaps that could last forever, like this unexpected winter which arrived one night and never left.
It was different here. Snow flurries drifted, gentle and dreamy, wrapping the town in a gloomy silence, like a film noir. I dropped my hand and dragged in a full breath until my lungs filled with the winter chill. Then I let it go and unlatched the gate, my collected splinter pounding in my index finger.
The beach was crisp and frigid, and my dress was trailing across the sand as I stepped closer to the shore on bare, clandestine soles. A cool morning mist flipped over the waves and howled in my ears, flicking tiny grains of sand against my cheeks and into my eyes.
At the shoreline, I gathered the bottom of my dress in one hand, pinned it to my thigh, and clutched the glass bottle—with my message inside—in my other hand. I stood deathly still, keeping my feet just behind the waterline, daring the sea to come and collect me, too. Come treasure me, too. Come love me, too.
Anticipation scratched up my spine, then her denim waters came, wrapping around my ankles and teasing me. My numbed feet sank, wet sand slipping out from under my toes and pulling back without me, the ocean loving her shore but never loving me enough to fight for me in return.
Though the sea and I had been here before, disappointment still flooded my chest. As it would time and time again.
As I looked up, I let the bottom of my dress go, and the linen was swept up in her waters. The new sheer moon was a ghost, a transparent sheet pinned to the ashen, pre-morning sky. It was time, and I uncorked the bottle and slid the message into my palm.
All my wicked thoughts were tattooed inside.
Inky messages wept in fluid cursive, punched into the brittle ivory.
