I put everything away and inspected the house more closely, discovering that there was a pair of double doors in the back leading to a small garage where I could park my rental car. I had been worried about it getting damaged if the storm was as bad as everyone said.
There was dust everywhere, and the garage smelled of damp. There was a gas-powered generator back there, and a couple of cans of fuel—of course there would be! A bike was hanging on one wall: yellow, old, with a wicker basket on the handlebars. With nothing better to do, I took it down, thinking I might go for a ride. But when I got it down, I abandoned the idea because the chain was broken.
I went inside, and the feeling of boredom was soon eating at me.No one ever told me how hard it is to do nothing. And I mean nothing at all. I had free time. I wasn’t in a rush. And I was used to running around everywhere: from home to school, from school to work, with an endless flood of jobs, classes, exams…
I entertained myself putting candles all over the house, each with its own matchbook next to it. I had also bought a flashlight and batteries, which I left in a drawer in the kitchen. I eyed the wood-burning stove, wondering if that was going to be something I needed to figure out. Then I went upstairs and unpacked my suitcase.
Hayley had left some clothes in the closet: long-sleeved shirts, a knit sweater. If it got cold, I’d have something to wear. I’d only packed summer clothes.
I made a sandwich and ate it standing up in front of the window in the living room. On the table next to me, my cell phone beeped. It was running out of battery. I plugged it in and stared at it, wanting to check my messages and missed calls, but I forced myself not to. I was on vacation!
Vacation!
I tried to hold on to that idea and to remind myself why I was there.
Come on, Harper. Get it together! You’ve only got a week to decide what to do with the rest of your life.
8
Mermaids’ Tears
Maybe it was because I was there and not somewhere else.
Maybe because it was too late to run away.
Maybe because deep down, I hoped to find the answer I was looking for. Because I’d heard a million times that life was unpredictable, that everything changes when you least expect it, and I wanted to believe that was good. So I stopped running away from it.
You can’t escape what you are unless you try to pretend you’re someone else.
Maybe I’d spent too much time pretending.
I opened my eyes and looked at the ocean. A cool, soft breeze, smelling of algae, caressed my skin. I could taste the salt in the air on my tongue. I walked to the shore, opening my senses to the space around me. Soon, colors, sounds, and aromas enveloped me. It was as if I were looking at the world for the first time. And I loved what I saw. An isolated, untamed part of the planet.
I walked for a long while. The soft sand of the beach gathered in undulating dunes that led to a cliff of bloodred rock. I climbed to the top and looked down, panting. Below me was an endless pebble beach. Stretching as far as the eye could see, it was lashed by foam-capped waves.
A gust of wind knocked me backwards. In the north, the afternoon sky had turned gray. The beach was empty except for a house that looked tiny in the distance and a few surfers in their neoprene outfits. I jogged down a path to the shore.
The water bubbled as it rose around my feet. It was chilly but bracing as I waded through it. I found a shiny red stone among the pebbles. I bent down to pick it up and it twinkled in my fingers under the sunlight. It looked like glass.
“Nice job. You don’t usually find them that big.”
I shouted in surprise and looked up to find a woman grinning at me. Where the hell had she come from?
“Sorry if I scared you,” she said.
“No problem, I just didn’t see you coming,” I said, standing up straight.
The first thing I noticed about her was her dark hair with coppery tones, which fell to her waist. Her skin was slightly tanned, her eyes turquoise green. She was pretty in her baggy white dress, which was thin and gave a view of her body. I couldn’t say exactly how old she was. Her face was girlish, timeless, despite her crow’s-feet.
Ethereal, I thought as I looked at her, bewitched.
She pointed to my hand.
“What are you going to do with it? It’s perfect.”
I looked at the pebble, not understanding what she meant. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
She seemed surprised at my question. “Oh, when I saw you, I thought you… You don’t know what it is?”
