Chapter Piper
Piper
I’m surprised he’s following me. He’s so good, so principled.
And I’m inconsiderate. Untrustworthy. A pain in the ass.
Just ask my sister.
I want confirmation of Henry’s commitment. I want him to want me, even when I’m challenging. Tati would say I’m testing him. She’d tell me this is wrong, both sneaking into the park and making Henry prove himself.
Though, look. He’s game.
I link my arm through his. We walk until we reach the Marine Conservation Park. The ticket queues are eerily quiet. The tall gate is closed to block the entrance. A chain is wrapped around it, secured with a padlock. Henry and I stop just short of the glow of a lamppost.
“Are we climbing?” he whispers.
“No. We’ll go around the back.” Taking his hand, I say, “Come on.”
We travel the park’s perimeter, moonlight and dim solar-powered bulbs illuminating our path.
There’s a privacy fence lined with spiky shrubs.
Orange signs that say KEEP OUT! PRIVATE PROPERTY!
are posted on all the gates along the way.
I catch Henry eyeing one apprehensively.
Out on the sand, though, the warning signs disappear.
There are breaks in the fence to make way for king palms nearly fifty feet tall.
Those gaps are patched by rickety dune fencing that’s easy to breach.
I stop at my usual entry point and pull back the fence, making a space big enough for Henry to slip through. He hesitates, peering down the sand that runs adjacent to the park. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“Well. I never said it was.”
He gives me a dubious look. “Security cameras?”
“Not where we’re going.”
“Night patrol? Trainers? Vets who check in on the animals?”
“The patrolman—a physically unimpressive rent-a-cop—does his first walk-through at ten; now that he’s done, he won’t be back for hours. No vets or trainers until morning. After dark, the animals just sleep or swim.” I jiggle the fencing. “You’re not chickening out on me, are you?”
He expels a breath and steps through the gap and onto Sugar Bay Marine Conservation Park property. I follow close behind.
We walk along a little-used path, one that circles the park’s border and is well out of range of the security cameras. Eventually, we’ll end up at the manta ray exhibit, but first…
I stop and point at the ground, at a square of concrete different from its neighbors.
My parents’ medallion.
“Whoa,” Henry says softly, stooping down for a closer look. He runs his fingers over my dad’s name, STEPHEN NIXON, and then my mom’s, CONSTANCE NIXON. He gazes up at me. “I didn’t notice this when I was here earlier.”
“Most people just walk right over it.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No, actually. It’s here for me and my sister and Turtle and everyone else who loved my mom and dad. We appreciate it. That’s what matters.”
“Now I appreciate it too,” he says, his voice steeped in fondness for two people he never got to meet. He rises, resting his hands on either side of my neck. He whispers, “I’m glad you showed me. Makes me feel like I know you better. Why you are who you are. Why you love what you love.”
“I’ve been exploring my options,” I tell him. “Like we talked about. Thinking about marine-focused majors. Considering schools.”
Smiling, he asks, “Which schools?”
“There are a few in California, and I like the College of Charleston in South Carolina. SUNY Stony Brook is my top choice, though.” I pull in a breath and meet his eyes.
“It’s in New York. On Long Island. Not so far from my grandparents,” I add, because I don’t want him to think I’m trying to chase him.
He cradles my face, the rough pads of his fingers brushing my jaw. “Not so far from West Point.” Touching his lips to my hair, he murmurs, “I wouldn’t hate being close to you next year.”
I smile up at him.
I wouldn’t hate that either.
***
We head for the manta ray exhibit. There are a few benches near the glass-walled pool, but we sit on the ground, stretching our legs out on the pavement. The rays glide through the water, stirring up the sandy bottom when they dip low. I could fall asleep watching them.
“It’s kind of mesmerizing,” Henry says.
“Totally. God, I wish I could join them.”
He grins, more relaxed now that we’re seated and still. “I bet you watched The Little Mermaid a lot when you were a kid.”
“I did! I used to waste birthday candles wishing I could live under the sea with Ariel.”
“Not to mention Delphina.”
“That’s right. My first true love.”
He laughs, but I’m serious. My parents introduced me to Delphina and the Starlit Sea.
They took turns reading a few chapters aloud each night.
We finished about six months before they left for their getaway in Tampa.
I read the subsequent books independently, repeatedly, and then I met Gabi, a girl as Delphina obsessed as I am.
My parents didn’t know Gabi long, but they adored her.
They were buddies with Maggie and Byron too.
During those months when Mom and Dad and Gabi overlapped, our parents went out for drinks, and we had a couple of joint family barbecues.
My mom often got on the phone with Gabi’s mom to discuss us girls and this reality TV show about rich housewives that they both loved.
After the accident, it was hard to be at home but impossible to be anywhere else.
Memories of my parents floated around me like bubbles in the sea.
They were everywhere, but fragile, impossible to touch.
Tati might as well have been a cyborg. She never once cried in front of me.
She completed tasks from morning until night, handling the wake and the burial, keeping the house, managing the money, and dealing with my grandparents, who had been weepy and cross since they’d arrived in Florida.
I realize now that my sister was too busy and too stressed to cope with her own grief, much less walk me through mine, but at the time, I felt utterly abandoned.
After the accident, Gabi slept over for weeks, hugging me while I cried into the night.
Maggie checked in often, bringing meal after meal.
Byron helped with repairs and heavy lifting.
After the accident, I slept with Delphina of the Starlit Sea under my pillow, imagining Mom’s voice lifting indignantly as she read Delphina’s parts, Dad’s tenor speaking Uncle Kye’s lines like he knew the merman personally.
When Tati was prepping for us to move out of the four-bedroom split-level we grew up in and into our two-bedroom apartment at the Towers, she packed up my room while I was at school and found the paperback in my rumpled sheets.
When I got home, she confronted me, making me feel foolish, like sentimentality was for little kids who didn’t know better.
“Keep your books on the shelves,” she snapped, then left me to cry alone in my boxed-up bedroom.
Even at ten, I knew I should try to cut her some slack.
She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since our parents’ passing; dark hollows had appeared beneath her eyes.
She had paper cuts all over her hands thanks to the hours upon hours she spent wrapping valuables in packing paper.
There was a shit ton of tension between her and our grandparents.
She missed Mom and Dad and her life back in Boston.
But she was so snippy with me.
When Gabi came over later that day, I told her about my confrontation with Tati. She labeled my sister a wicked sea witch and tucked Delphina into the box with my folded linens.
“Why do you think mermaids are so often romanticized?” Henry asks now.
“Good question. Aside from the mermaids in the Harry Potter books, who are terrifying, they’re usually portrayed as attractive. Irresistible. Once Delphina finds her way into the sea, mermen fall over their tails trying to get her attention. She only has eyes for Hurley, though.”
Henry shakes his head, amused. “Hurley?”
“He’s the love interest,” I say, like obviously. It blows my mind that there are people of my generation who aren’t entrenched in the Delphinaverse. It’s as weird as people Tati’s age who’ve never read Twilight.
“He and Delphina are fated to be together,” I explain, sighing at the ardor of it all. “It’s beautiful and super intense. By the end of the final book, they can’t keep their hands off each other.”
His eyebrows furrow. “But that sort of attraction’s pretty unbelievable.
Living underwater, their skin would be all shriveled, and the salt would do a number on their hair.
Also, how do merfolk procreate? Are they mammals who have live babies, or do they lay eggs like fish?
And do mermaids nurse their merbabies, or do they leave them to fend for themselves like newly hatched sea turtles? ”
I stare at him, wonderstruck by the way his mind works. But I’m also growing accustomed to his contemplation, to the charming way he puzzles over bizarre things.
“What?” he asks. “Am I being gross?”
“You’re being adorable.”
He makes a face. “Liar.”
“Seriously. If I wasn’t wild about you before, you’d have sealed the deal with these latest musings.”
He grins. “Look, if I’m going to ditch my comfort zone to break and enter, you’re gonna have to leave yours behind so we can discuss merpeople getting it on.”
I laugh as he tucks me under his arm, pulling me close.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I whisper, watching the rays.
“Thanks for inviting me. You know—”
A beam of light cuts through our corner of the park.
Henry goes absolutely still.
“Who’s there?” a voice shouts.
My heart catapults into my throat.
“Who the fuck is that?” Henry whispers.
It’s got to be the night patrolman.
He’s late.
Or early.
Shit.
“Security guard?” Henry demands in an undertone.
In all the years I’ve been sneaking into the park, I’ve never encountered a soul. But tonight…tonight of all nights.
“Maybe?” I say, my voice trembling. “Probably.”
“Jesus, Piper!”
I was casual and cool when I suggested coming to the park tonight. Not once did I seriously consider the possibility of being found out.
Of getting in trouble.
Of getting Henry in trouble.
The flashlight beam bounces through the manta rays’ enclosure, skimming the top of their pool, the tops of our heads, illuminating Henry’s panicked face.
The park is nearly a hundred acres, but the patrolman seems to have zeroed in on us.
“Come out!” he bellows. “You’re trespassing on private property!”
All I can think of as I sit frozen on the pavement, dangerously close to cardiac arrest, is Henry. He follows rules, focuses on the future. He has goals. He has dreams.
West Point.
He could lose it because of me.
I scramble into a crouch, keeping my chin tucked, my head down.
He gives me a questioning look, mouth tight.
I grab his hand and whisper, “Follow me.”