Chapter 14
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Rylan knocked on his mother’s bathroom door. It was the morning of their first dive. Everyone, including Francis and MJ, were
up on deck preparing to dock at Icara Key. But he couldn’t bring himself to join them. He was excited. At least, he had been
looking forward to diving for weeks. Only now, the thought of being below water his father and the woman he’d just told everything
to seemed more claustrophobic than freeing.
Lila opened the door, wrapped in a buttermilk kimono, its long bell sleeves lined with marabou trim. She smiled, wrinkleless,
and pulled her son into the bathroom.
“Sit, my love. Have you put your sunscreen on?”
Rylan let her guide him to a seat on the lip of the bathtub. “Not yet.” He watched her deposit a dollop of 50 SPF foundation
onto her palm. She rubbed it into his face, starting with the crescent of acne along his jaw. Rylan shut his eyes. His mother’s
hands moved along his cheeks to his temples until his whole face felt smoothed and cold.
“Won’t you come with us?” He knew the answer, but he wanted to ask just in case.
“Simply isn’t for me, my sweet.” Lila sat beside him and used her index finger to redefine Rylan’s curls.
“I know.”
Lila had only gone down with them once, the first time, when the twins had their open water certification dive with MJ eight
years ago. Rylan had been astonished by his mother, always so graceful and empyrean, floundering underwater like a drowning
kitten. Alejandro eventually fished her out, and from then on the extent of Lila’s relationship with the sea was to sunbathe
beside it. Rylan had been so young at the time that the whole thing seemed silly. The water was safe to him. But all these
years later, he wondered if his mother had been having a panic attack. He wondered if his anxiety and the stomach-flipping
sensation that he was always out of his depth came from her.
“I just . . . don’t feel so good about it anymore.”
Rylan let himself lean slightly into Lila. She took his face in her hands and ushered him down until his head lay in a cloud
of marabou trim in her lap, careful not to get the sunscreen from his face on her robe. Her fingernails ran along his scalp.
She smelled like cherries. And roses, maybe. He felt cocooned by her robe, her hands, the room. Steam from the bath she must
have just taken misted the mirrors and made the whole space warm and sleepy.
“You’ve been on edge this week,” Lila said. “Your sister has that effect on people.”
Rylan wanted to say that she was wrong. Tia wasn’t the thing that was bothering him. Well, at least, not the main thing. But
her haphazard runaway plan had put a strain on him. How was he suddenly responsible for whether or not the Camerons remained intact?
“It’s not just her,” Rylan whispered, and he rotated his shoulder reflexively. If he hadn’t told MJ what she wanted to know, would she have kept shaking him? Would she have yelled?
“Your father?” Lila guessed.
“No.”
Rylan turned his face and buried it into Lila’s stomach. He liked feeling small like this, as if he were only his head and
shoulders, tiny enough for his mother to wrap herself around him.
“MJ?” said Lila, going down the list, apparently, in order of who she deemed most inflammatory.
Rylan didn’t reply.
Lila sighed. “I do wish we could have vacations with just the five of us. I tried to talk your father into an overwater villa
in Bora Bora, but he insisted on this.”
Of course he did. A Cameron graduation could not be celebrated with relaxation. There had to be an adventure. A rite of literal
passage.
“Rylan!” Francis’s voice called out from abovedeck.
“You’d better get ready, dove.” Lila helped him sit up. She touched her thumb to his chin. “You’ll have a ball.”
She rose and steered him to the door just as Francis opened it wide.
“Ah, there you are. Going to see us off, Lil?”
“Dressed like this?” Lila said, sweeping the sheer fabric of her kimono through the air in a grand gesture. “No, I must—”
“Change first,” Francis and Rylan finished for her in unison. Francis slapped Rylan’s back affably. A warm feeling broke open
in Rylan’s chest.
“Am I that predictable?” Lila moaned as she followed the two of them up on deck.
“Yes, Mom.”
“Having the proper outfit is an art,” Lila said, hugging the kimono around her slim form. “Even if there’s no one to see it.”
“We appreciate you making an exception, Picasso.” Francis looped an arm around her waist and planted a brief kiss on her scalp.
“Don’t we, Rylan?”
“Yeah. It’s an honor,” Rylan laughed.
He was getting excited again. The water was beautiful, the day was perfect. Even if MJ were coming on the dive with them,
it’s not like he’d have to talk with her. They could just swim and admire the sea, and when they returned Lila would be waiting
for them, with drinks in hand.
Someone cleared their throat behind them, and Rylan, Lila, and Francis turned.
Tia was leaned against the chart house, arms folded. She had on her wet suit already, zipped up to the chin, and with her
red-tipped hair and dark-rimmed eyes, she looked like some kind of angsty, dystopian warrior.
“We diving or what?”
“Yes, yes, go get your gear ready,” Francis said, and he pulled away from Rylan and Lila.
Tia shouldered her way past Rylan, and he rolled his eyes when her back was to him. Was she really upset by them having a
good time? Acting like a family? It was like she didn’t want the Camerons to be good. He gritted his teeth.
“Suit up, Rylan!” MJ shouted from the cockpit.
“Okay, okay,” he said, already irritated by Tia’s tantrum.
He started to cross the deck, but Lila drew him back. “Stay safe down there. Listen to your father. And when you come back,
let me attend to your hair. It always looks so good after being in salt water—”
“Okay!” Rylan snapped. He yanked away. “Anybody else want to order me around while we’re at it?”
Lila reached up to grasp his arm. “Francis Rylan Cameron . . .”
Rylan shrugged her off and spun on his heel. Francis stepped in the way. The two of them were eye to eye.
“Boy,” Francis said, and Rylan’s spine seemed to fold. He dropped his chin to his chest and stared hard at the deck.
“What?”
Francis took him by the shoulders and spun him to face Lila, who was using her thumb to dab at the corners of her eyes.
“You upset your mother,” Francis said calmly. He had Rylan’s shoulders pulled so far back he was sure his shoulder blades
would touch.
Rylan glanced around for Tia instinctively. She was on the other side of the ship, getting a scuba tank out of one of the
bilges with Alejandro’s help. MJ, however, had heard or maybe sensed the disagreement. She thundered across the deck.
“Francis!”
Francis released Rylan and stepped instead by Lila’s side, arm around her once more. He looked at Rylan in profound disappointment,
and every muscle in Rylan’s body seized up. MJ was going to try to intervene. Or, worse, let her temper boil over and spout
off everything she knew. Everything Rylan had told her.
“I’m sorry,” Rylan whispered.
MJ reached them, nostrils flared. She paused when she heard Rylan apologize. He did his best not to look like a damsel, just
sulky. But he couldn’t ignore the way his breaths came clipped and his muscles wouldn’t unclench.
Lila perked instantly. “That’s my gentle boy.”
Francis studied him for a moment, then gave a nod, and relief rinsed away Rylan’s tension. MJ’s brows gathered over narrowed
eyes.
“I’ll go get ready now,” Rylan said, and he removed himself from the three of them before something worse could happen.
“Excellent idea, son,” Francis called after him. “And once we’re in the water, gird your loins. I think it’s the perfect time
to demonstrate your new rescue skills.”