Fathomless by Jackson Pearce Read Free Book Online

the girl on the shore, she knew my name. Did I know her? Were we friends, so close that she could recognize me even now? I try to remember her face, place it in my old life, but my mind won’t allow me to hold on to my name and the girl’s face. I let her image slide away. The name is more important. I don’t know why—I’m Lo now, and I’m happy. I’m happy here, right now, in this moment. I don’t need to remember Naida, to fight for memories that are as decayed as the
Glasgow
.
    But… I close my eyes, say the name again.
    Should I tell the others about the girl on the beach? About how my feet bled when I stepped in the sand? Most of us wouldn’t care, I’m sure. Molly might. The others would be disappointed that I spoke with a human; unless we’re after their souls, it’s best they don’t see us. I don’t like having a secret, though. Secrets make me different. Secrets make me alone, make me unhappy.
    But I decide not to tell them. I close my eyes, let the waves swish my hair up and over my body until the moon drops low and the ocean gets dark, so dark that I know it’s nearly dawn. All the while I repeat the name in my head—no, not
the
name. My name.
    Naida. Naida. Naida.

Celia
     
    I take a cab from the hospital back to our dorm. The campus is dark, but it always is during the summer—the old, weather-beaten brick buildings loom like monsters amid the palm trees. The upper dormitories, where my sisters and I live, are the most lonesome of all. Most of the girls who go to Milton’s Prep come from money and spend their summers on islands or yachts or in foreign countries. They return in August with tans and new clothes and accents they claim to have “just developed” in the weeks they were away.
    We never leave. We’ve been in our suite in the upper dorms since we got here, a single-story concrete building with ancient couches in the lobby. We tell everyone we don’t go home for the summer because Ellison is boring, but the truth is, we don’t go home because there isn’t a home to go to—there’s just an empty house in Georgia and an uncle inCalifornia who sends us an allowance from our father’s estate every month. We were the last of ten children—our parents were already old when we were born, and most of our brothers were long out of the house. Our mother didn’t live to see us start second grade, and raising daughters alone scared our father—not that it mattered much, since his Alzheimer’s meant he’d forgotten us before we made it through our first year here. I read his past once. Thousands of memories, bright, vivid, colorful. I described them to our father while Anne and Jane watched eagerly, convinced that this would fix everything, that he’d remember us, that we’d be a family.
    It didn’t work. He didn’t recognize his own memories. He didn’t know them.
    He didn’t know us. It was the only time my power seemed useful, and it failed me.
    Technically, I guess there is something more than our empty house, faraway uncle, the brothers we barely know: There’s our father, sitting in a nursing home in Atlanta, with no idea who his children are. So as far as Anne, Jane, and I are concerned, we are alone in the world, except for one another.
    I sneak into the dorm’s main door, shivering at the blast of air-conditioning. The hallways smell like pine cleaning solution until I get to the end, where our apartment door is, and the smells of clothes and perfume and life mingle with the chemical. I unlock the door and push it open—Anne’s and Jane’s purses are on the kitchen counter. They must havethought I went to bed early—they’d never have gone to sleep if they realized I wasn’t home. I slip into my bedroom—it’s tiny, but then, all the bedrooms here are.
Maybe I should wake up my sisters and tell them what happened
, I think as I pull off my clothes. With Jude, with Naida—but how could I possibly explain Naida to them? A naked girl who came out of the water