The Secret Sea by Barry Lyga Read Free Book Online Page B

ships.”
    â€œWhy?” Moira asked.
    â€œWell, this might seem crazy, but I just have this feeling that there was a boat there.”
    â€œWhere?”
    He hesitated but then told them: “Where I was. At the tower.”
    If they’d all been in the same room, he was certain that at this point Khalid and Moira would have exchanged a worried look. Instead, they both just nodded on his screen and looked away from their cameras for a moment.
    Before anyone could speak again, Zak heard his mother’s tread on the creaky hardwood floor outside his door. He signed off quickly and hid the iPod just as Mom opened his door.
    â€œDinner,” she said, clearly leaving him no other option.
    *   *   *
    Dad had made empanadas and left them in the fridge the day before, so Mom heated them up for dinner. She sat at one end of the table and picked and pecked at her food, a sight that set Zak’s parent alarm off. Mom couldn’t live with Dad or love him anymore, but she’d always liked his cooking. “On our first date,” she’d told Zak once, years ago, “your father cooked chicken mole and brought it to my apartment in the Village. He thought it was the way to my heart, and I guess he was right. It was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen.”
    â€œHey, Mom?”
    At first he thought she hadn’t heard him. She just kept poking at an empanada. But she finally looked up at him, her eyes tired and dull.
    â€œWhat, Zak?”
    He’d meant to ask her something, but her expression prompted an apology instead. “I’m really sorry.”
    She nodded as if she didn’t quite believe it. “I appreciate that, but what I want is less an apology and more an explanation.”
    â€œI don’t have one.”
    She threw her fork down in disgust. “Why would you do that, Zak? Leave the house and go into the city like that?” She stared at him, and he was helpless under her angry gaze. Clearly, she expected him to say something, and when he didn’t, she picked up the fork again and savagely stabbed at her food. “Is this what they warn parents about when they talk about kids becoming teenagers? Because this is crazy , Zak. This isn’t just acting out or being disrespectful. This is dangerous. This involved the police. You’re all I—we—I have left. You could have been hurt. You could have been killed. Do you even understand how serious this is?”
    â€œI understand,” he said quietly. Because he did. Better than she knew. Because he knew more than she did.
    Chowing down, Zak barely tasted Dad’s cooking as his mind spun wildly, trying to think of a way out of his situation. She was deeply focused on him right now, and she would take whatever he said very seriously. He might be able to learn something.
    â€œI have a question,” he said, picking his words carefully. “Can I ask it?”
    â€œI can’t believe you’re speaking . Yes.”
    â€œIt’s about Uncle Tomás.”
    The stricken look that crossed her face pained him. He felt as though he’d pressed a scalding-hot iron to her flesh. So many years later, and her brother’s death still slashed at her like a sword.
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œYou miss him, don’t you?”
    Mom grimaced as though hit with a migraine. “I miss him like…” Her lower lip trembled. “When I was … A while back, before you were born, your dad and I moved from the Village to Brooklyn. And I messed up and left a box of kitchen stuff in the old apartment. Nothing expensive, just some dishes. But one of them was a serving dish that was just the right size.”
    Zak wasn’t sure where his mother was going with this, but he said nothing and let her continue.
    Wiping at the corners of her eyes with her napkin, she said, “By the time we’d unpacked in the new place, I remembered the box, but it