Undertow by Michael Buckley Read Free Book Online Page A

well, something predatory and vicious, like a great white shark hiding in the body of a woman. To her right was an elderly woman wearing what would best be described as a nun’s habit, only made from the skin of some dark-furred animal. It covered her entire body, exposing only her face and hands, and the “habit” formed a strange hammerlike shape on either side of her head.
    And then there was the boy. He was about my age, with hair cut short and eyes blue and bright, eyes that burned a glowing echo I could see even when I closed my own. He looked lost and confused, troubled by what he was seeing around him, like he was seeing the world for the first time.
    Behind him came others who were far more strange and whose names I would learn later: the Nix with their teeth and claws, the quietly confident Ceto, and the Sirena, whose every emotion was revealed in colorful scales. There were some I haven’t seen since that day—translucent-skinned ones and people with tentacles for limbs. All of them were in a state of metamorphosis. Tails became legs. Fins sank into flesh. Gills vanished, causing their owners to choke on their first breaths of air. There were elderly creatures, babies, teenagers, and families, all climbing onto the beach, eyeing us with wide-eyed wonder. At first they numbered in the hundreds, then thousands, until eventually I could no longer see the sand for all the bodies.
    Panic broke out all around me. Sunbathers abandoned towels, coolers, and chairs. They trampled one another to get away, and children became separated from parents. Yet in the chaos I heard someone calling my name. I searched the crowd, careful not to get knocked over in the rush, and spotted my father sprinting toward us with his gun in hand.
    â€œSummer! You promised Lyric would not be part of this!” he shouted.
    â€œIt’s not my fault. She found me, Leonard!” my mother cried. “Please take her home.”
    â€œWe’re all going!” he demanded.
    My mother pulled away from him. “You know I have to do this. I have a responsibility to them.”
    â€œWhat about your responsibility to us?” my father said.
    â€œWill someone please tell me what’s happening?” I screamed.
    Mr. Lir pushed his way through people to join us. “Summer, send your family away. It is not safe for them to be here.”
    My father waved him off. “It’s not safe for any of us, Terrance. People will take pictures of this—they’re taking pictures right now—and if we stay on this beach any longer, we are all going to be in them. They’ll figure out what you are, what Samuel and Lyric are, and they’ll come for them. They’ll come for all of us.”
    â€œWhat did you say?” I cried. “What am I?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Lyric. We didn’t know how to tell you,” my mother said, and as she took my face in her hands I saw faint pink- and rose-colored patchesappear on her neck and forearms. They were scales, like those on a fish or a snake, both beautiful and terribly wrong.
    I shrieked and fell backward. “What are you?” I cried.
    â€œWe can explain later, Lyric,” my father cried. “Right now we have to get out of here. Summer, come with us.”
    My mother stared at him for a long moment, perhaps weighing every day of their life together against the responsibility she felt to the strange visitors, and then she turned to the ocean and her scales turned fire-engine red and blistering white.
    â€œTell them I’m sorry, Terrance,” she said without even looking at him. “Try to make them understand.”
    â€œSummer, you cannot turn your back on our people,” Mr. Lir shouted. “They’ll call you a traitor. You’ll be an untouchable!”
    â€œWe have to run,” she said as she took my hand. My father took the other, and we fled through the crowd while her odd friends called out to us with