Underwater: The Mer of Pend Oreille

Prologue

Water fills my ears and nose, and the numbing silence consumes me. I can’t hear anyone at the surface anymore. Can’t see the rocky beach and sky. I sink deeper and deeper into the cold, focusing on the dancing light that represents where air ends and water begins.

I move my arms, cupping my hands and clawing upward. Resistance meets my every move. My legs remain limp, lifeless, and immobile—pointing downward at the endless black abyss that awaits me. When I look down, I see eyes watching me from the darkness, their eerie blue glow waiting…waiting…waiting.

I’m not scared. Not even when my lungs begin to crumple and burn like paper bags on fire. Not when the lilting light above me grows smaller and smaller as I sink. Ten feet…twenty feet…fifty feet…a hundred feet and the light vanishes. There are hundreds of thousands of feet to go before I hit the bottom and meet my fate. I drop my hands and close my eyes, no longer trying to paddle. This is it.

Something cold wraps itself around my wrist. Scaled and webbed like a fish—but strong like a hand—it doesn’t pull me up toward the oxygen, toward life. Instead it merely holds my fisted hands in its grasp. Like a friend. A comforter accompanying me on my descent.

The burning sensation in my lungs paralyzes me. My body becomes rigid, plank-like, fighting death, even though I’m surrendering. My thoughts grow cloudy and muddled. Images of my family flash and pop behind my eyelids like fireworks. Just as I feel as though my body will explode, sending millions of tiny pieces of me floating to the surface, euphoria sets in. Like a high, only better. Stronger.

Permanent.

The hand around mine squeezes, one last motion prompting me to open my eyes before death gobbles me up, sea-monster-style. When I do, I see it: light and colors and brilliance beyond anything else I’d ever witnessed. And then I know.

I’m home.

Chapter One

I saw a man standing in the middle of the water. Fruit-flavored cereal dropped from my kid brother’s mouth, and I suppressed a grimace. He didn’t notice.

I guess the fact that I’d recently celebrated my eighteenth birthday by piercing my septum and dying my hair ink black had finally made me completely ignorable to my family. Oh, well. Watching Declan consume food was like watching a helicopter eat anyway.

My sister, Evey, dropped her empty bowl into the sink. "No, you didn’t. Nobody can stand in the middle of Moon’s Bay." She turned to me, her long blonde ponytail brushing against the sea-glass wind chime hanging in front of the kitchen window.

The tinkling sound of the blue and green chunks caught my attention. We’d gotten the chimes while at the beach near Seattle, Washington, two summers ago—the same day as the accident. When our car rolled three times into a pea field along the highway, the sound of the chimes was the only thing I’d been able to hear. Evey said she remembers crunching metal, breaking glass, and Mom screaming. I’d only heard that stupid sea glass clinking together like bells.

Did you hear me? My mom’s expression was the same one she always wore: concern, annoyance, and maybe a small side of fear. I could practically hear her inner thoughts. Will Luna ever be able to focus again? Will Luna ever stop being so angry all the time? Will Luna walk across the stage at graduation?

My parents worried about stuff like that all the time. I heard all their late-night conversations. It was hard not to when we lived in an old house with wide vents. Even the sound of the lake, lapping away at the rocks a few hundred feet below my window wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of their fears. There was something really disturbing about listening to your six-foot-three father weep through the night.

Now I was just plagued with their worries about living on a hill next to the fifth-deepest lake in America. Every boat accident, every swimmer reported missing kept them awake for hours, hissing at one another in hushed voices about whether to sell our house before I wind up the next one under water.

Luna? My mother rested her hand on my arm and gave it a small shake. Did you eat something? I can’t have you going to school on an empty stomach and failing another trigonometry quiz.

I scowled at her. I’d failed my last test because I’d hidden behind the captain of the wrestling team, rested my head on the desk, and slept through class. It had very little to do with my breakfast menu that day, but my fitness-obsessed mother blamed everything that went wrong on a lack of protein. If she could, she’d send the people of the war-torn Middle East a boatload of energy bars and then expect peace to wash over the region like a wave.

I ate, all right?

That was usually all it took to insure that my mother would leave me alone for the span of the drive to school. She was easily exhausted by my surly attitude and often whined to my father that she loved me, but no longer liked me. Another gem I’d picked up through those damn vents.

Good. She stared at me tight-lipped for a few seconds, and her movements were jerky and angry when she whirled around to face my sister. Score one for me. Get your coats and backpacks. Evey, I saw your history notebook on the stairs a few minutes ago. Please don’t forget it. I can’t leave work to bring it to you again.

Her fingers twitched at her side. She raised her hand toward my hair, but I made no move to soften my attitude. I didn’t want her pity.

Is everyone going to ignore me? Declan pretended to slam dunk his bowl into the soapy dishwater, sending foam in all directions. There was a dude. In the middle of the lake.

Where? My dad asked as he charged through the room, snatching half a piece of toast off the countertop. He took a bite and bent to peer out the kitchen window.

Declan pointed below our house to the end of a grassy slope that evolved into a rocky beach, where the choppy, gray waters of the great Pend Oreille Lake met our yard. In the middle of the bay, a duck bounced up and down over the waves.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wrinkle appear between my father’s eyebrows. He put a hand on Declan’s shoulder and guided him toward my mom and her tapping toe. Don’t think it was a man, son. Looks like the ducks are coming back early this year.

But, Dad, I saw him. My little brother blew his shaggy hair out of his eyes and wriggled out from under my dad’s hand. He was there.

Evey followed his line of sight. Well, what was he doing out there? Was he fishing or something?

No. Standing. Declan pressed his face to the window, his green eyes scanning the view. Or maybe swimming.

I pulled my binder off the table and fingered its tattered cover. Dude. It’s like hypothermia temperatures in the water. Nobody is swimming today.

You guys are jerks, Declan whined. Nobody ever believes me.

We believe you. Dad threw one of his knock it off, or else looks over his shoulder at Evey and me. We can talk about it some more tonight.

Do we have to? I watched from behind my long bangs, pretending to be unbearably bored with everything going on around me. I was good at that. Everyone in my family thought I was perpetually in la-la land, but I rarely missed a thing.

My mother swung open the door, letting in an icy burst of mid-March air. Luna Marie, could you have a decent attitude this morning?

I glared back at her. Breaking out the middle name already? It isn’t even eight o’clock.

My whole family shuddered in unison as cold air filled the kitchen, prompting Declan to scoop up his Spider-Man backpack with a grumble. You guys all suck.

Evey pushed herself away from the sink and cast a glare at me. Well, that was unnecessary.

What? You don’t believe there was a crazy moron going for a polar bear dip this morning? I looked at my fifteen-year-old sister, and we exchanged a smirk. Though Evey kept her attitude at bay most of the time—probably because I was usually bursting with enough for both of us—it was still underneath all of that pink-cheeked, well-intended obedience. I considered it my personal goal to bring it out of her as often as possible.

She pursed her mouth. I think Dec’s been sniffing glue.

I have not. That’s rude! Declan punched at Evey’s arm.

She ducked, narrowly missing his swing. Watch it.

Wow. We’ve got a whole troop of surly kids this morning. My dad swallowed the rest of his coffee and gently pushed Declan toward the exit. They all need attitude adjustments.

Badly. My mother shook her head, clearly exasperated as we filed out of the kitchen toward the dusty, red minivan in the driveway.

I turned around and craned my neck so I could see the lake and felt my heart thud against my breastbone. There was nobody in the water, just the green-headed duck, floating in place like a buoy. I wondered if Declan actually had seen someone out there. Unlikely. Swimming during March in a lake nearly two thousand feet deep in places was insane.

My mom saw me gazing at the water and offered me a consolation prize. Pool therapy is tonight.

Oh, goodie. I shoved my binder into my black denim messenger bag covered in safety pins. Four feet of water and a foam kickboard. Where do I sign up?

She closed her eyes for a second. Would it kill you to have a good attitude?

I propped my bag on my lap, unlatched the brakes on my chair, and wheeled myself toward my mother at the top of the wooden ramp my father had built when they brought me home from the hospital. I cried the first time I saw it.

My brother and sister watched us from the van, and my father rubbed his eyes as though he’d not slept eight hours the night before. Guilt started to tickle the back of my throat, tempting me to apologize, but I swallowed it.

I glared up at my mother seeing only part of her face through my dark veil of hair. Yes, Mom. It would kill me.

Don’t be late after school. My mother’s voice was brittle as she tossed our bags out of the van door. Offering us a tight smile that never made it to her eyes, she waved. I’ve got to get my afternoon workout in, and Dad needs me at work as long as possible before I come to the school.

I caught my messenger bag with one hand and avoided her eyes.

Evey leaned into the front seat and offered Mom a quick kiss on the cheek. Have a good day.

Thanks. My mom pushed her reddish-blonde bob behind her ear. Luna, good luck on your test.

I nodded, pretending the armrest on my chair was the most interesting thing I’d seen in ages.

My mother’s sigh made my stomach twist. Evey pushed the door shut, and the van revved up and peeled out of the back parking lot.

My sister stared down at me over the top of her black-framed glasses.

I ignored her for ten seconds. Twelve. Fifteen. What!

Can’t you be nice to her once in a while? She slung her backpack onto one shoulder and reached for the handles on the back of my chair.

I slipped my fingerless leather gloves onto my hands. Silver studs decorated the knuckles, but I didn’t wear them as a fashion statement. I wore them because pushing the wheels on my chair burned my palms to hell and stained them black. If there was anything worse than being the girl who survived a horrific car crash that rendered her partially paralyzed, it was being that same girl with callused, filthy hands.

You don’t have to push me. I gestured for her to walk next to me.

We crossed the back parking lot of Sandpoint High School, carefully weaving our way around the faculty members’ cars. My mom dropped us off there every morning so I wouldn’t have to drag myself out of the car and into my chair in front of everyone like some kind of morning freak show. Luna Prosser can’t even, like, get out of her mom’s car now? OMG, do you think she, like, wears diapers now?

Yeah. Kids in my school sometimes forgot that my spinal cord was injured and not my ears. And for the record, I didn’t wear diapers. I still had control of all that stuff. They said I had full sexual function too…though I’d yet to test that theory. I hadn’t even been asked out on a date since becoming a poster child for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Evey fiddled with the end of her ponytail, twisting it and untwisting it around her long finger. Listen, I have softball practice starting next Monday.

She was the only sophomore in the whole school to make varsity. As proud as I know she was, she pretended to be aloof about the whole thing for my sake. Before the accident, I’d been the star of the junior varsity softball team. My coach called me The Golden Arm and put me in the front of all of the team photographs even though I was five foot eight and belonged in the back.

Those days were over. He offered me a pitching position as a courtesy when I’d returned to school, but I refused. I wasn’t interested in being some sort of handicapped prodigy, like that one-armed drummer in the eighties hair band my dad was always telling me about.

I know. Leaning forward, I hunkered down to push myself up the cement incline that led into the gymnasium entrance. You’re gonna do awesome. You know that.

Thanks. Her voice was soft. What are you going to do afterschool without me?

I shrugged. I was thinking about taking up drugs.

She kicked my wheel. That’s not funny.

Ev, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me all the time. You’ll turn into Mom.

In the time since the accident, Evey and I had become pretty close. It started because I was so dependent on her to help me get around, but the older she got, the more I considered her a friend more than an annoying kid sister. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she still annoyed me—especially when she stole my face soap or borrowed clothes without asking. But since becoming chair-bound, most of my friends pulled away from me, whereas Evey had grown closer. She’d inadvertently become my best friend.

She opened the school door and waited for me to roll past. I’m only a sophomore. I can wait until next year to play softball if you don’t want to be home alone all the time.

I won’t be alone. I’ll have Declan to torture. I wrinkled my nose as a sweaty jock lumbered past us, cutting right in front of me. Hey, watch it!

Awesome. She pushed up her glasses and grinned. So, you’ll be at home all season watching some very tall guy swim in the bay, right?

"No. I’ll be home all spring watching ducks."

We exited the corridor behind the gym, and the noise of a Wednesday morning hit me like a slap across the face. Throngs of kids shuffled in unison to their classes, bags and backpacks weighing their arms down like zombies. The hum of dozens of different conversations filled my ears: lame teachers, bad grades, strict parents, after-school practices, in-school suspension, boys who behave like jerks, and girls who don’t put out. All of the conversations were the same as every other day, and they made my head pound like a jackhammer.

At least spring is coming, Evey offered as we shoved our way into the crowd. Which means swimming season will be here soon enough.

I nodded. She was one of the few people who understood how desperate I was to get back into the water. My parents bought me a full-body wet suit last year, and after that I was able to swim in the late fall and early spring. Every single day I woke up waiting for the temperature to hit sixty-five degrees so that I could go for a dip, but the winter here in the Inland Northwest was hanging on for dear life. My only water time was my weekly aqua therapy session with my physical therapist, and that left much to be desired.

"Maybe I’ll take a dip this afternoon." I watched people in the crowd glance over their shoulder. As soon as they spotted me below them in my chair, they’d do their civic duty and shift to the side a bit. Grimacing, I inched forward. Courtesy wasn’t a perquisite to attend my high school.

Luna, it’s too cold. You’ll cramp up. Not to mention the fact that Mom and Dad will kill you. She took her place behind me and put her hands on the handles of my chair. Excuse me.

My cheeks scalded behind my curtain of dark hair. I hated being babied, even when it was necessary.

She sighed behind me. "I said, excuse me."

A kid with white-blond hair and wearing a football jersey—even though football season ended months ago—gave Evey the once-over. I shuddered as soon as we made eye contact. In a school of a thousand students, why oh why did I always find myself in the same hallway as Ian McClendon?

Kevin, Ian’s zit-faced toady, demanded, What’s the magic word, Prosser?

I heard the plastic underneath my sister’s fingers groan as she gripped my chair. Evey hadn’t inherited my fondness for speaking up. Unless she was on the softball field, she preferred to shrink into the inspirational, anti-drug posters lining the walls.

She cleared her throat. Please?

His oily red face twisted into a smirk. Nope. Try again.

Ian pulled his gaze from mine and dutifully punched Kevin in the arm. Knock it off, Kev.

I grabbed my wheels and lurched my chair out of Evey’s grip and into the back of Kevin’s legs. "Is the magic word dickhead?"

When he stumbled, his backpack swung off of his shoulder and rammed into the girl walking next to him. Kevin usually preferred cramming himself halfway up Ian’s backside, which caused more than a handful of problems when Ian and I had dated sophomore year. Seemed like every time he’d gone in to kiss me, Kevin had popped up and taken a cheap shot at me: my looks, my family, the worn-out old Victorian house we lived in, which apparently wasn’t as cool as the posh lakeside cabin where he and Ian’s families lived.

Unfortunately, he was also the person who’d taken the news that I would likely never walk again and turned it into hot gossip in the halls of Sandpoint High. Ian, who was one part nice-guy, one part popularity-obsessed jock, quickly decided that breaking things off with me was the smartest choice. According to him, I needed to focus on recovery. But realistically, he needed to focus on dating the head cheerleader with the giant boobs and two working legs.

Not that I was bitter.

A few more heads turned, and Ian’s expression softened as soon as our eyes met again. Sorry about that, Luna.

Right. I shoved past him and ran over Kevin’s toe. The wall of teenagers parted, and we finally sidled past just as the first bell rang. I hated the fact that Ian looked at me with pity. It made me want to punch him in the face. If only I could reach it.

He shifted between his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. I’m sorry, all right?

Kevin straightened up, rubbing his arm as he glared at me. Gimp bitch.

Ian glared down at his friend. Dude. Shut up.

I didn’t respond. I was used to it. As much as I hated to admit it, my parents were right when they whined to my doctors about kids today being so cruel. There was a kid I’d gone to school with since the third grade who missed the bulk of our freshman year because he’d been fighting testicular cancer. The kids in my school still tormented him by calling him One Nut Nick.

I rolled right up to Evey’s locker, and she dropped her pack to the floor with a thump. Kevin’s a jerk. She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses. I don’t know why Ian puts up with him.

Because Ian’s a tool. I picked at a thread hanging on the strap of my bag.

He said he didn’t see you.

I pinched the strap between my fingers. He also said he didn’t like redheads, but look who he’s screwing now.

You’ve known him since you guys were in junior high. She opened her locker and shifted through its contents. You have to be nice to him eventually.

"I don’t have to be nice to anyone. I tilted my head and looked up at Evey. Why are you suddenly so defensive of Mr. Jockstrap?"

She busied herself filtering through the contents of her locker. I’m not.

A younger version of Ian—bearing the same blond hair, but a rounder, softer face—walked by. Hey, Evey.

She glanced up and offered a smile, small and prim.

I raised one eyebrow. Does this have something to do with his brother?

My sister’s face flushed, and she pushed her glasses higher on her nose. No. Geez. Be quiet.

I rolled as close to her legs as I could get without knocking her down. Come on. You like Hayden, don’t you?

She watched his back as he sauntered away. No. Yeah. I dunno.

I followed her line of sight. Ian and I had lamented about our equally annoying thirteen-year-old siblings. We didn’t know that two years later, we’d be broken up in a very made-for-TV-teen-drama way and our fifteen-year-old siblings would be crushing on each other. Fate was peculiar sometimes.

We watched as a senior passed Hayden and slugged him in the gut so hard he doubled over. Papers and a baseball glove slid through the open zipper on his backpack, hitting the floor among all the walking feet.

Tell your brother hi, the older kid said with a snide chuckle.

Hayden moved quickly to gather his things. The hierarchy in my backwoods school was maddening. The popular kids were never nice to the younger kids, even if it meant betraying a sibling. So long as it made you appear cool and aloof, nobody cared about how much of a jerk you looked like.

Hayden hates it when they do that, she hissed down to me.

He should. It’s rude. Casting an evil glance at Ian’s back as he strutted away with his friends, I shifted in my seat. I can’t stand watching crap like that.

He says that when they’re at home, Ian is cool. That’s why Hayden doesn’t get mad.

I watched as Hayden shoved his way past a group of staring girls, keeping his head down. I’d say he’s plenty mad. He’s just not saying anything because his brother is Mr. Sandpoint High.

A hand came down on Hayden’s shoulder, stopping him as he barreled toward the corner.

His startled voice carried down the hall. Sorry. Didn’t see you.

I leaned back in my seat so I could see which teacher would lecture poor Hayden. I couldn’t see what faculty member it was, but the color drained from Hayden’s face. Poor guy was having a crap morning.

The surrounding kids scattered like mice, their eyes wide with unabashed curiosity. When some girls scuttled past Evey and me, I heard one of them say, "Where did he come from?"

Evey peered around her locker door, and her mouth dropped open. Holy cow.

I reeled my head back in Hayden’s direction. What’s all the fuss about? I…oh.

It was if things were suddenly moving in slow motion as he came around the corner. The first thing I noticed was his arm connected to the hand on Hayden’s shoulder. It was so defined that it looked as though it’d been Photoshopped. When my gaze rolled upward, I saw that the guy was cut enough to stretch the armholes of his worn black T-shirt. The knees of his faded black jeans were torn to shreds, as were the ankles, which were slit at the sides to make room for his dirty, scuffed boots.

When his face came into focus, my stomach tangled itself into a figure eight. His square jaw was dusted with whiskers; his cheekbones looked like something carved out of marble. On the each side of his neck were three tattooed lines, drawn at a diagonal just below his earlobes. Dark brown hair the color of chocolate hung in waves around his face. His mouth pulled upward at one corner in a smirk that made my heart grind to a halt.

Who’s that? Evey said.

I couldn’t focus on my sister. The hot dude was monopolizing my focus. I…uh…I don’t know.

Evey’s eyes locked on him as he sauntered down the hallway. His head was half a foot above everyone else’s. Well, whoever he is, the girls are all staring at him the way Dad looks at a prime rib.

Huh. I fingered a long strand of my dark hair, faking indifference while my heart coughed and groaned to a reluctant restart. She was right. Every single set of female eyes in the hallway was locked on the mystery boy.

He approached us, and the air around me filled with the aroma of the water grass that grew between the rocks along the edge of the lake.

Evey immediately turned to her closed locker, pretending to check and recheck the padlock. My fingers froze as soon as he fixed his gaze in my direction.

His eyes were the clearest, most crystal blue I’d ever seen. They looked ethereal, the same color as a robin’s egg, and slightly iridescent. I swear to all things holy that they could see right through me to the metal lockers behind my chair.

He scrolled his gaze down to my scrawny legs, which were covered in dark gray tights and propped on the footrest of my chair. His stare strayed from my legs, travelling over the metal framework of my chair as though he’d never seen one before.

The side of his mouth dropped, and his smile faded away. It was as if the sun slid behind a cloud, and I was inexplicably disappointed. I waited for his nerves to take over. The shifting eyes. The fidgeting. I’d seen it all.

None of that happened. Instead, he held out his hand. Whether he knew that he was setting off tingles up and down the back of my neck, I had no idea. But he did, and it felt amazing.

Hello, Luna.

Chapter Two

After The Pretty—as I’d dubbed him—held his hand out to me, I just sat there, staring at him like my little brother stares at his video games for five seconds until Evey kicked my chair. When I raised my palm and put it in his, I realized my sweat glands had thrown themselves into overdrive. I was good and clammy when he slowly shook my hand.

Your hand’s shaking. His voice was deep and rich, like the drinks my parents made at their coffee shop in downtown Sandpoint. It wrapped itself around me like a heavy, warm blanket, and the trembling stopped. There, he said. That’s better.

I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again. All of my witty, scathing one-liners eluded me, and I suddenly felt as though I were completely stoned on a handful of painkillers. During the first few months after the accident, I’d spent plenty of time being medicated, and this guy apparently had the same effect.

Most of the activity in the hallway ceased as The Pretty held my hand and smiled down at me. Lockers stopped slamming. Feet stopped walking. And all eyes—especially those belonging to the girls—locked themselves on our exchange. My school was just small enough that a new kid usually warranted stares and whispers. But when a kid walked into our school with bulging muscles, a jawline that could cut stone, and inexplicable tattoos on either side of his neck… kids froze in place with their mouths hanging open.

Right as the silence between The Pretty and I stretched into uncomfortable territory, he leaned his head forward, pressed a quick kiss to my knuckles, then dropped my hand. I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the warm fuzzies and form words, but he walked away before I regained use of my tongue, and he spoke to no one else before turning down the west hallway.

After school, as we were leaving, my wheel bounced in a parking lot pothole, splashing my leg with rainwater. Hey. I bent to swipe at it as Evey pushed me to the back fence where we met Mom every afternoon.