The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook - Lydia Millet (primary phonics .txt) 📗

her armchair, Cara’s mother’s terrycloth bathrobe swamping her small frame.

“Huh. Well, you said a mouthful,” said Hayley.

There was a pause. Cara was overwhelmed herself—where had all that come from? She hadn’t thought about the whole thing before at all, at least not consciously.

“That’s more than I knew,” said Jax after a moment.

“She also said …,” started Cara, and turned to Jax. She hesitated, and then decided to take the plunge. “She said the visionary is me,” she went on.

She felt a little proud of it—the pride kind of escaped her control, surged up despite herself—but there was no good reason for that except being conceited, she reminded herself. It was only a dream, after all. Her dream.

Basically, she was the one who suddenly had the idea that she was the visionary. It wasn’t like her mother had come up and said it to all of them, in the flesh.

Usually, in their family, it was Jax who knew things. It was Max who did things—sports, popularity, whatever—and it was Jax who knew things. She only half-believed she’d been singled out at all, frankly.

But then Jax surprised her.

“I suspected as much,” he said. “You see things. I hear them and I think about them. I’m more of an interpreter type.”

“You guys lost me again,” said Hayley, shaking her head in resignation.

“So Max is the arbiter? I wouldn’t want Max judging me,” said Cara. “Geez.”

“No kidding,” said Jax.

“Max is some kind of a judge?” asked Hayley. “In your game here?”

“It’s not a game,” said Jax. “Did the guy in the mirror seem like a game to you?”

“I wish it was a game,” said Cara.

“Max would make a good judge, actually,” said Hayley, and picked a mint-green marshmallow out of her cocoa, scrutinizing it.

“She has a major crush on him,” Cara told Jax, her eyes rolling.

“No, but for real,” said Hayley. “You’re kind of harsh on him. This summer, anyway. But he’s just trying to stay cool. It makes him lonely, but he has to, to keep it together. And he’s really a fair person, you know that? He’s always jumping in to make sure big guys don’t pick on little ones. You guys are way harsh.”

She shook her head and popped the marshmallow into her mouth.

Jax and Cara exchanged glances. Hayley might have a point, Cara thought with a pang of guilt—although Max could make himself pretty hard to be nice to when he was always locked up in his room wearing headphones. Or at the park jumping his skateboard. Again and again and again…

Still. He had his own way of dealing, and the past months hadn’t been easy for him either. Hayley was right about that part.

“Be that as it may,” said Jax.

“She said she couldn’t make it simpler for us,” said Cara. “Because just like you thought, Jax, he can read us, or at least read you, so as soon as we know where she is, he’ll know, too. So it’s got to be, like, this last-minute thing, somehow. The way we find her, I mean. It can’t be a slow hunt. She has to be revealed to us when we’re not expecting it, basically. Or something like that.”

“That does make it hard,” said Jax.

“I don’t know about you guys,” said Hayley, yawning, “but I kind of need to crash.”

“Keep the phone nearby, Jax,” said Cara, rising from her armchair. “And wake us up if it rings.”

Jax nodded quickly, anxious to be responsible despite being the one who’d been left at home like a baby.

“Will do,” he said.

They slept in so late that it was almost noon by the time Cara sat up in her double bed to blink at the fringe of bright sunlight around the window blinds.

She’d been woken by the jangling sound of Max and his friends banging in through the front door; now she could hear them downstairs. She sat listening as they went through the kitchen, opening and slamming cabinets and drawers. No doubt they were prowling through every available storage space looking for junk food.

She heard them laughing at the bottom of the stairs and had to assume that their night, at least, had been relaxed and uneventful.

“What time is it?” asked Hayley sleepily, opening one eye and stretching beneath the coverlet.

“Late,” said Cara. “And Max is home, so I guess that means you’re going to get right up and put your makeup on.”

“Shut up,” said Hayley, but she got out of bed, tossed on her pink robe, and padded into the bathroom in her cat-paw slippers. Cara heard the tap running and the sound of an electric toothbrush. Slippers, robe, electric toothbrush—Hayley didn’t travel light.

“Is everyone decent?” said Jax from the door.

Hayley closed herself in the bathroom, a bit of a prude considering the intruder was only ten. Then again, Hayley didn’t have brothers. She wasn’t used to the lack of privacy.

“It’s fine,” called Cara. “It’s just me.”

Jax opened the door and entered, fully dressed in what looked like yesterday’s clothes, with Rufus beside him.

“So they didn’t see anything during the night, right?” asked Cara.

Jax shook his head as the dog licked Cara’s outstretched hand, then bounded over to his favorite spot on the rug and curled up. Cara got out of bed and opened the blinds, flooding her bedroom with light.

The day, for once, was blue and clear. The water of the bay sparkled, stretched out beneath her.

She opened the window and cool, clean air swept in. She breathed deeply. Now that it wasn’t raining, she could leave it open….

“Listen, Car,” said Jax in a low voice, glancing quickly at the bathroom door. “The thing is, he’s getter stronger. Because it’s almost a new moon. You know, when the sky is darkest? In a sense, when it’s the deepest night.”

“What, like vampires or werewolves or something? He’s hooked up to the phases of the moon?”

“Yeah, like all the soldiers,” he nodded. “Like all the soldiers in the army of the dark,” he added ominously.

“You made that up,” said Cara.

“Nah, actually