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

see the look on his face? And he could have been—I mean, it could have been way worse, Jax. I can’t believe you’re not more freaked out.”

“I know it could,” he said, and looked determined. “But it wasn’t. And we have to keep going.”

“I don’t get how the—how he did it,” said Cara. “It wasn’t raining! And it wasn’t night yet, either!”

“I told you, he’s more powerful today,” said Jax. “He must have moved through another kind of water, somehow.”

He walked to the side of the road and looked down.

“There’s a creek right here, going under the road,” he said. “See? There.”

Cara stood beside him at the guardrail, looking down at a muddy trickle of water running into a culvert beneath them.

“He must have come in that,” said Jax. “Maybe he could even materialize just for an instant outside the water, because he’s getting stronger….”

“Hey, kid,” said the policeman with the cell. “We’ll cruise along behind you, why don’t you drop those bikes back at home. Leave ’em here, they won’t last till you get back.”

“Thanks, Officer,” said Jax, and they bent to grab the bars of their cycles.

The hospital was a lot of waiting around in white rooms that smelled a particular way—not bad but not really good, either. Zee showed up, too, with her fisherman dad, who’d driven her there. He was the man from the cheeseburger place—the bearded, sunburnt guy who knew about the algae in the red tides. He was nice enough, though he didn’t recognize Cara.

At a vending machine off the lounge, when she and Zee were buying a soda, Zee leaned in close to her and whispered.

“So, what are you going to do if it’s tonight?”

“I don’t know! Can you get the scuba stuff for us? And maybe leave it somewhere?”

“It’s really expensive,” said Zee. “What if something happened to it? I’d be grounded till I was, like, wearing Depends.”

“I know,” said Cara. “I understand, I really do. But this is so important.”

“What,” said Zee. “Jax’s science project?”

“It’s more than that,” said Cara, her voice growing louder. She checked herself and was thinking what else to say when Zee’s dad loomed suddenly behind them and asked Zee to get him a Mountain Dew. A few seconds later, Zee went into Max’s room for her visit, and after that her dad hurried her out, saying something about traps, and they left.

Cara and Jax finally said good-bye to Max at around ten at night. His arm in a cast, he was falling asleep with a baseball game blaring on the TV. He’d be there till the next morning at least, a nurse told them, for observation because of the concussion, but she reassured them that the arm would be fine and Max mostly needed a good night’s rest.

Cara felt bad for her dad, who was agonizing over his choice to leave them by themselves. They’d had to call him to tell him about the accident, and he was already on his way to the airport to get on a flight coming back. It was obvious that besides being really worried for Max, he thought the accident was his own fault.

She wanted to tell him about the Pouring Man—about all the strange events, so he would know this hadn’t just been an example of reckless teen driving or something. But her dad was into being a man of reason, as Jax put it. He would think she needed intensive talk therapy, and possibly Zoloft.

Lolly picked them up at the hospital and drove them home, her grandson in a baby seat in the back of her car with Jax beside him.

“I am definitely staying with you tonight,” she said. “I brought Manny’s crib in the trunk. No buts about it.”

“We figured,” said Jax.

“Thanks, Lolly,” said Cara.

She was leaning against the car window, gazing out at the passing lights along the highway and feeling very tired. She wondered how on earth, if they actually saw the blue-green light on the ocean and Max wasn’t back at home yet, they would ever get out to the sunken ship by themselves.

Seven

They decided to take shifts in front of Jax’s laptop, and because she had the first shift she also had the difficult task of waking her little brother at midnight.

Lolly was asleep upstairs with the baby, in their parents’ room, and Cara had drunk some of her dad’s coffee to stay up, so now she was wired and couldn’t get to sleep.

Jax, on the other hand, was crabby about being woken, and then all but nodded off at the console, so she made him drink coffee, too. She found some old instant in the cupboard and added plenty of milk.

“Putrid,” he said, and stuck his tongue out, eyes squeezed shut in revulsion. “I can’t believe anyone drinks this stuff on purpose.”

“I think there’s Coke in the fridge,” she said. “I’ll get you that instead.”

Soon Jax was wide awake and had his screen set up with two windows, one showing the webcam view, the other displaying one of his databases.

“Why don’t you try to sleep,” he said. “You need it.”

But it was no good. She sat up in her bed, the bedside light on, and kept getting up to do things—first to make herself a PB and J, then to pace the kitchen worrying about Max and what other things the Pouring Man could do to them. If he could do that, was there a limit?

She still felt mad at her mother sometimes—at moments like this when she was stressed out. She was just a kid; they all were, even Max. It wasn’t fair they had to save her. She should be saving them. Their mother should be here, and she should protect them from the so-called man whose name was fear, for God’s sake.

Then she felt bad for thinking that way. They weren’t really kids, after all—or barely, anymore, except for Jax who was a freak of nature in any case and