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

had a mental age of 90—and their mother had always looked after everything, and now it was their turn.

But still, as she paced, she went back and forth between feeling sorry for herself and Max and Jax and her mother and feeling angry. She couldn’t seem to help it.

“Max could have been killed,” she said aloud, standing still in the middle of the kitchen. It was like she was accusing someone.

She was alone, of course.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew Jax was standing over her, where she was curled in her dad’s favorite armchair, and he had his laptop open.

“Do you see something?” he asked, and crouched down beside her to show her the display.

She rubbed her eyes and looked at the screen, which was basically a rectangle of black. In the middle of the black she saw a faint lightness, but she wasn’t sure if it was anything—it might just be the reflection of a passing plane on the waves, or a faraway boat. It might be anything, in fact.

“I don’t know,” she said, doubtful.

“What if it is?” said Jax.

“I mean, it could be,” said Cara. She tried to look more closely, but the light was so faint, so characterless, that she couldn’t decide. “Or it could be nothing.”

She didn’t want it to be the fires, of course. She didn’t want it to be what they were looking for. Because if it was, they’d have to tackle it without Max.

But then she thought, what if we miss it? Because we’re afraid to handle it without him? What if we miss our one chance?

She sat up straighter in the chair, touching her good-luck ring with two fingers of the other hand. It grounded her, somehow. Her mother had called it a name in a foreign language, she recalled—nazam, or nazar, she thought now. Not that it mattered … but as she touched the ring, staring out in front of her over the top of the computer at her dad’s bookcase, she found the spines of the history books faded from her sight, and she could imagine, instead, the scene on the ocean: a yellow, fluorescent buoy bobbing on the water and all around it what looked like a bright field—a shining field. Beneath the field, columns of blue-green light went down, down into the water, and the waves moved around her….

“What’s wrong?” asked Jax.

She was dizzy and had lurched sideways in her chair.

“Seasick,” she said, because it came into her head.

It must be true.

And she rose.

“You’re right,” she said. “We have to go. It’s time.”

Once, when their dad was on a health kick and didn’t want to drive so much, he had put together a strange cart that attached to the back of his bicycle. It looked a bit like the buggies people pulled their babies around in, but it was meant to hold a kayak. He’d only used it for short distances, mostly to get to the bayside beaches near their house when he wanted to go for a paddle by himself. His kayaks were very light, and so long they could be hard to balance without scraping occasionally on the ground, but the cart had worked for their dad, and it would work, she hoped, for them too.

But she and Jax had to go farther—across the highway to the ocean side. She didn’t remember her dad doing that.

They took one of the doubles, a wooden kayak their dad had built last summer from a kit when he was trying to relax more and not work so much. He called it a pygmy boat or something; since it was a double, it could easily hold both of them. They roped it onto the cart carefully, because if it fell off in the dark, on the beach road, it might be hard to get back on. They threw in paddles, water and lights and Cara’s backpack; they wore their headlamps from camping trips, just in case.

Cara would pull the kayak behind her, with Jax up ahead to scout out the smoothest route.

And finally she called Zee’s cell, to find out how they could pick up the scuba and night-diving gear in case they turned out to need it. She had no idea what to do if Zee said no—she could call Cory, she guessed, but it would be beyond weird coming out of the blue like this….

It took a long time for Zee to pick up, and when she did she sounded half asleep. But the scuba stuff was laid out in her garage, she said in a smudged, groggy voice. The tanks were all full and had been checked. There were flashlights and headlamps you could use underwater. If Cara and Jax were quiet, they could come pick it up on their way; the garage door was unlocked.

“OK,” said Jax, putting on his helmet on the porch. Her bike was on the road already, the kayak secured behind it. “Then let’s rock and roll.”

He was trying to sound like Max, man of action. With Max in the hospital and her dad in the air somewhere between here and Chicago, Jax must think he was supposed to act like the man of the house.

As they passed Hayley’s place, cycling tentatively as Cara got used to towing the kayak behind her, a porch light blinked on. Surprised, they braked and watched as Hayley slipped out the front door and ran down the walkway to meet them.

“I heard about Max,” she said. “He’s OK, right?”

“His arm is broken,” said Cara. “But that’s it. He’ll be home tomorrow, and you can draw a cutesy heart on his cast.”

“Is it happening now? The thing with the sea lights?”

“We think it might be,” said Jax.

“We’re not sure,” put in Cara. “We have to check it out, is all.”

“But you can’t go without Max,” said Hayley urgently. “He’s—you need him to stay safe! You can’t go out there without him!”

“We have to,” said Cara. “He’s