Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

“We all do,” she grunts, and immediately drops back off to sleep.

I step out into the cool night and zip up my hoodie. I stretch, then walk over to the bathroom, where I wash my face and hands. I long to brush my teeth, but I’d have to wake the others up again to get into the pack. Instead, I wander over to a picnic table and lie down on my back. I take out my phone. I’ve got a decent signal, so I type the words CHIHUAHUAN DESERT into the browser, and a map appears. The area is huge, and it spreads into Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona. It looks like a whole lot of nothing. There are county roads snaking through it and a handful of tiny towns. A big swath of it is a national park. I try to find the ideal place to put a camp. It would have to be in a remote spot, I assume, so that no one would find it. It’s not going to be on a major road or near one of the towns. The problem is the entire region is barren. It could take us days to search it all. I hope Doyle sends me another message with more details.

I flip through my pictures to remind me of why I’m going to Tempest in the first place. One is of my mother, Summer Walker, in her ever-present flips-flops and cutoff shorts. She’s on the beach doing yoga, strong in the warrior pose with the Atlantic Ocean behind her. She’s so beautiful and strong, her black hair fluttering in the breeze. I hope they haven’t hurt her. She is a Sirena, and I’ve heard what they do to Alphas at Tempest.

My father is in the next picture, the man Bex calls the Big Guy. He’s giving me a tired expression as he eats a bowl of cereal in his cop uniform. He loved to ham up his exasperated looks whenever I took his picture, but he’s probably the most patient man I know. He’s solid and honest and brave, but the last time I saw him, he was seriously hurt. I worry about the broken ribs he probably got when we wrecked the car. He begged us to go on without him. I will always regret that we did.

I flip through more pictures, feeling tears leaking down my face. Here they are, the two of them trying to decipher the instructions for it; the Big Guy’s annoyed expression after he broke the IKEA coffee table; my mother standing off to the side, stifling a laugh. Here they are walking hand in hand along the sand, not knowing their daughter was capturing the moment on her phone. Here’s Mom glowing in the sunshine. Here’s Dad burning breakfast.

“I’m coming. Just hold on,” I whisper, hoping the words drift out into the night and find their way to my parents’ ears.

I skip forward to a photo of Bex and me, lying on my bed with our heads pressed close together so we can take a picture together. Our eyes are smiling and our mouths are puckered into duck lips. I don’t remember when it was taken. It could have happened on a thousand different afternoons. We were inseparable then—so close, we didn’t need other girlfriends. Here she is bumming cigarettes from the bouncer at Rudy’s, and here is the time we tried to learn to skateboard, and here she is trying on a fur coat we found at the Salvation Army. I told her she looked like a polar bear. We laughed about it for weeks. I miss the girls in these pictures.

The camera roll ends with one of the last shots I snapped, and it steals my breath. Fathom and I are pressed close to each other in the bright Coney Island light. All six-foot-plus of him looks awkward and confused. I’m holding the camera and looking mischievous. I snapped it without warning, and when I showed him the result, his hard, suspicious features fell and a boyish version I never knew existed took their place. Was it magic? he wondered. Did I know how lucky I was to have a machine that recreated the faces of the people I love?

I do now.

What is it about you? Most of our days you were grouchy, or pensive, or just mean, but then you could be so kind. When you stepped close to me and locked your eyes with mine, I felt like I could melt onto the floor. Even now, this picture of you is enough to make me dizzy.

Could you really be gone? Arcade thinks so. She’s packed you up and put you in storage like a stack of old sweaters she no longer needs. As cold as she is, maybe she’s living in reality.

“I’m not ready to let you go,” I whisper.

“We should train.”

Arcade has materialized behind me, and I let out a little yelp of surprise.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I cry. I fumble with the phone, not wanting her to see my photograph. I stuff it into my pocket and spring to my feet.

Arcade looks around at the deserted parking lot and the tree line behind the bathrooms. I take the opportunity to wipe the tearstains off my face.

“We do not have much time left,” she says. “How long before we find the camp?”

“We’ve got about a half a tank of gas left, but it’ll run out and we’ll need another car. If we get lucky and all goes perfect, we could be at Tempest in three days.”

She nods, then walks across the field toward the woods.

“Come,” she calls to me over her shoulder.