Next it was a cheerleader’s turn. Then the boy who was first-chair saxophone in the band. There were popular plays—“Never have I ever kissed three boys in the same night”—and unpopular plays—“Never have I ever popped a zit.” There were plays intended to single out another senior—“Never have I ever made out with Mr. Richman after eighth-period science in the supply closet”—and plays intended purely for showing off—“Never have I ever been turned down for a date.” Eureka sipped her punch independent of her classmates’ divulgences, which she found painfully mundane. This was not the game she’d imagined it being all these years.
Never, she thought, had reality ever compared with what might have been if any of her classmates dared to dream beyond their ordinary worlds.
The only bearable aspect of the game was Brooks’s muttered commentary about each classmate taking a turn: “Never has she ever considered wearing pants that didn’t show her thong.… Never has he ever not judged others for doing things he does daily.… Never has she ever left the house without a pound of makeup.”
By the time the game got around to Julien and Cat, most peoples’ punch cups had been taken, drained, returned, and refilled a few times. Eureka didn’t expect much out of Julien—he was so jocky, so cocky. But when it was his turn, he said to Cat, “Never have I ever kissed a girl I actually like—but I’m hoping to change that tonight.”
The boys booed and the girls whooped and Cat fanned herself dramatically, loving it. Eureka was impressed. Someone had finally figured out that ultimately this game wasn’t about divulging shameful secrets. They were supposed to use Never-Ever to get to know each other better.
Cat raised her cup, took a breath, and looked at Julien. “Never have I ever told a cute guy that”—she hesitated—“I got a 2390 on my SATs.”
The room was riveted. No one could make her drink for that. Julien grabbed her and kissed her. The game got better after that.
Soon it was Maya Cayce’s turn. She waited until the room was quiet, until all eyes were moving over her. “Never have I ever”—her black-lacquered fingernail traced the border of her cup—“been in a car accident.”
Three nearby seniors shrugged and handed Maya their drinks, bringing up tales of run red lights and drunken off-roading. Eureka’s grip tightened on her cup. Her body stiffened as Maya looked at her. “Eureka, you’re supposed to pass me your drink.”
Her face was hot. She glanced around the room, noticing everyone’s eyes on her. They were waiting for her. She imagined throwing her drink in Maya Cayce’s face, the red punch dripping in bloodlike rivulets along her pale neck, down her cleavage.
“Did I do something to offend you, Maya?” she asked.
“All the time,” Maya said. “Right now, for example, you’re cheating.”
Eureka thrust out her cup, hoping Maya choked.
Brooks laid a hand on her knee and murmured, “Don’t let her get to you, Reka. Let it go.” The old Brooks. His touch was medicinal. She tried to let it take effect. It was his turn.
“Never have I ever …” Brooks watched Eureka. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin and something shifted. New Brooks. Dark, unpredictable Brooks. Suddenly Eureka braced herself. “Attempted suicide.”
The entire room gasped, because everyone knew.
“You bastard,” she said.
“Play the game, Eureka,” he said.
“No.”
Brooks grabbed her drink and chugged the rest, wiping his mouth with his hand like a redneck. “It’s your turn.”
She refused to have a nervous breakdown in front of the majority of the senior class. But when she inhaled, her chest was electric with something it wanted to release, a scream or an inappropriate laugh or … tears.
That was it.
“Never have I ever broken down and sobbed.”
For a moment no one said anything. Her classmates didn’t know whether to believe her, to judge her, or to take it as a joke. No one moved to pass Eureka their drink, though over twelve years of school together she realized she’d seen most of them cry. The pressure built in her chest until she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Screw all of y’all.” Eureka stood up. No one followed her as she left the dumbstruck game and ran toward the nearest bathroom.
Later, on the frozen boat ride home, Cat leaned close to Eureka. “Is what you said true? You’ve never cried?”
It was just Julien, Tim, Cat, and Eureka cruising up the bayou. After the game Cat had rescued Eureka from the bathroom where she’d been staring numbly into a toilet. Cat insisted the boys take them home immediately. Eureka hadn’t seen Brooks on the way out. She never wanted to see him again.
The bayou hummed with locusts. It was ten minutes to midnight, nudging dangerously against her curfew, and so unworthy of the trouble she’d be in if she was one minute late. The wind was biting. Cat rubbed Eureka’s hands.
“I said I haven’t sobbed.” Eureka shrugged, thinking all the clothes in the world couldn’t counter the sensation of utter nakedness pulsing through her. “You know I’ve teared up before.”
“Right. Of course.” Cat looked at the shore as it glided by, as if she was trying to recall bygone tears on her friend’s cheeks.
Eureka had chosen the word “sobbed” because shedding that single tear in front of Ander had felt like a betrayal of her promise to Diana years ago. Her mother had slapped her when she was weeping uncontrollably. That was what she’d never done again, the vow she would never break, not even on a night like tonight.
21
LIFE PRESERVER
One moment Eureka thought she was flying. The next—a violent crash into cold blue water. Her body split the surface. She clenched her eyes shut as the sea swallowed her. A wave canceled the sound of something—someone screaming above water—as the hush of ocean flowed in. Eureka heard only the crackle of fish feeding on coral, the gurgle her underwater gasp produced, and the quiet before the next colossal thrash of tide.
Her body was caught in something constricting. Her probing fingers found a nylon strap. She was too stunned to move, to wrestle free, to remember where she was. She let the ocean entomb her. Was she drowning yet? Her lungs knew no difference between being in water and being in the open air. The surface danced above, an impossible dream, an effort she couldn’t see how to make.
She felt one thing above all else: unbearable loss. But what had she lost? What did she long for so viscerally that her heart pulled like an anchor?
Diana.
The accident. The wave. She remembered.
Eureka was there again—inside the car, in the waters beneath Seven Mile Bridge. She’d been given a second chance to save her mother.
She saw everything so clearly. The clock on the dashboard read 8:09. Her cell phone drifted across the flooded front seat. Yellow-green seaweed fringed the center console. An angelfish flitted through the open window as if it were hitchhiking to the bottom. Next to her, a flowing curtain of red hair masked Diana’s face.
Eureka thrashed for the clasp of her seat belt. It dissolved into bits of debris in her hands, as if it were long-decayed. She lunged toward her mother. As soon as she reached Diana, her heart swelled with love. But her mother’s body was limp.
“Mom!”
Eureka’s heart seized. She brushed the hair from Diana’s face, longing to see her. Then Eureka stifled a scream. Where her mother’s regal features should have been, there was a black void. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Bright rays of something like sunlight suddenly rained down around her. Hands gripped her body. Fingers squeezed her shoulders. She was being pulled from Diana against her will. She writhed, screaming. Her savior neither heard nor cared.
She never surrendered, lashing at the hands that separated her from Diana. She would have preferred to drown. She wanted to stay in the ocean with her mother. For some reason, when she glared up at the owner of the hands, she expected to see another black and voided face.
But the boy was bathed in such bright light she could barely see him. Blond hair waved in the water. One hand reached for something above him—a long black cord stretching vertically through the sea. He grasped it hard and pulled. As Eureka soared upward through the cold glaze of sea, she realized the boy was holding on to an anchor’s thick metal chain, a lifeline to the surface.
Light suffused the ocean around him. His eyes met hers. He smiled, but it looked like he was crying.
Ander opened his mouth—and began to sing. The song was strange and otherworldly, in a language Eureka could almost understand. It was bright and high-pitched, replete with baffling scales. It sounded so familiar … almost like the chirping of a lovebird.
Her eyes opened in the solitary darkness of her bedroom. She gulped air and wiped her sweat-dampened brow. The dream song rang though her mind, a haunting sound track in the night’s stillness. She massaged her left ear, but the sound didn’t go away. It grew louder.
She rolled over to read a glowing 5:00 a.m. on her phone’s display. She realized the sound was just the song of morning birds that had infiltrated her dream and woken her. The culprits were likely speckled starlings, which migrated to Louisiana this time every fall. She wedged a pillow over her head to block out their chirping, not ready to rise and recall how thoroughly Brooks had betrayed her at the party the night before.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Eureka shot up in bed. The sound came from her window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She threw off her blankets and hovered near the wall. The palest thread of predawn light brushed her gauzy white curtains, but she saw no shadow darkening them to indicate a person outside. She was dizzy from the dream, from how close she’d been to Diana and to Ander. She was delirious. There was no one outside her window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
In a single motion Eureka threw back the curtains. A small lime-green bird waited calmly outside on the white windowsill. He had a diamond of golden feathers on his breast and a bright red crown. His beak tapped three times on the glass.
“Polaris.” Eureka recognized Madame Blavatsky’s bird.
She slid the window up and opened the wooden shutters wider. She’d cut the screen out years ago. Icy air billowed in. She held out her hand.
Polaris hopped onto her index finger and resumed singing vibrantly. This time, Eureka was certain she heard the bird in stereo. Somehow his song came through the left ear that had heard nothing but muffled ringing for months. She realized he was trying to tell her something.
His green wings flapped against the quiet sky, propelling his body inches above her finger. He swooped closer, chirped at Eureka, then turned his body toward the street. He flapped his wings again. At last he perched on her finger to chirp a final crescendo.
“Shhh.” Eureka glanced over her shoulder at the wall her room shared with the twins’. She watched Polaris repeat the same pattern: hovering above her hand, turning toward the street, and chirping another—quieter—crescendo as he landed back on her finger.
“It’s Madame Blavatsky,” Eureka said. “She wants me to follow you.”