Waterfell

2

CLOUDED WATERS

“Miss Marin, kindly report to Principal Cano’s office.”

Even though all the stares of the students in the room suddenly converge upon me, my second-period Spanish teacher doesn’t look up from the pile of papers on his desk. I shrug, grinning at the kids in the front row, and sport a sneaky thumbs-up to Jenna and Sawyer sitting in the back next to my empty desk. Jenna rolls her eyes in an exaggerated movement as if I’ve just gotten off scot-free from a fate worse than death, but she’s kind of right. Anything’s better than verb conjugations in Spanish class, even if it is facing the resident dragon-lord of Dover Prep.

The outer office is empty except for a familiar face. Cara ignores me, probably because she’s still mad about the match, or it could be that she’s just being Cara. She’s the principal’s niece, so she basically thinks that everyone at Dover is there to be at her beck and call. According to Jenna, the school is divided into Cara peons and Cara crap-ons. I’m definitely in the latter. Cara and I used to be friends—best friends even—but things had ended after a boy she’d liked asked me out, and I’d said yes. Apparently I’d broken a cardinal rule of girlhood, but technically, I didn’t steal anything that didn’t want to be stolen. And then when I took her place as starting striker on the JV team sophomore year, that’d been the clincher.

I shrug and look around. Normally the waiting room has a couple students standing around but it’s empty so I sit after checking in with Cano’s receptionist. Pushing aside the stack of college brochures on the table next to me, I thumb through the only magazine I can find and nearly snort at some of the articles. Flipping through one about “Ten Ways to Talk to Your Teen About Sex,” I can’t stop myself from bursting into laughter despite the immediate quelling look from the receptionist. I can’t imagine any parent who would use a cucumber as a prop in any kind of meaningful conversation.

“What’s so funny?” a voice behind me asks. The smell of salt and sand fills my nostrils, and I swing around. It’s the boy from the beach.

Lo.

He’s wearing a wool hat and black T-shirt with cargos instead of a neoprene hood and wet suit, but those eyes are unforgettable.

I slam the magazine shut, feeling a slow flush crawl up my neck and around the back of my ears. “Stalk much? What are you doing here, anyway?” I snap, noticing the golden sand grains covering his flip-flop-clad feet.

“Not stalking. I’m new here.”

“Sure you are.” Considering he isn’t wearing the Dover Prep required uniform, I’m pretty sure he’s taking me for a ride. I turn my attention back to the magazine, opening its pages and pretending to be absorbed in reading. A low chuckle alerts me to the particularly large headline entitled “Embarrassing Medical Problems.” I feel my skin getting hotter and toss the offending magazine to the table, turning to confront Mr. Nosypants.

“Why don’t you go back to surfing or tanning or whatever it is that you beach boys do?”

Lo smiles. I force myself not to notice that his teeth are whiter than I remember or to acknowledge the tiny response that makes my ears feel like they’re melting into unrecognizable nubs.

“I thought you were watching me surf the other day,” he says with a grin.

“Hardly,” I shoot back with feigned nonchalance. “Couldn’t have picked you out from the lineup of identical surfing doppelgängers if I tried.”

“So that wasn’t you out beyond the breakers staring at me like I was a frosted cherry smoothie?” Lo’s smile turns impish.

“What?” I splutter. “I was so not. I hate cherry.” I can’t exactly control the flush that seeps through my skin. I snap my lips shut, aware that I’ll only make it worse if I say anything more, especially in response to that annoying, knowing look on his face.

“Hi, Lo,” Cara says in a breathy voice, walking past us on her way out of the office. “Nice to see you again.” Once more, it’s as if I’m invisible, but no surprise there. Lo has obviously qualified for the peon list. I snort and turn back to studying the other brochures on the table before selecting one on making informed college choices.

“Hey, Cara,” Lo says to her with a smile that could melt butter, and then stands to move past her and sit in the empty seat next to me. With a death glare in my direction as if his actions are somehow my fault, Cara tosses her hair and stalks off. “So what’s your name?” he asks me.

Despite giving him immediate brownie points for blowing off Cara, I’m still trying to think of a snarky comeback in return for his earlier comment. Just then Principal Cano himself walks out of his office. He heads over to his assistant, holding a file in his hand. Cano is a tall swarthy, stern-looking man whose presence will make any classroom fall into immediate silence. It’s no different in the office. Well, except for Lo.

He stifles a laugh and whispers against my ear, “That guy is a dead ringer for Borat. If he has an accent, I think I’ll die.”

“Shut up,” I hiss back, leaning away from Lo’s warm breath. “So not funny. He’s Albanian and he’s a huge fan of detention, so keep talking if that’s your thing. Your funeral.”

In the same breath, I have to bite the smile trying to break across my face because Principal Cano is the butt of much Borat-related humor at Dover, all, of course, expressed in secret. A couple years back, one student actually posted a photo of the offending infamous green mankini on her blog with Principal Cano’s face, and she’d mysteriously disappeared within the same week. Rumors varied from she’d been expelled, to her family had moved to the other side of the country, to she was being held in Cano’s garage to be tortured for eternity.

I, of course, know better. Speio—who seems to somehow know everything that goes on in school—told me that there had been a very private lawsuit and an even more private settlement. So I know that it was definitely the second one, but who am I to curb the fun of speculation? Still, Cano is not one to be messed with—he takes his job as school principal seriously. Supposedly he used to be some kind of big-time molecular scientist in Eastern Europe and published several books on DNA research before he had a breakdown. I can’t imagine anything worse than managing a school full of hormonal teenagers, but different strokes for different folks.

“Ah, Ms. Marin,” Principal Cano says in a thickly accented voice. Beside me, I feel Lo’s indrawn snort and I bite the inside of my cheek even harder. I paste my best impression of a cheerleader smile on my face and lean so far away from Lo that I’m nearly out of my chair. “Congratulations on the game last week. Coach Fenton said that you were instrumental in the win.”

“Thank you, sir,” I say. “But it was a team effort.”

“That’s the spirit,” he agrees. I notice that he hasn’t acknowledged Lo but, new student or not, beach-bum surfer-boy is hardly my problem. “Come on in.”

As I stand to follow Principal Cano to his office, Lo winks at me and sprawls in the chair as if he’s in his living room. He picks up my discarded magazine and flips through it, raising his eyebrow and pointing overtly at the embarrassing-moments article. Unable to help myself, I roll my eyes at him. He’s a piece of work, that one.

Despite the pretense with the magazine, I feel his eyes on me all the way into the principal’s office. I say hello to the guidance counselor, who’s sitting in the second chair on the outside of the wide mahogany desk. Mrs. Leland is a tiny bird of a woman with dark hair always combed back in a bun, and a quiet demeanor. I smile at her and she congratulates me on the game as I take the seat to her left.

Luckily, Principal Cano only wants to talk about college choices, something I haven’t even started to think about. I still have a year of high school to go, but for some reason, it’s on his list of priorities. Jenna had told me he’d had a similar conversation with her about sports schools and sports scholarships. She’d mentioned something about it looking good on Dover’s—and by default Cano’s—record so he always took a vested interest in any potentially promising students, which apparently included me. But Cano has always seemed to be interested in my progress at Dover, so his attention is nothing new.

Lo catches my eye through the blinds of Principal Cano’s office. He’s staring at his phone, completely uncaring of any the rules governing visible cell phone use in school areas. I nod at the appropriate intervals, pretending to listen to Cano but surreptitiously studying the boy sitting outside. Something about him tugs at me. I don’t know if it’s the whole lonely-boy slash bad-boy vibe, but there’s something there that just gets me.

It isn’t about his physical looks. I mean he’s okay, but nothing spectacular. His tanned face is all hard angles and hollows, and his almond-shaped eyes make him look almost feminine. He’s not bad looking, that’s for sure, but cute isn’t a word I’d use to describe him. More on the slender side than bulky, there’s something resilient about him. I didn’t get to see that much of him in the wet suit, but I’m sure he’s in great shape if his surfing is any indication. He’s strong. I see it in the sharp curve of his jaw and in his long slender fingers tapping away on the phone’s screen.

Suddenly, my own phone vibrates in my pocket as a smile curls the left corner of Lo’s mouth. He doesn’t look up, just continues to stare intently at the device in his hands. I frown. Coincidence? It buzzes again and, this time, I can’t help myself.

“Excuse me, Principal Cano, sorry to interrupt but I think I forgot to turn my phone off this morning. I just want to make sure it’s not on.” Cano tosses a benevolent smile in my direction as I slide out my phone with a quick glance at the offending messages. I don’t recognize the number but the words are more than maddeningly identifiable.

Still enjoying that cherry smoothie, I see. BTW, you didn’t tell me your name.

I’m so hot with delayed embarrassment that it feels like I’m going to melt into a puddle on the floor any minute. Lo hasn’t looked up but that smirk is still lurking around the corners of his mouth. I’m itching to slap it off his face and figure out at the same time how he got ahold of my unlisted number. I shove my phone back into my pocket.

Tearing my glance away from the annoyance on the other side of the window, I focus on Principal Cano, who is now looking through my file. Boring. Not much in there other than the usual—transcripts, grades, notes. On paper, I’m an exemplary student, never drawing unnecessary attention to myself.

My gaze spans the desk, and suddenly, my boredom disappears. Next to a heap of files on Cano’s desk is another open file far thinner than mine. The photo of an arrogant but familiar face is clipped to one corner.

Lo’s file.

I bolt upright and forward in my chair, curiosity peppering my brain. It would be so easy to glimmer over the desk without anyone being the wiser. Curiosity gets the better of me, and maybe a little desire for payback. The need to see what’s in that file becomes insistent. In a world governed by paperwork, his file is even thinner than mine, which makes him very interesting.

Lo obviously has money; otherwise, he wouldn’t be here. Not that it matters, but Dover is a snooty private school that isn’t exactly known for giving free rides. As a student with a royal trust fund and a generous long-standing alumni grant, I had no trouble getting admitted. Dover has been my family’s alma mater for centuries.

My real family...the nonhuman one.

Who wouldn’t exactly approve of what I am about to do. Especially my Handlers.

Shoving the thought of them away, I focus on the task at hand. Glimmering isn’t expressly forbidden so I’m not doing anything too untoward, but it is frowned upon because of the potential exposure. I’ll be careful so there won’t be any risk.

Taking a breath, I shrug off the nerves, feeling the water inside my body press against my skin in immediate response as a round weightlessness forms in the middle of my chest. I extend the glimmer-shadow outward like a ball of water, hovering over Principal Cano’s desk as he’s speaking and gesturing at some notes in my file.

From any outside perspective, I’m sitting in my chair and listening intently to what Cano is saying. But for my own purposes, my glimmer-self can now see the pages on the desk as easily as if I were sitting on Principal Cano’s lap. Which is a pretty gross thought.

Focus, I tell myself, and push slightly to the right.

The glimmer-shadow almost breaks but I pull it together with a long, slow breath that slivers through my teeth. Glimmering is a delicate business that involves manipulating minuscule amounts of water in the air and connecting those to the source in my body. The technical term for it is hydroprojection, which basically means controlling the energy of moisture to project an invisible extension of myself wherever I choose. But I like the word glimmer better because that’s what it looks like if anyone were to ever envision it.

As expected, the pages in my file are boring, basically showing my transcripts from my last school, my current grades, my extracurricular activities and all the usual stuff. I’m not interested in any of that. I am interested in the Annoyance. Hovering over the second file, I glance at the sparse notes. Lo is a C student. No surprise—I could have called that just from his don’t-care attitude. Did four sports at his last school including swimming and soccer, and is a Junior State Surf Champion. No surprise there, either. I just don’t get why he’s here and why he had transferred to Dover in the middle of his junior year, from Hawaii of all places.

A note in red on a yellow Post-it catches my attention on the corner of the manila folder. The words Under Observation are underlined several times. It’s stuck above a newspaper clipping. I almost lose hold of the glimmer at the horrific mangled photo of a boat. Nearly his whole family was killed in a sailing accident during a freak storm. His foster father survived but is on life support in some private hospital in Australia, and it appears that Lo was sent here to live with his biological mother, his only remaining family.

A pang of pity spirals its way through me, becoming more intense as it touches my glimmer-self, so much so that it ripples outward. Of their own volition, my eyes turn to the boy sitting in the waiting room outside and connect with a pair of liquid blue ones. He’s staring right at me.

I dissipate in an instant, broken apart by the fierce vulnerability in that look. Or maybe he looks that way because of what I’ve just read. Either way, I feel guilty for my spying even though he couldn’t possibly know what I’d been doing. There’s no way he or any other human would be able to see anything—glimmers are invisible, undetectable to human eyes. Only the Aquarathi—my people—can sense a glimmer, not humans. And Lo is not one of us. If he were, I would know him in an instant.

As an Aquarathi heir, my blood commands any of my kind to declare themselves to me, and it isn’t like they have control over doing so; their bodies respond. It’s complicated to explain, but we work in the same way that water bonds to water. A single drop is but a part of the whole.

Principal Cano’s voice snaps me back to reality.

“Sorry, sir?” I say, momentarily disoriented.

“He asked if you could send Mr. Seavon in on your way back to class?” Mrs. Leland, who is standing next to him, has picked up Lo’s file.

At my blank stare, Mrs. Leland gently clarifies. “Lotharius Seavon. The boy in the waiting room whom you were speaking to earlier.”

Lotharius? I nearly giggle out loud but compose myself. We do live in California, after all, where people name their kids after colors and adverbs and feelings. There’s even a kid called Happy on the surf team at Dover. Lotharius is tamer than most. And for some reason, it suits him, probably more so than “Lo” does. Maybe it’s his exotic looks, but “Max” or “Tony” just wouldn’t seem fitting.

“Oh, of course,” I say just as Mrs. Leland hands me another pile of college brochures. “Is he new here?” I can’t help myself but after seeing Lo’s file on the desk and having him brag earlier that he was a student, I have to know for sure.

“Yes, today is his first day, and he’s a junior like you.” She stares at me with a thoughtful look, tipping her little bird head to the side. “Actually, Ms. Marin, perhaps you could help to show Mr. Seavon around at lunch. Help him get his bearings a bit.” I want to kick myself in the teeth for even asking about Lo...now I’m going to be stuck with the annoying creature. I make a mental note to try to fail my next English exam just get my name off Cano’s “promising students” list, but with my luck, I’ll get hauled in twice as often.

I smile graciously through my gnashed teeth. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my world, it’s that etiquette and flawless courtesy will get you anywhere, especially as a teen. It’s as if the adults don’t expect it. “Of course,” I say sweetly. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Thank you, Ms. Marin,” Principal Cano says, parting his lips in an odd grimace that barely passes for a smile. “As always, it’s been wonderful talking with you. Keep up the good work and be sure to let Mrs. Leland know if any of those—” he nods toward the brochures in my arms “—strike your fancy, and we can take it from there.” He presses a button on his desk phone and speaks into the handset just as I’m exiting the office. “Lori, we’re running a little behind. Can you readjust my schedule after Mr. Seavon? Thank you.”

Outside, Lo stares at me with the ever-present smirk on his face. His eyes, so vulnerable before, are now unreadable. The furrow speeds across my brow and is gone before I can process why his moodiness is even a blip on my radar. I don’t care.

A twinge of something slices through me as I think of all the tragedy in his life, but I’m not here to fix anyone, especially boys who obviously don’t want to be fixed. And I’m sure he’d be pissed if he knew that I’d looked at his file.

Guilt stabs me and I stare at him, inexplicably annoyed. “So...after you’re done, I have to, um, show you around later.”

Lo laughs, the sound of it rich and deep, and crinkling the outer corners of his eyes. The smile softens his entire face, transforming it from sharp to almost pleasant. I pretend not to notice. “Whoa, try not to sound so ecstatic! New-kid babysitter, the job you’ve always wanted.”

I can’t help but return the smile at his sarcastic comment. “Well, I don’t like to boast but they do call me the new-kid whisperer.”

“That must be pretty special.”

“So special,” I say with an exaggerated eye roll.

As we stare at each other with tentative smiles on our faces and laughter in our eyes, something strange flowers in the middle of my chest. It feels like a glimmer, only more tangible with its butterfly touches extending along my arms and legs, as if everything inside of me is responding to someone else’s glimmer call.