Teardrop

29 EVACUATION

When Eureka awoke the next morning, dim, silvery light shone through her window. Rain drummed against the trees. She yearned to let the storm lull her back to sleep, but her left ear was ringing, reminding her of the strange melody Ander had conjured when he unsealed Diana’s locket. The Book of Love was cradled in her arms, spelling out the prophecy of her tears. She knew she had to get up, to face the things she’d learned the night before, but an ache in her heart held her head against her pillow.

Brooks was gone. According to Ander, who seemed to have been right about so much else, Eureka’s oldest friend wasn’t coming back.

A weight on the other side of her bed surprised her. It was Ander.

“Have you been here all night?” she asked.

“I’m not leaving you.”

She crawled across the bed toward him. She was still in her bathrobe. He wore his clothes from the night before. They couldn’t help smiling as their faces drew near each other. He kissed her forehead, then her lips.

She wanted to pull him down onto the bed, to hold and kiss him horizontally, to feel the weight of his body on hers, but after a few soft pecks, Ander rose and stood at the window. His arms were crossed behind his back. Eureka could picture the way he would have stood there all night, scanning the street for a Seedbearer silhouette.

What would he have done if one of them had come to her house? She remembered the silver case he’d pulled from his pocket that night. It had terrified his family.

“Ander—” She meant to ask what had been inside that box.

“It’s time to go,” he said.

Eureka groped for her phone to check the time. When she remembered it was lost, she imagined it ringing somewhere in the rain-swept Gulf, amid a silver school of fish, being answered by a mermaid. She rummaged through her nightstand for her plastic polka-dot Swatch watch. “It’s six in the morning. My family will still be asleep.”

“Wake them up.”

“And tell them what?”

“I’ll tell everyone the plan as soon as we’re together,” Ander said, still facing the window. “It’s better if there aren’t too many questions. We’ll need to move quickly.”

“If I’m going to do this,” Eureka said, “I need to know where we’re going.” She’d slid from the bed. Her hand rested on his sleeve. His bicep flexed against her touch.

He faced her and ran his fingers through her hair, drawing his nails softly along her scalp, the nape of her neck. She’d thought it was sexy when he ran his fingers through his own hair. This was even better.

“We are going to find Solon,” he said. “The lost Seedbearer.”

“I thought you said he was in Turkey.”

For a moment, Ander almost smiled, then his face went strangely blank. “Luckily I salvaged a boat yesterday. We sail as soon as your family is ready.”

Eureka watched him carefully. There was something in his gaze—satisfaction suppressed by … guilt. Her mouth felt dry as her mind made a dark connection. She didn’t know how she knew.

“Ariel?” she whispered. Brooks’s boat. “How did you do that?”

“Don’t worry. It’s done.”

“I’m worried about Brooks, not his boat. Did you see him? Did you even look for him?”

Ander’s face tensed. His eyes flicked to the side. After a moment, they returned to Eureka’s, released of their hostility. “There will come a time when you will know the entirety of Brooks’s true fate. For everyone’s sake, I hope that is a long way off. In the meantime, you must try to move on.”

Her eyes clouded over; she barely saw him standing before her. In that moment, she wanted more than anything to hear Brooks call her Cuttlefish.

“Eureka?” Ander touched her cheek. “Eureka?”

“No,” Eureka murmured. She was talking to herself. She stepped away from Ander. Her balance was off. She stumbled into her nightstand and back against the wall. She felt as cold and stiff as if she’d spent the night on an icecap in the middle of the Arctic Circle.

Eureka couldn’t deny the change in Brooks the past few weeks, the shockingly cruel and disloyal behavior she didn’t recognize. She tallied the number of conversations in which Brooks had probed for information about her emotions, her lack of crying. She thought of Ander’s immense and inexplicable hostility toward him from their first encounter—then she thought about the story of Byblis and the man she’d once been close to, the man whose body became possessed by the Atlantean king.

Ander didn’t want to say it, but the signs were all pointing toward yet another impossible reality.

“Atlas,” she whispered. “The whole time, he wasn’t Brooks. He was Atlas.”

Ander frowned but said nothing.

“Brooks isn’t dead.”

“No.” Ander sighed. “He isn’t dead.”

“He was possessed.” Eureka could barely get the words out.

“I know you cared for him. I would not wish Brooks’s fate on anyone. But it happened, and there’s nothing we can do. Atlas is too powerful. What is done is done.”

She hated the way Ander spoke in the past tense about Brooks. There had to be a way to save him. Now that she knew what had happened—that it had happened because of her—Eureka owed it to Brooks to get him back. She didn’t know how, only that she had to try.

“If I could just find him …” Her voice faltered.

“No.” Ander’s sharpness stole Eureka’s breath. He glared into her eyes, searching them for signs of tears. When he didn’t find them, he seemed vastly relieved. He slipped the chain with the thunderstone and locket over Eureka’s head. “You are in danger, Eureka. Your family is in danger. If you trust me, I can protect you. That’s all we can afford to focus on right now. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, halfheartedly, because there had to be a way.

“Good,” Ander said. “Now it’s time to tell your family.”

Eureka wore jeans, her running shoes, and a pale blue flannel shirt as she walked down the stairs holding Ander’s hand. Her purple school bag was draped over her shoulder, The Book of Love and Madame Blavatsky’s translation tucked inside. The den was dark. The clock on the cable box blinked 1:43. The storm must have made the power go out in the night.

As Eureka felt her way around the furniture, she heard the click of a door opening. Dad appeared in a sliver of lamplight in his bedroom doorway. His hair was wet, his shirt wrinkled and untucked. Eureka could smell his Irish Spring soap. He noticed the two dark forms in the shadows.

“Who’s there?” He moved quickly to turn on the light. “Eureka?”

“Dad—”

He stared at Ander. “Who is this? What’s he doing in our house?”

Ander’s cheeks had more color than Eureka had ever seen in them. He straightened his shoulders and ran his hands through his wavy hair twice. “Mr. Boudreaux, my name is Ander. I’m a … friend of Eureka’s.” He flashed her a small smile, as if, despite everything, he liked saying that.

She wanted to jump into his arms.

“Not at six in the morning you’re not,” Dad said. “Get out or I’m calling the police.”

“Dad, wait.” Eureka grabbed his arm the way she used to when she was little. “Don’t call the police. Please come and sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”

He looked at Eureka’s hand on his arm, then at Ander, then back at Eureka.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Fine. But first we’re making coffee.”

They moved to the kitchen, where Dad lit the gas burner and put on a kettle of water. He spooned black coffee into an old French press. Eureka and Ander sat at the table, arguing with their eyes over who should speak first.

Dad kept glancing at Ander. A disturbed expression fixed on his face. “You look familiar, kid.”

Ander shifted. “We’ve never met.”

While the water heated, Dad stepped closer to the table. He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes at Ander. His voice sounded distant when he said, “How did you say you knew this boy, Reka?”

“He’s my friend.”

“You go to school together?”

“We just … met.” She gave Ander a nervous shrug.

“Your mother said—” Dad’s hands began to shake. He set them firmly on the table to quiet them. “She said someday …”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The kettle whistled, so Eureka stood to turn off the burner. She poured water into the French press and gathered three mugs from the cupboard. “I think you should sit down, Dad. What we’re about to say might sound strange.”

A soft knock at the front door made all three of them jump. Eureka and Ander shared a glance, then she pushed back her chair and moved toward the door. Ander was right behind her.

“Don’t open the door,” he warned.

“I know who it is.” Eureka recognized the shape of the figure through the frosted glass. She yanked on the stuck doorknob, then unlocked the screen door.

Cat’s eyebrows arched at the sight of Ander standing over Eureka’s shoulder. “Would have gotten here earlier if I’d known there was going to be a sleepover.”

Behind Cat, wild wind shook the huge mossy bough of an oak tree as if it were a twig. A rough blast of water splattered the porch.

Eureka motioned Cat inside and offered to help her out of her raincoat. “We’re making coffee.”

“I can’t stay.” Cat wiped her feet on the mat. “We’re evacuating. My dad’s packing the car right now. We’re driving to stay with Mom’s cousins in Hot Springs. Are you evacuating, too?”

Eureka looked at Ander. “We’re not … We don’t … Maybe.”

“It’s not mandatory yet,” Cat explained, “but the TV said if the rain kept up, evacs might be required later on, and you know my parents—they always have to beat the traffic. Freaking storm came out of nowhere.”

Eureka swallowed a lump in her throat. “I know.”

“Anyway,” Cat said, “I saw your light on and wanted to drop this off before we left.” She held out the kind of wicker basket her mom was always packing for different fund-raisers and charity organizations. It was stuffed with rainbow confetti, the colors bleeding from the rain. “It’s my soul-mending kit: magazines, my mom’s meringues, and”—she lowered her voice and flashed a slender brown bottle at the bottom of the basket—“Maker’s Mark.”

Eureka took the basket, but what she really wanted to hold was Cat. She placed the soul-mending kit at their feet and wrapped her arms around her friend. “Thank you.”

She couldn’t bear to think how long it might be before she saw Cat again. Ander hadn’t mentioned when they’d be coming back.

“Stay for a cup of coffee?”

Eureka fixed Cat’s coffee the way she liked it, using most of Rhoda’s bottle of Irish Cream Coffee-mate. She poured a mug for herself and one for Dad and sprinkled cinnamon on top of both. Then she realized she didn’t know how Ander took his coffee, and it made her feel reckless, as if they’d run off and gotten engaged without knowing each other’s last name. She still didn’t know his last name.

“Black,” he said before she had to ask.

For a moment, they sipped quietly and Eureka knew that soon she had to do it: shatter this peace. Say goodbye to her best friend. Convince Dad of absurd, fantastic truths. Evacuate. She would take this small sip of false normalcy before things fell further apart.

Dad hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked up to say hello to Cat. His face was ashen. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Can I talk to you, Eureka?”

She followed him to the back of the kitchen. They stood in the doorway that elbowed off into the dining room, out of earshot of Ander and Cat. From the side of the stove hung the backyard landscapes the twins had painted in watercolor at their preschool. William’s was realistic: four green oak trees, a weathered swing set, the bayou twisting in the background. Claire’s was abstract, wholly purple, a glorious rendering of what their yard looked like when it stormed. Eureka could hardly look at the paintings, knowing that, in the best-case scenario, she had to rip the twins and their parents from the life they knew because she had put everyone in danger.

She didn’t want to tell Dad. She really didn’t want to tell him. But if she didn’t tell him, something worse might happen. “The thing is, Dad—” she started to say.

“Your mother said that someday something might happen,” Dad interrupted.

Eureka blinked. “She warned you.” She took his hand, which was cold and clammy, not strong and reassuring the way she was used to it feeling. She tried to stay as calm as possible. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought. Maybe Dad already had some sense of what to expect. “Tell me exactly what she said.”

He closed his eyes. His lids were creased and damp and he looked so frail it scared her. “Your mother was prone to delirium. She’d be out with you at the park or some store buying clothes. This was back when you were little, always when the two of you were alone. It never seemed to happen when I was there to see it. She’d come home and insist that impossible things had occurred.”

Eureka inched closer to him, attempting to inch closer to Diana. “Like what?”

“It was like she would fall into a fever. She’d repeat the same thing over and over. I thought she was ill, maybe schizophrenic. I’ve never forgotten what she said.” He looked at Eureka and shook his head. She knew he didn’t want to tell her.

“What did she say?”

That she came from a long line of Atlanteans? That she possessed a book prophesying a lost island’s second coming? That a cult of fanatics might someday seek to kill their daughter for her tears?

Dad wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “She said: ‘Today I saw the boy who’s going to break Eureka’s heart.’ ”

A chill ran down Eureka’s spine. “What?”

“You were four years old. It was absurd. But she wouldn’t let it go. Finally, the third time it happened, I made her draw me a picture.”

“Mom was a good artist,” Eureka murmured.

“I kept that picture in my closet,” Dad said. “I don’t know why. She’d drawn this sweet-looking kid, six or seven years old, nothing disturbing in the face, but in all the years we lived in town, I never saw the boy. Until …” His lip trembled and he took Eureka’s hands again. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the breakfast table. “The likeness is unmistakable.”

Tension twisted through Eureka’s chest, crippling her breath like a bad cold. “Ander,” she whispered.

Dad nodded. “He’s the same as he was in the drawing, just grown up.”

Eureka shook her head, as if that would shake the sensation of nausea. She told herself an old drawing didn’t matter. Diana couldn’t have read this future. She couldn’t have known Eureka and Ander might someday truly care for one another. She thought of his lips, his hands, the unique protectiveness that came through everything Ander did. It made her skin tingle with pleasure. She had to trust in that instinct. Instinct was all she had left.

Maybe Ander had been raised to be her enemy, but he was different now. Everything was different now.

“I trust him,” she said. “We’re in danger, Dad. You and me, Rhoda, the twins. We need to get out of here today, now, and Ander is the only one who can help us.”

Dad gazed at Eureka with profound pity and she knew it was the same look he must have given to Diana when she said things that sounded crazy. He tweaked her chin. He sighed. “You’ve had a real hard time of it, kid. All you need to do today is relax. Let me make you something for breakfast.”

“No, Dad. Please—”

“Trenton?” Rhoda appeared in the kitchen wearing a red silk robe. Her loose hair flowed down her back—a style Eureka wasn’t used to seeing on her. Her face was bare of makeup. Rhoda looked pretty. And frantic. “Where are the children?”

“They’re not in their room?” Eureka and Dad asked simultaneously.

Rhoda shook her head. “Their beds are made. The window was wide open.”

A terrific clap of thunder gave way to a faint rapping on the back door that Eureka almost didn’t hear. Rhoda and Dad sprinted to open it, but Ander got there first.

The door blew back with a sharp gust of wind. Rhoda, Dad, and Eureka halted at the sight of the Seedbearer standing in the doorway.

Eureka had seen him before at the police station and on the side of the road later that night. He looked sixty, with pale skin, slickly parted gray hair, and a pale gray tailored suit that gave him the appearance of a door-to-door salesman. His eyes glowed the same bright turquoise as Ander’s.

The resemblance between them was undeniable—and alarming.

“Who are you?” Dad demanded.

“If you’re looking for your children,” the Seedbearer said as a strong odor of citronella wafted in from the backyard, “step outside. We’d be happy to arrange an exchange.”