Stay

I waited until the beach was clear of people before I walked out of the water. I didn't know what would cause more of a stir, the sight of a naked girl or the sight of her dragging what appeared to be a dead seal from the water behind her, but most likely both. It wasn't something I was willing to find out.

This beach wasn't usually well populated anyway. The sand rockier with shells sharper than most tourist liked. Which was just the way I liked it. It was more known for us locales who longed to enjoy the smell of the salty air, the warm waves crashing against our feet with the silence required to really appreciate and bask in its relevance and beauty. Or locales who wanted to party, or engage in illegal activities, or be alone together for a different reason than just the breathtaking views and contemplating their place in the universe.

I shivered and wobbled as my body once again adjusted to walking on two legs, while I made my way up the familiar path of sand leading to a cluster of rocks. I immediately missed the warmth of the skin I now drug behind me, the feel of the waves against my sleek body as I cut through them, weightless and free. Unlike the confines of the cold, harsh, world and the body I now found myself in. I knew it was winter by the sting in the air, but not exactly when.

I dropped to my knees and began to dig through the sand in the same spot just like I had countless times before. The brutal Maine wind left me shaking and covered in goosebumps, and motivated me to dig faster and harder. Finally my nails scrapped against the lid of the red cooler. I swiped the sand away with a final impatient sweep and tore off the lid.

Tucked safely inside, like always, was clothes, money, bottled water, protein bars, and a cell phone. I rummaged through the goods, selecting clothes appropriate for the current season, jeans, a sweater, a jacket, and boots. I dressed quickly, and fought my dark hair back from my face as it hung in sodden clumps. My hand enclosed around the note in the cooler and a smile crossed my lips at my brother's messy, fast handwriting. Welcome back Mare! Can't wait to see you! We have lots to catch up on, little sis! Call me to pick you up! Love Zale.

I fished the cell phone out of the cooler and turned it on. As I waited for it to be operational, I thought of my brother Zale. How he came out here and restocked this cooler, recharged and changed out the batteries on this phone every time I was away. And the cold in my bones immediately disappeared and I felt guilty that I had even grumbled about coming back, leaving the water. Zale alone was enough to pull me back to this body, but I also longed to see my father too. He and I were not as close as we once were, since I had started going away, but I still missed and loved him.

When the phone screen clickedon, I inhaled a deep breath when I realized it was January 16th, sixwhole months since I walked down the moonlight beach and slipped inside my hide,letting the waves carry me away. I had never been gone for this long before. Guilt and shame crept over me as I dialed mybrother's number, even though it was preprogrammed in the phone. I would neverforget his number or him or anything that mattered, even though my memories andthis body grew fuzzy while I wore the skin that was currently lying on the sand

beside me. I promised them I would always come back when I left, that I wouldn't stay gone like mom finally did all those years ago.

My brother's phone went to voicemail. I had missed the sound of his voice, just how much I realized when tears pricked my eyes by the sound. "Hello, you've reached Zale's phone. You know what to do at the beep." Just the way it took my legs time to readjust it also took my voice a couple award clearings and a cough and it came out a bit hoarse and rough in the beginning.

"Hey..Hey Zay. I can't wait to see you too big brother. I missed you like crazy! I love you! Put the hot chocolate on and I'll meet you at home. I'll find my own way back! See you soon."

I slipped the phone and money into my pocket. I drank some of the bottled water, realizing I probably should have downed some before I made my call. My thoughtful brother even included mouthwash, toothpaste, and a toothbrush, which I gratefully used now. After a steady diet of seaweed and fish, I knew my breath was something awful. So was my tangled hair, but I didn't bother with it. I removed the duffle bag from the cooler, carefully put my skin inside the dark bag, reburied the cooler and headed off the beach with the bag slung across my shoulder.

It was only late afternoon, but the thief of winter was soon to rob the day of light and leave darkness in its place. I watched the world around me. The familiar shops, and houses of the coastal town I'd grew up in and knew as well as I did my own bodies. Most made of the stone built to withstand the harshness of the salt and wind of the sea that battered it. A small price to pay in return to live near its shores. There was a beauty in the stone, not just because it was my home, but because it stood strong and true, weathered but not beaten.

I walked past my old house, but it was the one in my mind that would forever be home. The charming, cozy seaside cottage which the swing Dad had built us was still swaying in the wind. So many memories filtered through me. Mostly good ones that made me smile, but not all. Like the day in my twelfth year of life, my father had packed us into the car, boxes in the trunk, and said we were leaving. It was Zale who'd said "What about Mom?" And Dad had turned to us in the back seat, his grey eyes steel, and said "She's not coming back. She's made her choice and now I have to make mine."

He moved us fifty miles away from our seaside home in Chamberlain, as if it would be enough to keep me away. I didn't understand it then, that he'd been afraid. My mother had taken back to the sea when I six- year-s old, and at first she would come back. In the beginning, she would walk on two legs and greet us on the shore. Bring us shells and stories, while my father watched, detached and forlorn from the sand. Sometimes she would stay a night or a week. But as the years passed, we saw less of her human form, and then even less of her seal form watching over us from the waves. Even having her in any form was better than none we soon came to learn, because by the time I was ten and Zale was twelve, she didn't return at all.

My father saw the same desire for the water in both of his children, but it was the strongest in me. As far back as I could remember both Zale and I were content to spend our lives on the sand or in the water, almost obsessively, to the point we would sneak out of our cottage at night and find ourselves at peace laying in the sand. When were barely more than toddlers, Dad found us one night there sleeping, out of his mind with worry and fear, while mom was calm and told him he needn't worry. Dad was furious and they fought about it. Afterwards, he gripped us tighter.

He could breathe easier when Zale turned fourteen, and he hadn't changed. Most Selkie's took on their first skins by the end of their thirteenth year of life. But he could see the stirrings in me, but the way I could sit on the shore, calm and still for hours. My eyes just watching, breathing it in, the look of longing. The same look he'd seen on my mother's face countless time. And he was desperate to keep me on the shore.

But in the end it was for naught. Because the call to the sea proved too strong. I told Zale I was going that night on my thirteenth birthday. I hugged him and promised him I'd always come back. He was sweet and understanding in a way I still didn't deserve or understand. And at fifteen years old, he even stole Dad's car and drove me the fifty miles to the beach we'd grown up on. It was his idea about the cooler, though then it was smaller, filled with less money, and his personal cell phone. He waved me goodbye and watched with a serene expression as I transformed into what I was meant to be for the first time. On some level he did understand.

And Zale was there the first time I returned after two weeks at sea. He'd gotten into serious trouble with Dad, then and many times after, but it still never stopped my sweet brother. He would pick me up, or made sure I got a ride home every time I needed him. Things between my dad and I fractured and remained cracked, but every time Zale would welcome me home with open arms, in winter with hot coca just the way I liked it and blankets he warmed in the dryer, and in summer with ice cold lemonade and strawberry ice cream, my favorites.

I could taste the coca in my mouth as I climbed on the bus. I clutched the phone to my chest, willing it to ring mentally. Zale should've been home from his classes at the community college by now, but he still had a life outside of me. Even though I took up more of it then I should, I was glad at the thought of him maybe being with his girlfriend Tara at the moment. Those two were crazy for each other and had been since they were little kids.

It took a couple hours, several buses, a cab, and some walking before I came to the house I mostly called home just because Zale lived there. The smile crept back across my lips by the site of his jeep in the driveway. Dad's truck was nowhere in sight, maybe a late day on his boat or just the commute home. I looked over the two story white Cape Cod house and I was struck immediately that something was wrong.

The house was too quiet and dark. Even though my brother's jeep was here, there was no way he was home. The house hadn't been "Zaled". It was a term my friend Remi had coined to explain what happened to our house and sometimes even other people's houses when Zale was there. My brother was a ball of energy who hated silence and stillness. He would often turn on every light in the house and nearly every TV and radio, and often both. It drove my Dad crazy and often led to many grumblings about paying the electricity bill, but it never stopped Zale from doing it. It was like my brother was so alive with life and energy it physically manifested in the environment around him.

I didn't bother knocking or jiggling the knob, but instead immediately went to the hideous gnome statue that had the spare key hidden beneath it. The statute was repulsive and Zale had chosen it years ago, stating no one would touch it or want to steal it. He even named it "Snaggle tooth". So far he'd been right.

I let myself into what was and wasn't really my house in Lisbon. I flipped on the switch by the wall and dumped my duffle on the floor, dropped the key in the bowl by the lamp. The second wrong thing I noticed was Zale's keys in the bowl. Why would Zale leave home without his keys? I tried his number again instantly and got the same instant voicemail as last time. I told him to call me.

I told myself I was being irrational. A dark and quiet house and my brother's keys in the bowl by the door proved nothing. He probably rushed out of here so quickly he'd forgotten them. Tara probably picked him up and they were out together eating dinner, laughing, and having a good time right now. But it had been six months and what if they weren't even dating anymore? What all had happened in the six months I was gone? But I dismissed that idea quickly, Tara and Zale were forever, they'd grown up together, he's even told her he was going to marry her and gave her a plastic ring when they were seven years old. I had no right to be angry that Zale wasn't here, that he didn't drop his life at my beck and call every time I called.

I shrugged out of my coat and laid it across the familiar, worn, brown couch. I thought about showering or calling Dad, but right now I just longed for some rich, sweet, hot chocolate. Zale made it the best, but I would just have to make do. I made towards the kitchen, past the stone fireplace, the worn brown coffee table nicked from years of abuse and even our initials that Zale and I had secretly carved underneath it. The whitewashed shiplap walls that been the same since Dad slapped the coat of paint on them when we first moved in, and even the giant old fashioned box TV Dad refused to upgrade.

I turned on the kitchen light and the room was bathed with light. The kitchen was old fashioned and hadn't changed much since we'd moved in. Almost like Dad had only half-heartedly made this our home, like he'd never fully committed. He'd taken down the hideous flowers and vine wall paper, but the puke green cabinets and worn countertops, and antique appliances, everything else remained as it had since the seventies when the original owners remodeled it. Everything except the gleaming and sparkling new stainless steel double fridge with the freezer that looked comically out of place.

Evidence of Dad's livelihood filled that freezer. My father was a fisherman born and raised, it ran through his blood. In some ways the sea called to us both. Out on his boat was where he'd met and fallen in love with my mother. Though now I wondered if he regretted it. And even though, he'd moved us away, the ocean still called him back as nearly every day he got in his truck, drove the forty miles to the closet shore in East Harpswell, and took out his boat along with a few deckhands. Sometimes I wondered if the fish and lobster was the only reason he left the shore, but if he still looked to see her out among the waves.

When I walked farther into the kitchen, I noticed the wooden table back in the corner near the window. The table itself was unremarkable, but rather the fact it was covered in mail, and various containers holding food. Pies and casseroles, all untouched. Like after a party or a funeral or something. I strained to remember if I'd missed any important events while I'd been away, but nothing came too made save for Remi's Birthday which passed two months ago, and it was far too late to be leftovers from Christmas. Both gave me a stab of regret, because I had never missed Christmas with my family before, and she was really the only friend I had left. The one who still came around, even after I disappeared and came back with paper thin explanations which had satisfied none of the rest of my former friends.

There was a stack of card sized envelopes stacked so high on the table, the stack had tilted and overflowed onto the floor. Most remained unopened, but I automatically reached down and picked the stack up off the floor. They were addressed to my father, my father and Zale, Zale, or simply The Halifax Family. My heart was thrumming in my chest, picking up in force the more I pulled a card out from where it was half stuffed back into the envelope. The front had some peaceful scene, a waterfall, and the words "Thinking Of You". Inside was blank and handwritten, signed The Douglas family who lived down the street. My chest tightened, my legs felt rubbery , and I collapsed into the wooden chair by the table, as my eyes skimmed Mrs. Douglas's feminine script Solomon, our thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family and hoping for Zale's quick and full recovery. Please if there is anything you need or anything we can do you, don't hesitate to call or come by.

It was hard to force air into my lungs. Zale's recovery from what? If the uneaten food lining the table and the sheer volume of cards upon it, were any indications, it was something bad. No one made casseroles for broken arms. I jumped up from the table so quickly my knee banged against the table and the chair hit the floor reverberating through the silent house. I paced the kitchen linoleum as I dialed Zale's number again. I cursed when I got the same results as before, straight to his voicemail. This time my voice was pleading for my brother to call me back, to please pick up. My eyes were burning and my breathing frantic as images and thoughts filled my mind, possibilities that devastated me.

My hands shook as I dialed my Dad's number. I needed answers no matter how bad they hurt, or maybe to put my mind at ease that Zale was okay, laid up at the hospital healing from a badly broken leg in one of those traction casts or something. Dad answered on the third ring. I was the one only one who ever used this phone.

"Marin, you're back," came my Dad's short and sharp greeting.

"Zale? Dad what's happened to Zale," I forced the words out.

Silence on the line, followed by a deep breath.

"Marin, I need you to meet me at the hospital. Take Zale's jeep and meet in the waiting room on the second floor. His keys are in the bowl."

Heavy silence followed again for a few seconds as I processed. My next words came out more like a whisper.

"Is he okay?"

"We'll talk when you get here. I'll see you soon."

The line went dead and I continued to grip it to my ears for several seconds afterward. I shoved the phone into my pocket, and made it across the room in just seconds, barely remembering to grab my coat. I grabbed Zale's keys and clutched them so tightly in my hand, the metal bit into my skin.

As I locked the door behind me on that empty house, my last thoughts were I always promised I would come back, but I always took for granted they would be here when I did.