Homecoming

Massachusetts, 1986

I saw her at the first Sunday mass of the fall semester. Her back to me in our regulation pinafores and two long braids like black twine. The stained-glass window straight ahead, a hundred little colours bleeding into one.

We were seated next to each other in calculus class because our surnames sat together alphabetically and she introduced herself, smiling. It was the roots of what I knew would be the friendship of my lifetime.

She was new to school and everyone liked her immediately. She had a way of pulling you in like that. At our swimming lesson she sat on the bleachers and announced to Ms Moorhouse that she had gotten her period. A few girls guffawed into their hands, but I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so unspeakably glamourous.

Campus was cold and teachers tsk tsked us if we dawdled between classes. Girls were called Bailey and Madison and had designer shoes and trust funds and their noses pointed towards heaven.

Last semester one of the sophomores disappeared for a week and came back fundamentally changed. There were the whispers that she’d been seen in the groundkeeper’s quarters after a school dance, and everything made sense, because he was around twenty-ish and so handsome the older girls called him ‘dishy’, ‘gorgeous’ and ‘mine.’ He was the headmaster’s nephew.

On my fifteenth birthday she bought me a bracelet made of the most beautiful jewels I’d ever seen in my life: it was iridescent and shining, like pearl but vibrant, sapphire but somehow pink and red if you twisted it in the light just so. I asked her if it was expensive and she shrugged. I felt hot embarrassment. I was here on a generous scholarship, my single mother lived in a one-bedroom house in a bad part of Boston. But I was used to being the outlier here.

The richest kid in the school, Harrison Mowbrey, had bodyguards with him when he was dropped off at the start of the year. People say his dad is some huge oil magnate, business tycoon, media mogul. No one really knows.

Her and I don’t discuss the other students. We seal ourselves into our own world and throw away the key. We spend evenings in her dorm room listening to my Walkman with a headphone splitter. We worship Celine and Whitney. We shimmy around her bedroom, she can move her hips in a way like she’s carving through water, elegant and flowy. I jig beside her, not believing my luck, not believing her.

In October we go on a school trip to Washington to look at the monuments. We share a bedroom in the little motel, we’re never usually allowed to sleepover in each other’s dorms. We stay awake talking until we can’t keep our eyes peeled open any longer and feel wretched the next day after.

On the second night of the trip we turn into bed earlier; she’d been quiet all day and I put it down to exhaustion and traipsing around listening to museum guides drone on. But she turns away from me icily and I felt I had upset her. I go to her, put my hand on her shoulder and realise she is crying. I hold her and wipe her tears away; they are so salty they sting my hands. She won’t tell me what’s wrong: only that she doesn’t have enough time.

A week later it’s semester break and most people have gone home. My mother told me on the phone she’d taken on extra hours at work, I could stay at school if I wanted. I jumped for joy.

She hadn’t gone home either, she said it was too far away, but she missed her parents. We are two of a handful of girls left on campus.

She sneaks into my room at 2am, her hand covering my mouth so I don’t scream. She’s smuggled in candy, and we sit cross legged and chew them, talking excitedly about our plans for the two weeks of freedom spread out before us.

She pulls out a bottle then. It’s dark forest green and covered and dust.

“What on earth is that?”

“It’s cooking wine, I swiped it from a shelf in the kitchens. And this.” She produces a smaller bottle of nectarlike liquid labelled ‘brandy.’ I inspect it, recognising the name from my mother’s liquor cabinet I would paw through as a young child, miming drinking what I deemed ‘potions,’ her laughing at me whilst I didn’t understand the joke.

She unscrews the first bottle and takes a huge sip, before retching up pink liquid onto the carpet.

“Ewww! That’s so gross,” hands it to me, “go on, you try,”

I take a much more considered, small sip. It is acrid and burning, a slight finish of sweetness as it sets my insides on fire. “Ew.” I agree. We get to work on the brandy bottle and are pleasantly surprised in contrast. The minutes start to blur and bleed and I feel the happiest I have ever felt in my life.

“I have to tell you something.” She says, pulling my headphones off. It’s been hours since we started drinking now, we are lying on our backs, our knees knocking into each other listening to New Order on the Walkman. She faces me.

Her eyes are so green but change shade depending on the time of day. In evening they are the deepest jade, in the morning they will be light, a mint green. She studies me now.

“You have to help me. I’m running out if time.”

“This again? Out of time for what?”

She tells me everything. She tells me how she needs to get back home, how I must help. How home is very far. When she tells me she holds my hand, and it’s like I can see her truth: I promise her that I will help.

The week goes by slowly; I want to draw every second out of her. Every night I tell her I’ll miss her, I don’t want her to go. She says if she stays any longer she will die.

It’s a Sunday, and the plan is in place: after mass we will walk into town, hitchhike to the train station, take a two-hour train with two changes and then catch a final bus to the beach. The journey will take about six hours all up.

Father Cleary is droning on, his sermon relentless. I’ve never been particularly religious but right now I despise the concept. We line up for communion, and he recoils at the sight of me.

“You’ve been possessed by something demonic.” He tells me, refusing me communion. He rushes off, muttering. I return to my pew, shaking slightly. I don’t tell her what happened.

After mass our calculus teacher Mr Ratcliff approaches us, tells me I’m to come to his office immediately. I shake my head: “Please, sir, I can’t…” But he shakes his head and points to the door and I realise resistance is futile. I squeeze her hand to tell her I’m sorry.

Our school is a huge red brick building and Mr Ratcliff’s office sits on the top floor. We trudge up the grand, winding staircases in silence, headmasters of old glare at me from their oil paintings above.

Father Cleary had told Mr Ratcliff that I was in trouble. He was vague on the details but it was all Mr Ratcliff needed to hear. He smacks me with a ruler and tells me I better change my ways sharpish.

“I haven’t done anything.” I say, my eyes blurred with tears.

Matron ransacks my room that afternoon, on the hunt for contraband or clues. She returns nothing, except a pair a black knickers that have a slight trim that could loosely be interpreted as lace. Matron decides this must be the devilish thing Father Cleary had been so upset about.

“How do you think Father Cleary knew about my knickers?” I questioned. This got me another smacking and sent to bed with no dinner.

I had truly failed her. She would find somebody else for her quest. I gently sob myself to sleep.

But when I see her at breakfast the next day she pulls me in close: “There’ll be another time”, she whispers. “I just have to be patient.” She said the plan was stupid, juvenile and dangerous; it had been doomed from the start.

One year later

Halfway through our sophomore year I start dating Ted, who is in the year above. Theodore Mandeville. A name worthy of engraving and saying into microphones. He is charming and sweet and good at English; this I prize over the jockishness of the football boys.

I interpreted Ted’s reticence at her and I spending so much time together as jealousy. He lost it one night after his friend had suggested we were lesbians.

So I had to bring him into the fold as a plus one to our twosome, apologising to her when we were alone. She wasn’t too perturbed by Ted, more bewildered by my interest in him.

“He’s just so…normal. And plain.”

“He’s a fourteen year old boy.”

She shrugged. Her and Ted never really got on, just stuck each other out like a bad smell that’ll pass.

But Ted had a car. And more importantly, he could drive it.

We covered every possibility of a plan that didn’t need to involve Ted. This included me learning to drive and borrowing the car - but how? Us telling Ted we wanted to go on a seaside trip and ditching him when we arrived - but what if we couldn’t lose him, or he ended up finding us anyway?

In the end we decide to tell him. “I trust him, I do.” I told her. She was cautious.

“It’s different with men. Their hearts aren’t so open.”

“I don’t think we have much choice. Unless we wait until you learn to drive.”

She howled in anguish “I CAN’T. If I stay here any longer, I’ll die. I can feel myself getting weaker… our lifespan on earth, it’s miniscule, we aren’t made for this environment.”

So at the school dance we got Ted drunk, sat him down and told him everything.

“She was cursed to stay on land by a human and needs another human to say an incantation to get her back home and she’s chosen me to do it. It has to be me now.”

He stares at us.

“How many drugs are you on?” He peers at me, “have you been seeing Pete?”

Pete was the resident pillhead who hadn’t been kicked out yet because his dad donated the library.

“I thought you might say that.” She says, sighing. She then closes her eyes and slowly pours a glass of water over her legs, bare in her black halter neck dress. Scales start showing like a flower blooming, grey and thick. My eyes almost pop out of my head. Ted faints.

*

Ted agrees to the plan once his shock subsides. First, he avoids me for a week and tells me he needs time to process it. Nonetheless, the day comes around and all preparations have been made: Ted will drive us, I will say the words, she will be gone. My heart aches.

First, we must sit through mass. I look at her during the last hymn and she gives me a small smile. “I love you.” She mouths, whilst Ted, in the middle of us, stares ahead.

We go to leave the church, hearts skipping, but the doorway is blocked.

“Not so fast, you three.” Father Cleary’s large frame is stood in the door.

“Let us pass, it’s free time now. Father.” I say, emboldened by adrenaline.

“You’re going nowhere. Theodore, help me.”

I look to Ted, my eyes questioning, but without saying another word they come either side of her and grab a wrist each.

“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!” She screams, managing to pull a wrist out of Ted’s grasp, who she is obviously much stronger than.

“How dare you blaspheme in His house!” Father Cleary slaps her with his spare hand, disorienting her enough for Ted to grab her flailing arm, with both hands this time, and together they drag her backwards up the aisle.

“Let go of her!” I grab her ankles, trying to stop them, but someone is pulling me. I twist my head around to see Mr Ratcliff’s face. I thrash against him but he’s too strong, dragging me out of the church.

“If you don’t stop right now you will be expelled instantly.” He growls.

Hot tears pour down my face, but I stop moving. The image of mom sat in the house, eating a can of soup and getting the call that I’ve been expelled cracks my heart in two. He slowly relinquishes his vice grip.

I pace around in a circle.

“If you hurt her, you’ll go to prison.” I spit.

“We’re not going to hurt her, Rachel. We’re doing what’s best for her, and you.’

I laugh wryly, shake my head.

I was so worried for her that Ted’s betrayal barely registered. It felt almost inevitable. Lying little worm.

Minutes pass, Ratcliff watching me closely.

Then the doors open and Ted walks out.

“You snivelling, pathetic coward.” I say, pushing him hard.

He takes it. “I had to…Rachel, that was sick-“

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA” I scream, pushing him again.

“Enough!” Ratcliff bellows. Ted is walking away.

“And if it wasn’t obvious, we’re DONE!” I call after him. He doesn’t turn around, but I see him flinch a little. I know in that moment he will regret this for the rest of his life.

“I need to see her.” I walk I to the church, Mr Ratcliff following close behind.

We walk up to the pulpit. A large red curtain has been pulled across, blocking our view.

“Hello?” I call. I grab the curtain and yank it to the side, feeling sick.

A giant, crude tank full of water is in front of me, a green hose pipe pumping in water. I go cold.

She is inside, thrashing about. She barely fits inside; her grey tail is huge and her naked upper half covered in cales, her hair loose and wild, her eyes dark green. She is monstrous, ugly and unspeakably beautiful.

“You really are the devil’s creature.” Father Cleary marvels at her. I run at him, pummelling him with my fists.

“Let her go!” I scream.

“She’ll be with her master soon.” Father Cleary says. “I just had to see it for myself. I just had to be sure.”

“Aren’t we all God’s creatures?” I desperately plead. “Please, Father, please don’t do this.”

Ratcliff is restraining me again.

Father Cleary fills a cup of the holy water at the font and walks over, smiling. He starts to tip it over her in the tank. Her skin starts to blister as if it is on fire.

“Unnatural devil creature!” He shouts. It echoes around the huge church.

She screams under the water, a flurry of bubbles erupting from her mouth.

A few seconds pass, and she is gone: a thousand fissures and fibres imploding within the tank, my very own firework, a heinous destruction. I fall to my knees.

Twenty years later

My irrational fear of water was accepted by my husband. Joel was an agreeable and placid man. If our inability to conceive so far had upset him he tried his best not to show it. But I knew really it was my inability, that a sadness lived inside me making my body inhospitable to life.

On my thirty-sixth birthday Joel surprised me with a vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.

I hadn’t gone near the sea during our entire twelve-year relationship. We didn’t often leave Boston; and I explained it away as wanting to be close to my sick mother. I told Joel the ocean made me panicky, that I’d lost a good friend to drowning once.

But really it was because I was scared. I knew they would be angry at me for failing her. I was her chosen one and I had failed.

I have her bracelet on my wrist. I know what I should do.

I walk onto the beach and hear their voices say finally, finally, calling me from the water. I slowly walk in, fully clothed, the waves lap over me as I press further and further until I feel them wrap their bony hands around my ankles, tugging me under the swell. I don’t feel scared; it feels like coming home.