Page 30 of Crashing Tides

“Apparently this symbol’s all over my mom’s house.” I pull out my phone and open my messages, scrolling until I find the photo of the garage floor.

Jane glares at my screen. “What the fuck? What do you mean it’s everywhere?”

“My cousin says it’s all over. In cabinets, under the stove.” I shrug.

“And you never noticed?”

“Nuh-uh,” I say.

“Is this the reason you almost died this morning?”

I flinch. “Maybe.”

Her gaze is too knowing. I want to look away, but she has me pinned.

“OK, fine, I was up all night. Happy?”

She shakes her head, then murmurs, “I might’ve seen this before.”

My stomach lurches. “What? Where?” Instantly, I imagine waves scrawled across stalls in the women’s restroom.

She chews her lip, contemplative. “I’m not sure.”

While she frowns some more, I silently (and therefore politely) crash out. What if it is a cult? What if I’m the result of some freaky ritual?

What would happen if I went into the ocean?

Tentacles. Definitely tentacles. Fuckfuckfuck. OK, but people are into tentacles. Maybe I can start an OnlyFans. Wait, are there laws against that? Am I technically a sea creature? Is my entire existence some kind of legal gray area?

I remind myself that I don’t know anything yet, which only spikes my anxiety. Not knowing is the worst part.

Seconds pass. Jane is still chewing her lip.

Finally, I say, “OK. Let me know if you remember it later.”

Later turns out to be dinnertime. Outside, it’s gray and drizzly, but the dining hall is cozy, warm, well-lit. Raindrops slide down the windows, distorting my view of the trees. And while I’d love to pretend I’m not affected by the weather like everyone else, my mood has gone sour.

Some of this is Duncan Stirling’s fault. He won’t stop sitting behind me in history class. Every time I see him, my stomach lurches. Unnervingly, I still want to stuff my face into his hair and inhale obscenely.

Worse, sometimes I kind of want to bite him, but I tell myself that’s a perfectly normal manifestation of my disgust and not some kind of weird, possessive impulse that has needled its way into my very bones, an animalistic instinct that I can’t fight because I don’t understand it.

It’s distracting.

My phone buzzes. April has gotten ahold of a copy of The Blessed Fates of the Cursed, an ancient paperback with a Fabio-eqsue model on the cover, reaching his hands through the bars of a prison cell. She, Aleo, and Collin are enthusiastically acting out a prison riot scene. April as the illustrious Fiona throws herself back in her chair and lets out distressed moans. Aleo and Collin argue over who deserves her more, playing the roles of the prison guard, Harry, and her cellmate, Reggie.

It’s not a piece of classical literature so much as a bodice-ripper, but I don’t fight them too hard when they thrust a copy at me and order to play the part of Hot Rob, the island barbarian who bursts into the prison with a quiver of arrows on his back, wearing a loincloth made of sharkskin, intending to rescue the still tragically moaning Fiona.

My phone buzzes on the table. It’s Jane.

I interrupt the theatrics to grab my phone, covering the mouthpiece with my hand in the hopes that she isn’t going to make any untoward assumptions about the background noise. ‘Heyyy,” I say, because I maybe had a little wine with dinner and now I’m regretting it because my knees are too loose and the lights overhead have gone just a bit fuzzy, and she is absolutely going to judge me.

She huffs. “Really, Dominic?”

“It was one glass!” I protest. I know she has my best interests at heart. Sometimes I think maybe she’s even right: I drink more than I probably should.

I’m also just barely twenty-three at a magical university, watching my life unravel. I think I’m allowed to have a little fun sometimes. Most days, I’m sober.

OK, maybe half. Maybe a little less. But I don’t drink every day, and that counts for something.