It Wasn't Always Like This - Joy Preble Page 0,30

the hint and left.

Grown-ups are crazy, Emma told herself. But the explanation felt as false as her mother’s words about Simon.

That night out by the docks, Charlie whispered, “Emma, do you feel different?”

She was dizzy from his kisses, holding on to him as he stepped back. She’d been expecting him to say, “I love you.” Or maybe, “I want you.” Or possibly just take her hand and walk with her to the private little arbor a few feet away and lie in the grass, and she would let him slip his hands anywhere they wanted to go.

Emma had not yet contemplated the possibility of actually making love with him. But she sensed that someday she would like very much to be seduced by Charlie Ryan. She knew nice girls shouldn’t think things like this. But secretly, Emma also sensed she wasn’t all that nice.

“Yes,” she said. Because at that moment, she thought he meant because of the kissing. She leaned into him, but he backed off again.

“I know how that makes you feel,” he teased. Then his grin clouded over. He took her hands in his, pressing warmth into her. “I mean . . . something’s happened, Em. Don’t you feel . . . an energy?”

She did feel it. She closed her eyes. The thick, warm, salty air swirled around her. It was a perfume of the wildlife and the swamp and the ocean. When she opened her eyes, she knew exactly what Charlie meant, because she’d felt it, too. Not just an energy; she felt like energy itself, like she was a furnace or an engine or the sun.

Of course it was the immortality kicking in, not that she fully comprehended that yet, but still, she knew. It was spreading its magic through every vein, singing in her blood. The original Emma was being burned out, a new and permanent Emma rising from her own ashes.

On the other hand, girls who are kissed by boys who know how to kiss them always felt like that. She knew that by then.

Emma started to tell Charlie yes, she understood, that she sensed it, too.

But he let her go then and spread his arms wide, f ingers reaching like he wanted to lift off the earth and f ly. “I don’t know what it is, exactly.” She could see him searching for the right words. “It’s like the earth is racing inside me. Like I could do anything. Be anything. Invincible.” His gaze tipped again to the sky. “We’ll go up there someday, Emma. You and me. We’ll go everywhere.”

Charlie wasn’t normally this talkative. She’d always known this was what he wanted, to leave this place that was their parents’ idea and embark on his own mad adventure. Emma wanted that, too, but mostly she wanted Charlie.

He edged his f ingers slowly up her bare leg under her skirt.

“Oh,” she said. “That tickles.”

And then as his hand slid higher, she forgot what they were talking about at all.

Chapter Nine

St. Augustine, Florida

1914–1916

By the end of 1914, well over a year since they had sipped from the stream, the difference she and Charlie had felt and shared became impossible to forget.

On New Year’s Eve, Emma found her mother staring into the mirror and sobbing. They had f inished scrubbing and sweeping, her mother’s ritual. “You start the new year with a clean house,” her mother always said at this time of year. “Then good luck will come your way.”

Not this New Year’s Eve. On December 31, 1914, her mother couldn’t speak at all.

“It’s going to be f ine, Mama,” Emma said. The words felt fraudulent even as they left her mouth. How absurd of her mother to shine things up as though it made a bit of difference.

Glen Walters and his Church of Light were hosting a New Year’s Eve prayer meeting and celebration. Posters had been hung all over town.

f ight the evil among us

bring back light in the new year

Of course, the Church of Light had never approved of their families. They’d been unequivocal in their judgment. In their eyes—and words—the Alligator Farm and Museum gift shop was another symptom of general human decay in the form of silly pleasures and thrills. And their congregation was growing each day. Converts had taken solid root in this little part of St. Augustine. Maybe it was the heat that set their apocalyptic drums beating. Or just their inclination to f ind the devil in anything that felt different. The rumors had begun slowly and