Page 24 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

His voice was a deep tenor, and somehow it made the song even more unsettling, as though he were calling out to the sea itself.

Whoever he was, he probably deserved it.

I closed the window and returned to bed. Part of me wanted to check on Mother, but experience told me I’d only pour oil on the fire. Tomorrow, I'll find work. I needed money to buy myself a few hours of peace, to keep her anger pointed somewhere else until I found my brother. Then I’d leave. I had to. And since no one can save me, maybe I can save myself. And somewhere along the way, maybe I can save him too. A severed finger doesn’t mean he’s dead. It only means someone wants us to believe he is.

1. sister

7

BLUE

Warm water splashed against my face. My body was wrapped in a towel that barely covered my ass after a long shower, one I desperately needed after being awake all night. The noise outside was unbearable, blending with my own thoughts of my brother being out there somewhere, all alone, going through who knew what. Every time I closed my eyes, they snapped wide open again. I even tried falling asleep with my headphones on, but no matter how hard I tried, sleep wouldn’t come.

I stepped out of the bathroom. On my way, I caught a few glimpses of my reflection. The dark circles beneath my eyes were impossible to ignore. I crossed the room, sat on the bed beside my pinkSony Cassette Walkman, and listened to the only cassette I owned still turning inside.

I never had much. Everything else was second-hand or borrowed, but this was the one thing I’d bought for myself with my first paycheck. Music carried me away from this place, away from my own thoughts, and having this cassette on repeat since 2001 had kept me from feeling quite so alone.

I pulled the cassette out and flipped it over. On the back, the handwritten track list named ten songs. It didn’t last longer than forty-seven minutes, but to me, those forty-seven minutes had stretched into years on repeat.

Iris — The Goo Goo Dolls

Hazard — Richard Marx

Always — Bon Jovi

This I Promise You — *NSYNC

Extreme—More Than Words

Yellow — Coldplay

I Swear — All-4-One

Friends Will Be Friends — Queen

Crash and Burn — Savage Garden

Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely — Backstreet Boys

I don’t even know how I got it. All I know is that I’d had it ever since the Light Festival that year. I remembered leaving the player in Annie’s car when we all went to the beach, and ever since then, the cassette had been inside. She swore she had no idea how it got there, and I never questioned it. I just listened to it when I was happy, when I was sad, or when I couldn’t sleep.

Songs always made me calmer than I usually was, though I never understood why. I tried not to think about it too much because songs change once you know who they came from or who they were meant for. They stop being just melodies and become memories. People tie songs to faces, to moments, to the things they lost or never had. I didn’t want that. I wanted music to stay empty enough for me to hide in. Because if I gave every song a face, eventually every song would remind me of someone, and I’d have nowhere left to go when I needed to escape.

The flip phone Isabella gave me buzzed on the nightstand. I slid the cassette back into theWalkman, tucked it away in the drawer, and pulled it shut before reaching for the phone. Thebattery was almost dead, and I didn’t have a charger. I flipped it open. One SMS popped on the screen.

I clicked it open. It was the same number Isabella had called me from last night.

“Meet me at the marina. I have more info about Gianni. xx Isa”

My hands tightened around the phone. I checked the time. It was seven o’clock.

My thumbs moved over the tiny keypad and I typed, “I’ll be there at 7:30.”

I stood and walked to the closet. My hair was still damp from the shower, but on a hot summer day I couldn’t care less. The older people here believed the breeze could make you sick if you went outside with wet hair, but after doing it so many times, I knew it was just another superstition passed down through generations.

I pulled out a simple white dress and slipped it on. It had a V-neck with braided straps that tied behind my neck, leaving my back bare until the small of it. I shut the closet doors, grabbed my black-and-whiteConversefrom the side, balanced first on my left foot, then my right as I slipped them on, and tiptoed out of the bedroom, careful not to wake my mother.

As I passed the living room, I found her sprawled across the sofa, leaving soft snores from her open mouth. I would never understand how she could sleep while her only son had been missing for two days.