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  Surface (Siren’s Lullaby #1) © 2012 by Jody Morse and Jayme Morse

  Surface is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jody Morse and Jayme Morse.

  Connect with the authors at:

  http://www.jaymemorse.com/

  http://www.jodymorse.com/

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jayme-Morse-Jody-Morse-158320107584568/

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Prologue

  Awakened from a dreamless sleep, I sat up in bed and looked around. The soft pink satin sheets clung to my skin, which was drenched in sweat from the heat of the mid-August night.

  Something was wrong; I didn’t know what, but I could feel it.

  Glancing across the room, I saw that the twin-sized bed next to me was empty, the daffodil yellow sheets illuminated by the light of the full moon.

  Scarlett was gone.

  I flung myself out of bed and ran out of our shared bedroom, peeking into our mother’s room across the hall. She lay sprawled out across her queen-sized bed, our Jack Russell Terrier, Mickey, curled up at her side. Scarlett hadn’t left our room to climb into our mother’s bed after another bad dream.

  I poked my head into the bathroom, living room, and kitchen. I even checked Scarlett’s favorite hiding place, which was inside the hamper. My sister wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  That could only mean one thing: Scarlett must be outside. Again.

  I ran to the back sliding glass door and opened it quietly so that my mother wouldn’t wake up. I knew she hadn’t been sleeping much lately, often getting up in the middle of the night to brew a cup of coffee that we both knew she wouldn’t drink. I would feel bad about waking her up when, chances were, Scarlett was just trying to do something to draw attention to herself.

  She seemed to be doing that a lot lately, ever since our father had died. Last week, she had pretended she had broken her wrist after she fell off her bicycle.

  Once I was outside, I scanned our sandy backyard for my sister.

  That’s when I heard a voice.

  The melody drifted through the air, filling my ears. I had never heard my sister sing before, but I now discovered that her voice sounded as sweet as a songbird’s.

  I followed her voice to the dock she was perched on. Her back was to me as she sang, overlooking the bay. Her red hair, a beautiful coppery auburn color that I had been jealous of ever since we were little, cascaded around her shoulders in waves, catching the moon’s reflection.

  “Scarlett! What are you doing out here?” I hissed at her. I glanced down at my bare legs; goose bumps had risen on my sun-kissed skin. The hem of my nightgown fell just above my knees. There was no way I could be cold in the humidity of the Georgia summer night. It had to be that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right creeping up on me again.

  The song broke into silence, and Scarlett turned to look at me. Her bright green eyes were crazed, her expression aloof.

  “What are you doing out here, Scarlett?” I repeated. “Mom’s going to be worried if she wakes up and we’re both gone. Come inside with me!”

  My sister turned away from me, gazing back at the water.

  The singing began again, but this time, it sounded like it was further away. The song was sinfully sweet, and I found myself fascinated by it as I wondered where or who it was coming from. I watched fearfully as Scarlett leapt, head-first, off of the dock in front of me. Without thinking twice, I ran to the edge of the dock and peered into the water.

  All I could see were thousands of bubbles rising to surface of the water that my sister had just disappeared into.

  “Scarlett!” I screamed, unsure of what to do. I looked around quickly and, then, deciding there wasn’t another soul around that could hear me, I plunged myself into the bay after her.

  Salt water stung at my eyes as I searched the black, murky water for my sister.

  I recoiled, panicked, as my hand grasped at something slimy, but I calmed myself, realizing it was just a fish.

  Swimming further under the water, my arm brushed up against something warm.

  Scarlett’s arms reached out to me, flailing as if she were trying to swim up to the surface, but it seemed as though she were frozen in place. I gripped one of her arms with both of my hands and tried to pull her closer to me to swim us both to safety.

  She wouldn’t budge.

  My chest ached. Hungry for air, I quickly kicked up to the surface. I took a deep, ragged gasp of breath before plummeting myself back into the depths of the water.

  At the right of my sister, I saw a bright glowing explosion of blue shining light. The force of it jolted me away from her. I scrambled to reach her again. Scarlett stared up at me, with a scared, helpless look in her eyes. I kicked hard, pushing myself through the water, closer to her.

  Just as our fingers interlocked, I felt something grab me around the waist, prying me away from my sister.

  I fought hard against the strong arms that were trying to pull me closer to the shore, but it was no use. The person was stronger than me.

  As I was pulled from the water, I watched as Scarlett became farther and farther away from me. I could see her drifting deeper into the bay.

  As soon as I felt the fresh air hit against my face, I took a few deep breaths, accidentally swallowing a mouthful of salt water.

  My head bobbed in the water. Without turning to look at the person who was still tugging me to shore, I screamed, “Let me go! We need to save my sister!”

  My head was throbbing, and I couldn’t see clearly.

  “Ain’t nobody under that water but you,” the elderly man said, beaming his blue-tinted flashlight across the water as if to prove it to me. “I saw you come up for a minute and that’s when I decided to come help you. It looked like you were struggling. I was just down there looking for you.” The man paused. “You shouldn’t go off swimming in this bay at night, anyways. The sharks’ll get you.”

  My chest hurt, but I started screaming, “Help!” If he didn’t believe me, I needed to find someone else who would.

  I heard footsteps running across the dock and voices coming closer to where we stood on the shore, but I didn’t turn to see who they belonged to. Everything had turned into a big blur.

  The melody that I had heard earlier turned into a sorrowful tune; it was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

  Chapter 1

  Six Years Later

  The hot sun hit against my shoulders as I listened to the relaxing sound of the roaring waves. From my spot in my lifeguard chair, I had the perfect v
iew of the beach in front of me.

  “Let’s build a sandcastle,” a little girl, who appeared to be about three years old and was sitting a few feet in front of me, trilled.

  A young man, who I assumed to be the little girl’s father, grabbed the pink and yellow bucket next to him and used the tiny matching shovel to fill it up with sand. I smiled. It reminded me of going to the beach with my own father when I was a child. Our ‘‘thing’’ was to go deep out into the water together. We both loved to swim in the ocean, whereas my mom preferred to spend her time sunbathing and reading the latest People magazine, and Scarlett was too afraid of getting stung by a jellyfish to go in past her ankles.

  Sometimes, I think about how Dad would have reacted if he knew how Mom had treated me after Scarlett had died. If he were still alive today, would he tell her she was nuts, or would he think she was right? I tried not to think about my mom too much, but the memory was engraved into my mind. It sometimes rose to the surface, even when I didn’t want it to. Like right then, as I sat on my lifeguard chair staring into the crashing waves, the memory came flooding back to me.

  *

  Rough hands shook me awake. My eyes flew open, and I saw my mother’s face, inches away from mine. “How could you do that? How could you just leave your sister out there to drown?! You’re supposed to protect her!”

  I tried to answer my mother, but no words came out. My chest felt heavy and weak. I also felt an overwhelming sense of guilt over the fact that I hadn’t been able to pull Scarlett to safety.

  More than anything else, I didn’t believe that what was happening was real.

  “How could you be so irresponsible? Your sister is only eight years old!” Mom screamed, shaking me harshly. “You’re supposed to be the big sister!”

  I tried to speak again, to tell her that I was only nine years old and that Scarlett was the one who had come out here by herself—that I was the one who had tried to help her. But I couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  “Ma’am, we need you to calm down,” a voice nearby said. “We’re doing everything we can right now. The search team is out there right now, looking for your other daughter.”

  “Scarlett! Her name is Scarlett.” My mom began to sob, wailing loudly. Glancing to the left of me, I found that she had fallen to her knees and was covering her face with her hands.

  I turned to see a police officer standing on the other side of me. The beach was lit up with flares, and it was full of commotion. Cars crowded the sandy strip. The local news station was there filming about the incident.

  Moments turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into days. The police and EMTs had declared her dead. They hadn’t found a body, but it didn’t matter; they’d assumed that it had been washed away. Once the news came that she was dead, Mom went into her bedroom and wouldn’t come out for days. She refused to open her door, despite the amount of knocking I did.

  What my mom seemed to have forgotten was that she still had me. She wasn’t the only one who had lost someone; we were both missing Dad and Scarlett.

  When she finally emerged from her bedroom, my mom looked like Hell. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she had dark circles underneath them. Her long dirty blonde hair was disheveled, and she was still wearing the same outfit she had been wearing that fateful night.

  “Mommy,” I whispered, inching closer to give her a hug.

  She halted me with a hand. “You stay away from me,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice.

  My eyes filled up with tears as I watched how my loving mother, who hugged me every morning before school and every night before bedtime, suddenly wanted no part of me.

  “I want you to leave,” my mom went on, barely meeting my eyes. “Get out of my house.”

  “W-what?” I stuttered.

  My mother glanced at me from her spot across the room. I could tell she was trying to control her anger, but I didn’t know what I had done to make her so mad.

  “This is your fault,” Mom spat at me. “Your sister is dead because of you.”

  “No, she’s not,” I began, shaking my head, but my mother interrupted me.

  “For all I know, you’re the one who drowned her. Why is it that you’re the only one who saw it happen, and now no one can find her? You did this on purpose. What did you do with her body?”

  As I just stared back at her with my mouth hung open, my mom continued. “Why did you do it, Felicia? Were you that jealous of her that you had to go and drown her?”

  My chin quivered. I didn’t even try to control my tears anymore; they poured out of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as I stared back at her. This woman standing in front of me wasn’t acting like my mother. My mother was kind, loving, and down to earth; she only wanted what was best for us. She’d never accuse me of killing my own sister.

  I tried to tell my mother that what she was saying wasn’t true, that I loved Scarlett just as much as she did, that I’d tried to help her, but she screamed, “Go! Get out of here!”

  Afraid of what the stranger standing in front of me might be capable of doing, I did the only thing I could think of: I opened the front door and I left. I cried as I ran over to Gram’s house, never looking back.

  That day my mother kicked me out was the last time I had seen her—but it wasn’t the last time I had tried to. My mother had tried to kill herself a few weeks later, and she was committed to a mental health facility. Gram asked my mother if I could visit her. She refused, claiming that I was no longer her daughter.

  My mom had remained in the mental health facility since then. She had been unable to come to terms with my sister’s death; she wholeheartedly believed that Scarlett was still out there somewhere. When Gram went to visit her, my mother always asked about how Scarlett was doing, but she changed the subject at the mention of my name. She didn’t want to hear anything about my life. In my mom’s mind, Felicia Parks had never existed.

  *

  By mid-afternoon, the beach began to fill up with people. I’d only had to blow the whistle a few times all morning. If the whole summer was going to be like this, spending it as a Junior Lifeguard might not be too bad after all. I’d originally wanted to work at Scoops, an ice cream parlor that my best friend was working at this summer, but I could think of far worse jobs than this.

  My grandmother and I had figured out that in order to cover the expenses of going away to college in three years, I needed to start saving now. She’d suggested that I take lifeguard classes, since I know how to swim well.

  I didn’t expect to actually make the cut as a Junior Lifeguard, but I did. I didn’t mind spending the summer on the beach, since it’s what I have done for the past few years, anyway. Lifeguarding also sort of made me feel like I had a purpose in life—like I wasn’t the type of person who would just let her sister drown. Maybe if I saved enough people, I would be able to forgive myself someday.

  I had been occupied with watching the same little girl who had built the sand castle with her father all morning. Now, he was helping her jump up and down over the rolling waves when I heard someone yell, “Boo!”

  Shrieking louder than I meant to, I turned to find my best friend, Carrie, who grinned back at me, standing below my lifeguard chair.

  “You’re out of work already?” I asked, surprised that Carrie had already had enough time to change out of her Scoops uniform and into the red and white polka dotted bikini she had found during one of our day-long shopping trips to the mall.

  “The milkshake machine broke, so they let me out early,” Carrie explained. “I figured I’d come down here and hang out with you. How’s your first day going so far?”

  “Not bad,” I replied. “At least I’ll get a really good tan this summer.”

  “You need one,” Carrie agreed. “You’re beginning to look like a ghost.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I muttered, glancing down at my arm. My skin wasn’t that pale, but I guess, in comparison to Carrie’s skin, it looked it. My best fr
iend spent hours in tanning beds to get that fake Jersey Shore look. I didn’t love being pale, but I wouldn’t want to look like a pumpkin either.

  “So, um, I wanted to ask you something,” Carrie called up to me, a cautious tone in her voice. I knew that tone well; she was afraid that I was going to be annoyed at whatever she had to say.

  “Ask away,” I called down to her, trying to keep my eyes trained on the people swimming in the ocean in front of me. I couldn’t let a conversation with my friend prevent me from saving someone if the need should arise. I might not have been able to save Scarlett, but I wasn’t about to watch someone else drown. I hadn’t thought about how ironic this summer job really was until this moment. If people around here knew about my past experience with saving people, I wondered if they would still let me work here.

  “It’s about your birthday,” Carrie began. “I was thinking that, since it’s in August, we could have a pool party. We’ll make it a huge birthday bash, and I’ll make sure we invite all of our friends, and—”

  “No,” I said, interrupting her. “You know how I feel about my birthday. I don’t want a party.” I smiled down at my best friend, whose dark brown hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head. She was staring up at me with a look of hope in her honey brown eyes. “Thanks for thinking about me, but it’s okay. Maybe next year.”

  Carrie sighed in defeat. “Okay, if that’s what you want. I guess I’ll get some sun until you’re done working.” She spread out a hot pink beach towel and put on a pair of white studded sunglasses before flopping down in the sand next to my chair.

  I focused my attention on a guy surfing and sighed. It was hard for people to understand why my birthday bothered me so much—not that I’d made it easy for them to understand. I hated talking about Scarlett and since my Gram and I moved to a small beach town about fifteen minutes from where I grew up, it’d been easy to pretend that she had never existed.

  Even Carrie, who had been my best friend for the past six years, didn’t know about Scarlett. I had told her that the whole reason I hated my birthday was because I’d lost my mom on my birthday—which was technically the truth. I had just left out the part about losing Scarlett that day, too. Carrie didn’t know that I’d had a sister, or that she had died on the day of my ninth birthday. Since then, I’d always associated my birthday with the day I’d lost my family.