I write this as a story because nobody will believe me if I tell them it's true. I hardly believe it. I still think I'm crazy, that one of these days I'll wake up in a padded room, hugging myself in a nice white jacket with some large burly nurse shoving pills down my throat and watching so that I wouldn't cheek them. Still hasn't happened, so maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe my imagination is just that vivid and I somehow managed to keep this all to myself. Then there's the slim possibility that this did happen and I am best at keeping it to myself anyways.
However I can't. I can't keep this to myself because in the event that I die suddenly, like my father did, my story will go untold in this world and I can't risk this happening again. Not now that I can no longer protect it.
It started when I was a junior in college.
No. It started before I was born. It began with the first time my father saw my mother.
She was an archeologist, born to French writers on the East Coast of America. My grandfather worked at a local college while my grandmother ran a shop in town selling books. They named her Moselle, after the river they loved so much. She took the water as though she was a part of it; as if it was a part of her. Ancient history fascinated her and when she finally left for school, she threw herself into it as though perhaps her efforts could bring the forgotten civilizations back to life so she could ask people directly for answers to their mysteries.
My father saw my mother for the first time in the sea. My mother said he appeared out of nowhere, taking her by surprise as she stood with her feet in the ocean while on holiday with her parents in France. His story was that he'd been walking down the beach and saw the most beautiful woman in the world looking like she wished she could melt into the sea. The odd part was that Maman always maintained that there were no other footprints on the beach other than hers.
Papa had no family and very little to say about his past. He was as much a part of the water as my mother was and had spent years as a captain for hire for rich people's trips. He never claimed a home, stating he'd always lived on the waters. I remember a vague accent but little else. Maman told me once that the reason she didn't run the other way when the rugged, unshaven creature suddenly appeared before her was because he had eyes the exact same color as the ocean before a storm. They pierced her and she said that by the simple act of looking right at her, she was forever locked. They married, had me and moved back to the town Maman grew up in.
We used to spend our weekends on the coast, sailing, fishing and running along the shore. Sometimes Papa would take a boat while my mother did research at home and sail north or to places that I'm sure were exciting. Sometimes these trips lasted a day, once he was gone for nearly a month. When I was five, he left for two weeks and returned with sadness in his eyes. Maman said his father had died and that he felt the need to return home to take care of his father's work. He left again for nearly two months and then returned. After that, he would never leave for longer than a day and would take us with him in most cases.
I was seven when Papa died. We were staying at our beach house and he had gone out for a sail. The coast guard said he'd been knocked out by the sail swinging and hitting him on the head, falling in the water and drowning. That was the day Maman stopped smiling. She packed up the beach house without saying a word and we never returned. When we got home, Maman bought a house in the middle of Texas and we never went to the ocean again. I never took swimming lessons, I never set foot in a boat; even bridges made my mother panic. She suddenly hated the water, as though the death of Papa had been a betrayal of trust.
My grandparents passed when I was 18, leaving me with a substancial amount of money for school and board. I decided to return to the school my grandfather had taught at, renting a small apartment six blocks from the campus. It was quaint but wonderful, especially after the dry and hot climate Texas had subjected me to for so long. The town was filled with students my age and frankly I hardly stuck out. I'm not that skinny, I keep my sandy hair on the shorter side and I'm self conscious of my teeth so I don't smile very often. The only thing I have going for me is that my eyes are grey, like Papa's were. I didn't really draw a crowd when I went places. At least, not until I opened my mouth and spoke. Usually then I just made people uncomfortable. So when I began to notice the Watchers, I was a little more than freaked out.
Looking back, I guess they'd always been there. Imagine homeless people following you, staring, with no reason. Nothing against the homeless, but it was a little unnerving. What struck me as really odd was my mother ignoring them. The woman who refused to take the ferry when we went to Washington had no issues with these random folks staring at us in every city we showed up in. No matter what part of the world we were in, there they were: long light hair, alarmingly green eyes and really tan, sporting linen clothing that was often times not appropriate for the climate with a look on their face that told me they were not used to wearing shoes.
I was told to just ignore them, and I tried, I really did. But they were everywhere and always looked bored. So I was actually really annoyed when I realized they'd followed me to college and resolved to avoid them at all costs. It proved much harder than I thought it would be, as I quickly learned the day I wore my dad's wrist cuff to school.
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