Chapter 120: The Food Chain

Acheron gets a haircut.

And tunes Ceth's guitar.

Harcourt spends a lot of his time hiding in the spare room ("the junk room"), writing.

Right now he's only published in the school newspaper, which no one reads, but Harcourt dreams of making a living writing his own books.

Mara ages up to teen a few days after Harcourt.

"I like your scarf," she ventures.

He smiles at whatever blog he's reading. "I like yours too."

They'll figure out how to flirt eventually.

Claire shows us some of her moves.

Claire's kind-hearted nature leads her to politely hang up pictures of airplanes when Acheron's relative, Johnnie, sends them as gifts.

Lori La Mer asks if Harcourt is going to prom. He says no, so she asks him out.

"Romantically or as a friend?" Harcourt mumbles.

Lori frowns. "Is there something wrong with romantically?"

Harcourt has to explain she has the same hair color as his father. So it's just too weird.

Lori understands. "OH! Effff I'm sorry. Dammit. This always happens to me! Why am I related to literally everybody on this island? Ugh. I am so sorry. This is totally embarrassing. Sorry."
 

Noma and Pedro become teens.

These three all have a personality for trouble-making, but outside of toilet-papering the principal's office, flooding the school's basement and refusing to wear their hats and eyepatches at pep rallies, there's not much trouble to be made in this dead town.
 

Harcourt is amazed: Noma and Lori can talk forever, and say nothing of any consequence.

Pedro tries to get attention from Mara, but she just continues doodling, not sure how to respond to his flirting.

People are petty and blind and cruel and stupid. Harcourt went to the store to buy eggs - his mother has been on a baking kick - but on the way back, he sees this house on the corner, Walter Inkbeard's house, and finds himself stricken with rage. He's about to chuck one at the front door when, before he can do so, a woman casually walks outside.

Harcourt's hands twitch, and the eggs he was holding are crushed.

He panics and runs away before the woman can react to this sight.

Why did I do that?

Harcourt writes the words on a blank file and stares at them, waiting for the analytical voice in his head to figure it out.

How mortified would he have been if the woman who walked out of that door had been Kasey?

Harcourt can't sleep. In the middle of the night, he sneaks out of the house and wanders the island.

He didn't expect to see anyone else out here. Mara, least of all.

He approaches cautiously, not quite believing it is her, until he's close enough to see her more clearly.

She seems so calm, and lovely, and at peace.

Her movements are fluid, without awkwardness. Mara is comfortable where she is right now.

Harcourt begins to feel like a creeper, so forces himself to say hello, alerting her to his presence. He proceeds to ask her what she's doing here. She says she could ask him the same question. He frowns.

Mara relents. "I like to fish. I like to watch the dawn on the waters."

A few tugs, and then the line goes slack. Mara reels it back in casually and impales a live shrimp on the empty hook.

"You could watch the sunrise without all the, erm, ickyness," Harcourt points out.

She smiles cryptically. "When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain."

"But with all due respect, our species evolved for life outside of the ocean."

"But we depend on water for our survival." Mara catches Harcourt's dubious glance at the salty ocean. "Not that water, specifically. But... yeah, that water. Back where I lived when I was young, in Redwood Harbor, most all business revolved around the fishing industry. My grandmother used to take me fishing. Those are my earliest memories."

"I didn't know you knew your grandparents."

"I didn't know them very well. They died when I was small."

"I'm sorry."

Mara sets down the fishing pole and turns to him.

"Don't be," she says.

Harcourt never pictured Mara as someone to get her hands dirty with something gross like fishing. As he grew older, he began to see her as delicate and sheltered in the ways of the physical world, though brutally experienced in the ways of the mental, emotional one. It's such a weird thought, he can't keep it to himself, but he does try to rephrase it. Calling a girl delicate might be taken the wrong way.

Mara smirks at him. When she makes that face, condescending and familiar, Harcourt knows everything is going to be okay.

Sunrise turns the water pink, and their cheeks pink, as they share their first kiss.

Harcourt never thought breaking curfew could lead to anything so wonderful.







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Etc.: I wasn't originally intending to make Mara the romantic interest. I wanted to avert the childhood best friend becomes spouse thing that I end up doing all the time. But, as usual, I have my excuses... and those excuses involve how inbred the town is. This is generation 10. I can ship the next heir away. It will be okay. But for now, I need fresh blood in this gene puddle.