Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

middle school, I renamed myself after the Beatles song. You know it?”
    “
Hey Jude
? Of course.”
    “Oh, good, I don’t have to start hating you. Anyway, it didn’t really stick until I moved away from home. Only my roommates know the truth, and that’s only because my rent checks still say Barnaby.”
    I try to smash the smile spreading across my face but can’t help it. I laugh, and Jude’s ears turn pink. He rolls his eyes while I get the humor out but smiles a little himself at the same time.
    “I know, I know. Everyone in third grade thought it was a riot, too. You see why I changed it? No one would give money to a musician named Barnaby. What about you? Do you play any instruments? Create any art?”
    “Not really. I took a painting class at Milton’s once; we made watercolor flowers for nine weeks. No music, though. There’s only a choir program there, and I definitely
don’t
sing.”
    Jude pauses, looking a little confused. “Really? I remember you singing on the beach.”
    I stumble a little but shake my head. “Nope. I don’t sing.”
    “Huh. I could have sworn you did. What
do
you do, then, other than hang out with your sisters?”
    “I… nothing,” I answer. “Nothing. Really. I go to school, I get decent grades, I… I guess in some ways, being Anne’s and Jane’s sister is really all I have time to be. Or energy, at least.”
    Jude raises an eyebrow. “Poetic. Though it’d be more so if you weren’t wearing a hat covered in sea turtles.”
    I laugh. “I know, it’s not very exciting.”
    “I think you do more than that,” Jude says. “Maybe you just don’t realize it yet. Like, for example, might I remind you that you save drowning victims and give them terrible cases of Nightingale syndrome. That’s pretty exciting.”
    “You don’t have Nightingale syndrome,” I say.
    “I could!”
    “Yeah, yeah. Your turn.”
    “Okay…” Jude says, inhaling. “I… I left home because my mom lied to me about half a pie.”
    “A pie?”
    “Half a pie,” he corrects, grinning. “She said we were out of this pie I brought home from food day in French class.Really, she’d hidden it so she could eat the whole thing herself.”
    “And pie hoarding made you head to the beach?” I ask.
    “Well, technically, yes,” he says, adjusting his hat. “Not really, though. Really… I realized that she was always lying to me. She lied to me about why my dad left, about my stepfather being great, about a thousand little things every day. I was sick of the lies.” He looks up at me, smiles a little. “Sorry. Too much information.”
    “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t know that’s why you left. I knew she lied a lot, but I thought—”
    “You knew she lied?” Jude asks, confused. “How?”
    Damn it.
“You said it earlier, I think, maybe,” I say, trying to brush it off. “But it wasn’t too much information.”
    “Good… good,” Jude says, still looking confused. I curse at myself when he looks away. “But yeah. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I hate lying.”
    I grimace. Fantastic—he hates lying, and I’m practically a professional liar between keeping Naida and my power secret. Jude continues. “What about you? How’d you get here?”
    I inhale—at least this I can be honest about. “My father has Alzheimer’s, so he can’t take care of us. Our mother is gone. Our brothers are spread across the country, and we hardly know them. All I have are my sisters. We’ve been at Milton’s for seven years.”
    “Wow. No wonder they’re protective of you.”
    “Protective? More like… stifling.”
    Jude laughs. “That, too.”
    Another moment of silence. Jude drums his fingers on the register, then grins. “Okay, I’ve got one. So, when I was a little kid, I loved pop music….”
    I knew that. I know the story he’s about to tell me.
    But this time, for the first time, that’s okay.

Lo
     
    When it rains, it ’s beautiful under the water. It’s