Chapter Text
It's not like Michael meant for any of this to happen, but that didn't ease the feeling of guilt that he might have been the reason it did. Maybe he wasn't the real reason, but he'd been a catalyst, maybe. A trigger. Guilt gnawed on his guts as he sat in the stuffy back seat of his mom's Toyota. Even with the windows down, the heat was oppressive. He leaned his head against one of the boxes of Sam's comic books and stared at the torn upholstery on the roof of the car. Or was it a ceiling? If it was inside the car, was it a roof or a ceiling?
Lucy, his mom, had been talking about getting a new car for years, but there had never been enough money. There was money for dad's alcohol and Sam's comics and Michael's Honda motorcycle, but never for Lucy. That's how she was, Michael thought. She gave until there was no more. It was even more unlikely that she'd get a new car now that they were starting over, broke and moving to a new state with no real plan.
“Feeling okay, sweetie?” Lucy asked, glancing in the rear view mirror at her oldest son. Michael gave her a tight smile.
No. He was not feeling okay.
“Sure,” he said, his voice gravely from disuse. He hated when his throat got like this. Sore, dried out. Lucy noticed, and she nodded, and kept on driving.
“You know I'd stop, honey, but we're so close to Grandpa's,” she said. Michael grimaced.
“I'm good, mom,” he assured her. He hated that he had to assure her of anything. It shouldn't be his job to make his mom feel better, but he knew she'd been through enough and that, maybe, some of it was his fault. The trigger. He was so sick of the responsibility of caring for her when it should have been the other way around. He was the kid here. Or, used to be.
Now he was more like another parent to Sam than a big brother. Stepping in where his deadbeat dad had fallen short.
“The last stop was so long ago,” Sam complained, wriggling around in the front seat. “I can't feel my legs.” Says the guy who called shotgun at the start of this trip and never once offered to share. Michael was lucky that he managed to sleep for the first several hours of this ride.
Lucy was quiet for a few moments as she considered this. “I suppose we are low on gas.”
Thank God. Michael needed a drink. And that was classic Lucy, wasn't it? Always asking Michael to hold on while caving at the first sign of Sam's discomfort. Even though instinct and knowing his brother well made him sure that Sam's motivations were purely selfish, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd known Michael needed a rest stop and this was his way of helping his big brother out. The thought eased the his guilt for a second. After all, wasn't that how a family was supposed to be? Standing together instead of against each other? He gave a sigh that came out louder than it was supposed to.
“Sure you're okay, honey?” Lucy asked again, finding him in the rear view once more.
“We're gonna crash if you don't watch the road,” Michael said, attempting to tease her, but his tone was too hard, too low and tense, to be humorous. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, Mom.”
“It's okay,” she said, but her bright tone hid the hurt or irritation that his words caused. She was too raw for joking right now and he felt like he should have known that.
Again, as if he were the adult instead of her kid. Instead of a boy in pain.
“What's that smell?” Sam complained. Michael inhaled at the same time Lucy did.
“That's the ocean air!” she exclaimed. They really must be close to their grandfather's house if they were able to smell the ocean. Sam continued his complaining and Lucy continued to give into it. Michael inhaled again, taking the salt-air into his lungs and holding it as if it were cigarette smoke. He exhaled, and tried to ignore the sign that welcomed them to the Murder Capital of the World.
***
"Evian?" Grandpa asked, after the whole song and dance of pretending to be dead was done. Michael's hand had just wrapped around the bottle as he was taking stuff out of the car when Grandpa spotted it.
Michael rolled his eyes. "It was the only drinkable water at the gas station."
Which he knew, because he tried drinking out of the tap and it tasted like whatever poisoned the "ocean air" had also polluted the water supply in town. Grandpa pulled a face and Michael had to refrain from rolling his eyes again, just in an attempt to keep up the facade of being polite.
He knew what they had to look like to the old man. There was Sam, in his Brat pack mall couture, with his boxes and boxes of comic books, complaining about humidity and proper temperatures to store his collection. And then here comes Michael, with a bottle of fancy drinking water that only tools and yuppies drank, but he couldn't help it. The tap water had been disgusting and soda just didn't seem to quench the thirst in the way that the water did. It didn't chase away that slow, sand grit that started to accumulate in his mouth if he didn't drink enough the way that water did.
He sighed as Grandpa started mouthing things like, "Ooo, spring water" and "from the mountains", under his breath. Michael picked up his weights and went back inside.
It didn't matter, though. The resentment was causing a storm to build inside him, threatening to crack through his ribs and spill out of his mouth. The guilt that he'd been the cause of their move. The pain from his bruises, hidden under his shirt. He was in no mood to be made fun of. He dropped his weights in his room and stalked back downstairs.
"Michael!" Lucy called after him.
He ignored his mom as he slammed out of the house, keys to his bike in hand. There were times when he hated leaving her that way. There were other times when he thought she deserved it. Grandpa judged him as he rode away.
Fuck that old man.
His stomach ached from too many things. From the bruises, yes. From the other thing, too.
Michael rode for a while before he stopped and snagged a map from a gas station. He needed to familiarize himself with the roads in Santa Carla, especially if he was going to find any kind of work. But the day was fading and it was too late to go job hunting today. Would Lucy worry about him when he didn't come home for dinner? Possibly. More likely her and Sam were wandering the boardwalk, looking for pizza or Chinese food or something to eat.
If he couldn't do one thing, he'd do something else, then. Something to ease the desperation he felt. Maybe it would take care of the guilt a little bit, too.
Michael found a secluded spot, out by some place the map called “Hudson's Bluff”, where the sand was as dark as the night sky. It glittered like it also held stars. It seemed safe enough. Nothing around except a large opening in the side of the cliff, but that had to be a couple hundred feet away, maybe even a mile, off. No one was here except him, the waves and the stars.
So, he started to peel off his clothes.
His shoes and socks were disgustingly damp from the hot, long car ride. His jeans were clinging to his legs like skin, also full of sweat and stench. He really should have changed before storming out on his mom but it wasn't like he really meant to leave. It had been spur of the moment. His white tee shirt joined his jeans and socks in a pile on the sand.
Michael, he could hear his mom in his head. Leaving the beach as messy as your room!
It didn't matter. He felt beyond her criticism here. Beyond the reach of her needs, his brother's demands, or his father's fists. His hand came up to touch where his stomach was bruised.
Fucking freak.
Michael let the anger push him into taking his first step into the ocean. His first since he turned thirteen, since puberty had hit him as hard as his dad did and turned him into a monster. After a few small steps, Michael was up to his knees. He dove under and let the water take him.
Mistakes were made.
First, he probably should have taken his first ocean swim during the daylight, when the water was easier to see through. Everything was dark here, and he was having trouble adapting. This wasn't like the rivers or lakes he'd known back in Arizona. This water was moving, pulsing around him, in a way that felt more alive and dead at the same time.
His surfaced, treading the water, his normally curly hair slicked back from his face. He looked up.
No matter where he was, the sky always had the same number of stars.
Michael braced himself and let the change happen.
Michael, honey, I- I'm so sorry-
He pushed his mother's voice away while his body twisted and reconfigured itself into a different shape. He didn't need that memory shoving its way into his brain.
Like his dad had said, he was a freak.
He gathered a deep breath and dove back under.
Michael stayed out in the pitch-black waters too long. His mom would be worried sick, he knew, but it was his first night in a real ocean. He couldn't seem to leave. If he didn't belong in his family, maybe here. Maybe this was where he belonged.
Alone.
... Not alone.
Michael's skin prickled as if the water had suddenly turned icy. He felt something. Something was watching him.
He turned back, changing himself into a more normal shape, while he was still in deep enough waters that no one would see. It was harder to swim like this, like a human, but he couldn't risk being found out. As soon as he was able, he reached for his clothes and began to tug them onto his wet body, the denim of his jeans practically scraping his skin as they slid on. He shoved his feet into his sneakers, unable to find his own socks. There was no one here. No one he could see, anyway.
But he still felt the eyes. Watching.
He glanced over at the opening in the cliffs that he'd seen earlier. It would be his luck that it was a local hangout for people his age or something. People looking to hide among the stone and water and make-out or get high. It still just looked like a black slice out of the side of the rock.
That didn't stop Michael from shivering and running for his bike. Someone was watching him and Michael didn't know how much that person had been able to see on a night like this.