Lines in the Sand (Crossing The Lines #0.5)

Formatted by
E.M. Tippetts Book Designs

Crossing The Line Series

Lines in the Sand

Two Blue Lines
(Coming Soon)

Blurred Lines
(Coming 2015)

Between the Lines
(Coming Late 2015)

For Mom.

It’s always been yours.

Finding Lettie

M
y life changed forever this summer. And it wasn’t because I turned thirteen, or that we’d just survived our second hurricane. This will forever and always be the summer I touched my first dead body.

Okay, not a
whole
dead body. A bone. But close enough.

It started out like any other summer Saturday. I ate my bowl of Cap’n Crunch, caught a rerun of
MythBusters
, managed to avoid a shower after finishing my stupid chores. Then I finally talked Mom into letting me go meet my best buddy, Jonah, down by the pier.

“Hey, Reed,” he called as I rolled up on my skateboard, the wind off the water whipping his too-long hair into his eyes. “What’s up?”

I jumped off my board and popped it up into my hand, bypassing a seagull feasting on a trashed hamburger on the sandy ground. “Nothin’. Same ol’. Well, Isabelle was in my room stealing my anime books again.” My little sister was the bane of my existence. Brat.

He nodded, commiserating, as we strolled the sand dunes, the rushing waves pounding in the background. He probably understood more than most, having five younger siblings and one older brother. “Yeah. Matthew, Mark, and John all ganged up on my video games yesterday.” Did I mention they all have Biblical names? Straight up Old Testament for the older two, New Testament for the babies. Except for the youngest, Esther. His parents said there were no good girl names in the New Testament. Weirdos.

“Bummer. Sorry,” I said as we walked on in silence, the gusts of salty air rushing through our hair and stinging our eyes. But this was still our favorite place to hang out. Always had been, probably always would be. The girls in bikinis didn’t hurt either.

We criss-crossed some old sand flats, walking farther than usual, until we finally stopped and plopped down. Jonah pulled a crumpled package of Wrigley’s from his pocket and offered me up a piece. “Seen Melissa’s tits lately? They’re getting big.” He held up a hand to indicate a nice handful—at least a ripe granny smith—though I think he was exaggerating.

I grinned, forcing my gaze away. I couldn’t let him know how I felt about all that. I was an idiot, crushing on the hot girl. “Nah, dude. They’re not
that
big.” But I’d noticed too, cuz Melissa, well, she was
Melissa
. I noticed everything about her. Her long, brown hair the same color as Megan Fox’s. (Wowza.) And, if I got close enough, I could catch whiffs of her sweet shampoo. I’d also seen inside her locker . . . she liked the Misfits, anime, and horror movies. It didn’t get much more perfect than that. But it did. She also had the coolest brown eyes. Not brown, not black, but some dark, liquidy color in between. And, she was smart.

Yeah, I’d noticed. Not that I’d had the guts to talk to her.

“Whatever.” Jonah smacked his gum and flopped onto his back to stare up at the sky.

I squinted and studied the flowing, murky blue water. “So, you coming over for dinner?”

He shuffled his ratty tennis shoe deep into the sand, disrupting an old piece of plastic wrap, and a tumble of sand rolled down our small hill above the beach. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to. I knew the answer. “Sure. I guess.”

Jonah came to dinner nearly every night. I didn’t think his parents knew or cared where he was—no, I
knew
they didn’t. All those Biblical names were just for show because the King family wasn’t all that Christian and caring. Not to their kids, anyway. And I think Mom knew more than she let on, because she barely let me go over to their house, and I heard her say something once about two-faced serpents . . . and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about any snakes in the garden. But she didn’t mind Jonah coming over. It seemed sometimes like she loved him more than she loved me. But it was cool. Most of the time. He’d been my best friend since we were ten and my family moved to this little Texas refinery town for my dad’s job.

“Sweet,” I said, eying a boat the size of a white marble in the distance. “I think she’s making pork chops tonight.”

He nodded and kept toeing the sand between us, now disrupting an old soda bottle as the waves lapped in the distance and a gull cawed loudly overhead. Cars began to trickle into the parking lot about a hundred yards away as vacationers started showing up with their chairs and umbrellas, staking their claims to small patches of sand on the beach.

I kept my eyes peeled in case a hot girl in a bikini appeared so I could be the first to see her and call dibs . . . though the only girl I really wanted to see was Melissa Summers.

Just as a potential hottie with long blond hair was walking from the family van to the water’s edge, my shoe was covered by a landslide of sand. “Hey! What’re you doin’, man?”

Jonah rolled his head toward me from where he was still lying. “Sorry, dude. It just slid loose. Accident.” But his half-grin said he wasn’t
that
sorry.

I stood to shake the sand off, aggravated that I could already feel the grit in my sock.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, something caught my attention.

I couldn’t say why, it wasn’t large, or shiny. But it drew me. About two feet from where Jonah had shifted the sand with his dumb foot, a tattered piece of fabric laid buried in the sand.

I knelt down and examined it.

Jonah sat up. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“I don’t know. Some cloth or something.” I inched closer and touched it, an eerie feeling sliding through my body.

Jonah popped onto his knees and crawled over. “Lemme see . . .”

“No!” I held out a hand to stop him. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want him to touch it. “I got it.” I gave the fabric a tug and a big piece yanked free to whip in my hand with the wind.

We both looked it over. It was dingy, but it had obviously been white once with little yellow flowers.

“What do you think it is?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, but I somehow knew it was
something
. My heart began to pound as I handed the cloth to Jonah and raked my fingers through the sand looking for a bigger piece.

We glanced over as someone on the beach gave a yell as they chased a Frisbee in the warming beach air. The surf continued to pound the beach, the gulls continued their mournful cries, the kids continued to build their castles. Someone’s barbeque scented the air.

Jonah and I looked at each other. He felt it, too. He nodded, indicating that I should continue digging. It didn’t need to be spoken—this morning we were on a different journey. No more kid stuff.

A couple minutes later, my fingertips grazed something hard. I froze.

“What?” Jonah demanded. “You find something else?”

I peered up at him where he sat still with the piece of fabric clutched in his hand like a lifeline. “Maybe?”

“Well, dig it up.” He moved closer as excitement tinged his voice. He’d always been the adrenalin junkie, but not the one to get his hands dirty. How was that fair? I shot him a nasty look.

I sifted my fingertips through the sand a second time. I felt it again. Firm. Cool. I gripped it and yanked.

I came up with a long strip of leather. Like the cloth, it was weathered and old and it was hard to tell what it could’ve been.

Though, as I touched the cracked strip, a rush of reverence washed over my heart. I glanced up as a cloud momentarily floated in front of the sun, blocking its rays.

“Dude . . .” Jonah reached out and brushed his fingers across the leather, his tone quiet and respectful.

I flipped it over and we both touched it again, realizing at the same time that letters were etched into the back side.

“What’s it say?” Jonah glanced up into my eyes.

I traced a capital ‘L,’ tried to sound out the other letters, which had faded over time.

“Lettuce?”

“No, stupid,” I thunked Jonah on the arm. I ran my fingers through the engraving again. “Lettie.”

“Who’s Lettie?”

I rolled my eyes. “Really?” I studied the things we had in our hands again. “Probably some old lady who lost her stuff at the beach.” Surely these were just parts of an old dress and some kind of purse or weird, hippy jewelry or something. I mean, who wore leather bands these days?