Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (10 page)

Elizabeth crossed her arms and shot Miss Gale a disgusted look. But Miss Gale didn’t back down. She pressed her fists against the wooden railing as the dark clouds swirled in the sky over her head, giving her a fearsome appearance. After a long moment, Elizabeth spun around and marched down the sidewalk with her little posse following after her.

My mouth hung open as I blinked up at Miss Gale. Remind me never to get on her bad side.

“You all right, sugar?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“Sometimes you have to get ugly with people like that,” Miss Gale told me, shaking her head. She waved one hand at me. “Go on home and get cleaned up. And if you have anymore trouble with Miss Connors, let me know.”

Miss Gale turned, but I called up to her, “What does Elizabeth have against me anyway?”

She fell quiet for a moment, picking at a crack in the doorframe to avoid my gaze. “She’s just that kind of person, Mara.”

“But I haven’t even been here long enough to have done anything to her.”

Miss Gale pressed her lips together. “I can’t give you no answers. Go on home and talk to your daddy.”

She disappeared inside the store, apparently satisfied that everything was okay. But it wasn’t. There was no way I was going home right now to face Lake. The run-in with Elizabeth had only increased the anger bubbling inside me.

I squeezed soda out of my hair as best I could and then started walking again. Silence had settled over the island, but a few people walked down Heron Avenue, hurrying to their destinations before the rain started. A woman walking with a young child moved in a wide arc around me, pulling the little boy close, as if she were afraid I might touch him. She didn’t meet my gaze as she passed.

I didn’t understand anything that was going on around here.

The trees at Pirate’s Cove swayed back and forth in the swirling wind when I entered at the little trail that Josh had showed me. I walked through the forest quickly, trying to avoid being scratched by low-hanging limbs and ducking under the branches that swooped over the path.

To my disappointment, the beach wasn’t empty. A lone figure sat on the sand, his face turned toward the ocean and a guitar resting in his lap.

“You’re on my part of the beach,” I said when I reached him.

“Your part is over there.” Josh nodded his head toward the right. “This is my part.”

“I changed my mind. I’m claiming all of this.” I waved my hands in a big arc. “You can have that one little corner way over there.”

Josh looked around. “That’s a pretty big piece of beach for one person.”

“I
need
all of it.”

He still wore his usual black hoodie and baggy jeans, but his hair was wet and plastered to his head, dripping water onto his collar. “Have you been swimming?” I asked.

Josh blinked. “Why would I be swimming? It’s February. It’s cold.”

“Your hair is wet,” I pointed out.

“So is yours.”

I peeled a lock of sticky hair from the side of my face. “I got a Diet Coke shower a few minutes ago.”

Josh raised his eyebrows.

“Not voluntarily,” I growled. “Just a little run-in with Elizabeth Connors and her posse.”

“Oh,” Josh grunted. “Them.”

I plopped down onto the sand next to him uninvited, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Yes, them. Those girls you sit with at lunch.”

He made a face. “I don’t sit with them. I sit down and then they take over my table.” He glanced at me and then added, “Not voluntarily.”

“That’s a relief,” I said. “Because otherwise, I would have seriously questioned your taste in human beings.” I picked up a handful of sand and let it sift through my fingers. “So do you like to sit here by yourself in your free time?”

“It’s quiet,” Josh said. “Usually.”

Over the ocean, two birds chased each other, turning circles in the air and squawking. I scanned the water and I wished I’d thought to grab my camera so I could zoom out farther than my eyes could see. I needed to see something other than this island where no one could speak an honest answer, to be reminded that there were lives out there other than the haunted one I lived here.

“It was too quiet at home,” Josh said. He didn’t look my way when I turned to him and instead strummed a few lazy notes on his guitar. “My mom had gone out to run a few errands and sometimes I don’t like being there alone.”

“Is your dad around?” I asked.

His expression changed slightly as he said, “No. My dad died when I was really little.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. A dead parent, something we had in common. Which was worse—losing the only parent you’d ever known your entire life, or living with the mystery of never knowing what you’d missed out on by having a parent die so early in your life?

“I’m sorry,” I added.

Josh’s smile was tight and forced. “It was a long time ago.”

We sat quietly, side by side for a long time, listening to the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore. Josh played a soft, low accompaniment to the ocean on his guitar. Outside of our little hideaway, Lake was probably still at home. Had he even taken a second to wonder where I’d run off to? Would it ever occur to him to come after me, just once?

I hugged my knees tighter to my chest and rested my chin on top of them. No, I wouldn’t think about Lake anymore. He wasn’t allowed to have this kind of control over me. It didn’t matter anyway. A couple of years and I’d be gone, far away from him once again.

“Look out there,” Josh said, pointing to a spot on the water toward his left.

I squinted, trying to see what he was showing me. Then I spotted them, leaping above the surface of the water in smooth arcs. Dolphins splashed and played in the choppy water offshore.

“They don’t realize how lucky they are,” I said, envying the dolphins for their ability to swim as far as their fins would carry them. Far from people and all the problems of living on land. As I watched the dolphins leap in and out of the water, the sound of the ocean grew louder in my ears. I could almost imagine myself out there, swimming and leaping with them. “I’d like to be like them, never having to go back home if I don’t want to. Just swim and swim around the world, forever.”

The wind whipped my hair against my face and the sound of the ocean called to me like a lullaby over Josh’s soft music. He hummed just the tiniest bit and the song wrapped itself around me. My head swirled and my eyelids began to close. The ocean’s whisper and Josh’s song slowly grew louder in my ears and the air shimmered a little around me.

“Don’t you think it might be a lonely life?” Josh asked quietly. “Out there all by yourself?”

I wanted to say that I didn’t need anyone except myself, but here in Josh’s presence, the words felt like a lie on my tongue.

He stopped playing suddenly. “You’re shivering.”

I shook my head. “I’m okay.”

“You should have put on a coat.” He peeled off his hoodie, revealing thick arms and a wide chest underneath a plain white T-shirt. He pulled the hoodie over my head before I could protest, enveloping my entire body inside with the arms hanging loosely at my sides. It was warm and cozy inside his shirt, and it smelled like salt and musky deodorant.

“Thanks,” I said. The embrace of the ocean’s effect on me had been replaced by the buzz of Josh’s intoxicating scent.

He smiled. “A peace offering. I’ll share my beach with you if you’ll share it with me.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. “I suppose that’s a fair arrangement.”

Chapter Eleven

“Like this.” Dylan demonstrated the twist in the wire, his hands moving with the delicate precision of years of practice. He formed a smooth, tiny loop that didn’t look anything at all like the mess I had made.

I tried again, but the wire didn’t catch right and the handful of shells landed in my lap, spilling between my legs to the sandy wooden floor below.

“That’s okay,” Dylan said, scooping up the fallen shells with one hand and giving them back to me. “I dropped a lot of shells when I first started.”

I wasn’t exactly sure
why
I was learning to make shell bracelets, except for a lack of anything else to do. Life on the island wasn’t exactly fast-paced and full of excitement.

Footsteps pounded up the staircase to the Waverlys’ screened-in porch and Sailor appeared on the other side of the door, glaring in at us.

“You were supposed to meet me at Moody’s half an hour ago!” she growled.

Dylan cringed. “Is it three already? Sorry, I lost track of time.”

Sailor’s eyes shot daggers in my direction. She swung open the door, letting it slam against the side of the wall as she stomped inside to join us. “What is so important that you’d forget you already had plans with me?”

“I’m teaching Mara how to make bracelets,” Dylan said. He offered her a handful of shells. “Want to help?”

Sailor plopped down against the wall of the porch across from us and crossed her arms. “No, I do not.”

“I’m not good at this anyway,” I said, trying to give the shells back to Dylan. “My hands are made for photography, not crafting.”

“Your hands are perfect,” Dylan said.

Sailor’s glare bored into the side of my head.

He ducked his head, letting his sandy blonde hair fall in front of his face to hide the blush creeping up his neck. “I mean,” Dylan said, “it’s just stringing shells along on a wire, nothing to it. It’s not like it takes any real skill, not like the things Lake can do.”

Dylan always found a way to mention my dad in every conversation, as if Lake were his personal hero. At least someone around here saw something good in Lake. Since my arrival he hadn’t been anymore a part of my life than he was when I lived in Tennessee. He spent most of his days gone from the house, running off to collect crabs or shells. He never wanted to be a father and he still didn’t, that much was clear.

Some nights when I laid awake in my loft, unable to sleep because of the nightmares, I would hear Lake moving around downstairs in the dark. He seemed to sleep as little as I did. Sometimes in the darkness of three A.M., I wanted to ask if nightmares haunted him too, but I never felt like we were at the point in our relationship where we could talk about things other than what to have for dinner. We rarely even talked about that, often preferring to do our own thing.

We lived in the same house, but we were still hundreds of miles apart.

The crunch of seashells in my hand let me know that my fist was clenched tight. I opened my palm to find a few crushed shells.

“You okay?” Dylan asked, looking from the broken shells to me.

“Sorry,” I said, ignoring his question. “I’ll find you some more to replace them.”

Dylan shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

I tipped my hand over the bucket, letting the broken pieces get mixed in with the rest of Dylan’s seashells. “I think I’m done trying to be crafty for one day.”

Dylan continued working on his bracelet while I picked up my camera. I snapped a few pictures while he worked, admiring the sharp lines of his face and the texture of the shells against his fingers. He looked up every now and then, smiling with a bit of embarrassment, but he didn’t object.

I turned my camera toward Sailor, who stared back at me with a stormy expression. Yesterday’s rain had given away to full sun today and the light coming through the screen behind her illuminated the edges of her hair, making her appear to glow.

“Do you ever put that thing down?” she snapped as she roughly flipped a page in a magazine she’d picked up.

“No,” I answered, continuing to snap more photos when her glare deepened. “I’m calling this series ‘Sea Witch.’”

Sailor rolled her eyes and turned away from me. “I’m bored,” she announced, as if she expected everyone else to keep her entertained all hours of the day.

“Want to go hunting for shells?” Dylan asked. “The storm yesterday should have washed some good ones up on shore.”

Sailor made a big show of letting out a wide yawn. “Boring.”

“I think it sounds like fun,” I said, just to annoy her.

Dylan smiled at me. “Let’s go then. You coming, Sailor?”

She didn’t look happy about it, but she followed when Dylan led the way down the street. He carried an old plastic paint bucket in one hand, letting it thump against his thigh as he walked. Sailor pranced at his side, having made a point of claiming the space next to him.

I walked a few paces behind him, examining the world through my viewfinder. Sun-faded flags hanging from the shops along Heron Avenue fluttered in the soft breeze. The live oaks that lined each side of the street created a dappled canopy over the elderly couple that rode slowly by in a green golf cart, a little dog perched between them keeping a wary eye on us. A couple of kids ran by, chasing each other as their laughter echoed over the soft sigh of the ocean. We passed a bookstore with a broken sign and darkened windows, the store apparently long closed. Farther down, an old restaurant sat empty and forgotten, shingles falling off its roof. The wind whistled between the abandoned shops like whispers of ghosts.