“All right, all right, I admit defeat,” I sighed, stopping in my tracks. How could I consider myself a true explorer if I couldn’t even, well, get my feet wet? And something about Leo’s relaxed vibe told me that he probably wouldn’t care that my toes were weird. Maybe it was time to quit being such a baby about my imperfection.
I eased off one sneaker with the toe of one foot, but then I staggered, losing my balance. Leo was immediately by my side, extending his hand for me to grab.
I took it.
His fingers closed around mine, warm but rough and slightly callused. I looked down at my small, smooth, pale hand in his much larger one, and I felt my head spin. I was suddenly glad that I’d gotten a manicure.
“Better, right?” Leo asked as I kicked off my other sneaker. The comfortably warm water rushed up to swirl around my ankles. To my horror, I caught Leo looking directly at my bare feet, and my chest seized up.
“Yes,” I mumbled, withdrawing my hand and scooping up my Converse. My toes wiggled in the water of their own volition, as if astonished to finally be free.
“Then let’s dive in,” Leo said with a grin.
“You mean, swim?” I asked, confused. Our brief bout of hand-holding, along with my toe-baring, had disoriented me.
“No, I mean, let’s start the tour,” Leo laughed as a fresh wave slammed into the shore, depositing coils of seaweed around our feet. “And here we go,” he added, crouching down and picking up a flat circle dotted with small slits. “Ever seen a live sand dollar before, Ms. Aspiring Marine Biologist?”
“What makes you think that’s what I want to be?” I challenged. The fact was, I wasn’t sure which branch of science I wanted to follow in life—often, the laws of physics and the structures of chemistry spoke to me more than the rawness of biology.
“Well, your eyes were shining at the center today,” Leo replied matter-of-factly as he rose. I could feel him observing the side of my face. “You seemed…passionate.”
The seasick feeling returned, and I hoped Leo wouldn’t notice how my fingers trembled as I carefully touched the sand dollar. I was never completely relaxed around boys, but at least when talking to T.J. yesterday I’d been somewhat composed. Why was Leo’s presence making me feel so unmoored?
“No, I haven’t ever seen one up close, and it’s very cool,” I responded at last, pretending to be fully absorbed in the sand dollar.
“I’ll show you something even cooler,” Leo said, clearly enjoying himself; his eyes were dancing as he set the sand dollar back down where he had found it. “See those tiny holes in the sand?” He pointed, and I looked down to see the mysterious pinpricks. “Ghost shrimp,” he explained. “Funny little guys. They burrow into the sand so they can eat and hide out.”
“That doesn’t sound like typical shrimp behavior,” I said, smiling and getting back into the swing of things. Leo’s enthusiasm,
his
passion, for the ocean world was contagious. And incredibly attractive.
My heart thumped.
“We just call them shrimp,” Leo said, drawing a circle around the hole with his toe. “They’re really relatives of
lobsters. Surprising, huh? It’s like, did you know that Spanish moss isn’t really moss?”
“But—yes, it is,” I protested, thinking of the moss-heavy trees on the island.
“It’s related to
pineapple,
” Leo told me, widening his stunning eyes. “I swear. You can look it up. Isn’t that wild? Names can be so misleading.”
As I gazed back at Leo, I understood that he, this strange boy from an island in the middle of nowhere, loved science for the exact same reasons I did. Now
that
was wild. I felt like we were two explorers, partners, out there on the empty beach, with everything open for discovery.
“What’s in a name?” I said with a small laugh, and then, feeling brave, nudged Leo in the ribs with my elbow. “See, I know
some
Shakespeare.”
“Nice,” Leo said, nudging me back. “I like
Romeo and Juliet.
Forbidden love. Tragic ending. All the good stuff.”
“I’m with you there,” I said as we continued walking, wishing I hadn’t blushed at his use of the word
love.
“Happy endings never feel real to me.” I kept my head down; now that Leo had pointed out the ghost shrimp’s holes to me, I couldn’t stop seeing them in the sand.
“Well, it all depends,” Leo replied, crouching low again, “on what one considers a happy ending. Aha,” he said, lifting from the sand a small red bulb attached to a purplish stem.
“For you, ma’am. A sea pansy. I know it’s not a dozen roses, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.”
What did
that
mean? The blush that spread across my face now put my earlier flushing to shame. Was Leo implying that we were on a date? Had I dodged a date with T.J. only to wind up on another one? And since when was I the kind of girl who had these kinds of problems?
He’s kidding,
I decided, accepting the sea pansy and watching its round, brainlike bulb wobble in the wind. “Thank you, kind sir,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
“You’re welcome,” Leo replied, standing up. He came closer to me, closer than he had been in the center when he’d told me about Maurice. He was beautiful, I realized, studying the planes of his face—the straight line of his nose, the fullness of his mouth. Over his head, the sky was transforming from pale gold to pale red, and the soft texture of the air made me feel almost beautiful, too.
Something overcame me then—something stronger than sense or reason—and I felt my hand reach out. I wanted to touch Leo’s cheek, to feel its rough smoothness. Leo inclined his head toward me, and I was holding my breath, and then an enormous, swelling wave crested onto the shore.
The force of the current was so great that it lifted my feet and sent me tumbling backward. I landed hard, on my butt,
on the sand. I managed to hold on to my Converse, but the sea pansy was ripped from my hand.
“Oh, no, are you okay?” Leo asked. Gripped with shame, I looked up to see his eyes sparkling and his mouth twitching. He wanted to
laugh.
“It’s not funny!” I cried, scraping bits of gravel off my palms as I scooted backward onto drier sand. The seat of my jeans was sopping wet. I felt jittery and shaky, wondering what would have happened between us had nature not intervened. “And I lost the sea pansy,” I added mournfully.
Leo sat down beside me, putting his flip-flops in the sand. “We’ll find you another one,” he said reassuringly, a laugh still in his voice. “Don’t get angry with the current,” he added, watching me. “Just go with it. There’s this quotation I always think about: ‘Life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea.’ Isn’t that true?”
“Who said that?” I asked, still feeling petulant about my spill. “Shakespeare?”
“No,” Leo said, and I could see him smiling in my peripheral vision. “It’s from a movie I saw once.”
The sea was waxing and waning at our feet, and the sun was beginning its descent into the horizon. Seagulls cried out as they flew by, and I felt the warmth of Leo’s arm near mine. If a moment in my life had ever felt like a movie, this was it. I
turned my head to look at Leo, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. He was looking back at me, his expression now serious.
“Miranda,” he said. Never before had my misbegotten name sounded so lovely, never had its syllables been pronounced with such care. “I’m really glad you came to Selkie this summer.”
“I think I am, too,” I said, or started to say, because suddenly Leo was leaning toward me, and I couldn’t differentiate between the scent of the sand and his skin.
Just go with it,
I thought.
And let him kiss me.
The kiss started slow, his salt-licked lips lightly brushing mine, his sweet, clean breath tickling my own. Every inch of me was poised, waiting, tingling. I didn’t think. I didn’t question. As Leo deepened the kiss, I closed my eyes. I felt his sandy hand caress my cheek, his fingers tracing, exploring, and I reciprocated eagerly, touching his face.
Leo kissed languidly, a kiss like he had all the time in the world, a kiss as hot and slow as the summer itself. So different from Greg’s kisses, which seemed hurried and clumsy by comparison. I felt Leo’s warm tongue in my mouth, and I understood why people sometimes went crazy, risked everything for a kiss.
We ended the kiss at the same instant, drawing back and opening our eyes. My head was swimming and I couldn’t stop smiling. Had that really just happened? Had it really been me?
“I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I saw you yesterday afternoon,” Leo remarked, smiling, too. “Right on this beach.”
I glanced around at the quiet sand and the empty dunes, on which shadows had started to form. Abruptly, I was aware of the hour. My old, reliable common sense returned, and I got to my feet. My lips still felt tender from Leo’s kiss, and I was grateful that my knees were stable enough to hold me up.
“I don’t have my cell phone,” I told Leo, shaking my head at my forgetfulness, my lapse in logic. I attempted to brush off the damp sand that clung to my backside, growing flustered. “My mom will worry if I’m out after dark without calling. We’re from New York, you see, and she—she worries.”
Even if I’d had my phone, though, what would I have said to Mom?
Sorry, but remember that boy you saw me talking to yesterday? Yeah, we’ve been making out on the beach. No worries.
Never.
“Is that where you’re from?” Leo asked, jumping to his feet so quickly I could barely blink. He reached for my arm,
his eyes bright with curiosity. “Tell me about it. Tell me about you.”
“I can’t now,” I said, backing up a few paces even as my heart strained for me to stay put. “My mom—”
“Okay, okay,” Leo laughed, holding up his hands. “I get it. You’re a good girl.”
A taunting tone had crept into his deep voice, and his mouth curved up in an enigmatic smile. I felt a flash of ire at being cast in such a narrow role—even if it was an accurate one.
“Maybe I am,” I replied, cramming my feet back into my wet Converse and leaning over to tie the laces tight. “Is that so wrong?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I wish I could be a good boy more often. Can I at least walk you home?”
“How good boy of you,” I shot back, but I could feel my annoyance dissolving as I glanced up into his green eyes. “But no, thanks,” I added, softening. “I know my way.”
I hesitated, wanting him to ask me to stay, wanting him to kiss me again, and at the same time overwhelmed, unsure of how to proceed. Wasn’t this when most people exchanged phone numbers or e-mail addresses?
“Listen, I’m—when—” The words
should we meet up sometime?
seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth like taffy.
“Come find me,” Leo put in, his gaze full of understanding. “Whenever you want. I’ll be here.”
I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking. So I lifted my hand in a half wave, turned, and hurried along the heavy sand, my ponytail swinging from side to side. When I reached the boardwalk, I paused outside the brightly lit, noisy Crabby Hook and glanced over my shoulder at the dark beach.
I couldn’t spot Leo anywhere on the sand. There was only the ocean storming the shore and leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake. If I squinted, though, I could make out a pale shape bobbing on the whitecapped waves. It was moving too quickly to be a person, so maybe it was a dolphin, or a dinghy, or a harlequin duck. Maybe it was a ghost shrimp. A sand dollar.
Or maybe it was the sea pansy Leo had given me, carried away by the current like a memory I longed to grab on to and hold for as long as possible.
S
urreal.
That was the only way to describe the experience of returning to Siren Beach in broad daylight.
It was Sunday, July first, two days after my beach walk with Leo. I was lying on a towel, a few feet from where he and I had shared our knee-weakening kiss. Every time I thought of that kiss—approximately every five seconds—my whole body flushed. Beside me, CeeCee, Jacqueline, and Virginia were stretched out silently in bikinis, their faces turned worshipfully toward the sun. Behind us, Mom, Delilah, and Virginia’s mother, Felice, lounged on beach chairs, chatting. So there was absolutely no one with whom I could discuss my tumbling emotions.
Not that I was really in the mood to talk. In my black swimsuit, Converse, and oversized sunglasses, I felt somehow
disguised. Incognito. I’d put in my iPod earbuds but left the music off, an old trick that allowed me to listen in on conversations while being left alone. I loved observing.
“The repairmen were a disaster,” I heard Mom moan, and Delilah clucked her tongue. I allowed myself a glance back; Mom’s white caftan and matching head scarf fluttered in the wind and made her look almost identical to Delilah. “They left plaster all over the floor,” Mom went on, “and the faucets spit out brown water.”
Fortunately, Mom had been so preoccupied with the repairmen’s shoddy work that she hadn’t batted an eye when I’d walked into The Mariner on Friday evening late, wet, and covered in sand. And the day before, while I’d roamed uselessly around the house in a daze of disbelief and joy, Mom had been busy making phone calls—to the real estate lawyer, to Aunt Coral, and then to Delilah, who’d been the only person able to calm her down. At night, Mom had made one last, whispered call on the back porch, closing the French doors behind her. But I hadn’t asked her about it—I’d been too busy staring out the kitchen window and wondering if I’d really see Leo again.
Which was why, on the beach now, every tanned, blond boy who passed my towel made my heart skip and my head turn. One particularly pathetic false alarm had been Virginia’s younger brother, who’d stopped by to snag one of the peach smoothies Virginia’s housekeeper had packed in a cooler.
Come find me,
Leo had said, after all. But so far I hadn’t.
“Poor Amelia,” sighed Felice, whose face was frozen in eternal youth by the magic of Botox. “It truly
is
hard to find good help lately.”
I was so shocked that she had actually—without irony—uttered those words, that I let out a small sputtering laugh. I looked at Mom, waiting for her to laugh as well, but to my surprise, she simply took a sip of her smoothie.
Sighing, I rested my head back on the towel and looked up at the cloud-speckled sky. A Frisbee whizzed by overhead. I heard Felice announce to Mom and Delilah that she was going for a quick dip, and I watched from behind my sunglasses as she flip-flopped past my towel toward the ocean, her straw hat bobbing.
It was indefinable, but ever since the Heirs party, Mom had seemed different. She’d stopped making snarky remarks about Delilah, and this morning, she’d happily forgone sorting through Isadora’s things and accepted Delilah’s invitation to go sunbathing with “the ladies.”
Suddenly, CeeCee, Jacqueline, and Virginia squealed in unison. I’d been so focused on Mom that I hadn’t realized the girls were speaking.
“You
love
him,” Virginia pronounced, and for one second, I wondered if she was addressing me. Could she have known about Leo?
I turned my head toward the girls, who were now propped up on their elbows, and Jacqueline was rolling her eyes and blushing. Virginia must have been referring to Macon.
“And you’re going to get
married,
” CeeCee chimed in, giggling and licking peach foam off her straw.
“I don’t love him,” Jacqueline replied sensibly, slathering sunscreen onto her long dark legs. “It’s a summer thing. The novelty’s fun, but in a few weeks, we’ll both go back to our separate lives.”
Normally, I would have cheered on Jacqueline’s levelheaded declaration, but hearing those words now made a strange sadness well up in me.
“Jackie, since when are you such a pessimist?” CeeCee groaned. A group of shrieking girls in bikinis raced by, chased by bronzed boys in swim trunks, and they sprayed sand onto CeeCee’s towel. She scowled.
“Well, Macon’s not all that,” Virginia said, and took a sip of her smoothie. “Any boy who suggests a date to Fisherman’s Village loses points in my book.”
“He claimed he was trying to be
inventive.
” Jacqueline started laughing, and the others joined in.
Curiosity nipped at me. CeeCee had referred to Fisherman’s Village in relation to Leo. I sat up, taking out my earbuds and taking off my sunglasses.
“What’s Fisherman’s Village?” I asked.
Three made-up faces turned toward me, six flawlessly plucked eyebrows shot up.
“Miranda! We thought you were napping!” CeeCee exclaimed.
“Well, now that you’re up, is there any T.J. news?” Virginia asked, adjusting the top of her green polka-dot bikini to better showcase her bust.
“Fisherman’s Village is that way, I think,” Jacqueline replied. She pointed her smoothie cup toward the craggy rocks where I had first seen Leo walking on Thursday. Once again, all I could make out was mist. “I’ve never been, but I know it’s where the Selkie Island locals live.”
“Don’t worry, Miranda,” CeeCee said, unscrewing the cap off her tube of sunscreen. “T. J. Illingworth would never dream of taking you there!”
“Exactly. So what’s the T.J. news?” Virginia repeated, zeroing in on me.
I bit my lip. After my evening with Leo, I hadn’t thought about T.J. once. I felt mildly guilty for forgetting about him.
“Nothing, really,” I said, shrugging. “I haven’t heard from him—”
“That’s because he and Mr. Illingworth are in Savannah for the weekend,” CeeCee put in. “There’s some big golf tournament or something.” She mimed yawning and her friends cracked up.
“What’s this about Mr. Illingworth?” Delilah called from behind us. I glanced back to see Mom swat Delilah with her copy of
Vanity Fair.
My stomach tightened.
“We’re trying to set Miranda up with his son!” Jacqueline replied cheerily, and Mom choked on her smoothie. She coughed into her fist before regaining her composure.
A grin spread across Delilah’s face. “Miranda and T. J. Illingworth? How…intriguing.” She snapped off her sunglasses and raised one eyebrow at Mom. “It’s like history repeating itself, isn’t it?”
Mom’s sunglasses hid her expression, but I saw her jaw clench as she intently turned the pages of
Vanity Fair.
Normally, she read
Scientific American.
“Delilah,” she said in a warning tone. My stomach constricted again.
“Oops.” Delilah brought her fingers to her lips. “My mistake,” she said, but her eyes were dancing.
“What do you mean, Mama?” CeeCee asked, spinning around on her towel. Virginia and Jacqueline rolled over, too, and we all stared at Delilah.
But it was my mother who answered.
“It’s not a big deal,” she replied in a clipped tone, pushing her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “Mr. Illingworth and I used to date, back when we were kids.
Ancient
history,” she added, and met my gaze for a second before looking back at her magazine.
I’d suspected there had been something between Mom and Mr. Illingworth, but to hear her speak the words was startling. And if it
was
no big deal, why hadn’t Mom simply told me? And why was her face so pink?
“Oh, my gosh, can you say
destiny
?” CeeCee cried while Jacqueline grinned and Virginia looked stone-faced. “I swear I didn’t know that when I decided Miranda and T.J. should get together. Maybe I’m psychic!”
“You mean
psycho,
” Virginia muttered, flopping down on her back.
Delilah settled into her chair, clearly pleased. Just then, Felice reappeared, dripping wet in her age-inappropriate gold lamé bikini.
“The water was too cold for my taste,” she said, wrapping a towel around herself. Glancing at our little group of mothers and daughters, she clearly noticed the hovering tension. “What happened?” she demanded. “What did I miss?”
No one answered.
“CeeCee!” Mom spoke up loudly, flipping the pages of the magazine with force. “Was T.J. the young man I spoke to at the Heirs party? The one who told me where Miranda had gone?”
“Yup,” CeeCee replied, bouncing up and down a little. “Isn’t he divine?”
“He is very good-looking,” Mom concurred as Felice sat down beside her again. “Extremely polite, too.” Mom’s eyes flicked up toward me again, full of meaning.
My head spun. Was my own mother getting in on the matchmaking scheme? Not only was she suddenly involved in my romantic future, she apparently had a romantic
past
with my intended’s father. This was too weird.
“I have to pee,” I announced, setting down my empty smoothie cup and standing. I’d seen a restroom near the ice-cream stand on the boardwalk.
“Miranda!” Delilah exclaimed, slapping a hand to her bosom, and Mom shook her head at me. Felice looked outraged as well—or at least tried to look outraged.
“That’s not proper language for a young lady,” Mom told me, knitting her brow. “You can excuse yourself, but we don’t need the details.”
I heard the soft titters of CeeCee, Virginia, and Jacqueline, and I bowed my head. I felt like a five-year-old who’d been sent to the corner for talking in class. I’d never known Mom to admonish me in such a manner. Then again, I’d also never known her to have dated Theodore Illingworth the first.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, before turning and jogging away. As I went, I heard Virginia ask, “And
why
is she sunbathing in her sneakers?”
In the bathroom, I splashed water on my face and tried to calm down. Still, when I emerged, I didn’t feel prepared to rejoin Mom and the others.
The wind whipped through my hair as I walked down the boardwalk, drawn inexorably toward the marine center. I knew it was closed on Sundays, but I paused hopefully outside the screen door. My eyes traveled to the flyers on the window, and when I read one of them, my heart flipped in my chest.
Don’t Miss Our Sea Creature Beach Walks,
Wednesdays! Meet Intern Leo at the center
at 6 P.M. to purchase tickets.
Wednesdays? Leo had taken me on the beach walk on Friday. I remembered how he hadn’t wanted to accept my payment, and the suspicion that had crossed my mind. Now, comprehension descended. There
had
been no beach walk on Friday. Leo had fabricated it as a way for us to meet one-on-one.
I sucked in a sharp breath, at once flattered and freaked. No boy had ever gone to such lengths for me. On the other hand, I wondered if I had made an error in judgment, trusting Leo—
could
I trust a boy who was capable of lying with such ease? Would T.J. have done something similar? I doubted it.
I returned to my towel more confused than when I’d left.
Fortunately, the three moms had moved on to discussing where to find the freshest lobster in town, and Virginia and Jacqueline were splashing in the ocean while CeeCee lay on her stomach, texting Bobby.
I reapplied my Banana Boat, stretched out, and put in my iPod earbuds again, but now I turned the music way up, filling my eardrums in hopes of clearing my head. T.J. and Leo ping-ponged around in there, competing for space with Mom and Mr. Illingworth. Even Greg, who I thought I’d pushed into the recesses of my mind, cropped up.
Were CeeCee and her friends—not to mention Mom and
her
friends—infecting me? Or was it Selkie Island? Maybe being so far from home was turning me into the kind of girl who could think only about boys, dates, and ancient history.
When the wind turned rougher and the tide began creeping farther up the sand, all the moms agreed it was time to pack up. As Virginia and CeeCee whined about uneven tans, I threw one last look around the beach. I was starting to wonder if Leo’s remark that I could find him anytime had been another fabrication.
Besides, I thought as I shook out my sandy towel, what would I have realistically done had I actually spotted Leo on the beach? Kissed him in front of everyone?
My limbs tingled at the thought.
As we headed up the boardwalk toward town, Mom and I lagged behind, our shared beach bag dangling from my shoulder. I knew why
I
was lingering, but it seemed odd that ever-efficient Mom was dragging her feet.
I glanced at her, thinking how quiet she’d been since the Mr. Illingworth revelation. There were two pink spots on her cheekbones—not a sunburn.
“So…I have a question,” she spoke after a minute, her voice low enough so that Virginia, Virginia’s brother, and Felice, who were ahead of us, wouldn’t hear.
“I thought I was the one with the questions,” I joked, trying to ease what felt like a blossoming hostility between us.
Mom gave me a perfunctory smile. “This T.J.,” she began, and my pulse instantly sped up. “Maybe he’s someone you’d like to get to know better? So you could have, you know, another friend on Selkie, besides CeeCee and the girls?”
And Leo,
I thought, looking down at my Converse.
“He, um, seems nice enough,” I managed to say, realizing why I had never discussed boys with Mom—it was possibly the most awkward conversation one could have with a parent.
I breathed in the scent of boiled corn from The Crabby Hook as we passed by, recalling the Heirs party. T.J. seemed
cast in a different light now that I knew our parents were linked—he was at once more familiar and more distant.
“Well, I was considering inviting him and his father over for tea tomorrow,” Mom said in a rush, and it was clear to me that she’d been pondering this proposal all afternoon. The pink spots on her cheeks darkened.
“You were?” A small knot formed in my stomach. Was Mom arranging this tea so I could hang out with T.J.? Or did she have other motives? I thought of her secretive phone call the night before. “Mom,” I went on haltingly, avoiding her gaze, “I know you and Mr. Illingworth used to—whatever, but…” I trailed off, and my face colored. Maybe
this
was the most awkward parent topic ever.