Undertow

UNDERTOW

CALLIE KINGSTON

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended.

2012 Carolwood Press, Kindle edition

Copyright © 2012 Callie Kingston

All rights reserved

Published in the United States by Carolwood Press, Beaverton, OR

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

ASIN
B006SJK0AM

One

B
efore the first icy wave hit her, Marissa spent the afternoon watching the waves threaten the beach.
The isolated swath of sand wedged between the forested cliff and the gray Pacific was her favorite place to escape, after her dad delivered the Honda for her sixteenth birthday two years ago. A payoff probably, to make up for being a total jerk her whole life.
Still, a car was better than nothing. He bought the car, and in return, it bought her freedom.

The ocean spray tickled the skin on her legs into goose bumps as a welcome relief from the August heat. Her eyes stung, raw from crying for so long. The sun was now a half orange hanging on the horizon; hours had passed since she left home, left Drake, left everything.

She should have climbed back up to her car before dusk came and drove home to deal with the shredded remnants of her life. In full daylight, the trail from the parking lot above was treacherous and long; she’d hiked for over an hour through the thick old growth and slippery moss to reach Crescent Beach. Still muddy from the morning mists, the trail skirted the edge of the cliff in places. A misstep could result in a deadly hundred foot fall.

Maybe that would be okay.

Cradled against the weathered log of an ancient tree, she stared at the ocean through a wall of tears. Every agony she’d endured her whole life, almost eighteen screwed up years, poured onto the sand.

H
er mind involuntarily hit replay and the torment began again.

That morning, Marissa had been sprawled across Drake’s bed with his laptop while he argued with his dad downstairs. She was reading about a dead zone off the coast near Newport that was killing all the crabs—
just classic, our 'rents trash the planet and we get to clean up their mess,
she’d thought—when an icon flashed in the corner of the screen. Drake’s profile popped up: a narrow face wearing a crazy grin.

Twisting her long auburn hair into a loose knot at her neck, she hesitated. She tuned in to the voices downstairs and decided the argument would continue a while longer. Shoving away the queasy feeling, she moved the cursor and let it hover above the icon for a moment until her conscience lost the debate. She closed her eyes, clicked, and peeked.

It was a short note:
Hey Dray, come out and play? Miss you :-(

Her eyes froze on the girl’s photo. Blond hair, wide smile, blue eyes; the exact opposite of Marissa. She stared in disbelief and her gut cramped. Amy, who’d gushed since sophomore year about how lucky Marissa was to bag such an awesome guy? Pretty obvious now how awesome Amy thought he was.

The room shrunk until nothing was left but his betrayal splayed across the screen. When Drake’s hands wrapped around her ankles she flinched. “Hey, let’s go grab lunch,” he said, tugging on her feet. “I’m starving.”

Shrieking and twisting away from him, she jumped off the bed and glared at him. All the signs had been there, she realized: his aloof behavior these past weeks, a billion excuses for not calling, his bullshit answers. Drake had played her.

He looked past her to Amy’s face on the computer screen and his eyes grew huge.

Moments passed, an agonizing eternity.

Marissa’s chest began to ache. How could he do this to her? After everything they'd been through these past two years? Forcing herself to inhale and exhale evenly, she stared at him for a few minutes, desperate to find a way to erase this new reality.
Go
, her mind finally ordered,
just go
. She willed her legs to propel her toward the door.

He blocked her escape. “Just wait . . . calm down . . . let’s talk . . . please Mari! Listen to me. Don’t get all crazy about this.”
Lunging at her, he
grabbed her arm.

Marissa wheeled around and shoved his hands away.

“Mari, please . . .” Those huge golden eyes of his which had sucked her in the first time she met him, looked more shocked than sad. “I was going to tell you . . .”

“Shut up, already!” she sputtered. “You asshole! I thought you were different. You're as bad as all the rest. Worse! I thought you
loved
me.” She waited a second for him to respond, but he just stood there and looked at her like a helpless idiot.

By the time Drake started to stammer, she was already past him and out the door.

Three hours later, Marissa’s car was parked in the lot overlooking Crescent Beach at Ecola State Park. She’d tossed her cell phone in the back seat after letting a dozen of Drake’s calls go to voicemail during the hour and a half drive through the Coast Range, grabbed her jacket and boots from the trunk, still muddy from their last hike together a few weeks ago, and made her way down to the beach carrying only her water bottle and keys.

Marissa thrust the image from the morning away, fighting back the pain
. She felt like vomiting. If she could, she would have puked up every broken promise she’d swallowed over the years. All those promises: her mother’s . . . her father’s . . . Drake’s. Lies, lies, lies. All lies. The memories swarmed over her. One deception after another, in brilliant colors, like each scene was painted with unearthly crayons, her mind shuffling through them like a deck of cards. And at the bottom, the face of a little girl.

She traced the outline of the tattoo on her calf, brushing the sand away from the mermaid’s hair and turquoise tail. Underneath, the tattoo artist had inked her sister’s name: Bethany. It was her first tattoo, and the only one her mother didn’t hate.

The tide changed; each hour, the water reclaimed more of the sand. She hardly noticed. Staring toward the horizon where the ocean dropped off the curve of the earth and disappeared, she wished she could too.
She envied the whales, swimming through the abyss with nothing to stress about. No school, no mom, no jerk of a boyfriend.
Exhausted, she let the warmth of the afternoon sun and the steady swooshing of the tide lull her to sleep.

A rogue wave surged toward the cliff and soaked Marissa, startling her awake. She scrambled to escape. The water lifted the tree beside her into the surf where it bobbed like a cork. Chest deep in the frigid water, she panicked and flailed, desperate to escape.

The surf pushed the log forward, knocking her to the ground and pinning her there, face down in the wet sand. There was a searing pain in her head. Like a mantra the prayer played in an endless loop:
please don’t let me die, please don’t let me die
. She held her breath. When the ocean withdrew it carved out the sand from beneath her and left her encapsulated like a human clam near the water's edge.

Another torrent of icy water swept over her; the wave recoiled and yanked Marissa and the log past the breakers into the sea.

She gasped and clawed at the water, but her arms were already too numb. The only sensation left was a paradoxical burning in her chest. Caught in an undertow, she was wrenched sideways and down into the black water.

The world slipped away.

Two

O
n the other end of the line, the girl continued the interrogation. “You’re transferring from Portland State? But you're still a freshman?”

“Right.”
Just say yes already
, Marissa nearly screamed through the phone. Do you need a roommate or not?

She picked at a loose thread from the purple plaid quilt on Kelly’s bed, wishing she could take Kels to Corvallis with her. It was going to suck that her best friend would be an hour away in Portland. If not for her, Marissa’s not sure what she would have done after the blowout with Drake. When Marissa showed up on the porch three weeks ago, her hair matted and her nails crusted with sand from that terrifying night on the beach, Kelly’s mom gave her the same pitying look she had given Marissa since she was twelve, and opened the door. Thankfully, she never asked questions.

Erin, the potential new college roommate said, “Yeah, well . . .” A stupid pause, like her brain was taking a break, then she blurted out: “You're only seventeen? How'd you pull that off?”

Marissa twirled her hair absentmindedly, wishing she would quit with the twenty questions already. Next, she’d ask for her blood type or genetic profile or something. “Got all my credits done and graduated early, then enrolled in some classes at PSU.”

“Oh.” Erin sounded doubtful. “What’s your major?”

“Urban Studies.”

“OSU doesn’t have that major, you know.”

Snippy bitch.
“Yeah, I do. Decided it wasn’t really for me, I suppose.” Marissa was glib now. “Not sure what I want to go into.”

More questions. “Why Oregon State? Corvallis is . . . umm . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Seriously? Why does she care?
Marissa kept her reply short. “I like the country.”

The girl laughed. “Plenty of that here, that’s for sure.”