Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (11 page)

I squat to get a closer look at pink slime. Instead I see my face, an odd, chalky white color reflected in the sunlit water. I shift from one foot to the other. “Do you agree with him?”

“I never called you psychotic and pathetic.” Nate nudges a submerged rock, and something scuttles through the water. “That’s an opaleye fish.”

The swish of the fish elongates my face, and my mouth distorts as if in midscream. “But you called me a loner.”

“I called you
lonely
.” He settles the rock back into place. “There’s a difference.”

“I’m not lonely. I’m not feeling little tugs on my heartstrings to swap friendship bracelets.” I have Macey and my fellow delinquents, but I shouldn’t have to list my friends to prove I have them. I dip my hand into the sun-soaked water and nudge a different rock. “Feeling lonely would indicate I have an unrealized need for people.”

“Everyone needs people, Reb.”

We all need friends.

I push harder on the rock. Heaven forbid I forget Kennedy for five minutes. “But I’m not everyone, am I?”

You, Rebel Blue, are anything but ordinary.

Nate rocks back on his heels. The sun glints off his shiny, blue-black hair. “No, Rebel, you’re not.”

I can’t tell if that’s a criticism or a compliment. Not that it matters what Nate thinks of me. I jump to my feet and shake off the water.

On our way to the sea swallows’ nesting site at the mudflats, we cross an outcrop of rocks. “This time of day, we may see a pod of dolphins straight ahead,” Nate says. He shades his eyes with one hand and scans the ocean. His eyes are bright, his cheeks flushed. I bet this is how I look flying down the hill on Nova.

“You love it out here, don’t you?” I ask.

“I need plenty of community-service hours if I’m going to get a full-ride scholarship to college.”

“Liar.”

He drops his hand to his side. “Not that again.”

“If you lie, I’m going to call you on it.” I motion to the sea and sky. “This isn’t just about helping endangered birds. You love being out here.”

“You don’t have a filter, do you?”

“I find them rather unnecessary.” I wiggle my toes. “Like shoes.”

He raises his face to the sky and takes a deep breath of the salty breeze, his faded Del Rey School baseball T-shirt stretching across his chest. “Okay, I love it out here.”

I cup my hand to my ear. “Excuse me, what’s that?”

Nate shakes his head, a reluctant smile snaking onto his mouth. “You’re right. There, I said it.

Does that make you happy?”

“If I had pom-poms, I’d be shaking them.”

We stand side by side, watching the water and sky. “See that out there?” He points to the gentle swell of ocean to our right.

I squint at the deep blue waves dotted with tiny whitecaps. “What?”

“The sailboat. It’s a twenty-five-foot Hunter with a teak deck and bobblehead dolphin doll hanging from the captain’s wheel.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t see a boat and bobblehead.”

“You will next summer, and I’ll be behind the wheel, headed for the Baja.” His grin turns into a laugh as I thwack him on the shoulder, which is hard as a boulder but oddly warm.

I jab my hand into my pants pocket.

“Look!” Nate points to a different part of the ocean. “There’s a dolphin—two—no, three.”

I snort and head for the mudflats just past the rock. “Sure, Nate, right next to your sailboat.”

He takes my hand and drags me to the edge of the cliff. “Wait a minute and … and …” A seagull flies overhead, and somewhere in the mudflats a bird twitters. Nate nestles his arm against mine, moving our hands in a slow sweep. “… and … and … now!”

Three silver arcs fly from the water in front of our nestled arms. I stumble back. My bare foot lands in a small hole. I lunge forward to keep from falling. Frothy water churns and pounds the rocks twenty feet below the cliff. A scream tears up my throat. Hands tighten around my waist and pull.

Nate and I tumble backward, his body curling around mine. The sky cartwheels. Nate lands on a patch of earth covered in purple and white wildflowers. I land on him. No more cliff. Just Nate.

My chest rises and falls with his. We share a breath. The sweet smell of crushed flowers rises, overpowering the salt sea.

“Am I interrupting something?” Bronson asks.

“No!” I jump off Nate as if I’d touched an electric eel.

Nate’s slower. He stands, swatting crushed leaves and sand from his shorts. “Rebel got too close to the edge. I pulled her back. We lost our balance.”

“That’s right,” I say. “We lost our balance.”

DOWNSTAIRS, THE MUSIC BLASTS, AND THE GLASS frames rattle on the back wall of my attic studio. I cram Percy’s earplugs into my ears and try to do math.

Attorney fees + IRS application fees > cost of adopting four leatherback turtles.

I rub at my temples and wonder how I’m going to get the money for the next item on Kennedy Green’s bucket list:
Start my own 501(c)(3) charity.

As I thumb through the papers and read about bylaws, boards of directors, tax ID numbers, and IRS guidelines, I realize Kennedy Green is more annoying dead than alive.

On the floor below, someone shrieks, and then something clanks and crashes. It’s probably one of Aunt Evelyn’s ceramic roosters. Uncle Bob and Aunt Evelyn drove to San Diego for the night because Aunt Evelyn has an early-morning open house there tomorrow. It’s Saturday night, and Pen and the Cupcakes are having a party.

I read about mission statements and visions, but the words shimmy and shake in time with the music. Tiberius, the next-door neighbor’s rat terrier, starts to bark.

I pull the plugs from my ears because I’m not going to be able to get anything done tonight. And, honestly, I’ve had enough of Kennedy’s bucket list today. The latest stumbling block: School administration threw a fit when I brought the Red Rocket trees to school this morning. Apparently I hadn’t acquired them through an approved vendor, nor did I fill out the proper paperwork for “supply acquisition.”

“I just want to do something good,” I told the principal.

Percy stepped in and said he’d take care of the paperwork. On Monday I plan to give Percy one of Macey’s pies.
Yoo-hoo, Bronson, another friend.

Downstairs in the land of Cupcakes, I duck past a boisterous group playing Twister and weave through another half dozen of Penelope’s friends lounging in the kitchen eating pizza and jelly beans.

I stop at the counter and grab a piece of pizza. After downing it, I dig through the jelly beans, picking out the black ones. No one says a word. With jelly beans in hand, I walk out the back door onto the porch.

Tiberius pokes his head through a new hole under the fence. His ears tilt forward, and his crooked teeth flash in his version of a smile. I hop over the porch railing and toss him the jelly beans. He lunges, snapping up the sugary treats with gnashing teeth.

Then I follow the sound of waves.

Tonight bonfires dot the beach. Tongues of flames lick the inky sky, and in the back of my head a new design takes shape, a mosaic with elongated bits of amber and yellow sea glass, maybe on a black frame. I stroll along the boardwalk, past the sand, past the people. At the back of the grassy dunes a lone man reclines on a piece of cardboard. He smells of ripe sweat and rich earth. With his matted hair and scarecrow arms, he’s probably homeless, but he must find solace in this place of shifting sea. He rocks back and forth to the music of the ocean.

I pick my way past the tide pools and climb toward the outcrop of rocks. I try not to picture Nate putting his arm around me and pointing out the dolphins. I try not to remember falling through the air and landing in his arms. I try not to feel the brush of his breath on my skin. Slipping through the craggy rocks, I search the sea. Maybe I’ll see dolphins or whales or glow-in-the-dark algae, because now would be a good time to stop obsessing about Nate. As I near the point, one of the boulders shifts.

It’s not a rock but a person. In profile I make out neat hair, a square chin, and chiseled nose. And if the moon were brighter, I’d spot two curving dimples.

It’s fate.

I spin and tiptoe back across the rocks.

“Got another pod of dolphins out there,” Nate calls.

I run the toe of my flip-flop along a pile of rocks. I could pretend I didn’t hear him. But why? So we
breathed
together. So he makes me jump and leaves me off balance. I can’t deny that, but I also know that boys like Nate prefer to
breathe
with girls from the herd.

I join Nate on the cliff and take a seat on a smooth rock. Squinting, I spot dorsal fins. It’s hard to tell in the blue-black sea of rolling velvet, but there are six, maybe seven. I pull my knees to my chest, breathing in the quiet. Nate says nothing. I picture his huge, chatty family. Like me, he probably came to escape the noise. Or maybe he was doing work at the mudflats nearby. The sea swallows are expected within a week or two, and through the moonlight I see our newly erected fence posts.

Nate doesn’t say what brought him to this chunk of rock, and I don’t ask. We sit side by side and watch the sea. Like me, he seems content with the company of the waves and wind. At one point he settles onto his back, his intertwined fingers under his head. When the moon peeks out from a thin cover of clouds, the moonlight brightens our perch. I notice Nate’s shirt is from a 5K to raise money for juvenile diabetes.

I idly trace a series of wavy lines in the fine layer of sand dusting the rock. “So if you wanted to start a charity, how would you do it?”

He rolls to his side and raises himself on a bent arm. Moonlight and shadow play over the waves of his hair. “The bucket list?”

I flick a small pebble with my fingernail, and it sails over the edge into blackness. “What do you think?”

“Sounds like something Kennedy Green would have wanted to do before she died.”

“Where do I start?”

“With something you care about. Tia Mina would call them your passions.”

My passions. I hug my knees to my chest. There’s so much I want to do and see, so much that can’t be done chained to a school desk or in a single town on the edge of the ocean. “Art. I love art. I draw, paint, and make mosaics out of sea glass. I love my Vespa and traveling and finding new places.

And freedom. I’m passionate about freedom to speak my mind and follow my dreams. I’m passionate about the freedom to be me.”

“You’re getting deep.”

“The more time you spend thinking about something, the deeper you get into your heart.” Great, now I’m channeling my creepy detention supervisor. “Forget I said that last bit.” Time to shut my mouth. I scrutinize the beach in the distance, surprised most of the bonfires are out. “What time is it?”

Nate holds his watch to the moonlight and squints. “Eleven thirty. Why?”

“Crap! I only have thirty minutes.”

“To do what?”

“A random act of kindness.”

“It has to be done now?”

“Before midnight.” It slipped my mind, but it shouldn’t have. It’s Nate, of course. He’s distracting. I scramble off the rock.

“What are you going to do?” Nate asks as he follows me through the grassy dunes.

“Not sure. I’ve already done the clean-the-beach thing.” At this time of night there’s not much going on, and there’s no one on this part of the beach but the homeless man.

“Do you need a ride? My dad’s truck is over there.”

Mr. White Knight to the rescue. We dive into an ancient truck with rounded wheel wells and running boards. He cranks the ignition a half dozen times before it coughs and roars to life. “Where to?”

“Head toward downtown on Calle Bonita. Maybe I’ll find a little old lady who needs help crossing the street.”