Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (11 page)

Dylan led us to what he called the best shell hunting spot on the beach. It was toward the northern end of the island near an old, broken pier that had long ago begun to fall into the ocean. The location was far from the trees of Pirate’s Cove, so I didn’t have to worry about running into Josh while out with Dylan.

But why was I worried about Josh seeing me with Dylan?

The sunlight shimmered like diamonds on the ocean’s surface. I couldn’t resist taking my boots and socks off to dig my toes into the cool sand while I shot a few pictures of the water.

“If she’s going to stand there and take pictures, I’m not hunting for shells either,” Sailor said. She plopped down near where the gentle tide rolled in, not even flinching when the foaming water washed up over her legs, soaking her jeans.

“You don’t have to look for shells.” Dylan stood wide-legged and bent over as he dug shells out of the wet sand. “You both can keep me company while I look.”

Sailor crossed her arms tightly over her chest and turned her gaze toward the ocean, still sitting waist deep in the water.

I made my way over to Dylan and squatted down to help him look for good pieces he could work with. “Isn’t she cold?” I asked, nodding toward Sailor.

“She has unusually thick skin,” he answered, winking at me.

Dylan showed me what kinds of shells to look for and we worked in silence for a long time. Our hands became caked with thick, wet sand and my back ached from bending over so long. It was hard to focus sometimes, with the sound of the water filling my ears and the salt seeping deep into my lungs. Sometimes the world felt as if it lurched forward dizzyingly and I thirsted for a mouthful of cold, salty ocean water. The ocean seemed to almost hum a quiet song to me.

Dylan straightened up, arching his back in a stretch. “Hey, there’s your dad,” he said, pointing up the beach.

Lake walked toward us, dressed in his usual shorts and flip flops, despite the winter breeze. His shirt hung open, flapping behind him in the wind as he walked and the silver pendant hanging midway down his chest caught the sunlight, setting off a blinding glow for a moment.

“Thought I’d find you all here,” Lake said when he reached us. He carried his own plastic bucket in one hand. “Mind if I join you?”

“Of course not,” Dylan said, before I could open my mouth. His eyes lit up in Lake’s presence. “Look at these crab shells we found.”

The two became lost in their own world of seashells and crabs, examining each specimen to make sure it fit their criteria. I took a step back, but neither one seemed to notice. If I had decided to walk straight into the ocean at that moment, I was almost certain that Lake wouldn’t see a thing.

“Sad, isn’t it?” hissed a low voice in my ear. Sailor, dripping wet jeans plastered to her thighs, stood over my shoulder and grinned wickedly.

“What’s sad?” I snapped. “Besides you.”

“Isn’t it sad that your own father doesn’t care if you’re around?” She walked in a slow circle around me, her wet shoes squeaking on the sand. She looked like a cat closing in on prey that it had cornered. “How does it feel to know that your own parent doesn’t care about you at all?”

I clenched my teeth together and my hands gripped my camera as I stared back at her. Her Cheshire cat grin widened, her eyes half-closed in the afternoon sun. If she really were a cat, she would be purring contentedly right now, easing her victim into relaxing before she struck.

“Better watch out, Sailor,” I said. “Your ugly side is starting to show.”

“Oh, I’m all ugly sides,” Sailor told me. “You haven’t even begun to see how ugly I can get.” She stepped forward, her nose only inches from mine. I hated that she was taller and I had to look up slightly to meet her eyes. “I warned you before, stay away from Dylan.”

“Maybe you should tell him to stay away from me,” I said.

“You may think you can show up here and take whatever you want, but I’m not going to let that happen. Dylan has made a promise to me and I will see that he keeps it, whether or not you stand in my way.” Something flashed in her eyes and for a moment, I could believe she really was a sea witch as the wind lifted her hair into wild tentacles around her head.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself not to back down from her threatening glare. “I’m not trying to steal Dylan from you. He’s my friend. We’re allowed to be friends.”

Sailor jabbed one pointed finger into my shoulder. “You may have been something back where you came from, but here we’re an entirely different class of people. You have no idea what you’re messing with.”

My hands curled into fists instinctively and I sucked air in and out, trying to control my breathing. I had grown tired of being pushed around by this little princess.

“Jab your finger into me one more time and see if I don’t break it,” I told her.

Her lips curled into a snarl and she raised her hand, finger pointed, and aimed it at me. I braced my legs for the pounce, ready to spring at her as soon as she touched me.

But a hand stopped her halfway. Dylan looked down at her, anger etched across his face.

“I have told you before that your temper is going to get you into trouble,” he said to her in a low voice.

Sailor’s face turned red with fury waiting to be unleashed. “She’s pissing me off, hanging all over you and acting too stupid to do anything on her own.”

“I am
not
—”

Lake grabbed my arm to keep me from lunging at Sailor. “You need to learn to control your attitude as well,” he said.

A short laugh escaped my lips. “What would you know about my attitude? You’ve barely spent enough time with me to know even what color my eyes are.”

Lake released my arm and he stepped back slightly. He opened his mouth, but then closed it, not saying a word.

I fought back the churning in my stomach and looked away so I didn’t have to see the hurt in his eyes. I would
not
feel sorry for Lake.

“I’m taking Sailor home,” Dylan said, still holding her hand tight in his. “And we’re going to have a talk again about how keep yourself out of trouble. Isn’t that right, Sailor?”

“You made a promise to me,” she snapped at him. “Don’t forget that.”

“I was a kid when I made that promise,” he said. “It’s not fair to hold me to it now.”

“Because of
her
?” Sailor asked, glaring at me.

“Because I’ve grown up,” Dylan told her. “And it’s time you do the same.”

Her chin quivered slightly and she looked for a moment like she was going to cry. But then Sailor pushed her shoulders back and her chin up.

“I’ll be the meek little pushover if that’s what you want me to be,” she said to Dylan. “But I’m not forgetting what you promised.”

She spun around and marched across the beach, kicking up sand behind her.

Chapter Twelve

“I hate the library,” Sailor muttered as Dylan and I followed her through the heavy double doors.

“Big surprise,” I said.

Sailor paused, letting her gaze scan over the books and other students gathering at the tables. “It’s too quiet in here and it smells funny.”

“It’s fine,” Dylan said, steering her toward a table in the far back corner, away from everyone else. “Come on, we don’t have much time to get our work done and I don’t want to spend my lunch hour in here.”

We had been assigned to research the history behind some of the books our English class had read so far during the school year. I was at a disadvantage, since I hadn’t read all of the same books that they’d read in Swans Landing. I’d only managed to read a couple of the books that had been assigned at my old school during my mom’s illness, so I had a very limited list to choose from. I’d chosen
The Crucible
, which I had read simply because it was short, and so my research was on the Salem witch trials.

Sailor swept in ahead of me and threw herself across the chair next to Dylan at the table. She shot me a satisfied smirk, but I rolled my eyes as I sat down in the chair across from him.

The sound of Elizabeth and Jackie and their friends laughing behind us echoed through the otherwise quiet room, causing Ms. Perez, the librarian, to come over and shush them.

“Some people shouldn’t be allowed in the library.” Sailor shot a hard scowl over her shoulder toward them.

“I agree,” I said as I opened my notebook. “So could you please leave?”

Sailor snapped her own notebook open and then got up to stomp over to the computers.

“Nice,” Dylan said. “You actually ran Sailor off.”

“Not very far. But at least it’s an improvement.”

“Can’t you two try to get along? You might find that you actually have a lot in common.”

I snorted. “Like what?”

Dylan opened his copy of
East of Eden
, the book he had chosen. “Let’s just say that Sailor can kind of relate to where you’re coming from.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but he bent over the table, making notes in his scrawling handwriting. “Which means?” I prompted.

Dylan tapped his pen on the edge of his notebook as he bit his lip. Then he shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Sailor if you want to know more.”

I stood, letting out a short laugh. “I don’t want to know that badly.”

The library had two rows of computers, with the main circulation desk set in between them. Sailor had claimed a computer at one end of the left side row, while on the opposite side Elizabeth, Jackie, and several other kids from the class had taken over most of the computers. The right side row of computers buzzed with activity as they talked about their research or else tried to copy off of each other. Ms. Perez stayed busy keeping that side as quiet as possible.

No one looked toward Sailor. No one spoke to her. And no one sat in the row with her.

The only computer still available on the right side was on the end, only two seats down from Elizabeth. Neither option seemed very appealing, but at least on the left side I could sit all the way at the other end, as far from Sailor as possible. Which was exactly what I did.

I pulled up the library’s catalog and typed “Salem witch trials” into the search box.

“Ms. Perez?” Jackie asked in a loud voice. “Can you help me find this book? I don’t understand where it is.”

“Look at the Dewey decimal number,” Ms. Perez told her as she checked books back into the system. “Then match the number up with the signs on the end of the stacks.”

“But I don’t get it,” Jackie whined. “You’d better come show me.”

“Jackie’s not very good with numbers, Ms. Perez,” Elizabeth said, which made everyone on the other row laugh.

Jackie jabbed Elizabeth in the shoulder. “Shut up,” she said. “Ms. Perez,
please?
I seriously need some help finding this.”

Ms. Perez sighed, but she pushed back her chair and walked around the desk. “Come with me,” she said, waving to Jackie to follow.

Jackie turned around and grinned back at Elizabeth once Ms. Perez’s back was turned. Something was definitely up. I tried to keep my gaze focused on the screen in front of me while also watching Elizabeth and her friends out of the corner of my eye.

When Ms. Perez and Jackie had disappeared into the stacks, Elizabeth casually stood and sauntered around the row of computers as if she were just taking a stroll. But once she reached the other end of my row, she stopped right in front of Sailor.

“So, Sailor,” Elizabeth said in a voice loud enough for all of us at the computers to hear, “is it true?”

Sailor wrote in her notebook, her pen moving slowly and methodically, taking an extra long time before she set it down and then looked up at Elizabeth.

“Okay, I’ll play along,” she said in a bored voice. “Is what true?”

“Is it true that you’re dating a whale?” Elizabeth asked, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

I didn’t get the joke, but obviously everyone else did, judging from the way they fell over themselves laughing.

Sailor yawned and turned back to her computer, typing in a new search word for the online catalog. “Are you done?” she asked.

Elizabeth perched herself on the edge of Sailor’s table, letting one leg swing back and forth as she leaned down, her evil grin getting wider. “Do you cry whenever you see someone eating a fish sandwich?”

“I think I ate your cousin last week in my stew,” one of the boys said. He earned congratulatory punches on the shoulder for that.

Sailor looked at him coolly over the top of her monitor. “Good one,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “And I saw your mom at the zoo last year, inside the monkey cage.”

“At least I don’t smell like rotting fish,” the guy snapped back.

“Does it hurt when you get my daddy’s fishing hook stuck in your lip?” Elizabeth asked in an overly fake concerned voice.

Sailor bent her head back toward her notebook, writing her notes in tight, controlled lines while Elizabeth and her friends laughed. My fingers flexed over my keys. This was none of my business, I reminded myself.