From the Blue

by Mark Stephens

  “Defnitely.”

  “In fact, tomorrow is the big senior beach party. We’re not in high school anymore, but my little bro is. Maybe you’d like to stop by and check out the beach. I’m sure we’ll get a game going and Lord knows we could use a good pair of hands on our team.”

  “And the ladies.” Dennis chimed in.

  The young man who had been a fish out of water only a few hours ago thought about it for a moment. He would like to check out the locals. Plus, it’s the beach and the ocean, so he’d be near the water. People his own age to hang out with. Marcus and Brutus were great, but they were still adults. They were still the responsible ones. It’d be nice to be careless around kids his own age for a minute and if Arden objected, he’d pull the prince card out.

  “I’m in.” he finally replied.

  “Great. Let me give you directions. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “It’s Jaron, Jaron Seaborn.” He answered and listened as the guy started to ramble off instructions.

  Jaron said his goodbyes to his new friends, knowing that he needed to get back. He hurried past the administration building and returned to the rental car. He dipped inside the hot, steaming vehicle and downed two of the pills from the small vial in the seat next to him. When he replaced the bottle, he saw the blinking red light on the burner phone. He had a text.

  Come back now. Emergency.

  He felt a panicked worry spread through him. He gunned the car to life and tore out of the parking lot, even as his fingers were dialing.

  Chapter 3 – On Dry Land

  Dylan Roberts rolled over and slapped her hand on the snooze button to stop the annoying buzz of her alarm clock. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to shield them from the brightness of the morning sun coming in through the slats of her window blinds. When that didn’t work, she covered her head with the bedspread.

  Maybe if she could ignore the invasion of light into her room, she could go back to sleep. Just for another hour, was that too much to ask? It was the first official day of summer vacation and she had earned some sleeping-in time. Plus, if she could drift back into that dream with Ian Somerhalder, that would be fabulous.

  But it was also the day of the annual senior beach party. She couldn’t very well blow that off. The guys weren’t likely to wait for another hour for her either, which meant she’d miss her ride. And she had a lot to do before she met the girls at the diner.

  “Ugh.” She muttered to herself and flipped the covers from her head.

  She yawned mightily, feeling it come from deep down in her lungs, and stretched her arms out away from her. She tore the rose and white comforter off of the rest of her and sat up on the edge of her four poster bed. One last yawn and she stood in one swift motion, fighting off the urge to bury herself back under her blankets and sleep in.

  Barefoot and blurry-eyed, she plodded off into the adjoining bathroom, stopping for a second to blow kisses at her poster for One Direction. She slipped off her night shirt and turned on the shower. The hot water steamed up the mirror quickly, creating a white ethereal fog in the tiny space, and she stepped into the stall, closing the glass partition behind her. She raised her face into the stream of water and felt its rejuvenating effects immediately. Dylan let the hot water slough off the night grime and dream grogginess, sending it down the drain in a whirlpool.

  Out in her room, she heard the incessant sound of her alarm start up again and it brought her out of her little corner of heaven. She cursed at herself for forgetting to switch it off. Ignoring it as best she could, it wasn’t long until she heard her bedroom door creak open and muted footsteps walk into the room. Her aunt must’ve heard the alarm from downstairs because the next thing she noticed was the buzzing had stopped and her bedroom door had clicked shut again.

  Good Ole Aunt Paula.

  Fifteen minutes later, Dylan stood on the plush carpet of her bedroom, gazing at the overflowing, stuffed closet. A towel was tied over her chest and her wet, long hair was wrapped up over her head. The new bikini that she had bought last week lay on her just-made bed, but she still had to rummage for her day-wear and evening wear.

  After dismissing several choices, she finally picked out a sarong that matched the bikini pretty close. She picked out a t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts from her dresser and threw them on the bed next to the sarong as well as an over the shoulder blouse and a cut-off shirt. Dylan studied her choices for a moment before deciding. That would be suitable for the bonfire party.

  Returning to the bathroom, the fog from her shower had mostly evaporated from the mirror, leaving a faint residue of condensation. She unwrapped her hair, letting it fall past her shoulders, and took a good look at herself.

  Her brown hair was long enough that it was beginning to curl at the ends, even wet and weighted down. Dark brown eyes were separated by her smallish, pouty nose that barely supported the glasses she sometimes wore. High cheekbones gave her face a lift, but Dylan always thought they made her eyes look deeper than they were, almost haunted. Her lips were thin, but not too thin that she looked freakish. Still, she was extremely jealous of Angelina Jolie.

  She ran her fingers through her wet hair, combing out the tangles and watching the curls become even more pronounced.

  To dry or not to dry, that is the question of the day.

  Deciding the dispense with the chore of blow-drying her hair, Dylan started brushing on a light smattering of rouge on her cheeks, knowing the humidity of a June day on a Florida beach would erase most of her efforts. She skipped the eye liner and blush, but chose a peach colored lip liner to finish the job.

  Satisfied with the results, she stepped back out into her bedroom. Tying her hair back with a clip, she slipped on her bikini and sarong and admired the look on the full length mirror on her closet door.

  At 5’9, she was about average in height. Her figure had filled in nicely the last few years and she knew more than one boy at school who carried a crush on her. Being on the girls’ basketball and soccer teams had shed that last little bit of baby weight that she had always carried around. She wasn’t anorexic thin, and she didn’t want to be, but she was more than pleased with the reflection in the mirror.

  Not too shabby her inner critic spoke in her mind, which was pretty impressive. It was usually very critical and very vocal of her appearance, but it must have taken today off.

  Dylan grabbed her backpack out of the closet and stuffed two beach towels in it as well as her extra clothes. She dug out some sun block from her bathroom along with a few odds and ends and included them in one of the outside pockets. Her IPod and cell phone were next and then finally her worn copy of The Shining that she had borrowed from her aunt’s collection of books. She glanced around the room, trying to figure out if she was forgetting anything.

  Well, if she did, she did.

  She left her room and went down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Hello, sunshine.” Her Aunt Paula greeted her warmly from the counter barstool and the morning paper she was reading. If there was a poster child for good moods and cheery dispositions, her aunt would win by a landslide. “I turned off your alarm, in case you were wondering if we had ghosts or gremlins.”

  “Hey, mornin’. Yeah, I know, thanks. Thing was going off while I was in the shower.” she replied and threw her backpack on the floor near the unoccupied barstool. Her aunt was sipping at a steaming cup of green tea and turned back to reading the morning news. Dressed in her nurse’s smock, Dylan guessed that she must have an early shift at the hospital today.

  Taking a glass from the cupboard and filling it with orange juice from the fridge, Dylan settled into the seat opposite her aunt at the bar/island/counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

  “Beach party today?” Paula queried as she folded the paper and set it down on the counter in front of her. Dylan nodded at her as she took a big gulp of juice. Looking as stern as her Aunt Paula ever got, she asked, “Do I need to give you the speech
or have you got it memorized?”

  “No beer. No boys. No booze. Pretty much stay away from anything that starts with a B.” She laughed a little at their inside joke, joined by her aunt as soon as she swallowed another mouthful of her tea.

  Both of them knew ‘the talk’ was just pretense. Her aunt still remembered her own teenage years and knew it would do no good to outlaw anything that began with the letter B or C or any other letter of the alphabet. She didn’t want to be that kind of aunt and she trusted Dylan to make the right decisions on her own.

  “Well, maybe this one time, we can throw out the rules. Just once.” She added. “OK. Checklist? You have your cell on you?” Dylan nodded. “And this is the all night party, right?” Another nod. Most parents in town were pretty liberal about curfews during the party since they all had their own parties to remember fondly. “All right. Be careful. Call me if you need anything and be home first thing in the morning.”

  Dylan took her empty juice glass, rinsed it out in the sink and placed it in the dishwasher. She hefted the stuffed backpack up by the straps, threw it over her shoulder and bent down to give her aunt a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for letting me go.”

  Smiling at her, Aunt Paula held up two twenty dollar bills between her first two fingers like it was an afterthought. “For an emergency or whatever. Have fun.”

  She picked her newspaper back up after the bills disappeared and watched her niece leave from over the top of it.

  How fast they grow up.

  It seemed like only yesterday that her drug-addicted sister, Danielle, had dropped Dylan off and disappeared into the night under the pretense of getting her life together. Almost sixteen years had passed since that day and neither of them had heard as much as a peep from her.

  And Lord only knew where Dylan’s loser father, Marlon, had gotten to.

  Danielle hadn’t even known where he was in the weeks she had stayed here before taking off and Paula really didn’t want to exert the effort to find him. She supposed that someday Dylan would want to search for them and she would support that. But she refused to waste time on it now. Some men just weren’t worth it.

  Ah well, the past is the past for a reason. No sense dwelling on it. Hearing the screen door slam shut in its frame, Paula turned her gaze back to the article about urban sprawl in Central Florida and lost herself in the words, counting the time until she left for work.

  Dylan exited out the front door, stuffing the money into one of the pouches of her backpack and extricating her cell phone from the tangle of fabric. She strolled through the front yard and out to the sidewalk, adjusting the heavy weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She turned down the road and headed towards the outskirts of town and the diner where she was meeting her friends. Her fingers flew over the extended miniature keyboard of her smartphone as she texted everyone that she was on her way.

  It only took a second for her phone to buzz with a reply. Seeing it was Alex, her best friend, she flipped it open and read: Will be at corner in 10. Her fingers flew over the letters as she typed a response, punctuated by a smiley face. Meet u there.

  During their phone marathon the night before, which had mostly been a bitchfest concerning Derrick’s girlfriend, both girls had decided to meet up beforehand and walk out to the diner together. Girl power, solidarity and all. It would also give them time to dish on Carrie some more, who seemed to be Alex’s obsession of late.

  Dylan turned off her road and headed down the main drag of the little burg she called home, which conveniently intersected with Alex’s road. Three more blocks and she came to what everyone called Inlet Cove’s downtown.

  Inlet Cove itself was barely a blip on the atlas, a total population of maybe 2000, depending on who was pregnant and who had died. It was small enough that it and two nearby communities shared a high school and elementary school. It was a sleepy little town, barely able to support the three blocks of a downtown that it had. The main drag, aptly named Palm Drive, was lined with tall palm trees that had been sturdy enough to survive the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, and most of the local cars parked here in their slanted slots were faded by years in the harsh Florida sun.

  She passed the old Woolworth’s building that had been transformed into a local community center. Woolworth’s was way before her time, but everyone still called it that because the name was still faded into the facade. Its tall windows remained, once home to displays of the latest fashions and home furnishings. Now they only reflected a distorted image back at her, but she could still see the collection of videogames, the juice and pizza bars and pool tables.

  Near the double doors of the entrance, a swarm of middle school preteens had gathered. Dropped off by their working parents, they milled around aimlessly, waiting for the rec room to open at 10.

  As Dylan began to work her way through the mass of barely-teen boys, she realized the attention that she was drawing to herself. Drowning in testosterone, they all glared at and ogled her bikini clad body and long, bare legs as she passed. She thought about scolding them, putting a little fear of women into them, but hell’s bells, she figured it wouldn’t do any good.

  Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered. Boys will be boys. That was one of life’s few genuine truths that one could take to the bank.

  She smiled to herself and rolled her eyes after she emerged from the sea of hormones. She glanced across the street and saw the large marqueesthat announced Goldman’s Pharmacy, Novelty Novels and a sale on pool supplies at the hardware store. Catching his eye, she waved at old Mr. Sunderson as he swept the sidewalk in front of his antiques store, who returned it jauntily with one of his own. She stepped past the open door of Patty’s Pets and wrinkled her nose at the aroma of dogs, cats, birds and their assorted odors of poop. She quickened her steps until she got by the cloud of animal stench.

  Her phone vibrated again in her palm and she squinted at the small screen, obscured by the bright glare of the sun. Jaime had already gotten to the diner’s parking lot, most likely dropped off by her mother, and was waiting on them. Her fingers typed a brief response and Dylan found herself at the corner of Palms Court, Alex’s street.

  She stopped under the shade of the canopy that shielded the consignment store on the corner. Peeking around the side of the building, she could see Alex a block away, bopping along to whatever her ear buds were blasting in her ears, most likely the latest Katy Perry album. Always self-conscious about her ample curves, she was wearing a loose, buttoned shirt and a sarong around her waist that flapped wildly in the morning breeze. Her own back pack was slung over her shoulder and a wide brimmed hat covered her head.

  Alexandra Smeits was a relative newcomer to this little town, which was populated by entire families and generations who had never left. Her father was a security consultant that worked for one of NASA’s outside contractors, one of the few that didn’t get downsized from the end of the shuttle program. He had worked in the civilian corps at Johnson Space Center in Texas before accepting a promotion at Cape Canaveral almost four years ago. Her entire family still spoke with an occasional southern drawl, although Alex fought hard to disguise it.

  “Hola, girlfriend.” Alex ran the remaining half block, flip flops clattering loudly. The two met and hugged briefly. “Damn you look good today. Love that sarong.”

  “Gee, girl, it’s just something I threw on at the last minute. My stylist has the day off.” She replied in her best blond girl, Valley accent and waved her hand dismissively through the air.

  Both girls laughed at their mockery as they crossed Palms Court arm in arm and continued down the road.

  “Have you heard from the others?” Dylan asked as they walked along.

  “Jaime’s already there and waiting. Jordan texted me that he and Johnny were waiting on Derrick and Carrie to pick them up.” Alex’s tone was a bit frosty when she mentioned Carrie’s name. She had tried to disguise the obvious distaste and failed miserably.

  “Still not liking Carrie?” Dylan asked h
er.

  Carrie was a recent addition to their little eclectic group. She had only joined in because she had started dating Derrick right before Christmas break. Being a cheerleader and finally snagging her claws in the quarterback made her popular, but by no means did that make her well-liked. By osmosis, she had been included and she had yet to make a favorable impression on anyone. Even Dylan, who prided herself on finding something in everyone to like, was hard pressed to find common ground with her.

  “Dylan, you know she’s a skinny, little bitch. She’s snooty and full of herself. And, honestly, sometimes I want to force feed her a damn donut.”

  Alex and Carrie were probably the two cogs in the wheel of their little group that fit the worst. They were polar opposites, yet both were outspoken and opinionated. The only reason that the pair hadn’t come to blows was that Alex had a filter between her brain and her mouth. Well, at least she usually had a filter between them. Carrie, on the other hand, never gave a thought to her thoughts before sharing them and figured that everyone was interested in hearing what she had to say.

  “Alex, calm down. She’s dating Derrick and we like him, remember?”

  Dylan didn’t much like Carrie’s little rants of superiority and pretentiousness, but she had pretty much learned to ignore them. Under normal circumstances, she might have convinced Alex to ignore her also, but they had both gotten into a pretty big fight at school two weeks ago right before final exams. Neither girl had spoken to the other since. The tension was palpable and there didn’t seem to be any apologies forthcoming. They barely tolerated each other’s presence now, but Alex felt no compunction to hiding how she really felt when no one else was around.

  “Ugh.” Alex replied in resignation. “I wish Derrick would stop dating her. What the hell does he even see in her?”

  “Um, because she puts out. Read the bathroom walls or ask the football team. And she does that thing that girls hate to do, but boys love to have done. A lot, from what I hear.”