by Kristy Tate
The alley was dark and deserted.
Without turning on the lights, Brock went to the showroom. The display windows held vases of flowers. In the upcoming weeks, Cordelia would change out the flowers for autumn leaves, hay bundles, and sunflowers. The sidewalk looked quiet and cross-country team free. A few kids carrying ice cream cones from North Pole Nosh’s walked past. A couple leading a poodle headed for the grocery store.
Feeling ill, Brock gathered up his books, locked the shop, and headed home.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, when Gabby pulled her Mini Cooper in front of Grace’s grandparents’ house, Grace grabbed her towel and beach bag, slipped her feet into flip-flops, and headed out the door.
Gabby met her on the walkway. “Not so fast,” she said, putting her hand on Grace’s shoulder to stop her. “We gotta do your make-up.”
“Make-up? We’re going to the beach!”
“I knew you’d say that. That’s why I brought my big guns.” She showed Grace her makeup case. “It’s all waterproof.” Wrapping her arm through Grace’s, she led her to the front door.
“I thought you said you weren’t loaded,” Gabby said as they stepped inside.
Grace dropped her voice to a whisper. “My family is…not as rich as my grandfather. And my parents are super proud about accepting help.”
Gabby bit her lip and gazed around at the spacious room, soaring ceilings, two-story windows, and threadbare 1960’s furniture. “Doesn’t really add up. If your parents won’t take help, why are you living here?”
“I think if you knew my grandfather, you’d understand. Besides, technically, we’re helping my grandparents. Grandma can’t do the cleaning and cooking, and Grandpa is too cheap to hire someone and too chauvinist to do it himself. They can’t drive anymore. They really shouldn’t be living alone. So…”
“Here you are!” Gabby said.
Grace hung her head.
Gabby bumped her with her shoulder. “Don’t be so down. You’re here. We’re friends. Brock’s here.”
“I told you, Brock hates me.”
“Who’s Brock?” Heather appeared at the top of the stairs. She carried a basket of laundry in her arms.
Grace introduced her to Gabby. The laundry pricked Grace’s guilt. “You should come with us to the beach,” she told Heather.
“No thanks. Besides, I can’t. Remember? You’re wearing my swimsuit.”
“I’ll change.”
Heather shook her head and headed for the laundry room. “I gotta stay here and fix the grandunit’s lunch.”
“Next time,” Grace told Heather’s retreating back. “It’s so not fair,” she told Gabby, leading her into the downstairs powder room. “My grandpa treats us like we’re slaves.”
“But you do get to live in this mansion.” Gabby set down the makeup case and pulled out a tube of foundation.
“This mansion, as you call it, was built by my great-grandfather and is falling down around our ears. The plumbing is ancient and it moans so if you have to pee in the middle of the night, you can’t flush because it wakes everyone up. The kitchen was last remodeled in the 1960’s and the bathrooms are just as old.”
“I bet there’s some cool stuff here. You could probably sell some of it on eBay.” Gabby brushed toner onto Grace’s cheeks, nose, forehead and chin.
“My grandparents won’t sell anything.”
Grace stared at her own reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look as made up as she had yesterday, but she still looked really, really good.
“Let me see the swimsuit,” Gabby said.
“No! You’ll see it soon enough.”
“Does it show lots of skin?”
“No one wants to see my skin. It’s white. I’m from Oregon. Not that I’d be a different color if I lived here.”
“You do live here,” Gabby said.
“Temporarily.”
#
On the way to the beach, Alicia prattled on about cheer practice while Brock tried to remember why, exactly, they had started going out. They had met two years before when he’d just moved from Charleston. She was tall, beautiful, and witty. But now the funny things she said were usually about someone else, making him more uncomfortable than amused.
“Kayla wears pee-proof panties,” Alicia said.
That caught his attention. “How can you tell?”
She waved her hand in the air as if she was clearing out cobwebs. “You can totally tell!”
“You were checking out her panties?” He didn’t point out to her that it seemed like a guy thing to do. And pervy.
Alicia laughed. “No, silly. They were just sitting on the locker room bench.”
“You didn’t touch them, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Maybe she has a medical thing,” Brock said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.
Medical things reminded him of the whispering he’d heard the night before. According to the internet, hearing voices was a symptom of schizophrenia, a serious disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels and acts. A schizophrenic may have difficulty distinguishing what is real from what is imaginary. Which, when you thought about it, did crazy things to your head.
Who could say what was real and what wasn’t? Maybe this whole world, as he knew it, was all a fantasy. He thought he was sitting in his car, on the way to the beach, but maybe it was all a dream. Maybe the dreams he had at night were reality. Which would be insane, because last night he’d dreamed he was sharing his bed with a mountain lion. He wasn’t afraid of the mountain lion, but it was big and it wanted to cuddle. He could tell that it loved him, but it was making it hard to sleep. It generated a lot of heat, and—
“You okay?” Alicia asked. “You seem quiet.”
Brock rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
She slid another glance at him from under her thick lashes and pursed her lips as he pulled onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
#
“It’s the last day before school starts so everyone is going to be here,” Gabby said as she pulled into the Strand Beach parking lot. She had to circle the lot a few times before she spotted a middle-aged guy loading his surfboard into the back of his Toyota Tundra. Gabby waited behind him, blinker flashing, watching him unzip his wetsuit.
Grace wondered what the man did for a living that allowed him to surf in the middle of the day. She glanced at the mansions clinging to the bluff, wondering if everyone here was so rich they didn’t have to work.
“Work is an eternal principle,” her grandfather liked to say, meaning that everyone should work until they die, and maybe even after that. But lately, Grandpa worked really hard on crossword puzzles and not much else.
After the middle-aged man shimmied out of his suit and shook his wet hair like a dog, he got into his truck and pulled away. Gabby took the spot, turned off her car, and bared her teeth at Grace. “Lipstick on my teeth?”
“Huh, no. You’re good.”
“So are you.” She opened the door. “Let’s go.”
At the sand’s edge, Grace hung back. In Oregon, pale skin wasn’t in vogue, but it also wasn’t uncommon. Here, she looked like a florescent light bulb compared to Gabby’s friends.
“That’s Stacy and Kiley,” Gabby whispered, nodding at a guy in surfer shorts and a girl in a string bikini. “They’ve been together forever.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Well, it’s been like five months, but in high school time…” She dipped her head toward a couple playing volleyball. “That’s Rohan and Gillian. They just hooked up at Justin’s party last weekend. They go to different schools, so people are taking bets on whether or not it lasts.”
Everyone was so pretty—even the guys. She was glad she’d borrowed Heather’s swimsuit.
“Hey, everyone,” Gabby called out as they approached a cluster of kids on blankets and chairs near the water’s edge. “This is Grace. She’s a new junior at St. Mags
.”
Grace smiled through the introductions, trying to remember what name went with what person, while she searched for one face in particular.
Not that she wanted to see him. She just wanted to apologize. That was the right thing to do.
“Where’s Brock?” Gabby asked a girl in a red and white polka-dot bikini.
The girl tossed her brown ponytail over her shoulder. Her green eyes lit up. “Why?”
Gabby lifted a shoulder. “No particular reason.”
“I owe him an apology,” Grace told the girl.
She studied Grace through slit eyes. “Interesting. You know he’s with Alicia, right?”
“No, I didn’t know… I really don’t know him at all,” Grace said, her thoughts clicking over who this Alicia might be and wondering if she was the Barbie she’d seen him with in the BMW.
“Or me. Until now.” The brunette gave Grace a wide smile. “I’m Amy. So, what’d you do to him?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
Amy squealed. “I love it when people—other than me, of course—do embarrassing stuff.” She leaned forward, her eyes wide. “You don’t have to tell me, but I have to warn you, if you don’t, my imagination will come up with mega-embarrassments. Only don’t tell me if this involves bodily fluids. Those aren’t funny.”
“No fluids.”
“Then you gotta tell me!”
“I thought he had bullied my little brother, so I kicked his car.”
Amy leaned back. “Wow. Now I know not to mess with your little brother.” Amy took a long swallow from her Coke. She pointed at a house on the bluff. “He’s probably up there.”
“You mean he lives here?”
Amy bumped Grace with her Coke can. “No, silly. He lives in Bear Ranch, but Cordelia has a cottage down here. It’s the one with all the red geraniums.”
Of course it was the cutest thing on the bluff.
“Hey, you live in Bear Ranch,” Gabby said.
“My grandparents do…”
“But you’re there now, too,” Gabby said. “Maybe you’re neighbors!”
Grace felt hemmed in and searched for a way to steer the subject away from Brock. “Do you want to swim?”
Gabby tugged off her beach cover in response and Amy stepped out of her cutoffs. Seconds later, they ran for the water. Some guys, whose names Grace couldn’t remember, followed.
Gabby looked over her shoulder at them and squealed.
Amy did the same and laughed as a guy grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air. She let out a startled shriek and kicked her legs in protest. The guy threw her so that she spun to face him. Water rolled off his broad shoulders. He shook his head and sprayed her with his dripping hair then he pulled her tightly against his wet chest.
“We know him, right?” Grace asked Gabby, hoping that catching and throwing girls wasn’t standard Southern California practice.
“That’s Chase. He’s a moron,” Gabby huffed out. “The guy with him is Oliver, Amy’s twin.”
Oliver looked a lot like Amy, but bigger, broader, and his eyes were more hazel than green.
“Who you calling a moron?” Chase asked as he caught up with them.
A small dog with wiry gray fur barked in protest. Frisking around Oliver’s feet, he nipped at his ankles and yapped.
“What should she call you?” Gabby asked without stopping.
“Wrong question,” Chased said. “You should be asking, where are you going and what are you going to do with me?” He picked her up and carried her into the tide.
Gabby put her arms around Chase’s neck. “I’m not afraid of the water,” she told him, “or you.” But Grace noticed that Gabby shivered as the tide splashed her legs.
His smile broadened. “I can be dangerous.”
Grace felt awkward watching Gabby and Chase, and Amy and Oliver, so she dove into the water. The cold enveloped her, taking her breath. She pushed through a wave, and cut through the water with clean, strong strokes.
“Hey! Wait for us!” Amy called out.
Grace treaded water, looked back at the beach, and caught sight of Brock. He was with the Barbie, a leggy girl with long straight blond hair. He stood on a bluff, blond, blue-eyed, tanned, and toned. He carried a surfboard under one arm. Their gazes met. Grace dove back into the churning surf.
A hand snagged her ankle. She came up sputtering. Chase grabbed her around the waist and tossed her into the air. Seconds later, she hit the water. Holding her breath as long as she could, she sank to the ocean floor. Beneath the waves, she headed for a hairy pair of legs and tackled the back of a pair of knees.
Chase collapsed and she cut away from him. He surfaced minutes later, far enough away so that her splash couldn’t reach his face. He looked surprised and then grinned. He lowered his face into the surf and dashed toward her. She easily out-swam him to the shore and found a spot on the sand. What was left of the sun dried the water off her skin. The sand felt warm and gritty, nothing like Oregon’s soggy beaches. She wrung out her hair and lifted her face to the sky.
Chase stretched out beside her and rested his head on his crossed arms. He had his eyes closed, his face relaxed. Grace wondered if he looked like Johnny Depp had when he was sixteen. The water and sand glistened on his body and she wanted to know everything about him. “Tell me who you are,” she said, looking into his face.
Chase braced himself on his elbow and traced his finger along her collarbone, making her shiver under his warm touch. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Grace James.”
“Where are you from, Grace James, and how do you know Gabby?”
Grace dug her toes into the warm sand. “No. I want to know who you are and how you know Gabby.”
Chase closed his eyes again and leaned back. “Gabby and I were a thing a while ago.”
“You mean like when you were twelve?”
He gazed at Grace with intense brown eyes. “Fourteen. And don’t laugh, Romeo and Juliet were only fourteen, and they had the greatest love ever.”
“Maybe, but it didn’t end very well.”
He lay back down. “Yeah, it didn’t.” His voice was hard and sad, making her wonder if he was talking about Romeo and Juliet or him and Gabby.
The sun sank a little lower into the ocean and a light breeze kicked up, tossing small flurries of sand. “Do you go to Mission High?” she asked, feeling slightly chilled.
“St. Mags,” he said without opening his eyes.
“Me, too.”
“I know. Gabby told Amy about you.”
“And Amy told you.”
He sat up a smidge higher.
Grace followed his gaze out to the water where Gabby, Amy and Oliver were splashing in the waves. “Does she go to St. Mags, too?”
“Yeah.”
Grace felt someone watching, and she turned to see Brock. He stood by the bonfire, and looked away when their eyes met.
She smiled a shade brighter at Chase. “Maybe you can sit with me at lunch so you won’t have to sit alone.”
He flashed a grin. “You’d do that for me?”
“I will,” she pledged.
He looked over his shoulder at Brock. “How do you know Brockbank?”
“What makes you think we know each other?”
He shrugged. “I’m pretty good at reading people.”
“I…” She closed her mouth and pressed her lips together. “It’s embarrassing.” She glanced over at Brock. He had his back to her. “I’m pretty sure he hates me.”
“Is that why he keeps staring at you?”
Grace bumped him with her shoulder. “Maybe he’s staring at you.”
Chase lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think?”
Gabby, Oliver, and Amy splashed toward the shore.
“Hey, you guys want to swim out to the island?” Amy asked.
Chase looked at Grace with a question in his eyes.
“Sure,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. �
�I’m not sure the Oregon girl is up for it.”
“Oh, I’m up,” she said, bouncing to her feet.
“You sure?” Oliver asked. “It’s a serious swim.”
“And I’m a serious swimmer,” she said.
“Let’s race,” Chase said.
“Let’s not,” Amy said. Turning to Grace, she added, “Chase is a CIF champion in breast stroke.”
“CIF—is that like the CIA in swimming?” she asked.
Chase puffed out his chest. “The California Interscholastic Federation, only the governing body of California schools’ athletics.”
Grace interrupted with a laugh and waded deeper into the surf. “Oh, is that all.”
“Is that all?” Chase asked.
Grace didn’t answer, but ran and plunged into the tide.
Behind her, Chase yelled, “Hey!”
“Cheater!” Oliver called after her.
Grace swam as hard and fast as she could. The blue-gray water swirled around her, and she pushed through the bubbles. She was dimly aware of the others trailing behind. She thought Chase passed her, but she wasn’t sure. She swam until her arms and legs tingled with fatigue. Lifting her head from the water, she looked around. The black rock the others had called an island had disappeared. She appeared to be alone. Twirling around, she looked for the beach.
She couldn’t have gone that far. Right? But when she saw only a long stretch of the ocean and the blue sky, her belly filled with nerves. She refused to panic. Maybe if she just drifted, she would wash up on shore. Or be carried out to sea.
Grace took one deep breath and then another. She looked up at the sun, wishing it could tell her something. She thought of the North Star and how mariners had used its position for guidance. No stars. She’d have to wait for nightfall, and that seemed like a really bad plan, because she didn’t even know how to find the North Star, let alone how to use it as a compass.
Grace opened her mouth to call out, but a voice stopped her.
Someone was singing.
Grace spun in the water, churning her arms and legs like an eggbeater. She didn’t see anyone. A wave washed over and buried her in the swelling tide.