Sea Change

by Aimee Friedman

  “Right,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt and wondering if Mom did, in fact, expect me home soon for dinner. Knowing my perfectionist mother, though, she was probably still giving directions to the repairmen. Besides, I’d return to The Mariner before dark.

  Leo looked back up at me, and I realized, with a jolt, that I’d been spaced out staring at him, at the dark blond hair that the wind was sweeping across his forehead

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, reaching into my jeans pocket. “How much is the walk?” Where had my head gone?

  “No, no,” Leo said, holding up his hands and laughing. “This one’s on the house.”

  “Okay…thanks,” I said slowly. Something—a suspicion—flickered inside me, but I dismissed it as utter silliness.

  “So let’s get going,” Leo said, kicking off his flip-flops. He lifted them up in one hand, the muscles in his arm moving fluidly, like water. “You should take off your sneakers,” he advised. “We’re going to be walking right where the tide hits the shore.”

  “Oh, I—I don’t mind,” I stammered. I had no desire to show Leo my toes. Most of the time, people didn’t even notice, but in my mind, the freakishness was magnified. Last summer, when Wade and I had gone to see Sideshows by the Seashore at Coney Island, I’d felt as if the bearded ladies and sword swallowers were long-lost siblings.

  “You will,” Leo promised with a crooked smile, and his eyes—which turned an even more iridescent green in the sun—searched mine for a second. “You can’t fight the ocean.” Then he shrugged and began walking again, and I followed, relieved.

  But as soon as we passed the sunbathers and hit the damp hillock of sand that sloped down to the sea, I realized Leo was right. The unrelenting tide retreated and advanced with ferocity, and my beloved Converse were quickly soaked. Leo strode along easily as the water enveloped his long, browned feet.

  “All right, all right, I admit defeat,” I sighed, stopping in my tracks. How could I consider myself a true explorer if I couldn’t even, well, get my feet wet? And something about Leo’s relaxed vibe told me that he probably wouldn’t care that my toes were weird. Maybe it was time to quit being such a baby about my imperfection.

  I eased off one sneaker with the toe of one foot, but then I staggered, losing my balance. Leo was immediately by my side, extending his hand for me to grab.

  I took it.

  His fingers closed around mine, warm but rough and slightly callused. I looked down at my small, smooth, pale hand in his much larger one, and I felt my head spin. I was suddenly glad that I’d gotten a manicure.

  “Better, right?” Leo asked as I kicked off my other sneaker. The comfortably warm water rushed up to swirl around my ankles. To my horror, I caught Leo looking directly at my bare feet, and my chest seized up.

  “Yes,” I mumbled, withdrawing my hand and scooping up my Converse. My toes wiggled in the water of their own volition, as if astonished to finally be free.

  “Then let’s dive in,” Leo said with a grin.

  “You mean, swim?” I asked, confused. Our brief bout of hand-holding, along with my toe-baring, had disoriented me.

  “No, I mean, let’s start the tour,” Leo laughed as a fresh wave slammed into the shore, depositing coils of seaweed around our feet. “And here we go,” he added, crouching down and picking up a flat circle dotted with small slits. “Ever seen a live sand dollar before, Ms. Aspiring Marine Biologist?”

  “What makes you think that’s what I want to be?” I challenged. The fact was, I wasn’t sure which branch of science I wanted to follow in life—often, the laws of physics and the structures of chemistry spoke to me more than the rawness of biology.

  “Well, your eyes were shining at the center today,” Leo replied matter-of-factly as he rose. I could feel him observing the side of my face. “You seemed…passionate.”

  The seasick feeling returned, and I hoped Leo wouldn’t notice how my fingers trembled as I carefully touched the sand dollar. I was never completely relaxed around boys, but at least when talking to T.J. yesterday I’d been somewhat composed. Why was Leo’s presence making me feel so unmoored?

  “No, I haven’t ever seen one up close, and it’s very cool,” I responded at last, pretending to be fully absorbed in the sand dollar.

  “I’ll show you something even cooler,” Leo said, clearly enjoying himself; his eyes were dancing as he set the sand dollar back down where he had found it. “See those tiny holes in the sand?” He pointed, and I looked down to see the mysterious pinpricks. “Ghost shrimp,” he explained. “Funny little guys. They burrow into the sand so they can eat and hide out.”

  “That doesn’t sound like typical shrimp behavior,” I said, smiling and getting back into the swing of things. Leo’s enthusiasm, his passion, for the ocean world was contagious. And incredibly attractive.

  My heart thumped.

  “We just call them shrimp,” Leo said, drawing a circle around the hole with his toe. “They’re really relatives of lobsters. Surprising, huh? It’s like, did you know that Spanish moss isn’t really moss?”

  “But—yes, it is,” I protested, thinking of the moss-heavy trees on the island.

  “It’s related to pineapple,” Leo told me, widening his stunning eyes. “I swear. You can look it up. Isn’t that wild? Names can be so misleading.”

  As I gazed back at Leo, I understood that he, this strange boy from an island in the middle of nowhere, loved science for the exact same reasons I did. Now that was wild. I felt like we were two explorers, partners, out there on the empty beach, with everything open for discovery.

  “What’s in a name?” I said with a small laugh, and then, feeling brave, nudged Leo in the ribs with my elbow. “See, I know some Shakespeare.”

  “Nice,” Leo said, nudging me back. “I like Romeo and Juliet. Forbidden love. Tragic ending. All the good stuff.”

  “I’m with you there,” I said as we continued walking, wishing I hadn’t blushed at his use of the word love. “Happy endings never feel real to me.” I kept my head down; now that Leo had pointed out the ghost shrimp’s holes to me, I couldn’t stop seeing them in the sand.

  “Well, it all depends,” Leo replied, crouching low again, “on what one considers a happy ending. Aha,” he said, lifting from the sand a small red bulb attached to a purplish stem. “For you, ma’am. A sea pansy. I know it’s not a dozen roses, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.”

  What did that mean? The blush that spread across my face now put my earlier flushing to shame. Was Leo implying that we were on a date? Had I dodged a date with T.J. only to wind up on another one? And since when was I the kind of girl who had these kinds of problems?

  He’s kidding, I decided, accepting the sea pansy and watching its round, brainlike bulb wobble in the wind. “Thank you, kind sir,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  “You’re welcome,” Leo replied, standing up. He came closer to me, closer than he had been in the center when he’d told me about Maurice. He was beautiful, I realized, studying the planes of his face—the straight line of his nose, the fullness of his mouth. Over his head, the sky was transforming from pale gold to pale red, and the soft texture of the air made me feel almost beautiful, too.

  Something overcame me then—something stronger than sense or reason—and I felt my hand reach out. I wanted to touch Leo’s cheek, to feel its rough smoothness. Leo inclined his head toward me, and I was holding my breath, and then an enormous, swelling wave crested onto the shore.

  The force of the current was so great that it lifted my feet and sent me tumbling backward. I landed hard, on my butt, on the sand. I managed to hold on to my Converse, but the sea pansy was ripped from my hand.

  “Oh, no, are you okay?” Leo asked. Gripped with shame, I looked up to see his eyes sparkling and his mouth twitching. He wanted to laugh.

  “It’s not funny!” I cried, scraping bits of gravel off my palms as I scooted backward onto drier sand. The seat of my jeans was sopping wet. I fe
lt jittery and shaky, wondering what would have happened between us had nature not intervened. “And I lost the sea pansy,” I added mournfully.

  Leo sat down beside me, putting his flip-flops in the sand. “We’ll find you another one,” he said reassuringly, a laugh still in his voice. “Don’t get angry with the current,” he added, watching me. “Just go with it. There’s this quotation I always think about: ‘Life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea.’ Isn’t that true?”

  “Who said that?” I asked, still feeling petulant about my spill. “Shakespeare?”

  “No,” Leo said, and I could see him smiling in my peripheral vision. “It’s from a movie I saw once.”

  The sea was waxing and waning at our feet, and the sun was beginning its descent into the horizon. Seagulls cried out as they flew by, and I felt the warmth of Leo’s arm near mine. If a moment in my life had ever felt like a movie, this was it. I turned my head to look at Leo, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. He was looking back at me, his expression now serious.

  “Miranda,” he said. Never before had my misbegotten name sounded so lovely, never had its syllables been pronounced with such care. “I’m really glad you came to Selkie this summer.”

  “I think I am, too,” I said, or started to say, because suddenly Leo was leaning toward me, and I couldn’t differentiate between the scent of the sand and his skin.

  Just go with it, I thought.

  And let him kiss me.

  The kiss started slow, his salt-licked lips lightly brushing mine, his sweet, clean breath tickling my own. Every inch of me was poised, waiting, tingling. I didn’t think. I didn’t question. As Leo deepened the kiss, I closed my eyes. I felt his sandy hand caress my cheek, his fingers tracing, exploring, and I reciprocated eagerly, touching his face.

  Leo kissed languidly, a kiss like he had all the time in the world, a kiss as hot and slow as the summer itself. So different from Greg’s kisses, which seemed hurried and clumsy by comparison. I felt Leo’s warm tongue in my mouth, and I understood why people sometimes went crazy, risked everything for a kiss.

  We ended the kiss at the same instant, drawing back and opening our eyes. My head was swimming and I couldn’t stop smiling. Had that really just happened? Had it really been me?

  “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I saw you yesterday afternoon,” Leo remarked, smiling, too. “Right on this beach.”

  I glanced around at the quiet sand and the empty dunes, on which shadows had started to form. Abruptly, I was aware of the hour. My old, reliable common sense returned, and I got to my feet. My lips still felt tender from Leo’s kiss, and I was grateful that my knees were stable enough to hold me up.

  “I don’t have my cell phone,” I told Leo, shaking my head at my forgetfulness, my lapse in logic. I attempted to brush off the damp sand that clung to my backside, growing flustered. “My mom will worry if I’m out after dark without calling. We’re from New York, you see, and she—she worries.”

  Even if I’d had my phone, though, what would I have said to Mom? Sorry, but remember that boy you saw me talking to yesterday? Yeah, we’ve been making out on the beach. No worries.

  Never.

  “Is that where you’re from?” Leo asked, jumping to his feet so quickly I could barely blink. He reached for my arm, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Tell me about it. Tell me about you.”

  “I can’t now,” I said, backing up a few paces even as my heart strained for me to stay put. “My mom—”

  “Okay, okay,” Leo laughed, holding up his hands. “I get it. You’re a good girl.”

  A taunting tone had crept into his deep voice, and his mouth curved up in an enigmatic smile. I felt a flash of ire at being cast in such a narrow role—even if it was an accurate one.

  “Maybe I am,” I replied, cramming my feet back into my wet Converse and leaning over to tie the laces tight. “Is that so wrong?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I wish I could be a good boy more often. Can I at least walk you home?”

  “How good boy of you,” I shot back, but I could feel my annoyance dissolving as I glanced up into his green eyes. “But no, thanks,” I added, softening. “I know my way.”

  I hesitated, wanting him to ask me to stay, wanting him to kiss me again, and at the same time overwhelmed, unsure of how to proceed. Wasn’t this when most people exchanged phone numbers or e-mail addresses?

  “Listen, I’m—when—” The words should we meet up sometime? seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth like taffy.

  “Come find me,” Leo put in, his gaze full of understanding. “Whenever you want. I’ll be here.”

  I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking. So I lifted my hand in a half wave, turned, and hurried along the heavy sand, my ponytail swinging from side to side. When I reached the boardwalk, I paused outside the brightly lit, noisy Crabby Hook and glanced over my shoulder at the dark beach.

  I couldn’t spot Leo anywhere on the sand. There was only the ocean storming the shore and leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake. If I squinted, though, I could make out a pale shape bobbing on the whitecapped waves. It was moving too quickly to be a person, so maybe it was a dolphin, or a dinghy, or a harlequin duck. Maybe it was a ghost shrimp. A sand dollar.

  Or maybe it was the sea pansy Leo had given me, carried away by the current like a memory I longed to grab on to and hold for as long as possible.

  Seven

  MISTAKES

  Surreal.

  That was the only way to describe the experience of returning to Siren Beach in broad daylight.

  It was Sunday, July first, two days after my beach walk with Leo. I was lying on a towel, a few feet from where he and I had shared our knee-weakening kiss. Every time I thought of that kiss—approximately every five seconds—my whole body flushed. Beside me, CeeCee, Jacqueline, and Virginia were stretched out silently in bikinis, their faces turned worshipfully toward the sun. Behind us, Mom, Delilah, and Virginia’s mother, Felice, lounged on beach chairs, chatting. So there was absolutely no one with whom I could discuss my tumbling emotions.

  Not that I was really in the mood to talk. In my black swimsuit, Converse, and oversized sunglasses, I felt somehow disguised. Incognito. I’d put in my iPod earbuds but left the music off, an old trick that allowed me to listen in on conversations while being left alone. I loved observing.

  “The repairmen were a disaster,” I heard Mom moan, and Delilah clucked her tongue. I allowed myself a glance back; Mom’s white caftan and matching head scarf fluttered in the wind and made her look almost identical to Delilah. “They left plaster all over the floor,” Mom went on, “and the faucets spit out brown water.”

  Fortunately, Mom had been so preoccupied with the repairmen’s shoddy work that she hadn’t batted an eye when I’d walked into The Mariner on Friday evening late, wet, and covered in sand. And the day before, while I’d roamed uselessly around the house in a daze of disbelief and joy, Mom had been busy making phone calls—to the real estate lawyer, to Aunt Coral, and then to Delilah, who’d been the only person able to calm her down. At night, Mom had made one last, whispered call on the back porch, closing the French doors behind her. But I hadn’t asked her about it—I’d been too busy staring out the kitchen window and wondering if I’d really see Leo again.

  Which was why, on the beach now, every tanned, blond boy who passed my towel made my heart skip and my head turn. One particularly pathetic false alarm had been Virginia’s younger brother, who’d stopped by to snag one of the peach smoothies Virginia’s housekeeper had packed in a cooler.

  Come find me, Leo had said, after all. But so far I hadn’t.

  “Poor Amelia,” sighed Felice, whose face was frozen in eternal youth by the magic of Botox. “It truly is hard to find good help lately.”

  I was so shocked that she had actually—without irony—uttered those words, that I let out a small sputtering laugh. I looked at Mom, waiting f
or her to laugh as well, but to my surprise, she simply took a sip of her smoothie.

  Sighing, I rested my head back on the towel and looked up at the cloud-speckled sky. A Frisbee whizzed by overhead. I heard Felice announce to Mom and Delilah that she was going for a quick dip, and I watched from behind my sunglasses as she flip-flopped past my towel toward the ocean, her straw hat bobbing.

  It was indefinable, but ever since the Heirs party, Mom had seemed different. She’d stopped making snarky remarks about Delilah, and this morning, she’d happily forgone sorting through Isadora’s things and accepted Delilah’s invitation to go sunbathing with “the ladies.”

  Suddenly, CeeCee, Jacqueline, and Virginia squealed in unison. I’d been so focused on Mom that I hadn’t realized the girls were speaking.

  “You love him,” Virginia pronounced, and for one second, I wondered if she was addressing me. Could she have known about Leo?

  I turned my head toward the girls, who were now propped up on their elbows, and Jacqueline was rolling her eyes and blushing. Virginia must have been referring to Macon.

  “And you’re going to get married,” CeeCee chimed in, giggling and licking peach foam off her straw.

  “I don’t love him,” Jacqueline replied sensibly, slathering sunscreen onto her long dark legs. “It’s a summer thing. The novelty’s fun, but in a few weeks, we’ll both go back to our separate lives.”

  Normally, I would have cheered on Jacqueline’s levelheaded declaration, but hearing those words now made a strange sadness well up in me.

  “Jackie, since when are you such a pessimist?” CeeCee groaned. A group of shrieking girls in bikinis raced by, chased by bronzed boys in swim trunks, and they sprayed sand onto CeeCee’s towel. She scowled.

  “Well, Macon’s not all that,” Virginia said, and took a sip of her smoothie. “Any boy who suggests a date to Fisherman’s Village loses points in my book.”