“I’m really not getting any love from you, am I?” he asked, still smiling.
My sister’s obvious worship wasn’t enough for him?
“No, really,” he added when I didn’t bother answering. “Everyone hangs out there. It’s kind of our thing.”
“Cool. We’re in,” Darcy said, pushing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, which forced her chest up and out.
I shot her a look. There were only so many times we could get away with sneaking out.
“Cool,” Joaquin said. “Just head down to the docks and look for the carving of the drunk swan. You can’t miss it.”
Then he flipped open a pair of aviator sunglasses, slid them up his nose with one finger, and strode away. I couldn’t help noticing that every female he passed on the street, from the twelve-year-old with the ice-cream cone to the geriatric with the blue hair, turned to check him out.
“Why do you like that guy?” I asked Darcy as soon as he was out of earshot.
“How can you not like that guy?” she asked.
Because he was cocky. Because he was too sure of himself and obviously a player. Plus even after their supposed bonding session last night, he kept talking to me like she wasn’t even there.
“We’re not going out tonight,” I told her, thinking back to the fog that enveloped me on the beach. Imagined laugh or no, staying in seemed like a much safer option.
“Yes, we are,” she replied, yanking open the door to the general store.
“No. We’re not,” I shot back.
Darcy groaned loudly and stormed inside ahead of me. She was already trying on sunglasses at a wire rack as I closed the door behind us. Slowly, I made my way around the store and up and down the three short aisles. The place stocked everything from cereal to gardening gloves to underwear, but there was no magazine section. That was odd. I thought people in vacation towns were always clamoring for the latest issues of Us Weekly or whatever to read on the beach.
I approached the counter, where a woman with white hair was drying off tall soda-fountain glasses. She had on a blue-and-white gingham dress and a white, lace-trimmed apron.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Her smile was brighter than the sun outside. “What can I do ya for, hon?”
“Do you have any newspapers?” I asked.
She chucked her chin toward the register. “Have at ’em. They’re free.” Next to the old-fashioned change return was a stack of folded paper that looked something like my school newspaper, which only printed four times a year. I walked over and lifted the top copy.
THE DAILY REGISTER:
JUNIPER LANDING’S ONE AND ONLY NEWS SOURCE
The first article was titled A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A JL LIFEGUARD. Under the headline was a huge photograph of a smiling Joaquin Marquez.
“That’s it?” I blurted.
“People come here to get away from it all,” the woman said with a shrug. Then she shoved through the swinging door behind the counter and disappeared into the kitchen.
Unbelievable. “I’m going outside!” I shouted to Darcy.
“Whatever,” she replied.
The bell tinkled again as I shoved through the door and dropped into the first wire chair. I quickly flipped through the thin rag, my hopes falling with each turn of the page. There were stories on the upcoming Founder’s Day parade, a piece on a local jeweler, and a notice about a roundtable the mayor was hosting, but there was no national news page. Not even a column. Not one single mention of Roger Krauss/Steven Nell or the “unnamed teenage girl” he’d attacked in the woods outside Princeton. Back home, our story had been front-page news every morning and splashed across all the local stations. It had been on CNN and Dateline.
But here in Juniper Landing, it was as if neither one of us even existed.
The wet suit was surprisingly comfortable, once all the neoprene had been stretched and adjusted and smoothed out. But thank god I had never been all that self-conscious about my body, because this thing showed every last curve of it. I stepped into the cool bay water and walked over to where Aaron was standing in a similar suit, though his was two shades of blue and modern, while mine was plain black and looked like something out of a 1950s spy movie.
“So. What do you think?” he asked, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.