Adrift Read Free Page A

mother’s place,” he said, then smiled at my obvious surprise.  “You said you weren’t staying anywhere in particular.  She sometimes takes in boarders for the summer.  She has an empty house this summer, so I thought you might find it comfortable.”
    “I—I couldn’t,” I stammered.  “I mean…” I felt my face flooding with blood and knew my cheeks were scarlet.  “I… I don’t have any money,” I admitted, trying to hide my face by staring down at the ground and my feet.  “I couldn’t afford to stay anywhere.”
    Devin waved his hand in the air.  “Don’t worry about it.  You can help her out in the garden and she’d think herself repaid in full.  She won’t mind an extra pair of hands around.”
    “Thanks,” I mumbled.  “I don’t know why you’re being so nice.”
    As he didn’t appear to have heard me, I didn’t press the point.  I had grown up in the Midwest, it wasn’t unheard of for hospitality to be extended to those in need. Now here I was, horribly in need, and Devin had appeared like some pug-nosed knight in shining armor.  I wasn’t going to press the point. 
    I knew all too well that I had no money, no future… nothing but the clothes on my back, which were not clothes I recognized, when it came down to it.  I was fairly sure that the nearly ground-length green dress I was wearing with a white undershirt of some light, yet warm fabric, was not something I had ever had in my jeans and t-shirt closet.  The fine, leather ankle-boots were certainly not mine.  Who had dressed me, anyway?  I must look like something out of an old fairytale in a get-up like that.
    I reached up a hand to touch my hair and found it plaited behind me in a long tail.  My hair was long, nearly to my waist, but curly enough and thick enough that it rarely appeared to be that length.
    I wondered about this apparent gap in my memory.  Perhaps I had struck my head.  Or maybe everything I seemed to remember was nothing but some strange post-traumatic stress dream.  Only one thing was sure—nothing was making sense.  Something had happened to me.  I had either leapt into the ocean and been rescued, in which case I could not even slightly remember my savior… the young girl in the cottage?  Or I had wandered around for heaven knows how long, completely unaware of my surroundings… hallucinating?  Either way there were some serious gaps in my memory, and in my understanding. 
    I felt completely off-balance, as if I had opened my bedroom door and found Narnia there, staring me in the face… make that Wildside, I amended to myself.
    Devin was whistling to himself, a rollicking, happy tune that somehow seemed to echo the golden and green of the spring abounding around us.  It seemed fitting that he would whistle—his homely, kind face fitting well with the happy tail-wagging golden dog, the birdsong on the cool breeze coming off of the ocean.
    We came in sight of a cove, with a small boat brought aground.  Devin waded out into the water and Kip, the dog, leapt aboard, bearing a large white stick in his mouth—a trophy from his ramblings.  I followed, aware of the cool, moist air rising towards me as I approached the water.  A tingling filled my legs and lurched into my stomach as I stepped aboard the boat.  I leaned over the side, dropping my fingers into the rich beauty of the salty water surrounding us.
    The water was hypnotizing.  Even the slight touch of the tips of my fingers against the sleek surface drew tingling bolts of energy up through my arms, making me break out in goose bumps.  I leaned closer, drawn in.  I dropped my second hand into the water, but it wasn’t enough.  It could never be enough…
    “Careful, or you’ll have us over!” Devin cried sharply.
    I jumped.  I had forgotten anything existed but the water.  I obediently took my seat, but I let my fingers lightly dance across the surface.  Something in me could not bear to be this close and not be