Sea Read Free

their hard shells, I dared to flip the card over and read the familiar handwriting, faded and streaked from my old tears.
    Dear Sweet Sienna,
    I hope you and Spider are having a great time at surf camp! We can’t wait to see your new moves when we get home. Daddy and I miss you so much. We spotted two giant sea turtles today that looked just like the ones on this card. They are two of the ancient ones that live to be a hundred. We swam together, the four of us, wishing you were with us. See you soon to celebrate your birthday!
    xoxo, Mom (and Daddy)
    I swallowed back tears. The postcard arrived three years ago on my twelfth birthday in a mix of other cards and junk mail. A week after Dad came home from Thailand without her.
    I never even told my dad I got it, because it was ours.
    The last secret I shared with my mom.
    Carefully, I tucked the card back into my old journal and splashed cold water on my face. I stared at myself in the mirror, the counter cool marble on my palms.
    The glass was clear. But three years later, I still didn’t look like me.

SPIDER
    My bedroom felt dusky in that walking-out-of-a-matinee-movie way when the pinging started.
    Ting bing.
    I got up off my bed and moved aside my window curtain.
    Spider?
    I blinked to make sure my eyes weren’t teasing.
    With his free hand, the one not wrapped around his surfboard, he waved up to me, his sandy blond hair still wet from the sea. I cracked open my window and a cool foggy breeze rushed in.
    “Are you throwing rocks at my window?” I asked.
    “Shells. Guilty as charged. I heard you locked yourself in your bedroom.”
    “Really? Who told you that?”
    “Bev told me you called her, freaking out. I figured it wasn’t a good time for me to knock on your door, but I figured you might let me harass you from down here.” He grinned confidently. Everyone was always happy to see Spider, and he knew it.
    I couldn’t help but smile back. It was good to see him.
    When his head cocked to the side, his eyes weren’t joking anymore. “So I found something of yours the other day. And since it’s your birthday I figured it was the perfect time to give it to you.”
    He remembered my birthday? I hadn’t talked with Spider one-on-one in forever. Whenever I saw him, it was in passing at his and Bev’s house or at the beach surrounded by his posse of surf rats and girl groupies. He barely even looked at me at school when we walked by each other in the halls, and now he showed up at my house all nonchalant, remembering my birthday?
    “Really? What is it?” I asked.
    He scrunched his eyebrows, teasing. “Not telling. You have to come over and find out. It’s in my closet, waiting for you.”
    I felt my face flush imagining being in Spider’s house not because it was Bev who had invited me. About being in Spider’s room alone with him after all this time.
    I had to think of something to say.
    Tugging on the back of my hair, I asked the obvious. “You were surfing?”
    His eyes lit up. “The waves were shoulder high,” he said. “Must be a storm coming in. You should have been there.”
    I should have been there? Yeah, right.
    Speaking of giant waves. “So Bev told you about my birthday ‘surprise.’”
    Spider nodded. I nibbled on the rough skin next to my index finger and startled myself when I blurted out, “You know I don’t fly.”
    “I know,” he said without missing a beat. Of course he knew. He was there when it all happened: Sienna doesn’t fly anymore. Sienna doesn’t surf anymore. Sienna doesn’t do anything anymore. Sienna just doesn’t.
    “But if things were ... different, it would be kind of cool helping the tsunami survivors and all that,” he said encouragingly.
    Then I grew suspicious. “Hey, did my dad ask you to try and talk me into going with him?”
    Spider frowned. “No. Why would you think that?”
    “I don’t know. It’s just ... I’m kinda surprised to see you.”
    Spider bobbed back and forth from one bare foot to