Rose finally reaches the beach, and I try to push over to her, but several senior guys have gathered around her, giving her high fives and offering her beers. I slink back from the group. She shouldn’t have done that—gone into the water. Risked it. My cheeks blaze, watching her nonchalantly wipe the water from her arms as if she is pleased with herself, smiling up at the cluster of guys who’ve taken a sudden interest in her.
The moonlight makes a path up the beach, and I wander away from the noise of the party—not far, just enough to catch my breath. I drank too much, and the world is starting to buzz and crackle and tilt off axis. I think of my father vanishing on a night when there was no moon to see by, no stars to guide his way back from the dark. If there had been a moon, maybe he would have returned to us.
I consider heading back to the marina, ditching the party and returning to the island, when I hear the heavy breathing and staggered footsteps of someone stumbling up the sandy beach behind me. “Hey,” a voice calls. I spin around and see Lon Whittamer—one of Sparrow High’s notorious partiers—swaying toward me like I’m standing in his path.
“Hi,” I answer softly, trying to step out of his way so he can continue his drunken walk up the beach.
“You’re Pearl,” he says. “No, Paisley.” He laughs, tosses his head back, his brown eyes slipping closed briefly before focusing on me again. “Don’t tell me,” he says, holding up a finger in the air as if to stop me from giving away my name before he’s had time to figure it out on his own. “Priscilla. Hmm, Pinstripe.”
“You’re just saying things that start with the letter P.” I’m not in the mood for this; I just want to be left alone.
“Penny!” he shouts, cutting me off.
I take a step back as he leans forward, exhaling a boozy breath and almost falling into me. His dark brown hair is plastered to his forehead, and his narrow-set eyes seem unable to focus, blinking closed every couple seconds. He’s wearing a neon orange shirt with palm trees and pink flamingos scattered across it. Lon likes to wear obnoxious Hawaiian shirts in all shades of bright tropical colors with exotic birds and pineapples and hula girls. I think it started as a joke or maybe a dare our sophomore year, and then it turned into his trademark style. It makes him look like an eighty-year-old man on permanent vacation in Palm Springs. And since I don’t think he’s ever been to Palm Springs, his mother must order them online. And tonight he’s wearing one of his ugliest.
“I like you, Penny. I always have,” he mumbles.
“Is that right?”
“Yup. You’re my kind of girl.”
“I doubt that. You didn’t even know my name two seconds ago.”
Lon Whittamer’s parents own the only major grocery store in town: Lon’s Grocery, which they named after him. And he’s known for being a total narcissistic asshole. He considers himself a ladies’ man—a self-proclaimed Casanova—only because he can offer his girlfriends discounts on makeup in the meager cosmetics aisle at his parents’ store, and he uses this like a gold trophy he only hands out to girls who are worthy. But he’s also known for cheating on his girlfriends and has been caught numerous times making out with other girls in his jacked-up, chrome-rimmed, mud flap–accessorized red truck parked in the school parking lot. Basically, he’s a moron who doesn’t even deserve the breath it takes to tell him to get lost.
“Why didn’t you go into the water?” he asks slyly, inching closer to me again. “Like your friend did?” He brushes his hair back from his forehead and it sticks straight up, either from sweat or seawater.
“I didn’t want to.”
“You’re afraid of the Swan sisters?”
“Yeah, I am,” I answer honestly.
His eyes slide partway closed, and a stupid grin curls across his lips. “Maybe you should swim with me?”
“No thanks. I’m going back to the party.”
“You didn’t even wear a dress,” he points out, and his eyes slide down my body like he’s shocked by my appearance.
“Sorry to disappoint you.” I start to take a step around him, but he grabs hold of my arm and digs his fingers into my skin.
“You can’t just walk away.” He hiccups, closes his eyes again, then snaps them open like he’s trying to stay awake. “We haven’t swum yet.”
“I told you, I’m not getting in the water.”
“Sure you are.” He smiles playfully, like I must be enjoying this as much as he is, and begins dragging me with him into the shallows.
“Stop it.” I use my other hand to push against his chest. But he continues to lurch backward, deeper into the harbor. “Stop!” I shout this time. “Let me go.” I look up the shore to the mass of people, but they’re all too loud and drunk and distracted to hear me.
“Just one swim,” he coos, still smiling, slurring each word as they tumble from his lips.
We’ve staggered calf deep into the water, and I slam my fist against his chest. He winces briefly and then his expression changes, turns angry, and his eyes go wide.
“Now you’re going all the way in,” he announces more crisply, yanking against my arm so that I stumble several steps deeper, up to my knees. Not deep enough to risk being taken by a Swan sister, but still my heart begins to thump, fear pushing the blood out to my extremities and sending panic racing down my veins. I raise my arm again, ready to punch him directly in the face to keep him from dragging me in any farther, when someone appears to my left; someone I don’t recognize.
It all happens in an instant: The stranger shoves a hand against Lon’s chest; Lon’s throat lets out a short wheezing sound. His grip on my arm releases at the same time he loses his balance, and suddenly he’s careening backward, falling all the way into the water, arms flailing.
I take a staggering step back, sucking in air, and the person who pushed Lon off of me touches my arm to steady me. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, my heart rate not yet receding.
Lon, a few feet away, stands up from the waist-deep water, gagging and coughing and wiping seawater from his face. His bright orange shirt is now sopping wet. “What the fuck?” he yells, looking directly at the stranger standing beside me. “Who do you think you are?” Lon demands, marching toward us. And for the first time I really look up at the face of the stranger, trying to place him—the rigid angle of his cheekbones and the straight slope of his nose. And then I know: It’s him, the boy from the dock who was looking for work—the outsider. He’s wearing the same black sweatshirt and dark jeans, but he’s standing closer now, and I can clearly see the features of his face. The small scar by his left eye; the way his lips come together in a flat line; his short dark hair flecked with droplets of mist from the sea air. His gaze is still hard and unflinching, but in the moonlight he seems more exposed, like I might be able to read some clue in the rim of his eyes or the shiver of his throat when he swallows.