Beyond the Rising Tide by Sarah Beard Read Free Book Online

when you won’t go near the sea.
    “Mom—watch out for that tide pool.”
    Beth spins around to walk forward again and starts ticking off a list of all of Avery’s hobbies while Avery groans and begs her to stop. Rock climbing. Hiking. Fishing. Sailing. Longboarding. Volleyball. I’m thinking, Is there anything this girl can’t do? But the thing is, I haven’t seen her do any of these things. And I’m further convinced that Avery isn’t living the life she was before I came into it.
    “Mom—please,” Avery says firmly. “You’re boring Kai.”
    There’s that lift in my chest again. “No, she’s not,” I argue as my eyes find Avery’s. “I want to hear more.”
    Beth smiles at us over her shoulder. “Kai, may I bring you as a specimen to my next writing lecture? Most women these days wouldn’t know how to spot a gentleman if they saw one.”
    “Mom—” Avery’s voice is a warning, probably because this isn’t the first time her mom has mounted this soapbox.
    Beth ignores the warning and goes on about how her purpose in writing screenplays about decent men is to remind women not to accept anything less and to not allow men to treat them any less decently than the men in her stories treat their ladies.
    By the time we reach the stairway, Avery’s cheeks are bright pink, and Beth has barely paused for breath.
    “She gets extra chatty when she’s hungry,” Avery explains as we climb the steps, and she slows her pace to put more space between us and her mom.
    “Hey,” I say with a shrug, “chatty is better than grouchy. I know people who turn into orcs when they’re hungry.”
    As we enter her condo, Beth is giving us a detailed history of the demise of dating etiquette, claiming it all started with the feminist movement. I’m feeling too tense to sit, so when Beth drops into a stool and pulls one out for me, I just stand behind it and grip the curved iron back for support.
    Avery is on the other side of the bar pulling things out of the fridge. A smile plays on her mouth as she removes tinfoil from a large bowl. “Do you like crab salad?” she asks me.
    I smile at the irony of eating crab after just rescuing one, and then nod in the affirmative because there’s no room for a yes in Beth’s diatribe against feminism.
    “It’s not men’s fault they don’t know how to treat ladies anymore,” she’s saying. “Some women don’t want to be treated like ladies and it ruins it for the rest of us.”
    “Mom,” Avery says sharply as she slides a French bread loaf from a paper sleeve and points it at her, “I don’t think you understand what feminism is. It’s not about rejecting chivalry; it’s about mutual respect between men and women and—”
    Beth cuts her off with a passionate and long-winded rebuttal about how it doesn’t matter what true feminism is; it only matters what men perceive it to be and how they see it as a threat. I can’t see most of Avery’s face as she slices the French bread, but the tips of her ears are red. Her knife is moving at jigsaw speed, and something tells me she’s as eager as I am to get something into her mom’s mouth. So I go over to help her. She seems reluctant to hand over the knife, and instead points me to a large spoon anchored in the crab salad. I pick it up and start spreading crab salad on the bread.
    “Kai,” Beth says, and I stiffen at her tone because it’s like a fired-up teacher about to call on a slacking student. “Help me out here. As a man, do you feel threatened by feminism? I mean, what goes through your mind when you see women picketing and shouting at the top of their lungs, ‘Down with men’?”
    Avery rolls her eyes. “Mom—that’s such a stereotypical—”
    “Just—let him answer.”
    How did I go from happily making crab salad sandwiches to standing on a stage under a burning spotlight? I feel beads of sweat surfacing on my forehead. I try to think of something clever to say, but all I come up with is