Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Read Free Book Online

center, looking curvy and happy. She wasn’t wearing makeup in any of them, but her skin had that glow, her lips naturally pink, her smile huge. It was like Elsa rolled out of bed every morning and directly into some kind of hilarious team effort. There she was in the middle of a crew boat, laughing it up at the crack of dawn.
    Later that day, clinking oversized coffee mugs in a library.
    Nightcap, seven people on her bed, smiling even as they filled their heads with Latin or calculus or whatever it was.
    The last picture was of a rabbit. Clio held it up.
    “That’s Alex,” Elsa explained. “He’s our house rabbit at school. He’s sort of my baby. I named him after my boyfriend.
    Former boyfriend. I like being able to say, ‘Back in your cage, Alex! Stop pooing on the floor, Alex!’ Anyway, what about you?
    I’ve been talking all about me. What’s that book?”
    “Just one of my sketchbooks,” Clio said.
    “Can I see?”
    Some people didn’t like having other people look in their sketchbooks, but Clio had no problem with it. Of course, looking at it over Elsa’s shoulder, she realized that it did make 45

    her look like a bit of a stalker. The same people and faces turned up again and again. Jackson, her best friend. The guy who ran the Turkish takeout truck. That guy Henry from trig. Her cat, Suki.
    “Who’s this?” Elsa asked, flipping to the eighth picture of Ollie in a row.
    “Oh,” Clio said. “That’s Ollie. He’s . . .”
    What was he? A dream. A goal. The prize for surviving the summer. A missed opportunity. The future. The past. Some guy at an art store.
    “He must be your boyfriend,” Elsa said. “He’s handsome.”
    Clio realized that she should correct this statement, but she couldn’t. It sounded so nice. Ollie, my boyfriend.
    Maybe it could have been true if she hadn’t been dragged here. But maybes didn’t mean anything. To have an actual something, you needed some kind of concrete proof. Like one date, or one kiss, or even the exchange of words that promised one date. She’d almost gotten a job where Ollie worked, which wasn’t usually thought of as one of the signs of a budding romance. Still, he’d said he would remember her. Did that mean he was waiting for her? It had to.
    The moment to deny had long passed and she still hadn’t spoken. The plane dipped again, sending Elsa back into her peaceful place with closed eyes, mumbling in Swedish.
    Clio peered out of the window to see a surreal sight. The landscape made a kind of sense, but the colors were all backward.
    The sky was the color of a ripe, late-summer peach. The clouds were a kind of faded ink blue. The Bay of Naples, which stretched before them, was a dusky lavender. In the distance, there was a 46

    huge formation coming out of the water. It looked like a camel that had submerged itself, leaving just its humps exposed. Clio knew what this was instantly: Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that ruled over the area, the same one that buried the city of Pompeii in ash and lava two thousand years before. It was still, she knew, very much active. It had been suspiciously quiet for some time and could very well wake up again soon.
    Landing wasn’t so good for Elsa. The plane dipped and peaked, tossed by the crosscurrent as it got closer to the ground.
    Clio had four deep purple finger marks on her arm by the time it was all over but also, she could tell, Elsa’s lifelong friend-ship.
    As Elsa got her bag out of the overhead bin, Clio looked through the gap in the seats to the people behind. Aidan was directly in her line of sight. He saw her looking and fixed her with a look of his own, smiling strangely. He stood up and leaned over their seats.
    “Good flight?” he asked.
    “It’s over,” Elsa said. She was still a little shaky but smiled.
    “Clio got me through it.”
    “I heard.”
    Clio looked back to see what her father was doing. He and Julia were leaning in to each other, talking closely, whispering.
    What is