Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

this big secret? Clio thought.
    In the next second, she would regret this question. The answer came in the form of her father ever so quickly putting his tongue somewhere in the vicinity of Julia’s ear. Julia smiled and laughed softly.
    Clio spun around, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She 47

    felt a huge rush over her cheeks, every blood vessel in them flushed and full. There was a painful pulsing in her neck, and her hearing got tinny. It really felt for a moment like something very bad might happen to her head from all the pressure. She could hear Aidan making more pathetic jokes about his imaginary parachute to Elsa.
    “You okay?” Elsa asked.
    Clio stared at her helplessly. No longer frightened, Elsa had gone back to being the luminous dairy goddess, and Clio was just a confused girl in a small airplane seat, about to hyper-ventilate.
    “Head rush,” she managed.
    She wasn’t standing up and turning around until she was sure that her father and Julia were finished and out of her sight.
    Aidan leaned over from behind, lording down from over her shoulder. This blocked any view she might have had but also left her feeling very boxed in.
    “Nice tattoo,” he said, examining the zipper from above.
    “What do you keep in there? Change?”
    This wasn’t what she needed right now. And this was exactly the kind of thing that Ollie wouldn’t say. Ollie wasn’t a jackass.
    Ollie was perfection.
    “A little souvenir from my victims,” she said, getting up quickly. “Usually a severed finger.”
    Clio didn’t have to turn around to know that he was giving her one of those raised-eyebrow, “whatever you say, strangely scary girl” looks. She stood up and reached as far into the overhead bin as she could, taking as long as possible to pull her backpack out of the otherwise empty space.
    48

    “See?” Elsa said, her British voice purring. “That’s what you get when you don’t behave, Mr. Cross. Now make way. We’re getting off this death trap. This is over .”
    Clio was happy for Elsa, but she knew that her torment had only begun.
    49

    Mental Scarring and Jokes
    That Aren’t Funny
    As they walked out into the blinding Naples sun, Clio found herself clasping her own left ear. She couldn’t stop. It was as if by covering it, she could stop the horrific ear-penetration image from getting into her head.
    Things would never be the same now that she’d seen her father tonguing some strange woman’s ear. Never. That was the kind of thing that wormed its way into your brain, nestled itself between the warm, gray folds, and bred .
    “What’s the matter, kiddo?” her father asked, coming up alongside her and removing the comforting hand shield. “Ears won’t pop? Try swallowing.”
    Somehow swallowing wasn’t the word she wanted to hear right now.
    “I’m fine,” she replied, walking ahead.
    Their transport was a small, unmarked white van. The driver looked hot and bored and pulled at his damp shirt. He loaded 50

    their bags into the back while they all got in. The bench seats had cigarette burn holes. Clio found herself wedged between Elsa and Aidan in the backseat. Her father, Julia, and Martin sat in the front. Like most guys she knew, Aidan took up a bit more room, sitting with his legs farther apart, his computer between his ankles, pressing his left thigh up against her right in the process.
    The van let out a belch of diesel exhaust and rattled as it was turned on. This was not followed by a burst of refreshing air-conditioning, as she had hoped it would be. The driver cranked up the radio, which was tuned to a call-in show that she couldn’t understand. The noise and the heat canceled out any conversation before it even started. Aidan put in his earphones, and Elsa laid her head lightly against the back of the seat and closed her eyes.
    The first stretch of highway passed by some dusty and run-down housing developments, lots of uninspired billboards for local restaurants, and the occasional