Ties by Steph Campbell, Liz Reinhardt Read Free Book Online

and leave it in a heap next to the blanket, then jog down to the water’s edge. I only mean to wade out. I only want to feel the scratch and pull of the sand between my toes and let the curling, foaming water scrape against my calves. But I go deeper, until my knees bend underneath the swell.
    The water swirls and bobs around me, and, before I think it through, I jackknife my body and let the cool water suction me under. My ears are plugged in the roaring stillness, and I open my eyes to gauge where I am, but have to close them a second later because the salt stings so badly. My hair picks up, light as dandelion fluff, and waves like tentacles around my head.
    Even though my mouth is pinched tight, I can taste the tang of salt on my tongue. I kick and paddle; surprised at how fast I shoot forward and how amazing my limbs feel in the buoyant warmth of the ocean.
    I dart ahead until my lungs press, tight and uncomfortable, under my ribs. My cheeks puff out, and my nostrils threaten to unplug and search for oxygen. I kick up and gasp as I break the surface. When I turn, the shore and Genevieve are far away from me.
    I know I should swim back. Gen might be nervous. She made lunch. She may want to talk. I have a responsibility to be an entertaining and conscientious guest.
    But I don’t go back.
    I float, lying back so my body is horizontal in the Pacific. I think about what’s below me. I’m not far enough out for the vastness I imagine, but I like to think about all the sea life, the dolphins and whales, the fish and squids, shells, sharks, coral, turtles, all darting and stalking below, oblivious to my tiny human alienness in their midst.
    I only let myself think like that for a few minutes before I go vertical and paddle back to the shore with clean, determined strokes.
    I feel silly when I lie back and dream like that. It was weird enough to do it when I was a kid: now it’s just indulgent and stupid. I ignore how freaking amazing it felt to let those feelings wash over my body as I stand up in the surf, no longer a drifting oceanic interloper, but a grounded, sensible woman once more.   
    “Did you have fun?” Genevieve calls, not worried in the least.
    I walk to her side and thank her for the towel she offers me. “It was awesome exercise. I forgot how good it feels to swim.”
    “This part of the beach is like magic, right?” She sets out plates and silverware, and I examine her to see if she’s teasing me, but when she hands me my food, her face is sweetly serious.
    “It is,” I finally agree, digging in. “Magic.”
    I don’t know what I’m identifying as magical. The way I barely know her but already feel so comfortable? The call of the ocean and my response? The food she pulls out of the basket that melts on my tongue and makes me feel full in a way that has little to do with stomach capacity or calories?
    All of it, I decide.
    Magic.
    Just for this summer, just because it’s fun to play with what’s real and what’s not sometimes. Magic for right now, reality later. I promise.
     

5 HATTIE
     
    Genevieve’s voice comes from the sleepy place right before a dream.
    “Go. Your restlessness feels contagious, and I don’t want to catch it when I’m trying to nap. Go, explore.”
    “Do you want some sunscreen?” I ask, looking at her long, caramel legs, exposed to the sun without a care or worry.
    “I’m--” She pauses to yawn, not bothering to cover her mouth. “I’m Mexican, Hattie. I’ll be...toasty.”
    I wait for her to say something else, but she snores very lightly instead, so I decide to walk only as far as the piers. I can still see her from there. Genevieve has this adorable idea that nothing bad ever happens to anyone, and she tells me she tucked her money, i.d., phone, and credit cards in her bikini bottoms.
    She actually said she put them there for safekeeping with zero sense of irony.
    “I’ll be back,” I say to sleeping Genevieve. She snores again.
    The pier is largely