Saltwater Secrets Read online

  “She has a point about smoothies and marshmallows,” TJ said. He led me a few feet away from the fire and sat on a blanket. I followed him and did the same.

  I was at a bonfire, sitting on a blanket on the beach, next to TJ. This was exactly what I hoped this summer would be like.

  “How’s your guard training going?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to brag, but I think I’m at the top of the pack.”

  “Oh yeah? What about Tucker and Timmy?” I asked.

  “Tim’s doing okay. Tuck needs to pick up his pace on the runs.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Technically, he won’t be offered a job here next year, but we have an in with the mayor, so it shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, we’re expecting to complete the program early.”

  “How did you get to be friends with the mayor?” I asked

  “He was watching us train one day and sort of introduced himself. He’s a nice guy,” he said. “They say it’s all about who you know.”

  “That would be good for your five-year plan.”

  “You remember that?” he asked, surprised.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I dunno.” He shrugged. “I mean, I know everything going on in your life. You post on Instachat like ten times a day. But I don’t do that.”

  Well, he didn’t know everything, because, obviously, I only post the good stuff. “Come on,” I said. “I saw that pic of you in the ugly Christmas sweater and your new dog and that bruise on your knee when you fell off the curb. So I know stuff. Plus, I have a good memory, and I just remember that you’re always planning.”

  He looked at me; I could see the firelight flicker in his eyes. “You cold?”

  I didn’t realize that I was hugging my knees into my chest. “A little.”

  “Maybe we should move closer to the fire?” he asked.

  “That’s okay. I’m fine here.” I wanted to be a little in the distance, where we could talk without yelling over the music, and as long as I had Apple in my sight, I didn’t have to worry about her appearing on our blanket without warning. That would be awkward. I hoped Josie would mingle or at least talk to Timmy. Dario, on the other hand, was being very social among the marshmallow scene. He tossed one to Tucker, who tried to catch it in his mouth. Then Tucker threw one to Dario, only that one was melting, and it went everywhere but his mouth.

  I shivered. TJ slid his red hoodie over his head and handed it to me. “Put this on.”

  I did. I acted casual about it, but inside I was like, Wow! because I’d always wanted to wear one of those. It was already warm from his body heat, and it smelled like a combo of sunscreen, deodorant, and fabric softener. I used to spend time like this with Pete, but when all of that fell apart, I seriously thought I’d never like a guy again.

  He asked me, “Do you have big plans for the summer?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Except that I have to stay out of trouble. My mom put me on this three-strike thing, and let’s just say I only have one left.”

  “What were the first two?” he asked. I would’ve asked too.

  I took a deep breath.

  “I made some new friends this year, and they go to the mall after school to hang out. I wanted to go, but I had track practice. So I told my coach that I had a bunch of doctor appointments, and I skipped practice.”

  I pause. “But the coach saw my mom and asked how I was feeling. My mom didn’t know what Coach was talking about. And the next day the coach asked me to return my uniform.”

  He said, “That’s pretty bad, but not terrible.

  “I made it worse.”

  He waited for me to go on, but I wasn’t ready to do that.

  “Can we talk about something else?” I asked finally.

  “Sure. So, no big plans for the summer?”

  “Nah. This is vacation, so I’m just going to see what happens,” I said. “Tomorrow we’re gonna snorkel, so that’s a one-day plan.”

  “Action-packed day.” He laughed. “What else, like longer-term for the summer?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I shrugged.

  “Like, do you think about people you might hang out with?”

  “Uh, I guess not.…”

  “If you did think about that, would I be one of those people?” he asked.

  Now I got what he was getting at. And I liked where he’d gotten.

  “I hope so. I mean, I’d like to.”

  He smiled. “I was thinking we could do something together sometime. You like Skee-Ball?”

  I felt my face flush. “I love it. I’m really good at it too.”

  A group of girl guards started singing and dancing to the latest Flying Fish song, “A Basket Full of Seashells.” I sort of lip-synched along, and TJ’s legs bobbed to the beat.

  TJ asked, “Which band member is your favorite?”

  Without thinking, I said, “Evan. You?”

  “Hard to say. Depends on the song. Austin’s drum solo in this one is great. But Lucien rules the keyboard in ‘Sand on My Towel.’ ”

  “I agree with both of those, but Evan is the best dancer.”

  “That’s not fair. Since he’s on the guitar, he can move around, and the other guys can’t.”

  “True,” I said.

  “You like a guy who can dance?”

  “Sure.” I turn to him. “Do you dance?”

  “Not even a little,” he said. “I hope that’s not a deal breaker.”

  “I can show you some moves.”

  “You’re on.”

  I saw Josie move away from the crowd and head in our direction. She covered a yawn with her hand. “You ready, Stell?” she asked.

  “Umm,” I started. I was going to ask her if she wanted to stay for a while longer, when a four-wheeler tractor growled behind us. Timmy was driving.

  TJ started putting on his Reefs.

  He said, “Sorry to cut this short, but me and the guys have something we have to do.” He stood and wiped the sand off his legs. “Tuck!” he called. “We gotta go.”

  Timmy left the four-wheeler running but got off to talk to Josie. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Do you want a lift back to the boards?”

  She looked at the distance from the fire to the boardwalk. “It’s not far. I can walk.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Okay. Maybe next time.”

  “Sure. Maybe.” Then she asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Secret lifeguard meeting,” Tim said.

  He returned to the four-wheeler, where Tuck was already sitting, both cheeks plumped out with marshmallows and both hands full too. He couldn’t talk, but he was able to pump up his muscular arms for us to see. It’d become his signature move.

  TJ got on the tractor behind Tucker. He called to us, “See you guys tomorrow?”

  “Yup,” Dario managed to say, although some browned marshmallow dripped out the side of his mouth. He had white sticky marshmallow all over his face and hands. It was gross. I’m sure the Three Ts had noticed.

  The tractor roared away.

  “Where’s Apple?” I asked.

  Dario made a poof motion with his marshmallow-coated hands.

  I said to him, “Looks like you lost in the Great Marshmallow Battle.” I was trying to drop a hint that he’d gone unnecessarily overboard with the marshmallows.

  He checked out his hands, swallowed, and said, “Can one of you get my sandals?”

  Josie bent down and looped her fingers in the straps; then she said to me, “Sorry about interrupting you guys.”

  Dario licked his fingers. “Interrupting what?” he asked. Then he looked at the guard sweatshirt I was still wearing. “Wait a minute. Were you having a moment? You and TJ? You like him? Is that what that was? A moment?”

  “It wasn’t a moment—” I started to explain, when Dario picked up his vibrating phone with his cleanest two fingers.

  “Ugh. My mom. I gotta go before she puts out an AP
B on me.” He ran on ahead of us. He wasn’t kidding. He was late getting home one time last summer, and his mom called Officer Booth to their house. She wanted to file a missing-persons report and told Booth that he should have a helicopter out searching with a spotlight.

  Josie’s phone alarm went off. It was eight o’clock. This time I texted Dad to keep him in the loop. Dad wasn’t the type to hover over us, as long as he knew we were safe.

  Josie asked me, “What do you want to do now? I mean besides get something to eat? I can’t believe there wasn’t even a barbie there.” She meant a barbecue.

  I shrugged. “It’s too early to go home.”

  She was quiet. Something was bothering her, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was.

  “Don’t worry about TJ. You and I are still going to do all the things we always do,” I said. “But this year I also want to do some other stuff that we haven’t done before.”

  “That’s super, but that isn’t what I was thinking about.”

  She went ahead without another word.

  Sixteen Stella

  Police Station

  June 25 (Continued)

  I tell Santoro, because I have no one else I can talk to about this. “The bonfire was great. It was like things for my summer had turned around, and I was doing exactly what I’d wanted to do. And check this out.” I turn to show him the back of the lifeguard sweatshirt. “But Josie…”

  “What about her?” Santoro asks.

  “It wasn’t her scene. I wanted it to be, but it wasn’t.” I add, “She wasn’t obvious about being bored, but I could tell. She didn’t even try to talk to anyone other than Apple or Dario. And why couldn’t she see that Timmy was crushing on her? And don’t get me started with Dario and the marshmallows. It was…”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to think I’m being mean again.”

  “I don’t think you’re mean,” he says.

  “That’s good, because I’m not. I swear.”

  “So, what was Dario like?”

  “Embarrassing.”

  “But Tucker was doing the same thing. From what you’ve said, it sounds like the two of them are a lot alike. But you don’t think Tucker is embarrassing?”

  “I never thought about that.” Santoro is more perceptive than I gave him credit for. “Maybe.”

  He flips through his notebook to check a detail. “Where did TJ say they were going?”

  “He didn’t.” TJ didn’t tell me, so this isn’t a lie.

  Seventeen Stella

  Nifty Gifty

  June 19 (Continued)

  I was surprised when Josie said she didn’t want to go home.

  She suggested shopping, which was unlike her. She didn’t have to ask me twice. I thought maybe she’d said it because she knew I was in the market for a new bathing suit, but when she told me what she wanted to buy, it all made sense.

  We entered Nifty Gifty, which was crowded with out-of-towners going gaga over refrigerator magnets. Dario could trash talk about magnets all he wanted, but there was no denying they were a hot item.

  I swiped through a rack of cute bikinis and pulled out a few that I liked.

  Josie called to me from across the store, holding up a metal box. It looked like it would hold jewelry; bangle bracelets would fit in it really well. On top it said WHALEHEAD, NJ. It wasn’t an exciting box, but it looked like it would do the job to replace our lost treasure box, so I shrugged. Then I held up a bathing suit, and Josie gave them a similar shrug, so I left it behind.

  Josie paid for the box, and we met outside Nifty.

  “It doesn’t have a lock,” she said. Our previous box was a little safe where people could put important papers, like passports, and it had a dial combination lock.

  “That didn’t help last time,” I pointed out.

  “True.” Then she said, “Let’s put it in our spot.”

  * * *

  With our VIP bracelets, we cut in front of everyone in line at Kevin’s Fun House, and when the coast was clear, we jumped through the hole in the floor to the sand below and pulled the trapdoor shut above us. Once again, we both landed on our butts.

  “Where should we put it?” Josie asked. “Maybe we can hide it better?”

  I looked around with the help of my phone’s flashlight app. “We could bury it over there.” I indicated a particularly dark area to the side of the new sliding door that blocked the sight of the ocean. “Or over there.” I pointed to a spot at the edge of the Smoothie Factory’s foundation. “Or over there.” And I pointed to a spot near the foundation of Kevin’s Fun House. “Not a ton of options.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “It’s like you aren’t even trying. Do you care about this at all?”

  I did care about it, just not as much as Josie, but I knew that telling her that wouldn’t go over so well. “I do, Jo. But there aren’t many places to pick from, for real.”

  “You have a better idea?” she asked me.

  “We could keep it at home. Then it wouldn’t get lost again.”

  Josie just stared at me. Finally she said, “You can’t be serious.”

  “What’s the problem with that?”

  “It’s stupid. Boring.” Then she raised her voice. “It breaks tradition!”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s bury it over there.” I chose the spot by the Smoothie Factory’s foundation, because there was a tuft of beach grass that must get enough sun poking through the boards to survive. “We can try to get it under the grass.”

  She nodded. Then she took the Flying Fish concert flyer out of her back pocket and put it into the box. “You have anything?”

  I reached into my pocket for something, anything. I was unprepared for this, but, thankfully, I found something good. “Here’s my ticket from my first Minotaur ride of the season.”

  “Good one.” Josie smiled, and I was relieved that had made her happy. She crouched down and dug in the sand, placed the box in the hole, and covered it up. “Looks okay,” she said.

  The sliding door started to open, showing a nearly full moon hovering over the black waters of the Atlantic.

  We looked at each other like, What should we do?

  I bent into a shadow and tugged Josie to crouch next to me.

  “Is that…?” Josie started.

  I shushed her and nodded.

  The door slid open farther, and three kayaks were dragged through the sand, right along the groove. That explained the small trench in the sand.

  They were lined up in a row against the wall of the Smoothie Factory, and one of the draggers knocked on the newly painted lime-green door. A girl in a white lab coat answered. “Hi, guys.” Then she called behind her, “They’re here!”

  A second girl joined her at the door. I clearly saw their faces under the outside light, but I didn’t know either of them.

  The kayakers each lifted bags from their respective kayaks and handed them to the girls.

  Josie whispered to me, “What’s in the bags?”

  I shushed her again.

  One girl asked, “You want to come in and hang out?”

  “Nah. We get up early.” The kayakers dragged the boats through the groove in the sand out to Thirty-Fourth Street. We crept to a place where we could spy on them. There they hoisted the boats onto a trailer towed by a van and waved to the driver once all three kayaks were secure. One of the kayakers pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his shorts and thumbed a message; then he joined the other two, who were halfway up the ramp that led to the boardwalk.

  My cell phone vibrated with a message from TJ. Skee-Ball tomorrow?

  We inched out toward the street, still hidden in the darkness, and watched as the van rounded the corner onto the main street, Ocean Avenue. I noticed that it was a Water Sport Adventure van. The first person that popped into my mind was Angie, since she’d said she was driving one of their vans. I noticed something else that stood out. It was a person under a streetlight. They were particularly noticeable
because they wore a Phillies baseball cap. Most people at Whalehead are Yankees or Mets fans, so a Phillies cap isn’t popular.

  “What do you think they were doing?” Josie asked.

  “I don’t know, but I want to find out.”

  “We can’t really chase the van down Ocean Avenue,” Josie said.

  “No, we can’t. We’ll need to think of another way.” I thought for a hot sec, and I couldn’t come up with anything.

  But Josie did.

  Eighteen Stella

  Police Station

  June 25 (Continued)

  “You see the driver of the van?” Santoro asks.

  “No.” That isn’t a lie. I assume it was Angie, but I don’t know for sure.

  “What about the people with the kayaks?”

  “It was too dark.” This time I lie, not because I’m a liar, although it might seem that way, but I know how this all unfolds, and none of those people are important to the conspiracy or the accident that brought me here in the first place. I know what it’s like to get in trouble for something that isn’t really your fault, and there’s no reason the Three Ts or Angie need to be identified.

  I ask, “Any word from the hospital?”

  “Nothing yet.” He adds, “I know you’re worried, but no news is usually better than bad news.”

  I nod.

  Santoro gets back to business. “What was Josie’s idea? Her idea to find out what all this was about?”

  “She suggested we ask about part-time jobs at the Smoothie Factory. You know, talk to the people who work there, specifically the girls at the basement door that night, and see what they were doing.”

  “Josie comes up with good ideas, huh?” he asks.

  “Sure. But so do I, like with Meredith Maxwell,” I say. “That was me.”

  Nineteen Stella

  Boardwalk—Whalehead, New Jersey

  June 20

  “Murielle duPluie here with the Whalehead news from the Jersey Shore. If you’re on the boardwalk today, you’re going to want to stop in front of Kevin’s Fun House, where the biggest welcome sign ever is being constructed for none other than Meredith Maxwell. The project is led by her self-proclaimed number one fan, Cassandra Winterhalter. This girl is determined to get as many signatures on the sign as possible, so swing on by.”