Page 1 of Without a Clue

Chapter 1

Did you know that jailbreaking your pent-up city toes from their Chelsea boots and surrendering your feet to the white-hot sand of Miami in February is good for you? That standing right where the crest of bubbly waves gently hugs your ankles before receding back into the blue-green ocean does wonders for your mental health?

But of course you do.

Just as you know, like everyone else on God’s green earth, that the torturous act of waking up in an obscure conference center in San Diego at 3 a.m., missing your flight, rerouting your flying experience an extra ten hours through two more extremely stressful layovers (I don’t have time for details, but I’m now missing one shoelace and definitely have a welt blooming on my hip as we speak), and becoming the ball in the great pinball machine of the United States is all worth it just to get to this moment?

But of course you do.

The beach is a miracle worker.

Any sane human knows that.

There are no words in the English language to properly describe the moment when you gulp in your first lungful of sea-salt air after months of particular grief and do precisely . . . nothing.

Nothing but stare out at the endless sea, listen as seagulls greet you gaily overhead, and feel the waves crash heedlessly all around.

No phones.

No agendas.

No mind-spinning movement.

Nothing but letting the senses take over.

It’s worth it because of the ocean’s intangible something, that mysteriously magical something that beckons you and heals you and envelops your heart in a warm blanket embroidered with the word peace and makes everything you’ve suffered to get here—everything you’ve suffered the past six weeks—absolutely worth it because of this moment.

Where the sea coos, I know you were a splinter away from breaking down into total madness, but shhh, child, you are here now. Rest and find peace in my salty arms.

That is what I came for. (Well, that and the small fact I’m paid to for work.)

This is what I’m supposed to be feeling right now.

Peace.

And in fact, until twenty minutes ago, that was precisely what I was feeling.

And then he showed up.

With that THING.

And I’m not entirely sure of how it’s come to this point, how precisely point A led to point Z, but now here I stand, sensible twenty-seven-year-old Penelope Mae Dupont, with no criminal record or even so much as a speeding ticket, holding this stranger’s portable boom box high over my head in knee-deep water and waves tossing all around—all while threatening to hurl his precious music box into the sea.

I’ve gone, as it turns out, completely mad.

Which both is and isn’t surprising, given, as I said, I was only a splinter away before he came and ruined everything.

“Are you insane?” the man cries out, gesturing widely with his overtanned hands.

Then he utters some choice words.

And some more.

All of which I ignore.

A crowd is gathering.

But I, again in complete dissonance to my normal nature, don’t care.