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“Apparently so. Well, that explains it.”
I arch an eyebrow in question. “Explains what?”
He points down the beach, and I follow his direction until I spy a silhouette on the shore. A slender body with long legs, and just enough moonlight to pick up the violet highlights in her hair. She drags her feet in the surf, playing with the ribbons of blue water that wash back into the sea.
“Leela,” I say.
“She’s been out there for over an hour, just wandering.”
“I’ll be back,” I tell him, pulling off my boots and socks, and leaping nimbly over the side of the railing into the sand.
“Really? It’s going to be like that?” He yells after me, amused, but I don’t answer.
I jog up the beach, my bare feet silent in the sand. The breeze tumbles her hair around her shoulders, and she looks up as I approach. For a moment, our eyes meet, and I try to read her face.
There’s a sadness in her I can’t explain, buried just beneath the surface. I catch it from time to time. It’s not something that she shows to everyone. She glances back out to sea, and I match her pace.
“Tracers like these are usually drug-induced,” Ivy says, her tone soft and curious. “It’s fascinating.”
“It’s algae,” I add, a smile tilting at the corners of my lips. “What makes it so interesting is that you can see how the water moves. How it curls. Where it speeds up and where it fades out. All the living things. Look,” I motion toward the span of water between the sandbars where several fish swim, with blue glowing bubbles swirling in their wake.
“Cool,” she says, smiling.
My gaze falls to the sand, and I scoop up a piece of broken sand dollar, running my fingers over it in my palm to test the texture. Taking a step toward the ocean, I fling it, skimming it across the water in a series of blue ripples until it slides beneath an oncoming breaker.
“So, Nebraska girl. Of all the tiny beach towns in Florida, how did you end up in this one?”
She shrugs. “Just luck, I guess. Fate. Destiny. Poor and impulsive life decisions.” She looks over at me, and our eyes meet again. Flecks of gold shimmer in their emerald depths,capturing the magic in the moonlight like the luminescent sea. “What about you? Have you always lived here?”
I nod. “For the most part. My mom moved us around a lot. We ended up in Pelican Beach when I started middle school.”
“You like it here,” she states confidently. “It fits you.”
I laugh. “Yeah? How so?”
“The madness of the crowd and the traffic, offset by the serenity of the ocean. Side by side, occasionally intertwined. A balance.” She rolls the ball of her tongue ring absently between her lips, and glances back out to sea. “Beauty and chaos.”
My pulse leaps. “You’re perceptive.”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re an enigma.”
A smile teases at her lips. “I’m really not.”
“Okay, then fill in the pieces. Tell me something about you. Something no one else knows.”
Her gaze slides back to mine, studying me curiously. “That’s personal.”
“If you want it to be.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “I don’t like the way you get inside my head.”
“I said something I don’t know.”
She bites her lip to stop the spread of her smile. “I don’t know anyone here. Essentially, I could tell you anything, and there’s no one to disprove it.”
I nod. “Valid. But my challenge still stands.”
