The Other Side of Blue by Valerie O. Patterson

Author:Valerie O. Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)

Chapter Sixteen

I START TO ask him why I should be nice, why he should tell me at all. I think he’s lying. Mayur just likes to be important.

“Hey, what are you talking about?” Loco plops down on the sand in front of Mayur and me. He throws a bottle cap into the fire. He holds a new bottle of soda loosely by the neck. He runs his hand over the lip, as if to brush away sand or salt, then guzzles from it. He burps, long and loud.

Mayur laughs. No, he howls, the way boys do. Some of the cousins laugh, too, punching each other’s shoulders, as if this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. Even the taller ones, the older ones, act like little boys. They’re laughing so hard, they act as if they’ve forgotten what Mayur was talking about, why Loco even asked what was going on.

Kammi and Saco wander back into the circle of light around the bonfire. Kammi sits on the log next to me, but farther away than before. Saco sits near her.

I shuffle my bare feet in the sand, burying them in the coolness.

The moment when I could ask Mayur what he means has passed for now.

Mayur speaks into my ear as he pushes his pudgy body off the sand. “Remember, be nice, and I’ll tell you,” he says, seeming to read my mind. “Later.”

“Do you swim at night?” Loco asks. He’s looking at Kammi and me.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Kammi straightens her back as she sits forward on the log, no doubt thinking about how dark the sea is at night. What things could brush against a leg, or take it of?

Loco shrugs. “What is dangerous? Not peligroso. Not here, no sharks.”

“It’s okay. It’s shallow just here.” Saco sounds reassuring.

Sharks feed in shallow waters at dusk and dawn. That much I remember from the nature shows Dad encouraged me to watch all the time.

“Okay, who’s in?” Mayur asks.

The boys speak all at once.

“For a minute. I’ll go in for a minute,” Kammi says when Saco grins at her.

“What about you?” Loco asks me.

“I don’t swim in the ocean.” I pull my scarf around my shoulders.

“This is just a sea, like a bathtub.” Saco grins, his eyes lit up by the glow from the fire. Kammi’s watching him. She’ll go in the water if he wants her to.

I shake my head.

Mayur narrows his eyes at me. “She’s afraid.”

He thinks he can dare me to go in. His words don’t scare me. I don’t care if they all think I am a coward. At the end of the month, I’ll go back to Maine. I won’t have to see them again. Next summer, I’ll find a way to stay with Zoe while Mother comes back here. Maybe she won’t even bring Howard, since she told Philippa on the phone last year that bringing men here is bad luck. Kammi won’t come, either; she’ll spend time with her mother in Atlanta or have “quality” time with Howard.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.