Red Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

meant was, you’re a good student, and without as many distractions
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    â€œIf by ‘distractions’ you mean friends, then you’re right. I don’t have any friends.”
    â€œWe have our sailing friends on the other boats.” She extends her hand out into the night. “They’re out there, Emma and Mac, the others. They’d do anything for us.”
    â€œThey didn’t wait for us.”
    â€œEmma and Mac hung back as long as they thought they could. You were too late getting back to the boat.”
    â€œAre you going to rant again about me being late?”
    â€œYou brought it up.”
    I hurl what’s left in my mug overboard. “You like to think that this trip is such a good thing for me. But it’s not about me, this trip. Not the smallest bit of it. This trip is all about you. Everything is about you. You and Duncan.”
    Her voice is quiet. “This trip is for us, Lib. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get us back on track. I don’t ever want to feel like I could have done more. But I don’t want to hear
anything
about Duncan.” She takes a breath, pauses, then says, “You are so angry. For five years, you’ve been angry, ever since I married Duncan. You’ve made him into some kind of a monster, and he only wants what is best for you.” I release one small guffaw. She says, “Duncan and I wanted to make this trip—”
    I cut her off. “No. Duncan wanted the trip. You want what Duncan wants, so you went along. Thanks for dragging me with you.”
    â€œLet me finish. We wanted to make this trip with you, while we could, while there was still time to get your marks back up for university applications.”
    â€œHa. You’ll be happy if I finish high school. You took me because you don’t trust me. You need to control my every waking moment and what better place than a floating bleach bottle half a world away from anything and
anyone
that’s important to me.”
    She recoils after that last comment. Then she says, “You’re important to me, to both of us.”
    â€œBoth of us. You and Duncan. Duncan and you. Duncan who can do no wrong.”
    â€œDuncan isn’t perfect, Lib, but you know he would never hurt you.”
    â€œAnd that makes me, what, the liar? Couldn’t he be lying? Couldn’t you be lying, just to protect him?”
    This silences her, briefly. “Lib, Duncan is my heaven-on-earth, but I wouldn’t protect him, not if he was harming you.” She doesn’t even blink. She pauses, breathes in, then says, “It’s not that I don’t believe you.”
    â€œHow can you make those two statements? Don’t they cancel each other out?”
    Mom chooses her words as if she were picking up broken glass. “I think that you’re confused.”
    â€œOh, thanks very much. It’s nice to know you have such faith in my mental capacity. Nice that my tea mug comes without a sippy lid.”
    â€œIt won’t hurt for you to be away a while.”
    â€œAway from what?”
    â€œI’ve talked to you about Ty. You just don’t want to hear me.”
    I make my voice mimic hers, “He’s so much older than you, Lib.” Then I say, “You marry a dinosaur, but Ty is too old for me.”
    She’s losing her patience; her voice is clipped. “It’s not just that Ty is nineteen, although I hate that he trolls for girls in the ninth grade.”
    â€œTrolls? You make him sound like a predator.”
    â€œIt’s not just me who thinks so. Lindsay told Denise that Ty is bad news.”
    Lindsay is my old best friend Vanessa’s sister, in grade twelve now. Denise is her mother.
    â€œHow would Lindsay know?”
    â€œBecause she went out with him too when she was fourteen.”
    â€œNo, she didn’t.”
    â€œShe did. For two weeks, then he threw her back and picked