Shining Sea Read Online Free PDF

The law? Or The Thing Called Love ?”
    We both start laughing. The Thing Called Love is one of my favorite old movies. It’s about a bunch of songwriters trying to make it in Nashville. Dad bought the DVD, but I claimed it. I told Mary about the film one day so she watched it. Now she loves it too. And she loves music, the one serious interest I have now that all water-related activities are banned from my things-I-want-to-do-when-I-grow-up list.
    Someday, I want to go to Nashville to hear music and write songs, like in the movie. Mom and Dad took a trip to Nashville once. Inexplicably, Dad came home with the red cowboy boots. They were two sizes too big for me. When they finally fit, I started wearing them. I wanted to remind my parents there’d been a time when they’d gotten along, sort of. The boots are broken in now and feel like slippers. When I first showed up at RHHH, they definitely got a few looks.
    Mary wants to hear my songs, and I told her she can—at my next gig, which will have to be in Portland, because Rock Hook Harbor doesn’t have a music scene. Somehow, I’m pretty sure the mainland doesn’t either. Kids around here drive all the way to Portland just to go dancing.
    Lilah and I used to blast music in her room and dance.
    Music. It saved my life when she nearly lost hers . . .
    One of the Kevins shouts as he passes by, jerking me back to the moment. Mary’s leaning in across the table, gesturing for me to do the same.
    Without waiting to hear what she has to say, I blurt, “Mary, this is going to sound stupid, but there’s this guy. I saw him surfing at the beach next to the lighthouse—”
    “Hate to break up your girl thang , but it’s time for class.”
    Logan. Hard to believe I hadn’t seen him coming.
    “Oh yeah, girl thing.” Mary grabs my hand.
    “Mind if I watch?” Logan slides onto the bench, the side of his body pressing against mine. The bell shrills and the noise in the cafeteria doubles.
    I shove my shoulder hard against his—and get up. Mary stands too now. She’s headed to gym, the only period besides her art class and my music theory class that we don’t have together. Walking backward, she blows a stream of kisses at me for Logan’s benefit.
    He arches one dark brow.
    I say, “In your dreams, Delaine.”
    “ My dreams?” Laughing, he stands and takes my hand. “Hey, don’t blame me for Mary’s perverted ideas. Just—remember to include me in them.” He laces his fingers with mine.
    And even though I’m not sure where his joking ends and he begins, the way our fingers are entwined—feels good.
    But after we walk across the cafeteria together and out into the crowded hall, I ease my hand out of his. Because . . . the school feels stuffy. The weather is humid and my hair is doing its puffy frizzy thing. Plus my ears are ringing. Not ringing, really, but—I don’t know.
    Pushing my hair back irritably, I’m twisting it into a knot when a group of boys passes by, one of them jostling me—
    Logan grabs the kid who bumped me, slams him up against a locker. “Watch it, idiot.”
    The boy’s eyes go wide.
    Before I can protest—the boy’s shoulder had barely brushed mine—Logan releases him and starts walking. Almost reluctantly, I follow, catching up with him only when he slows, as if he’s suddenly remembering that we’d been going down the hall together.
    “Sorry,” he mutters, “but I swear—some of these guys . . . It’s like they’re part of a different species or something.”

LIBRARY CARDS
    The Rock Hook Harbor public library doesn’t have that library book smell. It smells more like the inside of a guitar. Wooden beams cross high ceilings, and tall windows show the surrounding woods, making it a soothing place to study, a better place to daydream.
    Whether I do those things here or in my room, each day by late afternoon I’m up on the lighthouse deck, searching for that lone surfer. So far the only sign of life I’ve seen is a