Hit the Beach (16 page)
Authors: Laura Dower
Subject: Miss You!
Then Madison promptly deleted what she’d typed. That was
way
too much. She retyped.
Subject: Where R U?
No, Madison told herself. That sounded too desperate. She adjusted the subject line one last time, as generically as she could possibly get it without sounding too aloof. It had to be just right or she’d give Hart the wrong message—and that could be disastrous.
From: MadFinn
To: Sk8ingboy
Subject: Hello There
Date: Mon 16 Aug 5:34 PM
So I’ve been waiting for a letter from you. Remember we said we’d write? I know I could have e-mailed u b4 now but it’s been way busy here @ camp. How about you?
DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.
Madison typed and retyped her message but then discarded the note altogether.
She couldn’t send Hart an e-mail. Not like this.
She surfed around the site a little bit more. At one point, Madison’s computer went
ding
. Surprise! Fiona was logged on, too. How lucky, Madison thought, as she sent Fiona her first Florida message. The pair decided upon a private “room” where they could go to chat live.
Madison waited for Fiona to type in more information. But two minutes later, Fiona still had written nothing more.
Madison nearly fell off her chair when she read Fiona’s message.
Madison stopped typing and shook out her fingers. What was this? Fiona was writing all these things that Madison just did not want to read.
Moving to Los Gatos again? Leaving Far Hills?
When Fiona had talked about such things the week before it had seemed unlikely, but now, it seemed as if Madison’s worst fear might come true.
Would Fiona really be moving away?
They could hardly be BFFs across an entire country. Madison’s heart felt heavy. She had wanted to share many things with Fiona about the past week: the Egrets and the faraway look in Will’s green eyes and the way the water shimmered under the super-hot Florida sun. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell Fiona anything about any of that.
She could hardly bring herself to write a single word.
T
HE BEACH ON TUESDAY
was steamy hot, just as Monday had been.
Since the heat and high humidity were not going anywhere, Leonard and the camp staff organized an afternoon trip across one of the ponds, along a path, and across the main road toward the ocean. The ELC maintained about 500 yards of oceanfront. There was a breeze blowing off the water.
The campers were thrilled to see the nesting sites of the loggerhead turtles for the first time. Each site was marked and identified as a nest by county officials, who had placed little orange flags on wooden sticks in the sand to show where the nesting areas were.
Leonard explained to everyone about the Habitat Conservation Plan, an agreement to limit the building of seawalls in coastal Florida.
“Everywhere you go in Florida,” Leonard sighed, “you have to watch out for the natural boundaries established by the turtles. We can’t just come in and wreak havoc on the beach. This is an important law meant to protect turtles from people like us.”
“Whoa,” Will muttered. “Who would want to hurt a turtle?”
“My dad volunteers for that group, the conservation group,” Teeny said. “There are a lot of people who live here who care what happens to the water and the beach and rivers.”
“That’s so great,” Madison said, impressed.
After a few more words from Leonard, the kids spread out across the beach. The different groups intermingled as they checked out the turtle nesting sites. Sometimes the nesting site was a deep hole; at other times, it was just a pile of sand where the turtle had been.
The campers seemed happy to check out the beach. Of course, they were also psyched to slather on a little sunblock and hang out—even just for a little while.
Unfortunately, Madison wasn’t psyched—not at all. And after a half hour or so on the beach, she began to experience some real discomfort. Madison realized that she should have brought a hat; her skin was starting to prickle. She could see her arm from the shoulder to the elbow turning pink right before her very eyes—and it wasn’t pretty.
Madison looked for someone to commiserate with, but she didn’t find one among the Egrets. The boys could not have cared less. As for the girls, Suchita’s skin appeared super tanned already, and Ann didn’t have to worry about the sun, she bragged, because not only had she brought along some sunblock but her skin never, ever burned anyway. As much as Madison hated being pale, even worse was being
alone
in her paleness.
Lindsay and Aimee would have related to paleness. They could all have hidden from the sun together. At that exact moment, Madison missed her BFFs more than ever.
Thankfully, the ongoing hunt for turtle nests and other beach artifacts made Madison forget all about the tanning dilemma. With Ann and Suchita she teamed up to make notes about their beach observations, while the boys teamed up to take their own notes. Madison was momentarily wistful about not being paired with Will in any way (at least for a little while), but she didn’t dwell on it. Hanging with the girls was an opportunity for better bonding with them. It was like having temporary substitutes for Aimee and Fiona—almost.
Leonard and his staff strolled around. They asked the campers to look for shells, to identify insects, and to seek out the small holes where crabs hid. They wanted everyone to pay attention to the things on the beach, from seashells to seaweed. The campers needed to learn all they could about that habitat so that they could knowledgeably observe the turtles laying their eggs during hatchling night.
The big event was only a few days away. It was the defining moment of Camp Sunshine. In just a few nights, all of the campers—from Alligators to Flounders—would band together on that very beach to observe the loggerhead turtles in the darkness as they crawled up the beach to lay their eggs. Of course, there was the chance that there might not be many turtles on the beach that particular night; but there was also a chance that there would be dozens of them.
Madison had her fingers crossed. She wanted to see as many turtles as possible. She had a vision of a beach filled with so many turtles that there was no sand visible, nowhere to walk: a blanket of turtles creeping up from the ocean’s edge.
Now, that would be cool.
Ann found a large piece of driftwood shaped like antlers, and after singing a rousing “only-126-days-until-Christmas” chorus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” she buried the wood in the sand.
Madison laughed. “That was funny,” she said. With all of Ann’s quirks, had Madison simply missed her sense of humor? Maybe Ann wasn’t so annoying after all. Maybe she was just trying hard to get everyone to like her.
That was a feeling Madison understood only too well.
Suchita continued her search for a bottle or some shards of beach glass. She wanted her own meaningful souvenir of this place and these people. Madison told Ann and Suchita about the note in a bottle that Madison had found the week before. Everyone agreed that finding a mysterious note in a bottle had to be good luck, somehow.
Madison wondered what the good luck would bring. Did it mean that she and Will would continue to make some kind of connection?
Then she chased that idea right out of her head.
What was she thinking? What about Hart?
Just then, the boys from the Egrets came over to the three Egret girls. The boys’ hands were filled with shells of all colors, including beige, lavender, coral, and gray.
“Ooooh,” Ann gushed. “Where did you find all those?”
Logan snickered. “We’ve been doing our homework. Where have you been?”
“Very funny,” Suchita said, giggling. “We’ve been working, too.” She held up a handful of beach glass. There was one beautiful blue shard right on top. Logan took it in his hand for a closer look.
“So, Will,” Ann asked, “where did you and Teeny go?”
Madison didn’t say anything.
Will grinned. “We went surfing,” he cracked. “Where do you think, Ann? We were scoping out the nests.”
“So were we,” Madison said.
Ann smiled. “Yeah, so were we.”
“Anyway,” Teeny said. “Leonard just told us that they’re ready to head back. You want to walk back with us?”
Will came closer to where Madison and Ann stood.
“You want to walk back together?” he asked, repeating Teeny’s invitation. Madison wasn’t sure to whom he was directing his question.
“Yes,” Ann responded right away.
“Most excellent,” Will said. He held out his hand. “So this is for you.”
Once again, Madison didn’t know who the
you
referred to. Ann stared at Will’s open palm and snatched a beautiful pink shell that was resting in it.
“It’s so pretty!” Ann said as she cradled the shell.
“Yeah, we found this depression in the sand over there with all these incredible shells. Hardly any of them are chipped. There were a lot of clamshells, too, with deep purple ridges. Very cool,” Will said.
“Oh,” Madison said. “I’ll have to look for it.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “So, you want one, too?”
Madison reached out and took a pink shell for herself. Will smiled when she clutched it in her fingers.
“Thanks,” Madison said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Ann said, her eyes open wide, lashes flickering.
They started the long walk back to the ELC.
“What happened to you?” Dad asked as he drove Madison home that afternoon. He said he’d run home early from his work meeting so he could meet her.
“What do you mean, ‘What happened’?” Madison asked dumbly.
“Maddie, dear, you look like a lobster,” Dad said. “Does it hurt?”
Madison panicked. She pulled down the little mirror on the passenger-seat visor.
Her skin was bright pink. She was more sunburned than she’d ever been, at least since she had been a little girl. Madison remembered a time in first grade when she had gone on a trip to Chicago with Mom and Dad. She’d stayed in the lake up by Gramma Helen’s house all day long without using sunscreen. That sunburn had sent her to the emergency room.
This burn wasn’t nearly as bad, but it did hurt. Madison felt a little case of the chills coming on, but she wasn’t sure if maybe part of that was due to the transition from hot beach to air-conditioned car.
Dad was acting very affectionate. He didn’t seem as preoccupied with work as he’d been before. Instead, he seemed eager to talk about Madison’s day. Of course, she obliged. She told him about the turtle nests and the pink shells. She told him about how nice Ann and Suchita had been, and about the many new friends she’d found at camp after only a week.
Dad beamed. “I knew it was a good idea, your coming down to Florida,” he said. “Say, I thought we might play a game of tennis tonight. Are you up for it?”
Madison’s skin was so hot to the touch. What if she got clipped by a tennis ball on top of that?
“Um … I don’t think so, Dad,” Madison said. “Can we do it another time this week?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” Dad said gently, reaching out for Madison’s hand. His skin was cool on top of hers. “I understand,” he said.
