Night Swimming
Table of Contents
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For N. and J.
With All My Love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe heartfelt thanks to Joanne Delaney, Research Interpreter, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and to Mike Johnson, Fisheries Biologist, National Marine Fisheries Services. Joanne allowed me to question her about coral reef habitats for hours on end, providing me with clear and articulate answers, all given with endless patience and good humor. Coral Beach is a fictitious town, but Mike Johnson offered invaluable suggestions about locations along Florida’s Atlantic coast where I might create a coral world.
For those who know and love the magic of the sea, Joanne Delaney and Mike Johnson are your true champions. Any errors and oversights about this fascinating realm are mine.
I would also like to thank Rebecca Abrams and Nathan Benn for their many useful pointers regarding photography and photo processing.
Greek mythology has three graces. I’m blessed with four. Four wonderful women: Joanie, Denise, Susie, and Jennifer, who, through their unwavering support and encouragement, have taught me much about friendship.
“Something the matter, Lily?” Sean asked.
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” Head cocked to the side, she studied him.
“Surprised? About what?”
“I’m surprised you’re here.” Her mouth curved upward.
“I warned you I’d be joining you.”
Throwing caution to the wind, he let his eyes roam slowly over her, lingering. She’d have to be blind not to see the hunger in them.
Which she clearly wasn’t. She retreated a step. He followed, his longer legs closing the distance, until his body almost brushed hers.
Lily’s cool composure was unraveling, no matter how hard she tried to pretend otherwise. The signs were all there, in the fine trembling of her limbs, in the flush that stole over her porcelain smooth cheeks. Fierce satisfaction filled Sean at her involuntary reaction.
He dipped his head until his lips hovered, a soft whisper away. . . .
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PROLOGUE
CORAL BEACH, FLORIDA
“Quit it!” Lily hissed, jerking backward.
“No! You quit it!
I’m
leading. You’re the girl, you’re supposed to follow.”
Ha, what a joke,
thought Sean. Lily Banyon wasn’t a girl, she was an alien—a pale, blond-haired, freaky-eyed alien monster.
Lily glared down at him. Her light blue eyes glittered with contempt. “This is so dumb. Why should you get to lead just because you’re a boy? You don’t know anything. You’re doing it all wrong . . . as usual.”
Lily was, without a doubt, the biggest pain that ever lived. Arriving on this planet within weeks of his own birth (her mother claimed Lily’d been born in a hospital, like most kids, but Sean would never fall for that one), all she did, day in and day out, was contradict and correct him, Big Miss Know-It-All.
Like now,
he thought, telling him he didn’t know how to lead her in the stupid fox-trot. Sean lifted his head to glare back at her, and got a prime view of her snot-filled, snooty nose.
Gross me out.
She was still trying to lead. Sean jerked hard, hoping he could throw her off balance, have her land on her butt in front of everyone. Even though that was like thinking you could fell a giant sequoia simply by tugging on its branches. He felt a surge of triumph as her feet stumbled forward in his direction, finally following his.
Victory was fleeting. Lily stopped cold, her abrupt halt causing his feet to tangle with hers. Their bodies smacked, and then ricocheted.
Jeesh!
Holding her hand was bad enough—even with the protective layer of Lily’s white cotton gloves. Sean didn’t want to touch any more of her than that. He lurched backward, tripping over her monster-size feet in his hurried recoil.
“Ow!”
Lily’s squeal made his ears ring. “You stepped on me! Oh, wait! Let me guess. This is one of your new moves! Though if you think this is dancing, you’re stupider than I thought.” She curled her lip, flashing metal. “But that’s probably not possible.”
Lily actually believed she’d invented sarcasm. “Just shut up and dance,” Sean hissed, tugging on her hands once more, willing the dumb song to end so that he could go back to his seat on the opposite side of the school gym—as far away from Lily Banyon as possible.
“No,
you
shut up.”
God, Lily hated him, the little runt. Why did Deadly Dudley, the dance teacher, always stick Sean McDermott with her? Why should she have to dance with a twerp who was more than a foot shorter than she was? So what if he was the tallest of the sixth-grade boys? If she was going to have to dance with a midget, at least give her a less obnoxious one. Anybody. She
hated
Sean McDermott. Hated him. Loathed, detested,
abhorred
—Lily had looked that last one up in the dictionary, needing a richer vocabulary for the list of grievances that grew each time she saw him, which was practically always, thanks to their mothers.
Her mom and his were best friends. They did everything together—shopped, gossiped—everything. The friendship stretched way back to when they were kids, actually further than that, all the way back to their grandmothers. The older ladies still talked on the phone every morning and were the best bridge players in Coral Beach, trouncing other grannies on a weekly basis. Their mothers and grandmothers took it for granted that Lily and Sean would get along like peanut butter and jelly.
Grown-ups were so lame.
Lily could feel their eyes on them, Sean’s mom’s and her own mom’s. Typical of their totally clueless state, they’d volunteered as chaperons for these lousy social dancing lessons. Lily didn’t need to glance over to know they were watching her and Sean’s “progress” on the floor, nudging each other with their tanned elbows and giggling behind cupped hands over how cute Sean looked (with Mrs. McDermott loyally adding that Lily looked quite nice, too, which her mother would ignore as a polite but blatant untruth) and wasn’t this a good idea to insist their kids take dancing lessons, such an invaluable tool for later on in life. Cripes.
Hadn’t they figured out yet that she and Sean couldn’t stand each other? Had hated each other forever? Lily wouldn’t be surprised if they’d exchanged squinty-eyed glares from their strollers.
And here she was, dancing with the enemy. Lily scowled, noting how Sean’s dark hair was brushed neatly, perfectly, his part straight as an arrow. Even his curls were neat. She knew that when people looked at them together, they shook their heads in pity. Next to cute, perfect Sean McDermott, Lily resembled an ugly stork. Unlike ducklings, storks stayed ugly. The angry frustration, which seemed permanently lodged at the core of Lily’s being, welled, rising to the surface.
If Sean stomped on her foot one more time, she’d make him really sorry.
Pushed up against the walls of the gymnasium, where the social dancing lessons took place Tuesdays and Thursdays for eight consecutive weeks, was a single line of gun gray, metallic folding chairs. Everyone who wasn’t out on the gym floor was supposed to be sitting properly, knees together, back straight, the girls’ white cotton–gloved hands folded primly in their laps.
That’s what they were supposed to be doing, but this year’s batch of sixth graders was the unruliest yet. Such was the considered opinion of the dancing teacher, Miss Clarissa Dudley, who’d been teaching Coral Beach’s youngsters the ins and outs of the box-step for the past twenty-five years. Today’s class wasn’t even half over, and, already, Clarissa longed to be back home in her pink, air-conditioned cottage with the bedroom’s lights dimmed, a cool cloth placed over her throbbing temples.
An outraged scream erupted, shattering the strains of Frank Sinatra’s “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” Clarissa’s permed head swiveled back and forth along the line of folding chairs, searching out the offender. The guilty party, however, wasn’t to be found in the seated group, squirming with boredom though it was. The disruption came from the far end of the dance floor.
Dear Heaven!
It was Lily Banyon and Sean McDermott, practically duking it out.
Her pumps clacked urgently as she scurried across the heavily shellacked floor. But Clarissa Dudley’s legs were made to cha-cha, not to run the twenty-yard dash. By the time she reached them, Sean’s and Lily’s mothers were already separating the two brawlers.
“Lily, Lily, would you please stop making a spectacle of yourself!” Her mother’s voice echoed shrilly. “Why can’t you ever behave like a young lady? And for Pete’s sake, put your shoulders back. You’re all hunched over!”
At Kaye Harrison’s words, the gym fell as silent as a tomb. Even Frank Sinatra stopped his warbling. All of Coral Beach’s sixth grade stared, riveted with morbid fascination while Lily’s mother continued scolding her daughter.
Everyone except Sean. He dropped his head, suddenly engrossed in studying the faint scuff marks on his brown suede Hush Puppies. He didn’t want to gawk as Lily’s face went beet red with humiliation. He didn’t want to see her lips quiver or her shoulders shake with suppressed tears.
Kaye Harrison’s blistering tirade continued, echoing throughout the gym, and Sean’s guts twisted in shame. It was one thing for him to detest Lily, quite another to witness her own mother lashing out at her—in public, too. It was moments such as this, when Kaye let fly her painful barbs, that Sean felt almost sorry for Lily. Perhaps, just perhaps, she didn’t deserve everything she got.
It was a mystery why Kaye constantly harped at Lily. Perhaps Kaye couldn’t help herself, sort of like picking at a mosquito bite until it oozed blood. Most of the time, Sean liked Kaye. Who, besides Lily, wouldn’t? Kaye was a fairy princess,
I Dream of Jeannie,
and Miss America all rolled into one. Kaye was sunshine and smiles—until her eyes lit on Lily.
Things would be much easier if everyone—Kaye especially—accepted the simple truth: Lily was an alien. It wasn’t fair to blame her for something she couldn’t help, a cosmic goof-up. If Sean realized that, so should her mom. Yet Kaye acted as though it was entirely Lily’s fault that she wasn’t pretty and cute, like her.
Fat chance of that. Forget graceful, too. Sean knew from personal experience that Lily didn’t have a coordinated bone in her body. Dancing with her was like dancing with a deranged and very angry polar bear.
Though it killed Sean to admit it, what Lily did have was brains. Not that brainpower did her any good at home. Kaye Harrison went ballistic each time she got a whiff of one of Lily’s science experiments wafting up from the basement. Never once had Sean heard Kaye brag about the straight A’s her daughter pulled off; she seemed to think it no big deal that Lily had been placed in accelerated math, and was currently whizzing through freshman algebra.
But it was a big deal. Lily was so smart, there were times when Sean wondered if his own brain were made of lead. But that thought, along with any trace of empathy for Lily’s unhappy home life, vanished in a blinding flash of pain.
Wrenching free of her mother’s restraining grip, Lily had landed a swift, wickedly hard kick to his shinbone.
While Kaye shrieked, Sean clutched his throbbing shin, hopping like a drunken cricket. Lily’s face bobbed before him. It was lit by a smile of fierce satisfaction. Teeth gritted, Sean vowed that someday, someday soon, he’d get even with Lily Banyon.
