The ruins were Mickey’s favorite forbidden spot. Technically, it was on the outer edge of the wildlife refuge, and it was known for its heavy surf and wicked dangerous rocks. Duncan always said only serious athletes should even try to swim near the ruins, but Clancy ignored him. His brother was now training for triathlons and distance swimming events and thought he was some hot-shit superhero or something.
Kids who had towels or sunglasses tossed them onto the dune before they got in the water. Clancy kicked off his sandals and followed close behind. He swam out toward Mickey and immediately started messing with him. “That blond girl is jailbait.”
“Yeah? Well, she told me she’s thirteen, asshole.” Mickey smacked him in the face with a decent amount of seawater.
“She’s bullshitting you.” Clancy returned the favor.
He let it slide, and swam away. He needed to clear his head. His parents were fighting about money again and he couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting somebody dressed like a mermaid, and he just wanted to hide until festival week was over. It had been a good three years since he actually had any fun during the Mermaid Festival. Now it was just work—his parents called it doing them favors . . . do stuff for his mom’s goofy group or to help his dad with city and festival duties. Help me real quick with the copying. Do the dishes for me—we’re having an emergency meeting. Give me a hand with the clambake setup, would you? And could you run down to the warehouse and get . . .
Clancy suddenly became aware that the current had carried him pretty far offshore while he wasn’t paying attention. It didn’t worry him—he’d been swimming in the Atlantic since before he was out of diapers, and knew exactly how to handle the situation. He began a leisurely, but steady, freestyle stroke parallel to the shore. Once he passed the rocks he knew he could make a direct turn toward land and encounter no resistance from the current.
He heard the kids shouting but didn’t pay much attention to them. Mickey was fun, but he could be loud and obnoxious sometimes and he just wore Clancy out. His mom had once commented that the three friends were like the Three Little Bears—Chip was too soft, Mickey too hard, and Clancy just right.
Yeah, well, all moms said shit like that about their own kids.
In a watery distortion of sound, he thought he heard his name being called. Clancy lifted his head and saw almost all the group standing on the beach waving their arms and yelling. Something was wrong. He stopped swimming.
“My sister!” The little jailbait girl was hysterical. “She’s caught in the riptide!”
Clancy saw the girl’s head bobbing along with the waves and knew she was on a collision course with the rocks. She’d get smacked around good if nobody helped her.
Ah, shit.
He resumed his freestyle but put on the afterburners. Clancy calculated in his head how many minutes he had before she’d start banging against the rocks. He’d seen kids get mangled up pretty bad by those things, and couldn’t even imagine that pretty face and body of hers covered with gashes and bruises.
Clancy made his cut toward shore. He started flying through the water, the screaming and yelling intensifying. Above all the voices and the roar of the water, he heard a girl’s solo plea.
“I’m in a little trouble over here!”
Clancy nearly laughed at how casual she sounded. She was pretty tough for a girl. Most girls he knew would be buggin’ out the way her little sister was. Clancy reached the girl with only inches to spare before she hit the boulders, immediately flipping her on her back, slipping his arm across her chest and gripping her side. He shoved off from one of the rocks and began a hard-core rescue sidestroke, hauling her skinny little ass out of the rip current. And while he did it, even though this was an actual emergency, he couldn’t help but think about how close his right hand was to her left boob. He considered “accidentally” slipping so he could get a feel, but he thought better of it. The first time he put his hand on a pretty girl’s breast, he wanted it to be because she invited him—or at least at a time when she could tell him to stop if she wanted. Would it be wrong to cop a feel during a crisis? He wasn’t even sure it would count.