Surrounded by Sharks Read online

  “That the one we took last night?” said her mom. They headed off the path and toward the worn wooden dock. The boat was painted white and had the hotel’s name on the back in blue, just above the blocky outboard motor.

  “Don’t think so,” said her dad.

  They crossed a little sliver of sand and stepped carefully onto the end of the dock. Drew expected it to shift and possibly sink, but it was sturdy enough. She looked down as she walked and could see the ocean sloshing underneath through the planks. She gave the weathered wood a closer look. “Pretty worn down, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Adds to the charm of the place, I’d imagine,” said her mom.

  “And the cost!” joked Big Tony.

  “This must be where they bring the people over,” said Kate, pointing to the side opposite the hotel launch. The wood seemed even more scratched up and worn out there, and there was a thick rope tied to the far post. It was just like the one securing the hotel boat, but this one was coiled up, waiting for the next arrival.

  “Nice work, detective,” said Big Tony.

  Kate smiled. Drew flicked her eyes to the side and saw Key West, hazy in the distance. Then she smiled, too.

  The family turned and headed back toward shore, with Drew last in line. At the end of the dock, they met someone. “Hello there, luv,” said Kate to the little boy. “Where are you off to?”

  The boy looked to be ten or eleven. He pointed out to sea, back toward Key West. Drew glanced at him. Technically, this was a boy with a tan, but definitely not what she’d meant.

  “Well, that will be quite an adventure for you!” continued her mom.

  The boy just nodded and took a seat on the edge of the dock.

  “Little pirate, that one,” said Big Tony as they resumed their trip along the walking path.

  Drew took one last look over her shoulder and saw the boy’s parents appear from the hotel grounds with their luggage. They must be waiting for the first boat to show, she thought. There must be a schedule somewhere.

  “Dad?” she said.

  “Yeah, luv?”

  “How much was the boat last night?”

  “One million pounds!” he said.

  Her mom gave him a swat.

  Her parents held hands and looked out at the water. Drew clasped her own hands together as a joke, but there was no one to appreciate her humor. She kicked at a seashell with her flip-flop. She was wearing a parentally approved combo of shorts and a light T-shirt. (“You can’t just go walking around in your bathing suit all day,” her mom had said. “You’re English!”) Even as early as it was here, she already felt the sun on her arms and legs. At least she’d get a tan. Those were hard to come by in Knutsford.

  She looked out to sea, too, but it all sort of seemed the same to her. She tried the island side, and there, sitting up against the trunk of a palm tree, was another boy. This one looked older, almost her age. He was somewhat tan, too, but she thought it might be the natural kind with him. He was in the shade and reading a book, after all.

  He raised his head as she passed, but looked down quickly when he saw her.

  Quiet as a church mouse, that one, she thought. He’ll be no fun at all.

  Her parents didn’t even notice him. They’d just spotted the bar.

  Davey stood up and brushed the sand from his butt. He was just going to have to move if there were going to be English people running all over the place. It was distracting. He’d heard enough to identify their accents and not much more. He had a pretty solid grasp of English accents from PBS.

  This family didn’t have the posh accents from Downton Abbey (his mom’s favorite show). They sounded more like some of the characters on Mystery! (his dad’s). And by some of the characters, he meant the criminals. And the guy who played Gimli the Dwarf in the Lord of the Rings movies. He didn’t think they were really criminals, the way the parents held hands and joked around. And they definitely weren’t dwarves.

  The problem — the distraction — was their daughter. At least he assumed it was their daughter. Whatever branch of the family tree she fell off of, her T-shirt was so light that he could see her bathing suit right through it. Or, wait … was that her bra?

  Yep, waaaaay too distracting. Their voices had faded away at this point, but he figured they’d be back. Or someone else would, probably wearing a tiny bikini or something else that would make it impossible for him to concentrate on reading his book. Plus, he was sitting, like, twenty yards from the bar stand. What if it opened up and he got drunk on the fumes? It seemed possible. He knew from science class that alcoholic solutions were prone to evaporation. He took a deep breath as he started walking back toward the pathway. The air did smell a little different. Was that the ocean or just a whole mess of rum? Man, he’d be in trouble then. Stumbling back into the hotel room completely blitzed on alcohol vapors.

  He’d be in trouble anyway. He’d realized that right around the time he’d fully woken up, just outside the hotel door. One of his parents was going to wake up and see that he wasn’t there. Then that one would wake up the other one so they could both have a mutual parental freak-out about it. He rehearsed possible excuses in his head:

  “I was just sooo excited to get started on our awesome vacation!”

  “I saw a beached whale from the window and went out to help.”

  “Brando was farting.”

  He didn’t think any of those would cut it, so to speak. He tried to think of others, but the best he could come up with was: “Where was I going to go? It’s a frickin’ island!”

  It was hopeless. He was thinking about that girl again. He wondered what her name was. Had they said it, in their criminal dwarfen accents? The only thing he remembered them calling her was “luv.” And if he called her that, he’d straight up get smacked.

  Luv … Now there’s something he didn’t hear in his family, not anymore. He picked at that thought for a bit until he saw the next family. They were sitting quietly on their luggage at the edge of a little dock, just off the walking path.

  “Out for a walk?” called a very tall man.

  Davey looked at him. The only thing louder than the man’s voice was his shirt. A Hawaiian shirt in Florida … Those were some weak geographical skills right there.

  “Yeah,” Davey called back. He tried to think of something else to say so he could walk away from them without seeming rude. “Waiting for a boat?”

  “Yeah,” called the man. “First one of the day. We’re not exactly sure when it’s supposed to get here, but we’ve got an early flight.”

  That hadn’t worked. Now he had to respond to that, too. He took another look at the little group. The lady was glancing over her shoulder and out to sea, as if mentioning the boat might’ve made it appear. There was a boy there, too, younger than Brando. The boy nodded at him, and Davey nodded back. He realized he still hadn’t responded.

  “Well, good luck with that!” he called. He gave a quick wave and started walking again before they could say anything else.

  Once he was a safe distance away, he looked back. There was a white boat tied to the end of the dock. He sort of wanted to check it out. He also wanted to walk to the end of the dock and look into the deeper water. He bet there’d be fish and stuff. But he couldn’t with all those people camped out at this end of it. What was it, rush hour all of a sudden? He kept walking, looking for a quiet spot to read his book.

  The pathway connected to another one leading to the back of the hotel. There was a pool, which made no sense to him. The whole place was surrounded by ocean. He kept going and was all the way at the other end of the little island when he found it. A little path split off from the main one. He followed it through a thick stand of scrubby bushes and salt-stunted trees and emerged onto the most beautiful little beach he’d ever seen. The most beautiful, and the most private. There was absolutely no one there, and looking back, he could no longer see the walkway or the hotel or really much of anything.

  In fact, the only
evidence that anyone had ever been there before was a large sign, nearly falling over in the sand. The paint was sun-blasted and peeling, but he could still make out most of the letters: NO SW MM NG.

  He played a quick game of Wheel of Fortune in his head, bought a vowel: No Swimming.

  Brando got up to go to the bathroom. He was so sleepy that he didn’t notice his brother was gone until he got back. For a few moments he just stood at the end of his bed looking at the empty cot. At first he thought that something exciting might’ve happened. Maybe his brother had been carried off by a gator or captured by drug smugglers. He’d watched enough TV to know that Florida had both.

  He walked over to the cot, knelt down, and looked underneath. Davey wasn’t camped out under there. He looked over at his own bed: comfortable and warm. He could just go back to sleep and forget about it, but now he was curious. He knew his older brother well — he’d lived with him his entire life — so he knew what to look for.

  He checked the floor on both sides of the cot, everywhere within an arm’s length or so. Sure enough, Davey’s glasses were gone. And where was that book he’d been carrying around all week, The Silma-something-or-other? He found Davey’s little stack of books and checked each one. It was gone, too.

  So he took his glasses and his book, thought Brando. Probably his key card for the room, too. That pretty much ruled out gator attack or kidnapping. Brando shrugged it off. That had been a long shot, anyway. So that meant …

  Davey had snuck out of the room. It didn’t surprise Brando that much. His brother was always wandering off to hang out by himself these days. He’d become so boring. But this was different. This wasn’t heading straight up to his room after dinner. He could get in major trouble for this.

  Brando reached down and felt the cot. The plan was for them to alternate nights on it. Their dad had called it an “army cot,” trying to spin it into something cool. Brando wasn’t fooled. He touched the metal frame and coarse canvas and could tell it would be seriously uncomfortable.

  A plan took shape. If Davey got in trouble, he should have to sleep on the cot all week. That was only fair, right? Brando could just quietly suggest it at some point. He liked the plan, but now he was all kinds of conflicted. He was many things, most of which he’d admit with pride: loud, moody, maybe a little devious around the edges. But he was not a rat. And he had a lot of opinions about his older brother, who never wanted to hang out with him anymore. But he didn’t hate him.

  He looked back at his parents. He knew his dad was still asleep because he could hear him snoring, so he only really had to check on his mom. She was motionless, balanced on the very edge of the bed. How did she sleep through that noise at point-blank range? For a second Brando wondered if he snored, too. Nah, he thought. Not me.

  He looked directly at them and thought, as hard as he could:

  WAKE UP.

  WAKE UP.

  YOUR SON HAS FLOWN THE COOP — WAKE UP!

  Nothing.

  Brando made a deal with himself: He wouldn’t intentionally wake them up. That would be the same as ratting on his brother. He’d just behave totally normally. If they happened to hear him and wake up before Davey got back, well, Davey had made his cot, and now he had to lie in it. All week.

  Brando went over to the little desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down. He spent some time reading the room service menu. He considered his breakfast options. Then he got up and walked over to the mini fridge on the other side of the room. It was fairly close to his dad’s head, but he wasn’t especially careful opening it.

  His dad didn’t seem to notice. Brando pushed through all of the expensive stuff the hotel was trying to sell: the five-dollar pack of M&M’s, the mixed nuts for seven fifty. He took out the half-full bottle of Coke he’d picked up in Key West and put in there last night. He undid the cap, but it was too flat to hiss or fizz or anything.

  He wasn’t supposed to have soda in the morning, but this was a no-lose situation for him. If his parents woke up right now, he wouldn’t be the one in trouble. He stood right next to their bed and took a long drink. Still nothing. He put the cap back on and put it back in the mini fridge. He closed the door kind of hard. Wouldn’t want to waste electricity.

  His dad shifted in the bed. He started to roll over, but his body seemed to remember that it had nowhere to go and stopped. It amounted to a shoulder fake, one way and then the other. He even stopped snoring for a moment. Brando held his breath, but his dad went right back to snoring. His mom hadn’t moved an inch.

  Brando walked back across the room. He sat on the edge of his bed. It really was comfortable. He lay back to consider his next move. A minute later, he was snoring, too.

  Davey was surprised how warm the water was. He was standing at the very edge of the breaking waves, up to his ankles. He’d kicked off his sneakers and walked right past the NO SW MM NG sign, which was fine because he wasn’t sw mm ng. He still had his glasses on, still had the book in his hand. He was just testing out the water for later.

  He figured he’d go in that afternoon — if he wasn’t hotel-grounded, anyway. That would be fine with him, too. That was Davey’s secret weapon. Most of the things his parents could do to punish him — send him to his room, revoke TV privileges — he did to himself anyway. If they really wanted to get to him, they could take his books away. That might work, but no parent ever did that. In parent logic, that would be like forbidding him from doing his homework.

  The little waves curled around his ankles, clean and clear and warm. They seemed almost friendly. It was like being licked by a giant kitten, he thought — except not as weird or creepy as that. He looked out over the water and could see all the way to the horizon. He felt like an explorer. There was nothing in between him and the edge of the world. He remembered the sight of Key West off in the distance from the other side of the island. He pictured the image of Aszure Island he’d seen on Google Maps. If Key West was east of here, then he was looking at the open ocean to the west now. Next stop: Mexico, a thousand miles away.

  A larger wave broke in front of him, sending water halfway up his shin. He reached down and ran his right hand through it as it rushed past, clutching his book to his chest with his left. It was like a bath, like stepping into a vast, gently rolling bath. The water tugged at his calves as it rushed back out to sea, and he stood up to steady himself.

  Maybe this week won’t be so bad, after all, he thought as he walked out of the water and back up the beach. If he stood right in the breakers the whole time, he’d hardly be able to hear his family. Or maybe if he just didn’t tell them about this little spot … He looked around the little beach. He had it to himself and could sit anywhere. He chose a spot at the edge of the trees, where he could be half in and half out of the sun.

  He sat down, opened his book to the page he’d dog-eared, and got started. He read for a while, but he wasn’t quite as lost in it as he had been the first two times he’d read it. He kept looking up at the sea. He watched the little waves build themselves up and fall over. He watched the foamy white breakers that had pushed and pulled playfully at his ankles.

  He decided to go in again, maybe just a little farther this time.

  He hadn’t put his sneakers back on, so he didn’t have to worry about them. Sand clung unevenly to his feet like threadbare socks. He took the key card and the eight dollars — a five and three ones, folded neatly — out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He looked around to make sure there were no witnesses and took his T-shirt off. He figured he’d go in up to his waist.

  He looked down at his little pile of stuff and then looked over at the mouth of the path. No one else had come through it so far, but it was just a couple dozen yards from the main walkway. Better safe than sorry. He bundled up all his stuff, sneakers included, and walked back to the line of trees. He found a bush that was a little greener and less patchy than the others and stashed his stuff underneath the far side. He got a nasty scratch on his arm from one of the sharp little
branches. It turned red with tiny pinpricks of blood as he walked across the sand. It didn’t bother him. He used to get a lot of cuts and scratches back when he and his brother used to roam around the neighborhood, climbing trees and crashing through bushes. When he turned around, he couldn’t see his stuff at all. He was satisfied, except …

  He reached up and took off his glasses. Just in case. He’d only had them for a year. He’d gotten them when he’d started having trouble seeing what his teachers were writing on the board. He jogged over and put them under the bush as well, careful not to scratch himself this time. He kicked the sand around as he walked back so there wouldn’t be an obvious line of footprints heading right toward his eight bucks. He stopped after a while. The sand was too fine to hold a shape for long.

  He passed that sign again. Relax, little sign, he thought. Don’t lose any more letters worrying about me. I’m just going to wade around for a few minutes. The sign was probably just there because there was no lifeguard on duty or something dumb like that anyway.

  He marched right into the water this time. He didn’t even pause at the line of breakers. It was so great because he didn’t have to hold his breath for that first shock of cold, the way he did at the lake back home. He didn’t have to go slowly, waiting for his body to adjust. He just strode forward like a hero heading into battle.

  He braced himself for the force of the first wave. It hit him at the knees and splashed up the front of his trunks. The waves were bigger now. The tide was coming in.

  Drew was on the roof of the hotel. She’d found the sun deck. It was still too early for proper sunbathing, she supposed, but it was a nice opportunity to give her parents the slip. They were in the lobby waiting — dead serious — for the gift shop to open. As if they didn’t have all week. Plus, she could give her bikini a test run before they all headed to the beach later.