Lindsay pulled the earbuds loose, wrapped them around her iPod, and dropped the player on the seat. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the door, staring at the front of the supermarket. Come on, Dad, she thought, watching the glass doors slide open and closed for shoppers. Hurry up.
She felt certain her mood would improve when they reached the house. The SUV and the storm felt so confining. She would have gone into the store with her parents, except her mom would have constantly asked her opinion about food and junk to make Lindsay feel involved, and she just wasn’t in the mood. The house would be better. She could charge up her phone and Treo and reconnect with Kate so her friend didn’t have an attack over the party. And bonus, her uncle Lou was out of town. That was such a relief. Lou wasn’t a total freak, but he came close. He was loud and annoying and told the worst knock-knock jokes ever. Her dad said he was in Arkansas, fishing with friends, which meant she’d get the guest room, and her parents would take his. At least she’d have some privacy.
But what was she supposed to do for ten days? She couldn’t hang with her parents the whole time, though she imagined that was her dad’s plan.
“You might meet a nice boy on the beach,” her mom had said before they left on the trip.
Yeah right, Lindsay thought. Redlands Beach is probably crawling with gap-toothed Cletuses. Likely they swim in cutoff jeans and show off their hairy backs. Gross.
She smiled and shook her head, but she did find a ray of hope way in the back of her thoughts. Maybe she would meet a boy. It could happen. People from all over went to the beach in the summer.
The glass doors of the store opened. Lindsay squinted through the storm and saw a fat guy in overalls hauling two bags of groceries into the downpour. Sadly, that was the kind of guy who’d probably be prowling the beach, his round belly rolling over the top of his swim trunks. Or worse, what if he was feeling saucy and decided to wear a thong?
Lindsay groaned and laughed, imagining that very thing. “So sick,” she whispered to the empty car.
Though totally unlikely, some hot guy’s parents might have kidnapped him, too. That would be cool. They’d meet on the beach. He’d have blond hair and aquamarine swimming trunks, like the kind she saw that OC stud wearing in last night’s rerun. His name would be something totally cool, like Jaimie or Josh, and he’d be eighteen and headed off to college after summer. Every afternoon they’d meet on the beach and then hit town for coffee and stuff.
As she thought this, the doors of the market slid open again. Two men stood in the opening, side by side. One was tall and slender, the other short and round. The rain blurred their faces, so Lindsay only got a vague impression of what they looked like. Both wore slick black parkas against the rain. The round one held a sack of groceries. The thin one opened an umbrella, then handed it to the round man. The thin man opened a second umbrella that he raised over his head, and the two men stepped into the storm.
They walked slowly, seeming to match each other’s steps perfectly in a creepy kind of dance. The mushroom parts of the umbrellas floated over their heads, gliding smoothly through the battering rain and wind. Lindsay squinted harder and slid across the seat to get a better look at these strange men. A chill ran down her back, and her hands trembled.
When the men reached the front of her parents’ SUV, the tall one looked through the wind-shield at her. His head turned slowly, though his shoulders didn’t move. He didn’t stop walking, didn’t even pause. He kept looking at her, though. His narrow face was blank and motionless, his eyes black with shadows. And his head kept turning, as if it wasn’t attached to the rest of him.
Lindsay’s stomach knotted with fear. The guy was creeping her out bad. She checked the doors and made sure they were locked; then she curled her legs up tight to her chest and held them with her arms. She looked down at the screen of her iPod and stared at the letters without reading them. Anything to distract herself from the curious freaks with umbrellas. She counted to ten, feeling certain that at any moment she’d hear the sound of the door handle click and crack as the two men in black tried to break into the car.
On the number nine, with her heart beating so hard she thought it would burst through her chest, a loud rapping startled her, and she yelped. Her head whipped up, away from the iPod screen, and she saw her dad’s face, dripping wet, pressed up against the glass. He was pointing at the door lock and shouting “Hurry up.”
Lindsay sprang forward to disengage the lock. Behind her dad, she saw the two men in black drifting deeper into the storm.
2
As they drove south on the narrow coastal road, Lindsay was thrilled to see all of the new construction going up near town. Then she was disappointed when they neared her uncle’s house, because this stretch hardly seemed to have changed at all. Every tenth house was fantastic—all glass and new paint—which only served to point out the lameness of the older properties.
Of course, the weather didn’t help. It was so dreary. Still, she kept hoping, unreasonably that in the years since she’d last visited the beach it had gone from zero to hero on the resort scale. Then, just before turning into her uncle’s drive, she saw the sign for the Redlands Mobile Home Park, and her spirits sank a little lower.
Lightning cracked as Lindsay followed her parents into Uncle Lou’s house. The rain sounded like a million tiny footsteps on the roof.
“It’s supposed to clear up tomorrow,” her dad said. He carried her bags upstairs, while her mom stayed in the kitchen to unload the groceries.
Uncle Lou’s house hadn’t changed in five years. His green sofa still faced the fireplace in the den, and the square wooden coffee table sat in front of it. He still had all of the old paintings of dogs and hunters on the walls. At least he’d discovered the magic of Febreze, so the room didn’t smell as bad as she remembered. Lindsay went to the window and looked toward the beach. Angry surf, with caps of froth, cut a line through the otherwise gray scene. The beach looked messy with tons of drift-wood and litter poking out of the sand.
Glad I brought sandals. I’d cut my toes to shreds on that stuff.
Once she heard her dad’s heavy feet on the stairs, Lindsay turned away from the view. She needed to recharge her Treo, cell phone, and iPod, and get her laptop set up.
Her dad met her at the bottom of the stairs and said, “You’re all set. First door on the right. Why don’t you get unpacked and then come down to help your mom fix dinner?”
“I have to call Kate first,” Lindsay said, walking up the stairs. “Tell Mom I’ll do the salad.”
The room wasn’t awful. The bed was huge, with a fluffy down quilt hugging the top of the mattress. A small chest of drawers, hardly large enough for the clothes she brought, stood by the closet. There was a cool window seat with a thick green cushion on the far side of the bed. She imagined that was where she’d spend a lot of the next ten days, drinking coffee and looking out at the ocean or at the screen of her laptop. That would work. She could picture herself there, like one of those models in a coffee commercial, looking all cool and content while gripping a steaming mug of bean and gazing out into the world.
There was even an electrical outlet built into the wall under the window seat, so she could keep her laptop plugged in. Nice.