Waveborn

4

Energy drained out of her, leaving her feeling like a marionette with her strings cut. "Go away," Cass said again. Then, with what little dignity she could muster, she retreated below deck.

#

"Cass?"

She sat up so quickly that she banged her head on her cabin's low roof. Her heart hammered triple time, sweat soaked her shirt, and she could feel her hair sticking in tight coils to the sides of her face.

"Cass! Come out here!"

With a rush of relief, Cass recognized Jen's voice. She crawled out of bed, dodging the pile of wet clothes she'd left on the floor, and made her way to the deck, where the rain had settled into a gentler rhythm against the boat. Beyond, a million tiny pockmarks colored the water's surface silvery-gray. The air had cooled in the last hour or so, enough that Cass shivered when it touched her sweaty neck and back.

Jen moved back as she climbed through the hatch opening. "Did you have a nice morning?"

Just like Jen, Cass thought, not to notice that her hair was sticking every direction because she'd slept on it wet. She probably hadn't noticed the pile of wet clothes, either. Jen tended to be oblivious to things like that. Cass imagined herself explaining the morning's events-Joe's weird warning, Evie's story, Jason shoving her into the water-and settled for a shrug. Jen was already worried about coming back to this island; give her any more reasons to worry and she'd be unbearable.

"I heard you stopped by the Mercantile," Jen went on. Her tone held an implied question.

"Yeah," Cass said. "I picked up some groceries."

"You met Joe, then? Did you talk much with him?"

"Not really." Cass hugged herself against the air's chill, wondering where this conversation was going. "Why?"

Jen bent to straighten the tail of the rope that tied them to the dock, which was already wound into a neat coil. "I didn't realize he was still around until I stopped by the Mercantile to get the power switched on. He said you'd already taken care of it."

Cass thought again of Jason pushing her off the dock. Yeah, she'd taken care of it.

Then Jen's face brightened with that smile that made everyone love her, even if she did have a tendency to forget everything but whales and acoustics and her special fluid-filled microphones and monitoring systems. "I have a present for you."

Cass followed her pointing finger to the dock, where a patch of candy-apple red gleamed beside the nearest light post, so bright and cheerful that she wondered why she hadn't noticed it immediately. It was a cruising bike, the kind with tall handle bars, chrome fenders, and a body of curving red steel. She looked from it to Jen and back again before vaulting over the side of the Andiamo. "It's perfect. Fantastically, amazingly perfect!"

Jen pushed a strand of wet hair off her forehead. "I ordered it as soon as we decided to come. I figured you'd need it, since there are no cars on the island."

"No cars?" Cass's gaze traveled to the marina and the boat-filled lot beside it. She didn't see a single car or truck and didn't remember any from the gravel road beyond. "Seriously?"

"Rodger's Island isn't on the ferry route, so everything has to be brought over by private boat. You'll see a few four wheelers and dirt bikes around town, but when I was here last, most people walked or biked. I figured there would still be a bike at the Piper Center that I could use on days I don't need the whale boat." Jen jerked her chin toward shore, where a scuffed-looking mountain bike leaned against the fence. "But I thought you would need some kind of transportation, too."

There were lots of cool things about living most of her life on a sailboat. Cass could winch a jib with the best of them, read tide and current charts, and her weather sense was even better than Jen's. She'd been nosed by dolphins and orcas, swum with angel fish and sea turtles, and she could do pretty much whatever she wanted for school as long as she stayed on top of her online math class. But the flip side was that she missed a lot of stuff other kids took for granted: soccer games, birthday parties-the kind with other kids, not just Jen and a few field scientists-and, of course, learning to ride a bike.

Cass ran her fingers along the bike's gleaming curves. The paint was the bright red of a macaw's plumage, with white detailing and chrome handle bars. It had a bell, two baskets mounted behind the seat, even streamers dangling from the handlebars.

"Streamers?" she asked.

Jen's smile broadened. "I never got you a bike before. I wanted to do it right."

The bike's weight in her hands filled Cass with an aching mix of happiness and hope. It was the first thing she'd ever owned that belonged so completely to the land. It felt like a promise.

She grasped the handlebars more firmly and started wheeling it toward shore. "Let's give it a try."

Jen hesitated. "It's raining, Cass." She held up one hand, a sheepish expression on her face. "Besides, I don't have a helmet for you. And I need to go back to work. I spent all morning putting this bike together and I still need to make a run to check the sea monitors. They haven't had their recording chips replaced for a month and no one's cleaned the sensors since Peter's accident."

"I see." Cass's voice fell flat, but she did see. If any one of the monitors stopped working, the data collected by the entire assembly would be compromised. It just meant that she was on her own again.

It wouldn't usually bother her. In fact, she'd wanted time to explore the island-it was just that after the morning's events, she wasn't yet ready to strike out on her own again.

"Do you have plans for the afternoon?" Jen asked.

Cass shook her head. "Only schoolwork, which," she added, "I shouldn't have to do. This is North America. Remember summer vacation?"

Jen grimaced; it was an old argument. "We won't be here long enough for you to change your schedule, but you could take the afternoon off and come out on the boat with me."

"And do my schoolwork?" Cass asked. She held a hand out to the rain, which still beat a steady rhythm on the dock. "My papers will melt."

"No." Jen hesitated. "Just come with me. You can help me check monitors."

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A/N

Up to 36 reads already? So awesome! If you're liking the story, please let me know. If you're enjoying this, please come back next week to read more. And vote :). More to come next Tuesday.

Cheryl

PS-Good luck to everyone taking finals this week!!!!