Surrounded by Sharks (2 page)

Davey made it past the hotel’s front desk — really a chest-high counter — without any trouble. Admittedly, there was no one there, so the only trouble would’ve been if he’d run into it. He didn’t. He read the small
RING FOR SERVICE!
sign and he didn’t do that, either. Then he pushed through the front door and stepped out into a truly gorgeous morning.

He could hardly believe it. In front of him, just past the hotel grounds, was a beach and then the ocean. The blue of the sky and the blue of the water met at the horizon. It was like another world, a fantasy realm.

He hadn’t really seen the beach the day before. The coolest thing he’d seen then was the Cincinnati airport, where he’d been able to watch a few jets take off. It was too late to see much by the time they’d gotten to Florida. The taxi driver in Key West told them the sunset had been really great — and that they’d just missed it. The guy who piloted the little boat over to this island said the same thing. The boat ride was kind of cool, but there wasn’t much to see in the dark. Davey’s main impression of Florida so far had been of a nice thing he’d just missed.

He saw it all now, though. First up, a palm tree. Until that moment, palm trees had been one of those famous things he’d seen on TV but not in person. Palm trees, polar bears, riots … He stood there looking at it for a few seconds. It was just like on
Hawaii Five-0
. So far, he’d made it exactly four feet from the hotel.

He looked to the sides: more palms trees and a sandy walking path in both directions. He listened closely and could just hear the little waves curling and falling and retreating at the ocean’s edge. He turned around and saw the sign on the front of the hotel. Swooping blue letters on a white background spelled out
ASZURE ISLAND INN
.
Two points off for spelling
, he thought, though he knew it was the same way on the map.

He picked a direction — left, just to be different — and started walking. It took him a few steps to register the temperature. Normally, he’d step out a door and right away his body would tell him that it was too hot or too cold. It was a lot of both back in Ohio. But this time, his body had no complaints. It was warm but not too hot. The light breeze was refreshing but not too cool. Davey knew it would probably heat up as the day went on, but he figured that would just make the breeze feel nicer.

So, yes, he was impressed. But then he spotted the flaw in the plan after a few more steps: There was nothing to do on this island. Still in front of the hotel, he could already see the end of it. Not the end of the hotel; the end of the island. It was that small. He looked at the hotel again, just now realizing that it was the only one on the island. This was a one-horse town, and the hotel was that horse.

Wow
, he thought,
Mom wasn’t kidding
. The first time she’d told them about this trip, she’d described it as a “remote island retreat.” Brando had groaned. Two of those words basically mean the same thing as
boring
. After that, she’d started calling it a “family retreat” to “recharge.” You weren’t allowed to groan at a “family” anything, and who didn’t like to get charged? Anyway, it hadn’t been up for a vote. They’d already purchased the tickets — some great deal online.

Davey kept walking, and then he saw something. It was some kind of stand, just off the path.
Hey now
, he thought. It was closed, but then it wasn’t even seven in the morning. With the wooden shutters locked, it was impossible to tell what it sold, but it had to sell something. He squinted into the distance and saw another one.
Maybe there are some the other way, too
, he thought.

Davey didn’t need much. At home, he spent most of his time in his room, and a lot of that reading. And he had his favorite books with him. His parents could recharge, and he could reread. A few weeks earlier he’d overheard his mom calling him “kind of monkish,” but he didn’t think she meant it entirely in a bad way. They had monks in their family, actual Tibetan monks. His parents’ business sold arts and crafts from Tibet. Though if you wanted to know what most of the arguments were about, they didn’t sell nearly as many as they used to.

It didn’t take Davey long to reach the second stand. This one had metal shutters that were closed tight with big padlocks. There was a sign on top:
ASZURE ISLAND BAR
. Davey considered it. He’d been hoping for a place that sold comic books, or even regular ones. He knew that Ernest Hemingway used to live on Key West. He could see Key West from here, a fuzzy lump on the water. Davey hadn’t read any of Hemingway’s books yet, but he knew he wrote about bullfights and wars and other potentially interesting things. He flexed his left hand and felt the familiar weight of
The Silmarillion
.

A bar was okay, he decided. They’d have pretzels and potato chips and probably a few different kinds of soda. Plus, it would be fun to tell his parents, “Back in a minute, just going to the bar!”

Davey smiled for the first time in days. And then he heard something: voices, headed his way. He was at the far end of the island, where it came to a tip before bending back toward the other side of the hotel. That’s where the voices were coming from. He’d had the whole island to himself until now, but not anymore. The voices were getting louder. Not wanting to go toward them, he looked around for an alternative.

Drew Dobkin wanted the world to know that she was being held here against her will. She’d wanted to go to Madrid or Miami or Mykonos. It didn’t have to begin with an
M
; those were just examples. But it should have been somewhere with excitement and music and boys with tans to look at. She was fourteen now and needed to go on holiday somewhere appropriate. Well, she’d be fourteen in two months, but she was always one to round up.

But had she been asked? She had not! Her parents had simply found some great deal online and packed her up like so much luggage and shipped her here straight from England. Now they were stumbling around some little walking path with only a vague idea of what time it was. She checked her phone. No service, of course, but it worked as a watch. It was 12:28 in the afternoon back in Knutsford, and apparently 7:28 in the morning here. And what was this, anyway, a deserted island? Like the ones in the cartoons? They hadn’t seen a single person since they’d left the hotel. And come to think of it, they hadn’t seen anyone there, either.

“Lovely, though, isn’t it?” said her mom, Kate.

Her dad, a man universally known as Big Tony, grunted in agreement. And then she got the distinct, annoying impression that they were waiting for her opinion on the matter. She flicked her eyes around a bit. She supposed it was quite pretty, in a boring sort of way. Instead of admitting it, she asked, “Can we go to Key West today?”

Her best friend, Becca, had told her that Key West was where the party was at. Her exact words: “Key West, that’s where the party’s at.” Drew didn’t need a full-on party, just some excitement and a bit of fun. Wasn’t that what holidays were for? It made no sense to her to leave England to rest — England was already the sleepiest place on earth!

“Now hold on, then,” said Big Tony, his first words of the day. “We just got here last night!”

“It speaks!” said her mom, acting astonished.

And then there they went, joking around and talking about anything other than Key West. Drew let them have their fun. She’d spotted something interesting up ahead. It was a little … what did you call it? A pier, or was it too small for that? A dock, maybe?

“Here’s the boat place,” she said. She pointed out over the water, a little farther up the path. There was a single boat tied up alongside.

“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
.