as she watched her mother laughing and smiling that fake, fake smile of hers as she treaded water and chatted with Mr. Bannister. And there was her father, floating on his back and looking so very unconcerned and happy with himself, but Charlie knew that men who did what he did deserved to go to hell …
“I want them gone,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
Suddenly, the dark shape surged up under her father. He had just enough time to let out a shriek before it dragged him under and tore him apart, staining the water with his blood.
Her mother screamed.
“Oh Jesus, get in the boat, get in the boat!” Mr. Bannister yelled frantically to his kids.
Her mother, who’d always been a strong, graceful swimmer, had already reached the ladder and was almost clear of the water when the thing grabbed her leg. It yanked her down so hard that Charlie heard her bones snap. Then came another furious churning under the waves. The water bloomed red.
Then silence.
Mr. Bannister, who’d stopped when he saw her mother snatched from the ladder, was treading water with his boys a few yards away. The children were crying, and Mr. Bannister’s face was gray.
Finally, when it was clear the thing had gone, Mr. Bannister towed his kids to the boat and boosted them onto the ladder. After they’d scrambled up to the deck, he hauled himself up with shaking arms.
Charlie was still staring at the fading bloom of blood, numb with shock. What had she done?
Mr. Bannister put his arm around her and gently pulled her away from the railing.
“Oh, please don’t look, you shouldn’t see that,” he said. “Jesus. It musta been a shark. I had no idea they’d be out this time of year. God, I’m so sorry … you poor kid, nobody should have to see something like that.”
She wasn’t sorry, but she was terribly afraid.
The Coast Guard never found any trace of her parents’ bodies, nor did they manage to catch any sharks. After the memorial service, Charlie left Florida and went to live with her aunt’s family in Cuchillo, Texas. It was hot and dry and far, far away from the ocean.
Her mother’s sister, Lois Wilson, was a real estate agent, a tall blond woman in her early forties who’d married the local tennis pro right out of college. They had two teenage girls, Misty and Jennifer, who were just as tall and pretty as their mother, and like their father they had dazzling smiles, good tans, and killer overhead volleys.
Charlie, like her father, had bark-brown hair, freckles, and a pug nose. And, as her mother had often told her, she was fat. She’d taken a lot of teasing back in elementary school, so she knew deep down that she was worthless and ugly, but moving into the Wilsons’ big limestone house just drove it home.
Summer came and school let out, and Misty and Jennifer went off to sports camps. Mrs. Wilson deemed Charlie too young to be left at home alone. So she was sent along with Mr. Wilson every morning as he went to work at the Swim & Racquet Club at the edge of the city.
They’d arrive early, before the club opened. Mr. Wilson would go off to check the courts and open the pro shop. Charlie would be able to swim by herself for an hour or so, when the whole pool was her private blue ocean. She’d pretend she was crossing the English Channel, or she’d throw pebbles in the deep end and pretend she was diving for pearls. Sometimes she wondered about what had really happened at St. Augustine. The voice couldn’t have been real. Could it?
But when the club opened and people started trickling in, her paradise rapidly turned into purgatory. By noon the pool was clogged with screaming kids; the poolside became a maze of greased adult bodies basking in the sun. Even worse, her breasts were growing, perpetually sore little lumps that made her feel even more self-conscious. At school, she was covered, camouflaged. Here her every flaw lay blazing in the sun.
One boy, a big red-haired thirteen-year-old named Jason, delighted in harassing her. At first, it was just the usual taunts about her weight. Then his tactics changed alarmingly.
It started when she was near the four-foot mark in the pool, mutely watching a group of seven-year-olds play Marco Polo, when Jason grabbed her butt. She whirled around, a protest on her lips that died when she saw he’d pulled down