its icy depths. For your own protection. Steven must have meant your in its plural form. As in, it's for all the students' protection. Otherwise, if he only meant Luce ...
"Dawn's okay," she said. "That's all that matters."
"Um, yeah, because of you, Baywatch."
"Do not start calling me Baywatch."
"You prefer to think of yourself as a jack-of-all-trades kind of savior?" Shelby had the most deadpan way of teasing. "Frankie says some mystery creep's been lurking around the school grounds the past two nights. You should give him what for--"
"What?" Luce almost spat out her chai. "Who is it?"
"I repeat: Mystery creep. They dunno." Shelby took a seat on a weathered at of limestone, skipping a few stones expertly into the ocean. "Just some dude. I overheard Frankie talking to Kramer about it on the boat yesterday after all the hoopla."
Luce sat down next to Shelby and began to root around in the sand for stones.
Someone was sneaking around Shoreline. What if it was Daniel?
It would be just like him. So stubborn about keeping his own promise not to see her, but unable to stay away. The thought of him made her yearn for him that much more. She could feel herself almost on the brink of tears, which was crazy. Odds were the mystery creep wasn't even Daniel. It could be Cam. It could be anyone. It could be an Outcast.
"Did Francesca seem worried?" she asked Shelby.
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Wait a minute. Is that why you didn't sneak out last night?" It was the rst night Luce hadn't been woken up by Shelby coming in through the window.
"No." Shelby's skipping arm was toned from all her yoga. Her next stone skipped six times in a wide arc, coming almost all the way back to them, like a boomerang.
"Where do you go every night, anyway?"
Shelby stu ed her hands in the pockets of her pu y red ski vest. She was staring at the gray waves so intensely that it was clear she'd either seen something out there--or she was avoiding the question. Luce followed her gaze, almost relieved to see nothing in the water but gray-and-white waves all the way to the horizon.
"Shelby."
"What? I don't go anywhere."
Luce started to stand up, annoyed that Shelby felt she couldn't tell her anything. Luce was brushing damp sand from the backs of her legs when Shelby's hand tugged her back down onto the rock.
"Okay, I used to go see my sorry-ass boyfriend." Shelby sighed heavily, pitching a rock artlessly into the water, nearly pelting a fat seagull swooping down for a sh. "Before he became my sorry-ass ex-boyfriend."
"Oh. Shel, I'm sorry." Luce chewed on her lip. "I didn't even know you had a boyfriend."
"I had to start keeping him at arm's length. He got way too into the fact that I had a new roommate. Kept bugging me to let him come over late at night. Wanted to meet you. I don't know what kind of girl he thinks I am. No o ense, but three's a crowd in my book."
"Who is he?" Luce asked. "Does he go here?"
"Phillip Aves. He's a senior in the main school."
Luce didn't think she knew him.
"That pale kid with the bleached-blond hair?" Shelby said. "Kind of looks like an albino David Bowie? You can't really miss him." Her mouth twitched. "Unfortunately."
"Why didn't you tell me you broke up?"
"I prefer downloading Vampire Weekend songs that I lip-sync to when you're not around. Better for my chakras. Besides"--she pointed a stubby
nger at Luce--"you're the one being all moody and weird today. Daniel treating you wrong or something?"
Luce leaned back on her elbows. "That would require us actually seeing each other, which apparently we aren't allowed to do."
If Luce closed her eyes, she could let the sound of the waves take her back to the very rst night she'd kissed Daniel. In this lifetime. The humid tangle of their bodies on that languishing Savannah boardwalk. The hungry pressure of his hands pulling her in. Everything seemed possible then. She opened her eyes. She was so far away from all of that now. She opened her eyes. She was so far away from all of that now.
"So your sorry-ass ex-boyfriend--"
"No." Shelby made a zip-it motion with her ngers. "I don't want to talk about SAEB any more than I guess you want to talk about Daniel. Next."
That was fair. But it wasn't exactly that Luce didn't want to talk about Daniel. It was more like, if she started talking about Daniel, she might