Float

Original Edition: Chapter Twenty-Five

On the morning of the Fletchers' barbecue—which should have been a day of celebration because, c'mon, free food—I woke up at the ungodly hour of four fifty-five. It was dark. It was cold. For a solid eight and a half seconds, I thought I might actually rather die than get out of bed.

"Fucking morning people," I grumbled at my ceiling.

I tossed my duvet aside and got to my feet, very much alive and very much unhappy to be up and at 'em. With all the stealth and finesse of a newborn elephant, I nudged the bedroom door open (it creaked) and tiptoed out into the hallway (where the floorboards also creaked, because of course).

In a rare stroke of luck, Aunt Rachel's door was closed. I slipped past it and down the stairs, my arms braced out in front of me as I felt my way through the pitch-black living room.

The kitchen was dark, too, but luckily the windows that looked out towards the ocean let in a bit of dim blue light. I snatched the home phone off the charging dock on the counter and plopped down on the tile floor, folding my legs and looking up to the display of the microwave. Four fifty-nine. Perfect.

I braced my thumb over the talk button.

In the same instant that the clock on the microwave clicked to five o'clock, the handset in my lap lit up and the opening bar of the ringtone played (Rachel had customized her home phones to play an instrumental, xylophone-heavy rendition of Snoop Dogg's 2004 hit single "Drop It Like It's Hot"). I hit talk before the xylophone could start up and pressed the phone to my ear.

"Hi," I grunted.

Blake Hamilton's laugh carried through the speaker.

"Goooooood morning Holden!" he greeted, with the smarmy affectation of an anchor from one of northern Florida's lower-budget news stations. "Today is Saturday, August 4th. The weather looks like—well, actually, it looks like total shit. Tropical Storm Donald is here. It'll probably rain. Now, for a special report on the Fletcher family barbeque, we're going to turn to Waverly Lyons, who has just woken up. Lyons?"

I smacked my lips together.

"My mouth tastes like expired yogurt."

Blake hummed thoughtfully.

"Yeah. Lyons, that might be one of the top five most revolting things I've ever heard."

I snorted and rolled my eyes.

"I can't believe I woke up for this," I said.

Alright, so five o'clock in the morning was an ungodly hour. But Blake was technically grounded until New Year's—which seemed fair enough, given that he kept sneaking out of the house—and Chloe had made him take up a two-week part-time job at the Marlin Bay Hospital teaching CPR, in addition to his lifeguarding at the beaches and job at the Holden Public Pool, to give him a better sense of responsibility or something. So I only got to see him when he was on duty at a beach.

One afternoon, after Blake had asked me when I'd be free the next day, I'd made a sardonic comment about being able to pencil him in from five to six o'clock in the morning.

Blake took me seriously.

And I, being the sucker I was, agreed.

There were few things I'd get out of bed for so early.

Blake was one of those things.

"You know," he huffed, "we wouldn't even have this problem if you had a cell phone. Like any other person living in this decade. Then I wouldn't have to wait until five in the morning to tell you about all the shit that happened the day before. I could just text you, like a civilized person. And send you memes. Do you know how hard it is to describe a meme, Waverly?"