Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(35)

He shrugged. “I like you, Libby. You’re not like most women I fly into the sea.”

“Har, har,” I said, though the fourteen-year-old in me was thinking, Oh. My. Gosh. He said he likes me!

“Will you let me make it up to you? I want to show you something pretty amazing.”

“Let me guess: in your pants.”

He laughed. “Whoa, there, lady. I don’t know what kind of little boys you’ve been spending time with, but I’m not trying to trick you into doing anything smutty.”

Really? This was disappointing. At the same time, our last outing had not gone well. As I tried to come up with a reason to say no, I found myself staring at his forearms. Which were strong, and led to an equally strong pair of hands, which looked alluringly nimble. Even if he did have some kind of savior complex, I decided it was worth it to give him another chance.

“Okay,” I agreed. “What should I wear?”

“What you have on now is perfect.”

“You are a pervert!” I said, pulling my towel around me. I was kidding, but also aware that the only thing between him and my jiggly bits was a thin layer of fabric.

“We’re going boating. Although you should bring a T-shirt and shorts, too.” Intriguing.

“What time?”

“Um . . . let’s say six thirty. Looking forward to it.” He stood and brushed off his shorts, then began walking back toward the road.

“Hey,” I called after him.

He spun around. “What’s up?”

“I don’t even know your last name.”

He wore a mischievous grin. “So you don’t. It’s Velasquez.”

“All right, Shiloh Velasquez,” I said. “See you tonight.”



Several hours later, we were driving through a series of back roads. Neither of us spoke, but the silence wasn’t as awkward as before.

“Here we are,” he said as we pulled into a sandy lot where a few other cars were parked.

As I got out of the Jeep, I spotted some plastic kayaks propped outside a shed. Just past the shed was a row of bushes and trees, which parted in the center, revealing water not two hundred feet ahead.

“Are we going kayaking?” I asked. “Because I’m not very sporty.”

“Good, because I’m not either. The only thing I’m actually good at is flying.”

“Debatable,” I grinned.

“Your point,” he said, smiling back.

It was getting dark, and Shiloh held up a can of bug repellent and nodded toward the water. “It’s no accident that they call this place Mosquito Bay. Let me spray you.” He looked me up and down. “You’re probably going to want to take off your shirt and shorts.”

I blushed, grateful that it was nearly dark out. “Okay,” I said, and stripped down to my tankini. Goosebumps surfaced as he coated my arms and legs with the chemically cooled mist.

“Will you?” he asked, handing me the can. Then he took off his shirt, at which point my entire body began to blush. There is something extremely intimate about a man removing half his clothes, standing with his lean, tan body outstretched, and waiting for you to do something to him. Even if that something is spraying him down with an industrial-strength pesticide.

“Thanks,” he said, oblivious to the drool pooling in my mouth.

I swallowed and attempted to sound blasé. “Not a problem.”

We walked to the shed, where he handed me a red kayak and took a yellow one for himself. Then he grabbed an oar and a life jacket for each of us.

“We can just take these?”

“Yeah, the guy who runs this outfit is a buddy of mine. He’s already got a group out there, and he knows we’re coming.”

We dragged the small boats down a path to a murky-looking pond resembling the small lake my family used to vacation at. “What is this place?” I asked him.

“It’s a bay connected to the sea, but it has an entirely different ecosystem from any other body of water on the island. Than in the world, really. You’ll see,” he said as he pushed my kayak away from the shore.

This sounded vaguely ominous, but I decided to invoke old-school Libby. “Great!” I said cheerfully, and began to paddle.

The water was still and clear, and it was easy to navigate the small plastic boat. It was getting late, though; by the time we reached the center of the bay, the sun had disappeared, and the moon was barely a sliver in the sky. “Are we going to be able to find our way back?” I asked over my shoulder. That was when I realized the water around Shiloh’s kayak was sort of glowing. And—whoa—mine was, too. “What the . . . ?”

Shiloh laughed heartily. “I was wondering when you’d notice. It’s bioluminescence. The bay is filled with tiny organisms called dinoflagellates, and they glow when they’re disturbed. It works best with your body, though.” At once, I remembered what my father had told me about the bay, and how I thought he’d sounded mildly demented at the time.

“Want to get in?” he asked.

“Really?”

He nodded toward a group of kayakers on the other side of the bay, who were climbing out of their boats. “Although I can’t promise not to drown you, I promise I’ll try not to.”

I carefully lowered myself into the water. It was tepid but dense—thick, even—and my body bobbed in place with little help from the life jacket. Shiloh paddled over and tethered our kayaks together with a rope. Then he dropped out of his kayak and swam around to me, leaving a blue-green stream of bioluminescence behind him.