Moonglass

CHAPTER 1
    Rain and wind pelted the ocean’s surface so hard it looked like it was boiling. In the passenger seat of our VW bus, I shivered despite the warm, muggy air. My dad jumped into the driver’s seat and shook the rain off.
    “Weird summer storm, huh?” Water dripped from his face as he tried to catch my eye.
    I looked away.
    “You ready? Sure you’ve got everything?”
    “Yep. Got it all.” I paused, staring straight out the windshield. “Oh, wait—except for my friends, my school, my life …”
    “Anna—”
    “I know. I’m gonna love it there. It’ll be just great .”
    He started to say something but shook his head instead, cranked the key, and turned the music up to a volume that made it clear we were finished talking. I felt a pang of regret for being like that with him, but kept my eyes on the beach that he’d decided, without even asking me, to leave. The beach where I’d found a simple peace on my morning runs, and trolled for boys with my friends on lazy summer afternoons, and where I’d caught my last waves of the day, just as the sun slipped into the ocean. It was where my life was.
    And where my mother had left hers.
    I couldn’t understand it any more than I could put it into words, but tangled up with my anger at my dad over moving was a sense of guilt that ran deep in me. The stretch of water here belonged to my mother. And, somehow, leaving felt horribly wrong.
    I would never have said it, though, even if I thought it’d change his mind. I knew well the boundaries we’d drawn. Instead I rested my temple on the rain-cooled passenger window and watched the churning ocean disappear through a blur of gray.
    The dark all around threw me off. Apparently I had actually fall en asleep while pretending to be asleep so as to avoid talking to my dad. He put the car in park and stepped out to open the locked gate in front of us. When he looked back and motioned for me to slide over to the driver’s seat, I did so grudgingly and pulled our old bus forward, far enough so he had to back up a step or two, just to see if I could make him move. He didn’t seem to notice.
    “You wanna drive on down, Anna?”
    It was a stab at peace. Every time we’d talked for the last few weeks, we’d argued about why I couldn’t just live with my grandma and finish out high school at home, in Pismo Beach. Either he didn’t get it or he didn’t care how unfair it was, the way he’d changed everything like it was nothing. In a week’s time he’d taken a promotion and a transfer, packed up our life, and come to the cove to start a new one. Just like that.
    His generous concession was that I could stay with my grandma for the rest of the summer. So while he’d moved in and started work, I’d spent my days on the beach, trying to feel the normal fun and lightness of summer. Shelby and Laura and I went on with our summer traditions. We paddled out at the pier on the Fourth of July so we could watch the fireworks fall down like rain over our heads. We camped out on the dunes, feasting on s’mores and getting spinney on wine coolers. We snuck into the hotell pools only to be shooed out by the owners, who’d known us since forever. And we didn’t mention that I was leaving. Instead we laughed at tourist boys for their loud board shorts and backward wet suits, and then at ourselves for flirting with them anyway.
    But none of it was the same. For me, everything we did was weighted with the knowlledge that I was leaving and the stark realization that their lives would go on nearly the same without me once I was gone. Mine was the one that would change.
    It was a lonely thought, and I tried not to think about it. I had other worries. As soon as my dad had made his decision to take the transfer, something in him had shifted. There was a distance between us that was more than the result of me being angry about moving. He was just off somehow, only half there, and it unsettled me the same way watching a storm move in over the water did. I could tell he was trying hard to hide it and somehow hold on to the careful balance it had taken us so long to build. But the moment he’d made the decision to leave, that balance was all off. Which brought us to the cove.
    “No, I don’t wanna drive down.” I scooted back over to my seat, and he got in, probably resigned to the fact that I was going to draw this out.
    “Suit yourself.” He sounded tired. I looked out my window, arms crossed, and he tried again.