Moonglass

moment of silence, but I saw something flicker over his face and waited.
    “Hey. Just so you know, those cottages you were asking about—all the broken-down ones? Most of them aren’t locked up. You wouldn’t need your dad’s keys to go look in them. You just have to find an open lock. I went through them all last summer. Kind of another rookie initiation.”
    I raised an eyebrow and gave him my best mischievous smile. “Oh, yeah? well, I’ll keep that in mind—although … I’d be too creeped out to go in them alone, and my dad is working nights now, so he couldn’t take me. But, yeah, one of these days I’ll have to check them out.” I couldn’t have left him a bigger opening. I waited. Hoped. Opened the driver’s side door and started to climb in.
    He took a step closer and leaned a tanned arm on the open door. “Hey—”
    I caught my breath and got ready to accept his offer to give me a full tour of the cottages.
    “You should ask James. He knows all about the history of them and all that stuff—if that’s what you’re really interested in.” He was looking straight at me with his ridiculous silver-blue eyes and the hint of a smile.
    I put the key into the ignition, turned it hard, and did my best at nonchalance, despite the heat that crept up my neck. “Yeah, that’s right. James.” I looked at my watch. “Maybe we’ll check them out tonight. He’ll probably just be getting off duty when I get home, if I go soon.” I put my sunglasses on. He stepped backward, then shut the door softly for me. His hands rested on the open window frame, inches away from my shoulder.
    I shrugged. “If not, maybe I will just bring a flashlight and go myself.” He laughed a little, then looked down at his feet.
    “What?” I asked, a bit more indignant-sounding than I would have liked.
    He grinned at me and put his hands up. “Nothing, nothing…. I could show them to you one of these days too, if that’s what you’re interested in.” I paused, trying to determine if this offer was out of sincerity, interest, amusement …
    “Yeah? If you ever want to come down, you know where I live.” I smiled and put the bus in reverse. “Otherwise, I’ll see ya around,” I said brightly, hoping that it sounded casual, but mortified he had read me that easily.
    He pushed off the door and waved as he took a step back. “Bye, Anna.”
    I nodded when I drove by, and he did the same. In the rearview mirror, I watched as he kicked a rock, sending it bouncing across the asphalt. Then he shook his head and laughed, and I was sure the humorous thing was me. Ugh.
    It was close to five by the time I parked the bus in front of our cottage. I shut the motor off and looked out through the windshield for a moment, straight at my mom’s cottage. I didn’t even know she’d lived in it. Had she grown up there? Spent summers? How many nights had she stood on the tiny balcony and breathed the ocean air?
    A wave broke the stillness, and I shook the thoughts from my head before getting out. I looked up to the north end of the beach, where falling-down cottages dotted the hill and the bluff above. The sun hung low in the sky, spilling orange warmth onto them. crystal COVE BEACH COTTAGES: ISLANDS IN TIME ON THE CALIFORNIA COAST. That’s what the sign over the little park store said. Again, I had a feeling maybe that’s what my dad was after in coming back here. To go back to an easier, happier time in his life. I could see the draw, the charm he saw in it. His history ran deeper here than I had ever cared to ask about. My mother’s, too, which was the problem. I’d done all my asking about her a long time ago, taken the simple answers, and packaged them up neatly in the back of my mind. And it would have been easy for them to stay that way had we not ended up here, on an island in time.
    I pushed the thought from my head and headed up the front steps, but stopped short when something on the doormat caught my eye. It was a small folded piece of paper, weighted down with a cobalt blue piece of sea glass. With my name scrawled on the front.
    I stared at it, running through the few possible people it could be from. But the sea glass narrowed it down to only one, and I felt guilty just thinking about her. After that first day of school, I never went back to Joy’s class. Getting switched to another English teacher was surprisingly easy once I told my counselor what was mostly the truth—that I couldn’t take Joy seriously as