Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing Read Online Free Page A

one else in sight. Even though I hadn’t grown up on the island, something about the water seemed almost welcoming, almost as if it wanted me to be here.
    I focused on the water through the viewfinder of my camera and scanned the horizon with the zoom. I snapped a few photos of the swirling clouds and the birds soaring overhead. The wind whipped my hair around my head and sand stung my skin. I tried to imagine my mom being here, standing in this same spot and looking out at the same ocean.
    She came to Swans Landing the summer after she graduated college with a couple of friends. She originally planned to only spend the summer here, then go back home and look for a teaching job.
    But then she met Lake. And when her friends left at the end of summer, Mom stayed behind. She moved in with Lake, they got married on the beach, and a year later I was born. Six weeks after that, the marriage had ended abruptly and Mom finally left Swans Landing, with me.
    What was it about this place that made her want to stay? And what had finally driven her away?
    Maybe she’d already told me the answer to both questions in her letter: Lake Westray. An answer I wasn’t sure that I wanted to understand. She had kept so many secrets over the years. Why did she now want me to know about Lake?
    As my camera swung around, following a bird soaring over the water, a large, dark shape suddenly filled the viewfinder and blocked my view of the ocean.
    “You’re not supposed to stand on the sand dunes,” said an angry voice.

Chapter Three
     
    Behind the camera stood a guy around my age with a pair of broad shoulders beneath a thick black hoodie, nice full lips, tanned skin, and closely cropped dark hair, which looked wet. His deep, dark brown eyes glared at me.
    “Huh?” I said. Very cool under pressure, that was me.
    He pointed to a weathered sign that read, “Please stay off the sand dunes!”
    “I thought this was just a small hill.” The sand beneath my feet stood a little higher than the rest of the beach, but not as high as the things that were clearly sand dunes behind me.
    “A sand dune is a small hill,” he told me. “Meant to protect the beach from erosion. And you happen to be destroying this one by climbing all over it.”
    “You’re standing on it too,” I pointed out.
    “Only to get you off, since you couldn’t see the sign through your camera.” He sneered at me, as if taking pictures of the ocean was cliché and pathetic.
    I held the camera up, inches from his face, and pressed the shutter release, letting the camera flash in his eyes simply to annoy him. “Fine, I’ll stay off the sand dunes,” I said, carefully moving to lower ground. “Since you’re apparently the beach police.”
    He jumped down after me. “Sand dunes do serve a purpose. I’d prefer my house not wash away in the high tide, thank you.”
    “Then here’s a thought: move off the island,” I snapped back.
    Our eyes locked in a fight of wills, both silently daring the other to back down. My hands gripped my camera so hard that my fingernails ground against the casing.
    Finally, he blinked first and laughed. “You look like a tourist, you know.” He pointed at the camera around my neck. “Camera and all.”
    “You look like a decent human being,” I said, shrugging. “Apparently, you can’t judge people by appearances.”
    He made a grunting noise and said, “I’m Josh.”
    “Mara,” I told him.
    “Woodser,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
    “What?” I asked.
    “It’s what we call people who aren’t from the island,” he said. “Staying in town?”
    I snorted. “I may be fresh off the boat, but I’m not stupid. I’m not telling some guy I don’t know where I live.”
    He cracked a smile, causing my heartbeat to pulse in my ears. “Scared I might sneak into your room in the middle of the night?”
    I might not throw him out if he did, but I certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. “Maybe I don’t want you