Free Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water by Elizabeth George

and the rest of her was piercings, chains, and Doc Martens all the way. She pretended not to recognize Jenn. Whatever, Jenn thought. Just hand over a smoke.
    She said, “Got a coupla extras?” to Augusta.
    “Extras of what?” Augusta said, ennui itself making the supreme effort to speak aloud.
    “Smokes,” Jenn said impatiently.
    “Oh. Smokes,” Augusta said. “I thought you meant tits.” She smiled her slow and knowing smile, her eyes fixed on Jenn’s nonexistent breasts. “When’re you going to grow some?” she asked. “You even started your period yet?”
    “You could’ve just said no to the cigarettes,” Jenn advised her. “It’d save you all the effort, Augusta.”
    Augusta rolled her eyes and dug in a black hobo bag that hung from her shoulder. She took out a cigarette and broke it in half. “Best I can do,” she told her.
    The two Goth boys were upon them then, and Augusta drew one of them into an embrace by hooking her leg around his. She kissed the other guy in a way that made kissing
anyone
look completely repulsive. Jenn left her to it and headed for one of the outdoor tables in front of the Commons. There she lit up and took a very nice hit. It wasn’t good for her, it slowed her down in soccer, and she had to quit if she wanted to make it athletically. But she’d been smoking since she was ten years old, and it was a habit now. She’d quit tomorrow. She closed her eyes and settled back to enjoy the guilty delight.
    Someone snatched the cigarette from her fingers. Her eyes flew open as Squat Cooper stomped it to bits on a paving stone. She said, “Hey!” to which he replied, “Stunts your growth, gives you cancer, makes wrinkles, turns your teeth yellow, and creeps out your breath. Not to mention what it does to the now extremely remote possibility of anyone putting his tongue inside your mouth.”
    “I just bummed that from Augusta Savage,” she told him.
    “Who names their kid Augusta?”
    “If my name was Fergus and everyone called me Squat, I don’t think I’d be mentioning anyone else’s name,” Jenn pointed out.
    “Piquant and amusing, my friend. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
    “What’re
you
doing here?”
    “First asked, first answered.”
    She sighed. Squat was . . . so completely Squat. She told him about the meeting going on.
    Squat lowered himself into one of the chairs at her table, rested his elbows on his knees, shook his head, and said, “This’s got to be the only place on the planet where they’d call a town meeting about a seal.”
    “It’s not a town meeting. It’s Ivar Thorndyke and the seal spotters.”
    Squat guffawed. “Even better. This is the only island on the planet where people join a club to
watch
for a seal.” He pretended to hold binoculars to his eyes and he altered his voice to a high-pitched tone. “‘Oh, Jeffrey, Jeffrey! Come and see! I think she’s arrived! Shall we alert the media?’” Then he lowered the binoculars and his voice as well. “‘No, Bunny-pie. That’s a small submarine you’re looking it. We’re being invaded by the terrorists, but no worries. As long as they don’t touch our Nera, all’s well, my dear.’”
    Jenn had to smile. He was right. Whidbey Island was a loony bin half the time. The other half it was so boring to live here that she thought she’d petrify before she managed to get herself permanently onto the mainland. “So what’re you doing in town?” she asked him.
    “Babysitting the twins.”
    His half-brother and half-sister, fruit of his father’s second marriage to the executive assistant for whom he’d left Squat’s mom. It had been one of those scandals-of-the-century kinds of departures for Mr. Cooper because Squat’s older brother had walked in on Dad and the executive assistant. And she’d not been executively assisting him.
    Jenn looked around. “So where are they?”
    “At the Clyde. There’s a Pixar movie showing.
Toy Story Twenty-Five: Finding Nemo under the