Free Landlocked (A water witch novel) by C.S. Moore

seen the man. For a moment I was chilled with terror, worried that Dylan would be hurt. I shrugged it off, telling myself that there had never been anyone there in the first place. A few seconds later, Dylan emerged from the shadow and walked across the street, took my arm, and led me home.
    “What did this person look like?” he asked as we walked down our long driveway.
    “No need to put out an APB. I think I just was seeing things,” I assured.
    Dylan searched the grounds as we mounted the steps to our wrap-around porch. “Still… I want you to stay in tomorrow. Can you do that for me, Maribel?”
    “Of course. I always stay in on Sunday fun-day. I still have to get you back for that game of Yahtzee last week.” I elbowed him in the ribs.
    “We’ll see. Now go to the kitchen with Sylvia. I’ll be back shortly.”
    After Sylvia calmed down, she put me to bed and tucked me in, like she had back when I was a small child. I fell asleep quickly, and for the first time I didn’t dream about the ocean. Instead of my welcomed lapping waves, I dreamed of Jaron. He was walking by the mystery man I'd seen in the shadows. Side by side they traveled. To where I wasn’t sure. All I could see was them together.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    5
     
    I woke up still groggy, having just gone through a very restless night. My dreams weren’t exactly nightmares, they didn’t give me that cold terrifying pierce that my first had, but they weren’t happy dreams either. Mostly they were just a bunch of scenes that I couldn’t make sense of. A lot of them had Jaron, and I guessed I was having them because of the previous night’s rejection. Clarissa was right; everyone had to deal with a crush snubbing them, why should I be any different? Sometimes boys turned out to be jerks, so why would I think Jaron immune to turning into one? I knew I wasn’t being rational, but even now, I couldn’t think that he was a bad person; he was the only boy I had ever connected with. He had to be someone special, maybe there was an explanation for him leaving the way he had. I just couldn’t believe he didn’t care about me. He'd felt what I had—at least I thought he had.
    “Ugh!” I threw myself back into bed, frustrated at my lack of boy experience. I stretched out and pulled the pale blue covers over my head and let myself think about the good parts of the night before; seeing Jaron’s face covered in dust outside of the theater after he finished hanging the amazing physical embodiment of the ocean that he had made with his thick, sure hands, touching briefly in the hallway and the electric attraction that threatened to boil my blood, and smelling his intoxicating scent that made me light-headed and whispered of familiarity. I shivered under my warm blankets. Then the unpleasant parts of the evening came into my mind, the stupid boys embarrassing me in the theater, Jaron’s obvious rejection, and the creepy man who had followed me home. All in all, I think I’d have to call it an awful night, no matter what my memories of Jaron said. In fact, I think it was the worst night of my life, and the bad feelings outweighed the good. No matter how optimistic a person I was, even I couldn’t fully delude myself into thinking there was a future with Jaron. I just needed to get back to my normal life.
    I jumped out of bed and glanced at the clock. It was five thirty and way earlier than I usually got up on a Sunday morning, but sleep, the fickle mistress, didn’t want anything to do with me right now. I walked into my bathroom and went to grab my scissors, but remembered that it was Sunday. I didn’t have to cut my hair on Sundays; we could be our freaky hairy selves when we weren’t in mixed company. When I was young it always made me smile that by the time Dylan was putting me into bed, his hair was hanging past his cheeks. I would call him Aunt Dylan and he would