Celia and Landon looked at one another.Time stood still.Even the spring winds quit, sending the brand-new leaves of the oak trees pointing downward.
When the silence pressed too hard on his chest, Landon raised his chin and said, “Hi, CeeCee.”The nickname came to him like breathing.
Celia smiled that gorgeous smile, a smile that transported him far back in time, raised her shoulders, and said, “Don’t go.Not yet.”
ChapterSeven
September 2000
It had been one of the best nights of Celia’s life.For hours, she and Landon had sat beside the bonfire, surrounded by other high school seniors they both liked and didn’t, watching the ocean draw closer and closer.The water whispered its dark secrets against the cliffside behind them.They drank two beers each, which felt like a lot but didn’t compare at all to what the other students had, then got up and sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” all the way through, dancing in the dark as the others drifted away from the party and returned home.The morning was swiftly upon them, and their first class of the day was hours away.But after a difficult day of school and Celia’s fears about the newspaper and a long shift at the Bluebell Cove Inn, she wanted to unleash.She wanted to feel free, like her peers did.
If only my mother hadn’t died, she let herself think for the first time all evening, then felt her smile melt off her face.
Landon threw his arm loosely around her shoulders and guffawed, his eyes in slits.“Everyone’s gone!”he cried, acting a little tipsier than she knew he was.
Suddenly glum, Celia threw herself on the sand, watching the last of the embers flicker out.Surrounding them were what looked to be twenty-plus beer cans and empty bags of potato chips.Exhaustion shrouded her vision.
“Doesn’t it seem like nobody cares about anything anymore?”Celia said, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Landon sat down beside her.His face was heavy with embarrassment, maybe from having touched her that way—gently, exuberantly, as though he wanted more.
Did he want more?Celia put her face in her hands, trying to project herself a year down the line, when she’d be in Washington, DC, studying for the career that was bound to change her life and countless others.She felt a stab of guilt, thinking of her little sisters and of Landon.It wasn’t that she ever wanted to abandon them.Was it possible to hold both realities at once?To love people all over the world?Oh, her thoughts were moving so quickly.It felt as though she were floating off the sand.
“Landon,” she breathed to her thighs, unable to look up at him.“What do you want out of your life?”
Landon was quiet for a moment, but she could feel the heaviness of his thoughts.As ever, he took her seriously, eager to delve deep into conversations that mattered to the idealistic teens who didn’t know enough about the real world to question their dreams.
“I’m sort of like you,” Landon said.“I don’t want to give up on any of this.”
Celia pulled her head up and looked at him.“On what?”
“On the world.”Landon swallowed so that his Adam’s apple bobbed.“I want to believe that our children and our children’s children will learn from the mistakes we’re making right now.I want to be instrumental in figuring out how to repair some of those mistakes.How to clean up some of the messes our parents and their parents made.”
Celia felt a wave of optimism, then crushed it with all she could think to say.“I don’t want kids.I’ve basically had to raise Wren and Juliet, and it’s too much.They need someone to watch them, care for them, make their lunches, and tell them to brush their teeth, like, all the time.I mean, look at my mother.She was so unhappy.And sometimes I wonder…” She trailed off, wondering what it was she really wondered.
Had their mother really loved them?Celia remembered the volatile arguments between her parents and her mother’s tired, glossy, unseeing eyes.
Landon arched his eyebrow.Celia rarely spoke about her mother, and he knew she was intrigued by it, eager to learn more about the darkness brewing in the Bluebell Cove Inn.Celia got up and brushed the sand from her legs, her cheeks burning.Before Landon could ask her for more details, she said, “Let’s clean up and get back.”Her watch said it was three in the morning.If her father heard her coming in, he’d wipe the floor with her.
After a little more than twenty minutes, they’d cleaned up the beach and hauled the bags of trash up the hill to the dumpster outside the local diner.Dim light glowed along the water, advertising a sunrise that would yank them into a new day.Again, Celia began to think about her work as the brand-new editor of the Bluebell Cove High School newspaper, and her eyes smarted with fear.
Suddenly overwhelmed, she stopped short and blinked at Landon.“I don’t know what to do.”
Landon’s face went blank.“What are you talking about?”
“For the first newspaper issue.Or any issue for that matter.”Celia crammed the rest of the trash into the dumpster and wiped her hands on her jeans.“I thought that when I got the editor position, ideas would just pour out of me.That’s how it always happened before.But it isn’t that way this time.”She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.“I thought that this would be my first step in the right direction.The thing that would get me to DC, on the path to my career.But maybe it’s the end of the road?I mean, Bethany wants to be an editor so bad.She’ll sniff out my weakness, right?She’ll find a way to end me?”
Landon was quiet, so quiet that Celia was frightened he agreed with her.He scrunched his face.But before he could say anything, there was a rustling through the trees beside them.Celia froze with surprise and yanked around to watch as the son of the wealthiest man of Bluebell Cove appeared between the shadows.Hanson Smith was the captain of the football team, the basketball team, and the baseball team, the so-called “prince” of their town.Although Celia was careful to hate Hanson for everything he stood for, she couldn’t discount how handsome he was.He looked like a blond Tom Cruise, but taller and broader, with a nose slightly crooked from a football accident their sophomore year.
Hanson was alone, which was a rarity.Usually, he was surrounded by his other football cronies, or whichever girls were after him at any one time.Celia had seen him at the bonfire, but he’d been far away from them, hunched on a big rock, domineering his area of the beach.When Celia had hit a particularly high note on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” she’d accidentally caught his eye, and a shiver of embarrassment had run down her spine.He’s just the braindead rich kid, she’d reminded herself.He probably doesn’t know who Queen is.What a loser.She’d sung louder, daring him to say that she and Landon were uncool.
But it was strange to find him here, coming up behind them in the woods surrounding the cove.It almost seemed as though he’d been following them.
Landon looked petrified, although when he caught Celia looking at him, he quickly fixed his face.
“Yo,” Hanson said, sliding his fingers through his curls.“What were you doing down there?”
Celia realized he was referring to the beach and why they’d taken so long to leave the party.“We cleaned up,” she said, her heart fluttering like a rabbit’s.“Everyone trashed the beach.”
