“We were in disguise, but Judd saw Colt,” Cody said. “I don’t think they cared about me. Judd was their target. Colt just got caught in the line of fire.”
“I can’t believe they threw eggs at you,” she said. “It’s really not funny. Someone could have been hurt.”
“I agree,” I said.
Dad rubbed his jaw and looked at the ceiling. “But you have it handled?”
“I do,” I said. “I will.”
“Good.”
CHAPTER 21
SUMMER
Ipicked up an avocado, gave a soft squeeze, and added it to the bag. It was my turn to do the grocery shopping. I moved on to the tomatoes and then picked up a bag of grapes for the kids.
I was going through the mental checklist in my head when I nearly walked into Lana coming around the end cap. She had a stack of papers tucked under one arm and a bag over her shoulder that looked like it weighed more than she did.
“Oh,” she gasped and moved back. “Sorry.”
“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”
She shifted the bag higher on her shoulder. “Errands.”
I looked at the papers. They were face down. “You need help?”
She smiled. “I’ve got it,” she said. “I promise.”
She was up to something, but I couldn’t figure out what that was.
“Lana, is everything okay?”
“I’m good, Summer.” She adjusted the bag again and gave me a look that said,drop it. “See you on the waves later this afternoon.”
And then she was gone, leaving me standing there with a cantaloupe in my hand.
“How weird,” I murmured.
I finished my shopping and headed up to the checkout. We usually bought the same things every time, but it was inevitable I forgot something every time. I stood in the middle of an aisle, staring at the contents of the cart, and decided I had everything we needed.
I loaded everything onto the belt at checkout. The cashier looked up from her register with a smile.
“Summer.” She started scanning. “How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Good. Busy. We don’t even have that port and we’re seeing a bump in business. People are coming into town to see what all the excitement is about.”
“That’s good,” I said. But was it? Did we want that kind of publicity? I knew what they would say about us. A bunch of backwoods people that didn’t know what was good for them. NIMBY. I’d seen the stupid comments online. They were right. Not in my backyard. They could put it in Judd’s backyard. I would say Colt’s, but in a way, it was in Colt’s backyard, so that argument didn’t hold.
The cashier was the daughter of the couple who had owned the market for as long as I could remember. She’d grown up behind that counter the same way I’d grown up in the water. The market was as much a part of Surfside as the sand. She knew every regular by name and what they bought and which days they came in.
The market wouldn’t survive a population influx. She’d be pushed out when some big chain moved in. That’s how it always was. We’d have some Kroger monstrosity. It wasn’t just her business. It hurt my heart to think of all my friends losing their jobs because of greed. Colt could say what he wanted about it helping all of us, but that was only half of it.
“I was watching the livestream from the protest,” she said, over the beeping sound of my groceries sliding across the scanner. “I couldn’t leave the register but I had my phone propped up the whole morning.” She shook her head, grinning. “My mom was out there. She said it was incredible.”
“It was something,” I said carefully.
