Bluehour (A Watermagic Novel) by Brighton Hill Page B

still damp from
practice.
    This evening the surfing wasn’t so great.
There were some reckless teenage boys driving a speedboat too close
to shore. The engine noise was distracting from the usual natural
rhythmic sounds of the waves. Where I usually sought solace, there
was disruption.
    The boys were taking turns trying to water
ski even though they were completely inept at it. As far as I knew,
I didn’t think water skiing was allowed in this area, but the
lifeguards weren’t around and nobody did anything about it.
    After catching the first wave awkwardly, I
started paddling back out with my stomach flat down on the board.
As I made my way through the surge, to my surprise, I thought I saw
five heads poke out of the water a short distance from me. But, as
quickly as I saw the heads surface, they were gone. Most likely it
was my imagination, but I thought they looked like the French
exchange students.
    If the people I saw were the French kids, I
wondered if they saw me. Even though it shouldn’t have, it shocked
me to imagine the très beaux out swimming about at the same time as
I was surfing. It was a popular place to swim and surf, so I
shouldn’t have been surprised, but something about the way their
heads all surfaced together and then dived back under in unison
seemed odd.
    I continued to watch for the people to
resurface, but I didn’t see anyone again. The light was dim now as
the sun had nearly set on the horizon. It would be difficult to see
them.
    The motor boat engine was driving me crazy.
Those guys were messing up the breaks on the waves with their
careless shenanigans. I wanted to yell at them, but they wouldn’t
have heard over the engine roar.
    As I turned my board around, I was distracted
as I watched for the swimmers some more. I kept looking and
looking, but couldn’t find them. Then that darn boat cut way too
close to me as I was trying to stand up.
    I felt a sudden pull at my leg and I went
flying off my surfboard. Terror overtook me. For a moment, I didn’t
know what was happening. It was all occurring so fast.
    Something had jerked me so hard. Then I
realized the boater’s water ski rope had caught onto the tether
that was wrapped around my ankle and the surfboard. My mind was
spinning. I was going to die. I tried to pull the Velcro from my
ankle to release myself as I was being pulled at tremendous speed
through the water, but the boat pulled me so roughly and fast that
the tether broke from the surfboard and twisted up with the water
ski rope.
    I was being pulled out to sea. My lungs felt
like they were going to burst. The water was choking me. I couldn’t
breathe.
    “I’m going to die. I’m going to die,” I
thought. My leg felt like it was going to be ripped out of the
socket.
    But then, seemingly coming out of nowhere I
saw Laurent beside me. He grabbed onto my limbs for an instant. It
wasn’t possible. My body was being pulled through the water too
fast. There was no way he could swim rapidly enough to keep up with
the high speed of the boat. But in the same moment that he held to
me, he tore the tether from the ski rope with his teeth.
    And then I don’t remember anything else.
    Suddenly, I woke up choking. I coughed up
water. Someone was giving me CPR on the shore. My eyes popped open.
It was dark out now, but I saw clearly that the person on top of me
was Laurent.
    “What the hell?” I coughed out.
    He moved off of my body and carefully helped
me sit up. “You’re going to be okay, Grace—as good as new.” His
voice had a musical quality to it, but his eyebrows were knitted
together like he was worried. “You won’t even have to go to the
hospital.” His too perfect face looked pale and his piercing eyes
seemed watery. I wondered if he had been crying.
    For another minute I coughed. He was patting
my back. I tried to replay in my mind what had just happened.
    My breathing started to regulate. Oddly, I
felt just fine. I was dazed and everything seemed sort of