Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1) by Megan Tayte

there wiping out
became rarer and Luke and I began to cut about together side by side.
    Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that my
development was closely tracked by the surfing fraternity; I would catch the
odd member watching, from time to time, and I was totally stoked when a couple
gave me a ‘nice form’ one afternoon as I dried off on the beach. There was only
one surfer, though, in that set who pulled my attention – the blond-haired boy.
He had not approached me since our first meeting, but sometimes I felt his gaze
on me, and it seemed to me that he chose to surf towards the middle of the
cove, closer to my beginner’s area.
    As my skill on the board grew, so did my confidence, and I
surprised myself by developing a kind of fearlessness in tackling waves. Luke
seemed to relax, realising that I wasn’t about to drown or dash myself on the
rocks, accidentally or otherwise. I still caught him casting dark looks towards
where the others surfed sometimes, but he said nothing more about them to me.
    When surfing wasn’t the topic of conversation, we talked
about all sorts. I learned that he lived up the hill behind the village in a
salmon-pink house. That he had two jobs – a cook five days a week at a pub
three coves over, and man-and-van whenever a local job came up. That he was a
total foodie, and dreamed of one day opening his own eatery. He was easy to
talk to, and he didn’t quiz me but let me volunteer what information I was
happy to share – so I told him a little about my school, my degree course, my
memories of summers here in the cove and even, in a mad moment, of my growing
passion for Quincy ME courtesy of Bert, which made him laugh long and
hard.
    There was just one subject that, by silent agreement, we
skirted around: family. I had no desire to talk about my distant father and my
needy mother; less still to delve into the murky area of the loss of my sister.
And in turn Luke said nothing about his family to me, for whatever reason, and
I respected his right to privacy.
    Meanwhile, between the summer job and learning to surf, I
dug about as much as I could, trying to unearth clues as to Sienna’s movements,
moods and motivations in her last weeks. I spoke to obscure classmates from
Sienna’s school, who, it transpired, knew very little about her beyond memories
of wild partying. I carefully unpicked the hard-drive of Sienna’s laptop which
I had Mother send me, but found nothing more interesting than a morose poem
about fire ripping through a rain-soaked city. I pushed myself to talk to local
people as I walked Chester, and when the awkward moment arrived where they
acknowledged who I was, I asked, ‘Did you know my sister?’ The answer was only
ever, ‘Knew of her.’ I struggled to find anyone who’d actually been
close to Sienna, and I began to wonder just how isolated she had been here. ( So
why stay? I wondered.) Only the surfing gang remained to be probed, and
they were seriously intimidating.
    One rainy afternoon I pushed my complaining car up the M5 to
Bridgwater where Katie, Sienna’s best friend from school, lived. We met in
a cafe by the railway station, and from the outset Katie was unbearably
distraught – a steady flow of tears leaking mascara down onto her white
sweater, the odd sob causing people in the cafe to pause mid-sip and gawk at
us. I did my best to shush her, but she was implacable and, when it came to
answering questions, incoherent. As I sat quietly, waiting for her to calm, it
struck me that I’d been here before, many times, with Mother. She and Katie
would have got along famously. Perhaps, I reflected, that was the attraction
for Sienna; perhaps in some warped way she felt closer to home when around
Katie.
    Finally, after a good five minutes of waiting, I snapped.
‘Katie! Stop it. Now.’
    The coldness of my tone brought her up short. She stopped
mid-sob and stared at me.
    ‘She was my sister, my sister – you get it? If I can
sit here