Read Online Beach Girls by Luanne Rice - Free Book Online

more. She could never say the words:
my mom died.
    “You miss your mom,” Peggy said.
    Nell glanced up. How could she possibly know?
    “I miss my dad,” Peggy explained. “I could tell about you . . . at least, I thought I could. And when you said it was just you and your dad here, I knew for sure. . . . It rots, doesn't it?”
    “Big time,” Nell said.
    The girls were sitting on the edge of their towels, their heads so close together that Nell's face was in the shade of Peggy's hat. The sand was so warm; they burrowed their feet down as far as possible, till they got to the cool, damp layer. Nell wished they could just sit there for the rest of the day. But just then a long shadow fell across their towels, and she looked up—into the freckled face of a boy who looked a lot like Peggy.
    “Hey, squirt,” he said.
    “Billy—where's the bird?” she asked.
    “I left it up there.” He gestured up at the cottages on the stone hill—at the House That Used to Be Blue. Nell felt a shiver, remembering Stevie.
    “Not with the witch!” Peggy said. “Are you crazy? She'll pluck its feathers to make a hat, or a cape, or something! Crows are black,
hello
!”
    Nell felt the first instant of doubt regarding her new best friend. She wanted to defend Stevie, but the boy—the way he looked and acted meant he had to be Peggy's brother—beat her to it.
    “I don't think so,” he said. “She's not the bird-plucking type. She seems, like, depressed or something. Eugene was spying on her, like, looking in her windows? And he saw her crying. All alone, in the middle of the morning. It was weird.”
    “Depressed?” Nell asked. She knew she had found a family of kindred spirits: that word was part of their language, too.
    “Yeah,” the boy said. “And who might you be?”
    “Nell Kilvert,” she said.
    “Nell, this is Billy, my brother,” Peggy said. “It sounds
just
like something a witch would do—crying on a summer day. Excuse me, but that's strange.”
    “Maybe someone she loved died,” Nell said.
    Peggy and her brother Billy just stared and stared as if she'd just said the most unspeakable thing in the world. Billy shrugged and walked down the beach.
    Peggy decided to laugh it off. “Hah! Like her black cat, or her pet newt. Or maybe she's getting divorced again, for the fifteenth time. Or maybe she lost another huge diamond ring . . .”
    “She's special,” Nell said.
    “She wants you to think that,” Peggy said. “To lure you in!”
    “I don't think she wants to lure anyone in,” Nell said. “She has that ‘Please Go Away' sign in her yard.”
    Peggy frowned—Nell had her there.
    “She and my mom and my aunt were really close. They even had a name for themselves,” Nell said. “I was thinking . . . we could call ourselves the same thing!”
    “What is it?” Peggy asked.
    “Beach girls,” Nell said.
    Peggy's nose wrinkled, and she squinted into the sun. Her gaze swept up the rocky point, toward the House That Used to Be Blue. Nell could almost read her mind: she'd been seeing dark magic and crystal balls and pointy black hats, but those images were being replaced by beach balls, bright towels, and blue bathing suits. Nell smiled.
    “Witches aren't beach girls,” Peggy said doubtfully.
    “Beach girls aren't witches,” Nell countered, and Peggy cocked her eyebrows in a thoughtful way.
    Just then Laurel came running over from the lifeguard chair, where she'd been talking to a bunch of her friends, and clapped her hands.
    “Okay, everyone into the water for one last thing—we're going to tread water for ten minutes! Find your partners!”
    Peggy grabbed Nell's hand, and together they ran into the water, diving under the first wave. Their bodies, hot from the sun, felt the saltwater shock, and they came up squealing. Nell thought of her mother holding Stevie's hand. Or Aunt Madeleine's . . . Peggy's gaze was directed over Nell's head, to the cottage on the hill—as if she, like Nell, was