Read Online Landlocked (A water witch novel) by C.S. Moore - Free Book Online

masculine features cut through the light like knives leaving shadows lying on his skin. Under his high cheekbones dark triangles stretched out to his jaw, and a little black diamond nestled into the deep cleft in his chin. Though his beauty was undeniable, he looked worn, like he'd been through a lifetime’s worth of work and hardships. His mouth seemed comfortable being tugged down at the corners, which surprised me since in the short time that I'd had with him, his plump lips had always been pulled up into a winning smile.
    “Well since Maribel seems to have temporarily gone mute… what happened back there, Jaron?” she asked. I had never seen her pay that close attention to anything; she seemed almost as protective as Aunt Sylvia would have been if she had been there.
    His normal happy-go-lucky demeanor was back when he turned to her. For an instant I pictured him slipping on a mask—but shook out the thought, not sure why it had run across my mind in the first place.
    “Just a boy being stupid, makes me feel like I need to apologize for my gender,” he said, unable to put humor in his voice—though I knew that’s what he had intended.
    “What do you mean…?” Her eyes lit up in realization. “Did one of them touch you?” she demanded, no longer attempting to quiet her voice.
    “No, no, no, no,” I said quickly, trying to calm my best friend/verbal volcano before she could spew molten lava on anyone. “Yesterday at the art fair, Brad kind of grabbed me… But Jaron stopped him before he got out of hand.” Clarissa’s face turned from red to purple and I guessed I'd said the wrong thing. At that moment, I really wished the movie was actually not a total bomb so people would shush her. But it must have been pretty bad, because if anything, the interested faces around us looked like they wanted her to speak up so even the cheap seats could hear her.
    She stood swiftly from her chair and pointed t o where we had stopped. “You think it’s okay to touch a girl whenever you want, you think my friend here is some kind of possession of yours?” She started walking down the aisle, shaking off my hands as I attempted to hold her back. She stopped in front of the group of boys, who thought they could somehow evolve into turtles and pull their heads into their chest cavities, or so it appeared. “Here I am, Brad,” she bellowed. “Go ahead and touch me, see what happens.”
    I was shocked and embarrassed beyond belief, but not too shocked too notice the real smile dancing across Jaron’s face, or too embarrassed to see the amount of love that Clarissa’s over-the-top display showed. In the middle of her colorful tirade, I was glad that we weren’t at a children’s movie, knowing that their presence wouldn’t have had an effect on the number of expletives she used. At last all three boys got up and headed for the exit, with Clarissa booing and hissing at them as if they were old timey villains.
    She plopped back into her old squeaky chair. “What did I miss?”
    “Only the most dramatic performance ever,” Jaron said theatrically. “Yours, that is. You didn’t miss anything in the movie. It’s pretty awful… in fact I think we need candy to get through it.” He paused, looking toward the exit. “I’ll be back.”
    “Okay,” I said, smiling at him. I was pretty impressed that he could handle the full force of Clarissa in stride. Most guys couldn’t.
    “What do you want?” he asked then added, “And no this isn’t a date if I buy you candy. That’s what totally platonic friends do, right?”
    “Junior Mints, just as long as it’s strictly platonic,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.
    “I’ll have some Dots, thanks for asking,” Clarissa interjected.
    Jaron walked out of the theater and I nestled into the chair to try and enjoy the movie. After five minutes I picked up on the fact that the writers must have been shooting for a merger of Harry and the Hendersons and Young