Read Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection for Free Online

Balloon Men. But something fluttered inside her, dark-winged. A longing as plain as what she heard in Reece’s voice, though she was looking for magic and he was just looking for a way to fit in.
    Hefting her tote bag, she tossed it onto the sand, out of the waves’ reach. Reece gave her a curious look, then averted his gaze as she stepped out of her skirt.
    “It’s okay,” she said, amused at his sudden sense of propriety. “I’m wearing my swimsuit.”
    By the time he turned back, her blouse and skirt had joined her tote bag on the beach and she was shaking loose her hair. “Coming in?” she asked.
    Reece simply stood and watched the sway of her hips as she headed for the water. Her swimsuit was white. In the poor light it was as though she wasn’t wearing anything—the swimsuit looked like untanned skin. She dove cleanly into a wave, head bobbing up pale in the dark water when she surfaced.
    “C’mon!” she called to him. “The water’s fine, once you get in.”
    Reece hesitated. He’d wanted to go in this afternoon, but hadn’t had the nerve to bare his white skinny limbs in front of a beach full of serious tanners. Well, there was no one to see him now, he thought as he stripped down to his underwear.
    The water hit him like a cold fist when he dove in after her and he came up gasping with shock. His body tingled, every pore stung alert. Ellen drifted further out, riding the waves easily. As he waded out to join her, a swell rose up and tumbled him back to shore in a spill of floundering arms and legs that scraped him against the sand.
    “Either go under or over them,” Ellen advised him as he started back out.
    He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but the water wasn’t too deep except when a big wave came. He went under the next one and came up spluttering, but pleased with himself for not getting thrown up against the beach again.
    “I love swimming at night,” Ellen said as they drifted together.
    Reece nodded. The water was surprisingly warm, too, once you were in it. You could lose all sense of time out here, just floating with the swells.
    “You do this a lot?” he asked.
    Ellen shook her head. “It’s not that good an idea to do this alone. If the undertow got you, it’d pull you right out and no one would know.”
    Reece laid his head back in the water and looked up at the sky. Though they were less than an hour by the freeway out of down-town L.A., the sky was completely different here. It didn’t have that glow from God-knows-how-many millions of lights. The stars seemed closer, too, or maybe it was that the sky seemed deeper.
    He glanced over at Ellen. Their reason for being out here was forgotten. He wished he had the nerve to just sort of sidle up to her and put his arms around her, hold her close. She’d feel all slippery, but she’d feel good.
    He paddled a little bit towards her, riding a swell up and then down again. The wave turned him slightly away from her. When he glanced back, he saw her staring wide-eyed at the shore. His gaze followed hers and then that cold he’d felt when he first entered the water returned in a numbing rush.
    The booger was here.
    It came snuffling over a rise in the beach, a squat dark shadow in the sand, greasy and slick as it beelined for their clothing. When it reached Ellen’s tote bag, it buried its face in her skirt and blouse, then proceeded to rip them to shreds. Ellen’s fingers caught his arm in a frightened grip. A wave came up, lifting his feet from the bottom. He kicked out frantically, afraid he was going to drown with her holding on to him like that, but the wave tossed them both in towards the shore.
    The booger looked up, baring its barracuda teeth. The red coals of its eyes burned right into them both, pinning them there on the wet sand where the wave had left them. Leaving the ruin of Ellen’s belongings in torn shreds, it moved slowly towards them.
    “Re-Reece,” Ellen said. She was pressed close to him, shivering.
    Reece