Read Tides for Free Online Page B

Noah, “but the lighthouse is automated. She doesn’t actually have to
keep
it at all. But you probably knew that.”
    They talked about the lighthouse, the other islands, and the hotel. Gradually their conversation got easier, losing some of its sparring edge. Mara found herself smiling and laughing, and once she even touched his shoulder—but only briefly, and then she pulled her hand away.
    Noah told her about his grandmother and his sister, and about his parents, whom both he and his sister were trying to escape for the summer. “Lo doesn’t have a job out here, like I do, but she wanted to get away from them even more than I did. And she likes to draw, and she likes to read, so I’m hoping she’ll be all right here while I’m at work, even though she’s mostly alone. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do to help her when I leave for college in the fall.”
    Mara was startled. “You’re leaving your family?”
    Noah raised his eyebrows and gave her a funny look. “Aren’t you, soon enough?” he countered. “You must be at least as old as I am. I mean—” He blushed again. “Haven’t you thought about leaving?”
    “Not for a long time.” Mara looked out at the ocean. “I know exactly what I want to do, and it’s all here.” She thought of the younglings, just waiting for someone to lead them to adulthood. She knew she could do it if she got the chance. If the Elder would give it to her.
    “Wow,” said Noah. “I can’t imagine living in the same place all my life.”
    Mara listened to him describe the college he’d attend in the fall, and she told him what she could about herself.
    “You have
five
siblings?” he cried. “I only have one, and she’s more than enough.” As soon as he spoke, he looked stricken. “I mean, I love Lo. She’s great. But you know.” He grinned. One side of his mouth creased under the pressure of his smile. Mara noticed freckles on his nose.
    “Five younger,” she said. “I have an older brother too, but he’s less trouble than the others. Usually.”
Noah and Ronan would get along quite well,
she thought. Ronan couldn’t wait to leave his family either. A familiar ache twisted in her belly, and she tried not to think about Ronan’s plans.
    “So, six siblings. I bet you’re never lonely.”
    He was only joking, Mara knew, just as she knew it was her face that looked stricken now.
    Noah’s mouth opened. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said quickly. “I guess anyone can get lonely out here.”
    “I love the islands,” said Mara. “It’s only that—when you said I wasn’t lonely—” She paused. “I used to have another sister.” Mara hadn’t spoken of it, hadn’t heard anyone mention Aine out loud, in almost five years. It was strange how dangerous it felt to acknowledge her after so much silence. To acknowledge her absence.
    And she’d told a stranger, too. She’d told someone she didn’t know at all, someone she certainly shouldn’t be able to trust. Mara’s whole life was built around hiding, around secrets. She didn’t like how easy it was for her to talk to this boy. How much she felt, without any reason for it, that she could trust him.
    She stopped talking. She waited for him to prove her wrong.
    “Oh,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
    Those words sounded strange to Mara, hollow and wooden, but when she searched Noah’s face, he looked truly concerned. Maybe it was just because the word was so apt. Loss.
Aine, where are you?
    She looked at him, and he looked back. They didn’t speak.
    She looked away. “I should go,” she said. “The sun is setting.” And it was, or starting to—just a little orange around the edges of the clouds, a shining, a broken path of white light skittering toward the horizon. The islands were beginning to glow.
    Noah looked down at his bright, blinking watch. “Oh, God.” He sighed, standing up. “I should have been at Gemm’s a long time ago.” He