“Yeah,” I yell back. For good measure, I give him a thumbs-up.

“What are you waiting for?”

I tighten my grip on the snorkel gear, like I’m holding a weapon. My breezy dress feels suddenly like a shield. I don’t want to take it off. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this.

What was I thinking?

Brow creasing, Quint starts walking back toward me. He looks legitimately concerned. “Okay, I shouldn’t have teased you about the sharks. But I checked, and there’s never been a shark sighting along this stretch of beach. You’re going to be fine.”

“It’s not…” I shake my head.

He cocks his head to one side, considering. “Are you afraid of the water?”

“No,” I say, perhaps a little too defensively, only afterward realizing that to say yes would have been a perfect way to get out of this.

“Prudence, it’s okay if you are. But you should say—”

“I’m not afraid of the water!”

He holds up his hands, his snorkel gear dangling from his fingers. “Okay, okay. So what’s the holdup?”

I open my mouth, but what can I say? That I’m too shy to take my dress off? That I don’t want him to see me in my swimsuit, when half the people in our town practically live in their swimsuits this time of year?

“I just…” I shake my head again. “Nothing. Whatever.” I set down the mask and turn away from him, because that’s as close to seeking privacy as I can get out here on the open beach. I suck in a deep breath and before I can talk myself out of it, before I can make it any weirder than it already is, I pull my dress up over my head and drape it over the rock beside our towels. I grab the snorkel gear and pass by Quint without meeting his gaze.

I have no idea if he bothers to look at me. To look look.

And I don’t want to know.

I’ve never gotten into the water so quickly.

The sand shifts under my bare feet. The waves push at my legs and hips, and soon the foam is swirling around my waist.

“Keep the tube out of the water,” says Quint, and I jump. I didn’t realize he was so close to me, and now his hand is beneath mine, lifting the gear away from the gentle waves. “Nothing like a mouth full of seawater to ruin the experience.”

He smiles, his eyes catching the light that’s reflected off the water, and they are not boring, nondescript, basic brown eyes at all. They are rich and captivating.

My mouth dries.

Goodness gracious, what is happening to me? Why is this starting to feel like … like …

Like the start of a crush.

Ha! No! Absolutely not. A storm of silent laughter surges through my thoughts. That is absurd.

This is Quint Erickson. He is so not my type. He is the polar opposite of my type.

Okay, I’m not entirely sure what my type is, but I do know it is not him.

“Ready?” Quint pulls on his goggles, and I’m grateful that my internal hysteria is brought to a screeching halt. I must look confused, because he takes my goggles away from me and adjusts the mouth tube attachment. “Like this,” he says, pulling the strap on over my head, stretching the band so that it fits under my ponytail. I hold my breath until his hands fall away and I’m left to adjust the goggles so they fit snug, forming a seal around my eyes. “Then this part goes in your mouth—not over it, but inside your lips, okay? Then all you need to do is keep this end out of the water. And that’s it.” He grins again, before sliding the mouthpiece between his lips, making them puff out. Making him look ridiculous.

He tips forward and pushes off into the water, floating at the surface, the tube puncturing the air beside his ear.

“Get it together, Prudence,” I whisper, before stuffing the piece into my mouth. It feels awkward, the plastic pushing uncomfortably against my gums.

Okay. I just have to get this over with and move on with my day. Quint will be satisfied, he won’t have to yell at me about being “a team” anymore, and we can get started on the real work.

I walk out until the waves are up to my chest before leaning over and putting my face in the water.

It takes some mental coaching to persuade my body to inhale, and I keep checking that the other end of the tube is still out of the water. But after the first few breaths, it gets easier, despite every instinct reminding me that breathing underwater is not natural.

I peer into the depths.

I see … me.

My legs, looking ghastly pale and tinged sea-foam green.

My swimsuit—solid black.

My bright-pink-polished toes being covered up with drifts of sand.

I turn in a circle, noticing a handful of shells scattered across the seabed.

It’s … pretty. Serene. I like how the light filtering through the water casts swirls around the—

Oh holy shish kebab!

I spit out my mouth piece and scream, back-paddling my arms. My head pops out of the water.

“Quint!”

He’s at least thirty feet away. His head snaps up and he tugs out his mouthpiece. “Yeah?”

“Come here! Fast!”

He doesn’t ask questions, just starts swimming toward me with perfect front-crawl arm strokes, as opposed to the awkward doggy paddle I consider to be my specialty.

“Look, look, look!” I say, latching on to his arm and pointing. Still wearing the goggles, he ducks his head into the water. I pop my mouthpiece back in and join him, clutching his arm, because as excited as I am, I’m also a little scared.

He sees it, too.

A sea turtle, hunkered down on the ocean floor. It’s enormous. At least four feet wide, unless that’s a trick of the water and the light. If it knows we’re here, it’s ignoring us.

Quint meets my eye under the water and we share a mutual, awed grin. At least, I’m in awe. His smile is something more akin to told you so.

I’m not sure what he thinks he told me, though.

Quint lifts his head up out of the water. I follow suit, only then realizing that he didn’t have his mouthpiece in. He takes a minute to catch his breath, but he’s beaming.

“Amazing, right?”

I spit out the snorkel gear. “How crazy is that? It’s, like … right there!”

He nods. “I see them out here all the time.”

I gape at him, almost as stunned by the sighting of the sea turtle as I am to realize that, to some people, that’s a common occurrence.

I’m still holding on to him, like he’s a life raft keeping me afloat. I’m surprised that he hasn’t shaken me off.

Licking the salt from my lips, I uncurl my hands and lower my feet back into the sand below. The current has pulled us out farther and the surface is nearly to my sternum now. We’re just two goggled heads smiling at each other like loons.

“It still blows my mind,” says Quint. “When you’re looking at the water from up here, you’d never know.” I look down, and he’s right. The water is clear—at least I always thought of it as clear—but I can only see the vague murky shapes of our bodies. There’s none of the clarity and brilliance that was so striking underneath.

We duck our heads under again. The sea turtle has moved a few feet away, but it’s still there, loitering on the ocean floor. I see Quint pull something from a pocket in his swim trunks, like a phone, but bigger. Chunkier. A phone wearing battle armor.

I watch as he dives deeper, getting so close to the turtle I actually become a little worried for him. He swims around a few times and I realize he’s taking pictures. The turtle ignores him. I’m beginning to think that Quint will pass out if he holds his breath any longer, when the turtle turns, shockingly quick and graceful, and swims straight for me. I startle and lift up my legs, giving it a wide berth. It passes underneath me and continues on its way toward the shallows.

Quint and I both pop up again. He’s panting, his hair plastered to his face. It takes him a few seconds to drain the seawater from his snorkel tube, but he’s grinning the whole time.

“Is that a camera?” I ask.

“Naw, just my phone,” he answers, holding it up. It looks like a swanky gadget out of one of Jude’s favorite sci-fi movies. “My mom got me a waterproof case for my birthday. I’m saving up for a wider lens that’ll work with it, but it’s good enough for now. So? What did you think of your first real wildlife sighting?”

I consider this. I’ve seen sea turtles at the zoo, but seeing one here, so close to me, was exhilarating.

“Is there more?” I ask.

He laughs. “Let’s find out.”

* * *

I had expected our snorkeling experiment to last fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, but Quint and I end up being in the water for more than two hours. By the time we finally come ashore, my fingers have pruned, I have a cut on my ankle from a vicious rock, and I feel like I’ve just journeyed to an alien planet and returned to tell the tale.

Quint knew all the best places to go. He took me to some rocky outcrops and pointed out underground gardens of seaweed and kelp. We saw so many fish, my mind is dizzy trying to remember them all. A kaleidoscope of colors, darting in and out of the rocks, swooping around my knees, shimmering like gemstones. For a grand finale, which I suspect Quint had been planning all along, we swam farther up-shore, to a cropping of large rocks that couldn’t be seen from any public beaches. The rocks were crowded with harbor seals, whooping and barking and lazing in the afternoon sun.

I have lived here my whole life. How did I not know this was here, only a few miles from my house?

I’ve forgotten all about my previous self-consciousness as Quint and I make the trek back up the beach. The tide has gone out and the walk to our towels feels endless. Sand clings to the soles of my feet. Quint keeps glancing over at me, grinning, almost secretive.

“So?” he says as I wrap one of the beach towels around my body.

“That was…” I struggle for words. I’m suddenly dying of thirst, and I can feel a sunburn on my back, but it all pales beside the afternoon I’ve had.