Dawn by McKayla Box

Chapter 1

I’m standing on the beach and I feel alone.

It’s the day before my Christmas vacation officially starts, the end of my first semester in Santa Barbara. I’ve finished my finals and my stuff is mostly packed; my big roller bag full of clothes and a couple of boxes of crap that have just been taking up space in my dorm that I don’t need. I’ve only been back to Sunset Beach once since school started. Thanksgiving. It was good to see my dad. And it was good to see Bridget, Gina, and Maddie. Even though we still talk all the time, it was good to do the talking in person.

But Trevor went to New York with his dad to see family, and I wasn’t counting on that.

He’s visited Santa Barbara one time. The third week of school.

And it was weird. I was trying to manage my classes and he felt out of place and it was awkward and strange and I’d been counting on seeing him at Thanksgiving to make everything feel normal again.

So it still felt weird.

We still talk every day and I tell him everything that is going on in Santa Barbara. He’s still in Sunset, working for his dad, still trying to figure out what’s next.

But the distance feels like a thing.

And I don’t like it.

“Presley?” Kyra asks. “Hello?”

I turn around. Kyra Geiger. My roommate and my de facto best friend at school. She’s shorter than me, with shoulder-length hair the color of cinnamon, freckles across her nose, and green eyes. She’s wearing a UCSB hoodie and black shorts. She’s majoring in communications, eats chocolate like it’s about to disappear from the planet, and is nice to literally every single person she encounters.

“What?” I say.

She smiles. “I asked if you were going in.” She nods at the waves crashing to shore in front of us. “You said you wanted to come down here to swim one last time. Now, you’re standing there like you’ve never seen the ocean before.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Just spacing out a little.”

“That boy? Is he what you’re thinking about?”

I hesitate, then nod. I don’t talk a lot about Trevor, but she knows enough.

“You’re gonna see him soon, right?” She says. “You’ll have all of break, yeah?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

I turn back to the water. Trevor has been stand-offish about my coming home. He says I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. I’ve tried to make plans, but he puts me off. Tells me he isn’t sure what his schedule is or what his dad has planned.

I don’t know what it means.

I pull off my sweatshirt. “Sorry. I’ll go.”

Kyra doesn’t swim but she gets freaked out if I go down the beach alone. So she’s my swimming buddy who doesn’t swim.

“Watch out for sharks,” she reminds me as she settles down on the sand.

I throw my sweatshirt at her and peel off my shorts and toss those at her, too. I’ve got a rash guard on and my bikini bottoms. “There are no sharks.”

“Liar. I’ve watched The Discovery Channel.”

“Whatever.”

I turn and walk to the water’s edge. I didn’t bring my board. I’ve already bagged it and didn’t want to pull it all out. I just want to get in the ocean. The beaches in Santa Barbara aren’t as good as the ones in Sunset, but I like them. It’s still the ocean.

I take a deep breath and step toward the water, breathing in the salty air, tuning in to the rhythmic sound of the waves rolling in, one after another.

The ocean fixes everything.

* * *

“When is your dad coming?”Kyra asks.

We are walking back through Isla Vista, the small town that houses the huge university, to our dorm. I’m wet and cold, but I feel better.

“Tomorrow morning,” I tell her. “He was going to come tonight but he had some work stuff he needed to finish.”

“Cool,” she says, nodding. “My sister wants to leave early. I told her I wanted to sleep in and she told me to enjoy the walk.”

Her sister is a junior at Santa Barbara and they seem to tolerate one another more than actually like one another.

“Better set your alarm.”

“No doubt,” she says with a grin. “You wanna go out tonight? There’s, like, three different parties I’ve already heard about.”

There is always a party somewhere at Santa Barbara. I thought we partied a lot in Sunset, but it’s nothing compared to Isla Vista.

I shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“What else are we gonna do?”

“Watch a movie? Go to bed early?”

Kyra groans. “Yeah, I’ll be doing enough of that when I get home. This is my last chance to have actual fun.”

“What’s Claudia doing?”

She makes a face. “She already left. Won’t see her for like a month. I’ll probably die.”

I chuckle. Kyra has a dramatic streak. It’s a wonder she isn’t majoring in theater.

We cross the street to our skyscraper of a dorm. It’s literally the tallest building in Isla Vista and you can see it from anywhere on campus. It looks like an apartment building that belongs in the middle of downtown Los Angeles instead of a college beach town.

I scan my ID against the reader and the glass doors unlock. People are carrying their stuff out to cars and a few parents are standing around, looking impatient.

Kyra and I take the elevator to our room on the tenth floor. When the elevator doors slide open, a blue Nerf football flies in and bounces off my forehead. I pick it up off the floor and get out of the elevator.

“Oh shit,” Randy Walker says. “Sorry, Presley.”

I fire it back at him. “Was that planned?”

He smiles. He lives down the hall from us. He’s cute, tall with brown wavy hair. He stuck his head in our room the first night we were there and invited us to a bonfire down on the beach. Kyra thinks he likes me and I think he likes Kyra, but he’s never made a move on either one of us, which is good since Kyra has a girlfriend and I have Trevor. I’ve studied with him in the lounge a couple of times and he’s nice. He’s the kind of guy I would notice if I didn’t have a boyfriend.

“Not planned,” he says, snagging the ball out of the air. “Thought you two were already gone.”

“She had to dunk herself,” Kyra tells him. “One last time.”

“I thought you were from Sunset Beach.” Randy gives me a puzzled look. “I think I saw a lot of beach there when I drove through it.”

“I just wanted to go swimming,” I tell him, then poke Kyra in the ribs. “I like the ocean. Sue me.”

“I’m trying to get her to go out tonight,” Kyra tells him. “She’s claiming she’s not sure she wants to do anything, though.”

“Bunch of ragers on D.P.,” he says. “I think Will and I are gonna head down if you guys wanna walk with us.”

Kyra looks at me.

D.P. Del Playa. The street that runs on the edge of the bluffs, just above the Pacific. Every single house on the street is occupied by students and there are parties there nearly every single night of the year.

So this isn’t a surprise.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m tired and I’m kinda just ready to…go home.”

“Nerd,” Kyra says.

“I hear ya,” Randy says. “I gotta wait until tomorrow, though, so figure might as well have fun.”

“That’s what I tried to tell her,” Kyra says.

I roll my eyes. “I think I’m a little partied out. That’s all.”

Kyra links her arm with mine. “She’ll think about it,” she says to Randy.

“I will?”

She nods. “Yes. You will.”

Randy laughs, tosses the ball up in the air, then catches it. “Alright. Well, if you wanna walk with us, we’ll probably leave around nine. And if you decide to stay home, then I hope you have a good Christmas, Presley.”

I smile at him. “You, too.”

Kyra keeps her arm linked with mine as we walk toward our room, dodging a couple people as they haul bags and suitcases toward the elevator. She leans into me, her mouth a few inches from my ear. “He is so into you.”

“He is not.”

“He is,” she insists. “He’s super cute. If you’re into boys and shit.”

I laugh.

We stop outside our room and I shove my key card into the reader.

“But Trevor. Right?”

“Yeah. Trevor.” Just saying his name makes my stomach flip-flop.

She sighs and smiles. “He must be something else.”

I nod again and push the door open. “He is. He really is.”

“Alright.” She yanks off her sweatshirt and flops down on her unmade bed. Her side of our room is always a mess. Her bed is always a tangle of blankets and pillows, her desk littered with books and food and what she calls her “tiny treasures” but are pretty much just a motley collection of knick knacks. “I’ll stop bugging you.”

“Bugging me about what?”

“Going out tonight,” she says. “I can see it.”

I reach for the hairbrush sitting on my dorm-issued dresser and start pulling it through my still-damp hair. I really should take shower to wash the salt and sand off me. “See what?”

“That you’re ready to see that boy,” she says. “That you’re ready to go home and be with him for the next few weeks. I think in your head you’re already there.” She smiles. “So I’ll let you stay here and watch a movie and imagine all of the things you’re going to do to him when you see him.”

I’m walking the room as I brush my hair. “Stop.” I hold the brush up like a weapon.

She grins. “It’s true and you know it.”

It might be partly true. I might be imaging what it will be like to kiss Trevor. To touch him. To…do other things to him.

But the other part? The part she’s not picking up on him?

I’m scared to see Trevor.

And I don’t know why.