Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
“Man, there’s nowhere to park!” Tom’s best friend Nick moaned as he took their rental car on another lap around the La Vega Beach parking lot.
“I told you, we should have gotten here earlier,” Jason, another member of their spring break crew, shouted from the back seat.
“Some of us were too hungover to make it up before lunchtime,” Nick yelled back, twisting around in his seat as he tried to back up.
“Maybe we should just pack it in,” Kevin, the fourth of the friends, suggested. “We can always hang out back at the beach house.”
“No,” Tom protested. “We’re having a beach day.”
“Ah! Found one.” Nick hollered in triumph as he steered the sports car into a recently vacated space. Tom sighed in relief. He really needed a day in the sun, swimming in the waves, and relaxing with his buddies.
The past semester at Harvard had been intense. His dad had insisted that he focus on rigorous business classes and demanded high marks in all of them. Tom knew that his dad just wanted to make sure he was well prepared to take over the family business after he graduated, but it left very little time for fun.
So when his best friend Nick organized a trip to La Vega, Florida, for spring break, Tom jumped at the chance. His dad was annoyed that he wasn’t spending spring break doing a micro internship or another resume-boosting activity, but Tom just wanted to have a good time with his friends and knew this might be one of his last chances at a real vacation.
Tom looked out over the blue ocean, grinning. Time spent in nature always made him feel refreshed and energized, and he couldn’t wait to splash around in the warm waters of La Vega.
“You going to help, or what?” Nick’s voice startled Tom out of his reverie. The rest of the guys were hauling beer coolers and folding chairs out of the car’s trunk, and Tom went over to help.
They dragged everything down the beach, looking for a good place to set up. Nick was being especially picky, insisting that they needed lots of room for their volleyball net, so they walked for a while as Nick scouted out the perfect location for a beach day camp.
“Excuse me! Hi!”
Tom heard a female voice and whipped around, wondering if she was talking to him. He saw a girl about his own age, with long red hair pulled back in a messy, windswept braid under a floppy sun hat. Her nose was peppered with freckles, and she was carrying a clipboard.
“Hi,” Tom said, stopping to hear what she had to say.
“My name is Louisa,” the girl began, “and I’m here with the La Vega Sea Turtle Conservation Center. We’re recruiting volunteers for a beach cleanup tomorrow, to help restore the nesting habitat for native endangered sea life.”
“Cool!” Tom reached out for her clipboard, but Nick interrupted, running over to them and punching Tom playfully on the arm.
“Come on, man. We just found the perfect spot, but you’re all the way back here—we need that cooler.”
Tom looked down at the cooler he was carrying, then over to Louisa, and back to Nick. Louisa was cute, and he liked the idea of participating in some local efforts while he was here. But Nick had already run off again, and Tom didn’t want to risk losing his friends in the crowd.
“Uh, I have to go,” he said, giving Louisa an apologetic smile.
“Well, take one of these, at least.” Louisa handed him a flyer, which Tom looked over before sticking into the pocket of his new board shorts.
“Thanks. I’ll see you around.”
By the time Tom found his buddies, they had already set up the volleyball net and were batting the ball around between them.
“Where were you, dude? We need a fourth, or we can’t play.” Jason tossed Tom the volleyball, and he caught it with ease.
“You’ll regret that once I’m kicking your butt,” Tom teased, spiking the ball back.
They began a spirited game, Tom and Nick on one team, Kevin and Jason on the other. They laughed and shouted as they volleyed back and forth, Tom and Nick maintaining the lead by a tiny margin.
But then Tom caught the ball at a strange angle, sending it wide in an arc that took it past most of the beachgoers and into a patch of grass at the foot of a nearby sand dune.
“I’ll get it,” Tom yelled, jogging in the direction the ball had gone.
When he found it, though, something caught his eye. At first, he thought someone had left a pile of ping-pong balls in the sand. But when Tom took a closer look, he saw that they were eggs, bright white and perfectly round, nestled into a small hole in the sand.
The image looked familiar. Tom pulled the sea turtle brochure out of his pocket and smoothed it out, flipping it open. There, right in the center, was a photo of a nearly identical nest. They were sea turtle eggs!
Tom raced back to his friends, the volleyball tucked under one arm, nearly breathless with excitement. “Guys, you have to come look! I found a sea turtle nest!”
“Took you long enough,” Kevin said, grabbing for the ball. “It’s our serve.”
“No, hold on—before we start playing again, you should come see this.” He held out the brochure, pointing to the picture of the eggs in the nest. “It says here that they’re endangered, so I think it’s pretty rare to find them just on the beach like that.”
Tom’s friends looked at each other, shrugging ambivalently.
“I don’t know if I want to go all the way over there just to see some turtle eggs,” Nick said.
“We’ve all seen eggs before,” Kevin said. “Let’s just get back to the game.” He tossed the ball to Jason and gestured for Tom to take his place again by the volleyball net.
Tom rubbed his neck, which was slick with sweat and sunscreen, trying to figure out what to do. He knew he couldn’t just leave the nest out in the open like that, exposed to stray volleyballs or anything else that might hurt them. But what was he supposed to do? It wasn’t like he had the knowledge or resources to help a bunch of baby sea turtles that hadn’t even hatched yet.
Then it occurred to him—Louisa! Surely the girl he met earlier, who was so focused on helping sea turtles and other marine animals, would know what to do. He’d have to go find her.
“You guys keep playing,” he said, grabbing a water bottle from the cooler and putting his sunglasses back on. “I’m going to go find that girl from before, the one with the clipboard.”
“Aw, man.” Nick rolled his eyes. “Forget about turtle girl, dude. I know she was cute, but we’ll go out tonight. You’ll meet plenty of chicks.”
“Ones who don’t want you to sign a petition or anything,” Jason added.
But Tom wasn’t listening. He didn’t like the idea of those eggs being left alone for any longer. He set out to find Louisa and see what could be done to help them.