Page 98 - NS 2024

“I think so,” Owen said. “Did we bring a boat?” “Did you bring a swimsuit?” I replied.
“No,” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you two?”
“Yes,” Sienna replied. “We have coordinating ones on.”
“Wonderful,” Owen said. “I did not bring a swimsuit on my trip to my mother’s funeral because I did not anticipate that she would send a letter from the grave bidding us to swim through this magical sea.”
His voice had some of its old sarcastic air. It wasn’t uite the wide-eyed Owen I remembered from childhood, but more so a teenage version of him. It felt familiar, and I wanted to hug him and cling to the version of him I still knew.
“You can hold my keys and phone then,” Sienna decided, tossing her keys to Owen. Hesitantly, I gave Owen my phone as well.
“Are you two just going to swim out to that island?”
“It’s where the coordinates say to go,” I replied meekly.
“What if there’s like... a shark or something?” Owen asked.
“e dragon will protect us,” Sienna oered.
“Someone needs to bring you down to planet Earth,” Owen scolded. “ere is no dragon.” “ere’s no sharks either,” Sienna replied.
“Sharks are so much more realistic than dragons,” Owen insisted.
“Our mom would not be sending us on a death mission,” I reasoned.
“Before today, I wouldn’t think our mom would want us to do anything like this. She barely
let us come home past ten o’clock, Everly.”
“Really?” Sienna asked. “You guys had a curfew?”
“Yes,” I conrmed.
Owen ignored us. “I’m not going to stand here on the shore and let you guys swim to the
island.”
“Because you could protect us from the big scary sharks?” I teased.
Owen frowned. “Because at least if something goes wrong we’ll be... together.” His words were corny, but I got the urge to hug my brother again. Whenever we made up stories as kids, Owen always wanted to be our protector. I’d missed having my brother’s protection. ere wasn’t much he could have done against a shark attack, but his presence alone made me feel better. “e rst one there wins!” Sienna exclaimed, jumping into the water.
I shrieked at how cold the water was, but got used to it uickly. Luckily, the water wasn’t too deep. About halfway through, I decided to splash some water at Owen. e water hit him and Sienna. is resulted in a splash war for the rest of the way, which was totally unfair because Sienna had goles on and I didn’t. We’d le the oaties in the car, unfortunately.
All of our hair was soaked and we were out of breath from the swim. I have no clue which