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"That's not true" He shook a nger at her She'd never seen him lose his temper so quickly Then he looked up at the sky, and Luce followed his gaze A shadow zipped over their heads--like an all-black rework leaving a deadly, smoky tail Daniel seeo," he said "I have to go," he said

"How shocking" She turned away "Turn up out of nowhere, pick a ght, then duck out This rabbed her shoulders and shook them until she met his eyes "It is true love," he said, with such desperation that Luce couldn't tell whether it chipped away at or added to the pain in her heart "You know it is" His eyes burned violet--not with anger but with intense desire The kind of look that made you love a person so ht in front of you

Daniel ducked his head to kiss her cheek, but she was too close to tears Eh, and then: the beat of wings

No

When she whipped her head around, Daniel was soaring across the sky, halfway between the ocean and the ht white under a moonbeam A moment later, it was hard to tell him apart from any of the stars in the sky

Chapter Five

FOURTEEN DAYS

During the night, a windless layer of fogIt didn't lift with the sunrise, and its gloo and everyone So all day Friday in school, Luce felt like she was being dragged along by a slow- tide The teachers were out of focus, noncommittal, and sloith their lectures The students sat in a heap of lethargy, struggling to stay awake though the long, damp drone of the day

By the time classes let out, the dreariness had penetrated Luce to her very core She didn't knohat she was doing at this school that wasn't really hers, in this tehted her lack of a real, permanent one All she wanted to do was crawl into her botto rst week at Shoreline, but also the argument with Daniel and the jumble of questions and anxieties that had shaken loose in her ht before had been i she'd stumbled alone back to her dor oDaniel's shutting her out no longer surprised her, but that didn't , chauvinistic order he'd given her to stay on the school grounds? What was this, the nineteenth century? It crossed her mind that o, but--like Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet--Luce was certain no former self of hers would ever have been cool with that And she certainly wasn't now

She was still angry and annoyed after class,toward the dor by the ti into the dim, empty room, she almost didn't see the envelope someone had slipped under the door

It was cream-colored, imsy and square, and when she ipped it over, she saw her name typed on the front in sy fro she owed him one too

The letter inside was typewritten on cream-colored paper and folded into thirds

Dear Luce,

There's so to tell you Meet ht? The 5 bus along Hwy 1 stops a quarter of a mile

south of Shoreline Use this bus pass I'll be waiting by the North CliCan't wait to see you

Love, Daniel

Shaking the envelope, Luce felt a small slip of paper inside She pulled out a thin blue-and-white bus ticket with the number ve printed on its front and a crude littledrawn on its back That was it There was nothing else

Luce couldn't gure it out No ument on the beach No indication that Daniel even understood how erratic it was to practically vanish into thin air one night, then expect her to travel at his whie Daniel could turn up anywhere, anytiistical realities that nors had to deal with

The letter felt cold and sti in her hands Her more reckless side was teuing, tired of Daniel's not trusting her with details But that pesky in-love side of Luce wondered whether she was being too harsh on him Because their relationship orth the e ort She tried to remember the way his eyes had looked and his voice had sounded when he told her the story about the lifetiold rush The way he'd seen her through theand fallen in love with her for so like the thousandth tie she took with her when she left her dor the path toward Shoreline's front gates, toward the bus stop where Daniel had instructed her to wait An ied at her heart while she stood under a da, peel around the hairpin turns on guardrail-less Highway 1, and vanish again

When she looked back at Shoreline's formidable campus in the distance, she re as we stay under their umbrella of surveillance, we can prettyout from under the umbrella, but where was the har Daniel again orth the risk of getting caught

A few minutes past the half hour, the number ve bus pulled up to the stop

The bus was old and gray and rickety, as was the driver who heaved the levered door open to let Luce board She took an empty seat near the front The bus smelled like cobwebs, or a rarely used attic She had to clutch the cheap leatherette seat cushion as the bus barreled around the curves at fty miles an hour, as if just inches beyond the road, the cli didn't drop a ray ocean

It was raining by the tiot to town, a steady sideways drizzle just shy of a real downpour Most of the businesses on the ht, and the town looked wet and a little desolate Not exactly the scene she'd had indown froged it over her head She could feel the chill of the rain on her nose and her ngertips She spotted a bent green n and followed its arroard Noyo Point

The point was a wide peninsula of land, not lush green like the terrain on Shoreline's caray sand The trees thinned out here, their leaves stripped away by the tful ocean wind There was one lone bench on a patch of e, about a hundred yards from the road That must have been where Daniel meant for them to meet But Luce could see from where she stood that he wasn't there yet She looked down at her watch She was ve minutes late