Excerpt: Restless

They arrived at the Mouth of Truth. It looked impressive, Alex thought, even with the crack in its upper right side, and it was bigger than he thought it would be. “I’ll put my hand in it first,” he volunteered immediately. His dad beamed at him, retrieving a camera from his black rucksack. Alex waited for his turn. A teenage girl with long brown hair and tanned skin and dressed in a white strappy top had her hand in the Mouth and she was smiling at the flash of someone’s camera. A boy about her age was standing next to her, his arm curled around her waist, fingers pressed against the bare skin showing there. She looked up at him and said, “I love you,” loud and clear and she stood on the tip of her toes and kissed him until they were both dissolving in warmth and happiness and laughter. Alex squirmed a little. He could hear his dad chuckling behind him and he thought about how much he hated embarrassing parents. Parents were, by definition, always embarrassing.