Excerpt: Escape to Anywhere But Here

As she walked down the road to the Celandine’s house, she thought on the time they first met. She’d been on the beach at Marlee Rose’s lake house up in New Milford. They’d been drinking ice tea and tanning and watching the high school boys rocket around on their Sea-dos jumping the waves of the little motor boats around the lake. One of the boats, faster and a bit larger than the others was towing some of the older guys around on wake boards. She was still amused at the concept of wake boarding, being a surfer herself, and kind of thought it was cheating. She was just commenting again on this to Marlee Rose, when one of them let go of the rope, clearly accidentally, and skidded along the edge of the water, right up the short beach, and into the bushes. Somewhere either in crashing into the bushes, or trying to wrangle his way out, his board shorts had ripped on the branches, leaving a very white bottom exposed to the world. As the rest of his body was almost as tan as her Italian skin, his pale tuckus was a drastic enough contrast to earn the attention of the entire beach. Furthermore, his board had become dislodged from his foot, and was now sitting on Sophia Olivia’s lap.