Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Page A

a hand to help Elsa get out of the van last, sleepy and slow. “Something to see first.”
    “Is this it?” Elsa asked Clio. “I’ve been absolutely out. I didn’t realize how knackered I was.”
    “I think so,” Clio said. “But I don’t know what it is.”
    “Leave your bags, everyone!” her dad said. “Follow me!”
    “I guess it is that way,” Clio said.
    “Can you tell the driver that we’ll need at least an hour to unload?” he asked Elsa. “I’ll pay him for it.”
    Elsa communicated this in Italian, and the offer was accepted.
    Her father led them down a concrete path until it ended abruptly and four steps took them down to the dark-sanded beach. Clio looked over at the cliff face next to them, but couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing. It was like the world’s most extraordinary layer cake.
    At the sand level, built entirely into the cliff, was a three-story building with a grapefruit-yellow front. The paint was worn to white in places, but the long windows were framed in bold and spotless red. If it had been up on a street, the building would have looked like an old hotel, but it actually had a large banner 56

    on the front announcing in English that it was a dive shop. In the space above it, where a normal building would have air and sky, was the middle of an entirely different building, again built flat into the cliff. This one looked like an ancient fortress of gray brick, complete with tiny openings for archers to shoot from.
    The structure was interrupted again near the top of the cliff, turning into a true and unmistakable grand hotel, also yellow, with pristine white archways that faced out to the sea and dripping greenery along the edge.
    Clio wanted to draw it immediately, if only to understand it.
    She could only admire the insanity of the people who made such a thing—or three things. But her dad had started doing a little tap dance on the sand.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, swinging his arms open.
    “Welcome to your new home for the summer!”
    There was some looking around at the water, the cliff, the Vespas parked along the walkway.
    “You’re not talking about this, are you?” Aidan said, his voice thick with dismay.
    Sitting on the sand in front of them, directly behind her father, was a fifty-foot-long decaying wooden boat. It was moored in place on a dangerous-looking diagonal with metal barrels and lumber shoved under it, just about holding it upright. About a third of it was covered with a tarp, but the remaining two-thirds consisted mainly of smashed-out windows and rot.
    “I realize it needs a little work,” he father said. “But the potential!”
    “This is our boat?” Julia asked. “This isn’t going to . . .”
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    Elsa’s eyes had gone wide. For once, strangers knew what Clio had been feeling all her life. That was a nice realization, but it didn’t take away from the wreck of reality in front of her.
    “Ben,” Martin began. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
    “That’s kind of an understatement,” Aidan said.
    Her father looked at them in genuine confusion.
    “Really?” he asked. “I got such a good deal on it.”
    “I imagine you did,” Julia said.
    Clio fixed her father with a deadly stare.
    “With a little work,” he said, “it’ll be great. It’s not nearly as bad as it looks.”
    Silence from the group. Martin let out a polite cough.
    “Oh!” Her dad laughed, looking over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.
    I was facing the wrong way. There’s our boat. Right there, on the end.”
    They rotated as one toward the gently lapping water.
    Before them, no more than fifteen feet out—swimming distance, maybe even walking distance—was a row of five fabulous boats. At the very end of the row was the biggest and baddest of them all, definitely a yacht. Something about this boat screamed,
    “I am a very popular model in the world’s oil-bearing regions. I cost more than your soul!”
    “Welcome to the Sea