Life's a Beach by Claire Cook Page A

was setting up a Chinese checkers game on the foot of my pulled-out bed, and my cat was batting a yellow marble around on the floor.

    “We’re missing a few marbles here,” my father said.

    “Speak for yourself,” I said.

    “Hey, that’s a good one, Dollface. You get that from me, you know.” He slid the game closer to my end of the bed. “Okay, you can be red and I’ll be blue, and we’ll fill in the missing ones with the greens and just remember who they belong to. That way Champ can have the yellow ones all to himself.”

    “Dad?”

    “Okay, age before beauty. I’ll start.” My father moved a blue marble diagonally forward until it rested in the next tin dimple.

    I picked up a red marble. “Dad? Mom’s not kidding, you know. She’s really going to sell the house. Maybe you should get rid of some of this stuff, and then we can rent you a storage unit for the rest of it.”

    “This isn’t chess, you know, Toots. Come on, make your move.”

    I put the marble down, and my father moved another blue one right away. “If I have to move,” he said, “I think I’d rather live on a houseboat. Maybe I can take your mother on a cruise and get her used to the idea.”

    “I’m not sure we have time for that, Dad.”

    “Okay, then we’ll pretend to be sick. First I’ll go, then you’ll come down with the same thing.” He scratched his head and picked up another marble. “We’ll have to synchronize our symptoms, though. That mother of yours is one smart cookie. How about a headache first and then it travels south from there?”

    I moved another marble and tried to picture where I’d be in a few months. Not, I hoped, on a couch in my parents’ townhouse. Riley’s top bunk might be slightly less depressing. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was a lot of sea glass earrings away from my own apartment. I could try to talk myself into considering another sales job, but the money was so unreliable, especially in the beginning. And I knew I’d go crazy in an office job. I just couldn’t spend my life cooped up behind four walls, living someone else’s dream. I had to figure out something more fulfilling.

    My father pushed himself off the edge of the sofa bed and started pacing. “Or maybe you and that young man of yours could get engaged, Toots. You could say you’ve always dreamed of a garden wedding. The old broad would never be able to resist that one.”

    I buried my head in my hands.

    “You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to, Dollface. A long engagement is all we need. He’s a nice young man, though. A good sweeper, too.”

    My father squatted down and rolled a yellow marble. Boyfriend stalked it, then went in for the kill. “Way to go, Champ,” my father said.

    He paced another few steps and leaned over my kitchen table. “Wooh, baby,” he said. “Will you look at that. What do you know, Champ. Looks like our Toots is quite the artist. A regular Picasso.”

     

    12

    WHEN RILEY AND I GOT TO THE SET THE NEXT DAY, everybody was passing around the latest issue of
The Daily Catch
. “What happened?” I asked one of the AD people.

    She shook her head and handed me her paper.

     

    SHARK FLIES COOP

    After a 23-day visit to the shores of Marshbury, a 14-foot, 1,700-pound female great white shark slipped out under the cover of darkness last night. Though a satellite tracking device, attached earlier, will allow scientists to observe the great white’s movements, it is unlikely that even Worldwide Studio will be able to talk the shark into returning to finish the filming of
Shark Sense.
When asked whether this constitutes a breach of contract on the part of the shark, Director Manny Muscadel had no comment.

     

    Riley was reading over my elbow. “Uh-oh,” he said when he finished.

    “Yeah,” I said, “who knew sharks could fly?”

    He laughed, but not with his usual abandon. “What are they going to do?”

    I didn’t have a clue so I