Chapter 2
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
The Day Before Departure
The Old Eileen was waiting for Tia Cameron. She felt the ship’s magnetic pull as she stepped onto the dock of New Haven Marina. It was the
way the waves must feel, building themselves up high only to race back to shore and shatter upon the sand.
An inevitability.
Sweat spread under the arms of her school uniform as she dragged her suitcase over the wooden slats of the dock and laid eyes
on her family’s boat.
The Old Eileen sat like a swan among sea gulls, her body streamlined, her gold lettering immaculate. She’d been swabbed and de-fouled until
she shone a brilliant white and gave off a mild scent of chemical lime. She was as stunning as she’d been the day Tia’s father
bought her when Tia and her twin brother, Rylan, were small. The Old Eileen had been a part of their lives every summer since in the same way other families had ski lodges or beach homes.
But this trip would be different from all the ones that had come before. This was no childhood day-sail hugging the coast or vacation spent inside a bay. This trip would take them out to sea for a week to celebrate that high school was now behind them and the real world loomed ahead.
For Tia Cameron, this trip marked the end of something.
“My beautiful daughter!” a soprano voice chimed out from the deck of the ship.
Tia’s mother was poised at the stern on tiptoes, one hand on the back of her sun hat, the other tilting up her heart-shaped
Saint Laurent sunglasses. The image made Tia think of the ship log she and Rylan used to keep, where they had given everyone
onboard descriptions and call signs.
Lila Logan Cameron. Glamorous actress and mother of two.
Call sign: Cassiopeia.
Meaning: The mythic Greek queen who boasted so much that her daughter Andromeda ended up chained to a rock in monster-infested
waters.
Or, as Rylan preferred, Cassiopea: the scientific genus for upside-down jellyfish. Beautiful. Lucid. Deadly.
The moment Tia crossed the catwalk and was in reach, Lila clasped her face, kissed her on both cheeks, and announced, “My
darling girl, I am going to make you a drink. What would you like?”
“Anything but tea.”
Lila laughed. “Then a pair of strawberry daiquiris, coming right up! Put your suitcase in your room.”
Tia hoisted her suitcase to the ship’s companionway. “Okay, Mom.” She knew better than to halt the breathtaking momentum of
Lila Logan.
The hatch to the companionway was open, sunshine streaming into the salon below.
Tia lowered her suitcase down and climbed after it, then walked through the salon and the short hall to the center bedroom.
Her brother’s stuff was already unpacked neatly in his half.
Even his swim trunks had been folded. There wasn’t a maid onboard, but Tia couldn’t imagine her unkempt, daydreamy brother taking the time to fold every article of clothing and swimwear.
And it wasn’t like her mother would have done it herself.
When Tia climbed back on deck in her polka-dot two-piece, Lila was draped across the chart house in a lavender shell-scoop
bikini. She sat up long enough to hand her a glass of pink, sweet-smelling liquid before they lay back side by side.
“Where’s Rylan and Dad?” The ice cubes made music in her daiquiri glass.
“Off on a dive. Rylan still hasn’t passed all of his rescue skills. They’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” Lila reached a long arm
over and toasted her drink with Tia’s. “But enough about them. To Tia Cameron! The newest—and finest—graduate of St. Beatrice—”
“Bernadette’s.”
“St. Bernadette’s! Now, even if you weren’t educated a bit, you at least look like you were on paper.” Lila drained her glass.
Tia took a sip. Even though she was only two hours from her redbrick, woodsy boarding school, not nearly far enough, the sunlight,
the sea, and the strawberry sweetener were enough to make her finally relax. St. Bernadette’s School for Girls was behind
her now. For good.
Lila wrinkled her nose and touched Tia’s hair. “Did you dye the ends yourself?”
“Yup.” The sink in her dorm room had still been stained red when Tia left this morning.
“Let me pay for a salon next time, hm?” Lila tossed her own corn silk hair over one shoulder.
Tia pictured for the millionth time what her life might have been like if she looked more like her mother.
Lila Cameron was a classic beauty—soft hair and softer skin with a delicate frame that, like her maiden name, Lila Logan, made it seem like she was ready to soar.
Tia hadn’t inherited any of it. She was shorter and curvier with coarse dark hair that had taken half a dozen bleach attempts to dye the split ends red.
“My, if it isn’t the dashing and daring Cameron women!”
Tia’s father materialized at the swim ladder, decked out in full scuba diving apparel: skintight wet suit, half-inflated buoyancy
control device, and bright orange fins under one arm that evoked some awkward avian creature.
Tia downed the rest of her daiquiri.
Captain Francis Ryan Cameron. A rags-to-riches yachting CEO and owner of The Old Eileen.
Call sign: Midas.
Meaning: The storied king whose mere touch turned everything into gold. Or, the Midas cichlid fish, known to be omnivorous,
territorial, and color-changing.
Lila matched her husband’s pearly grin as she leaned back on her elbows. “Ah, and the gallant, gawky Cameron men.”
“Glad to see you, Tia. How was the drive?” Francis tossed his flippers aside and worked to peel off his wetsuit.
“Fine,” Tia said, her focus behind her father where any moment she hoped Rylan would appear.
And he did, hauling himself over the edge effortlessly, black hair dripping beads down his face. He shed his wet suit like
a selkie’s coat and locked in on her with owly eyes.
Francis Rylan Cameron. Son, brother.
Call sign: Minnow.
Meaning: Small, bashful, freshwater fish. Harmless and quick. But fun fact—they have teeth in the back of their throat.
Tia stood. Rylan crossed the deck, leaned down, and crushed her in his arms. When he pulled back, his smile was electric,
a current that ran from him to her and made her smile in return.
But something was different. He’d gotten tall. There was a nick on his chin where he must have cut himself shaving. Since when does Rylan shave? And was he even thinner than last summer?
Rylan drew her in again and murmured into her hair, “Missed you.”
He was definitely thinner.
“How was your dive?” she asked.
Francis answered for him. “He passed some of the rescue skills. Third time’s the charm, eh, Tia?”
“Sure.”
Francis strode across the deck once he was free from his equipment and planted a scratchy, stubbly kiss on his daughter’s
head. He did the same with his wife’s cheek, and she swatted him away. “Shave. Now.”
Tia set her empty daiquiri glass on the chart house. She toted Rylan to the railing, then shoved him backward into the marina
water without warning. She needed to talk to him. Alone.
Rylan surfaced, spluttering. “Hey!” he shouted, whipping his head around to see if they were going to be chastised by the
dockworkers. There weren’t any nearby. If there had been at one point, they’d already turned a blind eye to Rylan and Francis
doing a quick skill dive under the ship. Most marinas forbade scuba diving or swimming at all in case of a boating accident.
But the dockworkers knew the Camerons. Francis’s company, Unwind Yachting, maintained half the boats in the marina.
Tia cannonballed in after her brother, sending a soupy wave into him.
He made a face and spit. “What was that for?”
Tia swam to his side and poked his head. “Just to make sure you’re still alive in there.”
Rylan pushed her hand away. He treaded water, those gentle eyes of his trained on her.
Tia glanced back at their family yacht. Her parents were still flirting on deck.
Alejandro Matamoros, Francis’s best friend, business partner, and renowned culinary mastermind, was below, she knew, cooking up a feast. MJ, the first mate, would arrive tomorrow, along with Ernie, a longtime sailor and family friend.
There would be seven of them in the end, sailing from their meet-up spot in Connecticut to the Camerons’ Palm Beach home.
Francis and Lila had hired a crew to charter their boat all the way to New Haven just so they could fly in and sail it back down themselves.
Tia faced her twin. “When this is over, the vacation, our birthday, all of it . . .”
She sucked in a breath. There was no going back now.
“When all of it’s over, I’m leaving, Ry. I’m leaving, and I want you to come with me. We’re about to turn eighteen. We graduated.
We can do this.”
Rylan’s face drained of color. He looked as white as the hull of the ship.
Tia took him by his shoulder. “You don’t have to decide now. I know it’s big, but I’ve thought it all through and—”
“No,” Rylan whispered.
Tia shook him slightly. “Rylan, just think about—”
“I can’t,” he murmured, and the tremor in his voice made Tia’s stomach turn.
She hadn’t expected this. He always went along with her plans. But he had spent more time with Francis and Lila the past year
than he had with her, and leaving them behind forever was huge. Tia would need to ease him into it.
“Tia,” he said, strained, in response to her silence. “You just got here. Can we talk about this later? Please.”
“Fine. Of course.” She let him withdraw and swim back to the ladder.
Maybe in this moment Rylan couldn’t imagine the world that Tia could outside the one built by the Cameron family. But tomorrow, The Old Eileen would glide out from the harbor and into open sea. One week later, she’d dock in West Palm Beach, and the seven of them would
disembark. And after their birthday celebration on June 5, Tia and Rylan would be gone, and a world outside the Camerons would
be far more than imagined.