Down by the Sea

Claire didn’t know Derek very well. He was a boy on the periphery. He was handsome, a surfer, a little slow, a little awkward but he seemed nice so saying yes to a walk on the beach didn’t seem to be such a bad idea.

Who knows, it was the start of summer, she had never been in love, her sister, Thalia, teased her about it, being a goody-goody, maybe this summer, the summer of her eighteenth year, was time for change.

She wondered, as she put on her sweater and headed to the pier, what that change might look like.