NaNoWriMo The Mystery of Searook

Chapter 1: Where Lynn Enjoys Surfboards And Strawberry Milkshakes

Carolin Bishop stood on the beach facing the sun. One hand was holding an ice cold strawberry milkshake and the other was bracing a long off-white surfboard against the oak railing of the boardwalk. Behind her was the bustling small city of Searook, but ahead of her was simply the setting sun, the sea, and the surf. It was calm and tranquil, exactly what Carolin was longing for. A little kid chased his brother down the boardwalk, small shoes and shrill screams breaking the silence and interrupting Carolin's quiet moment. Taking that as a sign, Carolin took her surfboard under her arm and turned back to the city.
 
On her way home, Carolin opted to take the more scenic route. She wandered down Coral Avenue, waving to the familiar shopkeepers. The normally swarming street was starting to taper off as people made their way home for the day. The people who weren't heading home entered the small restaurants or pulled out small tables partially into the street so they could enjoy the picturesque sunset. It was just another day in the small Californian city of Searook.
 
"Lynn! Lynn!" Carolin turned to see Sydney waving her over from Harold's Hardware, a small shop tucked in the street. Carolin hopped up to the sidewalk and off the automobile-free street and set her surfboard against the outside windowsill.
 
"Hey Syd, what's up?" Carolin asked, entering the doorway and waving to Harold who was dissecting an old computer from behind the counter.
 
"Harold just got some new honeycomb in, here try," Sydney was, as always, very excited, Carolin opened her mouth but a piece of honeycomb went in before any words could come out. A satisfied moan escaped Carolin, Harold had a few beehives at his home and sold the honeycomb throughout the year. Whenever they were set out in his store, they were gone before the hour was up. Carolin stopped by the store every other day or so in hopes to snatch some before they disappeared.
 
“That’s really really good,” Carolin said through a mouthful of the golden honeycomb.
 
There was boisterous laugh from Harold and Carolin wiped at her mouth. “’Tis one of my better batches. Betsy next door just put some Blazin’ Stars in her garden and the bees love ‘em,”
 
“What’s that you got there, Harold?” Carolin inquired, gestured to the dissected computer.
 
“It’s y’r mum’s computer. ‘Parently it stopped workin’ yesterday” Harold replied adjusting a wire with his finger.
 
“Oh, then I guess we’ll leave you to it, good luck!” Sydney excused them with a smile and dragged Carolin by the arm out the door and onto the street. “Lynn, you didn’t know about the computer, did you?”
 
Carolin’s response was just a bit too fast, “No, but it’s not a big deal,”
 
“First your mom stops talking to you, then she refuses to let you get the surfboard from your house, and now she takes your computer in without asking you first?!” Sydney exclaims, voicing exactly what Carolin had been thinking.
 
“My parents divorced, she’s technically allowed to do things like that, its fine. Sure, she’s a bit upset about it, but of course she’s going to be. Besides, the stopped talking was also me not talking to her. And the surfboard incident was because she didn’t hear the door. And she uses the computer too! I mean, it’s fine,”
 
“Lynn,” Sydney whined, dragging out her name, “You need to stop pretending it’s fine when it’s not,”
 
Carolin stopped listening. Sydney went on talking about how her mom needs to respect her and her dad should let her mom do this but Carolin couldn’t listen. Usually she would join in and harp and vent and get it all out but today, she was just tired. Big day tomorrow, she was going to teach her first surfing lesson. That would give her something to do besides sit around at her dad’s surf shop and pretend her mom wasn’t mad at her.
 
“Lynn, are you even listening?” Sydney’s voice wasn’t as accusing as the words were. There was a level of concern. Usually Sydney didn’t pay too much attention to if Carolin was truly engaged, she just needed to talk sometimes so she was a bit used to zoning out.
 
“Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about the surfing lessons tomorrow,” Carolin admitted.
 
“Oh that’s right, well I should probably let you head home then shouldn’t I?” Sydney realized. She waiting for Carolin’s nod before continuing, “Well, you have to text me tomorrow and tell me how it goes, or call me. Yeah, you should call me so we can chat. And have fun at Searook Prep! I still can’t believe you got into the school. Like what were the chances you would win the lottery thing? But you totally deserve it. I live vicariously through those cute uniforms. Oh yeah, yeah, you’re going home. Alright, byeee!” Sydney waved and the instant Carolin turned she heard Sydney’s phone ring and then her voice start up again about theatre club. She never really stopped talking, but it was something that Carolin enjoyed, it was a change of pace.
 
As Carolin walked down the familiar streets to her home, her mind still reeling about her mom. She stopped, for a second, realizing she had been heading towards her mom’s house. Not her dad’s. It was horrible that they had to live in different places now. At least her dad’s house, where she spent most of her time, was their old house. Familiar and big. Oh how she wished they could make up again and life could go back to normal.
 
~~~
 
“Alright friends, now take your surfboard and set it between two of the lines in the sand,” Carolin had quickly transformed into an excellent surf coach. “Amazing, now, lay down on it just like this,” She demonstrated and started to mimic the arm movements, “And you are just going to do this with your arms, imagine pulling yourself through the water,” She stood back up and started going from kid to kid, offering advice and adjusting arm movements.
 
Carolin got to the end of the line before she realized that she actually knew the person on the end. “Bumblebee! OMG! You said you would never learn to surf! What are you doing here?” A delighted grin made it’s way on to Carolin’s face.
 
Ashby was a girl assigned to be a student that Carolin got to mentor at her old school. They ended up becoming really close and have really only been able to keep in touch via letters slipped in each other’s mailboxes. Ashby had recently gone into remission from Leukemia so it was a big surprise that she was able to be at the surfing lessons. There were so many things that she hadn’t been able to do before so that fact that she was able to do this was a really good sign. Besides, having a friend there was going to make the lessons much easier for Carolin.
 
“I signed up just last week, I decided to surprise you!” Ashby grinned, “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching, coach?” A mischievous smile worked it’s way on Ashby’s face.
 
“You’re right!” Carolin exclaimed, standing up, “Oh, and you might want to straighten your arms a little, no doggy paddling, big strokes get you farther,”
 
“Alright everyone, next we are going to practice standing on the board, everyone up!” Carolin called out, standing on her board with her knees bent and arms out, demonstrating what all twenty of her pupils were to do.
 
“When are we going to actually be on the waves?” A little boy groaned, looking past the sandbar they were on and out to the waves crashing against the shore.
 
“We can go to the ocean when I am confident that each of you can hold your own on the waves. You need to be able to mock-swim on the sand, stay stable on your surfboard on the sand, have balance even when I tilt your board back and forth and a bunch of other things. Long story short, you still have a long ways to go,” Carolin grinned. Even though she was crushing the little boy’s dream of surfing on his first lesson, she was confidant that she was crushing the lesson.
 
The rest of the two-hour class raced by. It was a myriad of the right form standing on their boards and mimicking how they would swim out to waves. All of the kids at the end winced when they had to raise their arms over their heads. Carolin, herself, was sore from demonstrating things, and she had been surfing for years before this. It was hard to not give Ashby any more attention than the rest of the learners, but every time she was a bit drained, she knew she could turn to Ashby and find a new bounty of energy and affirmation.
 
As the lesson ended, Carolin watched as each of the kids were picked up by their parents. Several demonstrated what they had learned or started off on a long rampant of how much fun they had had. Ashby walked up to Carolin before her parents came too. “That was so much fun!”
 
“I’m so glad you could make it!” Carolin patted a spot on the sand next to her, “Sit down. Did you enjoy it?”
 
Ashby sat down on the sand with the same smile etched on her face, “I really did! It was so nice seeing you again. Letters are never enough, although they are really, really fun. I can’t wait to surf, the doctor only cleared me to do it a little bit ago so this is the first time I’ve been able to actually do it. But I’ll have to do check ins though since its more exercise then I’ve been doing but I’m excited,”
 
“That’s so great! Maybe after next lesson I could take you out on the waves some, maybe a sort of private lesson,” Carolin gave her a playful nudge, looking out to the sea.
 
“Really?! That would be so much fun!” Ashby squealed, “I wish we could have started doing surfi—”
 
Ashby paused mid-word when Carolin’s phone rang really loudly. She probably paused because Carolin’s phone never really rang. She picked it up and saw it was a text. But her phone was silenced, so it shouldn’t have made any noise. Ashby took out her phone and that solved the mystery of the noise. It was a group chat. There wasn’t a name with the number who sent it though. The text read, ‘meet me at the fountain at 5 next Thursday’
 
“Who’s that?” Ashby was the first to talk.
 
“I don’t know, I figured you might know,” Carolin admitted.
 
“It’s to you, me, your friend Sydney and another number I don’t have.”
 
“It’s Xavier,”
 
“Oh” Ashby murmured, “Are we going to do it?”
 
“I don’t know”

WC: 1824 | Total WC: 1824

Chapter 2: Where Most Of The Group Meets and Discusses

Carolin sat on a bench in the park facing the sea. It was a familiar spot for her, the only quiet spot in the park. The rest of it was bustling with screaming kids and excitable dogs. But here: it was calm and quiet, rather like two nights ago when she had stood at the pier looking out to the sea. Since then, she had starting surfing lessons, met Ashby for the first time since last year and gotten the mysterious text.

‘Calm, what does that even mean?
All I get are moments of tranquility’

It didn’t rhyme. Most of Carolin’s songs rhymed. She sighed, looking at the page she had just written that in. She was nearing the end of her journal now, it was the one she had started the beginning of this summer. Most pages were filled with song lyrics or doodles, occasionally a to-do list or diary entrees. Basically everyone Carolin knew commented that they had never seen her without her journal. It was pretty true, unless she was surfing, she had her journal in hand or in a bag. Simply, so when ideas strike, she could write them down.

Carolin had made a deal with the man at the music store that each song she handed in would be worth $20 and if she added chords it would be worth $50. That sounded like a lot, but it added up. Ideas usually took days, then lyrics took an hour or two, refining and word choice and editing was another hour, and chords usually took an entire afternoon or sometimes two. Nonetheless, because of the deal, Carolin was making quite a bit, and on top of that she had the surfing lessons that she got about 25$ an hour. And then there was the five dollars she got weekly from taking down the trash bins along the street. And the extra ten dollars weekly from walking the Pincum’s dog every day. And in the summer she mowed lawns and the fall she raked leaves and the winter she shoveled what little snow fell and in the spring she weeded gardens. Carolin was always doing something for money since finances had led to the divorce. It was also a reason to not be at either of the homes.

‘always busy
always working
but it’s my fault; come attest
I never get time to rest’

Carolin looked up from the journal. This one was too raw to turn in for money. It was too much truth. She’d have to edit it, or maybe even rewrite it before she’d feel alright giving it to the music store.

A little kid, probably early elementary age ran in front of the bench. He was holding a plastic airplane toy and was vocalizing the little engine noises. He ran back and forth in front of her, oblivious to Carolin sitting on the bench. “Going down, going down!” he screamed, no diving the plane into the grass, “Deploy the jumpers everyone out!” he giggled dropping some rocks he grabbed from the ground as if they were the people jumping out. He rammed the toy into the grass and giggled, messing around with it and pretending to take off again. He ‘nyoom’ed away again back through the path towards one of the play structures. A residue of a smile found it’s way on Carolin’s face.

There was the sound of voices behind her and Carolin glanced back to see an older couple walk down the path the boy had just disappeared into. They were laughing and recounting a memory about something with lobsters. They seemed so content, like how her parents had been a year or two ago. Before the fighting.

Carolin turned back toward the sea, she could just see it over the houses and palm trees. The park was on a hill, there was a trail that led to Coral Avenue and from that you could get onto the boardwalk and from that, the ocean.

Carolin looked back to her journal and found that she had lost her inspiration. She sighed and sunk back into the bench. The song was only a few lines in. She still needed a chorus and a bridge and chords and the rest of the verses. It seemed she had something to work on for the rest of the night. Not that she really felt like working on a song all night.

She still had the group text to worry about. What even was it? There was a really good chance that it was just a friend of theirs that she and Ashby simply didn’t have the number for. Besides, there were four of them, so it was less likely to be a creepy person. It wasn’t like they were meeting in a back alley either. It was a relatively busy area too. It could be a school thing or a club or a whole number of things. Carolin started doodling the fountain in the middle of Coral Avenue. Her result wasn’t too great, but at least she could recognize it was a fountain.

Carolin felt her phone buzz again and dug it out of her bag so fast that her journal fell from her lap and onto the sprinkler-reliant grass. Sadly, it wasn’t a text from the mysterious person. It was Xavier. Carolin felt her breath catch, he wanted to meet at the beach. They hadn’t talked in months, and now he just wanted to chat? Then the next text came in ‘about the group chat’. The shock died. She’d have to go then, well she didn’t have to go, but she was going to go.

Carolin stuffed her journal in her bag and stood up, reluctantly walking down the trail. There was a part of her that dreaded doing this.

Part 1/8 of Chapter 2 | WC: 965 | Total WC: 2789