Page 4 of Shark Cove

“Damn you, Dad,” she said aloud, taking a baggie of chicken thighs out of the freezer. Mom bought them in bulk at Costco and then separated them, just enough for each meal. Malia put the meat in the sink and glanced at the clock—4:00 p.m. Hopefully her best and only friend, Camille, would be able to talk soon.

Peter Clark used to come home from his law practice right around now, and “keep his girls company” until Mom arrived, whenever she came home.

Now it was just Malia, covering for both parents and getting popcorn thrown at her for thanks.

Kylie came schlumping down and dribbled into her chair, reluctance oozing from every pore as she opened her homework. Malia ignored this, already deep in burner phone text messages sent to the number for posting on Wallflower Diaries, her anonymous gossip blog. According to sources, Blake Lee, the homecoming king, was seeing at least three different girls. That had been three too many for the Homecoming Princess, who’d canceled their date to prom—and their confrontation made a juicy post.

Her fingers flew on her laptop’s keys as Malia entered first names in conversation balloons that she pasted onto cutout yearbook photos of the girls in question and loaded into a meme maker video template. She finished the update:“Blake L man-slut status confirmed!”

Malia squashed the dying quiver of her own crush on Blake as she posted the graphic. Making posts into GIFs and cartoons was part of the site’s appeal. To keep the material from circulating and getting her in worse trouble if she were ever tracked, Malia encrypted the posts so the address was concealed; people could see the content and leave comments, but nothing more.

Epithets began appearing right away from Blake supporters, along with angry denials from friends of the girls.Good.This was a hot post. She rubbed her hands together with glee.

“What are you doing over there? Watching porn?” Kylie’s eyes narrowed and her chin thrust out as she glared at Malia over her math book.

Malia snorted. “Very funny.”

She shut the laptop and filled a pan and set the chicken thighs in it, adding teriyaki sauce. She took out frozen broccoli and a rice cooker, glancing at the clock. Maybe Camille would be done by now. She called her friend’s cell, but it went immediately to voice mail.

An hour later, Malia turned all the food off, waiting for Mom to get home. Kylie had finished her homework and gone back upstairs by then.

She tried Camille again—no answer.

Maybe Camille’s mom had taken her phone away. That had sometimes happened, like when Camille wouldn’t submit to the chemical peel her mom, Regina William, had scheduled for both of them—never mind that you weren’t supposed to do things to a sixteen-year-old face that you did to a fifty-year-old one.

Malia tried Camille’s house phone, which rang with a sound like celestial chimes. That device was a piece of polished sculpture, a shape that didn’t even look like a communication appliance. Malia could picture it there on the shiny dining room sideboard, the light of a crystal chandelier falling around it like frozen rain.

“Hello?” Regina William’s breathless voice.

“Hi, Ms. William. This is Malia.” Camille’s mom didn’t like her, so Malia was surprised when she cried, “Oh, thank God! Do you know where she is?”

“Where who is?”

“Camille! Camille’s gone!” The woman’s breathy voice had climbed to a screech. “She wasn’t home when I got here with Pierre to do electrolysis. She’s with you, right?”

“No.” Malia’s heart thumped with alarm. Camille was well-liked, but she was a homebody and didn’t have a lot of friends she saw outside of school. Generally, she was either at her own house or Malia’s. “I called this phone because she wasn’t answering hers.”

“But she must be with you!” Ms. William was pacing; she’d seen the elegant blonde woman do it often enough before, striding back and forth on the deep carpet of the dining room, or multitasking around the big showy house with a phone to her ear. “I can’t believe this. Camille packed a bag and left a note saying she’d had it with me and the beauty treatments. She’s run away!”

“What? Camille would never do that.” Camille loved her mom; she might someday refuse to let her force her into a beauty queen mold, but run away?Never.Camille didn’t like adventures. Where would she go, if not to Malia’s house?

Malia felt a terrible feeling: a sock to the gut, actual nausea. What if Camille really had run away, and run away from her best friend, too?

Chapter Two

Malia was assemblingthe teriyaki chicken, rice and broccoli for dinner when she heard the sound of a key in the lock. “Hey, Mom,” she called.

“Hey, Malia,” Mom called back. “Where’s Kylie?”

“On your bed. Eating popcorn.” She heard her mother hang her purse on the hook beside their backpacks next to the stairs. She’d usually go upstairs next and lock up her gun and badge in the safe in the nightstand by her bed, but instead, Harry said, “I’ve brought someone home to meet you.”

Malia frowned as she set the casserole dish of chicken down on the table. No one ever came over to their house!

Mom walked into the dining area, a bump-out off the kitchen, as Malia glanced worriedly at the table set for three—there wasn’t enough food for a fourth. “Malia, this is an old friend of mine. Lei Texeira. She’s a homicide detective.”

Malia wiped her hands on a dish towel, stepping forward with a hand extended. “Hi.” Lei was a pretty mixed Hawaiian/Asian woman with curly brown hair, large tilted brown eyes, and an athletic build. “Nice to meet you.”

“You’re lovely, Malia.” The detective smiled, holding Malia’s hand in both of hers for a brief squeeze. “I knew when I met you as a baby that you’d be a beauty.”

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