Casey is heading off to Tartuga, a small Caribbean island for the summer and no one, not her mom, not her two best friends, not even her new boyfriend, Matt, get why she’s so bummed. They keep telling her how lucky she is. They keep calling it Paradise.
“Sure, it will be pretty, but so what? I’ve seen plenty of calendar shots of white beaches, pale blue water and sailboats gliding by in the distance. It’s all very picturesque. What you also always see in those photos is a perfect looking couple walking hand in hand along the beach or standing up to their waists in the water, arms twined around each other, gazing at a big orange sun sinking into the horizon.
That’s my point.
You don’t see a lot of calendar shots of mortified teenage girls hurrying along the beach trying to ditch their little brothers, who are following them everywhere, kicking up sand and throwing soggy strands of seaweed at each other.”
Once Casey gets to Tartuga, it turns out to be just as awful as she imagined: her brothers trail her everywhere, there’s no one else on the island except her dad, his new wife and about a quadrillion mosquitos. All she can think about is what she’s missing back home. In fact, it’s worse than she imagined: there’s no cell service, no internet, no nothing -- she can’t even talk to anyone.
Then Jonah turns up. He’s cute, he’s tall, he’s sixteen, he’s there to help her dad out with his sea turtle project and he knows all about the island and it’s underwater world.
Then a few other things happen. |
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