When Waves Crash

4.) Are You Lost or Something

"Roughly, 34%." I tell my mom from behind a stack of sea urchin spikes. After checking my math four times, I have determined the percentage of "Strange Seaweed" to "Usual Seaweed." It took me so long because I have this thing where I don't trust calculators. For some reason, I would rather do the math in my head or on paper twenty times, than do it once in a calculator and worry if I typed something in wrong. Nine times out of ten I type something in wrong, I don't need a calculator to figure out that math.

"Hmm, that's rather strange isn't it?" Mom says from examining a piece of the "Strange Seaweed" under a microscope.

"Do you see anything?" I ask, walking out from behind the spikes and traveling over to the microscope."Nope," Mom responds. "You take a look." She slides the microscope over to where I am standing to the right of her."Yeah, you're right Mom, I don't see anything out of the ordinary either," I respond. "Ya know what else I don't see?" I ask. Before she even gets to respond, I answer my own question. "That intern of yours! Wasn't today supposed to be his first day or something?

"Avery, it's only nine fifty-five. I don't expect him to be here until at least ten.""But that's so unfair!" I groan.

"What's unfair?" a strange male voice says behind me. Mom looks over my right shoulder and smacks a huge grin on her face. I turn around and I come face to face with the shaggy surfer dude that I made awkward eye contact with yesterday.

"Hello! You must be Ryan! I am Veronica Jeffers, you will be interning with me this year. Oh and this is my daughter Avery."

"Hello, Ms. Jeffers, nice to meet you. You too, Avery, even though we kind of already met." Ryan replies flipping his shaggy black hair.

"Oh I didn't know that you knew each—"

"Not quite," I interrupt.

"Unofficially," Ryan says with a smirk. I can't help but think about how sexy his voice is, but I cover up those thoughts by giving him and dirty look and then staring down at my hands.

"Well, okay then," Mom breaks the awkward silence. "Ryan if you just follow me I will explain to you some of the things that I am working on, and give you something to do."

"All right, sounds good to me Ms. Jeffers," Ryan responds following my mom.

"Oh, please, call me Veronica," Mom insists. I hear her continue to talk about her projects until she walks too far away from me and I can't hear her anymore. This will be pure torture having to see him every day. I was so embarrassed about the incident, so I convinced myself that I would never see him again to get over it. Now, all of that embarrassment is back.

"Staring again I see," Ryan speaks, standing in front of the table I am sitting behind.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you. How long have you been standing there?" I say weakly.

"Not long," he replies. "I didn't want to interrupt you during your favorite hobby."

"Shut up. I was just looking out my window at the beach. Not you and your friends," I explain. "Just leave me alone."

"Then why did you jump behind a curtain when you got caught?" Ryan asks, clearly not believing my lie.

"You are a real jerk, you know that right?" I snap at him."I'm not a jerk, I can just understand girls," he says with confidence in his voice.

"I don't believe that for one second. Now, will you excuse me I have school work to do?"

"Okay, I don't know how you ever get work done with all the staring you do!" Ryan yells to me as I get up from the table and head to the back room of the lab. I groan and slam the door shut. God, he makes me so frustrated. Did he not see that I didn't want to talk to him? Understands girls my ass, if he understood he would have known to not talk to me.