Prologue
Age 12
“Wait for me, Orion!” “Come on!” The small boy with dark hair and cerulean blue eyes tugged on my hand. “I wanna show you something!”
“Slow down! Your legs are longer than mine.” Running on sand was no easy task. The sun had begun to set, casting orange and purple hues across the sky. We’d been playing on the beach all day.
Orion’s younger brother and baby sister were still building a sandcastle nearby. That had always been my favorite thing to do—building a house of my own, pretending to be a princess in a castle. Someone loved by everyone. Someone with parents who cared. A prince to whisk me away on a bad day.
No worries about food. No fighting parents. Always new clothes.
But those were just things from my fairytale.
In real life, I wore hand-me-downs—old, stinky, matted clothing—and borrowed Orion’s shorts and t-shirts when we wanted to swim. If I were a princess, I’d never want for anything. But life was never that easy. It never had been.
My legs were burning by the time Orion finally stopped.
“Look!” He pointed into a shallow hole in the sand. A small, red-orange octopus wriggled in place. “It’s an octopus!”
“So cute!” I knelt beside it. The little creature was no bigger than my hand, flitting around the crater and bumping into the sides.
“Do you think it’s stuck?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
“It can’t stay here like this,” I said, frowning. It would dry out... or be eaten by a seagull.
It was trapped. Just like me.
“What should we do?” Orion asked.
“We have to help it!”
“How?”
“Can’t we just pick it up?” I ran a finger gently across its slick skin. It darted to the other side of the hole.
“Don’t they have teeth?”
“Octopuses don’t have teeth,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for something to scoop it with!”
Orion returned with a large, intact clam shell. “Will this work?”
The octopus flinched every time he tried to scoop it.
“It’s scared,” I said.
“Well, if someone tried to pick you up with a giant shell, wouldn’t you be?”
I laughed. “Of course! Then you’d have to come save me.”
Orion paused and looked at me seriously. “And I would. Always. No matter what.”
I smiled. “You better. Now let’s get Otto back in the water. I’m hungry.”
“Otto?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. Otto the Octopus,” I said, grinning. “Okay, I’ll scare him toward you, and you scoop him up when he runs.”
“Alright. Tell me when.”
“Now!”
I lowered my hand into the water and nudged Otto along. He darted straight into the clam shell.
“Yay! We did it!” I clapped.
“GAHH!! HE’S TRYING TO GET OUT!” Orion panicked, running toward the waves with the shell in both hands, one arm flailing.
“Quick! Put him down!”
“HE’S MOVING TOO MUCH!”
Orion yelped and dropped the shell face-down into the ankle-deep water.
“Oh no! Is he okay?” I hurried to his side.
“I don’t see him...”
We knelt and peered closer. Slowly, a reddish tentacle slipped out from under the shell. Then another. Then the whole of Otto wriggled free.
He hovered for a moment, drifting from one side of the shell to the other—like he was saying thank you—then disappeared into the sea.
“He’s okay!” I beamed. “You saved him!” I threw my arms around Orion.
“HEY!” He fell backwards into the water. “I was already dry!”
“You’ll dry again,” I teased, sticking my tongue out.
He rolled his eyes, his shirt soaked. “Come on. I want ice cream.”
“Me too.” I stood, brushing the sand off my legs. Orion followed.
He kissed me on the cheek, then took my hand, our fingers intertwining.
“What was that for?” I asked, wiping my cheek with my shoulder.
“Just felt like it.” He shrugged, smiling. “Let’s go.”
And just like that, he was pulling me back toward his siblings.
