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Oh. My. Gods. - Weebly

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water on my face in the bathroom, lace up my sneakers, and am<br />

heading out the door when the snoozing alarm clock starts blaring<br />

again. Smiling at the thought of Stella having to hunt it out from<br />

under my bed, I start down the path to the dock where we arrived<br />

last night. Where there’s water there must be a beach.<br />

The dock is in a little lagoon, nicely protected from the open<br />

sea, with rocky cliffs on one side and a narrow strip of sand on the<br />

other. Even though I’m not going to push my worn-out body too<br />

hard, I sit on the dock and do ten minutes of stretches. Pulling a<br />

hamstring is the last thing I need.<br />

The sun is just starting to rise and casts a pale pink over everything.<br />

I take deep, filling breaths as I reach for my toes, taking in<br />

the salty clean smell of the sea. A different smell from the California<br />

beaches I’m used to. Purer, maybe.<br />

I twist my upper body to the one side, going for that extra oblique<br />

stretch, and notice a cluster of little white buildings on top of the<br />

cliffs. Bathed in the early morning twilight, it looks just as pink as<br />

the rest of the island. That must be the village. It seems so strange<br />

that there are people that live up there in that little village, a world<br />

away from L.A., with whole lives that go on whether I’m here to see<br />

them or not. I guess that’s true of everywhere—the cars you pass<br />

on the freeway, the towns you fly over at thirty thousand feet, and<br />

those little white buildings. Suddenly, L.A. feels even farther away.<br />

Surrounded by pink and silence, except for gently lapping waves,<br />

I embrace the inner and outer peace. Leaving the dock for the thin<br />

strip of sand, I kick into a moderate run. If my entire year here were<br />

just like this moment then things might not be so bad. But I know<br />

49

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