"Would you," he asked, dropping to one knee in the sand beside me, "hang onto these?"

He slipped his glasses into my hands. I had a chance to look into his eyes, and noticed for the first time that they were a very deep, very bright blue.

"Sure thing," I heard myself murmur.

He smiled. Then he got back to his feet, picked up Adam's board, and, with a polite nod to us girls, trudged out into the waves.

"Oh, my God," Gina said again.

Adam, who'd collapsed into the sand beside Cee Cee, leaned up on an elbow and demanded, "What?"

When Michael had joined Sleepy, Dopey, and their other friends in the surf, Gina turned her face slowly toward mine. "Did you see that?" she asked.

I nodded dumbly.

"But that – that – " Cee Cee stammered. "That defies all logic."

Adam sat up. "What are you guys talking about?" he wanted to know.

But we could only shake our heads. Speech was impossible.

Because it turned out that Michael Meducci, underneath his pen protector, was totally and completely buff.

"He must," Cee Cee ventured, "work out like three hours a day."

"More like five," Gina murmured.

"He could bench press me," I said, and both Cee Cee and Gina nodded in agreement.

"Are you guys," Adam demanded, "talking about Michael Meducci?"

We ignored him. How could we not? For we had just seen a god – pasty skinned, it was true, but perfect in every other way.

"All he needs," Gina breathed, "is to come out from behind that computer once in a while and get a little color."

"No," I said. I couldn't bear the thought of that perfectly sculpted body marred by skin cancer. "He's fine the way he is."

"Just a little color," Gina said again. "I mean, SPF 15 and he'll still get a little brown. That's all he needs."

"No," I said again.

"Suze is right," Cee Cee said. "He's perfect the way he is."

"Oh, my God," Adam said, flopping back disgustedly into the sand. "Michael Meducci. I can't believe you guys are talking that way about Michael Meducci."

But how could we help it? He was perfection. Okay, so he wasn't the best surfer. That, we realized, while we watched him get tossed off Adam's board by a fairly small wave that Sleepy and Dopey rode with ease, would have been asking for too much.

But in every other way, he was one hundred percent genuine hottie.

At least until he was knocked over by a middling to large-size wave and did not resurface.

At first we were not alarmed. Surfing was not something I particularly wanted to try – while I love the beach, I have no affection at all for the ocean. In fact, quite the opposite: the water scares me because there's no telling what else is swimming around in all that murky darkness. But I had watched Sleepy and Dopey ride enough waves to know that surfers often disappear for long moments, only to come popping up yards away, usually flashing a big grin and an OK sign with their thumb and index finger.

But the wait for Michael to come popping up seemed longer than usual. We saw Adam's board shoot out of a particularly large wave, and head, riderless, toward the shore. Still no sign of Michael.

This was when the lifeguard – the same big blond one who'd attempted to rescue Dopey; we had stationed ourselves close to his chair, as had become our custom – sat up straight, and suddenly lifted his binoculars to his face.

I, however, did not need binoculars to see what I saw next. And that was Michael finally breaking the surface after having been down nearly a minute. Only no sooner had he come up than he was pulled down again, and not by any undertow or riptide.

No, this I saw quite clearly: Michael was pulled down by a rope of seaweed that had somehow twined itself around his neck....

And then I saw there was no "somehow" about it. The seaweed was being held there by a pair of hands.

A pair of hands belonging to someone in the water beneath him.

Someone who had no need to surface for air. Because that someone was already dead.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that I did what I did next with any sort of conscious thought. If I'd been thinking at all, I'd have stayed exactly where I was and hoped for the best. All I can say in defense of my actions is that, after years and years of dealing with the undead, I acted purely on instinct, without thinking anything through.

Which was why, as the lifeguard was charging through the surf toward Michael, his little orange flotation device in hand, I leaped up and followed.

Now, maybe I've seen the movie Jaws one too many times, but I have always made it a point never to wade farther than waist-deep into the ocean – any ocean. So when I found myself surging toward the spot where I'd last seen Michael, and felt the sand shelf I'd been running on give out beneath me, I tried to tell myself that the lurch my heart gave was one of adrenaline, not fear.

I tried to tell myself that, of course. But I didn't believe me. When I realized I was going to have to start swimming, I completely freaked. I swam, all right – I know how to do that, at least. But the whole time I was thinking, Oh, my God, please don't let anything gross, like an eel, touch me on any part of my body. Please don't let a jellyfish sting me. Please don't let a shark swim up from underneath me and bite me in half.

But as it turned out, I had way worse things to worry about than eels, jellyfish, or sharks.

Behind me, I could hear voices shouting dimly. Gina and Cee Cee and Adam, I figured, in the part of my brain that wasn't paralyzed with fear. Yelling at me to get out of the water. What did I think I was doing, anyway? The lifeguard had the situation well in hand.

But the lifeguard couldn't see – or fight – the hands that were pulling Michael down.

I saw the lifeguard – who had no idea, I'm sure, that some crazy girl had dove in after him – let the enormous wave approaching us gently lift his body and propel him that much closer to where Michael had disappeared. I tried his technique, only to end up sputtering, with a mouthful of saltwater. My eyes were stinging, and my teeth starting to chatter. It was really, really cold in the water without a wetsuit.

And then, a few yards away from me, Michael suddenly resurfaced, gasping for breath and clawing at the rope of seaweed around his neck. The lifeguard, in two easy strokes, was beside him, shoving the orange flotation device at him, and telling him to relax, that everything was going to be all right.