Layla McKelland is a teenage author-in-the-making, who has spent each of her seventeen years as the new kid in town. Her mother and aunt cart Layla about the country, always residing near a body of water. The latest beach town is also home to two intensely opposite young men -- the perma-smiling Tristan, and his unfailingly creepy friend Pyke. When Layla witnesses Pyke diving into the ocean -- only to emerge inexplicably dry -- she questions whether her indulgence in paranormal novels has warped her brain. As the unbelievable aquatic events stack up (including an attempted drowning, with the water itself playing the villain), Layla is soon juggling a distrust of Tristan's carefree exterior, a general loathing for all-things-Pyke, and a well-founded hunch that there is a connection between these boys, her incommunicado father, and her mother's obsession with the sea. She just hopes to piece the story together before someone succeeds in killing her.