The day after Jamie visits, Connie does her best to keep herself busy. She bakes bread. She reads all six books in Hope Hazelnut's Nightmare Mall series. She goes for two separate runs around her neighborhood—unfortunately, she didn't space them far apart enough, and Mr. Moody, her neighbor, is still cutting his bushes when she passes by for the second time and gives her that withering look that always makes her feel bad about herself. She cleans the bathrooms, vacuums the rugs, dusts the shelves, and wipes down the cupboards.

Anything to keep herself busy.

Connie just can't bring herself to look at her phone. She knows she should; she knows Steven has probably been trying to reach her, and she can't avoid him forever, but she can't talk to him yet.

By the time her mother comes home from work, Connie is all showered and dressed and ready to go to her violin lesson. Priyanka is amazed at Connie's efforts. "The house looks great, honey. Thank you."

Connie beams at the compliment. "And I made dinner too! In the slow cooker!"

"Oh? Well, lovely. We'll have it after we get back from your lesson." Priyanka puts away her bag and changes out of her labcoat, then adds, "By the way, I think Steven called the house phone and left a message on our voicemail."

Connie winces. "I guess he must have called while I was out for a jog." She'd seen the red light blinking on the phone, but she avoided it, worrying that it might be for her.

Priyanka frowns at her daughter. "Connie, you can't keep avoiding his calls. Steven wants to talk to you. It's rude to keep ignoring him."

Connie looks at the floor, feeling like she's five years old again, getting scolded for misbehaving. "I know."

"If he calls the house again while I'm here, I'm answering the phone, and you're going to talk to him, you understand me? I'm not going to let this keep disrupting our home."

Connie wants to protest, but one look from her mother tells her to stop before she even starts. "Yes, ma'am."

With a sigh, Priyanka pulls her purse over her shoulder and says, "All right, let's go. Julian's waiting for you."

After her lesson and dinner, Connie returns to her room. Julian, her teacher, told her in his usual, blunt way that her playing was lackluster. When she pleaded that she'd been sick, he told her that was no excuse.

"You must remember who you play for," he reminded her.

"I know. My audience expects—"

Julian held his hand up and stopped her. "No! No. You play for yourself first. Always yourself! Because if you cannot find beauty in your work, how do you expect anyone else to find it? Were you satisfied with your efforts tonight?"

"No."

"Think about it, Connie. Come back next week ready to make the music you want to hear from yourself."

Lion is waiting for her when she returns. She notices he has something in his mouth, and when she gets closer, she realizes it's her phone. "Lion!" she cries, worried that he might have damaged it. But he deposits it into her hand, and she finds, to her relief, that it is unscathed—with the exception of a bit of saliva.

It's off, she realizes – she turned it off the day before yesterday, and hadn't turned it back on since. And so she activates it, and finds that there are a slew of texts waiting for her:

- Hey Connie. Hope you're well. It's been crazy in Beach City!

- If you want to call or text me back I can tell you all about it!

- Okay, so I'll just tell you: Nanefua is our new mayor! Yay!?

- Are you doing okay? Anything fun going on?

- Hey, Connie. How are you today?

- Hope everything's going okay.

- It'd be cool if you told me it was... I guess I miss you.

- I know yesterday I said, 'I guess,' but I mean, I do miss you...

- Hope you didn't get your phone mixed up with a tennis ball. Ha ha.

"Ugh. Steven. Everything's a big laugh to you," Connie grumbles. There was one last message to read. Sighing, she scrolls to it.

- Please talk to me.

That's the sentence that tugs on her heart, and all she wants is for things to go back to the way they were. But she doesn't know what to say, doesn't know where to start. If she starts to text back, it'll be a jumble of fury and hurt and confusion that won't make any hits reply on the latest message, and types, "I can't talk to you right now."

There. It's simple, and it's honest. She's about to hit "send," when she realizes that if she sends that message, then she will be talking to Steven, and he might say something in reply—and she isn't sure if she's prepared to do that. She cancels the message, feeling like a coward. He's been trying to reach her, he obviously wants to talk—granted, he probably still has no understanding of how badly he's hurt her, but he's still trying. And doesn't she owe it to him, as well as to herself, to try to fix their relationship?

She lies on her bed, staring out the window, watching the sun's light slip away and the stars begin to take the stage in the heavens. And finally, just as her eyes grow so heavy that she can't keep them open anymore, the answer comes to her. Connie has to talk to Steven in person. Tomorrow. This is the only way to begin to make things right.

Lion's portal lands them near enough to the shore that Connie only has to wade through an inch or two of water to hit dry land. Sure enough, they are at the back of the temple, and she just has to walk around to the front and climb the steps to the house.

Every step she takes up towards the house is one filled with both anticipation and dread. She has no idea what she'll say when she gets there: whether she'll wrap her arms around him and cry into his shoulder, or yell at him—or maybe some combination. Finally she gets to the top…and sees a white piece of paper stuck to the door that reads, "Gone vacationing." She peers into the window and sees that the lights are out, and no one is around.

Connie lets out a light, hysterical, one-note laugh. All that time worrying about what she'd say to him…and he's not even there. Part of her is annoyed that Steven sent all those texts, and then just left to go on vacation. But the other side of her tries to reason that she hasn't answered him, and perhaps he felt there was no reason to stay if he wasn't going to get an answer.

With a sigh, she walks down the stairs, ready to ask Lion if he'll take her home. But when she gets to the beach, the large feline isn't around. "Great," Connie says out loud. Now she'll have to call her parents and beg them to come get her.

"Hey kiddo."

Connie turns around to see her dad, coming around the corner. "Dad!" she calls. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I was just in the neighborhood, enjoying the beach…happened to see you."

"Oh, really? You just happened to be hanging around Steven's house?"

Doug stuffs his hands in his pockets and smiles. "Well…maybe I overhead you talking to Lion about coming here too. And maybe I thought…you might need some backup."

Connie looks forlornly up at the giant statue of a woman with the dual faces and the many arms, who guards a deserted beach. "Yeah. Can you take me home, please? There's no one here. I'm not sure where Lion went."

"Sure! But I have to make a stop first for work. Do you mind coming along?"

In spite of its rather violent-sounding name, Bludgeon Beach is about as tranquil a place as they come. It's not a tourist attraction the way Beach City is in the summer; here, everyone knows everyone else, and Connie and her father clearly stick out. There's one grocery store, one clothing store, one beauty salon, one bank, one post office. Doug brings Connie to the town's only hardware store, where the owner, Mr. Flibnitt, has asked for a consultation on installing a security system. Doug was referred to the squat little man with rosy cheeks by his brother one town over, whose movie theater Doug used to patrol.

"Okay, Mr. Flibnitt, now obviously one of the easiest and most cost-effective methods for providing security is a surveillance system. Install a few cameras in the entrance and exit, and you can already start making your store more secure…"

Connie walks off as her father talks with the shop owner. She's just exited the store when she hears what sounds like a distressed voice nearby.

"Can you please just leave me alone? I just want to get my little sister home!"

"Aw come on, baby, let's have some fun!"

"I told you, I have to go home!"

Connie peers down the street, near the pier, and sees a pretty girl a few years older than her, with deep red hair and wearing a pale peach dress, trying to evade two teenaged boys that are closing in on her. Nearby is a little girl, no more than 6 or 7, also with red hair, who looks frightened to tears.

The boys are pulling on the girl's dress, tugging on her arms. The little girl is crying, "Amanda! Amanda!"

"Come on, Mandy! The kid'll find her way home. Let's go play like we did last summer. You know how we like it." The one boy, probably the leader, grins like a snake. Connie feels her blood boil, and before she realizes it, she's walking towards them.

"Hey! Didn't you hear her? Back off!" Connie yells at them.

The boys stop for a moment, look at her, then scoff. "Whatever. Stupid little kid," the leader says.

"What's the matter?" she taunts them. "You scared? You should be." Connie is shocked to hear these words come out of her mouth, but she can't help it. She can't stand bullies.

The leader nods to the other boy. "Go teach the bitch a lesson."

The boy complies, lunging at her. But that is his first mistake, as he throws all his weight forwards, which allows Connie to grab his arm, duck under him, and throw him off balance, flipping him over like a pancake. The boy hits the wooden deck with a heavy thud. He gets up quickly, ready now to take her on. Again he lunges at her, and Connie kicks his shin, and as he falls forward, she deals a sharp blow to his back, and he flops down again onto his belly.

"All right, screw this crap," the leader says, brandishing a pocket knife. Connie just smirks and pulls her sword from its scabbard she wears on her back. "Knife versus a sword? Get real," she says to him. She hears the gasps of the girls behind her.

Her words don't faze him. He attempts a jab, and Connie cleanly and effortlessly cuts the blade off of the knife, leaving nothing but a metal stump behind. He just stares at his damaged weapon, incredulous.

"What's going on here?"

They all turn to see the town constable and his deputy. Doug is standing next to them.

"These two were harassing these girls," Connie told the officer.

"It's true!" the little girl pipes up, undeterred by her sister's attempts to silence her. "They wouldn't leave us alone! They tried to hurt my sister! This girl," she says, pointing to Connie. "She saved us!" Several other bystanders who'd witnessed the confrontation confirm this.

"Matt, Tyler," the constable said to the boys, "This was your last chance. You're coming with me, and I'm calling your parents."

The boys start to protest, but when the leader (named Matt, apparently) glances at Connie, still wielding her razor-sharp sword, he relents and they allow themselves to be taken away. After the constable is gone and Connie's sheathed her sword, the two girls—as well as several other kids of all ages—crowd around her in excitement.

"Thank you so much!"

"You were amazing!"

"It was about time those two losers learned a lesson."

"I've only seen moves like that in movies! How did you do it?"

Connie tries to answer their questions as much as she can, although the attention is a little overwhelming. She looks over at her father, standing off to the side. He's smiling at her with pride gleaming in his eyes. After a few minutes, the crowd slowly dissipates. Afterwards, the girl who had been targeted—Amanda—slowly approaches her. "Can you teach me to do what you did?" she asks quietly.

"Oh yeah! Me too!" her little sister cries, jumping up and down.

"Kayla," Amanda chides her.

"Uh, yes, of course I can." Connie says this reluctantly, but when she looks into the eyes of the little girl, Kayla, and how she's been able to transform the look in them from fear to awe, she becomes resolute. "I can teach you both, if you want. I'm still learning myself, but I can show you a couple of simple self-defense moves."

"I wanna learn!" Kayla insists to her sister.

"We'll have to talk to Mom, but…" Amanda trails off, then smiles bitterly. "At least, that way you can stand up for yourself. You can say 'no' and mean it."

"It's not always easy to say 'no,'" Doug remarks gently, having walked up to them. He puts his arm around Connie. She smiles at him and holds his hand.

"No. It's not." Amanda crosses her arms around herself. "Well. You're obviously not from around here, are you? Can you come back sometime soon?"

"Well, I'll be here tomorrow afternoon to help Mr. Flibnitt install his cameras…so I can bring Connie too," Doug tells them.

So Connie, Doug, and the girls start making plans, and before they know it, they have three additional participants who were listening nearby, and the Town's pastor steps in too and offers the church's basement for the classes Connie will teach. Before long, they've worked out a schedule, with Connie teaching three classes over the course of the next week—when she's not involved with her own learning, naturally. She's amazed.

Not long after, Connie and Doug sit on the beach together, watching the waves lazily roll in and out. Bludgeon Beach is smaller, grassier, and dustier than the beach Connie is used to, but it's still nice to feel the warm air and hear the seagulls cry above her.

"I'm proud of you, kiddo," Doug tells her, clasping his knees. "You did a great thing today."

"Thanks, Dad. It's weird, you know? This was kinda just what I needed. After what happened with Steven and the Homeworld gems, I started to feel like—like—I don't know, all my hard work and training had been for nothing. But I feel like I have a purpose again!"

Doug stares at her, concerned. "Connie…why would you feel like you had no purpose?"

"You know why. Steven just turned himself in and left us. I felt so helpless! He broke his promise to me!" Connie tries to keep herself calm, but it's difficult. She digs her fingers deep into the sand, feeling the chill from the seawater that lies deep beneath the layers and trying to let it soothe her.

"Honey…he did it to protect you. To protect everyone. Based on what you told us about the situation, it didn't sound like there was any other way to save everyone. He left you because he didn't want to see anyone hurt."

Connie feels the tears gathering in her eyes, and she wipes them away angrily. "I know. I know. I heard what Steven told me. I know it was a no-win situation. I heard the story Mom told me about her time in the ER and having to make a split-second decision and feeling like she couldn't win. I heard when Stevonnie told me in my dream that Steven never meant to hurt me. I heard it all! I get it. They were going to take all those people—Jamie, Lars, Sadie, Onion—and Steven couldn't bear to let it happen! I get it! But the thing is…" Connie stops mid-sentence as it hits her. She understands, at last. Her mouth opens and closes, but no words come out.

"Connie? What is it?" Doug asks.

"All those people…that's what Steven told me. 'They were going to take all those people; they were going to take you!' he said to me."

"Yes…right…"

"He—he lumped me in with all those other people in the town. That's it!" She smacks her palm with her fist in triumph. "That's it! That's why I'm so mad! That's why I can't talk to him."

Doug takes ahold of his daughter's shoulders. "Connie, you're not making sense."

Connie takes her father's hands as they rest on her shoulders. "I got mad because Steven treated me like everyone else! Like someone he wanted to protect! And I don't want him to protect me! I want him to treat me like a part of himself—like his hand, or his arm! Something he relies on, something he values so much that there's no way he could leave it behind. Something that he'd never part with, unless he absolutely had to!"

"Oh honey. Don't you think that's reckless…?"

"Yes." Connie nods firmly. "Yes, it is. I know what it sounds like. I want him to put me above everything else, even as he's putting me in harm's way. I know I'm not the only one he left; I know that he left the gems and Mr. Universe behind, and they were devastated by it, and they've been a part of Steven's life longer than I have. And maybe I have no right to ask him for that. But I can't help what I feel! I know it sounds…childish…and selfish…and crazy to feel this way about being with him, but I can't just stop feeling it! Because…" She searches for the words. "Because…"

Finally Doug supplies them for her: "Because you're in love with him."

Connie doesn't answer him; she doesn't have to.

There is silence for a while after this. Doug searches for the words, but he's torn between saying what he thinks the father of a 12 year-old girl should say, and saying what is probably the truer (but infinitely more difficult) thing to say. It would be so easy to dismiss his daughter's feelings, to tell her that it's just puppy love she's feeling: at its lightest a crush, and at its darkest, lust. He could tell her that it's just a phase that she'll grow out of.

But he knows it would be completely wrong. Doug can see the passion Connie has for this boy who's disrupted her life and set her world ablaze. He knows it's not just the thrill of the adventures Steven has taken her on; there's devotion and commitment and respect and honor and trust—and yes, love—written all over his daughter's face.

It terrifies him, but it intrigues him too, because Connie has these feelings for Steven after knowing him for such a short time, while it took him years to develop these feelings for Priyanka—even after having known her for most of his life. Their marriage wasn't an "arranged marriage"; rather, it was a "suggested" one. Doug's parents were part of a generation on a cusp of modernity; one foot in the old customs and the other shunning them for new, contemporary ideas. Priyanka's were the same, and so it was "suggested" that they date and spend time together. Their parents gave them just enough space to make them think that getting married was all their idea. Even so, it took quite a while after they got married for Doug to fall in love with Priyanka; he already loved her, having been her playmate as a child, but being in love took time and work.

And yet, his daughter, who'd stumbled into a friendship with a boy who'd been raised so differently from her, had all those feelings growing wild and untamed in her that Doug had had to work for years to cultivate and sow in his own heart. He put his hand over that rhythmically beating organ in his chest now, hoping to find the words to say. And finally, he spoke.

"Honey. If that's how you feel, then that's how you feel. But please—don't think all of your worth lies in one person. Connie, you're so young; there are so many things to see and to do and to be! It's…noble to be devoted to someone, but you have to be devoted to yourself first. Your life belongs to you and no one else. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Connie nods. "I guess I do." She looks over at the little strip of stores, and the municipal parking lot beyond it. "Should we head back?"

Doug chuckles. "Yeah. Sounds good."

When they get back to street level, Connie finds Lion waiting there for them. A couple of the locals are keeping a distance, but fortunately no one seems to have freaked out too much by his presence. "Lion!" Connie greets the large cat, wrapping her arms around him. "Where did you go? You just dropped me off and took off! Thank goodness my dad followed us…" Connie trails off, and she looks into the gleaming yellow eyes of her friend. "Or maybe…you did it on purpose, so that my dad could bring me here and talk to me?"

Lion's expression doesn't really change, but just for a moment, Connie swears she can see a twinkle of mischief in his eye. "Steven's gone on vacation, Lion. So uh…if you want to stay with me for a while, I'd like that. How about I meet you back at home?"

Lion snorts in approval, then turns around and lets out a great roar, creating a portal that closes as soon as he jumps into it.

"Uh, Connie?"

She turns around to see her Doug standing behind her. "You ready, honey?"

Connie looks behind her dad, noticing that they're right in front of the beauty parlor. She sees a photo of a model in the window, rocking a short, layered cut, and it speaks to her, somehow. She thinks about what her dad said—about being devoted to herself. And she makes up her mind right then and there. "There's one thing I want to do first," she tells Doug.

"Are you sure about this, Connie?" Doug asks as they sit together. "You've never gotten your hair cut. Ever!"

"I know, Dad."

"What if you don't like it?"

"It's hair, Dad. It will grow back."

Connie sounds like she's just reassuring her dad, but she's reassuring herself. Her long hair has always been part of her—a defining trait. But she wants to redefine herself now. And this is a simple way to start.

"You're up, hon!" the salon owner, a busty lady with bright red hair streaked with blonde, tells her. Connie exhales and smiles at her dad, then goes to sit in the black vinyl chair.

"So, what are we doing today?" the beautician asks as she throws a plastic drape around her.

"Um…the photo in the window? I'd like my hair cut like that please, ma'am," Connie replies.

"That's quite a cut! That's a lot of hair to lose!" the lady says, rubbing a long lock of Connie's hair between her fingers. "But you have such delicate features; it'll suit you nicely," she adds with a smile. Connie smiles back, relieved by her words.

"I'm Arlene, by the way," the lady says, as she parts Connie's hair into sections and holds them with large clips.

"I'm Connie. And that's my dad." Connie points to Doug, who waves nervously.

"A pleasure. Okay, here we go." Arlene takes a lock of hair, guides it to the blade of her scissors, and makes the first cut.

Connie feels it flutter past her face and drop to the ground, and she exhales. She then realizes she'd been holding her breath. She's done it. No going back now.

Arlene takes another lock, and cuts that away too. Connie now thinks of that song she was listening to a few days ago: Say that our love ain't water under the bridge. She doesn't know what's going to happen between her and Steven; maybe everything will be fine and it'll go back to the way things were. Maybe it won't. Maybe she'll laugh in joy and relief; maybe she'll cry in heartbreak. But one thing she does know is that if she's water, then she's not going to stay under that bridge. Water moves, water flows. It runs from streams to rivers and lakes, and finally out to the ocean. Maybe one day she'll be Steven's ocean, but for now, she's going to work on being her own.

Arlene cuts another lock; it caresses her face as it leaves her. Then another. Connie looks up into the mirror, and she starts to see that her hair is taking the shape of the new haircut. Her new style frames her face in a different way. She looks older, more mature. She's starting to see someone new emerging.

Just a few more locks of hair to go. Connie closes her eyes and says to herself, "I will be my own ocean." She feels the weight of her hair leaving her. One last lock. Arlene's scissors slice through it effortlessly. It is done.

"Take a look, hon," Arlene tells her. Connie opens her eyes, and smiles.

I am my own ocean.