Crossroads/Borrowed Lives—2026-05-27 (Patreon)

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Chapter 114: PASS THE SUNSCREEN by Mara Voss

I’m going to start this post with a little travel/ecology/geology info because Evan did some Google research, and I thought this was pretty interesting.

We’re noodling around Key West in a rented pontoon—more on that. Under the pontoon, Key West is not just blue water. It is limestone, pale carbonate sand, soft lime mud, and big dark patches of seagrass that look like shadows until you realize they are basically underwater fields.

The geology is doing the color work, and the ecology is using every inch of it. Sand makes the water glow turquoise. Seagrass gives little fish, rays, turtles, conch, and lobster somewhere to hide, eat, and grow. Then there are hardbottom places with sponge, coral bits, urchins, and reef fish acting like the neighborhood was built for them.

I kept looking over the side thinking, This is not empty water. This is a city with no streets. And that’s something I wouldn’t have experienced without the boat.

But renting a boat…there were issues.

We called Ms. Chambers about our idea, thinking this would be a good social media post that could leak where Shay was today. Posted, not-today, of course.

Renting a boat, however, typically means signing something legal and showing IDs. Showing Shay and Devon’s IDs and signing their names to a contract would have been essentially illegal—a notch or two worse than checking into a hotel, we thought.

After checking around a few places, we saw a handwritten sign: Boat Rental • Day Rates. We paid cash and left the keys to our Jeep in exchange for the keys to the boat.

So, at some point in the future, Shay and Devon will check in from this pontoon boat here in the waters off Key West.

We headed due south for a while and made a pretty serious attempt at reaching the horizon.

Evan joked, “Cuba… Ninety miles that way,”

I squinted dramatically at the horizon, then said, “I regret to report I do not see Cuba.”

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