In the beginning of the book, when A asks Rhiannon, “Where do you want to go?” a lot rides on her answer:

If she says, Let’s go to the mall, I will disconnect. If she says, Take me back to your house, I will disconnect. If she says, Actually, I don’t want to miss sixth period, I will disconnect. […] But she says, ‘I want to go to the ocean.’ […] And I feel myself connecting (10).

The ocean is a place where they can be free; Rhiannon can be free from Justin’s constant judgments, and A can be free of the lonely, constantly changing life that A leads. It’s a powerful place of boundaries, where land meets sea. But this boundary is fluid, changing with the tides, changing with the storms, changing with every wave. A and Rhiannon feel their burdens lift as the boundaries between them change while they run and dance and play on the sand: “Suddenly we are touching the sacred part—running to the shoreline, feeling the first cold burst of water on our ankles, reaching into the tide to catch at shells before they ebb away from our fingers” (14).