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by Scott Brown


  As the sun dripped yolk slowly off the edge of that long parabola, Monica said, “Not bad, huh?”

  “Not…bad,” I answered. Then I noticed: Monica wasn’t looking at the sky, wasn’t looking west. Wasn’t looking east, either, back at bad old civilization.

  No, Monica was looking down. Straight down.

  At the Sawtooth. Eating the cliffs. It did not chew with its mouth closed, the Sawtooth.

  “You don’t ever feel sorry for the rocks?”

  Monica wrinkled her nose. Didn’t appreciate my weak-sauce joke. “Dude, that wave? Made BoB. And BoB made us. That wave is a goddamn miracle. Fuck the rocks.”

  I laughed. But she was serious. Something pulled taut in her voice.

  “From the beach, it’s just a big wave. Fine. But up here—look, follow my finger,” and she pointed at the chaos. “See, it’s really three waves coming together. Look, there’s the main one, coming straight off the ocean. But with a southern swell, you get that reflection off this jetty, and you get rebound from the reef. And every few minutes…”

  She watched the chaos that was, to her, all pattern, beautiful pattern. “No,” she said. “No.” She let a few more pass.

  “There.” She grabbed my arm, a rough whisper, as if she didn’t want to scare some wild animal. “That’s it.”

  And I saw it. I saw the barrel form. The perfect pocket. Monica’s mystic fold.

  Jesus. It was beautiful.

  The shape that haunts the wet dreams of surfers the world over: I’d seen tubes before, live and on video, but never anything like this.

  That day, I saw it the way Monica saw it: as a kind of holy thing, this perfect architecture of converging violences, so beautiful it was indistinguishable from a miracle.

  For a moment.

  And then…

  …that gorgeous blue cathedral just tore itself apart on the reef between the jetties and was gone, as if it had never existed.

  Trying to mirror Monica’s mood, I said solemnly, “Death of a perfect wave.”

  Monica was peering at me now, mouth screwed over to one side. Like I’d missed the point.

  “Near death,” she corrected. And pointed. “See? The tube takes you around the rocks. If you trust it. If you find the fold.”

  I squinted. She was right. But she was barely right. It was a narrow margin, and I said so.

  “ ‘Nor so wide as a church door,’ ” Monica mumbled, “ ‘but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’ ”

  “Huh?”

  “Hamilton.” She was screwing with me, but I decided it wasn’t the right moment to screw back. She was sighing one of her end-of-the-world sighs. “Nature made something exceptional. Is the point. Maybe we should just be grateful.”

  Was this her way of cheering me up? I wasn’t sure I wanted to be cheered up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be compared to a monster wave.

  I assumed that’s what she’d meant. I assumed that’s why we were up there: To buck me up. To assure me I was the exceptional thing.

  I think it was either Charles Darwin or Shakespeare who said, “Boys: they’re not so smart, y’know?”

  * * *

  —

  Something about that little day trip stuck with me, a pebble in my brain shoe, grit in the oyster of my gray matter. Something about it, about Monica, bothered me. Couldn’t quite form that niggling bother into a pearl, though.

  Maybe I just didn’t have the bandwidth. There was so much Me to deal with. I had bigger fish to fry and/or hormonally brake. A week later, I was back at HUGE. Action was being taken.

  “So what we’re doing here,” Dr. Helman said as she gave me the injection, “is tapping the brakes. Just tapping. A little hormonal nudge-nudge.”

  “And if…my body doesn’t take the hint?”

  Dr. Helman smiled her cartoon-pig smile. “Then we’ll try something else.”

  By then, I didn’t want to “tap the brakes.”

  I wanted to stop.

  On the other hand: I still felt incredible. I felt like I could handle anything, anyone.

  It was a perfect time for a fresh interview with our local network affiliate.

  * * *

  —

  News 8 was now checking in with Drew and me after every game: half sports segment, half “human interest” (i.e., freak show).

  I don’t think Drew loved that.

  “The two towers…the basketball star and his brother, a growing wonder of the world…”

  He didn’t like the freak show for me. He didn’t like it for him, either.

  Was I in Drew’s spotlight? Maybe a little. Did I like it there? I wasn’t ready to say. Certainly not to myself. Obviously not to Drew. Definitely not to the cameras.

  To the cameras, I said: “The best part about being up here is it gives me better views of Drew’s games.”

  And I’d pass him the mic.

  * * *

  —

  “Dude,” said Rafty. “Let’s take it to twelve.”

  “Dude,” I said, lounging on the grass next to the Royalls’ driveway. “Let’s not.”

  Rafty was perched on the trampoline, fiddling with his phone.

  “Aw, c’mon, you could dunk on a twelve-footer now.”

  “Let’s just play. At regulation.”

  “No, man,” said Rafty, “it’s no fun playing against you now. I mean, no offense, it’s just, y’know, no contest.”

  Looking straight up, I watched a cloud divide, then divide again.

  No contest. The words made me suddenly, viciously depressed.

  “Fine,” I said. “Take it to twelve.”

  Rafty eagerly went to work. Then he rolled the trampoline over.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Let’s make it bonkers,” said Rafty.

  So we made it bonkers. I’d run. I’d leap. I’d ricochet off the trampoline and hurl my whole ridiculous fuselage through the air to the rim, taking care to release at the last possible moment—otherwise, I was afraid I’d tear the hoop right off.

  And then I saw Rafty, filming me.

  “Raf, dude, what the hell? Can we not?”

  “This is great shit, man. Great shit. C’mon, don’t be a nozzle, we’re moving into the, like, X-Man stage of your fame, and people want to see powers.”

  Powers, huh?

  Great shit?

  “Hey, Raf,” I said. “Here’s some great shit.”

  I took a flying leap. Bounced off the tramp, heard a RIP! Made it airborne and came down, ball palmed. GUH-DONG!

  And then:

  CRASH!

  I’d shattered the glass of Rafty’s stupid basketball camp backboard into roughly nine billion pieces.

  When I came to earth, Rafty was still filming. But he wasn’t looking at his phone. He was looking at me. He didn’t speak for a while.

  I’d scared him.

  I was glad.

  “I’ll be honest, dude,” he said, and his lip was quivering. “I’m not sure what that’s gonna do for your image.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”

  And I walked off. Like the badass I thought I was.

  A block later, I realized my car was still at Rafty’s.

  I walked back. Then I waited in the woods a half hour for Raf to go in. Feeling increasingly creepy, like some kind of fairy-tale monster lurking. It seemed like Rafty’d never leave. He just sat there on the trampoline, looking at his broken goal.

  * * *

  —

  Q: Who takes Lennie to the river?

  A: Geo—

  THUMP!

  Did you know…even when you’re almost six feet, ten inches tall, you still jump out of your skin when a large, hairy, fleshy mass connects with the window not five inches from you
r face while you’re trying to finish your English homework?

  Magic Mike was plastered on the observation window. Looking stunned. He hadn’t been moving under his own steam. He’d been thrown.

  Jollof.

  I guessed the Blue-grooming had done it. Mike had been getting bolder. Big problem. Ape hierarchies don’t change overnight—not without a catastrophe.

  I picked up the Aggression Log and was starting to add yet another sad entry to our primate crime blotter when—

  Bloodcurdling screech.

  Different from the usual bloodcurdling screeches. A catastrophe in the making.

  I looked up, and there, next to the viewing window, Jollof had Magic Mike pinned down in the dirt, and he was—

  Holy shit, he was biting his neck. Going for what looked like the jugular. I’d seen him display his teeth before, but this—

  Yes, there’s a protocol for situations like this. But that protocol’s not really intended for interns. Even six-tenners. Especially not ones who’d been expressly prohibited from entering the habitat. Unfortunately, at that terrible moment, an intern was the only person in Keeper Access. I hit the alarm, but I knew precisely how long it’d take for the cavalry to arrive.

  I knew it’d take precisely one beta male ape life.

  I was through the air lock before I even knew what I was doing.

  Jollof looked up from what he was doing—which was murdering Magic Mike—

  —and saw Will Daughtry, all 210 pounds of him, coming out of the air lock, waving the flag of the California Republic. (Which was the first large item grabbable as I plummeted into the air lock.)

  Jollof had never seen a flag. Had no idea what it was, and could only conclude that it was Large and Unpredictable and Not Good for Jollof. With a snarl that must’ve translated to some truly fragrant gorilla profanity, he retreated, and Magic Mike rolled away and hid in the bushes.

  I’m not sure any of this counted as deconfliction. Or was legal.

  Quickly, very quickly, I ducked back into the air lock, sealed everything.

  By the time the cavalry came, the situation was defused, and we were all clear.

  After it was over, after everyone cleared out and Brian debriefed me, I sat on the floor a good long time, just breathing, filling my huge lungs and emptying them. Filling, emptying. Listening to the air I was displacing just by being here.

  Then I thought of Monica.

  How, if I’d been mortally wounded fighting a gorilla, she’d be my first last call, hands down.

  What did that mean? That Sid wasn’t my first last call? My first instinct?

  I’ll be honest: all that crazy, furtive, dangerous-feeling teenage sex may have blurred things a bit. My blood felt like lit kerosene in my veins, fiery little trails, a map to further adventures, absolutely terrifying, completely amazing. So improbable, given where I’d been, given what I’d been.

  Maybe it all even meant something.

  I was too afraid to ask. Maybe I wasn’t the only one.

  Maybe that’s why we didn’t say love, Sid and I. After. Or before. Or ever.

  Maybe it wasn’t because Sid was “cool.” Maybe it was because Sid was scared. And so was I.

  I realized I wasn’t breathing.

  When I got my breath back, all of it, all forty gallons or whatever it was I held now, I went the hell home, in a car that felt way too small for me, with a full choir of crazy things gibbering in my head.

  That was probably the beginning of it, my devolution, my long slide down the ol’ descent-of-man chart. All because I acted on instinct, to save a life, to aid the weak. All because I felt strong enough. Big enough.

  I wasn’t.

  * * *

  —

  Look, I was just minding my business.

  Just walking through a high school gymnasium to fetch my girlfriend from volleyball practice. Me, a mild-mannered six-ten intramural volleyball semi-celebrity with a talent for AP biology, just going about my day. Trying to tune out the smack-smack-smack of basketball on polyurethane, trying to let Drew and his Harps stay in their zone, practicing for the Sweet Sixteen against Kearny Science & Math. When I heard…

  “Daughtry! C’mere!”

  Coach Guthridge’s voice. Never heard it directed at me before.

  I hope I didn’t jog over too eagerly, like a benchwarmer, or a Weimaraner.

  But I think I might’ve.

  Coach Gut was standing with Drew, who wore an expression that suggested he was fighting off a fatal liver fluke. Coach Gut, I saw instantly, was screwing with Drew.

  Coach Gut liked mind games. Drew knew this, but he was still susceptible. Coach must’ve thought he was irritating his star player into releasing energies said star player never even knew he had. He was that kind of coach. The kind who enjoyed the result of all that goading, but also the process; the kind of guy who loved his work, especially when it was a little evil. He’d have made a great troll, Coach Gut, if he’d been born a little later.

  “Daughtry,” said Coach Gut, “let’s borrow you. Spare a minute for your school?”

  I answered, too puppyishly, too avidly by half: “Sure, whatcha need?”

  Yeah. That tone. Put me in, Coach!

  Drew rolled his eyes. And was justified in doing so.

  I don’t know what I was expecting Coach Gut to say. Fetch the Gatorade vat, big man? But no:

  “Kearny Science has a center ’bout your height, Daughtry,” said Coach Gut. “You wanna stand in, let us get a feel for it? We’re a running team, we don’t have a tower.”

  Drew’s eyes pleaded with me: Please have somewhere else to be. But Drew’s mouth said, “Yeah, Will, it’d be a big help. Just two or three possessions.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure. Lemme just change.”

  I played it cool.

  I wasn’t cool.

  I was thrilled.

  I donned my intramural volleyball sweats to play varsity basketball.

  I like the pick-and-roll, I like the give-and-go. So shoot me.

  And the whistle screamed.

  For the first two possessions, I took my stand-in role very literally: I just stood. Played minimal D. I received incoming passes and dutifully chucked them toward the hoop, but made no special effort to deliver the mail. I played in mannequin mode, which is what I thought Coach wanted and Drew preferred.

  I was half-right.

  “Goddamn, Daughtry, what’s wrong with you?” Coach moaned. “Little bit of hustle wouldn’t kill you, would it?”

  I flushed. Something ignited in my gut. Then spread to my hands.

  Well then. Okay, Coach. One little bit of hustle, coming up.

  I could feel the adrenaline, could almost hear the high whine of my cellular centrifuges spinning up as the rocket fuel hit my bloodstream. Boy, oh boy, it did not take much poking to unlock beast mode. What the hell had I been damming up?

  Drew and I were about to find out.

  Next time the ball came in, I really posted up, really pivoted. Really faked.

  Launched. And stuffed it.

  I’d had months of practice, after all, on Rafty’s now-humbled hoop.

  By this time, Sid had shown up. I remembered: she was going to grab a ride with Ethan that day; they were supposed to see a movie or something. Now Drew and I were our own movie, and that movie was Godzilla vs. Mothra. Sidney sat in the bleachers in her sweats, grinning through the postpractice-sugar-crash granola bar she was eating. “C’maw, Harpsh!” she hooted, mouth full. “C’maw, Will Dawtshee!”

  Maybe that’s why I did the next thing I did, which I really shouldn’t have done.

  Or maybe it’s because I caught a look on Drew’s face I didn’t like much. This weird curl to his lip. This expression that said, Stop being a clown, son.

  That said, Sl
ow down, son.

  It came home to roost in that moment, this pigeon of revelation:

  That every look from Drew these days was Slow down, son. Stop being a clown, son.

  P.S. You look ridiculous! SON!

  And so, on defense, with Drew on a drive, I waited till he was airborne—

  —and then hooked the ball, right out of his paw.

  And took off. Breakaway.

  Unlike the typical big man, I was quick, see. Thank you, proportional growth. Thank you, weight training, proprioception, biology.

  Drew was still quicker, of course, and he had better stamina. But he also had a lot of ground to make up on that play, since he’d started this possession going in what turned out to be the wrong direction. He arrived under the basket just in time for me to stuff the ball more or less down his throat.

  I even hung on the goal for a second, let the hoop groooooooan with the weight of me. Then returned to earth. BLAM!

  Voltron is formed, motherfuckers.

  “Wooooot!” Sidney applauded.

  Drew tucked his tongue under his top lip, the way he did when he was absolutely stubbed-toe, jammed-finger, dick-in-zipper furious. Then he launched a midrange jumper on the next possession—

  —and I batted it down, Kong-like.

  I could see his anger flip into a whole new gear.

  “Hoo doggy!” barked Coach Gut. “If it’s gonna be like that, let’s go one on one!” His cracked leather saddle of a face split into six different grins. He was enjoying himself, that old turkey buzzard. And, I’m sorry to say, so was I.

  So Drew and I played to fifteen. I released some lovely field goals, but did most of the work in the paint, posting and pushing.

  Against me, his jumper was garbage. Not because I was great at blocking it (though I did block a couple), but because I was in his head now, and he took wilder shots. Tied at fourteen, he muscled in hard, and I instinctively planted my feet to draw the charge. Drew hit me full force, missed his layup, and I flopped dramatically, Duke-like. (By the way, when a six-tenner goes down like that—it’s never not dramatic.)

  Fweeeet! Whistle.

 

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