Pulled Under (Sixteenth Summer)

by Michelle Dalton

  I have called an emergency team meeting, and despite Sophie’s attitude, I can tell that I have at least caught the attention of the others.

  “What three words?” asks Mo.

  I hold up a copy of the King of the Beach rules, all twenty-three pages, and wave it in the air for emphasis. “‘From . . . all . . . divisions.’”

  “Now you really shouldn’t expect a hug,” says Sophie.

  “There are four divisions in the contest,” I continue. “The most important one is the Main Event. Whoever wins the Main Event is named the King of the Beach. But there are three other age group contests: Menehunes for kids twelve and under, Teens for thirteen- to nineteen-year-olds, and Legends for anyone over forty-five.”

  “Yeah,” says Nicole. “Why is that important?”

  “Because every year the people on the Surf City team, and all the other teams for that matter, only enter the Main Event. They all want to compete for the individual title.”

  “I still don’t see your point,” says Sophie.

  “Listen to the rules for the team competition.” I read from the rule book. “‘Competitors will be awarded points based on their finish in their individual competitions. The team championship will be awarded to the team whose members accumulate the most total points . . .’ And here’s the tricky part, because the sentence starts on this page but continues on this one,” I say as I flip to the next page. “‘. . . from all divisions.’”

  I let this sink in for a moment.

  “I still don’t get it,” Nicole says.

  “You can earn points for your team in any age group,” I say. “But none of the other teams ever do it. If we enter surfers in Menehunes, Teens, and Legends, we could earn a lot of points. We could build a really big lead before the Main Event even starts. We might even be able to win this thing.”

  Now I see the expressions I was hoping for.

  “Are you sure?” asks Mo.

  “Look for yourself,” I say as I hand her the rules.

  “Most teams are just made up of young guys at the peak of their skills. So of course they all enter the Main Event. It never occurred to anybody to make up a team that spanned different age groups.”

  Mickey flashes a big smile. “At least not until now.”

  “I think I’ve changed my mind,” says Sophie. “I deem this hug worthy.” She wraps her arms around me and squeezes so much that it lifts me off the ground.

  “Sophie, you and me in the Teens,” says Nicole, thinking aloud. “Mickey and Mo in Legends. That leaves us with three spots. Who else can we get? We need some Menehunes.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I say as I break free from Sophie’s hug. “Rebecca and Tyler are the two best surfers in summer camp. I bet they’d do it.”

  “Those two make seven,” says Sophie. “We can add one more.”

  “I know who would be perfect!” says Mickey with a Cheshire grin.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Your dad,” she says. “Is he over forty-five?”

  “By six months,” I say excitedly.

  “He’d be great,” Sophie says. “He’s really good.”

  “Oh my God. He’ll pass out when I tell him.”

  “That gives us three Legends, three Teens, and two Menehunes,” Nicole says. “If everyone does well—”

  “It still won’t be enough,” Mo says, interrupting.

  We look over to where she has the rules spread out on a surfboard. She’s writing numbers on the back of one of the pages.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  She scratches out some more math and looks up at us. “The points count from all the divisions, but the point values are bigger in the Main Event. There’s a very real chance that Surf City will sweep that, and if they do, it doesn’t matter how well we do in the others. We’ll still fall a few points short.”

  She holds up her paper to show us the math.

  We all think about this for a minute and try to figure out a solution.

  “We have to have someone in the Main Event who finishes high enough to score points,” Mickey says. “Those will count double because not only will we be adding them to our score, but we’ll also be subtracting points from their total points. That could put us over the top.”

  “Considering we’ve got two past champions on our squad, I still like our chances,” I say. “One of you can surf in the Main Event and the other in Legends with my dad.”

  Mickey shakes her head. “I’m afraid it will have to be one of you three.”

  “Why?” I ask. “You’ve both won it before. You’ve got the skills.”

  “Our skills have faded,” says Mickey. “We can do some damage in the Legends, but it would be a miracle if either one of us made it out of the first round in the Main Event.”

  “She’s right,” says Mo. “It needs to be one of you.”

  “And if we’re going to be honest,” says Nicole, “I’m not in the same league as Izzy and Sophie. So it shouldn’t be me.”

  I feel my pulse pick up pace as Sophie and I lock eyes on each other.

  “That means it’s got to be you,” I say to her. “You’re much better at cutbacks and tricks than I am. You can earn a big score. You can do this.”

  Sophie laughs. “You know that’s not true. You know that I am nowhere near the surfer you are. This is your time to be bold. This is your moment.”

  “Well, it’s got to be one of you,” Mo says.

  “How do we decide?” I ask.

  Mickey smiles at me. “That’s easy. The same way we always decide disputes at Surf Sisters. We’re going to go to the register.”

  “But we’re not open yet,” says Sophie. “No one is working the register.”

  Mo nods. “I know that. But since Izzy is the one who first came up with the idea of competing, and since she’s the one who found this wrinkle in the rules, we’ll say that she’s officially on register. We’ll let her decide.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. Bullet dodged.

  “That’s not fair,” says Sophie. “You know I’m right and you just gave her a way out.”

  Mo looks at me with an intensity that’s unnerving. “I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of responsibility that goes with being on the register. If you take the tradition seriously, you don’t just make the easy choice. You make the right choice. I think Izzy takes things seriously. I think she’ll make the right choice.”

  That last bit gets to me. I do take tradition seriously. I look at them one by one, and each one stares right back at me. I think about the contest. I think about the summer.

  Back in June the idea of me competing in the King of the Beach would have been laughable. But so much has happened. I’m definitely not the same girl I was then. I’m not even the same girl I was on the Fourth of July. Then I start to think about the girl I want to become. No one rushes me. No one says a thing. They just wait for me to respond.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll make the decision.”

  “Who’s it going to be?” asks Mickey.

  There is no hesitation in my voice. “Me.”

  Ben’s first day back in Pearl Beach doesn’t follow any of the romantic comedy movie plots that have played out in my imagination. There is no indie pop love song playing as we rush into each other’s arms at the airport. (I have to work so his uncle picks him up without me.) I don’t walk out of the shop after my shift and find him waiting for me across the street as he sits on the hood of a sports car. (His flight’s delayed two hours, so he’s still not back when my shift ends.) And we don’t go on a picnic and have it ruined by a sudden rainstorm only to kiss passionately after we take cover beneath an abandoned gazebo. (Okay, so I was pretty certain this one wouldn’t happen but, man, how cool would that be?)

  In fact, Ben’s first day back in Pearl Beach doesn’t even inclu
de me until it’s almost over. I still haven’t heard from him by ten o’clock, so I try to call and it goes straight to voice mail. I figure (at least I hope) that it’s because his battery is dead and not because he hit ignore when my picture popped up on his phone. Without really thinking it through, I ride my bike over to his uncle’s house and knock on the door. I regret this decision the moment I see his face.

  “Hi,” I say as he opens the door.

  He smiles, but it feels forced. “Hey.” I can tell that he’s exhausted both physically and emotionally.

  “How was your flight?” I ask.

  “Long . . . like the week.”

  There’s an awkward silence, and I’m not getting any encouraging signs, so I decide to cut my losses.

  “Well, I was just riding home from Nicole’s and wanted to make sure you got back okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I turn around and try to speed walk over to my bike, but he runs up behind me and takes me by the shoulder.

  “Wait a second,” he says. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

  I turn around and try to read his face, but it’s hard in the darkness.

  “I don’t know. I figured you’d be happy to see me. But you don’t seem happy. So I thought I should leave.”

  “I am happy. It’s just that I’m tired and I have to get up early for work.”

  (“You gave two excuses. Which one’s the real one?” I think as I remember what Nicole said to me just a couple of nights ago.)

  “I completely understand. Let’s just act like this never happened. We’ll see each other tomorrow and run into each other’s arms.”

  I really could use a laugh right here, but he looks serious.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk?” he says. “So we can talk.”

  All these signs are worrisome. I start to breathe heavily, but I try to hide it as Ben tells his uncle that he’ll be right back.

  I’m not sure how to describe the vibe as we walk down to the beach. Our chemistry feels completely different. The problem is that I don’t know if this is because things have changed between us or if it’s because he’s tired and I made a mistake by coming over this late. I’m also a bit concerned by the fact that he said he wanted to talk, but he’s keeping awfully quiet.

  I decide to take charge of the conversation.

  “If you want to talk about what went down with your parents and the judge, you know that I’m more than happy to listen,” I tell him. “But if you just want to forget about that stuff, that’s fine too.”

  He thinks for a moment. “Maybe another time, but right now I’m just happy to be away from it.”

  It’s night, but it’s still too hot and humid to snuggle as we walk down the beach together. We hold hands, but there’s a formality to it.

  “I hope you got to have at least some fun while you were up there.”

  “There was a big party at the lake, and I saw a lot of my friends from school,” he says with a faint smile, “so that was fun.”

  I can’t help it, but the first thing I do when I hear this is wonder whether or not his ex-girlfriend, Beth, was at the party. Amazingly, I resist the urge to ask him and instead let my crazy worrying stay in my head.

  “What did you want to talk about?” I ask, not sure I really want to hear the answer.

  “I really missed you,” he says.

  “I really missed you, too.”

  “But in a couple weeks I’ll be going back for good and . . . I wonder if we should—”

  I put my finger up against his lips to quiet him.

  “Why don’t you stop right there,” I say. “We both know that September’s coming. But I don’t think we should talk about it. I think we should just enjoy the moment.”

  He takes a deep breath and considers this. “It’s just—”

  “I don’t even want to talk about surfing,” I say, cutting him off again. “I just want to hold your hand and walk along the beach.”

  “Okay,” he says reluctantly. “We can do that.”

  We don’t say much after that. We just walk, and as we do I hold on as tightly as I can.

  The next few days aren’t much better. Ben and I both smile and say all the right things, but there’s a definite distance between us. He even cancels on me twice. Yesterday he backed out of lunch because there was a problem at work, and today I was supposed to give him another surf lesson, but he bailed at the last moment. He said that he had to go listen to a couple bands he was considering for the Sand Castle Dance. I offered to go along with him, but he said that since it was work, he really shouldn’t bring anyone along.

  I’m pretty sure he was about to break up with me on the beach, and now I wonder if I should have just let him do it. Rather than sit in my room so I could stress and obsess, I call Sophie and ask her to meet me at the pier for some intensive training.

  “What’s wrong?” Sophie asks when she sees the expression on my face.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I say. “I just want to work.”

  She nods. “Okay. Let’s work.”

  I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my new surfboard doesn’t just look amazing. It is amazing. Mo told me that because our styles are so similar, she knew just how to shape it. (We’ll call that the understatement of the year.) It’s perfect in every way and feels like an extension of my body whenever I’m in the water. At first I was worried that it had too much curve to it, but that curve has opened up my ability to attack my cutbacks. That’s what I’m working on today and the reason I called Sophie. She’s great at them.

  The cutback is probably the most important surfing maneuver of all. As the energy of the wave pushes you forward, you can get too far in front of it. When that happens you have to turn, or cutback, into the wave and go against it until you’re closer to the power source. It lets you ride the wave longer and gives you the power to do bigger and better turns and maneuvers.

  If you do a cutback right, you look like you belong in the Bolshoi Ballet. If you do it wrong, you look like my Uncle Barry doing the chicken dance at a wedding reception. After thirty minutes I’m looking more like Barry than Baryshnikov. I think this is partly due to the fact that I’m trying to add some flair to the maneuver in order to look good for the judges, but also because of my Ben funk.

  “So tell me,” I ask Sophie as we sit on our boards in the lineup, waiting for the next set of waves. “What am I doing wrong?”

  She gives me that Sophie smirk and asks, “Are we talking about surfing or Ben?”

  I think about it for a moment before answering. “Surfing.”

  “I think you’re trying too hard. The thing that’s so great about your technique is how smooth it is. But today you look uncomfortable, like you’re fighting the waves.”

  I nod as I make mental notes.

  “When you drop down into that turn, try leaning back more, right up to the point where you feel like you’re going to fall into the wave. And then picture big round circles in your mind as you start to whip around. It will make the move more fluid and help you pick up speed. No wasted energy.”

  I think about this for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “That all makes sense. I think I can do that.”

  “I know you can do it,” she says, with just the right amount of enthusiasm in her voice.

  We look back at the ocean and all we see are pancakes. There are no real waves coming our way, so we just bob quietly for a few moments until I break the silence.

  “All right,” I say with a smile. “What am I doing wrong with Ben?”

  She thinks about it for a moment. “The same thing. I think you’re trying too hard. You look uncomfortable.”

  “It’s not just a look,” I say. “I am uncomfortable. It used to be that when we walked on the beach our hands fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It was just perfect. But ever since he came ba
ck from Wisconsin, there’s been a distance between us. Physical and emotional. I keep hoping it will go away, but it doesn’t.”

  “Do you think it’s because of what happened when he went home?” she asks. “Is he freaked out because of his parents’ divorce?”

  “Maybe.” I shrug. “I have no way of knowing. He doesn’t talk about it, and I’m too scared to ask.”

  “I understand him not volunteering it,” she says. “But you can’t be scared to ask him something. If you’re a couple, you should be able to ask him anything you want. Don’t be shy. You know what happens to timid surfers?”

  “They wipe out.”

  “You bet they do. It’s the same with boys. If you’re timid, you wipe out. Now show me that cutback.”

  I see a set of waves coming right at us and pick out the one that’s just for me. I catch it, and as I ride along the shoulder just ahead of where it’s breaking, I think about the advice that Sophie gave me. I lean back farther and farther. At first it feels like I’m going to fall off the surfboard, but instead of falling I start picking up an amazing amount of speed. I shoot out in front of the break and do a wide sweeping turn known as a roundhouse. I can hear Sophie squealing with delight and cheering in the distance. After another hour of practice it’s almost second nature.

  By the time we’re done, I’m exhausted. The practice has taken my mind off Ben, and the fact that my cutback has improved so much at least gives me something positive for the day.

  “You own that move,” Sophie says as we carry our boards back toward the shop. “You need to be that bold with Ben.”

  “I’ll try,” I say honestly. “But that’s easier said than done.”

  “All the great things are.”

  Throughout the week I try my best to be bold with Ben. It’s not my default setting, but I’m determined to do whatever I can to make things right. It works best one morning when I convince him to come out for another lesson. At first he’s reluctant, but I’m able to fill the lulls in conversation with surf talk. Then the instruction starts to pay off, and he catches a few waves in a row. This is without a doubt the happiest I’ve seen him since he’s come back from Wisconsin. And best of all, he doesn’t pearl and end up with a bloody face this time.