by Paul Mosier
“It’s embarrassing. Like I’m a baby.” But I am a baby.
“How about we pretend we’re holding hands because we’re friends?”
“Okay.”
“Like we just met a few days ago, but already we love hanging out.”
I look at my feet. “Okay.”
“Like when we’re apart we can’t wait to be together again.”
I’m not sure if she’s serious or joking. Or whether she can read my mind and she’s kidding me about it. I smile anyway. “Okay.”
Summer holds out her hand. I hold out mine, and she takes it.
“Just goin’ in for a little splishy-splashy,” she announces to anyone in hearing range. “Gettin’ the old gills wet.”
This makes me laugh, and takes my mind off the fear. We walk down the slope of the beach. The water invades the space between our toes.
“Probably not walking all the way to China,” she says. “Maybe just up to our thighs.”
I look down to see how high the water is. It’s only halfway to my knees.
Then a girl approaches us from the deeper water. She trudges toward the shore, her hair completely wet.
“Gidget!” Summer shouts. “Wassup?”
“Hey, Summer! Just getting a little swimming in.” She’s actually a grown woman—not very tall, but she looks like a professional athlete. “Sitting out these ankle busters?”
“Yeah, not worth bringing our boards today. This is Juillet, aka Betty. Betty, this is Gidget.”
Gidget smiles and offers a fist for me to bump, like the jock boys do back home. I punch at it uncomfortably with my free hand.
Gidget kicks at the water. “Maybe tomorrow’ll be better.”
“Dude!” Summer gestures toward the ocean laid before us. “It couldn’t be any choppier than this.”
“You shoulda been here yesterday.” Gidget looks down at our joined hands and smiles. “Later.” She does this thing with her thumb and pinkie, wagging them back and forth, then walks past us, up the shore.
I look down at my free hand. I make a fist except for my thumb and pinkie.
“That’s the shaka,” Summer says. “It means ‘hang loose.’ But you gotta waggle it.”
I try.
Summer smiles. “You got it.”
I look out to the water. “She could tell I’m afraid.”
“Gidget? What makes you think that?”
“She saw my hand holding yours. Then she smiled.”
Summer gives me a little frown. “Maybe she’s just happy to see me with a friend.”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.
We move forward into the water. It climbs past my knees. A wave rolls in and advances up my thighs, but I hardly notice. I hardly notice because I’m thinking that obviously a girl like Summer would have plenty of friends.
I hold my ground as the waves try to push us toward the shore and tug us toward the deep. The water moves up and down our legs while fearless toddlers splash around us, attacking the waves, then retreating. Seagulls fly down the coast, then four pelicans in formation, and a lifeguard helicopter.
The sun glints off the water. The breeze blowing in from the blue-green distance smells like adventure, but I’m not turning away from it. I gaze out in the distance to a yacht cruising beyond the breakwater, then down to the hand holding mine.
6
THE NEXT DAY Summer is busy, so I’m solo until we ignore alien orders at six p.m. and take the Big Blue Bus down Fourth Street to Colorado. The plan is to go to the pier. As we ride the shiny new bus with its cushiony seats, I’m thinking of all the things that could go wrong on this excursion. For starters, the pier is a big thing made of wood sticking way out into the ocean. I went online earlier to preview the terrifying experience that awaits me, and to look at pictures of the rides that are on the pier. They would be scary enough if they were built on solid, dry ground, but they’re made worse by the fact that they’re on a wooden platform over a roiling ocean that would love to smash it all to bits.
We get off the bus near the train station, and the sidewalks are thick with people who’ve ridden to the end of the Expo Line in Santa Monica from various parts of Los Angeles to do exactly the kind of touristy thing that Summer and I are about to do.
I’m wearing a black T-shirt that says DEATH in big white letters. In this case it’s not the name of one of my favorite bands, or any band that I’m aware of. It’s just what ends up happening to all of us eventually. Summer laughed when she saw it, but she said it looked super cute on me. I’m also wearing my favorite ripped jeans and my black high-tops. I went a little bit light on the black makeup.
She, meanwhile, is wearing a light blue hoodie that says Um okay. People we pass look from me to Summer, from Summer to me, and smile like we’re telling some kind of joke. Like Happy is taking Sad for a walk.
When we get to Second Street she stops suddenly.
“Wait. Can we go back? I wanna show you the promenade. It’s the old street we just passed. Cars aren’t allowed and it has all these shops and restaurants and performers on it. And movie theaters!”
I give her a look of dread.
“Yes,” she confesses. “Yes, it is in fact Third Street, but nobody calls it that, and there’s so much happening you won’t even think about it. Come on!”
She leads me back through throngs of people on the sidewalk. We turn onto the promenade. Like she said, it’s filled with people and stores and places to eat. There’s a fortune-teller, and a woman singing and playing guitar for hat money, and someone with a monkey on a leash, all on the first block. It’s like a mall, but with sea breeze and sky and birds.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Mom.
WHERE ARE YOU? I GOT AN ALERT THAT YOU CROSSED THE BOUNDARY.
“Ugh. My mom always texts in all caps, so it feels like she’s shouting at me. But she might actually be shouting this time.”
Summer waits while I text back.
Me and Summer are about a hundred feet north of Colorado on the promenade. Just looking at things. Then we are going to the pier, safely tucked within the boundary. Bye!
“She’s tracking me on her phone.” I stuff mine into my back pocket.
Summer smiles. “That’s sweet.”
“It’s annoying. She says she wants me to go outside my comfort zone, but I bump into the limits of her comfort first.”
Summer lets her smile fade. She gestures down the block. “I need to show you something.”
I follow Summer down the promenade. She slows as we approach a fountain surrounded by landscaping, with bushes trimmed to the shapes of dinosaurs. Then she points to a sketchy-looking guy holding a camera. He’s got a scrawny goatee and dark sunglasses.
“This guy will take our picture for five bucks!”
“Why don’t we just do a selfie with our phones for free?”
“These are Polaroids! They develop right away. They’re more fun!”
Summer lets go of my hand, peels off a five, and gives it to the creepy guy.
“Over here!” she says. “Let’s do it with the fountain behind.”
The goatee guy follows us. Summer’s steps get smaller as we near the fountain. Then she turns. She looks over her shoulder at the spray, then to the guy with the camera. “This is close enough, right?”
He shrugs.
We stand side by side. I feel Summer’s shoulder against mine.
The guy with the camera kneels on one knee before us. “Smile.” He says it without cheer.
The flash flashes before the smile reaches my face. I feel Summer’s hand close over mine.
“Did you get a good shot?” she calls out.
But he’s already pulling the photo from the camera as he approaches. “You’ll know in a minute.” He hands it to Summer and turns away.
Summer drops the photo in her bag before it develops. “Come on, let’s get to the pier so we can watch the sunset!” She leads me off the promenade, down the sidewalk
.
We cross a busy street called Ocean, and enter a narrow strip of green park on the bluffs overlooking the beach and the endless sea beyond. We follow it to a bridge that takes us over the Pacific Coast Highway and the sand, and onto the pier.
The bridge and the pier are packed with people. They all walk out onto the pier, mill around on it, and then walk away from it. In between they buy food and souvenirs and ride the rides at Pacific Park—the name of the little amusement park on the pier—and cast their fishing lines into the ocean, and watch performers, and stare out to sea.
“Look at this!” Summer says. She leads me to a guy at a cart with a sign that says Your Name Painted on a Grain of Rice. The guy supposedly paints your name on a grain of white rice and then puts it in a tiny glass vial with a little cork on the opening, and charges you twenty bucks for it. But you would need a stupidly powerful magnifying glass to even see it.
“I wanna get one with your name on it!” Summer says.
I smile. “I can get one with your name on it.”
But then Summer gets distracted by a homeless man standing nearby. Dirty and bearded, he’s leaning back against the railing. Hanging from his neck is a sign with big, hand-drawn words.
MY TALE OF WOE WRITTEN ON A GRAIN OF RICE.
DONATIONS CHEERFULLY ACCEPTED
Summer pulls me to him.
The homeless man holds a fishing pole with a line dangling from it, to which he’s attached a tiny glass vial with a grain of rice inside. Hanging below that is a paper cup that’s been torn shorter, with a few dollars sticking out of it.
Summer moves closer and examines the vial. She squints at the grain of rice.
“How do I read it?” she asks.
He shrugs, then speaks in a growl. “Prob’ly a magnifying glass. Or a microscope.”
“Have you got a magnifying glass or a microscope?”
He shakes his head.
“If I give you some money, will you tell me your tale of woe?” she asks.
The homeless man rolls his eyes, like he’d rather just cash in on his gimmick, which really is pretty good as far as gimmicks go.
“Once I had everything,” he begins in his gravelly voice.
“Wait!” Summer says. “What’s your name?”
He rolls his eyes again. “Butch.”
“Okay. Sorry. Please continue, Butch.”
“Once I had everything. A philosophy degree, a dog that followed me everywhere, and a sleeping bag. And then . . .”
He pauses, and looks over his shoulder, over the railing of the pier, like he’s expecting to see something in the water below. He turns back to us, and stares at the wooden beams of the platform in front of him, his brow furrowed.
“Then what?” Summer asks.
“Then I ran out of room on the grain of rice.”
Summer looks at me and grins. But I don’t grin back because I feel like somehow it’s mean for her to look happy.
“That’s a real cliff-hanger,” she tells him. “But I really care about the character. And it makes me want to know what happens to Butch next.” She puts the twenty-dollar bill she’s been holding into the cup on the end of the fishing line, and gives the string a tug. “I think you’ve got a bite!”
Then she looks over her shoulder at the Ferris wheel, and turns to me, raising her eyebrows, asking without words.
Even though the sight of the Ferris wheel is horribly frightening, even though it goes against everything in my entire body, from my nerve endings to my brain, suddenly I feel like I want to stay at Summer’s side, wherever she takes me. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ll follow her, even if it means tagging along on the Ferris wheel, in a tiny cup on a rickety wheel high above the frothy ocean. So I smile my consent, and Summer smiles back and leads me there.
The line for the Ferris wheel is long, and it gives me plenty of time for regrets. The thick wooden planks beneath our feet make me feel like we’re on a pirate ship. They make me feel like I’m about to walk the plank.
A roller coaster roars overhead every minute or so, and the people on it scream in terror. They wait in line to scream in terror. Screaming in terror is why everyone is here.
Finally it is our turn to enter the metal cup that will take us around and around, from the pier to the sky. We step in, we sit down.
There is no seat belt. Just physics keeping us inside the little cup, and the hope that the wheel doesn’t bust loose from its moorings and roll into the sea.
Summer smiles, the wheel lurches and begins moving. Up we go.
I feel the ocean breeze in my face and hair, but I won’t look outside the cup we sit in. Instead I’m looking at my folded hands between my knees.
Summer scoots over and sits beside me. Her jeans are against mine. Then she puts one arm across my shoulders, and holds me close.
“Do you want to look? It’s really beautiful.”
I don’t say anything, but I don’t want to look. Then I do anyway. Slowly, slowly I raise my head, my eyes, and look to where the sinking sun shines off the surface of the sea. Summer squeezes my shoulder, and my heart leaps. Because it is beautiful. All of it. It makes my heart ache, and chills run down my spine.
The distant mountains that jut out into the water are backlit and misty. Nearer, just beyond the pier along the beach, I can see the waves being born, and the surfers who want to love the waves, lined up, waiting to claim them.
And, nearest, Summer’s smile, and my own smile reflected in her sunglasses. I look happy. Maybe I really am.
The wheel goes around and around, and then, like the sun, we come down, and everything is golden.
7
THE NEXT DAY, early afternoon, the sun is warm.
“Okay,” Summer says. “You ready?”
We’re standing side by side at the water’s edge, both in bikinis. Mine is brand-new, bought on the pier last night.
“Can you remind me again what it is I’m supposed to be ready for?” I watch as a wave advances and reaches my toes.
Summer smiles. “We’re gonna walk toward the horizon until either your feet are off the ocean floor or your head is underwater.”
I sigh. “And what again is the point of that?”
“Swimming. Ideally you’ll choose to have your feet leave the ocean floor and you’ll begin swimming. But feel free to dip your head underwater too.”
“I already know how to swim.”
“Of course!” She grins. “So this will be easy.”
But it won’t be easy, because this body of water is endlessly vast, unfathomably deep, filled with a million creatures I don’t want to meet.
“Let’s take a walk,” she says. She steps forward, then keeps stepping, and rather than be left behind, I follow by her side.
Quickly the water is above our knees. Summer doesn’t give me a chance to object.
We’re waist-deep. A wave moves against us.
“Cold!” I bark.
“Fresh from the Gulf of Alaska. The cold current is why the air doesn’t get hot on the coast all summer.”
We keep moving forward. There’s a sudden drop, a quick downward slope. A wave comes and I jump up to keep my head dry, but Summer dives beneath it. She comes up looking like it’s the best thing she’s ever done, like she’s in a commercial for this, shimmering as the water runs from her golden hair.
“Getting deep,” she says. “Ready for liftoff?”
I don’t answer, but the next wave comes and I lean forward. I try to breaststroke into it like at the pool at the country club back home, but it pelts me, mashing my face and hair. I’m swimming, though, and wet from head to toe. Mission accomplished.
“Woo-hoo!” Summer shouts. “Follow me!”
I do follow, for a while, but we’re getting too far out. Summer said it doesn’t matter how deep the ocean is once you’re swimming, but it doesn’t feel that way to me right now. Deeper feels deeper.
“I wanna go back!” I shout. I turn and head to shore.
But as hard as I swim, I feel like I’m getting nowhere. The shore seems to be growing more distant instead of nearer.
I keep swimming at the shore but not getting closer to it. I’m getting tired. A lifeguard on the beach waves her arms like she wants me to go to my left, but I want to come in.
I look over my shoulder at Summer. She’s way far out now, but she’s waving too. She’s waving at me to move the same way the lifeguard is, because she doesn’t understand, either. I turn back toward the beach. I kick and paddle as hard as I can, but it’s like I’m trying to swim upstream against a river’s current. My shoulders are tired, my thighs are burning, my feet are cramping. I’m out of breath.
I start to panic. It’s like when I was a little girl at the mall and I accidentally started going down an escalator, away from Mom and Dad, and I tried to step back up, but the escalator kept carrying me down, and no matter how fast I tried to run up I couldn’t get closer to them. Finally Dad smiled and stepped down the escalator, picked me up, held me. But he’s half a world away and not getting any closer, and though my arms dig and my legs kick, my breaths coming in gasps, the shore isn’t getting any closer, either.
Suddenly I’m face-to-face with an angel—a lifeguard, a woman, who looks like Summer if Summer were an adult and had brown hair.
“Rest,” she says. “I got you. You’re safe.”
She pushes her flotation device at me. I grab hold of it, and my legs fall toward the ocean floor. I stop kicking and immediately feel myself drifting more quickly out to sea.
“This is a rip current,” she says. “No sense in trying to swim against it. It’s moving straight out from the beach. What we want to do is move laterally until we’re no longer in it.” She rolls onto her back and begins a lazy backstroke. “Stay by my side, nice easy kicks. Let the current push you away from shore, and meanwhile we’ll kick our way out of the current, down the beach toward the pier.”
She stays by my side, watching me.
“Beautiful,” she says. “You’re doing great. Just a little bit farther and we’ll be out of the current.”
I swim blindly, staying by her side. Then suddenly I don’t feel like I’m being pulled out to sea anymore.