by Paul Mosier
I smile. I taste the salt in my nose and on my lips. It probably tastes the same in the Indian Ocean, and in the North Sea. It’s all one giant bowl of miso soup.
“Whoa.” She looks from the next wave to me, then begins kicking toward shore. “This. Catch it!”
I do as she does. I grip the board and kick like a tsunami is chasing me. Then I feel it behind me, the wave, but it doesn’t pass beneath me or crush me—instead I stay in front of it on my board, on top of its front edge. We’ve got it, and instantly I understand what this is about, getting a free ride from nature, a joyride, perched on the nose of the ocean like a hood ornament as it crashes into the continent. I feel like a dog with its head out a car window, like a flat stone skipping over a pond. Like a little girl riding her father’s shoulders.
I hear Summer whoop, and she’s there to my left. She looks at me with wild excitement, like it’s her first ride, not mine.
The wave carries us onward, bouncing us a couple of times as we enter shallow water. The waders dodge us as we pass them, small children and a father with a big belly. Finally the wave pulls our boards onto the sand, and quickly draws away to be reborn in the depths.
Summer pushes herself up from her board, from the sand. She gives me a hand and pulls me to my feet.
“Betty! You’re a natural!”
“Did I do good?” I ask.
She makes a crazy face, then pushes me away playfully. “That was epic! Nobody does that on their first wave!”
I smile sheepishly.
“Again?” she asks.
“Again,” I reply.
The day slips away as we ride and ride. Sometimes we get the waves and sometimes the waves get us, and sometimes nothing really happens. Now the sun is somewhere off to the west, maybe directly over Hawaii. I’m shivering from the cold water, warm from the pink the sun has painted my shoulders in spite of my SPF 144 sunscreen.
“One more?” she finally asks. Apparently even Summer has limits.
“One more,” I agree.
“But it needs to be a good one.” She turns back toward the water and begins trudging through it. “The last wave is always a good one, ’cause you never leave on a bad wave.”
The next wave is the last wave, because it is a good one. Not the very best of the day, but not one to make us demand a do-over. Good enough to leave the beach with.
We’re silent and exhausted as we walk away from the shore, the sun at our backs. It’s like heading up the aisle for the exit in a theater after a really great movie. On the slope in front of us, the houses and trees and buildings of Ocean Park bask in the sun of late afternoon. Then Summer stops in the middle of the wide swath of sand and turns to me.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
Summer raises her arms, gesturing to our surroundings, gathering all of it in. “For sharing this with me. For helping me remember that it’s worth sharing.”
She stands there smiling at me for a moment, and I stand there smiling back. While I try to think of a response, I hear the cry of seagulls carried on the roar of the ocean, smell sunscreen in the beach’s bouquet, taste the salt of the sea on my lips. Just when I’m starting to get uncomfortable with so much smiling, such an abundance of happiness, she shakes her head—the good kind of shaking her head—and turns back toward North America, toward California and Ocean Park, the snack bar, and an extra-large order of onion rings.
10
THE NEXT DAY is more of the same, only better. By the time Summer and I ignore alien orders at eleven, I’m so amped I forget to worry about Third Street even a little. I charge into the water at Summer’s side like I can’t wait to meet a shark. We ride and ride until I’m completely noodle-armed from paddling. In the late afternoon I fall asleep in the sun on a beach towel beside Summer, and when I wake up she’s smiling at me. She tells me I was smiling in my sleep.
We stop by Pinkie Promise after leaving the beach. Otis throws his arms up when he sees us.
“Duuuuudes! Looks like you’ve been riding something?”
Summer holds up her boogie board. I keep mine under my arm.
“Well, how was it?”
Summer and Otis watch me, waiting for my response. I look at my bare feet.
“Amazing.” I don’t know why I’m so shy about having had a great time.
“Betty is a natural,” Summer says.
Otis claps his hands together. “Well, they don’t name you Betty unless you were born to ride waves.”
This doesn’t make any sense, because nobody called me Betty until Otis did on my first day here. But instead of pointing this out, I just smile.
We place our orders—cones, so we can walk home with them while holding our boogie boards. Mint chip for me and butter pecan for Summer.
“Hey, I just had an idea,” Otis says as he scoops. “Alert the press.” He hands me my cone. “Dude, is Summer teaching you yoga to prepare for your first wave on a surfboard?”
“Yoga?” I ask.
Summer slaps her forehead. “Dude! That is a stellar idea. There’s lots of poses that’ll be good for balance and strength!”
“Yoga?” I repeat.
“Here!” Otis finishes shaping Summer’s cone and hands it to her. “Let me demonstrate!” He comes around the counter and stands with his legs apart. “This is the warrior pose. This’ll help you stay balanced as you serve in Neptune’s navy!” I watch as he points his left foot outward, bends into his left knee, and raises his arms, palms down, until they’re parallel to the floor. He gazes out past the fingertips of his left hand. “Now you try it!”
Otis holds the pose. It doesn’t look like he or Summer will take no for an answer, so I hand my cone to Summer, and do my best to duplicate his stance.
Summer smiles. “That’s good! Make sure your knee is directly above your ankle on the left foot. Nice.”
“Perfect!” Otis says. “Now get out of the pose by pretending you’re pushing your feet farther apart, but without pushing them farther apart.”
This doesn’t make any sense, but it works. I pop back up to standing straight.
Otis has me repeat the pose in the opposite direction. I’m hoping we’re done.
“She should learn downward dog, too,” Summer says.
“For sure!” Otis agrees.
Downward dog sounds humiliating, and it looks even more so, on my hands and feet with my butt up high in the air. At least Otis is doing it too. His messy blond hair and seashell necklace hang beneath his face as he stares down at the floor. Summer just smiles and alternates licks between her ice cream cone and mine.
“Now bend into your right knee,” Otis says. “Now your left. Do you feel your Achilles stretching?”
“Yes.”
It gets more embarrassing when a line of customers starts to form. They’ve got big cameras and tourist brochures sticking out of their pockets. They point at me and comment on the spectacle in foreign languages.
“Namaste, everybody!” Summer tells the people waiting for ice cream. She does the namaste bow with the two ice cream cones held together. “Otis will be right with you. I’m sure there’s just a couple more poses he wants to go over. But feel free to join in!”
From the downward dog position, and then the plank position—where I hold myself up like a diving board—I can see the customers smiling. A woman holding a camera with a big lens takes a picture of me and Otis. I guess for them—the tourists—it’s all part of the strange attraction of California. I guess it is for me, too.
After the plank pose, Otis jumps to his feet and fist-bumps me. “Awesome, Betty! Keep working on those poses, and Summer can add some others to your practice!”
Summer nods as she hands me my cone. “Heck, yeah! We’ll have you surfing in no time!”
I take a lick of my mint chip. It tastes even better than usual, like my senses have opened up from the yoga, and in this moment catching a wave while standing on my feet seems almost within the realm of possibi
lity. And if I’m willing to pose like a dog in an ice cream shop to make it happen, maybe that means I really do want to catch a wave.
Mom comes home early enough to have dinner with me. I’m practicing the warrior pose when she walks in the door.
“You’re doing yoga?”
“Summer and Otis taught me some poses. It feels kinda cool.”
She puts her laptop bag on the table. “There’s a yoga studio in Lakeshore near our home where you can take lessons. If you like.”
I pop up out of the pose. “Maybe.” I’m thinking that it won’t be the same if it’s not taught by Otis and Summer. But maybe anyway.
We take a cab to a surf-themed vegan place in downtown Santa Monica. It’s called Wave of Mutilation. TVs on every wall show nonstop footage of surfers riding gigantic waves as high as houses. At least the ones in Ocean Park aren’t so terrifyingly big.
The food is amazing. For drinks they only serve filtered water, and only at room temperature, with a lemon wedge. But the food is so tasty, I’m on board with whatever they might say about food and drink, and why.
“You’ve got a healthy appetite,” Mom observes. “You must be staying active.”
“Yeah.” I dip my taco into the ranchero sauce. I spring the question before taking a bite. “Can I have some money for a shorty?”
She smiles. “What exactly is a shorty?”
“It’s a wetty for summertime when the water isn’t too cold.” Her face shows a complete lack of understanding, so I add, “A wet suit.”
“Oh.” She brightens. “Have you been going in the water?”
“Yes. And boogie boarding.”
“Really?”
“Summer is teaching me.”
“Wow.” I can tell she’s trying not to make a big deal of it, but she’s happy I’m hanging around someone adventurous. She’s probably counting in her head how many fears I’m ignoring to do this.
“If I had a dad, he’d probably be the one to teach me to boogie board. And to help me get through riding the Ferris wheel. But instead I have Summer.”
“You do have a dad.”
“I do? Oh, right. But he’s busy fixing the faces of rich people so they look like mannequins. And running around Europe with a girl who’s barely older than me.”
Mom starts to say something but doesn’t, then reaches for her water and takes a sip.
It makes me mad at myself for being mean-spirited and sarcastic, bringing up the topic of Genevieve, ruining the mood during my time with Mom. But I’m also mad at Mom because she didn’t get the hint, that if I had a mom who ever spent time with me, she could be the one. She could be the one to boogie board with me, and everything else that’s a little bit scary but super scary when you’re alone.
Instead I have Summer.
“Did you FaceTime with your father today?”
“A couple days ago. For like five seconds. Then he handed the phone to Genevieve. Summer and I punked him by having Summer pretend to be me when he got back on the screen. But then he was back to his fabulous new life.”
“Well, he is a busy man.”
“Busy eating a fancy dinner and taking his doll to a show.”
Mom takes another sip of water, then clears her throat. “Are you deliberately trying to hurt me by reminding me of his choices?”
I slump down in my chair, away from the table. “No. I’m trying to remind you how much it hurts me.”
Mom takes her wallet from her purse. “So, how much does a shorty cost?”
“I can get a really good one for less than two hundred bucks.”
She raises her eyebrows. “That’s not cheap.”
“But it’ll keep me from getting too cold when I’m in the water for a long time. And it’ll help keep my sunburn from getting worse.”
She puts her wallet away and picks up her fork.
“And it’s better for rough conditions. Sometimes the waves tug at my bikini bottom so everyone can see half my butt.”
Mom’s eyebrows jump as she swallows a bite of food. She reaches for her glass of tepid water to wash it down. “We can stop by an ATM after dinner.”
I take a bite of taco to keep from smiling. But it’s not a smile at her agreeing to buy me a shorty. More like the unhappy kind of smile that always comes when I try to tell Mom how I’m feeling, and all she can do is throw money at me.
11
THE NEXT MORNING Summer and I ignore alien orders, then walk down the hill to the little library. Later we’ll shop for a shorty for me and go boogie boarding after the marine layer burns off. But right now, Summer says overcast skies are the best time for books. We’ve got our swimsuits on, just because.
“There’s a bigger library in downtown Santa Monica that I can take you to next time we go there,” Summer says. She opens the door and holds it for me. “But this one is cute and it’s really well stocked for being so small.”
She walks in like she owns the place, and waves at a librarian—a man wearing a striped sweater—who waves back at her. I’m worried that Summer is drawing attention to how little we’re wearing in this place, which is, after all, a public library. I lean to her and speak in a whisper. “Is it okay that we’re wearing bathing suits?”
She gives me a look like I’m kooky. Apparently all my questions are kooky. “Of course! This is Dogtown.”
I’m pretty sure if I ask about whether it’s okay that our feet are bare, the answer will be the same.
The library’s shelves are low. Its windows are high. Summer leads me to the kids’ area.
“Why is it called Dogtown?”
Summer kneels low in front of one of the shelves. “Because tons of people walk their dogs on Main Street. Which makes it tricky for skateboarders.”
I think about this, and imagine a skateboard having a collision with a Chihuahua. Then I picture a skateboarder tripping over a border collie’s leash, or ramming into a mastiff. I shudder.
“They pretty much get all the new titles here,” Summer says, running her fingertips across the spines of books. “But the very best book is an old one.” Her fingers go from left to right on the lowest shelf, then stop, and go back to the left. She frowns. “Dang. Someone must have checked it out. Remind me to show you my own copy at my house.”
“What book are you looking for?”
“The Perfect Wave. I’ve read it like a million times. I’m sure you can guess what it’s about.”
I smile.
We spend half an hour searching the shelves for books, sharing our finds, sampling them. Then we carry our selections to the front desk.
The librarian in the striped sweater greets us. “Did you girls find some good books to check out?”
“Yes!” Summer says. “Though my new friend here seems to be reading her way to a darker future.”
I frown, then look at the titles I’ve selected, spread out on the counter.
Zombies Slurped My Eye Sockets at Dawn.
Game Show of the Apocalypse.
Eat or Be Eaten.
“Everything isn’t always all cheerful,” I say in my own defense. “Bad things happen.”
The librarian’s smile disappears. He looks at Summer, then gathers the books and turns to scan them.
“I know,” Summer says, sounding annoyed. “But bad things don’t always happen.”
A dreadful feeling hangs in the air. Finally the librarian turns back to us and addresses Summer. “Do you have your library card, dear?”
Summer grins, then reaches to the back of her bikini bottom with both hands. “Hmm. No pockets there.” That quickly, the feeling of dread has disappeared. Like the sun burning off the morning clouds, Summer shines through.
The librarian returns Summer’s smile and pushes the pile of books to her. “I can just get the number from your file.”
Summer leans across the counter. “Thank you, Joe! You’re a prince.” She divides the stack of books between us, and we say good-bye to Joe the librarian.
“We’re al
l thinking about your brother,” he says.
Summer nods and says nothing. But her smile has disappeared.
We head out the door. The marine layer has burned off, and the sun shines brightly.
“You have a brother?” I ask as we walk up the hill, to her home and my cottage. “Is that who Hank is?” Again she nods and says nothing, but it’s like the sun has gone back behind the clouds. I look up, and the sky is bright blue, but it feels like the sun is back behind the clouds.
As we walk in silence, I wonder about Summer. I try to figure this girl out. Always sunny, except when a cloud passes over her, a cloud she won’t speak of.
Maybe by the end of July she’ll let me know her completely.
12
IT’S LATE MORNING on one of Mom’s rare days off. I’ve got on one of my pairs of dark blue jeans, but not to wear—they’re about to become a pair of cutoffs. Scissors found in a drawer are lying on the big table in the front room, and Mom is kneeling before me with a white china marker. She presses the tip high on one leg and makes a mark.
“Higher,” I say.
I watch as she moves the tip up—but barely at all—and makes another mark.
“Higher,” I repeat.
She looks up at me. “Why don’t you show me how high you’ve got in mind?”
I reach around to the back of my leg and feel for a good location. “Here.”
She tsks. “I don’t want you walking around with your butt on display.”
I scowl. “My butt won’t be on display. Just my legs.”
Mom sighs, then moves the tip up and makes the mark. “Well, you do have beautiful legs.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she says definitively. She marks the other leg, then stands back and smiles.
I drop the jeans and lay them across the big table in the front room, then grab the shears. A quick snip-snip, snip-snip, and then I pull the threads apart to fray them so it looks like I’ve been wearing them since school got out. Now I’ve got cutoffs just like Summer’s.
An hour later I’m wearing them, walking out the door to go to Main Street with Mom at lunchtime. It’s day thirteen of my holiday, and Summer said she is busy until later in the afternoon with some family stuff, which she offered zero details of. This works out okay, because today is a day away from saving lives at the hospital for Mom, so she and I are hanging out. I’m kinda excited to be showing her the town I’ve gotten to know.