I reach across the front seat to squeeze Fiona’s hand on my fresh new steering wheel. I have a best friend who is real, who loves me, who tried to save me when I was going mad. I don’t need Pete and Belle; I don’t need Jas. I have something real right here.
“Of course not,” I answer finally. I pause, the beginning of a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I think you might actually know me better than I know myself.”
37
Driving home later, I wonder what Mary would say if she knew I went to Kensington today, if she knew that now I’ve seen what’s really there. Mary would argue—she has argued—that I have every right to mourn the loss of Jas and Pete and Belle and Kensington and the life I thought I knew there. She’d say since they had all been real to me, I ought to grieve for them now that they’re gone. It’s the kind of logic I’ve always hated. You shouldn’t be able to have feelings for things that aren’t real. Or for people who aren’t real.
So I’m not crying over my loss as I drive down the PCH, putting miles between Kensington and me. Instead, I’m laughing. I’m laughing because I should have known all along that it wasn’t real; it was so obvious, now that I think about it. I left myself such an enormous clue, right in the center of my delusion:
There’s no way I ever would have really taken a wave, no matter how much I wanted to.
By the time I get home, I’ve decided that I’m going to major in math when I get to Stanford. There’s no such thing as imaginary numbers.
Except, of course, there are.
I go to my room and close the door. The other day my mother gave me back the notebook she’d confiscated months ago, the one in which I’d kept all my notes when I thought I was living in Pete’s house. It’s lying forgotten on my desk, but now I open it, run my hands over my scribbles. Even my handwriting doesn’t look like my own; it’s messier, somehow desperate-looking. The handwriting of a person having a mental breakdown. I slam the book shut and drop it into the trash can beneath my desk.
In therapy yesterday, Mary asked me whether I ever said I love you to Jas. I didn’t answer her. Already my memories—or whatever I’m supposed to call what I remember of my hallucinations—are beginning to fade. They’re fuzzy, like a painting onto which someone has thrown a bucket of water, the borders between each image bleeding together until they’re indistinct.
She pushed me; I must have loved him, she said, if I was planning on running away with him, traveling the world with him, giving up my whole life—school, family, friends—just to be with him. I must have loved him, she said again. Didn’t I?
I never actually told her that I was planning on running away with Jas. I must have said something about it when I was half-conscious, babbling endlessly, calling out in my sleep. She must have sat by my bed taking notes.
I refused to answer her. And I certainly didn’t tell her that when I woke up in the psych ward months ago, my first thought was the words I love you, too. In the water, when he was trying to save me—when he told me he loved me—I never had a chance to say it back; the water was crashing over me so rapidly, I hardly had time to open my mouth to take a breath, let alone utter four syllables.
I decide that next week, I’ll answer Mary’s latest question. I’ll tell her that I didn’t say I love you to Jas because you can’t love someone who doesn’t exist. Whatever this ache in my chest is, it can’t be the pain of missing him, because he was never here to begin with. This ache is just wasted space.
The next morning, as I make myself a bowl of cereal, I discover that we’re out of milk. My mother will send me out to the grocery store for more later. She doesn’t even think twice about sending me out on errands anymore. It’s even a little annoying how quick she is to say, “Wendy, dear, can you go pick that up?”
Just a few weeks ago, that would have been such a big deal. A few weeks ago, I was excited to be sent out for milk. I smile as I eat my dry cereal, Nana’s enormous head resting in my lap; that’s progress, I guess.
I haven’t bothered getting dressed yet today; I’m still wearing pajama pants and a shirt I stole from Michael a couple years ago, long before he and John disappeared. He used to wear it to the beach, and it got so soft and faded in the sunshine that when it was accidentally folded in with my laundry, I never gave it back. He huffed and puffed looking for this shirt, and I never confessed to him that I had it all along, tucked away at the bottom of my drawer, waiting to take it with me when I left for college, a little piece of home.
Now, at least, I don’t have to hide it anymore.
I’m tossing the last of my dry cereal when my father comes bounding through the front door.
“What are you doing home?” I ask. Since I got back from the hospital, he’s actually been going to work on time every day. My parents’ daily routine is beginning to look more and more like it did not just before I washed up on the beach but before my brothers ran away. My mother gets up and dressed every morning, goes for a long walk with Nana around the neighborhood. My father goes to work five days a week, and even works late once in a while, just like he used to.
He doesn’t answer me, just calls my mother’s name. She practically skips from her bedroom to meet him, her hair still wet from her morning shower. Nana dances at her feet, giddy because my parents are giddy.
“Wendy,” my dad says, barely keeping a straight face. “There’s a delivery for you in the driveway.”
I raise my eyebrows. They already got me a car, and that gift didn’t come with nearly so much fanfare. My father and I went to the dealership together; I test drove a few models and crunched the numbers alongside my dad before we decided which was the right one for me. I drove it home myself; there wasn’t any big reveal, no car waiting in the driveway with a big red bow tied around it.
What could possibly be in the driveway?
My bare feet squeak against the tile floor as I walk to the front door. A few months ago—a million years ago—I would have thought that it was my brothers, waiting there for me. I would have believed that somehow, some magic had led them back to the glass house, where they were waiting patiently in the driveway to surprise me with their presence. But today, the idea doesn’t even cross my mind. My brothers are dead, and I’ve finally begun the long process of learning how to live without them.
The sun is bright in my eyes when I open the front door. I squint, holding one hand like a visor against my forehead. There, leaning against the side of my car, all wrapped in a big red bow, is a surfboard. I take a few tentative steps toward it, as though I think it might sprout legs and run away if I get too close too fast. I glance back at my parents, who are grinning from the doorway.
The board is beautiful. Creamy white on the sides, with fading blocks of pale green, yellow, and pink floating across its center. It’s actually the perfect length for someone my height; even in my fantasies, I never actually surfed on a board that was the right size for me. Still, the new board towers over me. My father has even tied a block of wax to the board, and it dangles from a string beneath the red ribbon.
I reach out and touch it, feel the familiar texture of fiberglass, eye the sharp fins at its bottom. I turn back to my parents.
“This is for me?”
They nod, coming through the door arm in arm.
“It’s for you,” my father answers.
“We know how badly you want to learn to surf,” my mom says. “You talked about it in family session all the time. And then, the other day at the beach, we just thought…” She pauses, chewing her lip. “We thought maybe this was something you wanted.”
I nod. I think maybe I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to grab this board and run with it into the waves.
“We could go to the shop later and get a rack installed for you on the roof,” my father adds, gesturing to my car. “You’ll need it to drive the board up to school with you.”
“To school?” I echo.
He nods. “I know Stanford’s not exactly on the coast, but th
ere are plenty of beaches in driving distance.”
I nod; the words he doesn’t say float between us. The beach where I was found is only a couple hours’ drive from Stanford.
“Just be careful,” my mother begins, but my father shakes his head, silencing her.
I study my parents’ faces; they’re smiling, but there is such fear behind their eyes. My mother has her fingers wrapped around Nana’s collar to keep her from running into the street, but she’s holding on more tightly than is really necessary, like she just needs something to hang on to. I realize just how much this gesture means, what a sign it is of their trust in me, of their bravery, to push me out onto the water, where I most want to be, despite everything that happened to me and everything that happened to my brothers.
“If it’s not the right height,” my mother adds, “or if you don’t like the color—”
I shake my head. “No,” I say, a smile creeping across my lips.
I can already imagine the water beneath my beautiful board, the sensation of falling as I drop into a wave.
“It’s perfect,” I add, pulling my mother into a hug. “I love it.”
38
January is unseasonably warm, even for southern California. The forecasters on the evening news don’t bother masking their surprise each time the temperature rises: seventy-three; seventy-eight; eighty-one; and, on the day I leave for college, eighty-four.
“Beach weather,” my dad says carelessly as he loads my bedding into the backseat for me. I nod, glancing at my surfboard, secured tightly to the rack on the roof of my car.
I spent last night—when I should have been packing, or at least looking at my course catalog on the computer—waxing my board. I couldn’t help myself. I want the board to be prepared, perfect for when the time comes. My mother has already told me that when I’m ready, they’re going to treat me to surf lessons at the beach of my choice. They’ll hire me a private instructor. I almost groaned when she mentioned it—what could be lamer than an expensive private teacher on the beach?—but I could see how much it meant to her. She’s willing to let me go out on the water, her face said, but please, please, let her have this one thing, this assurance that I’ll be out there as safely as possible.
So I stifled my groan and thanked her instead.
I don’t really plan to head to the water anytime soon, despite the unseasonable warmth. I’m really excited to start classes, to have a schedule, to study and write papers. It’s been so long that I’m worried I may have forgotten how.
My dad startles me by taking a picture. I don’t have to see it to know what it looks like: a girl with straight brown hair and pale skin, standing beside her shiny new car, ready to begin the next chapter in her life. But he holds his camera out in front of him to show me the photo. I’m surprised by what I see; maybe Fiona wasn’t just being nice the other day when she said I looked good. In fact, maybe I’ve never looked quite so good as I do right now, with my car and my surfboard behind me. Even in the photo, I can see that my eyes have some light behind them, just like my brothers’ always did.
There is empty space on either side of me, space that my brothers would have taken up if they were here today. Maybe there will always be empty space on either side of me, the places where my brothers should be standing. And I know now that I will live with that empty space every day for the rest of my life.
“Oh,” my father says, slipping his hand into the pocket of his jeans. “I almost forgot. This came for you in the mail.”
He holds out an envelope addressed to me. No return address, not even a postmark, as though someone slipped it in our mailbox overnight while we were sleeping.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it from him and ripping it open. I stifle a gasp when I see what’s inside: a photograph with two handsome men—boys—tan and muscular, their arms draped lazily around each other, their surfboards propped up in the sand on either side of them. One of them has hazel eyes ringed in a yellow as bright as the sun, and the other’s are icicle blue.
I hope my father doesn’t see that my hands are shaking as I stuff the envelope and photo into my purse. I shrug like it’s nothing, but my heart is pounding so hard that I’m surprised my father can’t hear it.
My mother comes out of the house carrying a paper bag, Nana trotting along beside her. “Just some snacks for the road,” she says, holding it out.
“You know there are, like, a million restaurants between here and Palo Alto?” I say, but I take the bag nonetheless. I lean down to kiss Nana goodbye and press my cheek to her soft fur.
“Drive safe,” my mom says, hugging me tight. “And call us the minute you get there.”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.” She offered to drive with me, but I turned her down. I want to make this trip alone, and now, as the picture makes my bag feel like it weighs a hundred pounds, I know why.
My father hugs me next, kissing the top of my head the way he did when I was a little kid. I wave to my parents through my open window as I pull away, the shadow of my surfboard visible on the driveway at their feet.
At every red light between the glass house and the entrance to the freeway, I pull the photo from my bag and turn it over in my hands, gazing at it as though I think that if I just stare at it long enough, it will reveal all the answers. Maybe there’s some secret message, some tiny writing stashed in the corner, hidden in the sea behind them.
But there is nothing. No hint, no clue. I don’t even recognize the handwriting on the envelope. It could have been any of them—Jas, Pete, Belle, even Hughie or Matt—who sent this photograph to me.
Pete and Jas look so young in the photo, lanky teenagers; it must have been taken back when they were surfing together, before dust or Belle or I had a chance to come between them. Still, it’s clear that Jas is the older of the two; he’s taller than Pete, more filled out. Funny that I never knew exactly how old either of them was.
I pull onto the PCH and begin the drive up the coast. The next exit is one that I know well. One that no one ever takes. One that leads the way up above the water, where there are two ruined houses on opposite sides of the cliffs. The day I met him, Pete told me about waves that rose all the way up the cliffs, destroying some of the houses there. The storm that set off Witch Tree could have sent the waves that destroyed what was left of Kensington Beach, drenching Pete’s house in salt water, pulling the stairs from the cliffs, and flooding the beach altogether. Maybe the ocean did swallow my memories whole, after all.
I could change direction right now, check the Surfline app on my phone and find out where the biggest swell is headed next, where on earth the best waves will be today, tomorrow, next week. I could turn around and speed to the airport, buy a ticket, check my board, and disappear. That was our plan, after all: to travel the world, chasing the waves together.
But I shake my head, resting the photograph on my lap. Pete always said that once you make a decision to take a wave, you shouldn’t change your mind. No matter how big or how small the wave, once you paddle into it, the surest way to get yourself pummeled is to try to change direction instead of riding it out. I press down hard on the gas, speeding north, resuming my course.
The photograph is all I need right now. Proof that Kensington was real. Pete was real. Belle was real.
Jas was real. In my mind’s eye, I can see him right now, on the other side of the world, taking wave after wave in an ocean as clear and cool as starlight. Long before he met me, Jas planned to chase the waves around the world—with Pete, not with me. He stayed in Kensington because he was waiting for Pete to go with him.
I remember it all, sharp and crystal clear.
I remember Pete: the way my hand fit in his grasp, how his skin was always warm, as though it was constantly basking in the sunshine. I remember his kisses and the way he tasted and the sprinkle of freckles across his nose that were just a shade darker than the freckles that dotted the rest of his body. I remember that he taught me to take a wave, stood up on the board
behind me, and let me fly.
I remember Belle: her steely gray eyes, her blond hair flying behind her as she took a wave. I remember the gash in her leg, ugly and red, and I remember the way Pete held her as she bled. I remember the way she looked at me when she told me the truth about my brothers; she was sorry, not just for having kept the truth from me, but also because she couldn’t save them.
And I remember Jas: the smell of him, the feel of him, the taste of him, the weight of his body above mine, the strength of his arms around me. I never met anyone as strong as he is and I don’t think I ever will again. He was strong enough to save me from the water; somehow, he got me onto the beach where they found me, even if all he did was push my body into the right current. And he was strong enough to save himself, to save Pete, to save Belle. Somehow or another, they made their way back onto dry land.
And somehow or another, someone wanted me to know it.
The photograph feels hot on my leg. I stuff it back into its envelope, press the envelope deep inside my bag, and steady my grip on the steering wheel. When I reach for it later, I’ll discover a few fine grains of sand, sugar-white and flour-soft, resting at the bottom of my bag. For now, I’ll keep heading north, just like I planned. For now, I’ll live my life without knowing exactly where my friends might be. Because now I know that every minute we spent together was real. Our love was real, and someday I’ll have the chance to say I love you, too. And that’s enough.
But—maybe just one stop first. It’s beach weather, after all, just like my father said. I can practically feel the weight of the surfboard on the rack above my head. And it turns out I’ve already had a few lessons with a surfing expert. I change lanes and head for the coast.
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