I reached Ty’s board in two strokes.
“Okay,” Ty said, “just kind of slither up on top of me.”
“I’ll knock you over,” I said.
“The board’s stable,” Ty said calmly. “Just give it a try.”
I nodded, not wanting my legs dangling in shark water longer than they had to. Quickly, I went perpendicular to Ty and he reached down and helped me. I hoisted myself up, rising just a little, and then Little Brew boosted me from the Jet Ski. I turned myself lengthwise on the board, fitting myself to Ty’s body.
He started to paddle. Little Brew bubbled off on the Jet Ski.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said.
“You’ll be fine,” Ty said.
I wasn’t so sure.
Then something clicked. I turned and saw Tommy on the back of Ollie’s Jet Ski and he nodded at me. For once he was taking care of me, and all my fear and nervousness drained away. I kept my eyes on Tommy. He continued nodding, encouraging me, and for an instant, I felt that his illness had carved me somehow, had shaped me a little off and made me frightened. It was time to start living, time to look ahead and risk a little. I looked at Tommy one last time—my brother who had gum in his lungs and frail, weak bones, but who had a spirit to bring him across the country and onto the largest surf in California. My mother was right, after all: he studied sharks because he had never been able to swim without wondering what was beneath him, without wondering when the CF would deliver its final blow, and I could not conceive of his courage, his gentle spirit living day after day fighting for breath. I told Ty I was ready and I felt my body grow stronger and then the water lifted. It pushed us up in space, raised us toward the sun as if showing what it could do, what it intended, like a tennis player showing a ball before he served it, and then I felt Ty’s body go stiff and hard and he began to paddle. Ty Barry, the guy who had survived a shark attack, who had been bumped five feet into the air, who had watched the gray-white of the seventeen-foot shark swirl beneath him, letting him go, giving him life. I knew I could be with no one safer. He could not be twice jinxed.
“We got it, we got it, we got it!” he yelled.
I heard my own voice go crazy in a scream of delight, and then the wave began to build and build and build. Each end of the wave tightened, and up we went, up, more, until Ty nodded, and I hugged closer to him and felt the world start to tilt.
“Here we go!” Ty shouted.
And we did.
We caught the edge of the wave, tipped forward, and then shot down the face, angling a little right, the wave driving us. The wave no longer cared about us, I realized. It was now just physics, just the end of one rhythm and one motion unleashed thousands of miles north of where we lay on a bright red board and arced down and down and down. For a second the wave collapsed on us and I thought it was over, we were crushed, but then we shot forward again, took the wave’s energy and rode it away from itself, and we felt like a tongue, like a bright poke of joy, and the wave had to hurry to reach us. But it did. It crashed over my legs, which was all right because the buoyancy of the board made us go faster, and then Ty began pulling out. I’m not sure how I knew that but I did, and he torqued his shoulder into the wave and we began to climb up. For an instant I saw blue sky, great white clouds, and then the wave finally rolled us. It slammed us down, and then Ty was gone, and the board knocked my shin and disappeared, and I was under, under, under. I waited and performed a slow somersault, and then the wave, the violence that was once a wave, passed. It let me go without a struggle and I swam up, up, up and crashed through the surface of the water. I raised my fist and I pumped it and I shouted and Little Brew swung by and yanked me onto the back of the Jet Ski. He grabbed me and kissed me and I kissed him, couldn’t stop kissing him, and Tommy yelled, “Wooooo-hoooo!” When I looked behind us, Ty was already back on the board paddling after us, and the waves kept throwing themselves at the sky, and failing, and trying again.
Tommy stepped off the back of Ollie’s Jet Ski and fell straight down into the water, his life jacket making him bob vertically in the rolling swells. The water was too big. It was too big for such a small boy and we all sensed it, I did, anyway, and I watched with my heart stopping to see him struggle the few feet to Ty’s board.
“Snow Pony!” Little Brew yelled, trying to buck Tommy up. He brought our Jet Ski close to Ty’s board. Ollie filmed. I held Little Brew with all my might.
The other guys—Willy and Honey and two more boys whose names I didn’t quite catch—circled Ty’s board. It was obvious they had all talked about Tommy’s condition and they all tried to help. Tommy ignored them. I saw his jaw set as he tried to climb up onto Ty’s board as I had done, but his arms were too weak and his life jacket blocked him with its bulk. Little Brew bent down off our Jet Ski and helped Tommy get a lift; then Honey came over and let Tommy use his board as a second point of balance, and with everyone helping, Tommy finally clambered onto Ty’s back. Little Brew gave out a whoop, but you could tell it was forced.
I wanted to stop Tommy. It wasn’t a good idea to let him run the waves. I knew it. Everyone there suddenly knew it, but we couldn’t stop the momentum. The sun still shone and the water glinted. The waves still built and broke, built and broke, but we were farther out to sea and the breakers held no threat for us.
Then Tommy surprised us all.
With extraordinary effort, he pushed himself onto his knees. Then, inch by inch, he lifted the top half of his body so that he knelt on Ty’s back, his hands slowly leaving the safety of the board, his tiny, stunted body trembling with the effort. He raised himself, only for second, but for that second he surfed as others surfed. He stood, as much as he could, proving something to himself. I felt everyone grow still, and my eyes began to tear, and Tommy lifted himself again, lamely, twice raising his body to prove he could surf, and he didn’t do it for show, but to have one instant of confirmation. He was a boy and he was on a surfboard and he did not want to be the sickly kid. But he was, of course, and that was in his movement, too, and Little Brew shouted again, this time for real, and the other guys joined in and revved him up, shouting about the Snow Pony, the Tommymeister, the Surf-dude. I yelled, too, yelled until my throat hurt, because Tommy was a surfer, his heart knew it even if his body didn’t, and when he spread back out against Ty, he nodded and said he was ready to go.
Little Brew brought us around to a vantage point where we could watch. Ollie came to rest beside us and got the camera ready. Minutes later we saw Ty paddle for a wave and he and Tommy caught it easily. It was not an enormous wave. They rose above us, the wave teetering, and I saw Tommy’s small arms paddling, too, helping Ty even though the help was not needed or effective. Then Ty stopped and the board sloped down and to the right, and the wave began to curl on top of them. I saw Tommy’s face then. His face locked in joy and triumph, and it did not change even when I saw the board dip and begin to turn. The wave crashed down on them and for a second they outran it, but then the board got too far down and gave the wave a chance to swipe them with the flat of its broad body. Down they went. The board submerged and I saw Ty slide off, then Tommy; it reminded me of kids falling off a toboggan, except the water closed over them and the wave broke and a gull squawked loudly just off to the seaward side.
Little Brew shot us forward. He topped the last rise of Tommy’s wave and gunned us down into the valley between the dying wave and the mounting one. I held my breath. An instant later I saw Ty pop onto his board, his hand up to say he was fine, and I heard Little Brew rev down the engine because he wasn’t sure where to go.
I didn’t see Tommy.
No one saw Tommy.
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” I whispered, my eyes running up and down over the surf, in the waves, everywhere. “Oh, no.”
Then Ollie yelled and Little Brew turned around to see where Ollie was pointing, and I followed the line of Ollie’s arm, too. Tommy rode in the wash of the wave, his arm up, the orange jacket keeping hi
m buoyant. The wave had carried him closer to shore than we anticipated, and Little Brew flashed us forward, gunning it wildly, and I saw that he put us at risk because the building wave chased us. But if Little Brew didn’t catch him, then Tommy would have to endure a second wave crashing on top of him. Even as Little Brew surged us forward, I saw Tommy begin to be sucked into the draw of the approaching wave. The collision became inevitable. Little Brew could not reach him in time, so he gunned us out of the waves and shot southward, positioning himself to be ready for the next wash. And we watched as Tommy got sucked into the curl of the new wave, his head a brown dot in an absurdly large swell of water. The wave snapped down, smacking against the water below it. I covered my eyes as Tommy disappeared again.
The wave seemed to flutter forever. It frothed and blew spray into the air and in all the whiteness we saw nothing of Tommy. I screamed—later they told me I screamed—but I wasn’t conscious of it. I willed the wave to stop, but that was foolish, and only when the force of the wave had extinguished itself on the slack water below it did I see Tommy’s head bobbing in the froth of water racing toward the beach.
“There!” I yelled.
Everyone yelled.
Little Brew was on it. He gunned the Jet Ski until it made a high, whining-mosquito sound. I held on to him, my nails digging into his belly. He reached Tommy in a flash, and, with relief, I saw Tommy’s hand come up. But it wasn’t as easy as that. Little Brew had to lean way off the Jet Ski to help Tommy aboard, and before he could get him up a new wave began to collapse toward us. I could tell that Tommy was spent. In contrast, Little Brew’s movements grew desperate. He yanked and pulled, and I clawed at Tommy to get him on the seat between us while the wave to seaward began to draw us toward it. Then Tommy succeeded in flopping across the seat in front of Little Brew—I wasn’t sure how—and Little Brew jerked the Jet Ski into a full run. Tommy’s legs skimmed the surface and he slid partially off, but Little Brew held on to him. I held on to Little Brew. The wave behind began to sprint at us, spilling and gleaming like a murderous teardrop, and for a second it became a race again. Tommy slid farther off the Jet Ski until half his body dragged in the foamy water, and Little Brew throttled down to keep him connected. I reached out and grabbed Tommy’s jacket, then the wave broke and we disappeared in the wash of spray and turbulence. My hand lost its grip on Tommy. I said no, no, no again under my breath and closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch if it meant watching us lose Tommy a second time. I couldn’t stand to see it. But then the throb of the Jet Ski caught my ears and I opened my eyes and saw Little Brew steering with his right hand, his left locked onto Tommy’s life jacket.
“Hold on,” Little Brew yelled to me, to Tommy, to anyone who could hear him.
He shot us forward, buzzing through the wash, the water shooting out the back like a rooster tail. I looked around Little Brew and saw immediately that Tommy’s color was horrible. When he saw me, his eyes half closed, Tommy made the choke motion.
“He can’t breathe! He can’t breathe!” I shouted. “Get him to shore!”
Little Brew glanced back at me, not quite understanding.
“Now, now, he can’t breathe!” I screamed. “He needs medicine.”
Little Brew nodded. He grabbed Tommy tighter and shot forward, running the waves and the wash expertly while Ollie followed behind us, the waves trying to rock us back off shore.
I saw a shark as we brought Tommy in.
I saw it five feet underwater, maybe more. It passed like a blue-black piece of sealskin, its dorsal fin grazing the surface. Ollie didn’t see it. Neither did Little Brew nor Tommy. But I did. Somehow it felt as though I had been waiting to see it my entire life.
It cruised near the surface, its body longer than the Jet Ski, three times as long, and it passed in a hurried way. The shark was going somewhere. It rolled slightly on its starboard side, its eye lifting to meet mine. I was not food at that moment. I witnessed the shark’s panic, its fright at something—maybe the Jet Ski—and saw it pass quickly into the deeper elements. It glided down, all efficiency, and the thresher cut of its tail flicked twice and sent it straight under the waves. Except for the buggy hum of the Jet Skis, the sea had gone quiet—the gulls and the wind. The shark seemed to carry all sound with it.
Little Brew ran his Jet Ski as close to the shore as possible, but he couldn’t jam it up onto the beach because Tommy’s legs still trailed in the water. He stopped ten feet out and Ollie jumped off right behind him and together they hoisted Tommy onto the sand. I ran past them, heading for my backpack, and I dug around until I found the inhaler. I ran back and squeezed between them and slipped my hand under Tommy’s head. His eyes didn’t open; his chest didn’t move. I pried the mouthpiece between his lips and depressed the plunger.
“Call nine-one-one,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm. “Do it now.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Little Brew said.
“Run up the beach. Find someone. Call nine-one-one.”
Little Brew ran off. I turned to Ollie.
“I saw a shark on the way in,” I said. “Go tell those guys.”
He looked at me, confused.
“A shark,” I said. “A great white.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Go tell them. Get them in.”
I bent down and whispered into Tommy’s ear.
“I saw a shark,” I said.
He didn’t breathe. I put my ear to his lips. No air passed in or out of his lungs. I listened to Ollie start his Jet Ski. I heard it whine out into the surf. After a short while, its whine gave way to the wail of approaching sirens. I pressed Tommy’s chest lightly and pushed down, thinking I could get his lungs working. His left eyelid flickered, but that was all. A reef of sand ringed his chin and I saw where the life jacket had abraded his neck and jawline, rubbing itself in a shrug while it carried him through the surf.
“They’re on the way,” Little Brew said, falling to the sand beside us. “A lady had already called when she saw us.”
I nodded. I turned Tommy’s head. A drizzle of water spilled out of his mouth. It came slowly, almost reluctantly, like a bottle leaking. I brought his face back up and bent down and put my mouth over Tommy’s and breathed. I wasn’t sure how to do it. “Tilt his chin back,” Little Brew said. I did.
I blew hard into Tommy’s lungs, my mouth sealed around his, and I counted and did it over and over. The count changed each time. Sometimes I could do it with a proper cadence, and sometimes I breathed too quickly. Little Brew carefully straightened Tommy’s legs. It made no difference, but he did it anyway.
Then, suddenly, black trousers appeared—I did not look up, I kept my eyes on Tommy—and a pair of hands moved me away. I told them the details: cystic fibrosis, surfing, no Pulmozyme, no air, Tommy, his name is Tommy, my brother, I’m responsible, Tommy, New Hampshire, yes, I don’t know, eleven years old, not this bad, not before, yes, probably, his mother is in San Francisco, our mother, I saw a shark, yes, just beyond the surf line, Tommy, my name is Bee.
The paramedics took him, a breathing nipple already inserted in Tommy’s lips, the squawk and static of radio communications building and sizzling, feverish. I stayed beside the stretcher until they climbed up the sandy hill and put him into the back of the ambulance. Tommy looked like a small newborn on the big white cot. His face looked calm and flat and tired. I tried to climb in beside him, but I wasn’t allowed. Someone kicked the siren into high and it whooped. A paramedic with white rubber gloves handed me a card and said to follow.
Ty appeared at my shoulder.
“I’ll take you, Bee. Come on.”
Ollie had my backpack. He handed it to me. Little Brew and Ty ran on either side of me. The van had turned into a furnace sitting in the sun. It felt strange to get into such heat after the cold water. When Little Brew began to roll down the windows, I asked him to keep them up. Even in the wet suit I was shivering. The heat helped against the shivering.
Ty broke down.
He broke down at the first light we hit and he began to sob. He bent his head over the steering wheel and covered his face with his hands. I wanted to say something comforting, but I couldn’t speak. I reached a hand over and put it on his shoulder. He didn’t acknowledge it. When the light changed, Little Brew tapped him on the other shoulder and said to get going. Ty shook himself and drove. The traffic didn’t move very well. The afternoon had slipped toward evening and people were headed home, running errands or fooling around on a day off. The quiet from the middle of the day was over.
“I saw a shark,” I said at the next light.
Ty nodded. Little Brew let air out of his lungs in a long sigh.
“It was big and dark,” I said. “And it was running from something. Or it was swimming fast. It was a white.”
No one said anything. Then the light changed and Ty started driving again. We drove and let the heat cook us until finally we opened the windows and let the day inside. A pair of flies buzzed at the top of the van, swimming in heat, their bodies like sparks clicking against the roof.
“There’s been an accident,” I whispered into the phone.
“Where are you, Bee?” my mother asked.
“Tommy …,” I said.
“Where are you? Tell me immediately.”
“Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City.”
“And Half Moon is south of here?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And what’s happened?”
“Tommy went under the water,” I said. “He couldn’t get out of the waves.”
“Bee,” she said, her voice going tight and hard, “what are you telling me?”
“We’re at the hospital.”
“But he’ll be okay,” she said.
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