Waiting for Magic

by Susan Squires

  “What good would that do if he hasn’t got the DNA?” Kee slumped over the bar, head in her hands. “And he doesn’t. Or it would have been lightning bolts to the heart all over the dining room, or actually, all over the museum cafeteria two weeks ago. Not quite how it happened.” She groaned remembering her own awkwardness. “I’m not even sure I want magic anyway. Everything would change.”

  Kee could hear Jane thinking in the silence that followed.

  Finally Jane cleared her throat. “I expect it will get easier when Devin starts seeing someone.”

  Kee looked up. Jane’s face was in shadows, so Kee couldn’t tell whether she was kidding. It would not get easier. She chewed her lip for a few seconds. What did Jane know? “I’ve been telling him he ought to date.”

  “Then you’ll be relieved to know he’s going to teach a girl he met at school how to surf, beginning Saturday. I overheard him tell Maggie tonight.”

  Kee stopped breathing. It had happened. Somehow she’d always thought she’d be the one to date first, no matter what she told Devin. “How nice,” she managed. “Yeah. That’s good.”

  Jane covered Kee’s hand with her own. “You’ve got to let him move on, you know.” Kee could hear the kind smile in Jane’s voice. “You’re like twins. He and Maggie talked about that at dinner. It’s tough when twins who’ve shared everything need to split up to build their own families and their own lives.”

  Yeah. Twins. Brother and sister. A weight seemed to be sitting on her windpipe. “No question.” Then the air whooshed out of her all at once. “Of course I want him to be happy,” she said. “I want him to find someone he can love. I just don’t want to lose him entirely.”

  “Did you lose Tristram or Drew when they married?”

  “But they’re really family. The magic binds us together. Devin … isn’t.”

  Jane sat up. “Of course he’s family.”

  Oh, no. “I didn’t mean it like that. He’s always been my brother and he always will be. I’m just afraid.… Well, he won’t want to stay at the Breakers when he finds a girl. And he doesn’t have to stay. Morgan and the Clan won’t care about him if he doesn’t have magic. He can live anywhere. He and his surfer girl can follow the endless summer around the world, just like in that movie. We’re the ones who are stuck here.” A thought occurred to her. “You could go too, Jane. You don’t have to stay cooped up here.”

  “I … like it here,” Jane said softly. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

  “Well, I can.” Kee sounded sulky, even to herself. “I want to see the world.”

  “I know it’s hard for all of you.” Jane cleared her throat. “Maybe Devin won’t want to leave, and maybe he shouldn’t. Hurting him would hurt the family. The Clan would like that.”

  “You mean Dev wouldn’t be safe away from the Breakers either?” Kee hadn’t thought about that. Sad for Devin. But then he couldn’t go. She was just selfish enough to find satisfaction in that.

  “Maybe not,” Jane agreed.

  But he was leaving her behind. Kee was the one waiting, perhaps in vain, for magic to happen. Devin might be here physically, but his heart would soon be engaged elsewhere. Or maybe there’d be a surfer girl moving in to the Breakers.

  Jane stood up. “Get some sleep, Keelan. This will all look better in the morning.”

  “Maybe,” Kee said, following her lead.

  But it wouldn’t.

  *****

  Devin stared out at the curtains of rain flapping in the wind off the beach. Water cascaded down the panes of glass in the French doors. When rooms were redistributed after Tris first left for the apartment over his shop downtown, Brina made sure Devin got to move out from his room with Lanyon into a room of his own. It was still in the boy’s wing the family called “the Bay of Pigs.” But it overlooked the sea. He stood, now, wearing only his cotton pajama bottoms, staring out across the terrace and the bare branches of the jacaranda trees tossing in the wind to the whitecaps on the black of the Pacific. His room was dark. He didn’t want the family to know he was still awake. He couldn’t answer any questions right now. Not even his own.

  His thoughts were wild, his emotions snarled into a knot in his belly. It felt like the bad days after his parents had died, when he had no control over the blackness that reached out at unexpected moments to engulf him, when he couldn’t speak about it to anyone.

  He didn’t remember the plane crashing. He’d been seven. He flashed on the disinfectant smell of the hospital and the drawn face of the doctor who’d told him his parents were dead. Those first days had been a groggy mess, needles and noise at all hours. He’d found out later they’d taken out his spleen, sealed up the broken vessels that caused the internal bleeding and cast his broken pelvis. They couldn’t do much about broken ribs. All he’d known at first was pain and the fear of being left alone in the world.

  Then the brusque social services lady had told him he’d have to go to an orphanage until he got well, because no one would want him when he was sick and bound to be a lot of trouble and expense. She’d had lipstick that ran into the wrinkles in her upper lip and made her mouth look like a bright red spider. He hadn’t cried. He’d been past crying at that point. And he hadn’t cried in the orphanage, either. No matter what happened. He hadn’t spoken at all.

  But his life had changed the day Brina Tremaine had walked into the orphanage. She hadn’t tried to make him speak like all the others. She’d just told him that he had a distant family, quite a large one, and that it was time to come home.

  One very long flight later on a plane that belonged to his new family, and New Zealand was behind him. He had to admit he’d put the Tremaines through some grief. Didn’t speak. Didn’t like to be touched. But slowly he’d settled in because they accepted him just the way he was. Brina even got him surfing lessons because she saw how much he loved the water. One day it had just seemed like more trouble than it was worth not to talk. He’d been handing Tris tools as he worked on a motorcycle, and, well, it was just easier to talk when he wanted to know if he had the right tool. So he did. Tris looked a little shocked, but gave him a grin and growled, “So there you are. You’ve got a Kiwi accent.” And that was that. He’d lost his Kiwi accent over time, and he still wasn’t a great talker. But he wasn’t paralyzed by fear anymore.

  Kee had been a big part of drawing him in. She was the one closest to his age. And she had talked enough for both of them at first. She had become a translator of a sort, speaking for him when he didn’t speak for himself. She always seemed to know just what he’d say if he could. He watched her draw or paint or make lumps of clay into horses and people for hours on end. Kee made him see things in new ways. It was like she knew a thing or a person inside and out and revealed what it really was to everybody else. It never ceased to amaze him. She tamed how she saw things and expressed it. During those first months it had seemed she had a control over her life he didn’t have.

  She’d been his lifeline.

  As of now, that lifeline was gone. He’d thrown it away. He’d always loved her, of course. But now he was in love with her, and that changed everything. The wrenching feeling in his gut made him want to scream. Good thing he had all those years of practice being silent. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention now. But he couldn’t stay here, trembling in front of the window. Dinner tonight had flayed him raw.

  He needed the sea.

  He pulled open the French doors and pushed out into the rain and wind. The cold was welcome on his bare torso and feet. Maybe it would cool the burning inside him. So he didn’t reach for his wetsuit. He grabbed a long board from among several boards leaning against the fence that hid the garden shed and headed out over the lawns to the path along the cliffs. He’d need a big board for the kind of waves out there tonight. The dark didn’t scare him. He knew the way to the beach below like the back of his hand. He found the trail angling downward and picked his way down through the rocks to the narrow strand.

&nbs
p; Standing on the ribbon of sand, wet to the skin, he flipped his hair out of his eyes. The waves were huge, maybe twenty feet. They were rising way out, then cresting fast and crashing in foaming fury on the beach. Devin was a good surfer. Maybe great. He knew that. But only a fool with a death wish would surf these waves at night.

  But maybe that’s what he had. He felt the pull of the water calling him. It wasn’t the thunder of the waves or the howling wind. It was something more elemental that sometimes whispered to him when he felt closest to the ocean, like when he mastered a wave no one else could ride. It was like perfect harmony, a chord that vibrated in his soul and made him whole.

  That’s what he needed now. Maybe it would quiet him. Maybe it could fill up the hole Kee had left. And if it didn’t, maybe it would cure his problems in a more permanent way. He really didn’t care.

  He put down his board and stripped off his sopping pajama bottoms. Naked, he picked up his board and trotted into the freezing surf until the boiling foam was up to his hips. Then he launched himself forward onto his board and paddled like hell.

  He knew the currents around here like he knew how Kee’s eyes changed colors with the light. So he didn’t head straight into the giant waves. He struck out to the left, close to some rocks (which could also kill him) and let the outbound current help him through the waves. Tonight it was practically a riptide. He ducked through the waves until he could ride the swells over them, slowly getting father and farther out onto the black, swelling mystery of the ocean.

  His chest was heaving by the time he was able to sit up on his board and let the swells move under him. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet. The sheets of rain made visibility nearly zero. He couldn’t see the Breakers up on the cliffs. Hell, he couldn’t see the cliffs.

  But now that he was out here there was only one way to get back. A tingle of fear slid up his spine. With feet numb from the cold, could he even get up on his board? He sat there for a while, trying to count intervals and the number of waves between the biggest rollers. They were long and getting longer. This storm was still growing.

  He trailed a hand in the black water, mottled with the splatter of rain as the swells rolled under him, lifting him high and then sinking him into the trough where the walls of water towered above him. Damn. The Humboldt Current made the water cold, even though southern California had a Mediterranean climate. He should have brought his wetsuit.

  Or maybe it didn’t matter. Life stretched ahead, bleak without the possibility of ever telling Kee how he really felt about her. He’d never act on his desire. How could he? But the very thought shamed him. If Brina knew, or worse, Brian.… They’d be as filled with disgust for him as he was himself. Even if she wasn’t his sister, he could never deserve a girl like Kee. She was a bright flower floating through life. He wasn’t. Inarticulate, studious, obsessed with the sea—not exactly qualities high on a girl’s wish list. Or a family’s wish list for their daughter.

  Maybe he’d just stay out here until he froze or drowned. That might be better for everyone. The longing for Kee was so sharp in his gut he squeezed his eyes shut, put his arms around himself, and leaned over his board, shoulders shaking. A keening sound was lost in the roar of rain and waves. He realized he was crying only because the tears were warm.

  So were his feet.

  He opened his eyes. All around him the water was glowing. And it was warm.

  What the hell? The Pacific was way too cold for phosphorescent fish.

  The ocean whispered inside him. He floated on a bright, warm circle in the black water. It didn’t move as the midnight waves rolled under him. It stayed right around his surfboard. He could feel the energy in the ocean as though it were his own. He was lightheaded, almost as if he were drunk.

  Then the whisper turned into a roar. He looked behind him, out to sea. A huge wall of water rose above him. It had broken farther out. The crest was coming. He wouldn’t survive those tons of water crashing down on him. Now or never. He started to paddle as fast as he could go toward shore. The wave lifted him into the night. The crest was forming just behind him, the wall almost vertical below him. The power of the wave took over, sweeping him in front of it as he scrambled up to crouch on the board.

  He skidded along the face of the wave. The whole power of the ocean was behind that one huge swell. It surged under his board.

  And then something very curious happened. It was as if he went to a place that was suddenly quiet. He felt everything: how the crest would break, how fast the wave was moving, the churning blackness at its root. He saw with exquisite clarity the faint gradations of gray and black in the night around him, but all he heard was the singing of the ocean. He was powerful. The ocean was part of him and he was part of it.

  The crest curled over him, a black tunnel closing in on all sides as he screamed diagonally down the wall of wave. The small circle of grayer darkness at the end of the pipeline was collapsing. He put out a hand to the wall of water and it arched over his head again. He had no time to think what that meant. The gray patch grew larger and he shot out into the open.

  The wave filled his senses to overflowing. He was connected to it, and together they were rushing toward the shore.

  The rocks loomed out of the rain and the night ahead. His diagonal path down the wave put them straight in his path. Strength surged up through the wave as it began to break over him again. He’d either hit those rocks at high speed, or get crushed by the crest slamming into the shore. All problems solved. All troubles melted into H2O.

  His chest was full, his heart near to bursting. He could no longer see the rocks for the water curling over him. And then he felt a huge heaving thrust, almost like an animal beneath him. The ocean sang in his ears, pounded in his chest. He was thrown forward, through the wall of the pipeline. Miraculously he stayed on his board.

  And then he didn’t. The water crushed him down into the churn at the base of the wave. He had time for a lungful of air as he was tumbled over and over in the debris. He felt the tug of the surfboard at the tether to his ankle. He’d surface as long as he was tied to his board. Then his lifeline snapped. His last connection to anything that floated was gone. He scrambled toward the surface, kicking hard, only to be rolled under again. His lungs felt as though they’d burst. He was going to black out shortly and then it would all be over. The singing of the ocean in his ears had become a cacophonous shout.

  Again, he felt the swell beneath him. He broke the surface, gasping, knowing another wave waited to push him under.

  But there was no other wave. He had been thrown beyond the rocks. He was in a lull between the giant rollers. His surfboard floated at his side.

  He grabbed it, heaved it under his body. The next wave was smaller over here past the rocks. The foam of its crest pushed him in toward the shore. He coasted into the sandy part of Abalone Cove and limped up the beach, out of harm’s way.

  Devin turned and looked out to sea. Another huge wave was forming out there. Rain still pelted him. He realized his body was sore and looked down. He had cuts and scrapes everywhere from the debris in the water. Rain made the blood run down in rivulets across his skin. It could have been worse. Wind ripped around the silhouetted rocks to the north and plucked at the houses on the cliffs just south of him. He turned again to where the Breakers hunched a shoulder against the storm.

  He wasn’t quite sure how he’d lived through that wave. By all rights he should be drowned or his naked body shattered against the rocks. He’d think about that later.

  What he knew now was that there was no escaping what was about to play out at the Breakers. He couldn’t leave Kee, either by moving to Milwaukee or letting the ocean solve his problems permanently. Maybe she would need him someday, if only as a friend. And he’d be there for her.

  He was in for it now. Kee would look for her destined lover, trying to find her magic. He would keep silent about his own feelings. He was good at that. No one need know about his sick longing for Kee. And no one ever c
ould know. Especially not Kee. Maybe he ought to try keeping his distance though, just in case.

  He balanced his board on his head and began the long trudge home.

  *****

  Kee practically ran into Devin as he came out of his room at a jog.

  He stopped dead, looking dismayed.

  “Oh,” they both said.

  Kee frowned. There were scrapes on his jaw. She examined him quickly. He was bundled up, probably going out somewhere. Normally she would have known where he was going. It hurt that she didn’t. His knuckles were scraped too.

  “You been fighting?” she asked. Then she realized that such a personal question came from a time before she’d found out he was teaching some girl to surf on Saturday. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.” But wait. He was bleeding. Even as she watched, a bright spot of blood bloomed on his t-shirt where it was just visible under his V-neck sweater. That changed things. “You are, uh, bleeding.” She tapped her collarbone.

  He pulled his sweater over the stain then looked away. She couldn’t see his expression properly. “No. I haven’t been fighting.” He turned back toward her. He looked as though he was holding his face very still, like he was posing for one of the paintings she’d done of him. “I was helping Tris with an engine over in the garages. It slipped. He feels bad, so it’d be good if you didn’t say anything.”

  “I won’t.” It hurt that he thought she might. Hadn’t they been sharing secrets since they were nine?

  “You going down to breakfast?”

  That hurt even more. It was a question you’d ask a fellow guest in a hotel. “Just a bite. I’m going up to the museum.”

  He nodded, a little too quickly and too often. “Yeah. I’m, uh, out and about myself today. And then I’ve got a major paper due in a couple of weeks. Got to hit the books. Probably won’t be much in evidence for a while.” He looked around, as though a door might appear in the hallway where none had been before. “Oh, uh, forgot something.”