The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Once we’re through downtown and on the island’s main road surrounded by thick pines and oak trees—cleverly named Juniper Island Road—Lena rolls the windows down and sticks her arm out, riding the air with her palm. I keep stealing a bunch of glances at her, glad that the wind is too loud for us to talk. I just need a minute like this, some time to watch this weird lady with tattoos who’s the whole reason I’m alive.

  Well, not the whole reason, I guess. I pat my chest and take a deep breath, feeling the thrum-thrum under my fingers. I wonder if my donor ever got to surf. I sure never thought I would.

  East Beach on Juniper Island has the clearest water and the biggest waves. It’s also free of all the rocks that dot the west end, so it’s a perfect spot for surfing. At least, that’s what Lena told me.

  After we park in the gravel lot, Lena goes around to the truck’s bed and starts unloading the boards. One is bright pink and a lot smaller than the other neon-green one, so it’s clearly a kid’s board. My chest warms, thinking how Lena must have gone out yesterday and rented a board just for me.

  I grab my bag and we head toward the beach. My heart flutters and flits, nerves tingling my fingertips.

  But all my nerves disappear when my feet hit the sand. The ocean is there, just like it always is, my constant friend. It’s never let me down, not once. The sun is rising over the water, spilling pink and orange and purple over all the blue. It’s just about the most amazing thing ever. I’ve never seen the sunrise like this. Before I was sick, there was no way I was ever going to get up early enough to drive over to the east side of the island to see the sun come up. And, after I got sick, there was no way Kate was ever going to let me get up that early. So, this… this is…

  This is New Life.

  Tears pile up in my eyes and I go ahead and let them fall.

  “Sunny?” Lena’s ahead of me a little, but she drops the boards in the sand and doubles back. “You okay?”

  I nod and wave my hand at the sky.

  She turns to look at it and takes a deep breath. “I know. It’s one reason I wanted to come to the east side. There’s nothing like it, huh?”

  I shake my head. I can’t remember the last time Kate just… stopped. Even when we sit on the porch and listen to the ocean hit the rocks, she’s always worrying her fingers into knots and tossing me glances to make sure I’m still there.

  Lena’s not doing any of that. She’s watching the earth wake up, just like I am. I kind of want to take her hand. I can’t get any words out, but I want to do something, something big to mark this moment, and holding Lena’s hand seems pretty big to me. Before I can take the leap, though, she squeezes my shoulder and asks if I’m ready to ride some waves.

  And you know what? I so am.

  “Lie on your stomach and paddle,” Lena says, so I lie on my stomach and paddle.

  It’s not as easy as it sounds. The salty waves roll around me. They keep swelling up and smacking me in the face, and even though mine is a kid’s board, it feels about as big as a car. And the water is cold. The sun is still creeping up on the earth, so it’s not super-warm yet, and Lena didn’t have a Sunny-sized rash guard for me to borrow. Still, I’m on a surfboard. I’m going to surf.

  We go out pretty deep, even deeper than I went out on the day I met Quinn. The sea is calmer out here and Lena says we don’t need the waves yet. She sits up on her board, one leg over each side.

  I do the same. Except instead of sitting tall like I’m riding a horse, I promptly lose my balance and plop into the water. Good thing there’s a leash around my ankle.

  “Whoa, there!” Lena says, and I spit and sputter salt water from my mouth. She holds on to my board as I climb back on, careful not to make a total fool out of myself this time.

  “I meant to do that,” I say.

  “Of course you did.”

  I grin at her and find my balance.

  “I just want you to feel the sea right now,” she says. “Feel the board under your body, feel how it interacts with the water. We’ll get to the waves later.”

  I nod and take a deep breath. The sun is still rising, turning the sky from orange to lavender-gray, the first signs of blue peeking through. But I’m not really looking at that anymore. I’m looking at Lena watching the sky. She has on a long-sleeved black rash guard over her black bikini—one thing I do know about her is that she likes black—and she has this tiny smile on her face. Her eyes are soft. She looks… happy.

  “Why did you start surfing?” I ask.

  She glances at me, her eyes still all gentle, the exact same amber-brown as mine. “You know about me, right? That I’m an alcoholic?”

  I nod.

  “Well, I haven’t had a drink in a long time. Three years, four months, and eighteen days. Today will be nineteen, actually.”

  The number bounces around in my brain. It’s higher than I thought it would be. “You’ve… you’ve been okay for three whole years?”

  She sighs and looks out at the water. “That’s a complicated question, Sunny. Okay isn’t a word I usually use to talk about my recovery. It’s ongoing and it’s not easy. Every day I have to fight for it.”

  “Why? Why couldn’t you just stop drinking if it was bad for you?”

  “I wish I had an easy answer for that. For a long time, I told myself I could. I could stop anytime—and I tried.” She sighs and looks even harder at me, her eyes all hungry. “I tried, Sunny. I tried to stop and I tried to keep you. I did.”

  I frown and look away from her. It’s the first time she’s mentioned me in all of this and I’m not sure I want to go there. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Because I don’t get it. I don’t get why she couldn’t keep me, if she really wanted me.

  I guess she feels me closing up, because she clears her throat and moves on. “Anyway, after the first year of being sober, my sponsor, Danielle—that’s the person who helps me when I’m really struggling—suggested getting a hobby. I was still songwriting, and that helped a lot, but I needed something physical so I could stay healthy. Something that was good for my mind too.”

  “And surfing is good for your mind?”

  “What do you think?”

  She waves her hand at the sky and sea as we bob on the boards. The sun is warming up on my shoulders, pulling freckles out of my skin. The air is salty and full.

  “This isn’t surfing, though,” I say.

  “It’s part of it. You have to learn how to read the sea, the swells. You have to learn how to be patient and daring at the same time.”

  “Why did you need to learn patience and daring?”

  “Everyone does, don’t you think?”

  I drag my fingers through the water while I think about that. The sea is cool and clear, and below I see tiny fish swimming in circles. I feel them nipping at my toes.

  “I think I had to have a lot of patience when I was sick,” I finally say. “Because there was nothing I could do about it, you know?”

  Lena’s soft eyes go totally gooey. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “And then, when we found out I got a heart, I needed some daring. The surgery was scary. But maybe I had daring the whole time I was sick too. Because sometimes, before we knew I’d be okay, I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. I mean, I didn’t want to die, but I was so tired. But then I would wake up and I’d get out of bed and I’d keep hoping and trying. Maybe that was kind of daring.”

  I’ve never said any of this to Kate or Margot or Dave. I’ve only ever thought it in my bed at night when it hurt to breathe and my oxygen tank puffed air up my nose and all I could do was cry after Kate fell asleep next to me.

  “Sunny,” Lena says, “I think you’re the most daring person I know.”

  I shrug. “You don’t know me very well.”

  She doesn’t say anything to that, but her gooey eyes go sad. I didn’t say it to be mean. I said it because it’s true and she knows it.

  “I know one thing,” she says after a few seconds. “You’r
e daring enough to go on an epic kissing quest, even after giving a guy a bloody nose.”

  A laugh busts out of my mouth. Somehow, of all the things she could’ve said, that was the perfect thing.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Quinn and I decided you’re right. We need to like the person first. It’ll just be less… weird, I think.”

  “Agreed. So what’s your next strategy?”

  “Um… meet a boy I like?”

  She laughs. “Solid plan.”

  That’s my exact plan, actually. I even changed my New Life plan to fit it and everything.

  Step Three: Find a boy I like and kiss him.

  “You met… Ethan on the beach, right?” I ask.

  Lena nods. “I was trying to do a cartwheel and failing pretty hard.”

  “Right in front of him?”

  “Right in front of him. He laughed and helped me stand up and then he showed me how to do it right.”

  “He knew how to do a cartwheel?”

  “He did and it was perfect. He could do a roundoff too. He was always full of surprises.”

  She goes quiet for a second and her eyes are way, way far away. I feel a knot tangling up in my throat. I gulp it down.

  “So I need to… be really bad at gymnastics on the beach?” I ask.

  She cracks up at that. “Worked for me. But I’ve met more people than just your dad, you know. Friends and people I’ve liked.” She winks at me when she says that. “I’ve met people at the mall, at the skating rink, at fairs, in line buying guitar strings, at the doctor’s office when I had the flu, at concerts. People you might connect with are everywhere, Sunny.”

  I think about how I met Quinn, how she just appeared right next to me in the ocean like a magical mermaid. It’s pretty much the best meeting story ever, if you ask me.

  “Wait… so… you’ve kissed other people? Other than my dad?” I ask.

  “Well, yeah. We were only thirteen, you know, and he lived in Michigan. Way far away for two teenagers. I dated people. So did he. After tenth grade, I didn’t even talk to him anymore. His family stopped coming to Mexico Beach and we grew apart.”

  “So… how did you…” I wave at myself, hoping she gets what I’m asking.

  She smiles at me. “Funny story, that.”

  “Yeah?”

  She leans over, resting her elbows on her board. I do the same and if we weren’t floating in the middle of the ocean, I’d almost feel like we were at a slumber party, sharing secrets.

  “So, I was nineteen and I’d just signed with my manager in Nashville,” Lena says. “I was all set to record my first album, but you have to get studio musicians. You know, those people to fill in the instruments you don’t play, make it sound rich and full.”

  I nod, entranced.

  “The second day of recording, I was in the booth about to lay down a vocal track and in walks this guy in a leather jacket with floppy brown hair and green eyes.”

  “Oh my god. Was it—”

  “You bet it was. He was my drummer, hired by my producer, and his name was Ethan St. James.”

  “No way.”

  “Right? He couldn’t believe it either. A week later, we were dating and never looked back.”

  “Wow.”

  She nods, a little smile on her face.

  “Did you love him a lot?” I ask.

  She sits back up and blinks at the sky for a couple of seconds before looking back at me. “So much. You have his nose, I think.”

  Instinctively, I press my finger against the tip of my nose.

  “When we found out we were having you, we were…” She sighs and runs her hand through her wet hair. “Well, we were surprised.”

  “Um. Gross.”

  She grins and pushes my board a little, but then pulls me back. “But we were excited. We got married and rented an apartment about the size of a walk-in closet and we were so happy.”

  “You were? Even though you quit music because of me?”

  Her eyes go wide and her mouth drops open. “Sunny. Sweetie, that was… I didn’t…”

  “But you did, didn’t you?”

  She presses her mouth super-flat, but finally, she nods. “But I wanted to. I loved making music, but the music scene wasn’t good for me. There were parties and touring and unpredictable schedules and, well, just a lot of things that were bad for me that I had a hard time saying no to.”

  I frown, about to ask her what kind of things, but then, I know. “Like drinking alcohol?”

  “Yeah. Exactly. So when I got pregnant with you, it made sense to quit. Or at least take a break. Your dad agreed and, Sunny, like I said. We were happy.”

  Her eyes are shining when she says all this and my chest feels warm and melty. But then everything hardens up quick. Because if she was so happy to have me, to give up her whole big famous music career for me, how did she give me away only four years later? And even more than that, how did she stay away for so long?

  “Where’ve you been all this time?” I ask, and immediately wish I could swallow my own tongue.

  She pushes her palms into her board and looks at me. “At first? Nashville. I stayed there after your dad died and… well, after everything fell apart. Then, about four years ago, I knew I needed to get out of Nashville if I was really going to get serious about getting sober. I’d had some good long spells without drinking, went to these meetings called Alcoholics Anonymous that helped, but I’d always fall back into it. It’d just take one call from an old friend, one show at a venue I used to play at. So I moved to this coastal town on Long Island in New York called Montauk. It’s small and quiet. That’s where I started surfing. I taught private voice lessons there.”

  New York. She lives in New York. She was in New York when I got sick. She was in New York when Margot spit all over our friendship. It’s so weird, thinking about Lena all the way up there in those colder ocean waters.

  What did she do all that time? Who did she talk to? Does she have friends? A roommate? Does she go on dates? My mind spins with thousands of questions. Before Lena showed up, all my questions were about the past, wondering about her and my dad and why she left and never came back. But now, with that one little word—Montauk—I can’t stop thinking about this whole life she’s had without me. I want to know more, more, more. But I don’t. I don’t want to know any of it.

  I stare out at the water for a while, trying to calm down my brain. I wish Quinn was here. She could talk to Lena about regular stuff and I could listen and think and keep all my questions behind my teeth. And Quinn would love surfing. I wonder if she’s ever surfed before. Probably, she’s done everything before. Except have her first kiss, I guess.

  My heart flips and flops as I think about kissing. I sit up straight on my board. “I think I’ve felt the ocean enough.”

  Lena clears her throat. “Right. Let’s do this.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Okay, all you’re going to do for now is stand.”

  I pull a face at her. “Stand. That’s it?”

  “Talk to me again after you’ve tried it.”

  I would roll my eyes, but, hey, I’m the one who fell off the board just trying to sit on it.

  “All right,” she says, “lie on your stomach with your head up. Put your hands on the board beside your shoulders, like you’re going to do a push-up.”

  “I haven’t done a push-up in two years.”

  She frowns. “Are you okay to do this?”

  I wave a hand as I pitch forward to lie down. “Actually, I’ve never done a push-up.”

  “Sunny.”

  “I’m fine. Carry on, O Surfer Queen.”

  She smiles and I smoosh my palms against the board. The water is almost eye level, the sun a hazy golden ball right in front of me. The world looks amazing from here—small and big all at the same time.

  “When you’re ready, push your upper body up and sweep your feet under you, planting them on the stringer.”

  “The what?” />
  “That line in the middle of your board.”

  “Then just say that line in the middle of your board.”

  She sighs. “Watch me do it first. You have to turn your body as you do it so your feet are facing the side of the board.”

  I turn my head and watch her lie down and then gracefully pop up on the board, her body crouched like she’s ready for a fight, hands out just above her waist. It’s a thing of beauty, let me tell you, and I want to be the master of it.

  “Okay, watch me go,” I say.

  She sits back down on her board and flourishes her hand at me. I press my hands into the board and push up, bringing my feet under me at the same time. I plant them on the line in the middle of the board—pardon me, the stringer—and keep my legs bent. I’m about to shoot Lena a triumphant grin when the board tilts to the side. Then it tilts more and more. I try to even out my weight, but I might as well be grape jelly wiggling around in a bowl. The board flips all the way over and I splash into the ocean.

  For the second time today, I come up sputtering. I climb back on the board while Lena cracks up.

  “Easy as pie, right?” she says.

  I glare at her, but a smile tugs at my mouth. I haven’t moved my body around this much in a long, long time. Kate would probably be freaking out right now, but I feel totally awesome. I feel like this is what it was all for, all that patience and daring.

  I lie down on the board and do the whole thing over again.

  And topple into the sea again.

  Then I do it again.

  And so it goes—push, jump, splash… push, jump, splash—for at least fifteen minutes. I’m breathing hard, my heart slamming against my ribs, but I keep going. I keep going and going because I want to do this. I need to do it, to know I can, to let this new heart and whoever gave it to me stand on a surfboard surrounded by the sea and know it’s alive.