I wonder when my brother’s coming home. I haven’t heard a peep about it from my parents, and I’m afraid to ask. And lurking in the back of the cat allergies and bed sharing is a conversation with a boyfriend that might result in a breakup. Pretty sure breast to breast wouldn’t solve any of that.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Matt arrives home on the first weekend of Christmas break, but aside from extra footsteps through the house in the middle of the night, I barely notice the difference. He’s out with friends all the time. I leave early every morning for a run followed by a ride on my skateboard or bike, depending on the day. When I get back right before lunch, he’s usually just left. I work at Billy’s Buns until nine, and whether I surf at night or come straight home, he’s not back until well after I’m asleep.
The house feels like the floors are made of tightropes. Matt came home with an anger that has him shut off, and by the way my parents tread around him carefully, I’m almost positive now that the muffled argument I heard back at Thanksgiving was about studying abroad. I do my best to stay out of everyone’s way, but I’m pretty sure he thinks that this all is somehow my fault. He sees me once in a while walking out of the bathroom when he’s walking in, and I can feel his seething resentment, as if he hates me for breathing.
We get an unexpected storm that lasts two days, keeping me out of the water and off the sidewalks, so I actually visit the YMCA, pay for the day pass, and swim laps in the pool until my arms ache. I don’t shower afterward but go straight home to sit with my parents on the couch, my chlorine-drenched body emitting proof of my pool time.
Kelly finally texted me a day ago and asked if we could meet for lunch. It’ll be good to catch up. Even though we see each other at school and youth group, we haven’t talked much lately. We used to hang out all the time—getting acai bowls at Paradise Bowls or surfboard-shaped cookies at Beckers in Manhattan Beach, and then walking up and down Manhattan Beach Boulevard, stopping at the boutique stores and trying on shirts we’d never buy, or browsing the teen section at the independent bookstore Pages. I’ve asked her to get together, but she keeps saying she’s busy, so my heart does a little hopscotch skip when I get the text inviting me to lunch tomorrow. She does add, You’re coming alone, right?
I text back yes and do my best to ignore the subtext, Jake’s not invited. I get it. She wants it girls only. Jake’s been stuck down in Camp Pendleton, anyway. His father found him a temporary job over Christmas break at the base’s credit union because, according to his dad, “Nothing good can come from an eighteen-year-old with free time.”
We text every day, joking about nothing and everything. I’ve been able to read my Bible over the break without the school thing interfering, and it’s been so good for my spirit. But it also makes me more concerned about me and Jake. It’s weighing on me, so before bed one night, I text, What are you doing for christmas
Surviving
Lol can you get away
Once he passes out
He means his dad, but he sends me a gif of a kid seat belted in a car and screaming, then fainting.
K. I look up at the Hume Lake photo on my wall—me smiling so wide with my arms around Kelly, me full to the brim with camp food and Jesus. With shaky fingers, I add, We need to talk
About???
I don’t even know where to start, so I pick the most obvious.
Sex
Are you having sex??!!
Lol, very funny. About moving away. God too.
What about God?
Dunno. Never hear you talk about Him.
So?
Ugh. Sometimes I hate texting. This would be better as a face-to-face, but I couldn’t get myself to open my mouth before the break. This deserves a real conversation, not simply a Bible and a praying-hands emoji. I don’t answer. Instead, I write,
Tired. Just thoughts. Zzzz. don’t forget to pray
He gives a thumbs-up emoji.
Thumbs-up that he’ll pray, or thumbs-up that he’ll forget? I don’t know how we can text so much and say so little. I look out at the night sky through my window. I don’t have words tonight for God. Instead, I shrug my shoulders at Him, like, Yep, I know. Lousy attempt.
I know His mercies are new every morning, but when I wake up the following day, I wonder if He gets frustrated that I’m such a wuss and He has to give me so many of these mercies because I don’t step it up more. How hard is it to pick up a phone, call Jake, and say, “When you leave for college, are we breaking up? And by the way, what do you believe about Jesus?”
Instead, I pick up my skateboard and take off toward the ocean. The air is clean and crisp, the past two days of rain tamping down and clearing out the smog and haze. As I skate to Hermosa, I think of my year after Matt’s accident when my parents were always gone. When loneliness got like a weight on my chest and I’d talk to God like He was my best friend. If I was in my bedroom with my blinds tight, He was sitting at my desk chair. If I reheated lasagna from the dish Mom left me, He’d sit across from me at the dinner table. When I’d walk the streets of Manhattan and Hermosa, I always left enough room on the sidewalk to the right of me. I memorized Bible verses, which was my way of imagining Him talking back to me.
“Heyyy,” I say to God now. I ride to the edge of the sidewalk, imagining Him rolling up next to me. I bump over the sidewalk cracks, tic-tacking to build momentum. A man with five dogs pulls them out of nipping zone of my wheels. A lady with a stroller squints at me, like she might recognize me, but then realizes she doesn’t. She looks away and rolls her stroller over my imaginary skateboarding Jesus.
“She just flattened you like a pancake,” I joke. A couple holding hands looks at me, and I realize I should keep my prayers in my head for now.
I take Rosecrans west three miles, which spits me out in El Porto, the tip of North Manhattan. The waves are washed out today with early winds, and the only people out there are the tourists with the foam longboards and thick wetsuits who don’t know any better. I lose myself in the sound of my whirring wheels, skating south toward Hermosa, and stop at the pull-up bars at the bottom of Twenty-sixth at Bruce’s Beach. I do a couple of pull-ups next to a chiseled shirtless college guy.
“Not bad,” someone behind me says. I turn to see the girl who I ran into at El Porto that morning a while back, when surfing still felt like a far-off dream.
“Thanks,” I say. “Alix with an I, right? Last time I saw you, I could barely do one of these.”
She jumps for a pull-up bar and does a few knees to chest. “Yeah, I’ve seen you out there a couple times since then. You’re pretty good.”
My face warms at the compliment. “Oh! I signed up for the All Wave Junior Open, like you suggested.”
“Great!” she says, and she means it. “Too bad today’s so sucky out there. I’d totally invite you out with me.”
“You have your wetsuit?”
She nods.
“Mine’s at my friend Mike’s just a couple streets up. We could do an open-water swim to the pier.”
“Let’s do it. Meet you down at the lifeguard tower in ten?”
I pick up my skateboard and run up to Old Man Mike’s. I slither into my wetsuit and check my watch. It’s 9:33 a.m. Plenty of time before lunch.
Alix goes to Mira Costa, the surf dominators of the entire South Bay, and she’s on varsity, which is funny to me that they have enough surfers to fill varsity, JV, and frosh/soph teams. We don’t even have enough girls at my school who could make a C squad, much less varsity. As we swim, we talk about the surf competition. Alix says they’re trying out a new coed division but she totally thinks it’s going to be dominated by the guys because there aren’t enough girls our age at the same level. I learn that she plays lacrosse, has two little brothers, and hates seafood. Once she lost her bikini top in a wave, and since then, she wears a rash guard even when she’s swimming in the d
ead of summer. Flip-flops make her toes cramp, so usually she walks barefoot from her car to the beach. We backstroke and front stroke and sidestroke, and although it’s cold and windy, the wetsuit and constant swimming keep us buoyant and warm. I tell her about Matt’s accident and how I’m back surfing again after four years off. “Cool, cool,” she says. She learns about Jake and how I work at a sandwich shop and think Kelly Slater is super hot, even though he’s old.
Manhattan Beach Pier is between Eleventh and Twelfth Street, so by the time we return after swimming past the break and hanging a left, it’s about two miles round trip. When we crawl out of the water back at Twenty-sixth, my shoulders are tight and my lungs feel bruised in my rib cage from the deep breathing. We exchange numbers and promise to get a quick practice in before our competition in February.
* * *
I was planning on getting in a swim or a run anyway, but this was an unexpected surprise. I can’t wait to tell Jake. After I wriggle out of my wetsuit, hose my body down, and dry off with one of Mike’s towels, I snap up my board and continue my trek, skating past Manhattan Beach Pier where I just swam, past the public bathrooms, past the house that Mom points out every time she sees it, where they filmed the exterior shots of Beverly Hills, 90210, some show she watched in high school. I’m early for my lunch, so I ride past Martha’s Grill and stop at Hermosa Pier for a drink of water.
“Will you take our picture?” a father asks me. I snap a photo of him, his wife, and toddler in front of the big bronzed statue of Tim Kelly. Tim’s crouched down on a surfboard, just before standing, or maybe getting ready for a trick. Tim was this amazing surfer back in the ’60s, but he died at twenty-four, and it jarred the surfing community. We heard about him all the time as Junior Guards because supposedly he was also this “legendary” lifeguard. I imagine him saving children out of the mouths of seals, punching sharks in the eyes. There have been so many surfers in the world, even in Manhattan Beach, and yet Tim is the one who has a statue memorializing him. That always strikes me. I feel connected to him somehow, but I never know why. Some days I’ll stop and stare at him for minutes. I’ll always get close enough to touch him, to take a hand and stroke the bronze edge of his back as he crouches down, his eyes captivated by a wave and his future. The weird thing is that he died in a car accident. Not on the water, attempting a maverick wave, or out rescuing people from a sinking boat.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. When I remove it, Jake’s name is lighting up my screen. “Hi!” I answer.
“Where are you?”
“Hermosa. Where are you?”
“Your house. I’ll come meet you.”
Disappointment floods me. “I can’t. I promised Kelly I’d meet her at Martha’s for lunch.” Something in my gut tells me if I showed up with Jake at my hip, she wouldn’t be pleased. This is Kelly-and-Lovette-only time.
“Okay, afterward. You don’t have to be at work till three, right?” he says.
“Yes, but I thought you had work.”
He coughs in my ear. “I’ve developed this one-day cold.”
I laugh. “Okay, I’ll text you when we get the bill.”
At 12:55 p.m., I stroll up to the outdoor patio area of Martha’s. Kelly’s been there for a bit, I can tell by the glasses of water at our table. Two are half empty, condensation dripping down the sides. I tilt my head. Two of three glasses. She waves me over.
Next to her, Dave gives me a solemn nod.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The outside tables of Martha’s 22nd Street Grill are covered by an awning and fenced in by a waist-high steel railing that doubles as a dog-hitching post for the patrons who bring their rescues, which is pretty much everyone in the South Bay. To the east is Hermosa Avenue and the lunchtime cycling traffic, and to the west is the boardwalk, the sand, and the endless blue ocean looking bright against the grim faces of Kelly and Dave.
“Hope I’m not late,” I say, walking through the gate. “I was with Alix, and—”
“Alex? A date?”
“What? No, Alix with an I. Girl. Super-good surfer—oh, she’s competing in the Open too. We talked forever ago, but I ran into her today so we ended up hanging out and exchanging numbers and— You guys okay?” Their faces look paralyzed.
“Well,” Kelly hesitates. Dave touches her shoulder and nods at her to go on. “That’s what we were going to ask you.”
“Me?” My mind is racing. “You mean the thing with Cecilia?”
Kelly winces.
“Oh.” I sit down. “Yeah, I’m okay. Guess I cared more about people’s opinions than I thought I did. But I’m pretty much over it. I overheard her boyfriend on the water, and I get why she did all that to me. Doesn’t make it okay, but God gave me a little perspective, and that’s good.”
I’m trying to speak their language, and it works because Dave points an index finger lazily up to heaven and drawls, “Hashtag truth.” His eyes are half closed, like he’s praying. Or stoned. I stifle a giggle.
Kelly adds, “Amen,” which sounds extreme, even coming from her. She was always über Christian and maybe slightly critical, but it was never loud and in public. Her parents are hard-core—her mom’s wardrobe probably contains the entire Bible in printed quotes—but this all-Christian dialogue and showiness feels very “not Kelly.” “This isn’t really about Cecilia. But before we start,” Kelly says, “we should probably pray.”
“Most def,” Dave says.
They bow their heads, so I follow. I think we’re praying for our lunches, but we haven’t ordered, and then Kelly prays for the server right as she’s refilling waters at our table. I open my eyes to smile at her—We’re normal, I promise!—and I see Dave squeezing Kelly’s hand as he says, “Yes, Lord,” and the small crack of Kelly’s smile. I suddenly notice how much she uses the word just, over and over, as if it makes the prayer more sincere: “Father God, I just pray that you be present in this tough conversation, Father God, and I just know, Father God, you have just prompted our hearts, so please just tell her that it is out of concern and not criticism that we are just holding her accountable.”
“Me?” I interject, but their heads stay bowed. I want to break the mood because Kelly and I often joke while we’re praying. “Pssst!” I whisper. “Father God doesn’t forget his name every other word.” Instead of a giggle, I get silence, and that feels mean, so I say, “Father God, I’m sorry, I’m just confused, Father God, at just this new style of praying, Father God.”
Kelly squints her eyes like she’s trying to wring out more sincerity or maybe wring out my words from her brain. I stare wide-eyed at their bowed heads, wondering what I’ve done to require an intervention session. Dave blindly feels for her wrist and squeezes, like, “You’re doing great.” She nods once, fueled by it, and then continues as if I said nothing. “Father God, we just know that if you are disciplining, it is only because you are a loving father.” I’m in trouble with God? “Just help us to hate the sin and love the sinner, and I just pray that you would release the claws of backsliding embedded in Lovette.”
Whoa. I have claws in me?
“Oh,” Kelly adds as an afterthought. “And please bless this meal, amen.”
I look up. Still no food. Are we blessing the water? When the server tiptoes past, I flag her down and order a soup and sandwich, so this poor girl will at least get a tip.
Dave sneezes, and someone nearby says, “God bless you!”
“He does!” Dave responds. Oh boy. I offer a weak smile to the person, who looks at our table like, “Huh?”
Kelly sips her water, and I notice she has a ring on her wedding finger. They both do. “You get married and not tell me?” I joke, and Dave gives a one-syllable courtesy laugh, then sobers.
“These are purity rings,” he states, as if I’m clueless. “We’re reminding each other and anyone who watches—because everyone’s watching, right? Right?—that we�
��re married to God. It keeps Kelly and me treating each other like brother and sister in Christ.”
“So you’re siblings with feelings for each other?” I joke, but neither of them laugh. Kelly actually winces, her hair falling forward as she nods. Something is way different.
“Hey! Your strip of hair! It’s not purple anymore!”
“Yeah, Dave and I talked it over and realized it might be distracting to the message of Christ.”
What the heck? “Are non-Christians against purple?”
She glares at me like I should know better. “It might give the wrong impression, like I’m rebellious. I’m not. I don’t want people thinking it’s okay to defy Him or do your own thing and not care what God thinks.”
“Kelly, that’s crazy. You really think God cares about Kool-Aid hair?”
“Maybe not, but you shouldn’t do things if it makes others stumble.”
“I’m writing a song about it,” Dave pops in. I turn to him, and for a second so many mean comments come to mind. Song titles about purple hair and the fiery purple judgment of God.
I swallow down the words and force myself to look back at Kelly, shutting him out. “Or your purple hair could tell people, ‘See this? This is a reminder that God looks at the inside, not the outside. And, hey, this is me. I love purple, and I love the way it looks braided into this awesome blond hair God gave me because He’s clever and creative.’”
Kelly warms at my compliment, but Dave says, “I dunno, bro.”
Bro? I’m having none of this. “Look, if a person isn’t going to accept Christ because of purple hair, there are bigger issues between him and God.”
“Speaking of bigger issues . . .” Dave trails off.
Kelly gulps. My grilled cheese and tomato soup arrive.
“We’re worried about you,” Dave continues.
“What . . . about . . . me?”
He looks to Kelly, and suddenly she doesn’t want to talk. With a nudge from Dave, she starts. “You signed a True Love Waits pledge.”
Beyond the Break Page 19