Beyond the Break

by Heather Buchta

  “If you saw inside, you may not want it for your lottery house.”

  “What if it was the worst inside, and I didn’t care?”

  I walk on to the Hermosa pier, stop at the statue of Tim Kelly. Died in a car crash. How many people die untimely deaths? Yet he’s the only one with a statue. Something about him was far greater than surfing, and that gives me a little solace. What did you stand for, Tim? Was it worth it? I pat him on the shoulder and trudge on.

  I leave the beach and walk up to Hermosa Avenue, walk along the street with all its cute storefronts, but I hear the music playing in Jake’s car the first time we drove together, passing the bookstore Pages, the Creamery with its line out the door.

  I head back down to the Manhattan Beach Pier and travel north, my eyes fixed on the ocean, on the hundreds of waves we rode together. I hear him clapping, whooping, slapping the water in excitement. I remember him talking about how I headed up the wave with speed but wasn’t extending enough at the top.

  “You’re on your haunches like a bunny rabbit.”

  I can hear my laugh, the way it echoed in the windless night as I splashed him.

  At Twenty-sixth, I make my way up to Old Man Mike’s, and my heart sinks when I don’t see the LED boards, even though I know Jake said they’d be gone. But Mike’s boards are gone, too, and so’s my wetsuit. I go through the gate and knock on the sliding glass door. Mike slides it open. “Hey, kid,” he says. He looks sad.

  “Oh, no, you get robbed?”

  His eyes open wider than their usual half lids. “No. No.”

  “Where are your boards?”

  His face drips with apology before he speaks. “Your father—”

  “My dad was here?”

  “He was looking for you. He’s really worried.”

  I cross my arms. “I’m sure. Like he kept a close eye on me that year after Matt’s accident.”

  “That’s a lot for a parent to know what to do with.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending him.”

  He raises his hands in surrender.

  “Where’s my wetsuit?”

  “He, uh, had me put the boards away. He has your wetsuit.”

  “I bought that with my own money!”

  He holds his hands higher like I’m aiming a gun at him.

  “Sorry.” I slump into a lawn chair. “My boyfriend’s moving away tomorrow, and we just left on a really bad note.”

  “What about?”

  I laugh, embarrassed. “Sex, actually.”

  “Huh. That’s a doozy.”

  “We didn’t,” I say. “Have sex.”

  “Good on ya.” He nods like I’ve shared a similar view on politics. Then he adds, “I waited.”

  I turn in the lawn chair. “Really?”

  He laughs, and it’s guttural and ends with a hack. “Yes, ma’am. That was a thing back then. Waiting.” He nods at the sun, disappearing with its last thin line of orange on the horizon. “Seems like a foreign concept nowadays. Best choice I ever made. Only memory I had was with her.” He searches the horizon like she’s out there somewhere. “When you love someone that much, you don’t want other memories creepin’ in. Least not me, I don’t.”

  He taps the back of the lawn chair. “I’m gonna tell your parents you’re safe, if that’s okay.”

  “Please don’t. They’ll come pick me up. I’m going home, I swear. Just want to stay to see the moonlight. It’s almost full tonight.”

  “That it is. How ’bout I tell ’em you stopped by on your way home. Just so they stop worrying.”

  It’s a compromise. “Yeah, okay.”

  He heads inside and tosses a beach towel out of the glass door, then slides it shut. I wrap myself in it like a taco blanket and turn the chair to face the rising tide. Thirty minutes later, the moon shines on the water, creating a pathway straight to me, shimmering the way it always does, the way it did before I met Jake.

  “Two moons,” I murmur to God. I set down my towel and head home.

  * * *

  When I finally step onto my driveway, I look up and know I’m royally busted. My house is lit up like a Christmas tree, every window a beacon to guide me home. If my parents owned flares, they might’ve set them off by now. I know they must be worried, but they have to know I’m okay. I’m sure they’ve talked to Jake and Mike by now.

  I don’t have any strength left to stress out about this, so I push through my front door to face the music. Mom’s sitting at the dining table and she springs up, toast out of a toaster, and Dad rushes in from the bedroom.

  “Oh thank God,” Mom breathes.

  Dad slows to a halt. Says nothing.

  I decide to save them the speeches. “I was irresponsible, thoughtless, and selfish. If you want to ground me forever, that’s fine. I don’t have anywhere to go, anyway.”

  “Where were you?” Dad’s voice isn’t the threatening calm from before. It’s quieter, a scared child.

  “First Jake’s. And yes, I know I’m grounded, so you can doubly restrict me from seeing him in the future, because he’s moving back to Hawaii. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Mom repeats. “Your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.” For the first time in front of my mom, he is actually my boyfriend when she says that. Well, was.

  “Tomorrow? Monday?”

  Today’s still Sunday, so I’m not sure what other day of the week tomorrow would be, but I politely nod.

  “Oh.” Her shoulders sag, and her eyes look like they understand what I’m going through. Her face makes me teary, so I look away and kick at the wood floors.

  “Don’t scuff,” my father says.

  I stop.

  He looks like he hasn’t slept for two days. “Jake called us hours ago, saying you’d left.”

  “Then I walked.”

  “Where?” Mom asks.

  “Nowhere, really.” Just the places that remind me of Jake. “Everywhere.”

  “Oh?”

  I can’t explain. Maybe another night. “Then I went to Old Man Mike’s. Sorry for pulling him into this. He didn’t know, by the way. About the you-can’t-go-into-the-ocean rule. Or that I wasn’t allowed to surf.”

  Dad says, “We figured.”

  “Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m not sorry for going, but I’m sorry you got worried. You haven’t been worried about me in five years, so—”

  Mom gets huffy. “Lovette, that’s not—”

  I hold a hand up, and Mom stops. “No, it’s true,” I say. “But it’s okay.” And I actually mean it. “God used it for His good.” I know my parents have no clue what that means, and I’m not sure I do. But it makes sense right now.

  I take my shoes off by stepping on the backs of them with the toes of the other. “Can I go to bed? I haven’t exactly had a good day.”

  “Me neither,” Dad quips.

  I don’t know why today was any different—why it would worry them—but they look like real parents. The kind that get concerned, who age ten years when their kid disappears.

  “Okay, well.” I start to walk away.

  “Don’t leave angry,” Dad says, and it’s an order.

  “I’m not.”

  “I mean earlier. You gotta leave, then you leave. But not.” His words choke on each other. “That way. Not when you’re mad.” He’s speaking through gritted teeth, and he’s holding back something I’ve never seen from him. Tears. “If something would’ve happened . . . and that’s the last . . .” He turns away and clears his throat. He turns back and his voice is steady again, the military man I know. “You’re free to go.”

  “Sorry you had a bad day,” I mumble. I walk toward my bedroom but then turn. They’re still standing at the table, heads down, limp wilted leaves. “Dad?”

  He looks at me.

  “Reme
mber when I won the Under-Tens Surf Rider Days?”

  Dad nods. “You were eight.”

  “That was a good day.”

  I make my way to my room and shut my door for the night.

  I lie in bed hugging myself in Jake’s hoodie, staring out the window at the glowing moon. For at least fifteen minutes, I shake Jake’s snow globe and watch the sand settle, then repeat and watch it again. My Bible lies open on my bed, unread. A soft knock raps on my door. Not waiting for an invitation, Mom enters on tiptoe. I shake the snow globe one more time.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  She walks over to the chair by my window and sits.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  I look at her, and she takes it as a yes.

  “Why this contest? Why the ocean? I mean, most kids lie about drugs, you know?”

  I sit up in my bed, pull my knees up. There’s no fight left in me. My words come out tired, unfiltered. “When Matt was in his accident, I thought it was my fault.”

  Mom looks shocked.

  “He and I had argued that day. I thought maybe he was still mad and that’s why he fell. And when you both ignored me and stayed at the hospital, I figured you found out somehow about our fight, and that I deserved it.”

  “Oh, honey—”

  I lift my palm up. She quiets.

  “I thought if I was good enough and did everything right, you’d come home and Matt would be okay. But it didn’t happen. At least not right away. Then one day, I got in the ocean—trying to let a wave hurt me—thinking if I suffered, then maybe Matt would get better in exchange. But the waves were soft.”

  This is a lot for Mom to process, I can tell by the crinkle between her eyebrows, the disbelief in her concerned eyes.

  “I left my hair wet, hoping you’d notice and get mad—something. Only you guys never came home that night. That’s when I realized it didn’t matter—whether I did good or bad—your focus was Matt. And that’s fine—it needed to be—only I was twelve and didn’t get it then.”

  I close my Bible and set it on my nightstand, rub the cover and smile ruefully. “Luckily, I was going to church with Kelly, and God pointed out my twisted thinking. He didn’t work that way. Doing good to cancel out the bad, or vice versa. I started hanging out at Bruce’s Beach when you weren’t around, which was always. Old Man Mike gave me a wetsuit. And once I got back in the water for real—like not just to punish myself—I felt like it was keeping me alive. God rescued me, and the ocean that you told me to stay away from ended up being where I connected with Him. I can’t explain it, other than my life came into focus.”

  I scooch under my covers, lying down, but I turn my head on my pillow so I can face her. “First it was just the water. Where I felt God most. But when I started surfing again, I felt I could do more than I’d thought possible. Like I’d been created for a purpose. And not just surfing. Bigger than that. This competition represented that, you know? The start of something big.”

  Mom looks at me for a long moment. For someone who usually has something to say, her words are missing. She stands and leans over me, kisses my cheek tenderly. “You want me to leave the light on?”

  “No, that’s okay. Moon’s bright tonight.”

  She looks out at it, then scans my four walls, her gaze drifting from the Hume Lake Christian Camp photo to the postcards of the waves to the poster of Kelly Slater. She picks up my snow globe, scrutinizes the tiki pole inside with its signs for Waikiki, North Shore, Lahaina, Hanalei, and Kona. A look of recognition flickers, connecting it to the boyfriend who’s moving back there. She frowns, shakes it, and sets it back on my nightstand.

  I hear her pause at the door after she turns off my light, but I keep my back to her, my eyes fixed on the sand in the snow globe swirling and swirling and then settling to the ground.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I’m dreaming that I’m in a pinball machine. I realize why when I wake up to a hand shaking my shoulder.

  “Lovette.” No, still dreaming. It’s Matt’s voice, and Matt’s away at college.

  I swat at the hand and grunt.

  “Lovette, wake up. I’m Kelly Slater.”

  This wakes me up, but only to annoy me, because it’s most definitely not Kelly Slater. “Very funny.” I rub my eyes and turn to him. It looks like Matt. This is confusing.

  “Get up, butthead.”

  It is Matt.

  I drag myself up to a sitting position. “What are you doing here?” I whisper. I look outside. It’s still dark, but the moon’s no longer in my window. I reach for my phone on my nightstand, and then remember why my phone isn’t there. Jake. The surfing contest.

  “Had the day off. Thought I’d make sure the dust had settled. You almost caused World War Three here yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I feel pretty beat up,” I mumble.

  “Not you. Them. Mom and Dad went at each other. Brought me into the whole thing.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I heard what you said about me. Well, the gist of it.” He grabs me by the back of the neck, shakes a little. “Thanks.”

  It feels good, even at zero o’clock in the morning, to know your older brother thought you did a pretty cool thing by standing up for him. Still—“You couldn’t wait for the sun to come up to tell me this?”

  “Wow, how about, ‘Hey, Matt, thanks for driving seven hours to wake up Mom and Dad and convince them to let me compete.’”

  “WHAT.”

  “Shh! God, they finally went to bed two hours ago. Get up.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t have a board.”

  “No, but you have friends.” He tosses me my cell phone. “By the way, that’s on loan for the day. Dad wants it back at fifteen hundred.”

  I’m confused. Matt groans. “Couldn’t find Old Man Mike’s cell. I got ahold of Lydia and asked about borrowing boards, but she told me about Jake moving away, sorry, that sucks, and said to call Kelly, and Kelly didn’t have a board—how’s it that none of your friends surf, it’s like they live in Kansas—but then Kelly said you talked about some surfer named Alix with an I. Her number was in your phone, so I called—middle of the night and she actually answered—and I explained and asked her if I could pay her to rent her board. She said she has a few and you could use one of hers, but she couldn’t fit the extra in her car. So Lydia and her boyfriend, Guy?”

  “Kaj,” I correct.

  “Lydia and Kaj picked it up twenty minutes ago. They’re meeting you at the check-in booth in”—he looks at his phone—“T-minus thirty.” He walks out of the room, walks back in with my wetsuit and throws it. It slaps my face and lands on my lap in the bed. “Dad says that’s yours.” He walks out of the room.

  I’m stunned. He pops his head back in. “Party bus is leaving in five. Let’s move.”

  I look at my phone: 5:43 a.m. There are texts from Lydia, Niles, Kaj, and Kelly that show up at the top of my text stream. They’ve all been read by my parents. There’s one generic text written back to them all: This is Lovette’s father. Lovette will not have her phone for a month. Thank you.

  There are no texts from Jake. He knows my dad has my phone, so why would he text? Still, my heart hurts at seeing nothing.

  I text him frantically.

  Competing. Mom and Dad said ok. You still here?

  I wait. My text doesn’t register as delivered. That means he’s boarded the plane and turned off his phone. Please, Jesus, tell him to turn it back on. His flight isn’t until 6:15 a.m. That means he has time to get off the plane. He can still make it. But would he? I think of the way I left him last night, and regret weighs my eyelids shut.

  He’s not coming.

  With slow movements, I change into my bikini and put the wetsuit halfway on, just the legs, letting the top half hang at my waist. I throw on Jake’s hoodie over my biki
ni top, and find my ball of wax, still wrapped in cellophane, under my pillow. I slip my flip-flops on and jog out to the car.

  “Are they coming?” I ask Matt as we click our seat belts on. I motion with my chin toward the house.

  “They’re letting you compete, but only because I’m taking you. Watching you might be a little much for them right now.” He puts the car in drive. “One heart attack at a time.”

  * * *

  The sky’s a molten white when we step out onto the sand, the marine layer creating the gray emptiness of February skies. It makes the water look colder somehow, and I walk numbly to the judging tents. There are at least thirty people here, parents and teens, holding surfboards in one hand and coffees in the other. The competitors all with wetsuits half on, sweats and beanies in every direction.

  I sign in, and they tell me I’m in the first heat in the prelims. They hand me a blue bib, and I choke back a sob. Blue.

  The color of our LED boards.

  I’m a mix of emotions this morning. This is it. It’s what I’ve been wanting. But my head aches from all the tears of yesterday, my sinuses a clogged mess. I can still feel my swollen, puffy eyelids every time they blink. My heart feels hollowed out. It’s real. He’s gone. Jake’s really gone.

  “Lovette!” I hear a chorus of screams cutting through the quiet crashing of waves. My brother and I turn to see Niles, Kelly, Lydia, and Kaj all waving madly from a couple of lawn chairs and canopy over by the lifeguard tower. When I see the joy on their faces and think back to the lengths they went to make this happen, my emptiness evaporates like the marine layer at noon. I give my cheeks a quick slap, and Matt and I walk over.

  Kaj holds up Alix’s shortboard when I approach. “Your chariot awaits.”

  I take the board and give him a hug. They all surround me in a hug huddle, which is never our MO, but they know how eroded I feel after yesterday. Lydia takes a poster off the sand and holds it up. In fat Sharpie, she’s written 9.9.