Wavehouse

by Kaltman, Alice;

  Myra looked shocked. “And you didn’t tell me this news the second you walked in here?”

  I hadn’t. It was true. “I got distracted by the flyer,” I lied. “You know how I get when I’m drawing.”

  “Wow. So, tell me now.”

  “He wouldn’t leave,” I began, “and he was supremely annoying.”

  Myra raised an eyebrow. “Really? What was his name?”

  “Chris.”

  “Is he hot?”

  “Sort of,” I mumbled, focusing intently on the seaweed I was drawing.

  “Sort of how?”

  I looked up at her. “Sort of an Adonis-meets-tribal-chief-meets-Buddhist-monk kind of hot.”

  Myra nodded. “Interesting…”

  “Very multiculti-hard-to-place hot,” I continued with increasing enthusiasm. “With tattoos and a piercing!”

  Myra grinned. “Edgy. We like edgy.”

  “Edgy or not, I hope he doesn’t come back. It’s my break. Besides, Secretspot is our special place. Yours and mine.”

  “Well, yeah,” Myra said. “But maybe it’s okay for us to expand just a little.”

  I shook my head. “No way.”

  Myra groaned. “You know, Anna, it’s not all up to you. I have a say in how things go at Secretspot too.”

  “Oh great!” I cried. “So now you want to tell people about Secretspot?”

  “Not necessarily,” Myra shrugged. “I’m not sure I want anyone else up there either. At least right now. But it’s supposed to be a conversation, Anna. You don’t get to make all the decisions without even asking my opinion.”

  “You’re right,” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a moment or two of quiet interrupted only by Myra’s tap-tap-tap on the computer and the scratch of my pencil on paper. A knot clenched in my stomach; I hated it when Myra and I were at odds and I wanted to clear the air. “Hey, wanna see what I’ve drawn so far?” I turned the drawing around so Myra could see.

  “Um, okay…” she hesitated. “I love the mermaid and the starfish rocks. But what’s this?” She pointed to what was supposed to be seaweed.

  “Oh no,” I moaned.

  “What?”

  It was hair—Chris’s hair. His wild, edgy, annoying hair. I grabbed the drawing back and worked furiously to erase it. “Sorry. I got a bit distracted.”

  “I’ll say,” Myra sighed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning at Secretspot, Chris was there—impossible to miss in a yellow rash guard that shone like a beacon in the early morning sun. The waves were killer—

  six to eight feet high—bright blue beauties with perfect peaks and peeling sides. I watched him catch a gorgeous right-breaking wave, dancing and swaying with unfathomable grace and skill as he carved his way ahead of the lip.

  My insides were having a tug of war—one side was pulling me out there, to those stellar waves, to Chris; the other was pulling me back up the cliff to my bicycle, telling me to pedal away.

  You can do this. He’s just a guy, who used to be a little boy, who used to be a tiny baby, who used to be a little worm in his mother’s tummy.

  I paddled out at rocket speed making a bee-line right for Chris.

  “I told you to leave,” I said, as my board slid next to his.

  Chris’s crazy mop of hair was pulled back in a big bushy ponytail. “Well, good morning to you too,” he said.

  “I’m serious.” My heart thumped violently in my chest

  “Listen, I’m just here for a few more days. I really don’t want to have to surf down with all those other bozos at Eagle’s.”

  “Early’s.”

  “Right. Sorry. Early’s. And that other spot with the rocks is a bit too gnarly.” Before I knew it, Chris was right next to me. “Look, mind if I stay for just a few more? I promise I won’t get in your way.”

  Looking over at him, I noticed a couple of minor zits around his nose and a gap between his two front teeth. Although relieved that he wasn’t completely perfect, my heart was still racing like crazy, but I could tell it wasn’t scared crazy, it was happy crazy.

  Before I could reply, a set was upon us and I was set up for a six-foot left. Turning my board, I barely had to paddle to catch it, and popped up to my feet and started my own special dance with my own wavy friend. The ride was sweet and smooth, like skating on a lake, only the lake was tipped at a forty-five-degree angle. Paddling back out, I was, for the first time, anxious to hear what another surfer had to say about my ride.

  “Nice one,” Chris called, giving me a Cheshire cat grin and a big thumbs-up.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, trying to maintain my outer cool while my insides were singing wildly. I paddled past him, back out to my spot—Miss Chill.

  The next one Chris caught took him right by me, and as he passed he was high enough in the wave that his head was visible over the white foamy curl. For a split second he looked back at me, stuck his thumbs in his ears and made googly hands.

  When he paddled back out he asked, “Catch my gift?”

  “You’re really annoying, you know that?” I said. Annoying? Not really. He was surprisingly comfortable to be around. It seemed one of my shy pockets was opening up for Chris to nestle within.

  “Most people I surf with think I’m pretty cool,” Chris shrugged.

  “Whatever. You can surf here, today and for the next few days, if you promise on your life, that you don’t tell anyone that you came to this place. Or that you saw me here.”

  “How can I tell anyone I saw you here when I don’t even know who you are?”

  That’s right. He had no clue who I was, and I wanted to keep it that way, at least for the moment. “Belly Flop. That’s who I am. Just plain Belly Flop is fine.”

  “Aha,” he nodded. “So the annoying nickname becomes the secret alias. Sweet.”

  I smiled. “Yeah…sweet.”

  Between waves that morning, Chris managed to get a little more information out of me, like how old I was, and how long I had been surfing. But I refused to tell him my real name or any of the drama going on with the video and the surf scout. He wasn’t much more forthcoming, and we both skirted certain questions. He, by joking—in response to my asking where he was from, he said, “I was born on Mars and tossed to Earth by negligent Martian parents”—and me, by turning the questions around. When he asked if I had a boyfriend, I replied, “Do I seem like the kind of girl who has a boyfriend?”

  He could surf, that was for sure; every move was fluid, liquid—a gift. Chris was a natural. Like me, I suppose. And he was freakishly easy to talk to.

  As the morning edged toward noon, Chris took the first big risk. With his eyes averted and nervously tugging on his earring, he stammered, “So, uh, Belly Flop, any chance I could convince you to hang out later? Maybe let me take you out for dinner or something? That is, if there isn’t a boyfriend. Or even if there is…I mean, he could come, too.” Chris was definitely not as smooth asking a girl out on a date as he was charging up a wave on his potato chip shortboard. And I was even less smooth in my response, having never been asked out on a date before in my life.

  “Um, I guess…whatever…sure…why not?” Talk about lame! I was the definition of lame.

  Chris brightened, looking up. “Cool. So what is it? Dinner for two…or three?”

  I held up two fingers, and Chris gave me a killer smile. Then the best set of the day came through, each wave a winner. Funny thing was we didn’t make a single one. We just sat there grinning shyly at each other as the waves passed by, bobbing up and over like two dumbstruck human corks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The position of the sun told me it was after 9 a.m. Wicked late, and way past time for me to leave. If I wanted to get to The Shell Shop before Sara—and remain un-surf-detected—I would have to sec
retly stash my wet stuff and surfboard behind the dumpster in the alley, then quickly wash the saltwater out of my hair in the hopefully not-too-gross public restroom sink around the corner.

  “I gotta go,” I told Chris. “You should stay if you want. Catch a few more before the wind gets on it.”

  He smiled a snaggle-toothed grin.

  I dawdled. “So, um. I’ll see you later.”

  “Cool,” Chris nodded. “Later.”

  I paddled shoreward picking up a white-water ride to the beach. When I had climbed the cliff, I turned and waved but Chris didn’t seem to notice, even though I could swear he was looking my way. Then I realized he wasn’t looking at me at all, he was staring at the movie star’s house above my head. Weird, I thought.

  I still wasn’t entirely sure this was a date-date; maybe Chris just wanted to return the favor—after all, I had let him surf Secretspot, so perhaps he felt that he should take me out for a meal? I had decided on Brinestellar’s Cafe, a popular place that wasn’t too blatantly romantic. We planned to meet there at 7 p.m. I decided that I had better spruce up my usual attire, just in case this was a date-date. I was worried that out of the water, in regular clothes, in a public place we’d have nothing to talk about. The local lore that surrounded the Ramelle house would be a good conversational tidbit—

  although what else we would talk about, I had no idea.

  I was so distracted and excited that I nearly forgot to store my gear and almost walked into the shop wearing damp surf clothes with my hair spiked and salted. While I had my head under the not-too-grody restroom spigot, I realized that conversational tidbits were the least of my problems. It was my night to stay late at The Shell Shop, so bye-bye to first potential date with a hot guy ever.

  “Dammit!” I yelled, bolting upright and bashing the back of my head against the faucet, the pain of which required four rapid repeats of the F word in its pure, unadulterated form.

  “Pardon?” A pair of feet encased in pink pom-pom trimmed anklets and ladies boat shoes shuffled in the stall behind me.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  The toilet flushed and out walked a woman about Gramma’s age. Her baggy shorts were pale pink and her hair, thin and unnaturally rosy, matched her shorts. I expected a tsk-tsk’ing, but instead the woman said, “Gonna be one of those days, huh, sugar?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Well, try not to get too pickled. You’re young, you’re beautiful. The world is your oyster, and don’t you forget it.” She reached into her handbag and took out an anti-bacterial towelette, wiped her hands, and tossed it in the trash. “Bye now. You try and have a good one, you hear?”

  “Thanks…um…I’ll try.”

  I finished washing the salt out of my hair after she left. Even if I was young, and beautiful—was I really?—even if the world was my oyster, how could I weasel my way out of night-time Shell Shop duty? Lying to Sara would be a waste of time. Kendall’s Watch was a smaller than small town and someone was bound to see me and Chris at Brinestellar’s and tell my mother.

  My only choice was to come clean with Sara, tell her I had “dinner plans,” and just ask to switch Shell Shop duty to another night. Cool and casual, no biggie, like this sort of thing happened all the time. The world was my oyster.

  I got to the shop at 9:40 a.m. and Sara waltzed in half an hour later.

  “Once again, you never made it to Early’s,” Sara remarked. Her damp hair was up in a top-knot, secured by a glistening oyster shell hair clip (one of The Shell Shop’s best sellers). She looked like exotic royalty.

  I, on the other hand, probably looked like a wet schnauzer. I fingered through my own shaggy mop. “Nah. I decided to bag it and sleep in; just jumped in the shower quick.”

  “You can’t avoid surfing forever, Anna. I know you. Your gills will close up.” Sara was trying to be sweet now, referring to an old game we had played when I was little. Whenever she gave me a bath, Sara would make pretend that I was a mermaid.

  “Quick, quick little mermaid,” she’d say. “Get your head underwater or your gills will close up.” I would gleefully obey, plunging beneath the sudsy surface, and staying underwater till I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. Afterwards, I’d shove both my legs into one side of my pajama bottoms and shuffle around the house, pretending I was a landlocked creature of the deep.

  “Oh fair lady,” I’d lament dramatically. “Please return me to the ocean where I can swim and swim and swim!”

  Then Sara would scoop me up and carry me to my bed. “Ah, little mermaid princess,” she’d say in a breathy fairy tale voice. “Time for you to go to sleep. I promise you will return to the ocean in your dreams.”

  And Sara was right. I usually did return to the ocean in my dreams. But now, a lot of time had passed since our days of mermaid play. Time filled with disappointment, conflict, and confusion.

  Now I shrugged half-heartedly. “Yeah, right,” I grumbled.

  “FYI,” Sara said, “the Stella scout seems to be history.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Although I suppose I could call Stella directly and—”

  “Don’t you dare, Sara,” I snapped. “You’ve done enough damage with that stupid video.”

  “I told you I had nothing to do with that, Anna,” she groaned. “Get over it already.”

  “Don’t go calling anyone!” I snapped. “Please. Let me make my own decisions.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, Anna. And it is driving me damn crazy.”

  “Well, too damn bad.”

  Sara shook her head in disgust and stalked off toward the storeroom.

  Get it together, I told myself. Being bitchy is not going to help with your date night request. “Which reminds me,” I called after her, striving for a nicer tone. “If possible, can I stay late tomorrow night instead of tonight?”

  “Why?”

  “I have dinner plans.”

  She turned toward me with a laugh. “Dinner plans?”

  “Yeah. Dinner plans.”

  “What? You and Myra? I’m sorry, Anna, but that doesn’t fly.”

  “No. I’m going with someone else.”

  “Who?” Sara was suspicious. I couldn’t blame her really, as I never did anything with anyone besides Myra.

  “This guy I met.”

  Sara’s eyes got wide. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “Do I know this guy?” she asked, sounding way too excited.

  “I doubt it. He’s not from around here.”

  “I hope this isn’t some kind of online hook-up, Anna.” Now she sounded mother-to-daughter worried. “All kinds of pervy creeps prey on young girls that way.”

  “No. I’m not that stupid. He’s an old friend of Myra’s. From the city.” I was such a smooth liar that I frightened even myself.

  “Oh.” She brightened. “One of Myra’s friends.”

  I knew what she was thinking: If this guy was one of Myra’s friends, he was a super nerd and therefore no danger whatsoever. I felt that I was home free, so I milked it. “He’s studying meteorology and wants to talk to me about storms, hurricanes, and waves and stuff.”

  Sara shrugged, nonchalant and no longer concerned. “Sounds really boring, but go ahead. I don’t have anything cooking tonight anyhow. Rusty has to take a business client out for dinner. Someone so famous he has to keep it hush hush. Even from me.”

  “Wow. Cool. That’s really exciting.” Not really, but since it seemed like Sara and I had reached a peace accord, I feigned enthusiasm.

  “I know.” Sara smiled, continuing to the storeroom. I heaved a mega-sigh of relief. My heart was pumping as if I had surfed a fifteen-foot face. I just had to get through the next eight hours alive.

  Which I barely managed. I was so hyper that I almost broke a vintage Shelly while packing it for
a customer, and was so distracted that I ran into the postcard rack about fifteen times. Sara didn’t seem to notice. She went about her business, expertly convincing female customers that ugly shell-trimmed sarongs and flip-flops were ‘really comfortable and totally sexy,’ and flirting with the guys until they bought tee shirts they didn’t need.

  At 5 p.m. the steady flow of customers had slowed to a snail’s pace, and Sara surprised me, saying: “Why don’t you just leave now?”

  “Okay.” I walked toward the door. “I’m going home to get my stuff together and go over to Myra’s. See you tomorrow morning.”

  “You know,” Sara started. “If you want to borrow something of mine for this date, go ahead. I mean, if this guy is worth dressing up for at all…”

  I smiled at my mother for what felt like the first time in years. “Thanks. I might do that. But he’s really just, like, a friend. I’m just doing Myra a favor.”

  She smiled back. “It’s not the end of the world to dress up for friends, Anna.”

  As I walked out the door she called, “Try the blue halter dress with the low back. It’ll look killer on you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  For once your mother and I are on the same page,” Myra said as she tied a blue knot at the nape of my neck. “This dress looks spectacular. You remind me of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, you know, after she comes home from Paris.”

  “Ugh. Don’t mention that city, please. I hate it. It might steal you from me,” I sighed.

  “Sorry. It was just a cinematic association I couldn’t resist. Now, turn around and look.”

  Myra spun me toward the full-length mirror on the back of her closet door. Not bad. Sara’s blue dress gave my meager boobs a bit more lift and the illusion of size; the inward cut of the halter did my shoulders justice, and made my arms seem more like a dancer’s and less like a monkey’s. And the royal blue did look great with my black hair.

  Myra rummaged through her jewelry box and pulled out a pair of dangly pearl earrings. “Overkill?” she asked.