Cut Back

by Todd Strasser

  Spazzy was sitting with Shauna on the edge of the pool again. “You hungry?” he asked.

  Kai shrugged a little. The truth was he hadn’t even been thinking about food until he saw that hero, but now it was looking pretty good.

  “Go ahead, have some,” Spazzy said. “Just don’t fill up. You don’t want to spoil your appetite for later.”

  “What’s later?” Kai asked.

  “A clambake on the beach.”

  Kai put a slice of hero and a big handful of chips on a paper plate, grabbed a Coke from the cooler, and joined Spazzy and Shauna at the side of the pool. He let his legs dangle in the pool water. The temperature was perfect. Bean drifted over on the raft. Booger surfaced near them and held on to the edge of the pool. Kai watched as both of them stared at the scars on his right leg. Neither said anything.

  “Water feels great, huh?” Bean said.

  Kai nodded and bit into the hero.

  “Spazzy can make it any temperature he wants,” said Booger. “It’s a heated pool.”

  “So you could actually use it all year round?” Shauna asked.

  “I guess,” Spazzy said. “Only we close the house just before Labor Day and don’t come back until after Memorial Day.”

  “You mean, for nine months of the year nobody uses it?” Bean asked.

  Spazzy nodded. “Not while my sister and I are back in California at school.”

  “What does Marta do?” Shauna asked.

  “She takes care of our house in California,” Spazzy explained.

  “But you just said you and your sister were at school,” Booger said.

  “We go home on the weekends sometimes, and that’s where we go for holidays,” Spazzy said. He wasn’t bragging. In fact he sounded as if he almost didn’t realize that not everybody had two homes that were hardly used.

  “Is all this, like, since nine-eleven?” Kai asked.

  “Oh, no, my parents always had these houses,” Spazzy said.

  “What did they do?” Shauna asked.

  “Like in business,” Bean added in case it wasn’t clear.

  “They worked for the family business,” Spazzy said. “It’s a company my great-grandfather started.”

  “What kind of company?” Bean asked.

  Spazzy began to twitch and blink. “You’re gonna laugh. You know those plastic screens with the blue or pink stuff at the bottoms of urinals?”

  Shauna frowned, but Kai, Bean, and Booger grinned knowingly.

  “Serious?” Kai asked.

  Spazzy nodded. “The Winthrop line of disposable urinal screens with or without integral deodorant blocks in fresh mint, fruity cherry, or bubblegum.”

  “Whoa, that’s way more information than I needed,” Bean said. He floated closer, so that the edge of the raft bounced against Shauna’s knees. “Don’t turn around,” he whispered. “Spazzy, your sister’s still standing by that window, watching us.”

  “I told you, she’s super overprotective,” Spazzy said, twitching and ticking again. “This is the first time I’ve ever had friends over. I mean, like, its the first time I’ve ever had friends, period. At least around here.”

  “Does she have any friends?” Bean asked.

  “Back at college,” Spazzy said.

  “So you guys come here for the whole summer and, well, you know,” Booger said.

  “Like, have no friends?” Spazzy finished the sentence for him. “Basically. But we still have fun. We go to the beach and take drives and we see a lot of movies.”

  “I thought she didn’t like to take you where there were crowds,” Kai said.

  “We have a system,” Spazzy said. “My sister figures out when the cineplex is gonna be the least crowded. We either go in and sit down way before everyone else or we come in at the last second, when it’s already dark. It’s not that hard.”

  Shauna leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Why don’t we ask her to come out and join the party?”

  “No way,” Spazzy said. “I mean, you can ask, but she’ll never do it.”

  “Why not?” Booger asked.

  “She just won’t,” said Spazzy.

  “How old is she?” asked Shauna.

  “She just turned twenty.”

  “That’s silly,” said Shauna. “She’s only two years older than Bean.”

  “A year and a half,” Bean said. “I turned eighteen in January.”

  “Look, you can ask, but she won’t do it,” Spazzy said. “You’ll see. She’s like forty years old trapped inside a twenty-year-old body.”

  “Help! I’m trapped in a forty-year-old body,” Booger said.

  “It’s no joke,” Spazzy said. “Not when you have to live with her every day.”

  Thirty-one

  After a while Jillian did come out of the house, but only to suggest they shower and change into dry clothes before heading down to the beach for the cookout.

  “It sometimes gets a little buggy in the evening,” she said. In one hand she held out a spray bottle of Off! and in the other some kind of Cutter bug stick. “I brought out both of these, in case some of you prefer the spray while others like the rub-on type.”

  She left them on the table and took the tray with the rest of the hero sandwich inside. The ice cooler had wheels and Marta wheeled it in.

  “Two kinds of bug spray?” Booger said. “She really is like forty.”

  “Told you so,” said Spazzy.

  They showered in the cabana and changed clothes.

  “So when are we gonna light the bonfire?” Booger asked once they were ready to head down to the beach.

  “I guess after dinner when it gets dark,” Bean said. “Spazzy, you think your sister will let you come down to the fire?”

  “It’s doubtful,” Spazzy said.

  “What if we invite her, too?” asked Shauna.

  “That’s even more doubtful,” said Spazzy.

  From the pool area they followed a wooden walkway over the dunes and out to the beach. Because this part of Sun Haven was mostly residential and didn’t have motels or resorts, the beach here had fewer people on it. Halfway to the water there was yet another surprise awaiting them. A balding man with a gray ponytail, and wearing a white apron, was cooking lobster, chicken, and hot dogs on a grill. Once again there was a cooler with drinks, bowls of chips, plastic plates, knives, and forks.

  “Do you guys, like, ever cook for yourselves?” asked Booger.

  Spazzy’s faced flushed slightly. “Not much. I mean, Marta does most of the cooking.”

  “You’re rich, aren’t you?” Booger said.

  “I don’t know,” Spazzy said. “I never asked.”

  “But you could have anything you want, right?” said Booger.

  “Hey, Boogs, chill,” Bean said. “That’s like private stuff. Maybe the dude doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t care,” said Spazzy. “I mean, I guess you’re right. I can get whatever I want, but all I ever want is music and surfing magazines and videos, and maybe a couple of wet suits and boards. There’s nothing else.”

  A kid wearing a black helmet and goggles shot past on an ATV glancing briefly at the cookout before continuing down the shoreline.

  “How about an ATV?” Booger asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Spazzy said. “My sister would never let me.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” said the man with the ponytail.

  Spazzy let the others go first. The ponytailed man offered everyone half a lobster or chicken. Kai hesitated.

  “Take the lobster,” Spazzy said.

  “I’ve never had it,” Kai said.

  Shauna looked up. “You’ve never eaten lobster?”

  Kai shook his head.

  “That’s amazing,” Shauna said. “I practically grew up on the stuff.”

  “Yeah, but your father was a lobsterman,” Bean said.

  “Take the lobster, Kai,” Shauna said. “I’ll show you how to eat it.”

  Kai took the lobste
r, a baked potato, and a small dish of melted butter. When the ponytailed man handed him some folded white plastic, a small metal fork with thin tines, and something that looked like a nutcracker, Kai gave Shauna a look. She nodded for him to take those things too. They sat down together in the sand.

  “Okay, first the lobster bib,” Shauna said, unfolding the plastic. It was a thin white bib with a picture of a red lobster on it, and reminded Kai of the bibs people put on infants at mealtime. She tied the ends around her neck so that the bib hung down in front of her. “This is so you don’t get lobster juice all over your clothes”

  Kai didn’t put it on right away. “Somehow I manage to eat a lot of things without getting food on me.”

  “Not lobster,” Shauna said. “Just put it on, okay?”

  Kai unfolded the bib and put it on.

  “Now, in my family, we always start with the claw.” Shauna picked up the lobster’s body in one hand, took the lobster’s claw arm in the other and twisted it off. Then she clamped the nutcracker around the claw and squeezed. When the claw broke, juice sprayed against her bib.

  “See?” she said. Using the thin fork, she dug out the succulent white lobster meat inside.

  Kai followed her example and dipped a chunk of claw meat in melted butter, then ate it. It was delicious.

  “Pretty good, huh?” Shauna asked.

  “I could get used to this,” Kai said.

  “I bet.”

  While she showed him how to get the meat out of the lobster’s arms, Kai asked, “What were you and Deb Hollister talking about today?”

  “Nothing”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  They looked up. Jillian had come down to the beach. Even though it was still an hour before sunset and pretty warm out, she’d knotted a white sweater over her shoulders.

  “It’s great,” said Shauna. “Thanks so much.”

  Everyone nodded in appreciation.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Jillian said.

  A slightly awkward silence followed. “Well, have fun,” Spazzy’s sister said, and started back up the beach.

  “Why don’t you join us?” Bean suddenly asked.

  Jillian stopped. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Sure you could” Bean said. “I mean, have you had dinner yet?”

  “Well, not really.”

  “Then let me fix you a plate.” Bean was on his feet getting her a plate of food before Spazzy’s sister could protest. But even with a plate of food in her hand, Jillian looked uncomfortable. Kai was pretty sure she couldn’t see herself sitting on the sand. Bean seemed to sense that, too.

  “Over here,” he said, and led her toward a large gray driftwood log lying in the sand a dozen yards away. Jillian followed and soon they were sitting together on the log, eating and talking. Kai couldn’t help thinking that for a tall, nerdy, long-boarding undertaker-in-training with a Fu Manchu mustache and a black braid that reached down to the middle of his back, Bean was definitely in control when it came to the opposite sex.

  Shauna leaned toward Kai. “He really has a way with the ladies.”

  More than you could imagine, Kai thought, remembering the secret trips to Sun Haven that Shauna’s cousin Pauline had been making. “I guess looks aren’t everything.”

  “No.” Shauna gazed dreamily at Kai. “But they sure don’t hurt.”

  Over on the log Jillian laughed out loud. Spazzy actually lifted his head and blinked, not from a tic, but from astonishment.

  “Was that my sister?” he whispered.

  “Must’ve been,” Shauna said.

  “Wow,” Spazzy said. “I can’t remember the last time I heard her laugh. I mean, except in a movie theater.”

  They sat on the beach eating lobster, corn on the cob, and baked potatoes. The thin strips of clouds had vanished, and the sky was a vast, flawless blue. It was unusual for the wind to remain calm all afternoon on such a hot day, but as a result the ocean was as glassy as the surface of Spazzy’s pool, broken only by a pod of fish splashing on the surface as they chased bait.

  The sun was just starting to set, but the beach was far from empty. It had been a hot day and people seemed reluctant to leave. Had there been fewer beachgoers, Kai might have noticed the trouble that was approaching them.

  Thirty-two

  “Aw, cute. Look, it’s a cookout.”

  Without even looking up, Kai knew it was Sam. Runt, Everett, Derek, Lucas, and a couple of girls including Lucas’s girlfriend, Deb Hollister, were also there. Kai was struck by the realization of who was driving the ATV that had passed them earlier. He should have known it was Runt.

  Kai and his friends stood up. Spazzy was twitching like crazy, and some of the girls with Deb Hollister stared at him with horrified expressions on their faces.

  “Cute bibs,” Runt taunted.

  Meanwhile Derek went over to the grill where the man with the ponytail was cooking. With his bare hand, the tattooed, pierced guy picked up a chicken leg and thigh right off the hot grill and took a bite.

  “Excuse me,” Jillian said. “That’s not for you.”

  Derek chewed on the chicken and looked at her with an almost blank expression. Kai couldn’t figure out whether there was a lot going on inside the guy’s head. Or nothing. Both possibilities were kind of unnerving.

  “Don’t you guys have anything better to do than crash our parties?” Booger asked. “Why don’t you have some parties of your own?”

  “We have plenty of parties,” Runt shot back. “We just make sure you don’t know about them.”

  “Then, why don’t you pretend you don’t know about this one?” Spazzy said.

  Runt glanced over at Lucas as if awaiting orders.

  “I guess I’m just thinking about your philosophy of sharing,” Lucas said to Kai. “You want us to share our waves with you. How come you don’t share your parties with us?”

  “Maybe I would have,” Kai said. “But this isn’t my party—it’s Spazzy’s.”

  It was a dumb mistake and Kai knew it the second it left his lips. He forgot to call Spazzy by his real name. Kai glanced at Jilian, who was suddenly wearing a massive frown.

  “It’s okay,” Spazzy said to his sister. “It’s just what everyone calls me. I don’t even care. I mean, I’m so used to it, I don’t even notice anymore.”

  But between Derek taking the chicken and Kai calling Spazzy by his nickname, it was clear that Jillian had had enough. She took Spazzy aside to speak to him in private, but Kai and the others could hear every word she said.

  “What’s going on here?” Jilian asked her brother.

  “Nothing, really, they’re just some guys we know,” Spazzy said.

  “How?” Jillian asked.

  “Just from hanging around,” Spazzy said.

  For a moment Spazzy’s sister was silent, but Kai could see that her brother’s answer was not going down well. Jillian turned to Lucas. “You’re Lucas Frank. I’ve seen your picture in the local paper. You’re a surfer.”

  “That’s right,” Lucas said.

  Jillian studied Lucas’s crew. “You’re all surfers?”

  Sam, Everett, and the others nodded. Jillian turned to Kai. “And you and your friends?”

  Kai nodded. He could almost see Jillian putting it together in her head. All these kids were surfers. How in the world could her brother know them? Where would he have met them? Spazzy’s sister turned to Lucas again. “This is a private gathering. I would appreciate it if you would leave my brother and his friends alone.”

  Lucas glanced at his crew and jerked his head, then started down the beach. The crew followed, except for Derek, who went over to the grill and picked up a cob of corn for the walk home.

  When Lucas and his friends had gone, Jillian stared for a moment at Spazzy. Then she turned and walked back toward the house.

  Thirty-three

  Up to that point Spazzy had been in a really good mood, but now he grew quiet. They fi
nished the cookout talking about movies and TV and music. Everything, it seemed, except surfing. The sun was starting to go down, and they began to hear the pops and cracks of fireworks.

  “Time pretty soon for the bonfire,” Bean said.

  An awkward silence passed.

  “Hey, Spazzy,” Kai said. “Maybe you could get Jillian to come?”

  Spazzy twitched, licked the back of his hand, and sniffed it. Stuck a finger in his ear. Blinked. Shook his head. “Thanks, Kai, but it’s not happening. When I go back in the house, it’s gonna be the fricken Spanish Inquisition.”

  “The what?” Booger asked.

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” said Bean, then got up. “We still have to thank her for the party.”

  With Bean in the lead, they walked up the beach, across the walkway over the dunes, and around the swimming pool. Through the sliding glass doors they could see Jillian inside, sitting on a couch, reading a book. Spazzy slid open the door closest to her. She looked up with an expression that was just a few degrees warmer than icy. A mask.

  “Everyone wants to say thanks,” Spazzy said.

  Jillian nodded.

  One by one, Kai and his friends told Spazzy’s sister how much they appreciated the party.

  “You know, if you’d like to come down to the bonfire,” Bean said.

  “Thank you, Larry” said Jillian.

  “It’s Bean, really It’s been a long time since anyone called me Larry.”

  “Bean,” Jillian said flatly.

  “And everyone calls me Booger,” said Booger. “I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with my nose or nothing. It’s because I bodyboard.”

  Jillian nodded, but said nothing. It was pretty clear that she understood they were saying that they all had nicknames. The others backed out through the sliding door, but Kai stayed a moment longer. He put his arm around Spazzy’s shoulder. “I just want you to know that we think your brother’s a cool guy. It doesn’t matter what syndrome or nickname he has. He’s always welcome to do stuff with us.”

  Jillian nodded again.

  “And you, too.”

  Jillian blinked. As if hanging out with a bunch of scruffy local surf rats was something she’d ever do.