“It’s not a handout,” Kai said. “It’s just a chance to show what you’ve got. Besides, if Lucas and I agree, what difference does it make?”
Lucas gazed out at the approaching set. “Suppose we do it this way: I get the first good one, and then you can give Spazzy the next?”
“As long as you agree to take the first or second wave in the set,” Kai said.
“Deal,” said Lucas.
The set came in and, as agreed, Lucas took off first.
Kai turned to Spazzy. “Get the next one, dude. It’s all yours.”
“Thanks, Kai.” Spazzy paddled into the next wave. From Kai’s viewpoint behind, everything looked good. He expected to see Spazzy’s head and shoulders pop up. It didn’t happen. A second later Spazzy’s board pin-wheeled into the air. The leash went tight and the board hurtled back down.
Kai checked his watch. Three minutes left.
Spazzy had missed what was probably his last shot.
With two minutes left, Lucas paddled back out.
“Looks like your plan didn’t work,” he said.
Kai watched Spazzy paddle toward them through the waves, trying to get out in time for one last ride. The kid had a desperate, fearful look on his face—as if he just didn’t want it to end like this. Kai looked back out to see if anything decent was coming in. There were some dark wave crests out there rising above the others, but nothing particularly big or impressive. Probably nothing that would give Spazzy the kind of platform he needed to get a really stellar ride.
“Hey, look at it this way,” Lucas said. “Your friend had a good run.”
He had, and Kai was glad for him. This meant something to Spazzy. It wasn’t just about competing. It was about showing people what a kid with a disability could do. But what did it mean to Kai? Why should he care whether he got to the finals or not? Wasn’t this what he hated about surfing? The competition. Here for a trophy. There for a sponsorship, and in most places, just for another wave. If this competition didn’t mean anything to him, but meant so much to Spazzy, what was Kai doing out there?
The next set was coming. The one neither Kai nor Lucas needed to get into the finals. The one that simply didn’t have enough juice to help Spazzy get a decent ride.
“Might as well get a few extra points for the ride in,” Lucas said, and started to paddle.
Suddenly Kai had an idea.
Forty-five
Kai proned out on his board and started to paddle as hard as he could. There was no way he was going to catch the wave, but that wasn’t what he was trying to do. Just a few feet from him, Lucas was also paddling. But those few feet were the difference between catching it and not catching it. Kai was counting on Lucas to turn and look back at the wave. And when he did, he was in for a surprise.
Lucas looked back over his shoulder. When he saw Kai just behind and to his right, his eyes widened. He had to know that if they both kept going, there was a good chance Kai would hit him.
Lucas pulled up into a stall and let the wave pass. Kai kept going and caught it, then purposefully allowed himself to bite it in the trough. When his head came up out of the soup, he could hear the shrilled tremolo of the air horn. He’d just managed to get himself disqualified.
Lucas was paddling toward him with an angry look on his face. “What the fuck was that?” he yelled.
Kai just smiled and held on to his board. “I don’t know what I was thinking, Lucas. Guess I won’t be seeing you in the finals after all.”
He started to paddle in.
“Hey!” Spazzy called from behind, and paddled to catch up to Kai. “What happened out there?”
“I never saw him,” Kai lied as they paddled in side by side. “I was so focused on catching that wave.”
“But you didn’t even need it,” Spazzy said.
“You never know,” Kai said. “You can’t tell what the judges are thinking.”
“But now you’re out of the contest,” Spazzy said.
“I know.” Kai tried to look grim. “Guess you’ll have to do it for me.”
The first person to greet Kai on the beach was Buzzy Frank with a major glower on his face. “What the hell was that?”
“I didn’t see him,” Kai said as Lucas joined them.
“The hell you didn’t.”
“Look,” Kai said. “What do you care? Lucas won that heat hands down. He’s in the finals. That’s the only thing that matters, right?”
Buzzy frowned at him, then turned to his son. “Come on, let’s go.”
Buzzy marched away, but Lucas didn’t follow. Instead he studied Kai. “You had the best single-wave score of the day. You were a lock for the finals. You knew I was on that wave. You interfered on purpose. Why?”
“Something came up,” Kai said. “Something more important than winning.”
Lucas scowled at him like he couldn’t understand.
“Come on, Lucas,” Buzzy called.
Lucas left to join his father, and Kai walked up the beach with his board tucked under his arm. Spazzy had already gone ahead to his sister, Shauna, and Bean.
“I’m in the finals!” he cried. “Can you believe it?”
“Way to go.” Bean patted him on the shoulder.
“I mean, come on, Jillian,” Spazzy said to his sister. “If I’m good enough to make it to the finals, I must be good enough to go surfing by myself back in Sun Haven, right?”
Jillian pursed her lips and frowned. “As long as you’re with a friend.”
“Promise you won’t change your mind?” Spazzy asked.
“Promise,” his sister said.
Spazzy grinned. “This has to be the best day of my life.” He seemed to have trouble swallowing. “Man, I am thirsty. Do we have any water?”
“We ran out” Jillian said.
“I’ll go get some,” Spazzy said.
Ever protective of her little brother, Jillian got up. “I’ll go with you.”
They headed up the beach to the snack bar. As soon as they were out of earshot, Bean turned to Kai. “Interesting move out there. Tough break, getting disqualified on a garbage wave you had no reason to take. Especially considering you had the highest single-wave score of the day.”
“Yeah.”
“Real stroke of luck for Spazzy,” Bean said. “Imagine. It’s the kids first competition ever and he’s made it to the finals. Too bad he’ll totally get pounded by Lucas.”
“He said this is the best day of his life,” said Shauna.
“Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?” Bean asked.
“Life is strange,” Kai said.
The three of them smiled.
Look for the next Impact Zone book!
Close Out
by Todd Strasser
The tense mist of competition was thick in the air. This wasn’t some small, local, “let’s all go out and have fun” kind of event. No one smiled or joked. When Kai looked around, he saw nothing but grim determination on the faces of his fellow competitors. And there were plenty of good surfers out there. People who could rip and work a wave until there was nothing left but soup. Kai surfed with total resolve, concentration, and intensity. Tomorrow he could go back to being a soul surfer.
It was a long day, and by midafternoon everyone from Sun Haven except Kai, Lucas, and Bean had been eliminated. Bean was in the men’s long board finals when Booger, Spazzy, and Jillian showed up.
“Hey, guys!” Spazzy twitched as he wound his way through the patchwork of blankets, beach towels, and umbrellas. Booger and Jillian followed. Kai could see from the way Jillian kept swiveling her head that she was looking for Bean.
“He’s out there.” Kai pointed out at the break, where six long boarders in colored jerseys were jockeying for waves.
“How’s he doing?” Booger asked.
“Hard to tell,” Kai said. “They’re all good. At this point it probably has as much to do with luck as anything else.”
An air horn blared twice. Bean’s heat was ove
r. A few minutes later he trudged up the beach with his board under his arm and sea-water dripping off the end of his long braided ponytail. His head was down and it was hard to tell whether he was bummed or just tired. But when he saw Jillian, he straightened up and smiled.
“How come you’re not over at the tent waiting for the results?” Booger asked.
“They don’t announce the winners until the awards ceremony,” Bean said, sounding dejected. “But I dn’t get enough good rides. It’s unbelievable out there. You can hardly get on a wave. Every time you think you’re ready to go, there’s some other dude already paddling into it.”
“You mean they’re snaking you?” Booger asked.
“Maybe, but it’s hard to tell,” Bean said. “These guys just know where to be. No matter how deep in the pocket you think you are, there’s always someone a little deeper.”
Jillian put her hand on Bean’s shoulder.
“This the way you remember it?” Kai asked Curtis.
The older man shook his head. “The competition’s fiercer, the stakes are bigger. These guys are in top shape. Look at ’em. Their shoulders, and arms, and legs. You can see they train like athletes. Back in my day, we competed hard, but there was a feeling that you still let everyone have his shot. That’s not here anymore. You don’t get your shot unless you fight for it. That fight starts in a gym, lifting weights, and on a track, doing endurance work. When I was on the circuit, the only things we lifted were boards and beer bottles. There are boys out there today doing things world champions weren’t doing when I competed.”
“Well, sure,” Bean teased. “Back in those days it wasn’t easy to catch air on a hundred-and-eighty-pound, fifteen-foot solid redwood board.”
“Screw you,” Curtis growled in a good-natured way. “By the end of my time on the tour they were starting to use short boards. The forerunners of what you kids are on today.”
“Men’s open finals,” the beach marshal announced through the megaphone. “Competitors get your jerseys.”
Kai rose to his feet and picked up his board. His friends wished him good luck.
“You can do it, Kai.”
“Give it your best shot, dude.”
Todd Stresser is the author of more than one hundred novels for teens and middle graders including the best-selling Help! I’m Trapped In … series. His novels for older teens include The Accident, The Wave, Give a Boy a Gun, and Can’t Get There from Here. Todd and his kids have surfed Hawaii, California, and the eastern seaboard from Florida to New York.
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Kai could hear the cheers and hoots before the ride even ended. There’d definitely been luck involved. Somehow he’d found himself on a wave that didn’t want to quit. But he’d also taken advantage of what it had to offer.
When he paddled back out, Kai wasn’t surprised to see the glum expression on Lucas’s face. The guy knew he’d been completely out-surfed. What did surprise Kai was when Lucas nodded and grudgingly said, “Nice ride.”
Kai paddled up over the next wave. There was Spazzy, sitting on his board, shoulders hunched, looking even more bummed than Lucas.
Only then did Kai realize what he’d done.
Look for the final book in the Impact Zone series:
Close Out
Coming soon from Simon Pulse
And get hooked on some of Todd Strasser’s other Simon & Schuster hooks …
Can’t Get There from Here
Give a Boy a Gun
How I Created My Perfect Prom Date
Here Comes Heavenly
Buzzard’s Feast: Against the Odds
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