Brady dove off his Jet Ski into the churning waves to help her. He fought the strong current as he tried to find Mack.
Onshore, the crowd was silent. Mack’s grandfather looked out at the angry ocean. He waited for Mack and Brady to break the surface, but there was no sign of them.
A few moments later, Mack’s surfboard surfaced above the waves. Then Mack and Brady both came up, gasping for air.
They made their way to the shore and staggered onto the beach. Mack pulled her surfboard along behind her. Now that she was safe, she turned angrily to Brady.
“What did you do?” Mack shrieked.
“I tried to save you!” Brady exclaimed.
Mack stamped her foot in the sand. “I didn’t need saving! This was my last chance to ride that monster wave before I left forever. And instead, I end up back here at…at…” She stopped talking and looked around. Everything looked…different.
Who were those boys singing? And why was everyone wearing vintage 1960s beachwear?
“Okay,” she said slowly, feeling very confused. “I must have hit my head. Is this what a concussion looks like?”
Brady looked around the beach. He took in the singing and dancing surfers in old-fashioned bathing suits. Brady turned back to focus on Mack. “Did we both hit our heads?” he asked.
A chorus of dancers was heading their way. Brady grabbed Mack’s hand, and together they dove behind a sailboat lodged on the sand. They got out of the way of the dancers just in time.
“It’s weird,” Brady said, peering over the side of the boat. He scratched his head. “I’ve been here before.”
More and more surfers poured onto the beach and joined in the performance. Mack grabbed Brady’s arm in a panic. “Maybe we’re dead. We’ve died and ended up in a musical!”
A group of surfers suddenly lined up in front of them.
“Ka-razy!” a surfer named Seacat cried as he raced by Mack and Brady.
“Ka-razy!” the chorus of surfers answered.
This is ka-razy! Mack thought as the flash mob started to dance.
Just then, a group of girls in bikinis ran by, laughing. All the surfers watched them pass.
“Check that out,” Seacat said with a whistle. “Only thing better than a wave crashing is a wahine walking!”
“In your dreams, Seacat,” a surfer girl replied. “You’ve been hit on the head by too many boards!”
One of Seacat’s friends jokingly pushed him, and they all laughed as they headed to the ocean.
Brady tugged on Mack’s arm. His eyes were wide. “Mack!” Brady exclaimed. “We’re in the movie!”
“In what movie?” Mack asked.
“My movie. Wet Side Story!” he exclaimed.
“What? How? Why?” she sputtered. At that moment, Mack realized why the blond surfer who was leading the song looked so familiar. He was the star of the movie she had seen on TV! “What should we do?” she cried.
A smile spread across Brady’s face. “For right now, I guess…have some fun?”
“Any other options?” Mack asked.
“Look,” Brady told her. “Somehow we are in my favorite movie ever, and a gang of singing surfers is heading this way.” He stopped talking and pointed. “I say let’s join in!” he shouted and he jumped into the dance.
The cast of surfers all announced their names as they lined up for a roll call. At the end of the line, Brady and Mack meekly mumbled their names as well.
“Check it out!” Brady shouted to Mack as he danced. He clapped and spun around at exactly the same time as the others. “I know all the moves!”
Mack stood back and watched Brady master the beach choreography. At the end of the dance, everyone fell to the sand. Mack sighed, happy that all that singing and dancing was over. But one more beat made the surfers sit up, put their sunglasses on, and then fall back down. Mack tried to remain calm.
“This is fantastic,” Brady gushed. “Crazy, right?”
“I’d say so,” Mack replied.
Brady took her hand. “Come on!” He dragged Mack up to the crowd of surfers as they gathered at Big Momma’s, the beach-hut restaurant from the film.
“No shirts, no shoes—no service!” Big Momma shouted from the front door. She smiled at all the surfers.
Suddenly, the group noticed Mack and Brady. The couple looked out of place in their futuristic beachwear. Brady felt all eyes on him.
“We haven’t seen you kahunas around here before,” Giggles, a surfer girl, said.
“I’m McKenzie,” Mack said, trying to smile. “People call me Mack.”
“I’m Brady. People call me…Brady.”
Seacat stood next to Brady. “And where are you cats from?”
Brady flashed a smile. “We’re from…uh…” he began, “not far away,” while at the same time, Mack said, “Far away.”
Oops. They gave each other a look. “Far away,” Brady corrected himself, while Mack said, “Not far away” instead. Again, oops.
“Sorry,” Brady said quickly. “We’re still dealing with a major time change.”
“Hey Rascal,” Seacat said to his buddy next to him. “It seems like we’ve got some unwanted ho-dads we need to put the kibosh on!”
Brady reacted fast. “No, you got it all wrong!” he exclaimed.
Seacat shook his head. “We don’t jelly roll to outsiders,” he told him.
As the group closed in on Brady and Mack, there was a loud rumble outside the restaurant. Brady suddenly realized what was happening. He reached for Mack and took her hand.
“This is Big Momma’s,” Brady told her. “The restaurant where the surfers and bikers hang.”
At that moment, the door swung open and a biker loomed in the doorway. The biker pulled out a comb from his pocket and ran it smoothly through his hair.
Recalling the plot of the movie, Brady leaned in to Mack. “Each gang wants the other gone so they can have this place for themselves.”
Another biker entered the restaurant. She had big hair and high-heeled shoes. She popped a large bubblegum bubble as she struck a pose.
Brady anxiously watched the door, waiting for the next biker to enter. “Here comes Butchy, the leader of the greaser motorcycle gang, the Rodents,” he told Mack.
Mack stared at the bikers. “The Rodents?” she asked. Then a souped-up motorcycle rolled through the doorway and Butchy stepped inside.
“How cool is that!” Brady gasped. His mouth hung open.
“So…we landed in the middle of a surf-and-turf war?” Mack asked.
Butchy snapped his fingers and clapped three times. Heeding the call, the bikers fell into formation around him. They all wore leather jackets with “Rodents” painted on the back.
“Surfers!” Butchy complained, wrinkling up his nose. “I knew I smelled something fishy.”
Seacat stepped forward. “Rodents,” he snarled. “I knew I should have laid some traps!”
Giggles put her hands on her hips. “I thought you were exterminated,” she commented.
“And I thought you surfers were all washed up,” one of the bikers shot back.
“Yeah,” Butchy said, smiling. “’Cause clearly you is drips!”
“Why don’t you make like the ocean and wave good-bye!” the surfer next to Seacat said.
Mack rolled her eyes. Between the bad grammar and the hokey lines, she was losing it!
Brady poked Mack and grinned. “They just don’t write ’em like that anymore!”
“I do believes you alls is on our side of Big Momma’s,” Butchy said to Seacat and the surfers.
Seacat moved closer. “Yeah? And which side is your side?”
Butchy steadied his gaze at Seacat. “The left side!” he growled.
Tanner walked over to Butchy and put his hands on his shoulders. He turned the biker around to face the other side of the restaurant. “There!” he shouted.
All the surfers laughed—and so did Brady. Then he caught Mack’s eye. “Oh, come on,” he said.
“That’s great stuff!” He continued to say the lines with the characters as they argued.
By the jukebox, a biker took off her helmet. Mack looked closer and recognized her as Lela, the lead biker girl from the movie. Lela dropped a quarter in the jukebox and then expertly kicked it so music began. Brady took Mack’s hand and pulled her away. “Stand back!” he cried. When Mack protested, Brady replied, “You’ll see!”
The music started, and the bikers went into their dance routine, with Butchy singing the lead. Brady saw a Rodent leather jacket on the back of a chair, and quickly pulled it on. Then, he hopped onto the table and started singing. Butchy, watching Brady approvingly, handed him an electric guitar. Brady slung the guitar over his shoulder, jumped off the table, and then slid across the room on his knees.
Mack watched in disbelief. Since when did Brady know how to do all of these dance moves?
At the end of the song, Brady wound up face to face with Butchy. Butchy held out his hand to shake, but Brady went to give him a high five. As a ’60s biker, Butchy had no idea what to do. He thought Brady was going to smack him! Butchy puts up his fists to fight back.
Taking this as a good exit cue, Mack pulled Brady out of the restaurant.
“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Mack said once they were outside.
“I’ve always wanted to be in that number,” Brady replied sheepishly.
Mack sat down on the sand and rubbed her head. How were they ever going to get home?
Mack gazed out at the ocean and listened to the familiar rhythm of the waves crashing on the beach. She sighed and turned to face Brady. “Remember that movie about the robot that drank liquid from an abandoned spaceship?” she asked. “And turned into a vampire middle-school teacher who taught the entire school how to salsa, and they went on to win the regional championship?”
“Yeah?” Brady replied, vaguely remembering the movie.
“That makes more sense than all this,” she said, shaking her head.
Brady put up his hand. “I have an idea. Hand me my cell.”
Mack raised her eyebrows and waited for Brady to realize what he had asked.
“What year was this movie made?” she asked.
“Around nineteen sixty,” he said. “And?”
“And you’re going to do what with a cell phone?”
“Call my folks,” Brady replied, and then he stopped. “Who weren’t born yet. Right.” He slumped back on the sand.
Mack tried to get Brady to focus. “Brady, my entire future is dependent on getting out of here, like, now!”
A bunch of surfers ran by them laughing as they headed toward the water.
Brady watched them hop on surfboards and paddle out to the waves. “Except, maybe it would be fun to hang here for a bit,” he said.
“Except no, it wouldn’t,” Mack told him, “because I snuck out of my house and have to catch a plane in two hours. Well, two hours and fifty years.”
Realizing how serious Mack was about leaving, Brady sighed. “Maybe we just need to figure out how we got here, so we can leave,” he said. “Right before we landed here, we got caught in that storm. Maybe that had something to do with it?”
“So we need another storm to happen in order to leave,” Mack said, thinking out loud.
Brady brightened. “We’re in luck, because at the end of the movie, there’s a huge storm.”
Mack narrowed her eyes. “And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
A smile crept across his face. “Wait for the end of the movie!”
Putting her head in her hands, Mack moaned. “I knew it was a mistake to sneak out,” she grumbled. “I should never have done it.”
“You had to surf and you know it,” Brady assured her. “You have to do what your heart tells you, Mack.”
Just then, Seacat and a few surfers came running over to them.
“We’re having a shredder shindig tonight here at Big Momma’s,” Seacat told them. “You should both make the scene.”
“Thanks, but—” Mack began to say.
Brady put his hand on Mack’s arm. “Actually, it sounds blastin’!” he exclaimed.
The surfers ran off as Mack gave Brady a stern look. “We’re stuck in another dimension, and you think going to a party is the best use of our time?” She stood up. “Well, not me!”
At that moment, the daylight faded and suddenly it was evening. Instead of their bathing suits, Mack and Brady were wearing vintage 1960s beachwear.
“Where did these outfits come from?” Mack asked, slightly freaked out.
“The magic of movies,” Brady said, winking.
Mack gave up trying to figure this all out. She headed inside Big Momma’s with Brady. On stage, a band was playing. There were a few surfers already dancing.
“This scene is great,” Brady said to Mack. Then he realized where they were standing. He spotted the front door and pulled Mack away. “Heads up!” he cried.
Just then, two surfers ran through the entrance with their boards.
“No surfboards!” Big Momma called out.
A few bikers were standing toward the back of the restaurant. When they saw the surfers, they grimaced.
“Hey Lugnut, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Butchy, the leader of the bikers, said to the boy next to him.
“That if you sneeze and cough at the same time, you could blow your whole face off?” Lugnut asked.
“No,” Butchy said. He paused and thought about what Lugnut had said. “Well, yeah, but no! I’m thinking how much I don’t like surfers.”
“So boss, how we going to get Big Momma’s to be only a biker joint?” Lugnut asked.
“Shut up, I’m thinking,” Butchy snapped.
Cheechee, another one of the bikers, grunted. “How long is that going to take?”
“Great. Now I got two things to think about,” Butchy grumbled. Then he shook his head. “Come on,” Butchy said. “We is not gonna let a bunch of waterlogged washouts spoil our very fine ev-e-ning.”
As soon as the bikers entered Big Momma’s, the surfing dance party stopped.
Lela walked over with a tray of sodas and sat next to Butchy.
“Sodas for everyone,” Lela said, smiling.
“Thanks, sis,” Butchy said. “These surfers weren’t bothering you, were they?”
“Of course not,” Lela said to her big brother. “They’re not so bad.”
“All surfers is bad,” Cheechee snapped.
“Except the ones that are very bad,” Butchy added. “They’re even worse!” A few moments later, Big Momma walked in from the kitchen. Rascal spotted her and called her over.
“Hey Big Momma, you sure know how to fry up a fish burger,” he said.
Big Momma smiled. “If you can catch it, Big Momma can cook it! It’s home cooking because being here is like being home. Everyone is welcome here!”
Rascal reached out for Big Momma’s hand and started dancing with her. Lela jumped on stage with a few backup singers and launched into a song.
Brady tried to join in, and Mack had to practically drag him off the dance floor.
“I’m sorry, Brady, but I’m worried,” she whispered. “I don’t have time to wait for a storm. I’m going to the beach to see if I can figure another way out of here.”
Brady spun her around. “But look!” he cried. “Remember? This is the part of the movie we saw at your grandfather’s, where the two leads get together.”
Mack headed for the door. “You enjoy it. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”
As Mack turned to leave, she bumped right into Tanner. His eyes met hers and they locked gazes. At the same time, across the room, Lela stumbled and fell off the edge of the stage. Brady rushed over, and Lela fell into his arms. Their eyes met, and she smiled. Lela sang the rest of the song directly to Brady.
When the music stopped, Lela stayed near Brady. “You totally saved my life,” she said.
“Not really,” Brady told
her. “The stage is like, two feet up. The worst you would have done is broken a nail.”
Lela flashed him a smile. “I guess I literally fell for you, huh?” she cooed. “I’m Lela.”
At that moment, Brady realized that his on-screen crush was now standing in front of him! “I know,” he admitted. “I mean, it’s really you. I mean, I’ve thought about meeting you since I was, like, in fifth grade!”
“Me too!” Lela gushed. Then she paused. “Who are you?”
“I’m Brady, knight in shining board shorts.” He puffed out his chest.
“That’s a really long last name,” she said, slightly puzzled.
Meanwhile, Tanner was still staring at Mack.
“Nice of you to drop in,” he joked.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you,” she said, distracted. She tried to move toward the door.
“And now that you do, you like what you see?” Tanner asked with a wink.
“Oh, sure, nice to meet you,” Mack said. She couldn’t help but notice how cute he was. That is until she looked past him to the door and spotted Brady and Lela. Brady was practically drooling over her!
“Will you excuse me?” She walked up to Brady. “Brady, can I have a moment?” When Brady didn’t seem to hear her, Mack tried again. “A really quick, important moment?”
Reluctantly, Brady stepped away. “Excuse me, Lela,” he said, apologetically.
“It was really great falling into you. We should do it again sometime,” Lela flirted.
Mack leaned into Brady. She tried to act casual. “The mannequin with the six rows of teeth…just asked me out.”
But Brady wasn’t listening. “Mack, something’s not right,” he said slowly.
Mack rolled her eyes. “We could make a list of the things that aren’t right, starting with the fact that there are enough things for a list.”
Brady shook his head. “Look around,” he told her. He spun her around to see what was going on in the restaurant.
The room had suddenly grown eerily quiet. The surfers and bikers were each doing their own thing on opposite sides of the room.
“Nothing’s happening,” Brady explained. “It’s almost…dull.”
Teen Beach Movie Page 2
