by Anne Dayton
I rear my head back.
“I’m not trying to punish him, Riley. I’m trying to help him. And in this case, the best help I can give Michael is to let him go.”
I can feel my mouth hanging open. “So just like that, you’re going to fail him?”
“I don’t fail people. In my class you earn the grade you deserve.” She puts the pen down on the desk. “But, yes, I do hope some good will come of this, that failing my class will get him transferred to someone who is better equipped to help him.”
I reach down and grab the strap of my bag.
“What might surprise you is that Michael is not the only McGee I’m worried about.” She leans forward. “How are you doing?”
I stand up and loop my bag over my shoulder.
“You seem distracted this year—distant, fumbling.” She reaches across her desk and touches my arm. “What’s going on?”
I clench my fists. “I have to go.”
“It looks to me like everyone in your life has their own dreams for you, but you have no idea what you want.”
I push the door open. After all we’ve done for her . . . defending her to the other students at this stupid school. I can’t believe after all that she would turn on me now.
“I’ll never forget the day you first walked into my classroom.” I turn back to face her. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and her face is sad. “I’d never seen a student with so much promise. You’re the smartest kid in this school.”
I think about Ana, and I’m not so sure. She and I have always been in a dead heat for the top spot in our class.
“You’re special. You always have been, and you’re cut out for more than this”—she gestures around her tiny office—“and it kills me to see you throw it all away.”
“What are you talking about?” I step out into the hallway. “I’m not throwing anything away.” I stare at Ms. Moore. I used to think she had all the answers, that I could trust her more than anyone in the world. Now I’m beginning to see the truth—she just likes to meddle in people’s lives.
She bites her lip. “I want to help. I really do.”
I turn on my heels and walk down the hall.
20
Never in the three years I’ve known Zoe has she asked for help with schoolwork, which is why I knew I had to come. It’s two days after Thanksgiving, and we’re bent over her kitchen table, math books and papers spread out in front of us, calculating angles.
“That’s right.” I nod. “You’ve got it. Twenty degrees. You only have to remember SOH-CAH-TOA. So sine equals?”
“Opposite.” Zoe grips her pencil tightly. “Over hypotenuse.”
“Exactly.” I try to sound excited, but I always thought trigonometry was dull. “Want to try the next one?”
Zoe nods and starts copying the next problem from the book. Her lips move as she writes. I lean back and crane my neck to see out the big sliding glass door to Zoe’s backyard. Zoe lives in the woods, and from her back patio, you can see miles and miles of leafy green treetops. Somewhere out there there’s a stable, but I can’t spot it through the trees. Coming to Zoe’s house always feels like entering anther world, or at least another era, where shag carpet, textured wallpaper, and domed ceilings are considered normal.
“Okay.” She points to her paper. “Did I get this one right?”
I scan her work and see that the degrees of her triangle add up to two hundred and thirty.
“Let’s take another look at this.” I lean over her paper and try to make out her messy handwriting. Zoe blows out a breath and bends in closer. It doesn’t take long to figure out where she’s gone wrong, and I watch as she reworks the problem.
“Zo?” I push my chair back and help myself to a glass of water. “What made you suddenly so interested in your math grade?” From the window over the sink, I can see Zoe’s older brother, Nick, coming up the path from the stable.
“I don’t know.” Zoe shrugs, and her pale cheeks turn pink. “I mean, colleges want you to have good grades, right? To get in, and to, like, get financial aid and stuff.” She doodles on the edge of her paper, drawing a heart. “I should have started thinking about this stuff ages ago.”
I take a long gulp of the cool, clear water. The water at Zoe’s house comes from a well in the woods, and it tastes way better than the stuff that comes through the pipes in town.
“So you’re really applying to USC?”
“Yeah.” Zoe scratches her nose. “You guys are too, right? And Dean. ”
I set my glass down on the scarred Formica counter and walk back to the table. The legs of my chair scrape against the floor as I settle back into my chair. “So let’s see what’s going on with the next problem.”
I make sure Zoe sets up the equation right, then let my eyes focus on a dent in her tabletop. Maybe I would like LA. It’s sunny all the time, and you can surf year-round.
“You girls ready for a break?” Zoe’s mom, Dreamy, comes down the stairs from the second floor and smiles at us as she steps into the kitchen. “I made some carob chip cookies yesterday.”
“Mom, we’re trying to work.” Zoe rolls her eyes. She’s always been embarrassed about her parents’ vegan diet, but I think it’s pretty cool. I reach for the plate of cookies Dreamy holds out and take one. Carob doesn’t taste exactly like chocolate, but it’s pretty good. Zoe waves the plate away.
“What are you girls working on?” Dreamy leans back against the countertop and bites into one of the cookies.
“Trig.” Zoe taps her pencil against her paper. “You dug out all the Christmas decorations already?” There’s an edge to Zoe’s voice, and I look at Dreamy to see if she heard it too. Dreamy meets my eye and shakes her head, like she not only caught it but has heard it before.
“Oh look, here comes Nick,” Dreamy says cheerfully. A second later Nick crosses the patio and slides open the smudged-glass door. He waves as he steps onto the braided rug by the door and starts unlacing his work boots.
“So, Riley, do you know what you’re doing next year?” Dreamy asks.
I shove my cookie into my mouth to give myself a few moments before I have to answer. “Maybe USC,” I say and pray that will be enough to satisfy her.
“Oh really?” Dreamy’s eyebrows shoot up. “So, college then?”
I twist in my chair. Why is she so surprised?
“That’s always kind of been the plan.” I run my fingers along the rough surface of the table, tracing the grain of the dark wood with my finger. “I mean, you have to go to college, right?”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel my cheeks turn red. I’m so stupid. She’s taking night classes now, but Dreamy never went to college. I put my hand over my mouth.
“Don’t worry about it.” Dreamy laughs, waving her hand at me. “When I was young, there was a different mind-set on these things. No one had to do anything in the sixties.”
I try to imagine what Dreamy was like when she was young, but all I can picture are those hippies you see sitting in the parks in San Francisco.
“But like I keep telling Zoe, there’s no reason you have to go to college even now. College isn’t for everyone.” She pops the last of her cookie into her mouth and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Oh, well, I don’t know. . . .” I let my voice trail off.
“Hey.” Nick tugs his boots off and steps into the kitchen in his socks. “No fair. You made me go to college.” Nick grins at Zoe to show he’s kidding, but Zoe glares at her mother.
“And I’m not sure I was right to do that,” Dreamy says evenly. “In retrospect, I don’t think you were ready to be off on your own.”
Nick laughs and steps past her. “Those were the best six years of my life.” He bends over and reaches into the fridge.
“Maybe if we’d made you wait a year to mature a bit before you went, you’d have finished on time,” Dreamy says. “Would have saved ourselves a lot of money.” She grabs a dish towel off the counter and swats at Nick,
then turns back to me.
“All I’m saying, Riley, is that if you’re not excited about college, maybe it’s not right, or right right now, anyway. There’s a whole big world out there, and a million different ways for God to use you wherever you are, whether or not that includes college.”
I try to wrap my head around what she’s saying, but it’s like she’s speaking another language. Dreamy always has been a free spirit, but I don’t know how to tell her that not going to college is not really an option when your dad is a super Internet geek. They started a college savings account for me the day I was born. I glance at Zoe, and she lowers her head and mumbles something under her breath. Nick opens a bottle of seltzer and pours it into a glass.
“I mean, look at Zoe,” Dreamy says. “She loves being outdoors, and she hates school, so I’ve been trying to tell her to stick around here, take a few classes at a community college, make sure it’s really what she wants to do before diving in and moving away. It saves on tuition too when you do a year or two at City College first. Private schools aren’t exactly—”
Zoe slams her math book shut and pushes her chair back. “I want to go to USC. Why is that so hard for you to understand?” She stands up. “Everyone else is going away for school. The girls are, and Dean is, and the last thing I want to do is stick around here like some loser.”
Her voice goes up at the end, and I lean back, away from the family squabble. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Zoe raise her voice, but I’ve certainly never seen her talk this way to her parents.
“I told you I’d find a way to pay for it,” Zoe says.
Dreamy doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. She watches Zoe, then, tentatively, reaches out her hand and rests it on Zoe’s arm.
“I’m sorry.”
Zoe frowns, tears welling up in her eyes, and her shoulders drop. The tension in the room dissipates.
“Don’t worry, Zo,” Nick says, setting his empty glass in the sink. “If USC is what you really want, we’ll figure out how to make it happen.”
Dreamy nods her assent, and slowly, tentatively, Zoe sits back down and turns back to her math book.
21
We’re all crowded around our favorite picnic table in the courtyard listening to Zoe explain the plot of the ninja movie Dean is making, when something smacks me on the back of the head. I turn, ready to throttle someone, but all I see is a paper airplane resting at an awkward angle on the ground. I grab it off the blacktop and unfold it quickly.
Mavericks is on. Wanna go?
I look around, but don’t know who could have . . .
Ah. There, resting on the grassy hill with a bunch of skaters. Ben. He’s leaning back on his elbows on the grass, his legs stuck straight out in front of him. He waves, a dopey grin on his face. How did he get it to fly all the way over here? He must be some kind of paper airplane wizard.
Zoe breaks off her story as I push myself up, but I gesture for her to go on. “Be right back.” I grasp the paper and walk over to the group, clustered under some pine trees. I stand over them, and Ben lifts his hand to shield his eyes.
“Did you throw this?”
“Totally.” Ben pushes himself up and waits.
“Mavericks is on?” I can’t believe I missed that. Mavericks is a world-famous big-wave surf contest. The waves off Pillar Point Harbor, north of Half Moon Bay, are legendary—as big as a house on average days, close to fifty feet tall at their max—and every winter they host this competition for big-wave surfers. Well, they try to host it every year. What makes Mavericks so cool is that they have to wait until the conditions are exactly perfect. Suddenly huge swells begin to form, and they officially call the contest, and then surfers from around the world have forty-eight hours to get here. Many years, the conditions never reach perfection and Mavericks doesn’t happen at all.
“It is indeed.” Ben pats the black bag resting on the ground next to him. “And I want to take some pictures. You in?”
“When did they call it?” I was planning to work on my applications after school, but this is Mavericks. Plus, today Mr. Mackey agreed to write me a recommendation, so that counts as progress. The guys sitting around Ben are watching me, hanging on every word. They don’t even pretend they’re not listening.
“It started today,” Ben says, pulling his knees up. He’s wearing dusty black-and-white checkered Vans. “I’m going either way, so . . .”
I watch him for a second. I went to Mavericks with Tom a couple years ago, and I guess I kind of assumed we’d go again this year, but we haven’t exactly discussed it. And it’s not like he bothered to let me know it was on, even though he must have known. It’s his dream to be out there with the legends someday. He’s probably busy with class or something, and I can just give him a call and let him know I’m going with Ben. He won’t mind. Maybe he’ll even come out and meet me there.
I picture the sight of those monstrous waves. “Sure,” I say and kick his shoe gently. “I’ll meet you.”
***
Ben is waiting for me at the edge of the parking lot in front of the gym, as promised. He’s clutching his camera bag in one hand and twirling his keys around his finger in the other and whistling as I walk up to him.
“My car’s over here,” he says, ducking his head. He gestures toward a gray sedan. There’s a roof rack on top, but otherwise it’s a totally average car—several years old, safe, kind of boring. Ben fumbles with the keys, and I pull open the passenger door and slide into the seat.
Inside it’s a whole different story. “Now this is more like it.” I reach my hand out and touch one of the glossy decals covering the dashboard. The whole interior of the car, except for the seats and the roof, is covered with stickers. “What are these?”
“Decals.” He hesitates for a moment, then hands me a black plastic-covered folder from the backseat. Clear page protectors are clipped inside the binding, each holding a different colorful sticker. They’re really cool—a sixties-looking peace sign, a skull and crossbones, and a kind of stylized wave crashing onto a beach. One of them has this weird flower and says, “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” A couple of them look familiar, especially one that has a heart circled in what looks like barbed wire. “I got a new batch in from my printer.”
“Did you make these? I think I’ve seen them on people’s boards,” I say.
“Yeah, I’ve got a little business. Decals for boards. Surf and skate.” His cheeks turn pink, and he takes the folder back quickly.
“Wow, you think you know a guy and then . . .”
“You only know the tip of the iceberg, Riley McGee.” Ben cranks the car and pulls out of the parking lot, then clicks on the radio. It’s some British lady reading headlines from around the world. Ben taps his fingers on the steering wheel as he turns right onto Highway 1.
I check my phone, but Tom hasn’t responded to my message. Maybe he’s already there. It’s hard to get good reception on the shore.
“Have you ever seen Mavericks before?” I ask to break the silence. This feels weird. Ben and I aren’t really close, but it’s not usually this awkward.
“Yeah, last year,” Ben says. “The waves are . . .” He shakes his head. “It’s hard to imagine that much power, you know? And I love the audacity of trying to tackle those waves, like shaking your fist at God.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “I usually get some amazing shots.”
“Yeah.” I trace the barbed wire on the heart decal. It’s that popular Catholic image that looks vaguely rock and roll.
“So . . .” I let my voice trail off. He keeps his eyes firmly fastened to the road. “Art?”
“I’m for it.”
“How did you get into it, I mean?”
Ben doesn’t answer, and for a moment I don’t think he heard me. The woman on the radio is talking about a car bomb that went off in Libya. I reach out and snap it off.
“I don’t know,” he says at last. “Haven’t you ever just known you�
�re good at something?”
I turn my head and study his profile, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. He’s pretty cute, actually. Not Tom’s brand of manly gorgeousness, but Ben’s got kind of an Adam Brody with better hair thing going on.
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“I think you do.” Ben weaves past rows of parked cars and finds a tiny space along the side of the road, across from the cliffs. He parallel parks with ease and turns off the engine. The car is silent, until I push my door open and step out onto the sandy dirt by the road. We’re outside a tiny town, still a ways from the ocean, but there’s a one-lane road ahead of us, and judging by the traffic ahead, we’re not going to get any closer. We dash across the street and make our way to the cliffs on the other side. There are people standing all over the tops of the cliffs, and we weave our way through the crowd. A head stands out over the crowd, and for an instant my heart stops, but then the guy moves and I can see it’s not Tom after all.
Ben grabs my arm in a friendly, easy way as we walk toward the cliff. The beaches around here are not like the typical Southern California beaches you see in those old surf movies. The only way to get to the shore below is to climb down high, rocky cliffs. In some places there’s not even sand, just a sheer wall of stone that drops straight into the moody, pounding water below.
Ben proves to be an excellent scout, and soon he’s carved out a spot for us near the edge of a rocky point. I squint out at the water. I can’t make out who they are, but there are definitely bodies bobbing up and down in the water below. A huge wall of water comes up behind them.
“They’ve got to be out of their minds.” Two guys start paddling away, and a moment later, they’re all swept up in a wave that towers several times higher than them. Another guy gets sucked up into the wave and tossed over the backside. The crowd gasps in unison, and Ben’s camera clicks a bunch of times in rapid succession. Everyone stops talking. I close my eyes. It’s hard to imagine how a frail human body could survive being tossed around like that; then again, I know from experience that sometimes there’s a force more powerful than tides pulling on us.
