Catching Waves

by Stephanie Peters

  Kai relaxed and did as she suggested. He was no expert, but to his eye the store was stocked with quality equipment—except for the snow globes, which were pretty cheesy looking. He sneaked a peek at the woman. She was tall, tanned, blond, and athletic looking. Even stacking booties, her movements were graceful. She was strong, too, Kai realized as he watched her move a tall wooden bookcase with ease. He concluded that she was a surfer or at least had been a surfer at one time. He decided to see if he was right.

  “So, um, you do much surfing around here?” he asked.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Yeah, I ride the waves right out at the beach here.” He picked up a snow globe and shook it. Fake snow floated down on a mermaid sitting on plastic coral. “So, where do you surf?”

  The woman walked behind the counter. “What makes you think I’m a surfer?”

  Kai raised his shoulders. “You just seem like one, that’ all,” he said.

  She grinned. “You’ve got good instincts.” She leaned on the counter. “I used to surf. Now I own a shop. What’s your name?”

  “Kai, Kai Ford,” he said. he stuck out his hand. As she shook it, Kai noticed a scar running up her arm.

  “Hey, did you get that scar surfing?” he asked.

  She withdrew her hand. “Yes,” she answered.

  “I’ve got a scar from surfing, too,” Kai said. “I took a digger on a rock covered with barnacles. Is that how you got yours?”

  “Mmmm,” she mumbled.

  Kai wasn’t sure if that was a yes or no. He was about to ask her more but she changed the subject.

  “So, your name is Kai, as in the Hawaiian word for ‘the sea’?”

  Kai nodded. “Now I know you’re a surfer. Only someone who surfs—or speaks Hawaiian—would know something like that!”

  “Used to surf, Kai. Used to surf.” She ducked under the counter.

  Curiosity tickled his brain. Why, he wondered, didn’t she stiff anymore? Looking around, it seemed obvious to him that she was still into the sport. And she certainly seemed physically fit. Was it something to do with the scar?

  She straightened up and put a stack of papers on the counter. “Tell me, Kai, are you any good at surfing?”

  Kai shrugged. “I’m not bad. Not the best, but not the worst.”

  “Can you do any tricks?”

  “Some.” He ticked off the maneuvers he could do on his fingers. “I’m pretty good at catching air, so I can do different grabs. You know, stalefish, indy, double, things like that. My floater reentry and snaps aren’t bad, either.”

  The woman nodded appreciatively and handed him one of the papers. “I’m sponsoring a surf contest for kids this weekend. The winner gets a gift certificate for any of the merchandise you see here.” She made a grand sweeping gesture with her arm, like a game show hostess showing off a fabulous prize. “I thought you might like to enter.” “And,” she added, waggling her eyebrows mischievously, “I thought you might tell your surfer friends to visit the shop, too. To pick up an entry form, that is!”

  Kai had been in a few surf contests before. He’d never won first prize, but he’d always enjoyed being part of the competition. He looked around the shop again. Maybe this time he’d get lucky and surf his way to a pair of neoprene gloves or a new leash or maybe even a second board!

  He started to fold the paper when he realized he didn’t have any place to put it. His backpack was at home by now and while his swim trunks had pockets, they were still damp. The paper would just get wet. And he already had to carry his board and his towel.

  The woman seemed to understand his dilemma. “Hold out your arm and roll up your sleeve,” she instructed. Mystified, Kai did. She pulled the top off a marker and wrote down a Web site address on his skin. “You can download the entry form from this site,” she said. She put the cover back on the marker. Then she stopped and, staring at the marker, gave a cry of dismay.

  “Oh no! Permanent marker!”

  “What?!” Kai looked at his arm in horror, certain that he’d be stuck wearing the Web address forever.

  “Made you look!” the woman said, laughing. “Don’t worry. It’ll come off with soap and water. Just be sure to write the address down before you wash up for dinner!”

  “Dinner! Oh my gosh! My dad’s going to kill me if I don’t get home!” Kai said. “Thanks for the info about the competition. Great store. See you again!” He hurried out the door, grabbed his board, and jogged the remaining blocks back to his house, sandals slapping on the pavement and towel bouncing around his shoulders.

  4

  Have a nice run?” Kai’s father looked up from the grill, a smile on his lips. The smile widened when he saw the sweat rolling down his son’s face. “Lost track of time again, huh?” he said.

  Kai was so out of breath he could only nod.

  “Why don’t you hit the shower before dinner? I’ll throw a burger on for you when I hear the water stop.”

  Kai nodded again then carried his board inside the mudroom and leaned it next to his father’s longboard. He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Just as he was about to strip down, he remembered the Web site written on his arm. He padded back to his room and jotted the address on a scrap of paper. In the shower at last, he sudsed the writing and his sweat away.

  The smell of dinner made him dress in a hurry. He had been hungry when he stopped at the surf shop. Now he was famished!

  He pulled the condiments from the refrigerator and put them on the table just as his father came in from the deck with a plate of burgers. Kai grabbed the top one, slathering the meat with ketchup and mustard. He added a pickle slice, capped it with a bun, and took an enormous bite.

  Mr. Ford followed his son’s lead. “Anything interesting happen today?” he asked as he started eating.

  Kai looked up. He’d nearly forgotten the problem he’d caused at the beach earlier. He wondered if his dad had heard about R. William being there. It was possible—after all, his father worked close to the beach.

  But his father didn’t seem to be asking about anything in particular. So Kai decided not to mention what had happened. Instead, he finished chewing and said, “Well, there’s a new surf shop on the boulevard. It’s got totally cool stuff. And the woman who owns it is holding a competition on Saturday. The winner gets a gift certificate to her store.”

  “Interesting,” his father said. “Are you going to enter?”

  “Probably,” Kai replied. “She gave me the Web site address where I can download an entry form. I bet the site shows stuff from her store, too. Want to take a look at it with me after dinner?”

  “Sure. I could use some new supplies myself.”

  Although Mr. Ford had given up his career as a professional surfer more than a decade ago, he still loved riding the waves. Kai had grown up hearing tales about his father’s “golden days of surfing,” as he put it. The stories were set in exotic surf spots like Sunset Beach (in Hawaii), Kirra Point (in Australia), and Puerto Escondido (in Mexico). Kai hoped to visit those spots one day.

  After dinner, Kai and his father tidied the kitchen then carried their desserts (big bowls filled with ice cream) into the office. Kai logged onto the Internet and typed in the address the woman had given him.

  A moment later, the screen was filled with an image of the surf shop’s front door. Kai clicked on the door. The sound of rushing water came out of the computer speakers as a simulated wave washed away the door to reveal the interior of the shop. A line of text invited him to click on any of the merchandise to see what brands the store carried. Kai and his father looked at a few things, then Kai moved the curser to a graphic labeled “Surf Contest.” When he clicked on it, the shop interior dissolved into a copy of the entry form the woman had given him earlier.

  Kai was about to click on PRINT when suddenly his father grabbed the mouse from him.

  “Hey!” Kai cried, startled. “What gives, Dad?”

  5

  Mr. Ford didn’t answer.
He had moved the cursor to a line of text near the bottom of the page and was trying to click on it. But it was just text, nothing hidden within it.

  “‘Sunny Pierce,’” Mr. Ford read part of the text aloud. “I wonder …” He had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes.

  Kai waved a hand in front of his father’s face. “Hello? Dad? Are you still in there?”

  Mr. Ford seemed to shake himself back to the present. He turned to look at his son. “Say, Kai,” he said, his voice sounding overly casual to Kai’s ears, “what did this woman shop owner look like?”

  Kai raised his eyebrows. “Like a surfer, I guess. Blond, muscular, probably around your age, I guess. Why? Do you know her?”

  His father ran his fingers through his hair. “I might know of her. Hang on a second.” He got up and left the room.

  Mystified, Kai took control of the mouse again and clicked on the PRINT button. The printer was spitting out the entry form when his father came back. He was holding an old surfer magazine, one from a large collection he’d saved from his years on the professional circuit. He flipped it open and pointed to a picture.

  “That’s not the woman you saw today, is it?” His father’s voice had an excited edge to it.

  Kai examined the picture. It showed a woman tubing deep inside the barrel of a magnificent blue green wave. Kai whistled with appreciation.

  “Is it her?” his father prodded.

  Kai looked closely. Unfortunately, the woman’s face was partly obscured by her right arm. “I don’t know, Dad,” he said finally. “Maybe, maybe not. Why?”

  The dreamy look came back to his father’s face. “That’s a picture of Sunny, one of the best female surfers of my day. I’m telling you, Kai, you look up the phrase ‘poetry in motion’ and you’ll see a picture of her.”

  Kai regarded the photo with new interest. “If she was so great,” he asked, “how come I’ve never heard of her?”

  Mr. Ford frowned slightly. “There’s a big mystery surrounding her, actually. Take her name, for instance. She only went by Sunny, no last name. And like I said, she was the best, tops in the sport—for a few months, anyway. Then one day—Poof! She vanished from the scene. Just dropped out completely.”

  “Why?”

  His father shook his head. “That’s the mystery. There was never any explanation. She just withdrew from every event she was entered in. As far as I know, Sunny never surfed competitively again.”

  “Wow. So you think that Sunny Pierce, the woman who owns the shop, is this same surfer woman?” Kai’s eyes sparkled. “That would be so cool! Do you have any more photos of her? Maybe I could see her face better in a different shot.”

  But his father shook his head. “She was around for such a short time that there are hardly any pictures of her. This magazine was planning to do a big article on her, but she disappeared before they got the chance. That photo is the only one I know of.”

  Kai studied the photo some more. Then he saw something he’d missed before. Or rather, he didn’t see something that should have been there.

  The arm in the photo was tanned a deep brown. But it didn’t have a scar. If Sunny the surfer and Sunny the shop owner were the same person, the arm in the photo should have had a scar, too.

  Kai broke the news to his father as gently as he could. His father looked crushed.

  “Oh well, I suppose it was long shot,” he said, thumping the magazine against his leg. “The California surf scene is probably filled with people named Sunny, after all. Still …”

  “Dad, did you have a thing for her or something?” Kai asked with a grin.

  Mr. Ford reddened. “I’ll admit that I loved watching Sunny surf. But I was in love with your mother at the time, Kai.” He glanced at the magazine again. “I always hoped I’d get a chance to meet Sunny. Oh well.” He left the room, muttering to himself.

  Kai’s eyes strayed to a photo of his mother hanging on the wall. His parents had been divorced for nearly twelve years. Sixteen years ago, they had both been professional surfers. Soon after Kai was born, however, his father—a mediocre surfer at best—decided he’d rather stay home with his son than continue traveling the world in pursuit of a surfing title he’d probably never win. Kai’s mother, on the other hand, wanted to keep competing. In the end they realized it was better that they divorce. Kai’s father got custody of their two-year-old son. His mother surfed for another four years before finally ending her career. By that time she’d met and married another man. Now she lived on the East Coast with a new family. Kai saw her a few times a year.

  Many people assumed that since Kai had never lived with both parents, he didn’t miss having a mother around. They were wrong. Kai loved his father, but sometimes he couldn’t help feeling sad when he saw other boys with their moms.

  Kai tore his eyes from his mother’s picture and turned back to the computer. He was about to log off the Web when the computer screen went completely black.

  “Oh no!” Kai groaned. He clicked the mouse a few times then hit the Ctrl+Alt+Delete buttons, hoping that the screen would miraculously spring back to life. It didn’t.

  “Dad!” Kai called wearily. “Call the computer guy. We crashed again.”

  6

  The next day was Sunday, which meant two things. One, Kai could spend the whole day at the beach. And two, the broken computer would remain broken for one more day. Their computer guy didn’t work on Sundays.

  Since the computer wasn’t working, Kai’s father had to go into the office to finish some paperwork he’d planned to do at home. That was a happy circumstance for Kai because it meant his dad could bring his board in the truck. His father put his own longboard in as well.

  “I’d like to get in some surfing today, too,” he said as he searched for his car keys. “Want a lift to the beach?”

  Normally, Kai would have jumped at the offer. But instead he volunteered to stay behind and pack up a lunch for them to share later. “And I want to drop off the entry form at the surf shop, too,” he told his father.

  “I’ll see you around noon, then.”

  After his father left, Kai grabbed some juice from the refrigerator then retrieved the contest form from the office and sat down at the kitchen table to fill it out. The top half of the form outlined the details of the competition. Kai read this part carefully.

  The rules stated that contestants would start out in groups of four. Each group would have fifteen minutes to surf up to ten waves. The judges would pick the top two surfers from each group. Those two would advance to the next round of competition. Eventually, the best two surfers would compete in a final round to decide the winner.

  The judges would evaluate the contestants’ surfing technique, the length of their rides, the difficulty of their maneuvers, and how well they executed those maneuvers. Kai knew from previous contests that a surfer’s style often played a large part in how the judges ranked him. Style was one part energy, one part ability to make surfing seem effortless, and one part risk taking. The surfer who made a series of difficult moves look easy and exciting was the surfer who walked away with the prize.

  Kai had been surfing for four years, but he was still working on his style. Unlike other things his father had taught him, style was something he had to develop on his own.

  Kai remembered how difficult surfing had seemed at first. The first year had been basic training. Using his father’s longboard, he’d learned about safety, how to read a wave, how to pop up on his board and stay up, and how to bail when the ride wasn’t going right. His father had called him a “grom,” surfer lingo for a little kid who surfed.

  At the start of his second year, Kai got his own board. He tested out different lengths before deciding to go with his shortboard. Shortboards were lighter and maneuvered better than longboards. Better maneuvering meant tighter turns and, eventually, fancier tricks.

  Kai had been anxious to start doing tricks right away. But once again his father started with the basics. “There are three turn
techniques you have to know before you can go into tricks,” he told his son. “The first is the bottom turn, when you spin the board around at the bottom of a wave and surf it to the top. The top turn directs the board the other way, from the top of the wave to the bottom. And last is the cutback. With this one, you move side to side across the wave.”

  He explained that the turn techniques usually helped a surfer gain speed and set up tricks. “The faster your board is moving, the better chance you have of staying upright. When the board wallows in the water, so do you.”

  Kai had practiced the turns until he could do them without thinking. Finally, on his thirteenth birthday, his father started teaching him more difficult maneuvers. Now, at fourteen, Kai could launch off the lip of a wave for an indy grab air, with his back hand on the toeside rail. He could usually pull off a floater reentry that found him turning in midair to ride the lip. He could do different snaps, too, riding up the wave for a 180-degree turn.

  Kai looked at the form again. He knew if he was going to place high in this contest, he needed to put together a series of his best maneuvers. But first, he said to himself as he picked up a pen, I have to get it in gear and fill out this form!

  7

  Twenty minutes later, the completed form in hand, Kai approached the Seaside Surf Shop. He looked forward to seeing Sunny Pierce again. Maybe I’ll tell her about Dad’s hopes that she was the missing surfer he wanted to meet all those years ago! he thought with a smile.

  But when he reached the shop, he saw a sign stating its Sunday hours as noon to five. It was only ten o’clock. He wasn’t about to wait around for two hours, so he slipped the form under the door, where he was sure Sunny Pierce would see it. That done, he continued on to his dad’s truck to retrieve his board.

  Soon he was paddling out to the lineup. The ocean was producing sizable waves with good curls that morning. Kai rode the first wave straight in frontside to test the swell’s speed and momentum and to get his footing. The next time he did a few cutback turns, arcing his board back and forth across the face of the wave. On his third ride, he was planning to try a stalefish grab air. But he shifted his weight too far back and wound up digging the rail.