Jas takes his eyes off the road to look at me. “Why do you want to know so much about me?”
“Why not? Like you said, it’s a long drive in the middle of the night. You have to keep me awake, too.”
Jas laughs. “Just haven’t really thought about my past in a long time. Sometimes I think I can’t really remember my life before I started surfing.”
I nod; I bet John and Michael would say the same thing. My god, they hated the lessons my parents bought them. Hated learning technique on the dry sand when they ached to dive into the ocean. Still, they couldn’t deny that they learned a lot that came in handy later. The lessons were expensive; maybe Jas’s family wouldn’t have been able to afford them. Maybe that’s why he began dealing. Maybe that’s when he moved to Kensington, when he met Pete, when the war between them began. Maybe after maybe fills my head, and all these questions I’m too tired to ask. My eyelids grow so heavy that it’s impossible to keep them open. I try for a while, blinking one eye open and then the next, but eventually, sleep wins out.
I wake up in an empty car. I’m in a parking lot. I unclick my seat belt and turn around and see a flashing sign that says VACANCY. A motel. I pull my phone from my purse. It’s 4:14 a.m. We’ve been driving for three hours. There’s no way we could have gotten to Witch Tree in only three hours.
I look up from my phone; Jas is walking from the motel lobby toward the car. When he sees me looking at him, he smiles.
“Morning,” he says, opening my door for me. “Come on.”
“Where?” I want to say I’m not going anywhere with you, but why would he believe that, seeing as I’ve already come this far with him?
“I got us a room. You fell asleep a couple hours ago, and I can only keep myself awake for so long.”
“Aren’t you used to pulling the occasional all-nighter?” I ask, thinking of the nights he stayed awake with me as I hop down from the truck.
Jas lifts my duffel bag from the back and slings it over his shoulder as easily as if it’s filled with air. He doesn’t answer me, just begins walking toward the motel. It’s only two stories high, and Jas walks along the first floor, past darkened windows. I wonder if the lights are off because the people inside are sleeping or because the rooms are empty. Ours is almost the only car in the parking lot, and I’m pretty sure we’re in the middle of nowhere, though it’s hard to tell at this hour.
I follow Jas up the stairs to the second floor, breathing deeply. Wherever we are, we’re close to the ocean. I can smell the seaweed, feel the salt air on my skin. The outdoor hallway is barely lit, but I still can see the sand all over the floor. And I hear the sound of the ocean, the waves barreling against the shore, just a stone’s throw away.
“Where are we?” I say to Jas’s back.
He answers without turning around: “Halfway to Witch Tree.”
“Witch Tree,” I mutter. “Who would name a wave Witch Tree?”
“There’s a dead cypress tree at Pescadero Point,” Jas says, still not facing me. “You can see it from the water. A witch tree.”
“Well, who would want to surf underneath a witch’s tree?”
Now Jas does stop and turn around. “You want to surf where the waves are, Wendy. It’s as simple as that.” He looks so serious that it makes me blush. I have to will myself not to break eye contact with him. “You’d like Maverick’s better. A wave near Half Moon Bay.”
“Why?”
“Legend has it Maverick’s was named after a dog.”
I smile despite myself. “Really?”
“Yup. In the sixties, some guys were surfing there, and one of them brought his dog, who was named Maverick. Apparently, the dog was used to swimming out with the guys, so even though they left him onshore, he kept trying to catch them. But the conditions were too rough for him, so finally his owner had to tie him up back onshore. They called it Maverick’s, and the name stuck.”
Jas’s deep voice takes on a sweet timbre when he talks about the dog swimming after his owner and I smile, trying to imagine what Nana would do if she saw me swimming into the sea, facing down forty-, fifty-, sixty-foot waves. Of course she’d come after me. She’d want to be beside me, whatever the adventure. I wish she could be with me now. Suddenly, I’m terribly homesick.
Jas resumes walking.
“What kind of dog was Maverick?” I ask suddenly.
“A white German shepherd,” he answers.
“How do you know?”
Jas shrugs, the muscles in his back visible even through his T-shirt. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that story,” he says, sounding wistful.
He stops in front of a door marked 30. As he fits the rusted key into the lock, my heart begins to pound. Am I really going to follow this stranger—no, worse than a stranger, because I know the things he’s done—into a dark motel room in the middle of nowhere? Even if he did show up and offer to help me find my brothers? Even if he did drive all this way in the middle of the night while I slept at his side?
He surprises me by turning to me before he opens the door. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I got us a room with two beds.”
I nod. I begin to say thank you, but then change my mind; he hasn’t earned my thanks. Not yet.
25
I don’t expect to sleep soundly with Jas in the room, but I do. For the first night since I got back from Kensington, I don’t wake up in sheets soaked with dream-sweat. Instead, I wake up gently when the sunlight pours in through the windows. I glance at my phone; I slept with it under my pillow, just in case. I’m not sure exactly what I thought might happen. It’s after ten a.m. I roll over, expecting Jas to be snoozing in the bed across the room, but his bed is empty, his sheets barely wrinkled, almost as if he never went to sleep at all.
My parents will be awake by now. They will have discovered that I’m gone. There are five missed calls on my phone. They’ve probably called Fiona. Maybe they’ve called the police. Maybe they’re blaming themselves. Maybe they’re too frantic to do anything but pace the house, wondering where I’ve disappeared to now. I can’t call the house; they’d ask too many questions if they heard my voice on the other end of the line.
Feeling guilty, I send my parents an e-mail, just to let them know that I’m okay and I’ll be back soon. Once the message is sent, I turn off my phone.
I don’t bother getting dressed. I don’t even put on shoes. I head out in my pajama bottoms and the T-shirt I slept in. It’s breezy outside; the sun is shining, but the air feels heavy, ominous, as though the sky could crack open at any moment. Of course, I realize. A storm is coming, like Jas said. You can’t have big waves without a storm coming eventually.
I’m not surprised when I see his truck in the parking lot, exactly where he left it last night. One of his boards is missing. He’s on the beach. I think I knew that the instant I woke up.
These are not good waves, even I can see that. Small and choppy, with almost no curl to their lips when they peak. But Jas is making the most of them, turning and swishing his board over the chop, riding the lip of the wave, spinning like a ballet dancer and crouching like a tiger. He sees me watching him and waves at me, letting the current bring him back to shore.
“You didn’t have to stop,” I say as he walks toward me, balancing his board on his hip.
“Good morning to you, too.” He plants the board in the sand.
“Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Good morning.”
“You sound surprised,” he says, shaking the salt water out of his hair. Wet, it looks jet-black.
“Surprised?”
“You know, that a lowlife drug dealer like me has such good manners.”