“What happened to her?”
Jas smiles sadly. “Eventually she figured out that I wasn’t one of the things she wanted.”
I’m surprised at the heavy ache in his voice. “Broke your heart?”
Jas shrugs heavily. “She did the right thing, breaking up with me. She was still on the right track, and I had run off the rails. Anyway, there’re all different kinds of heartbreaks,” he says slowly. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
I nod, thinking of Fiona. A few days before graduation, she had called me crying. Dax had said that maybe they should break up before they went off to their separate colleges. She’d said he was breaking her heart just by thinking that, and I said all the things she needed to hear: Of course he loves you. He doesn’t really want to break up with you. Of course you can stay together, even at different schools.
But really, I was thinking that my brothers broke my heart the instant they ran away. They broke my parents’ hearts, too. I lived in a glass house full of shattered hearts and I hadn’t even fallen in love yet.
I wonder if that’s still true. My heart certainly feels better than it has in a long time. Maybe it’s putting itself back together, getting stronger the closer I get to finding my brothers. Or maybe it’s something else, someone else. I shake my head, blinking, decide to change the subject.
“You were going to tell me why you and Pete didn’t go around the world together like you planned.”
Jas nods, smiling at the waitress, who brings him a cup of coffee and places two plates of scrambled eggs in front of us.
“I didn’t order scrambled eggs,” I say.
“That’s all they have here,” Jas answers. I look around. I’m not sure this even qualifies as a restaurant. It’s just an RV at the edge of the beach, behind the motel, with three beat-up picnic tables beside it. I take a tentative bite of the eggs, expecting to gag. But they’re surprisingly good, and I’m starving.
“Here’s the thing,” Jas says finally. “Jet Skis cost money.”
“Of course they do.”
“Jet Skis,” Jas repeats, “cost money. Plane tickets cost money. Surfboards cost money and foot straps cost money and even towropes cost money.”
“I get it,” I say. “You can’t surf the world’s biggest and best waves for free.”
“Exactly,” Jas agrees. He leans back, lacing his hands at the base of his head, straightening his legs out in front of him.
I have to move over so that our feet don’t touch.
He shrugs again and sits back up, leaning toward me, his elbows on the table. “I was just trying to make us some money.”
I look at my scrambled eggs. “But at what cost?”
“You sound just like Pete. ‘It’s not worth it’—that’s what he’d tell me over and over again. I told him it was only temporary, just until I saved up enough to get us a ski and some tickets. But Pete kicked me out before I made that much. Course,” Jas adds, taking a sip of coffee, “I didn’t go far. Pete may have hated me, but his wasn’t the only empty house in Kensie.”
“So he lives on one side of the beach and you live on the other.”
“And he steals to put enough scraps together to feed the strays who show up at his house from time to time, and I sell drugs to make enough money to have running water and electricity and a Jet Ski and all the boards I want.”
He smiles, but he doesn’t sound pleased with himself. Quietly, he says, “If I hadn’t been selling, Wendy, someone else would have.” He’s saying it to me, but he doesn’t sound like he even believes it himself.
Shaking his head, he continues. “Pete and his crew still make it to the big waves sometimes. The local ones. But the ones across the globe? He just can’t get there.”
“Neither can you, apparently,” I counter, and Jas’s blue eyes fix on me. “I mean, you saved up all that money and bought yourself all those supplies, but you’re still not out there, traveling the world, conquering those waves. Not like you planned anyway.”
“No,” Jas agrees, “not like I planned.” He rests his forehead in his hands and takes a deep breath. “I did what I had to do,” he says. His voice sounds muffled and far away. “I’m not going to lie—I would do it again.” He looks up now, his eyes piercing and bright in the sunlight.
“Do you ever think of going back?” I ask, nodding my head in the direction of the mountains, in the direction of his childhood home. “You know, just to see your parents again, just for a second? To let them know that you’re okay?”
Jas nods, breaking his gaze with me to look at the mountains above us. He presses his hands flat into the table, just inches away from mine. I don’t think he’s going to answer me, but finally he looks at me with his clear blue eyes and says, “Am I okay?”
I don’t mean to do it, but in a second I’ve taken his hand in mine, squeezing it tight. His flesh is cool, and the callus on his thumb rubs my knuckles softly, so softly, softer than I ever imagined anyone could or would touch me.
26
Jas is heaving my duffel bag into the back of the truck when he turns to me. “I’ve got an idea,” he says.
“What?” I answer, walking around to the passenger side of the car. He rushes to beat me there and hold the door open for me. My hair is still wet from the morning shower; drying in the ocean air, it even has the tiniest bit of a wave to it, instead of hanging stick-straight down my back like it usually does.
Jas climbs into the driver’s seat. “There’s a bar not too far from here. The Jolly Roger. I spent a lot of time there after I ran away. It’s an old-school kinda place. Lots of surfers, lots of skin.” He pauses, then adds, “Lots of substances.”
“You think someone there might know my brothers?” I ask, cutting to the chase. Jas always hesitates before he mentions drugs and my brothers in the same sentence, like he hates to remind me about that part of them. It’d be kind of sweet, except for the fact that he’s the person who sold them the drugs in the first place.
Jas nods. “But, Wendy, listen—” Jas’s voice shifts, lowering an octave. “It’s a bad scene.”
I almost laugh; Pete used exactly the same words to describe Jas’s side of Kensie, the first night I spent there. “Jas, no offense or anything, but I’m a big girl and you’re a drug dealer. Won’t we fit right in?”
He doesn’t answer right away, just twists the keys in the ignition. I jump when the truck roars to life. “It’s a long shot,” he says, “but your brothers might’ve stopped there on their way up the coast months back. Someone might remember…”
“Supplying them?” I offer, and Jas nods. He pulls the car out of the lot.
“Well, then,” I say, “I guess we’re headed to the Jolly Roger.”
Darkness falls earlier than usual; Jas explains that the storm is coming down from Canada, the one that’s going to cause Witch Tree to break. He hands me his phone and shows me a weather map, tracking the storm.
“Looks like the wave will break sometime tomorrow morning,” he says, studying the map.
“Who knew surfers were such meteorology geeks?” I say, handing it back to him.
Jas laughs.
Even the parking lot of the Jolly Roger looks dangerous. First of all, it’s not even paved; it’s just a field of dirt next to a surfside shack. The beach is right across the street, but it looks gritty somehow, the water not quite so blue, the sand gray with tar or dirt. Cars and motorcycles are parked haphazardly across the lot so that Jas has to squeeze his truck into a corner, the back half popping out onto the road behind us. A bare, grimy yellow lightbulb hangs above the door, flickering on and off.
“How do you even know this place is called the Jolly Roger?” I ask. “There’s not exactly a sign over the door.”