“Okay,” I say, “I’ll try.”
5
The sun is hanging only halfway in the sky; the heat of the day is burning off. Before today, I’d always waded into the water one toe at a time, giggling and squealing at the cold, watching my brothers run out ahead of me. But today, I rushed into the water after Pete. And now, an hour later, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve fallen off his board. Every time, water shoots up my nose and fills my mouth. Salt clings to my eyelashes until my eyes sting.
I haven’t even come close to standing up on his board.
“The surest way to get worked is to try to turn back after you’ve started paddling in,” Pete tells me.
“I’m not turning back,” I say stubbornly.
“You’re not moving forward.”
I shake my head and chew on my bottom lip, studying the waves. This really shouldn’t be so hard, right? Hundreds of people stand up on waves every day. Thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe. Pete treads water beside me as I pull myself back up onto the board and try again. And wipe out again.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Pete says. “Or you’re not thinking of the right thing.”
“I’m thinking about getting onto this board,” I spit irritably as I come up for air. “What else should I be thinking about?”
Pete steadies the board between us. “Surfing says a lot about a person, you know?”
I shake my head. I certainly don’t know.
Pete floats on his back and doesn’t look at me when he says, “I’m guessing you’re a straight-A student who doesn’t like to cry and could turn worrying into an art form.” Pete straightens himself out, face-to-face with me again. “Am I right?” He grins.
I look down into the water, surprised that it’s clear enough to see my feet kicking out beneath me. “I have a lot to worry about.”
Pete shakes his head. “You can’t bring all of that with you here.” He taps the board. “Worries weigh you down. You need to be light enough to fly.”
Fly, I tell myself, looking at the sky above us, seagulls screaming overhead. Behind us, the ocean stretches out endlessly, so beautiful that it’s hard to believe it might have swallowed my brothers whole.
I lift my chin off the surfboard to look at the beach. The sun is reflected on the cliffs in a rainbow of colors, like someone painted them there. The light is dancing like fireflies on the water, which is surprisingly warm, like a current of warm water flows right into this cove, just for them. The water is even clearer here than it is down the coast. My brothers would have called these waves glassy and hollow, perfect for a ride.
And then I look at Pete, his face lit up by the setting sun. He looks perfectly at ease, like he was made for this very spot.
“Where are we?” I breathe softly.
“What?” Pete murmurs.
“Doesn’t this place have a name?”
He smiles. “Kensington,” he says, and he makes the word sound like music.
“Kensington,” I repeat, the word heavy in my mouth. I look around us, at the beach with sand so white it seems to exist outside of time. The last of the sunset is reflected on white rocks on the cliffs, the smoke from the fire rising up beneath them. And the ocean, which has always existed outside of time: it was here long before we were, and it will be here long after we’re gone. I know one thing for sure: I’m not leaving this place until I’ve taken a wave.
Pete whispers, “Think of something that makes you happy.”
Once more, I pull myself up onto the board so that I’m lying flat on my belly. Think of something that makes you happy. I close my eyes and think of Nana. Nana’s great big paws on my lap; the soft place between her ears. Nana’s giant tongue giving gentle kisses, and her great brown eyes, always waiting for me to come home, the tail that wags every time I walk in the door. Our parents got Nana for all three of us to share, but the dog singled me out almost immediately. Even John and Michael took to calling her “Wendy’s dog.” When she was a puppy, Nana slid over the tile floor of our house like a mop; she had to learn to walk on the slick surface without slipping. Nana has always belonged to me, the way John and Michael always belonged to each other.
I’m so focused on Nana that, at first, I don’t notice that Pete is pulling himself up onto the board behind me. He lies on top of me, his chin settling in the small of my back, sending a pleasant shiver up my spine.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but I don’t mind how close he is. I feel warm.
“Trust me,” Pete says. “Let me take the lead.”
He paddles us out toward the wave. His hands move like fins through the water, and he directs the surfboard to just the right spot, under the lip of a wave just ready to crest.
Pete plants his own feet before pulling me up after him. He presses his body close to mine, so that my feet are in between his own, my back flat against his front, as though together we are one surfer on the board, not two. And together, we ride the wave.
The ocean stretches out beyond us, endless and beautiful. I have never, not in a plane, not in the glass house set up on top of the hill, not driving on mountains to get to beach after beach, felt this close to the sky, this far from earth.
Pete lets the wave take us all the way back to the beach, the board sliding to a stop over the sand.
“What’d you think?” he asks me.
My back is still to him; I step off the board and curl my toes into the wet sand. I try to imagine what my brothers would say if they could see me now, but I’m almost positive that they’d be speechless.
I turn around and say, “I want another one.”
Pete laughs and throws his arms around me, folding me into a bear hug, his wet skin cool against mine, yet still I feel warm. He lifts me and spins me in a circle. I close my eyes, so that I can’t even tell which way I’m facing when he puts me down.
When I open my eyes, I see that the ocean is black: the sun has set completely. The fire has dwindled down to smoke. Belle and the other boys are nowhere to be seen. I didn’t realize that I’d been here long enough for darkness to fall.
“I should probably get going,” I say quickly. “Can I give you a ride home?”
Pete just shakes his head, laughing lightly. “I live here,” he says, pointing to the cliff rising above us. “That’s home.”
I step back. In the darkness, I can make out a series of low buildings on top of the cliff. There are houses lining the cliff, overlooking the water below. “You live here?”
“We all do.”
“Who?”
“The boys. And me. And Belle.” He points to the house closest to the cliff directly above us. “That one’s ours.” From here, I can barely make out its edges. In one of the second floor windows, a light switches on. Someone’s bedroom, maybe.
“Who lives in the rest of them?” I ask, and Pete steps away from me, as though I said something wrong.
“Most of them are empty,” he says, kicking the sand at his feet. “They were built years ago. You know, luxury homes on the beach.”
I nod. In my mind’s eye, I see the houses left abandoned, expected to fall apart, with floors still gleamingly clean, the windows still crystal clear. “It’s so beautiful here.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t safe,” he says, gesturing to the cliffs above. “Those cliffs used to go all the way out to the ocean. This beach was a totally different shape. There were cliffs lined with houses.”
I look up at the cliffs; it seems like they’ve been standing there a thousand years. It seems impossible that they were ever shaped differently.
“What happened? Beach erosion or something?”