Catching Waves (3 page)

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.”

T
he 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
!

T
wenty 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.

When he surfaced he paddled quickly to get out of the other surfers’ way. He hoped no one had seen his fall. He thought he
was in the clear, then he heard a familiar laugh and turned to see his father stroking his way toward him.

“Jeepers, who taught you to surf?” Mr. Ford said, grinning.

Kai grinned back. “Some guy who thought he was good enough to be a pro at one time!” he shot back. “Come on, I’ll race you
to the lineup!”

Kai and his father surfed together for another hour. Then they took a lunch break. Afterward, Mr. Ford lay on his towel for
a quick nap.

The food and exercise had made Kai drowsy, too, so he lay down on his back and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep. Lights
danced behind his closed lids. The salt from the seawater made his skin itchy. He scratched absently at the scar on his thigh.

Sometimes the scar itched—but nothing at all like it had itched when the gash was first starting to heal. Then he’d wanted
to claw the bandage away to get at the irritation, even though he knew that scratching the cut would irritate it even more.
After all, the skin beneath the bandage was still red and raw. Later, when the bandage came off, the cut hadn’t itched as
much. The skin had gradually turned pink and then, as more time passed, smooth and white.

Kai knew his scar was ugly, but he was secretly proud of it. It was his first—his only—surfing injury. He couldn’t imagine
his leg without it.

Kai flopped over onto his stomach and looked at his watch. It was past noon. That meant the Seaside Surf Shop was open. He
wondered if Sunny had found his form.

The sun was warm on his back. Kai rested his head on his arms, closed his eyes again, and let his thoughts wander from the
upcoming contest to the stories his father told about the competitions he’d been in. He pictured the photo his father had
shown him of the surfer Sunny and wondered
where it had been taken. Once again, he wished that the surfer Sunny and Sunny Pierce were the same person, for his father’s
sake. But the lack of a scar on the surfer’s arm proved they weren’t.

Then something occurred to Kai. He sat up abruptly, his mind whirling.

What if they
were
the same person—and the photo had been taken
before Sunny
had gotten the scar
?

K
ai was so excited by his theory that he almost woke his father up to tell him about it. But he hesitated, remembering how
disappointed his father had been last night. Kai decided to prove his theory before he got his father’s hopes up. But how
to get proof?

The obvious answer was to ask Sunny Pierce herself. Then Kai recalled how quickly she’d changed the subject when he asked
her about her scar. It was obvious she didn’t like to talk about how she got it.

Maybe I should just drop the whole
thing
, Kai thought. But he couldn’t get his mind off it. The possibility that he’d solved one of surfing’s great mysteries was
just too exciting. Finally, he shook his head as he thought,
How can I just drop it? Every time I go near that shop I’ll be wondering. No, I have to know
!

He pondered how he might go about getting information on the mysterious Sunny. He decided to start his investigation by looking
her up on the Internet.

Then he remembered his computer was on the blink. The library was closed on Sundays so those computers were out of reach,
too. And Kai didn’t dare ask his father if he could use the terminal at his workplace. Disappointed, Kai realized he couldn’t
do any investigating that afternoon. He hoped the home computer would be fixed by the next day, but he knew that it was unlikely.

It wasn’t until many hours later, when he was lying in bed that night, that he thought of one other place he could get access
to a computer.

His school library had a number of terminals. However, there was one problem. The library computers were off limits to students
unless they had written permission to do research on them. The rule had been put into place a year earlier, after a group
of students had been caught playing computer games instead of doing their work.

Kai wouldn’t have a permission slip, of course. If he got caught he’d get two afternoons of detention.
Well, I’ll just have to be sure I don’t get caught
! he said to himself.
But how
? He stared at the ceiling of his room and devised a plan. When he was satisfied it would work, he rolled over and went to
sleep.