Clash (8 page)
“Jenna?”
She turned around and saw that it was Malia.
“I thought I recognized the red hair. Did you see the contest?” Malia asked excitedly.
“Yeah, sweet,” Jenna swallowed and managed a cheerful smile. “And Bethany won.”
“With a tube ride like that she could have fallen off on every other wave and still won,” Malia said, rolling her eyes good naturedly. “So, are you still up for a surf lesson?”
Jenna studied Malia’s face; she really seemed sincere.
“I would, but I’m going to have to go pretty soon.” She grinned sheepishly. “And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a surfboard!”
Then a thought came to Jenna, a thought that bubbled up through the rejection and clung to the hope that she could still be a part of it all.
“Malia, where do you buy a surfboard?”
“New or used?”
“Oh, for sure, used,” Jenna said.
“Well, usually people buy those off friends or maybe from the paper or at a garage sale. What size are you looking for?”
Jenna’s face had a blank look on it, so Malia looked at her size.
“If I were you, I’d start with an eight-footer. Much longer, and it would be hard to carry, and much shorter, too hard to catch waves with it if you haven’t surfed much.”
“Eight foot. Okay . . . I can remember that.”
Jenna’s mom, holding shoes in her hand, approached the girls.
“Jenna, I’ve been looking all over the beach for you! You were supposed to be at the parking lot for me to pick you up twenty minutes ago!”
“Oh, uh, I’m sorry, Mom. I lost track of time,” Jenna said, mortified that her mom had yelled at her in front of Malia.
Jenna’s mom scowled at her.
“Okay, see you later,” Malia said cheerfully, as if she sensed trouble brewing. “We’ll give the surf lessons a rain check.”
“Yeah, later,” said Jenna, already turning toward the parking lot with the slow, weary shuffle of someone who’s not so sure “later” was going to happen.
The ride home was unpleasant, as she’d expected, but Jenna didn’t pay much attention to the lecture her mother delivered. Malia had given her back a sliver of hope, and she wasn’t about to let go of it. Not yet.
She had another adventure on her mind: to buy a surfboard and learn to surf.
After showering, Jenna scoured the classified section of the paper for surfboards. She found a few, but they were not the right size, and some seemed very expensive.
She piled all of her money on her bedspread and counted it several times. Including quarters, dimes, and nickels, she had just about ninety dollars saved up. If she got creative, she might make it to a hundred.
Jenna dug around for change in all the usual places: under sofa cushions and in drawers. In the end, she was a few dollars richer but still short of the hundred-dollar goal.
The next morning, a Sunday, Jenna stuffed her money in the pocket of her shorts, hopped on a bike, and started cruising the neighborhoods for garage sales.
As with many things, garage sales seem to be everywhere — until you start looking for them. Then they are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Jenna stumbled upon several, but the offerings were a hodgepodge of leftover stuff with not a surfboard to be found.
She had just about finished the one-mile loop and was approaching home from the back way when she spotted a hand-lettered sign stuck in a lawn that read, Garage Sale Today.
The early bargain hunters had already been at this location too. Only a few boxes of used clothing and electronic odds and ends seemed to be left. Under the shade of the eaves sat a large, dark-skinned Hawaiian man. His massive flat feet were wrapped in well-worn rubber slippers, and his thick arms were locked around a solid belly. He wore a wide smile, and his eyes danced with warmth.
Encouraged, she laid her bike on its side on the lawn and wandered into the garage. The big man turned his head, watching her.
She glanced around for a moment. No surfboards anywhere. She sighed in defeat and then turned back toward her bike.
“Can’t find what you are looking for?” the big man sang out.
“No,” Jenna said shyly, glancing back at him.
“Well? Maybe I can help. What you afta?”
“A surfboard.”
“Ah, you gotta know for where to look, sistah,” he said with a smile. “Come!”
With that he pulled his huge body off the chair and strolled into the middle of the garage. He paused, looked up at the ceiling, and pointed.
There in the rafters were surfboards of all sizes, almost a dozen of them. Jenna couldn’t believe it.
“What size you looking for?”
“Eight foot,” she whispered, trying not to get her hopes too high.
“I got one of dem for sure,” said the big man, who produced a small rickety ladder and reached up into the rafters.
He pulled down a yellowing eight-foot board with a softly rounded nose.
“I used to ride dis years ago. Was more skinny in dem days,” he added with a laugh.
“Uh, how much is this?” asked Jenna.
“Hmm. How much you have?”
“Well, I have a little over ninety-three dollars.”
“As all you money?”
“Yeah, that’s all my savings,” Jenna said, and then rushed on. “But if you’ll hold it for me, maybe I can earn some more.”
“I tell you what,” said the man. “You can have ’um for twenty bucks if you promise to be da best surfa in da watta.”
“How can I do that?”
The man squatted a bit and looked the young redhead straight in the eyes. His voice turned merry as he said, “By having da most fun!”
On her way home, Jenna couldn’t stop grinning, in spite of struggling to guide her bike with one hand, while cradling her new-used surfboard with her left.
She imagined herself gliding across the waves as she had seen Bethany do the day before. She imagined herself tanned and fi t, talking with the Hanalei girls.
When Jenna got home, she put the surfboard in the backyard under a tree. The board still had a leash on it, although it was old and worn. She practiced fastening its Velcro strap on and off her ankle. She didn’t know anything about being a goofy foot or a regular foot, so she tried it on both ankles to see if there was a right way to wear the thing.
Her mom was less than enthusiastic, though, when she got home and learned of Jenna’s purchase.
“I don’t know if just jumping into surfing is such a good idea,” her mom ventured, looking over the board.
Jenna felt her new world about to drop out from underneath her.
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s a dangerous sport,” said her mother.
“Lots and lots of girls surf, so it can’t be that dangerous.”
“It’s the ocean that’s dangerous. And those girls know the ocean because they were raised around it. It has dangerous animals too — just ask that Bethany girl. I don’t want you eaten by a shark.”
“Mom!” Jenna said, feeling the tears well up in her eyes.
“Jenna, you can’t . . . you don’t . . . ” her mother stammered, taken aback by tears instead of Jenna’s usual shouting.
“I don’t what?”
“Those girls are strong swimmers,” her mom said finally.
“I swam every summer in the public pool back home!” Jenna said. “Besides, surfboards have a rope thing that is attached to you in case you fall off.”
Jenna’s mother sighed and then relented.
“I guess,” she said, “if it will make you happy. But I still think we should both learn a little more about what it takes before you jump into that ocean.”
“Thank you, thank you, Mom!” said Jenna gleefully. “And you don’t have to worry. Those girls I told you about promised to give me lessons. So . . . can you take me to the beach now?
“Now?”
“Okay, after lunch.”
“I suppose,” her mother said, forcing a smile.
With that, Jenna spun away and went outside to hose the dust off her new used surfboard.
Bethany spotted the Hanalei girls as soon as service was over, and she quickly made her way over to the little group that had formed around Malia. Her eyes grew wide, as she saw Malia hold a bandaged, swollen foot up for all to see.
“Shoot, Malia! What did you do to yourself?”
“I sprained my ankle last night,” Malia explained with a hint of embarrassment. “Jumping on our trampoline with my sister. My timing was off. Hurt so bad when I landed on it, I thought it was broken.”
“Looks like you won’t be surfing with us today,” Holly said.
“Nah, I can’t even put a leash on this foot,” said Malia. “But I may just come down and hang out.”
“That’s cool,” Holly said. “How long do you think you’ll be out of the water?”
“I dunno. As soon as I can put some real weight on it, I’ll be back in.”
“You want us to pick you up on the way?” Bethany offered and was surprised when Malia shook her head no.
“Nah, it’s okay. If I decide to go, I’ll ask my mom to drive me down.”
“Okay,” Bethany said, still staring at Malia. Something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
“So,” Monica piped in, “if you can’t surf, you have to shoot photos of us!”
“No way!” shot back Malia.
“That’s the rule!” said Monica, half joking. “Those who can’t surf must take photos of those who can.”
“They’d all be out of focus anyway,” Bethany teased, getting a small smile from Malia.
Just then, Sarah Hill walked up and said, “Malia! What in the world happened to you?”
Jenna had a dilemma.
On the advice of Malia, she had purchased an eight-foot surfboard. But now she realized that the little sedan her mother drove was not much longer than her surfboard. And the car had no racks to throw the board on.
Jenna tried everything she could think of to fit the board into the car. She laid the passenger seat flat, but the board would not squeeze into the space. She rolled the back windows down and tried to shove the board through the car sideways, but then she realized that the first passing car would no doubt snap off the nose of the surfboard. She opened the trunk but found that its tiny space would not come close to accommodating an eight-foot surfboard.
When she had just about given up, Jenna spotted a latch on top of the back seat. She pulled it, and half of the back seat flopped forward. Victory!
Through a combination of laying down the front and back seats, Jenna was able to get most of her board into the car, with only a foot of it sticking past the rear bumper. She carefully wrapped the back end of the surfboard in a towel and then used a bungee cord to hold down the trunk lid.
Her mom came out of the house and took one look at the packing job Jenna had performed and commented, “Good thing there are only two of us!”
Jenna couldn’t agree more. She smiled and slid into the backseat behind her mother. She was glad that her mother’s boyfriend was not around today.
The car started up, and slack key Hawaiian music flooded out over the radio.
Normally Jenna would have asked her mom to change the station to something with more of a rock ’n’ roll sound, but today this was just fine. It sounded like the kind of music to go to the beach with — a soundtrack for a surfer girl.
When Jenna arrived at Pine Trees, she found the scene completely different than the day before.
Yesterday the place bustled with people and surfboards. Today the parking lot was almost empty and only a few clusters of people dotted the beach. The water was almost vacant of surfers.
She pulled her surfboard out of the car, actually said thank you to her mother, and slowly walked down the sandy trail to the beach.
Jenna was disappointed to see that none of the Hanalei girls were around. She laid the surfboard in the sand with the deck up and spread out her beach towel. Then she vigorously covered her pale body with sunblock. She didn’t notice that the warm tropical sun had quickly melted the wax on her surfboard, turning the deck liquid with its slippery wax.
Jenna stared at the ocean and wondered how she should start. She secretly had hoped that someone — Malia, Bethany, or one of the other girls — would give her some pointers about surfing. But no one was there.
She would have to do it herself.
Jenna stood up and fumbled with the leash. She fastened it on her left ankle, which turned out to be the wrong leg, because she tried to stand on the surfboard and felt very awkward — like the leash might trip her. So she switched the leash to her right ankle.
Jenna picked up her surfboard, and the runny wax smeared along her arm. “Gross!” she said out loud.
Trudging toward the crashing waves, Jenna tried to remember what she had seen the day before so that she could imitate it.
She made a painful mistake. Rather than point the nose of her board toward the ocean, she put the board in the water sideways and tried to push it out to sea in that manner.
The first small wave to come rolling in picked up the surfboard and smacked it hard into Jenna’s shins.
“Oww!” she cried, rubbing her legs.
When she recaptured her surfboard, Jenna pushed it a little way into the surf and then flopped on top of it. But the greasy sunblock that coated her body acted like butter on top of the now unwaxed board, and she slid off the side almost immediately. Over and over again she tried to find her balance in merely lying down on the board, but a bit of rolling whitewater kept sending her tumbling into the surf.
Jenna realized that this surfing sport was a lot harder than it looked and that she was going to need help.
Bethany and the girls trickled down the beach as they lugged their boards and gear, checking out the waves with the ease that comes from years of practice.
“The swells look a lot bigger today,” Jasmine said. Bethany grinned at her, feeling the excitement of the challenge building inside.
“Yeah! No time to lose!” she declared as she quickly pulled the chunk of white surf wax from a pocket in her towel and scraped it across the surface of her board. A thick fresh coat of wax roughed up the wax that already covered the deck.
“There limps Malia!” Monica announced, looking up from working on her own board.
Sure enough, Malia was slowly hobbling down the trail, with a small knapsack on her back and a folding beach chair under her arm. She wore shorts and a T-shirt over her bathing suit.