Cut Back (6 page)

“That's what I was thinking,” Kai said.
“Makes you wonder if he should be alone on the beach.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Then Shauna said, “So what did I do wrong that time?”

“A little too much angle on your takeoff,” Kai said. “Try for a little less next time.”

They waited for the next half decent wave to come in. Kai swung his head back and forth, looking for a wave, then looking at the strange guy on the beach. A wave came and this time Shauna caught the shoulder with a little less of an angle. It looked like she was about to pop up when she lost her balance and fell.

Back in the soup again.

But this time when her head popped up, she had a big grin. Kai waited while she got on her board and paddled back out.

“I felt it!” she said excitedly. “I really did! Like for a second I was actually going sideways in the curl! It was so cool!”

“What happened?”

“I tried to get up and the water just ripped my hand off the rail and I fell.”

“You gotta keep your hands off the rail,” Kai said. “Try planting them flat on the deck when
you pop up. Kind of like doing a push up.”

By now Bean and Booger had come back out.

“Guys, watch this!” Shauna said eagerly. Another wave was coming and she started to paddle into position.

“How's it going?” Bean asked Kai while they watched Shauna dig for the wave.

“She's getting there,” Kai said.

Shauna caught the wave at an angle, planted her hands on the deck of the board, popped up and instantly did a header right into the trough.

“Big improvement,” Bean quipped.

“Give her some time,” Kai said. He looked back at the beach. The strange guy was still standing at the waterline. “You guys know who that is?”

“That's Spazzy,” Booger said. “He and his sister come here every summer.”

“What's the story?” Kai asked.

“I don't know. People say the wiring in his head is messed up.”

Kai was about to look back to see what Shauna was doing when he saw one of the guys from Lucas's crew walking out of the water and up onto the beach with his board. It
was Runt, the red-haired kid who always tried to act so tough. Runt put his board down and started to walk toward the weird guy.

Maybe it was the agro posture of Runt's body, or the expression on his face. But something told Kai that there was going to be trouble.

W
ithout waiting for a wave, Kai started to paddle in. That weird guy, Spazzy, or whatever they called him, had seen Runt by now and was starting to back away up the beach. Meanwhile Runt bent down and picked something up from the sand like he was going to throw it.

Aw, crap
. Kai truly couldn't believe what he was seeing. Garbage like this wasn't supposed to happen in real life. It only happened in those dumb made-for-school movies about bullying that everyone felt compelled to show ever since those two nutcases went berserk at Columbine.

The spazzy guy started to back away faster
now, stumbling and almost losing his balance as he turned to run. Runt wound up, and threw whatever he'd picked up. Because of the way the spazzy guy was jerking and flailing, Kai couldn't tell if anything hit him or not.

“Get the hell outa here, you freak!” Runt shouted, and bent down to pick up something else to hurl. Kai reached the shallows and jumped off his board. He ripped the leash off his ankle, tore up the beach, and blindsided Runt just as he was about to throw.

They both went down. Kai had the advantage, since Runt didn't know what had hit him. But now he had to wrestle him in the sand. Of course, Runt had to fight back, so they rolled around, Kai getting sand in his mouth and eyes before he managed to grab Runt's arm, twist it around his back, and force him facedown in the sand.

“Leggo!” Runt tried to fight loose.

“Just chill,” Kai said, holding him down, but not hurting him. He spit the sand out of his mouth and tried to blink it out of his eyes.

“Let go!” Runt kept struggling.

Kai twisted the kid's arm up behind his back a little more. Runt yelped, then laid still.

“What's your problem?” Kai asked.

“Fuck you, what's
your
problem?” Runt growled back.

“I don't have a problem,” Kai said. “And I'm not the one throwing stuff at retards.”

“I'm not a retard,” someone said.

Kai swiveled his head around in surprise. The spazzy guy was standing there, blinking, licking his lips, jerking around like someone was zapping him with a stun gun. Yet the words had been spoken with perfect clarity. Kai stared at him, totally confused.

“I have Tourette's syndrome,” the guy said.

Whatever it was, Kai had never heard of it. Runt squirmed again. Kai let go and stood up. Runt leaped to his feet, spitting sand out of his mouth and scratching it out of his hair. He brought up his fists like he still wanted to fight.

“You want to go at it? Come on, let's go!” Runt danced around, waving his fists, ducking and weaving like he was in the first round of a heavyweight fight. Kai and the spazzy guy glanced at each other and the spazzy guy actually smiled, as if he agreed with Kai that Runt was a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal.

“Look, just go away, okay?” Kai said. “And don't throw stuff at people.”

“You chicken?” Runt spit and waved his fists. “They call you tuna, right? Chicken of the sea.”

Without warning, Kai brought his fist back and took a quick step toward the kid.

“Ah!” Caught by surprise, Runt yelped and jumped back out of range.

Kai smiled. “Yeah, I'm chicken. And what's wrong with you? Why can't you leave people alone?”

Runt dropped his fists and looked confused. He pointed a finger at the spazzy guy. “What's wrong with him?”

By now Lucas and his crew had come ashore, including the new guy with the tattoos and piercings. Bean and Booger came in too.

“What's going on?” Lucas asked.

“Maybe you could find Runt a bone to gnaw on,” Kai said. “He's definitely got a lot of energy to burn.”

“Screw you,” Runt snarled.

Sam took a step toward Kai. “What are you? The protector of weirdos or something?” Clearly he meant to include Bean and Booger as well.

Kai sighed. He was tempted to ask Sam if he was absent the day they handed out brains,
but it would only create more antagonism. Instead he turned to Lucas. “Just call off your dogs, okay? Then tonight we can meet in the alley with chains and knives and settle this like real men.”

“I'll be there,” Runt said.

Even Lucas had to roll his eyes. “Runt, you idiot, he wasn't serious.”

“Huh?” Runt looked even more confused.

Lucas turned back to Kai. “The real place to settle this would be in the waves. Like in Fairport in a few weeks. Oh, wait, I forgot. You're the big soul surfer who's completely anticompetition. Just like your hero, Duke Kahana-what's-his-face, the great ambassador of surfing. You know, it's funny. I read up on that guy and guess what? He wasn't against competition at all. In fact, he was a totally competitive animal.”

Kai felt a frown form on his face, but he knew better than to argue.

“Want to know how the great ambassador of surfing got to travel around the world putting on surf demonstrations?” Lucas continued. “Because he was a competitive swimmer and he was being invited to swimming meets. In fact, he was so competitive he won gold
medals in two Olympics. My guess is that he would have been the first one to sign up for a surfing heat, only they didn't have any back then. So I think you should come up with another excuse for not competing, dude, because if the big Duke was around today, I'm pretty sure he'd be looking forward to Fairport.”

Lucas turned and walked away, and his crew followed him, except the guy with piercings and tattoos, who gave Kai a long look as if he was sizing him up. Kai couldn't read the guy's expression. But something about him was really troubling. Finally he turned and left too.

“
I
think that's true,” said Spazzy, blinking and jerking again.

Kai looked at him curiously.

“I, I read it in a book,” Spazzy said. He started to hop up and down. “And thanks for helping me before.”

Kai watched him hop like he was on an invisible pogo stick.

“I saw you surfing Screamers,” Spazzy said. “But you're not one of them. Why did they let you?”

“Welcome to the Screamers Liberation Front,” Bean said. “We who are fighting for the cause of liberating Screamers from the neoprene grip of tyranny.”

“What's your name?” Booger asked.

“Caleb Winthrop. But everyone around here calls me Spazzy. If you said Caleb I might not know you meant me.”

“Doesn't it bother you when people call you that?” Bean asked.

Spazzy moved his head back and forth. It was very strange to Kai how at some moments Spazzy's body appeared to be completely out of his control, but at other moments he could appear, briefly, calm and normal.

“I spend most of the year at this school in Santa Barbara. It's for people like me. The first thing they teach you is not to take anything people do or say personally.” Spazzy licked the back of his hand, then sniffed it, then licked it again and sniffed it again. “I mean, when you do the kind of stuff I do, you
better
learn not to take what people say personally.”

“Can you ever control it?” Kai asked.

“Sometimes. Like for a really short time, but then it just builds up inside you and what comes out is even weirder than usual. So they teach you to relax and let whatever happens just happen. Like the other day when I came up to you on the beach and made all those stupid screechy noises? It's because I got all
excited and nervous and was trying to be cool and calm.”

“Wait a minute,” Bean said. “Is this the thing where some people curse like crazy and can't stop themselves?”

“Sometimes,” said Spazzy. “That's called coprolalia and not all Tourette's patients have it. My friend Ray has it and when he really gets wound up, it's like, totally crazed. Like this one time we went to the movies and there was this ridiculously long line to get in and our movie was gonna start at any moment and Ray went off cursing like a madman. Like he couldn't help it, but everybody freaked and the place just cleared out. Next thing you know, we're first in line.” Spazzy grinned proudly.

“But what about once you're in the movie?” Bean said. “Doesn't he bother everyone?”

“We usually try to go to heavy-action R-rated stuff and sit in the back. When Ray goes off most of the audience probably thinks it's part of the sound track.”

Kai chuckled. Spazzy was a cool guy.

Spazzy stared at something over Kai's shoulder, and immediately started blinking and
twitching again. Kai turned. A serious-looking young woman was taking determined strides across the beach toward them. She was wearing neatly pressed blue slacks, a white sweater, and what looked from a distance like pearl earrings and a pearl necklace. They seemed like the kind of clothes a sixty-year-old woman might wear, not someone in their early twenties. And it was hard to imagine anyone at any age dressing like that at eight in the morning.

“Aw, crap, it's the Wicked Witch of the West.” Spazzy started across the beach to meet her, as if he didn't want her to mix with Kai and his friends. She stopped and crossed her arms. Kai couldn't hear what she said, but it looked like she was scolding him. Spazzy hopwalked past her as if he didn't want to hear it.

“Can someone explain to me what just happened?” Bean said.

“I think we just met Spazzy, and he seems like a cool guy,” Kai said.

“What's Santa Barbara?” Booger asked.

“A place in California,” Bean said.

“What's he doing here?” Booger asked.

“Maybe you should ask him sometime,” Kai said.

“He said something about Screamers,” Bean
said. “But how would he even know about Screamers?”

“Why are you guys asking me this stuff?” Kai said. “I just met him too.”

“Weird,” said Booger.

They watched Spazzy walk back up the beach, followed by the well-dressed young woman. Then they turned and watched Lucas and his crew paddling back out to Screamers.

“What do you want to do?” asked Booger.

Bean checked his watch, then looked back at the waves. “Surf. What else?”

They turned back toward the water. Kai let Booger go ahead, then said, “Hey, Bean.”

Bean had just put on his leash. Now he straightened up. “Yeah?”

“Who's the new guy in Lucas's crew?”

Bean didn't even have to look to know who Kai was talking about. “Derek.”

“What's his story?”

“You don't want to know.”

K
ai surfed until 9 A.M., and headed back to the Driftwood to shower and change. Then he left the motel room and went back down the outside stairs, planning to grab some breakfast before going to the T-shirt shop. As he walked around the side of the motel he saw Curtis standing in the parking lot with two men wearing slacks, short-sleeved shirts, and ties. Both men had pocket protectors loaded with pens and mechanical pencils. Curtis was reading a pink sheet of paper one of the men had just handed him.

He looked back up at the two men. “Where'd you say you were from?”

“Town engineer's office,” one of the men answered.

“And you're citing me for creating an environmental hazard?” Curtis said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It's right over here, Mr. Ames.” One of the men led him over to the green garbage Dumpster in the corner of the parking lot near the street. The man took a pen from his pocket protector and pointed at a thin dribble of smelly yellowish liquid that dripped out of the bottom of the Dumpster and snaked down the driveway, along the curb and disappeared into a storm sewer in the street.