Pulled Under (Sixteenth Summer) (18 page)

In fact, Ben’s first day back in Pearl Beach doesn’t even include me until it’s almost over. I still haven’t heard from him by ten o’clock, so I try to call and it goes straight to voice mail. I figure (at least I hope) that it’s because his battery is dead and not because he hit ignore when my picture popped up on his phone. Without really thinking it through, I ride my bike over to his uncle’s house and knock on the door. I regret this decision the moment I see his face.

“Hi,” I say as he opens the door.

He smiles, but it feels forced. “Hey.” I can tell that he’s exhausted both physically and emotionally.

“How was your flight?” I ask.

“Long . . . like the week.”

There’s an awkward silence, and I’m not getting any encouraging signs, so I decide to cut my losses.

“Well, I was just riding home from Nicole’s and wanted to make sure you got back okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I turn around and try to speed walk over to my bike, but he runs up behind me and takes me by the shoulder.

“Wait a second,” he says. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

I turn around and try to read his face, but it’s hard in the darkness.

“I don’t know. I figured you’d be happy to see me. But you don’t seem happy. So I thought I should leave.”

“I
am
happy. It’s just that I’m tired and I have to get up early for work.”

(“You gave two excuses. Which one’s the real one?” I think as I remember what Nicole said to me just a couple of nights ago.)

“I completely understand. Let’s just act like this never happened. We’ll see each other tomorrow and run into each other’s arms.”

I really could use a laugh right here, but he looks serious.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” he says. “So we can talk.”

All these signs are worrisome. I start to breathe heavily, but I try to hide it as Ben tells his uncle that he’ll be right back.

I’m not sure how to describe the vibe as we walk down to the beach. Our chemistry feels completely different. The problem is that I don’t know if this is because things have changed between us or if it’s because he’s tired and I made a mistake by coming over this late. I’m also a bit concerned by the fact that he said he wanted to talk, but he’s keeping awfully quiet.

I decide to take charge of the conversation.

“If you want to talk about what went down with your parents and the judge, you know that I’m more than happy to listen,” I tell him. “But if you just want to forget about that stuff, that’s fine too.”

He thinks for a moment. “Maybe another time, but right now I’m just happy to be away from it.”

It’s night, but it’s still too hot and humid to snuggle as we walk down the beach together. We hold hands, but there’s a formality to it.

“I hope you got to have at least some fun while you were up there.”

“There was a big party at the lake, and I saw a lot of my friends from school,” he says with a faint smile, “so that was fun.”

I can’t help it, but the first thing I do when I hear this is wonder whether or not his ex-girlfriend, Beth, was at the party. Amazingly, I resist the urge to ask him and instead let my crazy worrying stay in my head.

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask, not sure I really want to hear the answer.

“I really missed you,” he says.

“I really missed you, too.”

“But in a couple weeks I’ll be going back for good and . . . I wonder if we should—”

I put my finger up against his lips to quiet him.

“Why don’t you stop right there,” I say. “We both know that September’s coming. But I don’t think we should talk about it. I think we should just enjoy the moment.”

He takes a deep breath and considers this. “It’s just—”

“I don’t even want to talk about surfing,” I say, cutting him off again. “I just want to hold your hand and walk along the beach.”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. “We can do that.”

We don’t say much after that. We just walk, and as we do I hold on as tightly as I can.

T
he next few days aren’t much better. Ben and I both smile and say all the right things, but there’s a definite distance between us. He even cancels on me twice. Yesterday he backed out of lunch because there was a problem at work, and today I was supposed to give him another surf lesson, but he bailed at the last moment. He said that he had to go listen to a couple bands he was considering for the Sand Castle Dance. I offered to go along with him, but he said that since it was work, he really shouldn’t bring anyone along.

I’m pretty sure he was about to break up with me on the beach, and now I wonder if I should have just let him do it. Rather than sit in my room so I could stress and obsess, I call Sophie and ask her to meet me at the pier for some intensive training.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie asks when she sees the expression on my face.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I say. “I just want to work.”

She nods. “Okay. Let’s work.”

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my new surfboard doesn’t just look amazing. It is amazing. Mo told me that because our styles are so similar, she knew just how to shape it. (We’ll call that the understatement of the year.) It’s perfect in every way and feels like an extension of my body whenever I’m in the water. At first I was worried that it had too much curve to it, but that curve has opened up my ability to attack my cutbacks. That’s what I’m working on today and the reason I called Sophie. She’s great at them.

The cutback is probably the most important surfing maneuver of all. As the energy of the wave pushes you forward, you can get too far in front of it. When that happens you have to turn, or cutback, into the wave and go against it until you’re closer to the power source. It lets you ride the wave longer and gives you the power to do bigger and better turns and maneuvers.

If you do a cutback right, you look like you belong in the Bolshoi Ballet. If you do it wrong, you look like my Uncle Barry doing the chicken dance at a wedding reception. After thirty minutes I’m looking more like Barry than Baryshnikov. I think this is partly due to the fact that I’m trying to add some flair to the maneuver in order to look good for the judges, but also because of my Ben funk.

“So tell me,” I ask Sophie as we sit on our boards in the lineup, waiting for the next set of waves. “What am I doing wrong?”

She gives me that Sophie smirk and asks, “Are we talking about surfing or Ben?”

I think about it for a moment before answering. “Surfing.”

“I think you’re trying too hard. The thing that’s so great about your technique is how smooth it is. But today you look uncomfortable, like you’re fighting the waves.”

I nod as I make mental notes.

“When you drop down into that turn, try leaning back more, right up to the point where you feel like you’re going to fall into the wave. And then picture big round circles in your mind as you start to whip around. It will make the move more fluid and help you pick up speed. No wasted energy.”

I think about this for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “That all makes sense. I think I can do that.”

“I know you can do it,” she says, with just the right amount of enthusiasm in her voice.

We look back at the ocean and all we see are pancakes. There are no real waves coming our way, so we just bob quietly for a few moments until I break the silence.

“All right,” I say with a smile. “What am I doing wrong with Ben?”

She thinks about it for a moment. “The same thing. I think you’re trying too hard. You look uncomfortable.”

“It’s not just a look,” I say. “I
am
uncomfortable. It used to be that when we walked on the beach our hands fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It was just perfect. But ever since he came back from Wisconsin, there’s been a distance between us. Physical and emotional. I keep hoping it will go away, but it doesn’t.”

“Do you think it’s because of what happened when he went home?” she asks. “Is he freaked out because of his parents’ divorce?”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “I have no way of knowing. He doesn’t talk about it, and I’m too scared to ask.”

“I understand him not volunteering it,” she says. “But you can’t be scared to ask him something. If you’re a couple, you should be able to ask him anything you want. Don’t be shy. You know what happens to timid surfers?”

“They wipe out.”

“You bet they do. It’s the same with boys. If you’re timid, you wipe out. Now show me that cutback.”

I see a set of waves coming right at us and pick out the one that’s just for me. I catch it, and as I ride along the shoulder just ahead of where it’s breaking, I think about the advice that Sophie gave me. I lean back farther and farther. At first it feels like I’m going to fall off the surfboard, but instead of falling I start picking up an amazing amount of speed. I shoot out in front of the break and do a wide sweeping turn known as a roundhouse. I can hear Sophie squealing with delight and cheering in the distance. After another hour of practice it’s almost second nature.

By the time we’re done, I’m exhausted. The practice has taken my mind off Ben, and the fact that my cutback has improved so much at least gives me something positive for the day.

“You own that move,” Sophie says as we carry our boards back toward the shop. “You need to be that bold with Ben.”

“I’ll try,” I say honestly. “But that’s easier said than done.”

“All the great things are.”

T
hroughout the week I try my best to be bold with Ben. It’s not my default setting, but I’m determined to do whatever I can to make things right. It works best one morning when I convince him to come out for another lesson. At first he’s reluctant, but I’m able to fill the lulls in conversation with surf talk. Then the instruction starts to pay off, and he catches a few waves in a row. This is without a doubt the happiest I’ve seen him since he’s come back from Wisconsin. And best of all, he doesn’t pearl and end up with a bloody face this time.

I try to extend this emotion when we finish, so I tell him that I’m taking him out for lunch to celebrate his success. When he says that he really should get to work, I say, “I won’t take no for an answer.”

This is me being bold. This is also me being stupid, because he really does have a lot of work to do. We’re only a few bites into our pizza when he gets an angry phone call from his uncle, wondering why he’s late for work. Lunch ends abruptly and this blah vibe carries over into everything we do for the next few days. I pick a movie for us to see and it’s terrible. I arrange a picnic on his lunch break and we get rained out. And unlike the movies, there’s no romantic gazebo to hide under. Karma is doing everything it can to keep us apart.

On Tuesday we hit rock bottom.

Ben arrives at Surf Sisters with the summer campers, but we can’t let any of them in the water because there’s a rip current. It’s hard because everything looks fine on the surface of the water and the kids don’t understand. This makes them cranky, and when I try to convert the lesson so that it works on the beach, it all falls flat. Their bad mood boils over into mine, and I wrap up the lesson a half hour early.

“We’re done?” Ben asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve stretched it out as much as I can without going in the water.”

“What am I supposed to do with them?” he asks. “The van won’t be here to pick them up for another thirty minutes.”

I’m sure that I will look back on this moment as a lost opportunity. But my funk keeps me from coming up with any creative solution to the problem. So, instead of saying, “We can go shell hunting,” or something like that, I say, “I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”

He shakes his head and asks, “Why are you being this way?”

“Because I can’t change the ocean current,” I snap. “And I can’t magically put kids in a good mood. And I sure can’t seem to make you happy about anything.”

It is totally irrational, and I can’t believe it as I hear the words come out of my mouth. But that’s what I say. I can’t really read Ben’s reaction. I’m not sure if he’s angry or just confused, but I am totally off the rails. Luckily, Sophie has come down to help with the lesson, and she distracts the kids before they get to watch me break down.

“Who do you think can build a better sand castle?” she says. “The boys? Or the girls?”

The kids all shout, and within thirty seconds Sophie has them split into two groups who are happily building away. Fearful that I might start crying in front of everybody, I say a quick good-bye and head up to the shop. This is strategic on my part because I know that Ben can’t leave the kids, so he won’t be able to follow me.

I hide out in the shop’s storeroom for about twenty minutes and make it back down just as they’re finishing. The sand castles look great, and the kids are having a wonderful time. I’m really disappointed that I acted the way I did. I feel like I let them down. Ben walks up to me, and I still can’t read his face.

“I’m really sorry,” I say, convinced that it’s too little too late.

“Me too,” he replies.

There’s an awkward silence.

“Do you want to do something tonight?” I ask, half prepared to hear him say that he doesn’t ever want to do something with me.

“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you want.”

I am so not good at this. Considering my current track record of bad ideas, I decide to stop with the boldness.

“I want you to pick,” I say. “None of my ideas seem to be working out too well lately.”

He gives me a little smile. “The picnic almost worked out.”

“You mean except for the thunderstorm.”

“Yeah, but the sub sandwich tasted good. Wet . . . but good.”

It feels nice to joke, even a little bit. “Still, I’ll let you pick. Surprise me.”

He nods. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

T
he ultimate surf maneuver is to ride inside the barrel or tube of a wave. It’s super difficult, especially here in Florida where there aren’t usually waves big enough, but when you do it, you are surrounded by water collapsing on you from all sides. Your only hope is to keep aiming for the light at the end of the barrel where you come back out again. That’s how I’m feeling about things with Ben. Everything is collapsing around me, but I’m still aiming for that light, still hoping to ride this wave all the way in to the shore.