Pulled Under (Sixteenth Summer) (9 page)

Once she’s made her purchase, I am free to go and head over to the garage. It’s been my favorite part of the shop ever since I was a kid and I’d come to look at all the boards and try to figure out which one was made just for me. We don’t have nearly the number that Surf City has in its inventory, but all of ours are choice. About half of them are custom made in the area. These cost a little more, but they are beyond sweet.

Personally, I’m saving up to buy my very own M & M, which is what we call the boards that Mickey and Mo shape themselves. They only make about a dozen a year, so they’re pretty hard to come by.

Speaking of Mo, when I get to the garage, I see her in back talking to Ben. She’s in her midfifties, but she looks much younger than that. A life spent surfing, swimming, and kayaking has kept her extremely fit. It also keeps her hair wet a lot of the time, which is why she usually just pulls it back in a ponytail.

Of the two sisters, I’m closer to her. This is no knock on Mickey; it’s just that Mo and I have more in common. Mickey’s loud and in your face like Sophie, but Mo hangs around the edges like I do. We surf alike too. Both of us favor a long, smooth style rather than a more athletic and aggressive one.

She’s showing Ben a display case that serves as a tribute to Steady Eddie, her father. It has all sorts of artifacts including surfing trophies, a lifesaving medal, and even his torpedo buoy, which is the big float that lifeguards carried back in the day.

“He won every surf contest in the state,” she says, beaming with pride.

“What about King of the Beach?” Ben asks, referring to our local contest. “Did he win that one too?”

Mo laughs. “Seven times—more than anyone.”

“Awesome,” says Ben. “Where’s the trophy for that?”

“At Surf City,” she says. “It always goes to the current champion.”

“That’s kind of unfair,” says Ben.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “It’s in their store, but Dad’s name is on it seven times. Mickey and I think of it as covertly advertising our store over there.”

“Why don’t you ask her who’s won it the second most times?” I say, interrupting.

“We’re in the middle of a conversation, Izzy,” she says, deflecting the comment.

“Go ahead and ask her,” I say again.

“Who won the second most times?” he asks.

She’s reluctant to answer, but Ben and I wait her out, and she finally concedes, “Mickey and I have each won it four times.”

“You were King of the Beach?” Ben asks.

She nods.

“The only two girls to ever win it,” I add, because I know that Mo won’t.

“That means between you two and your dad, you guys have your name engraved on it fifteen times.”

“I never thought of it that way, but I guess so.” Mo is uncomfortable receiving praise, so she redirects the conversation. “Ben, why don’t you show Izzy what you learned?”

“Oh, yeah. Watch this, Iz.” One by one he points to a row of surfboards, identifying each one by type as he goes. “This is a shortboard, this is an egg, this is a fish, and this one . . . is . . . a gun?”

“That’s right, a gun,” Mo says. “Now which one is the quad?”

“The fish,” he says, pointing toward it. “Because it has four fins.”

“Perfect.”

“Very impressive,” I say.

Feeling good about his surfboard IQ, he turns to Mo and adds, “I can do more than identify. I also know that you have to keep them in direct sunlight so that the condensation doesn’t contract the foam.”

Mo starts to correct him, but I shake her off and she lets it slide. Instead she turns to me and says, “I understand you’re going to be teaching Ben the fine art.” She always refers to surfing as “the fine art.”

“Yes, I am,” I say.

She gives us the once-over and nods her approval. “Good choice.”

I don’t know if she’s saying that I’m a good choice as a teacher for him or if he’s a good choice as a guy for me. Knowing Mo, it’s probably a combination of both.

“I’ll be happy to take any pointers that you may have too,” he tells her. “After all, you are a four-time King of the Beach. Or is it Queen?”

“King works,” she says with more than a little pride. She thinks about it and says, “My advice is that you should remember to fall in love with your heart and not with your brain. . . .”

I start to stammer something about it being way too early to use the
L
word, but catch myself when she continues.

“So pick a board that speaks to you right here.” She taps him in the center of the chest. “And always listen to what Izzy tells you. The girl has the gift.”

“I’ll do that,” he says.

Mo smiles and leaves us in the garage. For the first time since my dad interrupted us yesterday morning, we are alone. I look at him. He looks at me. And I realize I have no idea what to say. You’d think that since I’ve been obsessing over this moment for the last six hours, I might have come up with an opening line.

“Hi.” (Clever, huh?)

“Hi,” he says. “Is your shift over?”

“Yep,” I say. “Although I do have to be home for dinner in about an hour.”

He thinks this over for a moment. “An hour, huh? That doesn’t really leave us enough time to run the eight miles I was hoping to get in, so do you want to just go out on the pier and look at the ocean instead?”

“It’s one of my favorite things in the world.”

T
he Pearl Beach Fishing Pier is rare in that it’s equally popular with tourists and locals alike. It stretches out from the southern end of the boardwalk and is exactly one quarter mile long. When Ben and I get there, it’s low tide and the beach is at its widest. That means we have to walk nearly a third of the length of the pier before we’re actually over the water. There are people fishing from both sides for most of the way, but none at the far end. There’s also no railing at the end, which allows boats to tie off and lets us sit down on the edge and dangle our feet over the water.

“It’s pretty,” Ben says, looking out at endless ocean.

“It’s better than pretty,” I say as I close my eyes and feel the sea mist against my face. “It’s perfect.”

There’s that word again—“perfect.” It’s the same word I used to describe him yesterday morning, and I wonder if he makes the connection.

We’re both quiet for a little while, and I can tell he’s thinking of what to say. I decide to beat him to the punch.

“I’m pretty sure I know why you wanted to talk,” I offer. “And I’d just like to apologize for all the melodramatic baggage I laid on you yesterday. I also want to apologize for giving you the cold shoulder lately. You deserve better.”

“First of all, you don’t need to apologize for anything,” he says. “And secondly, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

I take a deep breath. This is it.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You’ve told me great things about the beach and surfing. You’ve told me where to eat and how to dress.”

“But . . . ,” I say. “This sounds like it’s leading to a ‘but.’”

I open my eyes and turn to him. He’s looking right at me.

“But,” he says, “you’ve told me almost nothing about
yourself
. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about you.”

This catches me off guard. Completely off guard.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you know all kinds of things about me. You know about my parents getting divorced. You know about me breaking up with my ex-girlfriend. You know about my school and my uncle and that I run cross-country. But the only thing I know about you is that your favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip.”

“That’s probably the most interesting thing about me.”

He shakes his head. “You should think more of yourself, Izzy. I’m sure there are an endless number of interesting things about you, and I’d like to know some of them.”

I rack my brain trying to think of any worth telling, but I come up blank.

“I’m sorry. It’s all just so . . . ordinary.”

“That cannot be,” he protests.

“Okay, I’ll prove it. You’ve met my parents and I’m an only child, so that means you know my entire family. I get good grades at school, but I’m pretty anonymous when I walk through the halls. That’s partly by choice and partly due to the high school version of Darwin’s natural selection. I haven’t told you about breaking up with my ex-boyfriend because I’ve never had a boyfriend. So, now you’re all caught up.”

“You’ve never had a boyfriend?”

I find this particular bit of information to be supremely embarrassing, so I turn away and look back at the water as I answer. “No.”

“Why not?” he asks. “What’s the problem?”

“I guess I’m just a loser,” I say sharply.

“No. I mean, what’s the problem with the boys in this town? How is it possible that you’ve never had a boyfriend? Does the salt water get in their brains? Does the sun make them stupid?”

“You’ve seen Kayla,” I say. “My school is loaded with girls who look like that.”

He thinks about this for a moment. “Okay, I’ll admit that Kayla is hot—”

“You think?” I say sarcastically.

“But she’s not in your league. You’re smarter, funnier, and way more interesting.”

“All things that a girl wants to hear. I’m sure she goes to bed every night cursing my really good personality.”

“You do have a really good personality,” he says. “But if you want me to be shallow, I’ll point out that you’re also better looking than her.”

I give him the look. “That’s completely untrue and you know it.”

“That’s funny, because I don’t know that,” he says. “I do know that she asked me to go to a party tonight. And I know that I turned her down so I could hang out with you.”

I’m not sure if I’ll ever have another such opportunity in the future, so I savor this for a moment before I respond.

“Really?”

“Really, and I’ll prove it,” he says, throwing my line right back at me. He covers his eyes with his left hand. “Ask me to describe Kayla.”

I’m skeptical of where this is going, but I don’t have much choice. “Describe Kayla.”

“Big boobs. Long legs. Great hair.”

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but he’s right—Kayla’s hair is spectacular. “Okay,” I reply. “You’re kind of proving my point.”

He shakes his head but still keeps his hand over his eyes. “Now ask me to describe you.”

I don’t really see how this can turn out well, so I don’t say anything. He doesn’t let that stop him.

“You have a wrinkle in your chin,” he says.

“Wow, a chin wrinkle sounds way better than big boobs.”

“You have this
amazing
wrinkle in your chin,” he says, ignoring my sarcasm, “that only appears when you smile. It’s so irresistible that I keep telling stupid jokes just so that you’ll laugh and I can see it again.”

I reflexively run my finger along my chin.

“And your eyes defy description,” he continues. “When I met you, I thought they were blue. Then, when we went to Luigi’s, I could have sworn they were brown. And yesterday morning . . . I’m certain they were green. Every time I see you, the first thing I look at are your eyes so I can see what color they are.”

Let me reiterate that this type of conversation is new to me, and it has me feeling a little breathless.

“And when you get embarrassed your cheeks turn red.” He uncovers his eyes and looks right at me. “Like they’re doing right now.”

Of course the fact that he says this makes me blush that much more.

“The first time I saw it was when I asked you how the poster looked and you started to say ‘awful’ but tried to change it to ‘awesome,’ and it came out ‘awfslome.’”

“You noticed that?”

He nods. “I notice everything about you.”

“Well, I can’t help but notice that all the things you just pointed out—wrinkly chin, inconsistent eye color, and the oh so sexy blushing—are in fact flaws. So again I say that you’re kind of proving my point.”

“You cannot believe that,” he says. “You know they’re not flaws.”

“Well, I admit that you manage to present them in a way that’s kind of amazing, but—”

“Maybe this analogy will work for you. Before you got to the garage, Mo showed me all the different types of surfboards. She really opened my eyes. Who knew there were so many?”

“I knew,” I joke, but he ignores it.

“Girls like Kayla are like factory boards. Shiny. Smooth. Pretty. They look great but they look alike.”

“And girls like me?” I ask.

“There aren’t
girls
like you, Izzy. There is
a girl
like you, singular. You’re like this custom board that Mo showed me. She shaped it herself, and it has all these little details and indentations that make it special and unique. They’re features, not flaws.”

I look at him and am totally speechless. On the list of the greatest things that anyone has ever said to me, this is the entire list. Nothing else is even close.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, you could say something about who you are. For once don’t make me do all the talking.”

“I’m really not trying to be difficult; I just can’t think of anything.”

“Tell me why you won’t surf in a contest.”

“I already did. It’s just not my scene.”

“Sorry, wrong answer,” he says as he makes a game show buzzer noise. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Is it because you’re shy? Is it because you think you’ll lose?”

“Maybe . . . but there’s more to it than that,” I try to explain.

I think about this for a moment, and he waits patiently for an answer. I look out at the water and try to put it all into words.

“For me surfing is completely pure. It’s just me and the water and my board. It’s almost spiritual. Actually, it
is
spiritual. There’s no one watching, no one judging. It doesn’t matter who’s popular or who’s pretty, and it’s not about being better than anybody else. It’s just about the quest for perfection.”

“And what do you mean by perfection?”

“Think about everything that goes into creating a wave: the gravitational pull of the moon, the wind and weather thousands of miles away in the middle of the ocean, the contours of the ocean floor. It’s an amazing cosmic event that is hidden from sight until the last possible moment. The wave only breaks the surface for such a short period of time, and perfection is the tuning fork that rings in your heart when you catch it the moment it comes to life and ride it until the last bit of it disappears. It’s the feeling of knowing that the forces of nature all came together and you were there to fully appreciate every last bit of it.”