Second Star

32

I’m not sure exactly when I fall asleep, but before I know it, Jas is shaking me awake for the second time today.

“Wake up, Darling,” he says. I like the way my name sounds in his deep voice. “I’m surfing Witch Tree today.”

“What?” I ask groggily. “Did the Coast Guard open the harbor?”

Jas shakes his head. “I found a captain who’ll take me out.”

I smile as I rub the sleep from my eyes. “I thought you were done living outside the law.”

“These are once-in-a-lifetime waves, Wendy. I’m not about to miss them.”

Unsurprised, I nod. “What about a tow partner?” I ask, remembering the Jet Ski waiting in the back of Jas’s truck.

Jas groans. “I know,” he says. “I thought for sure I’d be able to find some stragglers hanging out around the harbor, but everyone left.”

I shake my head, remembering what Pete said a few hours ago.

“Not everyone,” I say.

It’s early afternoon by the time we’re on the tiny boat, heading out to sea. Jas asked if I wanted to stay on shore, but I said no way.

“I’m not going to tell you not to come,” he said, “but I want you to know that it’s dangerous.”

“When I said yes, I meant it,” I countered. “I’m coming with you. I’m through standing on the sidelines.”

Jas nodded, grinning. “Yes, you are,” he agreed.

Once Belle saw that I was going, she insisted on coming, too. She even brought her board along for the ride, though Pete made her promise she’d stay in the boat if conditions looked too rough once we got out there. She agreed, but I could tell by the glint in her eye—the same as the glint in Pete’s eye when he accepted Jas’s offer to be his tow partner for the day—there was no way she was missing this wave either.

Jas rides the Jet Ski across the boat’s wake; visibility is so bad that every few minutes he disappears into the fog entirely even though he can’t be more than a few yards away. The boat rushes over the chop; we bounce so hard that my teeth chatter. I’m freezing in my sweatshirt and jeans, soaked through. Belle, Pete, and Jas are all wearing wetsuits and neoprene floatation vests. Back on dry land, it may be the middle of the summer, but out here, it’s as cold as December.

It’s like the storm that’s bringing these waves is a winter storm that just lost its way.

Jas shouts at us from the Jet Ski; he’s nearly flipped over, and the captain has to slow the boat as Jas struggles to right himself. Our small boat is tossed from side to side as we wait. When I first saw it, bouncing in the chop by the harbor, it didn’t look like much more than a rowboat with an engine attached to its hull. Once we were on board, I saw that it was, in fact, a fishing boat. It reeks of dead fish and is covered in seagull droppings. There’s a small space belowdecks where the captain must live. It’s no wonder that he was willing to take Jas’s bribe; with the harbor closed to fishermen, Jas was his only chance at making any money today.

He gives us the thumbs-up, and the captain takes off again. I can’t help wondering just what in the world is worth all this trouble. With the conditions as bad as they are, it takes us almost two hours just to get to the wave. We’re already risking our lives, and no one’s even tried to surf yet.

Suddenly, the captain cuts the motor—not that the boat keeps still. We’re still rocking back and forth, drifting out to sea. Jas pulls up alongside and offers Pete the first ride.

“We’re there?” I ask. How can they even tell that we’re in the right place?

Pete grins as he jumps into the water beside the boat. Jas tosses him the towrope, Pete slides his feet into his foot straps, and they take off.

“Just wait,” Belle says. I’m surprised to see her standing close beside me. She’s grinning so hard that her cheeks must hurt. I’ve never seen her look so … happy.

Jas pulls Pete, who stands on his board like it’s a water ski. It’s at least three feet shorter than the board he uses to surf back at Kensington, with rubber foot straps to hold his feet in place.

At first, I don’t recognize the wave rising off to the right of the boat; it looks less like the beginning of a wave and more like a monster of a whale rising to the surface.

Then it begins to grow from a lump into a hill, from a hill into a mountain, from a mountain into a wall.

Jas stops the Jet Ski and Pete sits straddling his board. Even though their backs are to me I know that they’re studying the curve of the wave, deciding just where to drop in, just when Pete should let go of the towrope, just which direction Jas should turn the Jet Ski to avoid getting caught when the wave crashes down.

It seems like hours have passed by the time the wave finally begins to curl over and collapse upon itself, right back into the water. The spray reaches us even here; I’m as soaked as if I’d been the one to dive into the ocean. I lick my lips and taste salt.

As the wave begins to build again, Jas restarts the Jet Ski, pulling Pete expertly behind him. Witch Tree is not a pretty wave; the water is green and murky, not crystal clear like the water in Hawaii or luminously blue like the water down the coast. As the wave grows, its face becomes choppy, rather than smooth and glassy like the waves in Kensington.

The wave rises and I wait for it to crest, wait for Pete to let go of the towrope. But Jas keeps pulling him and the wave keeps growing, even bigger this time than the last.

The sun finally, finally breaks through the clouds, illuminating the ocean. At once, the air is crystal clear. This wave doesn’t even resemble the waves I’ve seen before. It doesn’t even seem related to the waves that ride up on the shores of Newport Beach. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wave grow higher than ten feet; this wave that builds to twenty, thirty, fifty feet is a different animal entirely.

When Pete finally releases the towrope and drops into the wave, it looks like he’s free-falling down the face of a cliff. It looks like madness. It looks like lunacy.

But it also looks like grace.

I don’t think I could turn away if I wanted to; it’s as if a magnet is pulling my gaze ever closer to the wave. Pete was made to do this; so was Jas, and maybe my brothers, too.

Pete comes flying out the side of the wave, and Jas circles back to pick him up out of the water. Even from here, even over the sound of the wave crashing and the wind howling, I can hear them shouting. They look more excited than little kids on Christmas morning.

Jas takes the wave next. He flies down the face of it, the water almost black beneath him, except for the white line of foam trailing behind his board. He holds his arms out wide, his left hand flat against the wave behind him as though it’s as solid as a wall. But then I guess that’s exactly what it is: a wall of water. A skyscraper right here in the middle of the sea. His black hair shines in the sunlight, and his ride seems to last for hours as the wave continues to lengthen out in front of us. Pete whoops from his place on the Jet Ski; he keeps a close watch so that he can pull Jas out of the soup once his ride is over.

“Maybe they are superheroes,” I say out loud.

“What?” Belle asks.

I shake my head. “Just something I was thinking earlier. Like they are two superheroes fighting for world domination.”

Belle laughs, surprising me. “Yeah, and look what they can do when they join forces,” she says as the wave curls over Jas’s head, crashing into the ocean with a deafening roar. Pete grabs him from the water before the foam gets too thick.

The wave begins to build again, and I wonder who will take the next ride. The boat rocks jerkily from side to side.

My parents spent their honeymoon on a yacht in the South Pacific; my father once told me that sleeping out on the open water, the waves lapping the side of the boat, was like being rocked to sleep in an enormous cradle. The memory makes me want to laugh out loud. Being on this boat is like being held in the jaws of some wild animal, the kind that whips its prey back and forth, stunning it before it kills it. I watch the wave rise and fall as though I’m possessed by it, until it feels like it’s coming from someplace deep inside of me, until I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try, what it feels like to stand on solid ground.

Beside me, Belle is picking up her own board. “My turn now,” she says, waving at the boys to come back to the boat for her.

“Good luck,” I shout as she jumps overboard.