“I used to hate the water.”
—Roy Scheider, Jaws (1975)
7
* * *
My dad says the second day of something is always better than the first because you know what to expect, and he’s right. The Hotbox is slightly more tolerable today. I sacrifice my long waves for an updo and tie the scarf pinup-style, which keeps the sweat from rolling down the back of my neck. Grace has taken preventative measures too, bringing in a battery-powered oscillating fan from home that she’s mounted between our stations. Our biggest obstacle is juggling bathroom breaks, because we’re drinking more water than horses after the Kentucky Derby.
Halfway through my shift, I get my thirty-minute break. Shucking my orange vest, I head upstairs to the café, where I find a lull in the line. The sugar cookie Porter gave me yesterday was pretty scrumptious, so I buy two and find an empty table in a private alcove under the pirate ship. I pull out my phone and look up what’s been hounding me since I clocked in today.
Bill “Pennywise” Roth was a professional surfer who won a bunch of World Surf League championship titles and Triple Crowns in the 1980s. According to his online biography, he’s continually ranked as one of the top surfers of all time. It looks like he died eight years ago. There’s a photo of a life-size memorial statue out by the surfer’s crosswalk, taken at sunset, with a bunch of flowers and surfboards propped up against it.
I start to read about how he grew up in a poor Jewish family and started surfing at the age of six, and how he fostered this entire multigenerational family of professional surfers: his son, Xander Roth, and his grandchildren—
Hold on. Porter has a younger sister, Lana, sixteen, and she’s a state and nationally ranked surfer who’ll be competing professionally for the first time this fall and predicted to join a yearlong world tour starting next January. But Porter won’t? And what happened to his dad?
A shadow falls over my phone. I hit the power button, but not fast enough.
“Reading up on me?”
I grimace, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. How did he find me up here? “Are you stalking me on the security cameras?”
“Every move,” Porter says. Metal legs squeak against the slate floor as he spins another chair around backward and straddles it, legs spread, like he’s riding a horse. He crosses his arms on the chair’s back. “If you wanted to know something about my family, all you had to do was ask.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I start to gather up my stuff, but I’m only halfway through the first cookie, so it’s pretty obvious that I just sat down.
“I saw you staring at my dad today.” An accusation.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
A tiny groan escapes my mouth. My shoulders fall. “I didn’t know . . . I mean, Grace kind of mentioned something happened, but I didn’t know what, exactly, so I was just . . .” Just what? Digging my grave a little deeper? “Curious,” I finally finish.
“Okay,” he says, nodding his head slowly. “So what do you already know?”
I turn my phone back on. “I got to here,” I say, and point to the article.
He leans over the back of the chair and squints at the screen. “Ah. That’s it? So you know who my grandfather was and how he died?”
“Didn’t get to the death part,” I say, hoping that doesn’t sound as bad as I think it does.
He doesn’t seem to take offense. “He was a big wave surfer. That means he had steel balls. Took stupid risks, even when he got too old to be doing it. In the winter, after big storms, the waves will crest really high north of the cove, up at Bone Garden. He took a big risk one morning after a storm when I was ten. I watched him from the cliffs. The wave ate him whole and spit him out onto the rocks. That’s why they call it Bone Garden, by the way. He wasn’t the first idiot to die there. Just the most famous one.”
I don’t even know what to say. A large family stops near our table to pose for a photo in front of the sea monster. We lean to get out of their shot, once, twice, three times. They’re finally finished, and we’re left alone again.
Uninterested in dredging up his grandfather again, I try to think of something else to talk about. My mind turns to what I thought I witnessed in the vintage clothing shop. “Was that your buddy or something? That Davy guy?”
Porter grunts. “We grew up together.” He squints at me and says, “Was he bothering you?”
“Not successfully.”
Porter’s mouth twists at the corners. He chuckles softly. “Now, that I believe. He’s not very bright. But he’s pernicious. I do my best to keep my eye on him, but . . .” Porter trails off, like he was going to say more but thinks better about it and clams up. I notice his gaze flick over me, head to bare legs—not really in a lurid way. His eyes are tight, wary, and troubled, and there’s something behind that dark emotion connected to Davy that I don’t understand. I wonder if it has to do with that Chloe girl they were talking about.
Whatever it is, I decide not to pursue this any further. Another evasion tactic I’ve learned: Change the subject as many times as you need in order to avoid uncomfortable conversation.
“I see you have a sister who surfs.”
“Yeah,” he says, and he looks happy that I changed the subject too. “Lana’s killing it. She’s got crazy potential. People say she’ll be way bigger than my pops—maybe even bigger than my granddad.”
I wonder if this is a point of contention between them, if it hurts his boy pride. But he’s digging his phone out from his pocket to show me photos. A girl on a board inside the tunnel of a giant, curling wave. I can’t really make out much about her face, only that she’s wearing a yellow-and-black wet suit like a second skin and looking like she’s about to be swallowed by the ocean. Porter shows me others, some closer, some in which she looks impossibly upside down in the middle of the wave. The last one he shows me is the two of them together on the beach, both of them with curly hair drying in the sun, wet suits peeled down to their waists, brown skin gleaming. He’s behind her, arms around her shoulders, and they’re both grinning.
And right now, sitting across from me, there’s nothing but pride on his face. He doesn’t even try to hide it. His eyes are practically sparkling.
“She’s pretty,” I say.
“Looks like my mom. It’s our Hapa genes.” He glances up at me and explains, “Half Hawaiian. My grandparents were Polynesian and Chinese. My dad met my mom when he was my age, surfing the Pipeline on the North Shore. Here.” He pulls up another photo of his mother. She’s gorgeous. And she’s standing on the boardwalk near my favorite churro cart, in front of a familiar shop: Penny Boards. Well. Guess that answers that; it was his family’s shop, after all. Note to self: Pick another churro cart, already!