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Kai's first inclination was to shout at the
men to stop, but the way Curtis just sat there watching gave him pause. What the hell was going on? He started toward Curtis. Before he got there, one of the firemen carried a board over to Curtis and let him inspect it. Now Kai noticed that lying on the ground behind Curtis was a small pile of boards that he had apparently decided were worth saving.

Curtis gave the thumb's down to the board the fireman showed him. The fireman laid it on the ground and swung the axe.
Crack!
The fiberglass broke in half with a sound like a gun shot. Kai grimaced at the thought of it. They were destroying surfboards. This was insane.
Thunk! Thunk!
Both halves of the board got tossed into the back of the truck.

Kai reached the chair. Curtis looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. It was hard to tell whether they were red from drinking or from tears. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a new pink citation.

“Town tells me these here surfboards are an environmental hazard,” Curtis said. “They were to burn up, all this hydrogen cyanide'll get into the air. Know what they say hydrogen cyanide's used for? Gas chambers, grom. That's what they use to kill the killers who've killed.
You ever look at a surfboard and think, ‘Death sentence'? Strange world we live in. Strange world.” Curtis swept his arm around the yard. “Think of it, grom, all these here surfboards catch on fire, I could turn this whole town into one big gas chamber. Know what the irony of it is? This here's the death of Sun Haven. You're seein' it before your very eyes. These boards go. This motel goes. I go. And so goes the soul of this town. Suffocating under the weight of greed. Pretty soon there won't be anyone left except the rich folks. Everyone else'll have to move inland, where land is still cheap and the ocean is just a faraway distant dream.”

Crack!
One of the firemen broke another board in two. The sound made Kai wince. “How could surfboards catch fire out here?”

“You never heard of lightning, grom? Stuff's everywhere. Why I bet every year there are thousands of surfboard fires caused by lightning right here in Sun Haven alone. Don't tell me you've never noticed all them charred surfboard remains lying around.”

“What about all the surfboards in Sun Haven Surf?” Kai asked. “Wouldn't they be a fire hazard too?”

“No way,” Curtis said. “That Buzzy's a clever fella. He's got hisself a sprinkler system.” Curtis reached over the side of the chair and picked up a rusty old lawn sprinkler. “I tried to tell these fellas I had a sprinkler system too, but they didn't believe me.”

Curtis tossed the rusty lawn sprinkler back on the lawn. One of the firemen came over with the white-and-blue Trigger Brothers board Kai had discovered the first time he'd come to the motel. The fireman held it up in front of Curtis. Curtis glanced at Kai.

“You gotta keep it,” Kai said.

“Looks like the grom wants me to save that one,” Curtis said. The fireman nodded and added the Trigger Brothers to the pile beside Curtis's chair.

Crack!
The other fireman brought his axe down on an old aqua blue Wave Riding Vehicle. Kai didn't understand how Curtis could just sit there and watch. Unless it was like attending a funeral. But Kai had already attended one too many funerals in his life. He didn't need to see this.

Then he had an idea.

“Catch you later, old man,” he said.

“If I'm still around,” Curtis replied ominously.

Kai carried his board up to the room on the second floor. Pat and Sean had already left for the store. Kai knew he was going to be late for work, but that was too bad. He left the board in the room and went back down the outside stairs.
Crack!
The firemen were still destroying the old boards. Curtis was still sitting in the beach chair watching. The scene made Kai sick. He headed out to the street and over toward Teddy's house.

T
eddy was in the workshop, bent over a gorgeous seven-foot tri-fin, brushing on a gloss coat. Normally Kai knew better than to bother her when she was doing such delicate work, but this was an emergency.

“There's a problem,” he said.

Teddy gave him an odd gaze—half puzzled, half warning him not to bother her. She looked back down at the board and continued to work.

“I don't mean to interrupt you,” Kai said.

“Then don't,” Teddy replied without looking up.

“Right now two guys from the fire department are in Curtis's backyard hacking up his surfboards with fire axes.”

Teddy straightened up and stared at him, but Kai had a feeling she wasn't really seeing him. In her mind she must have been picturing the scene. It was strangely easy to imagine. The axes swinging down. The boards lurching and shuddering as if they were in their last death throes.

And then Teddy did something Kai did not expect. She smiled.

And started to apply the gloss coat again.

“You really don't care?” Kai asked.

“About that son of a bitch?” Teddy shook her head as she continued to work. “Not for an instant.”

“Look, I don't know what happened between you two all those years ago,” Kai said. “But he needs help.”

“Not from me he doesn't.” Teddy sighted down the surface of the board to make sure the gloss coat was going on evenly.

“He loses that motel, he'll have nothing,” Kai said. “It's all he's got. Without it he'll just drink himself into oblivion.”

“Is that a promise?” Teddy asked.

“I am serious, damn it,” Kai said.

Teddy rested the brush on her workbench. “Why? What do you care?”

“I care … because to me he represents the way surfing should be. It's about sharing. It's about being friendly. It's about a common love for the ocean.”

“Ah … the good old aloha spirit.” Her words stank of sarcasm and bitterness.

“That's right.”

“Tell you what, Kai. Maybe someday, if you can catch that SOB when he isn't drunk, you should ask him where that aloha spirit was when the best young woman surfer ever to come out of these parts wanted to compete against the men and he wouldn't allow it.”

“Why didn't you just go to other surfing competitions?” Kai asked.

“Because when it came to women surfers back then, the competitions were few and far between. I didn't have the means to travel down to the mid-Atlantic states. And forget about Florida. That might as well have been on the other side of the world. But if I could have competed here, maybe I would have gotten a mention in a magazine, or a local sponsor—anything that might have helped me get going. But that son of a bitch wouldn't even let me take the first step.”

“Did you ever ask him why?” Kai asked.

“About a thousand times,” Teddy said, and started brushing on the gloss coat again.

“What'd he say?” Kai asked.

“Why don't you go ask him?”

“Okay, I will. But you know what's going to happen in the meantime? He's gonna lose everything he has. You know they broke into his shed and took his best boards. Now they're gonna destroy all the rest. They're just grinding him down into nothing.”

“Good …
Damn it!
” Teddy put the brush down and sighted down the board again. A tiny drop of resin had collected on the rail. “Now look what you made me do.”

Kai waited silently while she fixed the mistake and finished applying the gloss coat. Even though Teddy said nothing and hardly even looked at him, he had a feeling she appreciated being left unbothered while she finished the job.

“Nice,” Kai finally said. He knew she was finished when she dipped the brush into a jar of acetone.

Teddy turned to him. “Why are you still here? What do you expect me to do?”

“Curtis says that once he's gone, there'll be no place for surfers to stay. All the breaks
around here will just be for rich people who can afford the fancy hotels and expensive restaurants. People like you and me won't be able to surf here anymore.”

“And you think saving Curtis's butt will stop that?” Teddy asked.

“At least slow it down,” Kai said. “Be honest, Teddy. You know it's not right. That's not the way it's supposed to be.”

“Says who?”

“I don't know,” Kai said. “Me, I guess.”

Teddy put her hands on her hips and gazed at him. “You are a strange one.”

The workshop grew quiet. Kai wondered what she was thinking. He thought about what must have been happening at Curtis's. Board after board being destroyed. “Look,” he finally said. “You do a lot of work for Buzzy. He's got a lot of say in this town. Couldn't you just speak to him?”

Teddy pointed at the board she'd just finished gloss coating. “Know who this is for?”

“Buzzy?” Kai said.

“That's right. Two thirds of the jobs I get come from Buzzy Frank. Without him, I can't make a living. Why would I do anything to jeopardize that?”

“Because maybe some things are more important than money,” Kai said.

Teddy gave him a bittersweet smile. “Correction, my young and very naive friend. Maybe some things
were
more important than money. But that was a long time ago.”

“So you really don't care if they destroy all those boards?” Kai asked. “Even though some of them were probably the first boards you ever shaped? Like number forty-three?”

“That piece of junk?” Teddy said.

“A piece of junk that practically saved me from going crazy last month and that right now is being ridden by a girl I know who'll probably never be a competitor but is loving it just the same.”

Teddy bristled and her faced reddened. Kai wondered if he'd gone too far. He half expected her to tell him to get the hell out of the workshop and never come back. Then something in her face softened.

“From what I've heard, ninety-nine percent of them are busted, dinged, pieces of crap that weren't worth saving in the first place,” she said.

“Maybe to you and me, but not to Curtis,” Kai said.

Teddy twisted her lips into an expression Kai couldn't read. “Know what? You are a royal pain in the ass.” There was actually something affectionate in the way she said it.

“But you'll see if you can stop them?” Kai asked.

“Maybe,” Teddy said. “And maybe it's time you got the hell out of here and stopped distracting me from my work.”

“With pleasure.” Kai turned to go.

“Wait,” Teddy called.

Kai stopped.

“If I do decide to do something, you don't tell a soul, you hear? Not your friends, not Curtis, not a single living soul. Understood?”

Kai forced himself not to smile. “Understood.”

T
he T-shirt shop had a new look. Fewer shirts hung on the racks, and fewer transfers were displayed on the walls and in the display cases. Instead there were now large hand-lettered signs on the walls that said
DON'T SEE WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR? JUST ASK.

When Kai got to the store, his father was talking to a young woman with two little kids in a double stroller. Laid out on the counter were two child-size, light blue T-shirts and two small rainbow transfers.

“We'll make matching rainbow shirts,” the Alien Frog Beast was saying. “And the names again?”

“Jake and Jack,” the mom said. Kai took a
closer look at the kids in the stroller. They were twin boys.

“Okay.” Pat opened the display. Inside were some small plain black-vinyl letters. Pat took a few out and laid them over the shirts to show the mom what they'd look like. The mom pursed her lips with disapproval. Kai knew why The black letters looked awful on the light blue shirts, especially with the rainbows.

“Do you have letters in any other colors?” the mom asked.

“Let me see what I have in the back,” Pat said, and went through the door into the back room. Suddenly Kai realized what was going on. It was the oldest con in the book: bait and switch.

Pat came back with a flat plastic case filled with larger letters in all colors. “Would any of these work for you?”

“Oh, yes, they're much better,” the young mother said. “Could you even use a variety so they matched the colors of the rainbow?”

“Of course,” Pat replied. “I just have to warn you that these letters are a bit more expensive.”

“I understand,” said the mother.

Kai doubted she really did.

Pat laid the large colorful letters on the shirts. Then he pretended to frown and rub his jaw thoughtfully. “Gee, now those rainbows look awful small.”

“Do you have any larger ones?” the mother asked.

“Hey, Sean,” Pat called across the store. “Would you go check in the back and see if there are any more of those big nice rainbows?”

“The deluxe color-bright ones?” Sean asked. “! thought we sold out of those.”

“There might be a few left,” Kai's father said. “Go check, okay?”

“Oh, I hope you have a few left,” the woman said anxiously. It was amazing. Pat had already sold her on the larger rainbows even though she hadn't seen them yet and had no idea of the outrageous price he would ask.

Sean stayed in the back for a long time. Kai could imagine what the young mother was picturing in her head: Sean searching through boxes and boxes for the highly desirable and no doubt very expensive deluxe color-bright rainbows. Pat was truly brilliant in an utterly demented way. If the law stated that he had to put price tags on everything he displayed, the
answer was to keep a lot of stuff in the back, where it wasn't displayed. Then he didn't have to put a price tag on it, and he could still charge whatever he wanted.

Finally Sean came out with two rainbow transfers. “Would you believe it? We had two left.”

“Oh! That's wonderful!” The mother gasped as if it was a miracle. Kai had no doubt that if he went into the back room, he'd find dozens of rainbow transfers in that size.