In the Break (11 page)

Jamie finished his bottle of sloe gin. He lit another joint.

“How much of that shit you got?” I said.

“This is it.”

“Do you like her?” Amber wiped her leg where she’d spilled beer.

There they went again.

“No. I don’t know. I don’t even know her.”

“I think you do.” Amber took another swig of beer.

Jamie lay down. And fell asleep.

“Wake up, asshole,” Amber said to him. Then to me she said, “So this is one of your famous surf trips?” Without waiting for
an answer she said, “It’s a big bore.”

“What do you want, nightlife?”

“What do you expect from fif …” She caught herself and stopped. She tried to smile at me but I turned away.

She was thinking of Robert Bonham, I bet. Robert Bonham. When he first started taking Amber surfing. He was patient with her,
helping her in the way that those who have gone before can help those who are beginning. And he wanted Jamie along to help
as well. Robert Bonham figured, Jamie told me, that with the two of them, they could help Amber to get waves, even though
she was a beginner. The problem was, however, I wasn’t invited. Jamie went with Robert Bonham and Amber once without me, the
first time. The second time Robert invited Jamie to go with him and Amber, Jamie declined. He said if I couldn’t go, then
he wouldn’t go either. I remember because I was doing yard work or something, Nestor leading the charge, and I saw Jamie coming
over the dirt path in the field next to our house.

I turned off the lawn mower when he got close to me. “I thought you were surfing,” I’d said in a snotty voice.

“I didn’t go with that cheapskate. Need some help?”

Jamie worked with Nestor and me, helping with the lawn and trimming some bushes and stuff.

When we finished, we rode our bikes back to his house, where we shot some hoops. During an intense game of Horse, Amber showed
up with Robert Bonham.

He handed her her board without coming up the driveway.

“Cheapskate,” Jamie muttered. And that day, I knew the kind of friend Jamie was. He’d rather not go surfing than leave me
behind.

“Not anymore,” Amber had said. “You can surf with us from now on, Juan.” She had smiled at me.

Remembering that smile from Amber, I had a huge excitement in my gut. My hands were shaking, so I placed them under my bottom.
My mouth was dry in spite of the cold beer.

“Look, Juan, I’m sorry, okay?”

I tried to play it cool, and didn’t answer.

She stood up and helped her groggy brother get in a sleeping bag. I felt a warmness inside, watching her take care of Jamie.
My friend was okay; F couldn’t touch him, get him arrested. She helped him into one of the bags — there were only two of them.

When she was finished she came over and sat next to me on the other one.

I looked long and hard into her eyes. Blue. Ice and sky. People would look at Amber and not know if her eyes were green or
gray or blue. Different people would give all those colors as their answers, if they were asked. I never really thought about
it that much because I knew: they were blue. Why would she want to be with a fifteen-year-old?

“Listen, Amber, let’s go check out that island, okay? If those people are still at my aunt’s when we come back, I’m leaving.
But if they’re gone, you and Jamie can stay if you want. But I would like to check out those waves on that island.” Why not?
When would I ever get another chance like this? If the universe sends you something, take advantage of it, is what I say.
Yet the universe hadn’t sent me anything: I’d taken it, no doubt about it. I’d taken my mother’s car, taken all the money
from her purse, used Jamie’s misfortune as an opportunity to find a perfect wave.

“Look at Jamie. He thinks we’re on vacation or something. We’re not, Juan, we’re not.”

“I know. But the swell’s pumping and we’re down here. And a guy with a boat? C’mon, when will we ever get a chance like this
again? Never. Besides, we could get the perfect wave.”

She shook her head. “There’s no such thing.”

“I think there may be. Why did this fisherman show up? He’s gonna take us to an island where the waves are perfect. I can
feel it. There’s gotta be a perfect wave. Jamie thinks there is.”

After a time she said, “Okay, I guess.”

We both looked up at the stars, the night filled with them. The wind blew in fresh ocean air over everything. As I inhaled
the salt smell I looked down at the one remaining sleeping bag. So did Amber.

“You can sleep with me, Juan, but no fooling around, okay?”

“What about Robert?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I’ll try.”

“No trying. If you don’t agree, then you can sleep over there.”

The fire was fading. I got up and fed it all the stuff we’d collected, building a huge, flaming globe. It highlighted Jamie
as he drooled on his sleeping bag. It lighted Amber’s soft smooth legs, her creamy face. While I fed the fire she laid out
the sleeping bag, first shaking the sand out of it.

After I turned off the music we lay side by side on a blanket with a sleeping bag over us, staring into heaven. It was like
going to the planetarium at Griffith Park, only much, much better. So vast and ethereal, like a fully formed idea that you
can’t verbalize. And so quiet.

As the fire burned out, the sky became brighter, until it was so luminous that it had come alive, a swirling, moving mass
of entities. Life. Alive. Jamie’s, Amber’s, and my problems were so inconsequential in the big scheme of things, as the cliché
goes. For once I understood it. I was experiencing the “real” right before my very eyes. The night sky, the stars, Amber,
Jamie. The now. The moment.

It had a liberating effect.

My family would be okay. I would survive the lapse in good judgment. My mom and dad would get over it. My brother would become
a father, I would become an uncle. Jamie would return. Amber …

I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She kissed back, nestling into the crook of my arm, as we began messing around.

The day was melancholy, the sky silently weeping over the vast and unseen ocean. It wasn’t what you would call raining, and
it wasn’t really foggy, but the fact remained that everything was all wet, and a light, filtering mist dusted the ocean. Huge
smooth-thick swells would hump up, and then we’d freeboard down their backsides.

Jésus worked the helm, which was in the center toward the stern of the dory. The bow and stern had points to them, mostly
keeping out the seas that we bobbed forward on. A Mercury outboard engine made the dory very fast indeed when he gunned it,
and there were three sides and a roof to the tiny wheelhouse in which Jésus stood, intent and braced against the swell. A
thick tarp stretched from the bow to the wheelhouse, and Amber slept under its sheltering dryness. Jamie sat on the bait tank
in the stern, looking back at the direction from which we’d come. I stood in between Jésus and Jamie.

As we had motored out of the harbor Jamie had said to me, “I know what’s going on with you and my sister.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“Don’t play stupid, Juan. I know what’s up, so knock it off.”

“I’m not good enough for your sister? Is that it? Is that what you’re saying? Listen, a-hole, she’s old enough to make her
own decisions and so am I.
Comprenez-vous, cabrone?
”

“What about Robert?”

“Fuck Robert.”

“Just fuck off, Juan.”

He had made for the bait tank, and I had remained next to the wheelhouse by Jésus.

We’d not spoken for quite some time. None of the Watkins were talkative, and I don’t know why. When he was alive Mr. Watkins
would exclaim a lot after he’d drunk a few martinis, his drink of choice. Mrs. Watkins was quiet most of the time I saw the
family interacting when I’d eat dinner with them. In fact, their meal routine was wholly different from that of my family.
In my family we’d practically fight over the food when it was put on the table. My little brother and sister would get yelled
at, most likely sent to their rooms for screwing up the sanctity of the meal. Everyone in my family would talk at once, making
the most dominant one raise their voice. In my family people would shout their conversations from different sides of the house!
But in general, mealtime was abuzz with laughter and talk. Not so at Jamie’s. Everyone was tight-lipped.

Jamie had a double reason for not being talkative. Besides the quiet family thing, he had had a lisp when he was young. He
used to get taken out of class to attend a speech class. The therapist told him he had a lazy T, and that he’d most likely
outgrow it, which he did. It was most pronounced in kindergarten, though it improved
steadily as he got older. I never had any trouble understanding him, but some of our teachers did. So he learned to keep quiet
rather than call attention to his lisp. The lisp and his shy nature didn’t make for a very outgoing person when we were younger.
But he still preferred not to talk, if given a choice.

Amber was different. She was so smart that most shit wasn’t worth her bother. Whereas Jamie’s silence was genetic and physical,
Amber’s was genetic and social. Most people were too stupid to talk to, she’d once said. A lot of kids thought she was weird.
She went from cheering squad to yoga. She surfed, though a lot of girls did that, but she could rip. And she was really good-looking.
All these things created a sort of unapproachable air, an aloofness that turned off people. So they said mean things about
her, said she was stuck-up, said she had a stick up her butt, said she was snotty, said she thought she was better than everyone
else (she did), all the stuff jealous people say when they don’t know someone and don’t know how to relate to them.

None of it bothered Amber, and that made things worse, somehow. It’s like if you don’t care, that makes the dolts even angrier.
What did Amber care? She and Robert Bonham were inseparable.

And she had Jamie.

Now she had me. Which Jamie was against.

Jamie was doing some weird shit, though I knew he wouldn’t turn on me. I’d never even had such a thought before, but he’d
changed so much lately. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him; I wasn’t. I was terrified. Jamie was a really good fighter.

Last year, when Jamie and I were in the ninth grade, this guy who was a junior, Kent Chambers, got in a fight with Jamie.
Jamie
hadn’t wanted to fight, hadn’t done anything to start it or encourage it. In fact, he’d done everything short of running away
to get out of it. It happened like this: Jamie and Greg Scott and I and some other guys were hanging by the eucalyptus trees,
away from everyone else, just being freshman, just trying not to cause attention, when the shit broke out. We didn’t even
see what happened, but this twerp, Brad Patton, ran by us, charging into the crowd over by the Coke machines. Next thing we
knew Kent Chambers and some of his bros are right in our faces.

“Who threw it?” Kent Chambers was pissed. His face was all red and he had food on his shirt.

None of us said anything. We all just sort of looked at the ground, looked off in the distance, anywhere but at the crowd
of juniors that now surrounded us.

“Which one of you fuckheads threw it! Who’s eating burritos?” He looked right at me.

Still no answer. Except Jamie had just finished one, and the wrapper lay at his feet. I tried to sidle over and cover it with
my tennis shoe, but it was too late — Kent Chambers had seen it as well.

“Okay,” Kent Chambers said, “the tall one,” meaning Jamie, because he’d had his growth spurt before any of us.

Jamie finally looked up, looked Kent Chambers in the eye. “I didn’t throw anything.”

Kent Chambers wasn’t a gangster or anything, wasn’t a tough guy. I think he was an okay guy. But he was older, and I sure
didn’t want to fight him. He was just bigger than we were, just stronger.

“One of you assholes did, and it was you.”

And just like that, he came at Jamie. Hard and fast. Throwing down.

Jamie backed around the tree, saying, “I don’t want to fight.”

Kent kept coming, and other kids sensed something going on and began charging over.

Kent pushed Jamie away from the tree, where he had no cover. Some of the eleventh-grade guys thought it was cool, some of
them wanted to join in, and one guy shook his head and left. A school yard’s no different from a barnyard, so I’ve heard,
and the violent excitement brought kids streaming toward us.

“I don’t want to fight,” Jamie said again.

“You threw a burrito, you dick!” Kent said coming at Jamie for real.

Jamie stood his ground, put his hands up, and sidestepped Kent’s first sortie, hitting Kent in the jaw with a really good
blow.

Kent was briefly spun around, but he turned to face Jamie, this time even more enraged, if that were possible. They went at
each other again, this time Jamie coming forward, both of them with their fists going off.

Next thing I knew Kent Chambers was on the ground, Jamie was over him, and the campus police officer had a hold of Jamie by
the shoulder. Kent’s face had big welts on it. Jamie’s T-shirt was ripped and he looked zoned out, looked as if he didn’t
know what had had happened. Jamie was quick, though. And I knew he had had a lot of anger always stored inside because of
his father, and then because of F.

Before the end of lunch bell rang, Amber came rushing up to me. We were still under the eucalyptus tree where it had all started.
Usually Amber wouldn’t talk to Jamie and me at school. She wouldn’t ignore us or anything, she just didn’t go out of her way
to associate with us.

“Is he okay?” she said, breathless. “I heard he fought Kent Chambers.”

I felt really cool, a junior girl seeking me out and everything. And Jamie had kicked Kent Chambers’s ass! “Yeah, he’s fine.
Somebody threw something on that guy and he insisted Jamie had done it.”

“He’s okay, Juan? He’s not hurt?”

“Naw, he won!” I couldn’t help chuckling, though I stopped it when I looked over at Kent Chambers’s boys, who didn’t look
too happy with us.