Summer of Seventeen (19 page)

The next few days were strange. Awkward. But it was getting easier.

Yansi was grounded. It was obvious that she got into a shit load of trouble for coming to see me when she did. She’d never had much freedom, but now her parents wouldn’t let her leave the house unless one of them was with her, although she wouldn’t tell me what they’d said when she went back home that day. I tried to ask her, but she just said it wasn’t important. I wasn’t sure how that squared with her insistence on complete honesty—from me—but I didn’t want to push her either.

It was getting good again, and I wasn’t going to risk that.

Mr. Alfaro wasn’t happy. Not that he ever looked anything other than a Hispanic grim reaper—or maybe he was just constipated. Either way, the sight of me made him pissed, and I kept expecting to be fired, but he never did.

Although I wasn’t allowed to sit in the truck’s cab anymore, but I was used to that by now.

Yansi sent me at least a dozen text messages each day. Every time Mr. Alfaro saw me checking my phone, this weird vein throbbed in the side of his head. On the third day after we got back together, he made me leave my phone in the truck while we were working. But then I spent my whole lunchtime texting, just to piss him off some more. Well, that was part of it, but I really wanted to hear from her. Whatever, I think it worked. Not that I was trying to give my girlfriend’s dad a coronary, but he was being a complete douche canoe about it.

I changed the password on my phone, because if any of my friends saw the messages I sent her, they’d take away my man-card; probably tear it up and burn it, too. But knowing that she was thinking about me and wanted to be with me … it felt damn fine. A lonely corner of my mind wondered if maybe Yansi was right: the time we’d been apart had shown us both how much we had to lose. Well, I’d already known that, but I was glad that Yansi did now. I hated that I’d put her through so much shit, but we’d gotten better at talking to each other—the important stuff.

I thought Sean was going to be a dick about it when I told him that me and Yansi were back together, but he wasn’t.

“No, I get it,” he said. “I don’t get
her
, but what you guys have—that’s real.”

I had to let that register in my brain, and then check that the words really had come from Sean.

He gave me an irritated look and then shrugged.

“I can think deep shit just as much as you can, bro. You were turning into a cock-sucking emo bitch without the ole ball an’ chain around.” Then his voice turned serious. “If she’s what you want, hang onto that. Because if there’s nothing you want, life is shit.”

I tried to ask him what he meant. He blew me off, making a joke of it. But I didn’t forget what he’d said.

I was keeping my promise to Yansi, too. When I hung out with Sean or Rob and the guys, I kept the drinking to a couple of beers—enough to get a buzz, but not enough to be tanked. I still took a few hits if a blunt was doing the rounds, but I passed on it more times than I inhaled.

Sean was still partying hard, but it didn’t seem to make him happy. In fact, the more he drank and smoked, the more miserable he seemed. I thought about what he said, about not wanting anything. The only thing that he seemed to care about was surfing, but even then he’d been too hung-over to make it to some of the dawn surfaris we planned.

He was hanging with Marcus and his crew a lot more, too. I’d been kind of avoiding Marcus since the thing with Julia. I saw him at the Sandbar when I was working, and sometimes we passed each other in the kitchen or on the way to the shower; but he was out a lot, and I didn’t go down to the pier as much as I used to.

The worst thing about Yansi being grounded was that she was going to miss the Fourth of July. That seemed unconstitutional to me, but her parents weren’t letting her off.

Panama’s Independence Day was November 28
th
. Yansi said that she hoped she wouldn’t still be grounded by then. I think that was a joke. Whatever. It meant that all the things we’d planned to do weren’t going to happen. There was a free concert in Riverfront Park in Cocoa Village a couple of miles away on the other side of the causeway, then we were coming back to the beach to see the firework display, which was always awesome.

Now she was going be at some family bonfire and cookout instead. So, I took the lunchtime shift at the Sandbar, just to keep myself busy more than anything else. And I promised to hang with Sean and Rob, so I came down to the pier after work. Plus, I’d have felt like a loser staying at home on the Fourth. Yeah, and Sean would have given me shit.

At least I knew Yansi would rather be with me. That was something. She was finding it harder to put up with her parents’ rules. I can’t really say I knew what that was like. Mom had always been cool about stuff. As long as I wasn’t hung-over on a school day, I could pretty much do what I wanted. But Yansi was on a short leash. I wanted to tell her that having her parents care so much was better than having ones who didn’t care at all. But I wasn’t good with words, so I didn’t say anything.

I was running late because the Sandbar had been slammed and Steve had wanted me to stay on. I did an extra hour, but that was all. Then I went home and took the time to eat something before heading out again. The food choices were pretty limited, but partying and drinking on an empty stomach—well, I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

It was hotter than balls, and all week the sweat had been running into my eyes, making them sting. My body was losing so much moisture, I was drinking a bottle of water every half hour. One day I used the garden hose where we were working to cool myself down for a few minutes. Today the air was thick and heavy, and the palm trees looked like they were drooping. I’d taken a shower when I got in from the Sandbar, but it hadn’t made a whole lot of difference—I was sweating again and my t-shirt clung to my back.

The ocean was a steely gray, flat and lifeless, just like it had been for days, and all of us surfers were grouchy with the lack of wave action. Paddleboards just didn’t cut it when what you really wanted was to work some bitchin’ waves, catch air, or ride some tubes.

I weaved through the evening crowds of vacationers on my skateboard, watching families enjoying the holiday vibe: Cocoa Beach was doing what it was born to do.

Mom loved the big holidays. I tried not to think about it too much because it hurt so bad. But Julia was the same, ignoring what we couldn’t change. She was hanging out with Ben and some of his work friends, so she must have been pretty desperate to have something, anything to distract her. I wished I did, too.

A few people were jogging on the wide, flat beach, and in the distance I could see a sailboat moving sluggishly across the horizon.

The pier was crowded, people already jostling for the best position to see the fireworks, but the usual suspects were hanging out below.

Sean was trashed already. I wondered where he was getting the money to buy booze so often. But then again, money had never been a problem for him.

He saw me and grinned, his lips slack like a punctured tire.

“Hey, bro! We’ve gotta add Cloud Nine on Siargo Island to the list. Marcus says it’s got an awesome reef break that’s just itchin’ for us to shred. Total death rides, man! One slip and the coral will shred your skin.” His eyes were glassy as he turned to Marcus and tried to coordinate a high-five. “The guy rocks! He’s a legend!”

I noticed that Camille was sitting on the sand next to Marcus. She was studying Sean carefully and didn’t crack a smile when Marcus laughed and returned the hand slap.

She was still watching him, a small frown wrinkling her forehead, when Sean lurched to his feet.

“Back in a minute: I gotta piss so bad, my eyeballs are floatin’.”

I watched him stagger off to use the gross public bathrooms up on the boardwalk. At least, I hoped that was where he was going, because if he went and pissed behind a dune in daylight where families were walking on the beach with their kids, he was going to end up getting arrested for public indecency. And, without passing judgment, the guy liked to wave his dick around if he thought girls would see him.

He’d been doing that since fourth grade so I didn’t think he was going to stop now.

I’d seen Sean’s dick more times than his doctor. That sounds bad, but the guy was obsessed, whipping it out at every opportunity—the back row of the lecture hall, in classrooms, behind the bleachers, at the football field, but especially the locker room.

Believe me, there’s an etiquette when you’re in the locker room. Sean’s brother Aidan said it’s like the New York subway after night; it should be safe, but you never know when someone’s going to pull out a dick.

When you’re 13, there’s a lot of towel snapping, wedgies, and comparing of various body parts. There just is.

The length of your johnson becomes common knowledge: hung like a horse
versus
has a weenie.

But by tenth grade, the rules change, and they’re pretty simple:

• Keep your eyes to yourself. (Although there’s a school of thought that says you should keep your eyes on the floor, I think that makes you look like a weirdo loser. No, look at eye-level or above.)
  
• Don’t get in the personal space of the guy next to you. And never, ever bend down to pick something up if you’re close to someone’s personal space. Leave that fucker on the floor, or you’ll be leaving with a split lip.
  
• Keep your towel nearby and don’t spend any more time naked than you really have to.
  
• Get in. Get out. It’s not the time to check your phone for messages. Creepy. And don’t start a conversation with naked people. Not cool.
  

Sean could never seem to remember that. You’d think he had a dick like a donkey the way he went on, but I’d checked, and it looked pretty average to me.

Rob passed me a beer and told me about some girl he’d met at a party and how she said she was going to hang with us tonight. Maybe she would, but Rob had been so stoned all summer, he admitted he couldn’t really remember what she looked like.

Typical Rob. Guy was such an asshole sometimes.

Sean was back a few minutes later. I guess he’d used a dune after all.

He plopped down beside me and pulled a bottle of Jack toward him.

“We gotta do it, man. We gotta do our surf trip. Nothing else matters. That dude,” and he pointed at Marcus, “that dude has surfed all around the world—I mean, just, like, everywhere—every continent.”

I wondered briefly what the surf was like in Antarctica. Cold, probably.

“That’s what I wanna do,” Sean breathed, his eyes glassy and reverent, “I don’t want to stay here in the ass-end of nowhere.”

“Where are you going to go next?” I asked Marcus.

He smiled. “I’m thinking of French Polynesia.”

Rob scratched his head. “Is that in France?”

There was a brief discussion of the merits of surfing Hossegor or Biarritz, which got pretty heated even though none of us had ever been there.

Marcus slung his arm around Camille and they shared a secret smile.

“I hate to break it to you guys,” said Marcus eventually, “but French Polynesia isn’t in France; it’s a group of islands in the Pacific. You’ve heard of the awesome surf breaks at Papeete, right? That’s the capital.”

“Oh yeah, part of Hawaii,” said Trey.

Camille looked appalled.

“Yeah,” laughed Marcus. “Right by Hawaii—just head south 2,000 miles.”

I could see Sean squinting as he tried to work out the geography, but in the end he just shook his head and grinned.

“Whatever, man! Sounds good. I heard that the barrels at Papeete are brutal!”

Camille rolled her eyes. “Is this all you talk of? Ripping and cutting and brutal barrels!”

Sean smirked. “Sure. What else is there? You think we want to sit around talking about chicks?”

I couldn’t work out why he was deliberately trying to piss her off. Marcus ignored him, but Camille looked annoyed.

“We are going there to create a life,” she sneered, “not to waste our life.”

Sean’s smile dropped away.

“You’re
moving
there, man?”

Marcus shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, why not?”

Camille pushed his shoulder. “Maybe? We have decided, haven’t we? I will work as a nurse again, and you will set up a surf school while you write your music.”

“Sure, baby,” he said, kissing away her concerns.

A brief flash of some emotion flickered in Sean’s eyes, then it was gone. He took a long slug of Jack Daniel’s, then flicked me on the ear.

“Put Papeete on the list,” he grinned.

Jeez, I was going to have to win the Mega Millions to be able to afford this surf trip.

Then Sean leaned toward me and pulled a scrunched piece of saran wrap out of his pocket.

“Wanna see some good shit?” he whispered, unfolding the plastic to reveal a small, blue pill. “Molly, this bitch always shows you a good time. I can hook you up, if you want some?”

I was tempted. God, was I tempted. I was so tired, and the idea of taking something that would make me party … it seemed like an answer to a question I hadn’t thought of asking.

I’d done Molly with Sean a couple of times before, although not for a while, and it had been good—hell, better than good—but for days after, it left me barely wanting to get out of bed. I’d tried to tell Mom I was sick, but she’d kicked my ass out and made me go to school anyway. That sucked.

“Nah, man,” I said reluctantly, shaking my head. Not that I could afford it anyway.

He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? I know a guy who knows a guy. The fireworks will be something else—you’ll feel like you’re up there with them.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I’m good.” Then I watched jealously as he tossed the pill into his mouth and washed it down with whiskey.

He licked his lips. “Like mommy’s milk,” he laughed.

The bottle got passed around a few times as people were spilling onto the beach, laughing and happy, all celebrating the holiday.

My phone vibrated and I smiled to see a text from Yansi.

* No fun celebrating without you. Miss you. X *