Girl Out of Water(45)

I want to pull some kind of trick as I head over—grind on one of the benches, pop an ollie or two, or even a kickflip, anything so I don’t look like I’m a complete encroacher. I don’t want Lincoln’s friends to look at me like I look at all the tourists in Santa Cruz, the ones who fall off their surfboards before ever properly standing up. However, as strong as my desire is to look like I belong, my desire to not make a complete fool of myself is even stronger, so I skip the tricks and skate straight over.

“Anise, meet Tom, Clayton, and Sofia.” Lincoln points to his three friends. “Guys, meet Anise. She comes to us from the fine city of Santa Cruz, where she spends her days surfing and surfing with a small side of surfing.”

“Oh, and don’t forget surfing,” I say.

We grin at each other. The pleasant stomach fluttering returns.

“Very cool.” Sofia smiles at me. She’s pretty—undeniably so—and by the look of her toned calf muscles, she can probably skate circles around me for hours. She continues to perform little tricks on her board as she talks to me, like Lincoln does, like she doesn’t have to think about what her feet are doing, like it’s as natural as running her hand through her hair. “I went surfing at the Wedge last summer. I totally sucked, but it was awesome.”

Great. She’s talented, pretty, and humble.

“So Anise,” Clayton says. He has alarmingly blue eyes and a short and stocky build. “Have you ever skated in the bowl before?”

“Not yet,” I say.

Lincoln clasps me on the back for a second, his fingers on the skin exposed from my tank top. “Anise here is a bit of a skating prodigy. I’m sure she’ll pick it up quickly.”

I glance down into the bowl, which looks to be about eight feet deep, much steeper than my average wave. Before I have a chance to consider further, Lincoln leans over to murmur into my ear. “I’m not saying I bet these guys twenty bucks that you’d make it on your first go, but I’m also not not saying I bet these guys twenty bucks that you’d make it on your first go.”

I look at him. “Seriously?”

He grins and raises his eyebrows. “Seriously.”

My thoughts churn for a second. “Fine. But we split the winnings.”

“Fine.”

“Sixty-forty.”

“Fine.”

“I’m the sixty.”

His grin widens. “I figured.”

? ? ?

The first time I got on a surfboard, it was in the middle of an afternoon on a weekday in the dead of winter. The beach was as empty as the beach ever gets. Dad stood by my side, taking me step by step through all of the maneuvers like he’d been doing for weeks, assuring that I had each move memorized on the packed sand before ever wading into the water. So on that day, the day I finally surfed, I knew exactly what I was doing, and only Dad was there to watch.

Now as I stand at the edge of the bowl, one foot planted on the tail end of my skateboard, the other hovering above it, an audience of not one but six people stands behind me—Lincoln, his friends, and of course Parker and Nash. Emery and Austin still haven’t shown up, and part of me wants to use that as an excuse to put this act of foolishness on hold and go check on them.

“Okay,” I mutter, then rehash the quick tutorial I was provided. “Plant foot on board, drop in, turn board, keep momentum, don’t lean back…definitely don’t fall…”

I’m not sure why I’m doing this. It’s not like I need, what—twelve whole dollars? I mean, I wouldn’t say no to twelve dollars, but it’s a pretty small sum of money considering I could break an arm, or worse, my pride. No, it’s not the money.

This summer took away my surfboard. I’m not going to let it take away my confidence too.

So with two short breaths and one deep one, and my new mantra of “Fuck it,” I stomp down on the front of the board and plummet into the bowl. The plunge is quick and steep, and common sense says it should lead to a very painful fall on my ass, but then the adrenaline floods, and reflexes take over, and I turn the board to the right and then the left at the last second, just balanced enough to stay vertical while sustaining momentum, and then I’m racing across the flat expanse of the bottom of the bowl, bringing my left foot down to the ground to kick for more speed, trying to accumulate enough to ride up the other side of the bowl.

As I get closer, I imagine that I’m not coming up on a wall of concrete, but a wall of water, a beautiful barrel wave, and I either have to face the wall or give up. I don’t give up. So I kick hard three more times, lock my knees, and burst back up the other side of the bowl, the tip of my board inching past the edge of the wall, and—“Fuck!”

I lose grip of my board and fall backward into the bowl. My feet trip as I attempt to run instead of fall down the steep side. But I’m too unsteady. I fall on my ass, my board clattering down beside me.

I sit there and try to ignore the very prominent pain in my posterior. Why the fuck did I decide to try this in front of a bunch of relative strangers? Then someone starts clapping, one of those slow, sharp claps.

Someone whistles, and someone says, “Hell yeah,” and someone else says, “I really didn’t think I’d lose that bet.”

I crane my head back to find Lincoln smoothly sliding down the side of the bowl with his full-dimpled smile. He reaches down and offers his hand, which I take. After pulling me to my feet, he picks up my board and gives it to me. “Pretty rad, surfer girl,” he says.