I was on my feet (I didn’t remember that), bellowing Deputy Bobby’s name.
It seemed like everybody else was cheering too, but I barely noticed. All my attention was on Deputy Bobby as he landed and rode the last of the wave toward shore.
And then it was Keme’s turn. I recognized the look of furious concentration on Keme’s face; every once in a while, I caught a glimpse of it when we were doing something else, when Keme forgot that he was supposed to be an unimpressed seventeen-year-old. His pop-up was a little less smooth than Deputy Bobby’s, and it looked like he struggled, in the first few seconds, to keep himself upright. Then he caught his balance, and he seemed to change. The boy who vacillated between detached and surly (and occasionally outright combative) was gone, and in his place was a boy who looked…alive. That was the only word for it. It was like Keme was a house, and someone had turned on all the lights, and they were spilling out of him. He didn’t have Deputy Bobby’s finesse, not yet, but I thought, as I watched him carve the wave, that he might be more of a natural—if he kept surfing, he’d be better than Deputy Bobby one day; there was no doubt about that. But what made me grin until my face hurt was how happy Keme looked. How unselfconsciously at peace he seemed to be.
Like Deputy Bobby, he launched himself from the lip of the wave and caught air. Instead of reaching for the back rail of the board, though, Keme spun. He almost pulled it off, but as he was coming back around, he smacked face-first into the water.
“OH NO!” (Guess who that was?)
Fox winced.
“Oh my,” Indira said.
“God.” West held finger and thumb an inch apart. “He was so close.”
I went for supportive (mostly because I knew it would both gratify and annoy Keme): “Great job, Keme! Good try!”
Keme surfaced and shook his head. He paddled back toward shore. Deputy Bobby was waiting for him at the halfway point, and when Keme came up beside him, Deputy Bobby said something. Keme shook his head again. Deputy Bobby stretched over to give Keme a one-armed hug. When they separated, they paddled the rest of the way together.
“Aww,” Millie said.
Indira patted West’s arm. “That’s a very nice young man you found for yourself.”
“Yeah,” West said with a smile. “He really is.”
“Hugs are boring,” Fox said. “I want to see them fight!”
A voice came over the speaker system, announcing that they needed the surfers to leave the water for the under eighteen division. In ones and twos, the surfers started making their way back to shore.
“Wait,” I said. “Keme isn’t eighteen. Was he competing in the adult division?”
“Obviously,” Fox said.
“How?”
“He lied about his age,” Millie said. “He does it all the time. When we go to the theater in Seaside, he pretends to be twelve.”
“Hold on. One time—once!—I asked him if he had his driver’s license, and he wouldn’t talk to me for a week. I mean, he never talks to me, but this was…icier.”
“Movie tickets are expensive,” Fox said with a shrug.
I looked at Indira.
“I’ve told him I don’t like it,” Indira said. “But when you add a drink and popcorn, sometimes it costs us fifty dollars.”
“I don’t care about the movie ticket! I care about the injustice of him getting mad at me—”
“Babe!” West screamed. He ducked under the barrier to sprint the remaining distance to Deputy Bobby, who was making his way up the beach with Keme. “You were amazing!”
Kissing ensued. Lots of kissing. And while Deputy Bobby was looking particularly, um, estimable, what with the wetsuit and the salt-stiff hair and the general, uh, effect, I decided to look elsewhere. Out of politeness.
“I guess West isn’t worried about getting wet anymore,” Fox said with unnecessary smugness. “You know, I think it’s a little unfair that Deputy Delicious looks even better somehow after being in the water.”
“Fox,” Indira said in a warning voice.
“Dash looks handsome after he gets out of the water,” Millie said—with dubious accuracy but heartwarming loyalty.
“Remember after we went swimming, when we went to get something to eat, and the waitress thought he was a drifter and said he could earn some money washing dishes?” Fox said and began to laugh.
Indira said a little more loudly this time: “Fox.”
“That was not my fault!” I said. “You stole my towel, and—no! I’m not getting into this again!”
By that point, fortunately, Deputy Bobby and West and Keme had joined us. Indira was pouring cups of hot coffee, and Deputy Bobby and Keme were shivering as they took theirs.
“You were amazing,” I told Deputy Bobby. And then I heard what I’d said, and I rushed to add, “You too, Keme.”
Keme glowered at me over the rim of his cup.
“I could have done it better, though,” I said.
For a heartbeat, the glower cracked, and a hint of a smile showed through. Then he went back to that flat stare.
“I definitely wouldn’t have fallen. Remember that part? At the end?”
His glare slipped again, but only for a moment, and then he made a very rude gesture.
“God, that was so good,” Deputy Bobby said. “It’s perfect out there.”
