“One day,” West said, “when I’m a famous designer, we’re going to buy a beach house. You’ll be able to surf whenever you want.”
He already can, I thought. Right now. Right here.
“You both need to eat something,” Indira said. “Do you want to get out of those suits first—”
Before she could finish, a shout up the beach interrupted her. We all turned.
“You lying, cheating, thieving son of a—”
I recognized the speaker from around town. His name was Nate Hampton, and he was a used-car salesman and member of Hastings Rock’s city council. He was a lanky redhead who had chosen, for some reason known only to God, to wear a suit to the beach. And in that moment, he was charging at another man—the real estate developer, the one West had called Gerry. The redhead crashed into Gerry, and the men went down. They rolled across the sand, throwing wild punches that had neither force nor accuracy. It looked like a couple of pre-teens brawling rather than two grown men.
Deputy Bobby sprinted up the beach, and in a matter of moments, he separated the men. I jogged after him in case he needed help, but since he was Deputy Bobby, he didn’t. The redhead was on his knees, wiping a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. Gerry sat on the sand. He looked older up close, his face lined. Maybe he thought dyeing his goatee and hair made him look younger. In my opinion, it made him look like he’d fallen into the shoe polish.
“Mr. Hampton,” Deputy Bobby said to the redhead. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing.” The redhead got to his feet. He spat blood on the sand, leveled a furious look at Gerry, and shook his head. Then he took off toward the parking lot.
“Are you all right, sir?” Deputy Bobby asked as he helped Gerry to his feet.
“Fine, fine.” But Gerry winced as he pressed a hand to his side.
“Let me get an on-duty deputy over here—”
“No need.” Gerry detached himself from Deputy Bobby. People were still staring, and Gerry gave a weak wave. “We’re all right here.” He patted Deputy Bobby’s arm. “Thank you, young man. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“You should wait for a paramedic to have a look at you. We’ve got some chairs right over there.”
“No, no, no. I’m fine.” And with another of those limp waves, Gerry shuffled off toward the cluster of tents that marked the operations center for the surfing challenge.
“I’m going to make sure he’s okay,” Deputy Bobby said to me.
“Bobby!” West’s voice had an unexpected edge as he joined us. “What are you doing?”
Deputy Bobby’s face shut down. His gaze settled on something in the middle distance, not quite looking at West.
“The fight—” I began.
“Excuse us,” West said to me.
I blinked and opened my mouth, but the only thing I could come up with was “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”
Deputy Bobby was still staring into the middle distance as I retreated.
“We talked about this,” West said, his voice sharp and carrying over the crash of the waves. “You’re not a deputy anymore. This isn’t your responsibility. Your responsibility is your family.”
Deputy Bobby said something too low for me to hear.
“What about somebody who’s actually on duty?” West said. “Dairek was right there!”
Deputy Bobby spoke again.
When West answered, his voice softened. “What if you’d gotten hurt?”
Then I moved beyond the reach of their voices.
Back at the chairs, the Last Picks were waiting for me with universally miserable expressions. Millie looked like she was about to cry. Keme glared at me as though this were somehow my fault. Indira sighed and started unwrapping a sandwich. And Fox watched Deputy Bobby and West without the slightest attempt to hide their interest.
“That,” they said, “is not good.”
Chapter 2
“But I don’t want to go to a party,” I said as we bounced along a rutted dirt road in Millie’s Mazda3.
“It’s going to be fun,” Millie said. “In fact, it’s going to be AMAZING!”
It had been a long, strange day. We’d gone home and spent the afternoon trying to be normal. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. The fight—fights, I guess, if you count Deputy Bobby and West’s spat—had ruined an otherwise perfect day, and nothing seemed capable of dispelling the mood. Maybe that was why, when Millie and Keme and Fox had announced that we were going to a party for the adults who had participated in the surf challenge, I wasn’t capable of offering my usual level of resistance.
Now, as we followed the unpaved road under a cloudy night sky, I repeated my point: “But I don’t want to go.”
“What would you do instead?” Fox asked. “Sit in your room and pretend to write and feel bad about pretending to write?”
“Ouch!”
“I know how it goes, darling. We’re not going to let you do that to yourself.”
“That sounds like something a cult leader would say right before kidnapping you into their cult.”
