Cut Back Read online

  Pat frowned. “Okay, we’ll take a room for a night and see how it goes,” he said, as if he were doing Curtis some huge favor.

  “That’ll be forty-five dollars,” Curtis said.

  “People usually pay at check out,” Pat complained.

  “Well, I don’t conduct business as usual around here, my good man,” Curtis replied. “I deal strictly on a take it or leave it basis.”

  Muttering to himself, Pat reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. He peeled off two twenties and a five and slid them across the counter to Curtis, who handed Pat a key attached to a blue plastic diamond with the number 22 on it.

  “Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen.” Curtis limped through the door, back into his living room.

  Room 22 was around the back of the motel and on the second floor. Kai and Sean followed Pat to the truck to get some clothes, then walked around behind the motel to climb the outside stairs. Pat stopped when he saw all the surfboards scattered around the backyard.

  “This where you got that surfboard of yours?” he asked Kai.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why doesn’t he sell ’em?”

  “He doesn’t want to,” Kai answered, knowing his father would never be able to understand that.

  They climbed the stairs to the second floor. Pat and Sean went ahead, but Kai paused by the rail and looked out at the dark inky ocean and the star-filled sky. It was a beautiful view and Kai understood why Curtis would have a difficult time leaving. A bottle rocket shot up into the dark from the beach and exploded with a flash of light. Kai turned and went down to the room.

  “What a dump,” Pat was saying as Kai entered and pulled the door closed behind him to stop all the bugs from streaming in toward the light. Having just spent a month sleeping on the floor of the back room at the T-shirt shop, Kai found it amusing that Pat could be so critical of a room that actually had beds. On the other hand, he had to admit that his father was at least partly right. Thin brown cigarette burns scarred every piece of furniture and flat surface. Even the blankets on the beds had brown-rimmed burn holes in them.

  The room had two queen-size beds. Pat flopped down on one of them without bothering to take off his shoes, picked up the TV remote and started to watch. It would be up to Sean and Kai to figure out who got the other bed. Kai was tired and knew at that point he could sleep anywhere.

  “You take the bed,” he told his half brother. “I’ll go back down and get one of the rafts. I’ll have no trouble sleeping on that tonight.”

  “Thanks.” Sean sat down on the other bed.

  Kai went back outside and down to the truck, and he got one of the inflatable rafts. Once again he climbed the outside stairs to the second floor and paused by the railing to look out at the ocean. It was late and quiet now, and he could hear the waves crashing on the beach and smell the salt air. A large sailboat moved slowly along the horizon, the bow, stern, and mast lights forming a triangle. Except for the past two years, Kai had spent his entire life near the ocean. Maybe he’d needed those past two inland years to understand. But now he knew he would never lose sight of the ocean again.

  Eight

  Kai was up early the next morning. Even in the gray predawn the air had a moist warm quality, and he could tell it was going to be a hot day. He walked to T-licious to get his board and wet suit. Were it not for the fact that he’d be surfing just after dawn, he probably wouldn’t have needed the wet suit at all.

  From the T-shirt shop he headed down to the beach. The surf was okay again, mostly knee to waist high. The sun was just peeking over the horizon. Lucas and Buzzy had gotten there ahead of him and were now paddling out. Down the beach, Lucas’s pile of scrap wood had grown huge. Kai could only assume that Buzzy had purchased a second truckload and had it delivered the previous afternoon. Up and down the beach were other piles of wood or half-built bonfires. None would come close to the size of Buzzy’s.

  Kai put his board down on the sand and kneeled beside it. It was one of those days when he wasn’t in a rush to get into the water. The waves were small and sectiony and Kai didn’t mind staying on the beach a few moments longer than usual, taking his time as he rubbed wax onto the deck of his new board.

  He heard a car door bang shut. In the lot on the other side of the boardwalk, he could see the top of Bean’s head. A few moments later Bean, Shauna, and Booger crossed the boardwalk. Old #43 was too heavy for Shauna to carry all the way from her house each day, so Bean was keeping it in the hearse for her.

  Booger sat down on the sand and slipped his fins on. “Where’re we surfing today?”

  “I’m surfing Screamers,” Kai answered. “And you guys are welcome to join me.”

  The others didn’t say a word.

  “I can pretty much guarantee you Lucas and his crew will leave you alone,” Kai added.

  “I’ll stick with Sewers, thanks,” Booger said, heading for the water with his body-board.

  Bean and Shauna waxed their boards. Being a beginner, Shauna was probably better off in the slower, softer waves at Sewers. As far as Bean was concerned, it was obvious that no matter what Kai said, he was still uncomfortable with Lucas and his crew.

  “Can you guys help me with something?” Shauna asked. “I keep having this problem. Sometimes I try to pop up and my hands slip off the rail.”

  “Wax helps,” Bean half teased.

  “I wax the rails and that helps for a while,” Shauna said, “but then they get slippery again.”

  “Let’s see the wax you’re using,” Kai said. Shauna handed him a half-used white rectangular bar. Kai scraped it with his thumbnail.

  “It’s probably too soft,” Kai said, handing it back to her.

  “It was fine last week,” Shauna said.

  “The water temperature’s gone up a couple of degrees, and with how hot and sunny it’s been getting, you’re probably rubbing this stuff off faster than you think.” Kai handed her the rest of his bar. “When you finish surfing today, let the sun melt the old wax off. Then try this stuff It’s a bit harder and shouldn’t come off as fast.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kai stood up and tucked his board under his arm. “Sure you guys don’t want to come over to Screamers?”

  “Why don’t you surf Sewers with us today?” Shauna asked.

  Kai raised the tip of his board. “On a day like today Screamers is the only place where I’ll get any kind of ride on this thing.”

  “Well, have fun.”

  Kai walked down the beach to the channel along the jetty and paddled out. When he got outside, neither Lucas nor Buzzy nodded or said anything. Instead they focused on Lucas’s surfing. Today he was working on something that involved going backside and doing a tail slide, with Buzzy urging Lucas to keep trying no matter how weak the wave. The more Kai saw of Buzzy, the more he saw a man who insisted on having everything his way.

  Kai caught a few waves, but found them weak and mushy. Sets were coming in less and less frequently. For no particular reason he decided to paddle farther out, well past the breaking waves, to see what Sun Haven looked like from the water. He got out into the blue water and turned around. While neither Buzzy nor Lucas would look at him before, both now shot him curious glances, as if they couldn’t figure out what he was doing out there.

  Meanwhile, Kai began to see what Curtis had meant about Buzzy Land. The whole shoreline was private houses and, except for the Driftwood Motel, fancy hotels and resorts. Kai didn’t doubt that Curtis was serious when he said his was the only motel within a hundred miles that charged less than one hundred and eighty dollars a night during the summer.

  Just then something black appeared in the water beneath him.

  Nine

  For a split second Kai’s heart jumped into his throat. Ever since Bethany Hamilton lost her arm to a fifteen-foot tiger shark back in Hanalei, he’d been acutely aware of things in the water beneath him. But this was just a black plastic bag. These days the ocean was filled with them.
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br />   Kai started to paddle back in. By now more of Lucas’s crew had arrived for the morning session. There were even a couple of new kids Kai had never seen before. Since the waves weren’t worth fighting for, Kai didn’t see the point in hassling with them, and he paddled toward Sewers instead. A little while later he joined Booger, Bean, and Shauna on the outside.

  “Not much of a day, huh?” Bean said, sitting on his board.

  “Beats working,” said Kai. He turned to Shauna. “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” she said. “The only thing I don’t get is why when I catch a wave, I always go straight toward shore, but when you guys catch a wave you go sideways.”

  Instead of answering, Kai looked out to see what was coming in. A smallish set was on the way. “Let’s see what you’re doing,” Kai said. “Maybe you could take one of these waves.”

  “Okay.” Shauna got prone on her board and started to paddle without really watching the wave behind her. She managed to catch it, then got to one knee as it closed out. For a second Kai thought she was going to eat it in the suds, but she held on and rose to both feet and rode the rest of the way in.

  Kai turned to Bean and gave him a questioning look.

  “I counted at least four, maybe five major mistakes,” Bean said. “How about you?”

  “Something like that,” Kai replied. “You want to tell her?”

  “No way,” Bean said. “She asked you, not me. In fact”—he turned his board around and started to paddle—“I think this is a good time to catch a wave myself.” With a few almost effortless paddles, he caught a wave.

  Chicken, Kai thought with a smile while Bean rode down the line, walking his long board like a dancer. By now Booger had paddled out on his bodyboard.

  “About that guy you’re looking for with blond dreadlocks and a red Jeep,” he said. “I was thinking … I bought some turntables and a mixer from a guy last year. He had brown dreadlocks. I think he was driving an old beat-up BMW.”

  “How’d you find him?” Kai asked.

  “He posted an ad in the music store in town.”

  “He was from around here?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Booger said. “Maybe a town or two over. It had to be a cash deal. No checks or money orders. Funny thing was, he brought the turntables over to my house, you know? Like he had all this stuff in the backseat of his car. So I paid him, and he asks me if I’m interested in anything else, and I’m like, what’ve you got? He opened the car’s trunk and it’s like a fricken miniwarehouse. He’s got brand-new MP3 players still in the box, cell phones, a couple of electric guitars, boom boxes … You know my carve board? That’s where I got it. He had three of them packed in there. And get this. He says if there’s something I didn’t see that I want, he can probably get it for me.”

  “You remember his name, phone number, anything?” Kai asked.

  Booger shook his head. “Tell you the truth, dude, the whole thing kind of freaked me. Like what if all this stuff was hot? And the way he acted was like … I had this feeling that if I’d asked him for a Glock nine he probably would have said ‘No sweat.’ I just wanted him to go away and never come back.”

  “Okay, thanks for telling me.”

  “I mean, it might not even be the same guy,” Booger said.

  “Hard to say,” Kai replied.

  A small wave jacked up behind them. “I’m going. See ya.” Booger kicked into the wave.

  Kai waited outside. A guy who had brown dreadlocks last year could have bleached them blond, or gold, this year. Could have sold the old BMW and gotten a Jeep too. Shauna got back out and sat up on her board next to him.

  “Did you see?” she said. “It’s always the same. I catch the wave, but all I can ever do is ride it straight in.”

  “There are some things you could do differently,” Kai said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, first of all, you should be looking over your shoulder as you paddle, so you can position yourself for the wave. It would help a lot if, instead of lying flat on the board, you arched your back. That makes it easier to look behind you. And at your stage you don’t really want to catch the wave at the peak. You’re better off on the shoulder. And since these waves aren’t very big or fast, you could take off on an angle so that you’re already a little bit turned into the wave. And you’re not really popping up. You’re just getting to your knees and waiting, then standing up. That’s a bad habit. You’re better off learning to pop right up.”

  “Is that all?” Shauna pouted.

  “Hey, you asked,” Kai said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Arch back, look behind, take off on the shoulder on an angle, pop right up. No knees. Piece of cake.”

  “Give it a shot,” Kai said.

  A small wave was coming. Shauna started paddling and looked over her shoulder to position herself. She angled the board, caught the wave, and promptly rolled over sideways.

  A moment later her head popped out of the suds. She grabbed her board and gave her head a shake, sending a spray in the air, climbed on and started to paddle back. Meanwhile Kai looked at the shore. That strange, twitchy guy from the other morning was back, standing at the water’s edge, looking out at them. Even from a hundred yards out in the water, Kai could see him hopping up and down, his head rolling and snapping, his hands fluttering as if he couldn’t control them.

  Shauna paddled out beside him.

  “You ever see that guy before?” Kai asked her.

  “No, but I’m pretty new around here,” she said. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Kai said. “He came up to me the other day on the beach acting really strange. It was like he was trying to talk, but all he could do was make these weird sounds.”

  “Maybe he’s, like, got something wrong with him,” Shauna said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Kai said. “Makes you wonder if he should be alone on the beach.”

  They were both quiet for a moment. Then Shauna said, “So what did I do wrong that time?”

  “A little too much angle on your takeoff,” Kai said. “Try for a little less next time.”

  They waited for the next half decent wave to come in. Kai swung his head back and forth, looking for a wave, then looking at the strange guy on the beach. A wave came and this time Shauna caught the shoulder with a little less of an angle. It looked like she was about to pop up when she lost her balance and fell.

  Back in the soup again.

  But this time when her head popped up, she had a big grin. Kai waited while she got on her board and paddled back out.

  “I felt it!” she said excitedly. “I really did! Like for a second I was actually going sideways in the curl! It was so cool!”

  “What happened?”

  “I tried to get up and the water just ripped my hand off the rail and I fell.”

  “You gotta keep your hands off the rail,” Kai said. “Try planting them flat on the deck when you pop up. Kind of like doing a push up.”

  By now Bean and Booger had come back out.

  “Guys, watch this!” Shauna said eagerly. Another wave was coming and she started to paddle into position.

  “How’s it going?” Bean asked Kai while they watched Shauna dig for the wave.

  “She’s getting there,” Kai said.

  Shauna caught the wave at an angle, planted her hands on the deck of the board, popped up and instantly did a header right into the trough.

  “Big improvement,” Bean quipped.

  “Give her some time,” Kai said. He looked back at the beach. The strange guy was still standing at the waterline. “You guys know who that is?”

  “That’s Spazzy,” Booger said. “He and his sister come here every summer.”

  “What’s the story?” Kai asked.

  “I don’t know. People say the wiring in his head is messed up.”

  Kai was about to look back to see what Shauna was doing when he saw one of the guys from Lucas’s crew wa
lking out of the water and up onto the beach with his board. It was Runt, the red-haired kid who always tried to act so tough. Runt put his board down and started to walk toward the weird guy.

  Maybe it was the agro posture of Runt’s body, or the expression on his face. But something told Kai that there was going to be trouble.

  Ten

  Without waiting for a wave, Kai started to paddle in. That weird guy, Spazzy, or whatever they called him, had seen Runt by now and was starting to back away up the beach. Meanwhile Runt bent down and picked something up from the sand like he was going to throw it.

  Aw, crap. Kai truly couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Garbage like this wasn’t supposed to happen in real life. It only happened in those dumb made-for-school movies about bullying that everyone felt compelled to show ever since those two nutcases went berserk at Columbine.

  The spazzy guy started to back away faster now, stumbling and almost losing his balance as he turned to run. Runt wound up, and threw whatever he’d picked up. Because of the way the spazzy guy was jerking and flailing, Kai couldn’t tell if anything hit him or not.

  “Get the hell outa here, you freak!” Runt shouted, and bent down to pick up something else to hurl. Kai reached the shallows and jumped off his board. He ripped the leash off his ankle, tore up the beach, and blindsided Runt just as he was about to throw.

  They both went down. Kai had the advantage, since Runt didn’t know what had hit him. But now he had to wrestle him in the sand. Of course, Runt had to fight back, so they rolled around, Kai getting sand in his mouth and eyes before he managed to grab Runt’s arm, twist it around his back, and force him facedown in the sand.

  “Leggo!” Runt tried to fight loose.

  “Just chill,” Kai said, holding him down, but not hurting him. He spit the sand out of his mouth and tried to blink it out of his eyes.