Cut Back Read online

  “Let go!” Runt kept struggling.

  Kai twisted the kid’s arm up behind his back a little more. Runt yelped, then laid still.

  “What’s your problem?” Kai asked.

  “Fuck you, what’s your problem?” Runt growled back.

  “I don’t have a problem,” Kai said. “And I’m not the one throwing stuff at retards.”

  “I’m not a retard,” someone said.

  Kai swiveled his head around in surprise. The spazzy guy was standing there, blinking, licking his lips, jerking around like someone was zapping him with a stun gun. Yet the words had been spoken with perfect clarity. Kai stared at him, totally confused.

  “I have Tourette’s syndrome,” the guy said.

  Whatever it was, Kai had never heard of it. Runt squirmed again. Kai let go and stood up. Runt leaped to his feet, spitting sand out of his mouth and scratching it out of his hair. He brought up his fists like he still wanted to fight.

  “You want to go at it? Come on, let’s go!” Runt danced around, waving his fists, ducking and weaving like he was in the first round of a heavyweight fight. Kai and the spazzy guy glanced at each other and the spazzy guy actually smiled, as if he agreed with Kai that Runt was a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal.

  “Look, just go away, okay?” Kai said. “And don’t throw stuff at people.”

  “You chicken?” Runt spit and waved his fists. “They call you tuna, right? Chicken of the sea.”

  Without warning, Kai brought his fist back and took a quick step toward the kid.

  “Ah!” Caught by surprise, Runt yelped and jumped back out of range.

  Kai smiled. “Yeah, I’m chicken. And what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you leave people alone?”

  Runt dropped his fists and looked confused. He pointed a finger at the spazzy guy. “What’s wrong with him?”

  By now Lucas and his crew had come ashore, including the new guy with the tattoos and piercings. Bean and Booger came in too.

  “What’s going on?” Lucas asked.

  “Maybe you could find Runt a bone to gnaw on,” Kai said. “He’s definitely got a lot of energy to burn.”

  “Screw you,” Runt snarled.

  Sam took a step toward Kai. “What are you? The protector of weirdos or something?” Clearly he meant to include Bean and Booger as well.

  Kai sighed. He was tempted to ask Sam if he was absent the day they handed out brains, but it would only create more antagonism. Instead he turned to Lucas. “Just call off your dogs, okay? Then tonight we can meet in the alley with chains and knives and settle this like real men.”

  “I’ll be there,” Runt said.

  Even Lucas had to roll his eyes. “Runt, you idiot, he wasn’t serious.”

  “Huh?” Runt looked even more confused.

  Lucas turned back to Kai. “The real place to settle this would be in the waves. Like in Fairport in a few weeks. Oh, wait, I forgot. You’re the big soul surfer who’s completely anticompetition. Just like your hero, Duke Kahana-what’s-his-face, the great ambassador of surfing. You know, it’s funny. I read up on that guy and guess what? He wasn’t against competition at all. In fact, he was a totally competitive animal.”

  Kai felt a frown form on his face, but he knew better than to argue.

  “Want to know how the great ambassador of surfing got to travel around the world putting on surf demonstrations?” Lucas continued. “Because he was a competitive swimmer and he was being invited to swimming meets. In fact, he was so competitive he won gold medals in two Olympics. My guess is that he would have been the first one to sign up for a surfing heat, only they didn’t have any back then. So I think you should come up with another excuse for not competing, dude, because if the big Duke was around today, I’m pretty sure he’d be looking forward to Fairport.”

  Lucas turned and walked away, and his crew followed him, except the guy with piercings and tattoos, who gave Kai a long look as if he was sizing him up. Kai couldn’t read the guy’s expression. But something about him was really troubling. Finally he turned and left too.

  Eleven

  “I think that’s true,” said Spazzy, blinking and jerking again.

  Kai looked at him curiously.

  “I, I read it in a book,” Spazzy said. He started to hop up and down. “And thanks for helping me before.”

  Kai watched him hop like he was on an invisible pogo stick.

  “I saw you surfing Screamers,” Spazzy said. “But you’re not one of them. Why did they let you?”

  “Welcome to the Screamers Liberation Front,” Bean said. “We who are fighting for the cause of liberating Screamers from the neoprene grip of tyranny.”

  “What’s your name?” Booger asked.

  “Caleb Winthrop. But everyone around here calls me Spazzy. If you said Caleb I might not know you meant me.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you when people call you that?” Bean asked.

  Spazzy moved his head back and forth. It was very strange to Kai how at some moments Spazzy’s body appeared to be completely out of his control, but at other moments he could appear, briefly, calm and normal.

  “I spend most of the year at this school in Santa Barbara. It’s for people like me. The first thing they teach you is not to take anything people do or say personally.” Spazzy licked the back of his hand, then sniffed it, then licked it again and sniffed it again. “I mean, when you do the kind of stuff I do, you better learn not to take what people say personally.”

  “Can you ever control it?” Kai asked.

  “Sometimes. Like for a really short time, but then it just builds up inside you and what comes out is even weirder than usual. So they teach you to relax and let whatever happens just happen. Like the other day when I came up to you on the beach and made all those stupid screechy noises? It’s because I got all excited and nervous and was trying to be cool and calm.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bean said. “Is this the thing where some people curse like crazy and can’t stop themselves?”

  “Sometimes,” said Spazzy. “That’s called coprolalia and not all Tourette’s patients have it. My friend Ray has it and when he really gets wound up, it’s like, totally crazed. Like this one time we went to the movies and there was this ridiculously long line to get in and our movie was gonna start at any moment and Ray went off cursing like a madman. Like he couldn’t help it, but everybody freaked and the place just cleared out. Next thing you know, we’re first in line.” Spazzy grinned proudly.

  “But what about once you’re in the movie?” Bean said. “Doesn’t he bother everyone?”

  “We usually try to go to heavy-action R-rated stuff and sit in the back. When Ray goes off most of the audience probably thinks it’s part of the sound track.”

  Kai chuckled. Spazzy was a cool guy.

  Spazzy stared at something over Kai’s shoulder, and immediately started blinking and twitching again. Kai turned. A serious-looking young woman was taking determined strides across the beach toward them. She was wearing neatly pressed blue slacks, a white sweater, and what looked from a distance like pearl earrings and a pearl necklace. They seemed like the kind of clothes a sixty-year-old woman might wear, not someone in their early twenties. And it was hard to imagine anyone at any age dressing like that at eight in the morning.

  “Aw, crap, it’s the Wicked Witch of the West.” Spazzy started across the beach to meet her, as if he didn’t want her to mix with Kai and his friends. She stopped and crossed her arms. Kai couldn’t hear what she said, but it looked like she was scolding him. Spazzy hopwalked past her as if he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Can someone explain to me what just happened?” Bean said.

  “I think we just met Spazzy, and he seems like a cool guy,” Kai said.

  “What’s Santa Barbara?” Booger asked.

  “A place in California,” Bean said.

  “What’s he doing here?” Booger asked.

  “Maybe you should ask him sometime,” Kai said.<
br />
  “He said something about Screamers,” Bean said. “But how would he even know about Screamers?”

  “Why are you guys asking me this stuff?” Kai said. “I just met him too.”

  “Weird,” said Booger.

  They watched Spazzy walk back up the beach, followed by the well-dressed young woman. Then they turned and watched Lucas and his crew paddling back out to Screamers.

  “What do you want to do?” asked Booger.

  Bean checked his watch, then looked back at the waves. “Surf. What else?”

  They turned back toward the water. Kai let Booger go ahead, then said, “Hey, Bean.”

  Bean had just put on his leash. Now he straightened up. “Yeah?”

  “Who’s the new guy in Lucas’s crew?”

  Bean didn’t even have to look to know who Kai was talking about. “Derek.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Twelve

  Kai surfed until 9 A.M., and headed back to the Driftwood to shower and change. Then he left the motel room and went back down the outside stairs, planning to grab some breakfast before going to the T-shirt shop. As he walked around the side of the motel he saw Curtis standing in the parking lot with two men wearing slacks, short-sleeved shirts, and ties. Both men had pocket protectors loaded with pens and mechanical pencils. Curtis was reading a pink sheet of paper one of the men had just handed him.

  He looked back up at the two men. “Where’d you say you were from?”

  “Town engineer’s office,” one of the men answered.

  “And you’re citing me for creating an environmental hazard?” Curtis said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s right over here, Mr. Ames.” One of the men led him over to the green garbage Dumpster in the corner of the parking lot near the street. The man took a pen from his pocket protector and pointed at a thin dribble of smelly yellowish liquid that dripped out of the bottom of the Dumpster and snaked down the driveway, along the curb and disappeared into a storm sewer in the street.

  “Yer shittin’ me,” Curtis sputtered in disbelief.

  “No, Mr. Ames, I’m afraid we’re not, er, doing that,” the man replied. “Town ordinance clearly states that it is the responsibility of every home and business owner to make sure that he prevents undesirable effluence from entering the city sewer system from his personal or business property.”

  Curtis waved the pink piece of paper at them. “Well, then I expect that if I go down to city hall I’ll find records of citations of every goddamn business and homeowner in this town who ever spread chemical fertilizer or weed killer or bug flicker on their lawns, right? Because we all know goddamn well that every time it rains all that shit goes right down the sewer and out into the ocean, where it’s already killed off the entire population of local lobsters, and it’s in the process of killing ninety percent of the worlds living reefs, not to mention feeding red tides and freakish algae blooms and more or less destroying the last great natural resources on this great cesspool of a planet we call Earth.”

  “All I can tell you, Mr. Ames, is that we do cite polluters whenever we can find them,” one of the men said. There was something odd about both men. Kai realized their upper torsos looked thick and out of proportion to their heads and lower bodies. One of them kept dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. It was definitely hot out, but not that hot.

  Curtis held up the pink sheet before their eyes and began to tear it into little pieces. “Who put you up to this? How much did they pay ya to come out here and hassle me with this shit?”

  “Uh, sir, by tearing up that citation I’m afraid you will be found in contempt,” one of the men said.

  “Contempt? You want to see contempt? I’ll show you contempt.” Curtis spun around and stomped toward the motel office.

  Kai had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. He quickly followed Curtis inside. The door from the office to Curtis’s living room was open and Kai could hear Curtis banging around as if he was looking for something while he muttered, “Contempt, huh? I’ll show those petty bureaucratic lightweights what contempt looks like.”

  Kai heard the sound of a breech opening and clacking shut. He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Curtis was standing in the middle of the living room with his sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

  “Curtis, don’t,” Kai said.

  The older man jerked his head around. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass.”

  “Sorry, grommet, it’s too late for that,” Curtis growled. “This is the last straw. I’ve had it with this crap. I’m renaming this place the Alamo. The only way they’ll take me out is in a body bag.”

  “And they will, too,” Kai said. “You walk out there with that gun and you’ll be doing exactly what they want you to do.”

  Curtis frowned.

  “Come here.” Kai went to the window and parted the blinds slightly. “Look at those guys. See anything?”

  “Yeah, I see a couple of geeks from the town engineer’s office. So what?”

  “Look at their chests,” Kai said.

  Curtis squinted through the blinds. He frowned. “What the hell?”

  “Kevlar vests. Body armor. Not exactly the normal dress code for geeks from the town engineer’s office, is it?”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Curtis muttered.

  “That means they expect you to go out there and do something crazy,” Kai said. “Want to know what they don’t expect? They don’t expect you to go back out there and apologize for tearing up that citation. Say it was temporary insanity and ask for another one.”

  Curtis grit his teeth. “The hell I will.”

  “Why are you trying to make trouble for yourself?” Kai asked. “Know how easy it would be to fix your problem? All you have to do is move the Dumpster. Maybe you don’t even have to move it. Maybe all you have to do is put a bucket under the leak. But if you don’t go back out there, they’re going to have this contempt thing hanging over your head. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I’m pretty sure you can’t fix it with a bucket.”

  Curtis pursed his lips and looked down at the floor. His shoulders drooped. “Christ on broken crutches.”

  Kai waited and said nothing. Finally Curtis heaved a big sigh. “You’re a smart kid, grom, but you’re missing the big picture. Maybe you’re right about this battle, but the war ain’t over. They’re gonna keep coming back at me again and again. They’re grinding me down, grom. It’s like they know I can only take so much of this before I blow.”

  “Maybe something will change,” Kai said. “Maybe you’ll be able to stop it once and for all.”

  “Not a chance,” Curtis said. “It’s me against the world, grom. There’s too much money to be made by booting my sorry ass out of here. Greed’s a powerful force, my friend. If it was a wave, it would be twice the size of Maverick’s going off twenty-four-seven, three hundred sixty-five days a year.”

  “Okay, but for right now you could make your life a lot easier by putting down the shotgun and going back out there and asking for another copy of that citation,” Kai said.

  Curtis looked down at the gun, then tossed it onto the couch. Kai flinched. It was crazy the way he tossed that gun around. Like he didn’t care that it might go off accidentally.

  “Okay, grom, this time I’ll do it,” Curtis said. “But I’m making no promises about next time.”

  Thirteen

  When Kai got to the T-shirt shop he found the Alien Frog Beast Hockaloogie standing on the sidewalk outside, staring at the window.

  “This surfing display ain’t working.” Kai’s father was talking about a display he’d asked Kai to create after he’d noticed that the only store in town that seemed to get foot traffic on hot sunny afternoons was Sun Haven Surf. The reason people went into the surf shop at that time of day was that in the afternoons the onshore breeze would start to blow out the waves. The surfer
s had nothing better to do than look at surfboards and ogle Jade, Kai’s sexy “friend” who worked behind the front counter. Pat figured that if he had Kai do a surfing display for T-licious, he might be able to sell a few T-shirts to those surfers, but Kai, who hated the scams his father pulled on people, made the display as ugly as possible by featuring T-shirts with pigs and ducks on surfboards.

  “So what do you want to do?” Kai asked his father.

  “How else do they get surfer kids to shop?” the Alien Frog Beast asked.

  Kai thought of suggesting that his father hire a sexy girl like Jade to work the counter, but that was out of the question. Instead he said, “You could become a sponsor.”

  “How’s that work?” Pat asked.

  “Usually you pick out the hottest, coolest surfer around and the store gives him some free stuff,” Kai said. “In return, the surfer puts the store’s logo on his boards and maybe on his wet suit. Other kids see the cool surfer wearing the store’s stuff and they want to wear it also.”

  “So you gotta have some kind of logo?” Pat looked unhappy.

  “It’s pretty key,” Kai said. He figured that would be the end of the conversation. Any idea that involved Pat giving away anything for free, not to mention actually paying for someone to design a logo, would pretty much blow the deal clear out of the water.

  “There he is!” someone suddenly said.

  Kai and his father looked down the sidewalk where a man was pointing at them. It was Mr. Asoki, the tourist Pat had scammed the night before. With him was a man wearing a green plaid sports jacket and slacks.

  “Crap!” Pat grumbled and dashed into the store.

  Meanwhile Mr. Asoki and the man in the sports jacket came toward Kai. Mr. Asoki was clearly excited. “He charge me seventy-five dollar a shirt!” he was telling the man in the green plaid jacket. “In other store same shirt twenty-two dollar.”

  Kai stayed on the sidewalk. As Mr. Asoki approached, his eyes fixed on Kai and he pointed at him. “Him. He work there too.”