“Hey, kiddo. I need to talk to you about the trip.”
My insides twisted into a sticky web. “That looks like light reading,” I said, trying to stall him.
“The book isn’t light reading; that’s the point,” he said defensively, his face half shadowed in the light. “These ugly things are really happening in the world, and if I can, I’m going to do something to help. If I can’t help stop it, I’ll do something to help heal the wounds. That’s what Team Hope was ...
is
... all about.”
“Team Hope? That’s what you’re calling your group now?”
“Yes. We changed it ... in honor of your mom.”
I didn’t know what to say. His international work was the reason she was gone.
My stomach clenched as I connected the dots.
That
was what my birthday morning was all about: Dad?
Check.
Tom?
Check.
And ... they needed a third person now.
Vera.
It was obvious who Vera was replacing.
My stomach seized. “Whatever.” I spit out the word, spun around to flee.
“Sienna, stop.”
“What!” I snapped. The circles under his eyes were darker than usual, but this time I didn’t feel bad. I was tired too. We were all tired.
He moved toward me, setting his hand on my shoulder in his robo-Dad way. But I shrugged it off.
“Listen, I know you’re still mad about your birthday and I want to apologize. I thought if I surprised you with the ticket, you might not be as adverse to coming along-okay, that’s a lie.” He chuckled a little, making me want to scream. “I knew you’d say no and I really wanted you to say yes.”
I didn’t answer. He was supposed to know better than to act like this. He was supposed to be an expert! My eyes stung with frustration.
“I’m sorry, honey. Being a dad of a teenage girl doesn’t come with instructions,” he said.
Neither does being a daughter of a widowed psychiatrist,
I wanted to retort, but instead I said the worst thing I could think of. “How could you even think of bringing her in place of Mom?” My words cracked like a whip. As soon as they were out, I wanted to suck them back in. Wanted to take back the whole stupid week. The whole last three years.
Dad just stared at me.
He scratched his beard, avoiding my eyes. “That’s not ... ,” he started to say but let his words trail off. “Wait. Just wait.”
As I stood in the doorway fuming, Dad reached under his desk and held up a DVD. “I have a proposition for you.”
The cover of the box was a faded photograph of three little girls standing in front of a massive gray wave. “What’s that?”
“A documentary shot at the orphanage we’ll be volunteering at. Look, I know you’re angry, but I want this trip to be your choice. I’m not going to force you to go. Watch this DVD and decide for yourself.”
I didn’t trust him a bit. “What’s the catch?”
Dad’s face relaxed. “No catch. I’m sincerely sorry for how I acted.” He raked his fingers through his thinning hair. “How this all seems. I’ve been a mess, and I can’t apologize enough. You’re fifteen years old now, so I might as well be honest with you.” He sighed. “I hate my practice. I hate listening to spoiled women whine about their rich husbands spending too much time on the golf course. I can’t even bring myself to fix the stairs, Sienna. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
I grunted in agreement.
“See? The house is a wreck. It’s falling apart. And as dear as she is, your grandmother drives me crazy. I’m just ... I’m just lost.” He sighed again. “Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded. I knew exactly what he meant.
His voice picked up, as if energized by my understanding. “I need to feel useful again, kiddo. I need to help people with real problems who actually need my help. This trip is something I have to do. And I really want you to come along. If you would just think about it? Please?”
When I squinted, the broken pieces of Dad’s face blurred and he looked like the dad who taught me to surf, to ride my bike. He looked like the man I used to believe could fix anything.
“Okay, Dad,” I said.
THE BACKPACK
Spider’s room still smelled like crusty salt water and cheese puffs. But now there was a musky scent, some cologne mixed in, that made it even nicer to hang out in.
Surf posters still covered the walls like ocean-themed wallpaper, and I could barely see the floor, it was so covered in crap. Maybe that’s why we used to get along so well—we both enjoyed lounging around in our own chaos.
A surf movie was on his flat-screen TV, but I was paying more attention to the fact that we were sitting next to each other on his bed. “Want some more?” Spider asked, dangling a half-empty bag of chips in front of me.
“No, thanks.”
Spider shrugged and continued to munch.
So.
When are you going to show me the thing you found for me?
Like he could read my mind, he rolled up the empty bag, shot it easily into the basketball hoop beside his door and watched it swoosh into the trash can underneath.
“Nice shot,” I said.
“Some things never change,” he said ironically. “Did you decide about Indo yet?” he asked, facing me.
I could have told him about the DVD.
How I watched half of it before with Bev in her room. That I didn’t finish it. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. It was too scary hearing the kids’ stories mixed in with news camera footage: the massive wave rushing through villages, destroying everything in its wake. The screams as the people ran and swam and struggled for safety. How one little girl, with a white flower in her hair, hid from the camera’s questions the whole time. She wouldn’t speak at all, like she was hiding from her own story. The whole time I watched, I couldn’t stop thinking: Maybe she’d speak to me.
“Can we talk about something else?” I asked Spider. I didn’t want to admit I was actually considering going. That even though Bev and Oma both thought it was a terrible idea, I might do this.
I might really go.
I noticed the summer freckles sprinkled across his nose when he asked, “Come on, you don’t want to go to Indo even a little bit? Because I remember, we used to ... Well, you used to always say you wanted to travel with your parents one day.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Do you
swear
my dad isn’t bribing you to persuade me to go? I mean, I know Bev would never succumb to that kind of pressure, but you,” I said with a grin, “are an entirely different story.”
“Swear.” He held up his pinky—our old ritual. “And I take offense at the suggestion,” he said, but he was grinning too.
I stared at his tanned hand.
Did he want me to twist mine into his? I didn’t dare reach out and touch him. From the corner of my eye I watched him pause for a beat before folding his hand back into a fist and reaching over the side of the bed.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He set a kid-size backpack on my lap. “Remember when we were eight, your parents were leaving for Vietnam and we thought we’d stow away in your dad’s Jeep? Well, I found yours.”
“No way!” I held up the Scooby-Doo pack. Sea was written on top in bright pink cursive. “I can’t believe you still have this!”
“They almost missed their plane when they found us hiding in the back. Your dad was so pissed, but your mom just laughed ... ,” he said, and then stopped when his words stuck to the air like flypaper. I tried to swallow them away, but my throat was a desert.
I carefully unzipped the top. The inside was still stuffed with the little kid clothes I’d packed all those years ago.
“I think this is a sign, Sea,” Spider said, his voice low, cautious. “This time you really get to go.”
Was it a sign?
I didn’t believe much in signs, not anymore. But this was pretty coincidental. I stared at the bag but didn’t dare look at Spider, who was leaning so close I could feel his breath on my cheek.
I leaned back, staring at the backpack while I talked. “If I decide to go, I have to get a ton of shots. They have serious diseases over there, you know,” I mumbled.
“We’ll just have to put you in a bubble when you get back so you don’t contaminate us with your cooties.” I felt him leaning closer.
“Would you visit me in the bubble?”
“Of course,” Spider said. “I’d bring you Popsicles and cheesy celebrity magazines.”
“In that case, it might be worth going. I think a bubble house life would appeal to me.”
Then Spider started tickling me. I feigned protest, hugging the backpack to my chest. “Spider, stop!”
Then we kind of rolled around laughing.
It felt good to laugh. Strange. Like I didn’t recognize the sound of my own laughter.
Spider started tickling me again and I laughed some more until suddenly Spider’s face was too close. He stopped laughing. His eyes looked different.
Something clicked. He was right. The little girl on the documentary. The backpack. Him.
I jumped up. “I need to go, Spider. You’re right!”
“You mean go home? What’s wrong?” Spider stood up from the bed, concerned.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need to tell my dad I’m going.”
He held on to my shoulders and I froze.
Was he trying to kiss me?
No. That couldn’t happen.
“So you’re going to go?” he asked, puzzled. “And you decided that
just now?”
I kept the backpack firmly between us. “Yeah,” I said. It was the truth.
Ducking out of his arms, I headed for the door so he couldn’t see the confusion on my face. “I think ... I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Even if I wanted him to, I couldn’t let Spider kiss me.
I remembered the last time as clear as if it were yesterday. His curious eyes and his cherry soda lips.
And then the horrible thing that happened after.
I wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but I was sure about this.
I would never be brave enough to try again.
I ran out of Spider’s house the same way I had that terrible day.
Maybe an ocean between us wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
SHARKS
“So you’re really going tonight?” Bev asked.
A week later, we were lying side by side on matching striped towels down at the cove, waiting for the rest of the group to arrive for our fare-thee-well bonfire.
“Looks like ...” My stomach churned when I even thought about the midnight flight.
“You’re going to be okay, dude.”
I looked at her sideways. Then I took a swig out of my water bottle. “I hope so.”
“The person you should be worried about is me,” Bev joked, smoothing down her straight black bob. “I mean, two whole weeks without you? I’m going to be so bored.”
“You have your brother,” I said, uneasiness creeping into my voice. I hadn’t seen him since that awkward day in his room.
“Yeah, right.” Bev rolled her eyes. “I’m completely irrelevant to him. As is anyone who doesn’t surf.”
That stung, but I let it pass. Bev was right on, as usual. I didn’t want to think about Spider anyway. All I wanted to do was soak up the sun and watch powder-puff clouds float in the sky. I didn’t want to think about the trip or how sore my arms were because of all the needle-poking shots.
I sighed, leaned back, basked in the heat of the day.
Sunny Cove’s golden beach was packed, dotted with families, zigzagging Frisbees and seagulls grazing the sand for PB&J crusts. The teal waves were breaking perfectly. Dozens of surfers were out waiting for that perfect ride.
“Why don’t you surf again, Bev?” I asked, forgetting her reason.
“Three words: great white sharks,” she said with a snort, pulling a vintage T-shirt over her head. “You know that.”
Sharks. Now I was thinking about Spider and everything else dangerous and lurking underwater. “Do you see your brother?”
“No, but I’m not exactly looking for him.”
I scanned the waves and stopped. I knew his surfboard like I used to know him. A short, red-and-white board with a black spiderweb painted on the nose. On his belly, bobbing on the board up and over the smooth water, waiting for the next set of ride-worthy waves, I found Spider.
And he wasn’t alone.
Someone was bobbing next to him, and that someone had thin shoulders, long red hair and a curvy wet suit.
“Who is
that girl
with your brother?” I asked, surprised at how jealous I felt.
Bev, now busy rubbing white Bullfrog on her nose, didn’t answer.
I shielded my eyes with my hand. “In the water? Some surfer girl. Can’t you see them?”
“Not really.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a girl. Look at her hair: it’s not hippie-boy long; it’s girl long. And I see boobs. Can’t you see her boobs? It’s definitely a girl.”
“Um. Sienna. News flash. I don’t exactly sit on the beach in order to stare at girl boobs. That’d be my brother’s department.”
I tilted my head so she couldn’t see me grimace.
“And so what if he’s surfing with a girl; what else is new? Why do you suddenly care what my stupid brother does, anyway? Because you guys hung out together last week in his room?”
She glanced at me suspiciously before flipping open the front page of the
New York Times.
She scanned down the newsprint with her pinky finger, humming and nodding to herself. “Status update: all clear. No new terrorist attacks in Indonesia or Bali, so you should be g-to-g for the whole trip. Good to go.”
I snorted. “Oh, right, and that means the whole two weeks will be threat level what? Yellow for low risk of terrorist acts?”
“Something like that.”
I leaned in closer. “Sure you don’t want to come with me, Bev? You could be my personal bodyguard.”
“Ha. I’ll pass. But don’t you worry. You can be your own bodyguard armed with my info.” She tapped the side of her skull. “Knowledge is power.”