40. Summer
Summer
I’m sitting on a lounge chair, my feet on the warm wood. My dress sticks to my skin. I’m cold. The laughter, the music, the lapping of the water… it all reaches me muffled, far away.
Jace almost drowned. But just before that, he was already gone. His eyes had fixed on something I couldn’t see.
Noah and Evan come back up the path. Sierra gets up before I do.
“How is he?”
“He’ll be okay. I mean… I think so,” Noah says, without looking at her.
I clench my fists. My nails dig into my palms. I slip on my sandals, stand up, and grab the flip-flops Jace left under the table.
The path between the lodge and the surf school is short, barely a few minutes on foot. I walk fast, Jace’s flip-flops in my right hand, my left hand wiping my eyes for no reason—I’m not crying, it’s the pool water, it’s the chlorine, it’s…
His terrified face in the water. His fingers clawing at nothing. His mouth searching for air.
And just before—his lips an inch from mine, the heat of his skin against my dress, his eyes half-closed.
I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. But I can’t sit at the edge of that pool and pretend everything’s fine.
The turquoise trailer finally comes into view. The light’s on inside, the curtains drawn.
I stop at the door. I hesitate… and knock.
Nothing.
A sound inside—paws scrabbling against the floor, a short whine. Flip.
I knock again, harder. Still nothing.
“Jace?” I call, my voice too high.
I raise my hand to pound a third time—and hear the bolt slide back.
He’d locked himself in.
The door opens. Jace is there, still wet, his hair plastered to his forehead. Pale—or more like ashen. Shadows under his eyes like I’ve never seen on him. His expression shut, his jaw tight.
He’s not okay. Not at all.
I hold out his flip-flops. He takes them without a word, tosses them inside. They bounce off the floor with a dull thud.
I open my mouth to speak, but his eyes drop to my soaked dress. The fabric’s gone see-through, my bra showing underneath.
It hadn’t even crossed my mind. Embarrassed, I fight the urge to cross my arms.
“Jace, what happened?”
His eyes come back to mine. Hard.
“Stop acting like you give a shit.”
I step back.
“What do you mean?”
“You weren’t there,” he spits.
“I was there, Jace. I jumped in the water, I—”
“I’m not talking about tonight.”
His voice breaks. His fists clench against his thighs.
I think back to the hitch in his step when he carried me after the wipeout. To his limp in the hallway of the house, Flip in his arms. To the way he tugged his shorts down at the gym. To cover his thigh?
“Jace… does this have something to do with you never going pro?”
His face freezes, like I just slapped him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, I—”
“You show up at my place after six years, and you ask me if it has something to do with me never going pro?”
He steps back. His hands are shaking.
“Jace, wait…”
He turns and disappears inside. I follow him.
The space is cramped. The bed takes up half of it, the counter’s cluttered, it smells like wax and neoprene. Flip is lying at the foot of the bed, his head lifted toward me.
Jace has his back to me. Head down, he braces both hands on the counter.
“Explain it to me, Jace!”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“Yes, there is. Because I don’t understand why you’re talking to me like this, I don’t understand what happened in that pool, and I don’t understand what you’re blaming me for.”
“You abandoned me, Summer,” he throws over his shoulder.
“I was seventeen, Jace. I found out about the bet and I left. It’s not—”
“The bet,” he says with a dry laugh. “The fucking bet.”
The drawer under the bed is still open. Cables and chargers tangle among crumpled papers. In one corner, a little cherry-red wooden board sticks out, with a sun, a palm tree, and the word California.
The memory surfaces: that last summer, Star Park, the shooting gallery. Jace won it for me. On the back, he’d written in black marker, in slanted letters:
Future Olympic Champion
It’s the board I put in the “Help yourself” boxes on the beach. Not to hurt Jace, but because I couldn’t stand that inscription anymore. I’ll never be an Olympic champion.
And here it is, in his trailer, in a drawer under his bed. He got it back.
I don’t have time to wonder why. Jace grabs an old GoPro. The cable dangles, plugged into a wall outlet. He yanks it out and tosses it onto the bed.
“Here. Watch.”
And he walks out. Flip darts between his legs. The door slams.
I’m alone in Jace’s trailer, my soaked dress clinging to my thighs. The silence is brutal.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. My hands are shaking. I pick up the camera. The screen is small, yellowed with age.
A single file.
I find the volume button and turn the sound down. Whatever I’m about to see, I don’t want to hear it. I press play. Miles’s face appears.
Miles, but younger. Rounder cheeks, shorter hair, a nervous smile I don’t recognize. Behind him, the edge of the cliffs, gray dawn. Below, the dark ocean, streaked with foam.
My stomach knots. I know this place. These are the cliffs below Star Park. The Last Ride.
The image shakes with Jace’s movements. And his voice comes through—the one from before, clearer, lighter, the voice of a boy afraid of nothing.
“For the glory, man!”
The sound is crackly, distorted by the tiny speaker.
Miles shakes his head. He wants to go back. Jace laughs. He throws his board off the edge—sky-blue with a black stripe—and jumps.
A few minutes later, I’m curled up at the foot of the bed, knees to my chest, hands pressed over my ears.
I’m sobbing.
Jace’s scream. A raw, tearing howl of pain and fear all at once.
Blood everywhere. In the water around him, on his hands, on the blue board.
Jace fighting to get back to the edge, one arm beating the water, the other gripping the rail of his board, his leg useless.
The fin, coming back.
Jace tipping sideways and falling into the water. A spray of foam swallows the image for a second, then the shark’s jaws close on the board. The crack almost drowns out the screams.
Miles moving across the rocks, knee-deep in water, hitting the shark with his own board, as hard as he can. Hitting it again, screaming. The camera jerks too much, the image jumps, the sound crackles.
Miles dragging Jace out of the water and hauling him over the rocks. His hands covered in blood. Jace’s board shattered. The leash strap cinched high around his thigh, a piece of wood threaded through—a makeshift tourniquet.
The phone on speaker. 911. The dispatcher’s voice, nasal, far away. Miles crying while he talks. Saying stay with me, look at me, talk to me. Repeating it. Begging.
And Jace still screaming.
I press my palms harder over my ears. It’s no use. The screams are in my head.
Jace was just a kid, screaming on the rocks. And I wasn’t there. I didn’t know anything.
“When I tell her about this, she’s gonna think I’m crazy.”
There was a girl he wanted to impress. A stab of jealousy, brief and ugly, rises, and I’m ashamed of it instantly.
I can’t stop crying. I keep my hands over my ears, even after the screen goes black.