Wavehouse Read online

  broken heart. And absolutely zero shared about my own aching one.

  I kept quiet, ate my food, and nodded at the appropriate times. After a “heart-healthy” dessert of low-fat frozen yogurt and strawberries—odd for Gramma not to bake, but then again the whole evening was odd—Grandpa and I settled silently in front of the TV for a quick peek at the Weather Channel. Storms were raging up and down the East Coast, but most were blowing out to sea. A cautionary advisory was in effect for the next forty-eight hours, especially in coastal communities. The surfer in me was momentarily stoked—the waves would be epic. Then I remembered the state of my life, and I was instantly back on dry land, glumly landlocked.

  “G’night, Tommykins,” I sighed as I got up to go to bed.

  “You leavin’?” Grandpa asked. “A funny comedy show with this big, fat Australian guy and his dumbo Kiwi kids is about to come on.”

  “I’m exhausted,” I croaked. “I’m going to sleep.”

  I leaned over for a comforting last whiff of Grandpa’s scalp before trudging upstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sixteen-year-old me usually slept like a baby when I stayed at Toilsome Lane, but that night was different—that night I was a grown-up with way too many woes. I clutched Woof Woof to my stomach, and positioned Fluffy under my head, hoping my pet pillows would soothe me as they had done so many times before. But pillows couldn’t do anything for this kind of pain. Chris had played me as cunningly as Rusty had played my mother, and I had never, in my whole life, felt uglier, stupider, or more used up.

  On top of that, I had Grandpa’s faulty heart valve to add to my worry-pile. After his first surgery, he had needed to recuperate for a long time. I had helped take care of him while Sara worked the shop. A second operation now, years later, would be even harder for everyone to manage. I couldn’t leave Kendall’s Watch on a surf tour, even if I had wanted to. So bye-bye almost-boyfriend, and almost-had-but-really-

  never-wanted professional career. Goodbye any kind of bright and happy future.

  I couldn’t sleep, so I got a stash of paper and pens from the dresser drawer. I started on a new Wavehouse, letting my mood dictate my drawing. A curled and awkward cave with a pitch black entrance emerged—a barnacle-encrusted tomblike place with fish scales scattered around like brittle and treacherous confetti. A dark and dismal Wavehouse to match my dark and dismal life. I was in a state all the next day at the shop. Sad, mad, and totally had. Not at all glad. Thankfully Meghan took up the slack. At half-past two, Sara called and said she was going to be held up by tee shirt issues for another day. Part of me had hoped she was staying in Jersey because she had rekindled her affair with Fireman Joe, which would make the Rusty news easier to bear. It was just as well—one doomed love affair at a time was quite enough.

  By three, I was almost functioning normally. Then something happened outside the shop that yanked me back under the gnarly current.

  “What’s going on out there?” I asked Meghan, who was looking out the window.

  “Wow,” she said. “I saw that awesome van earlier, but didn’t realize it belonged to him.”

  Chris sat in the driver’s seat of a retro-cool VW van across the street. It was a classic old 60s model—probably worth a mint—with surfboards piled on the roof, and vintage stickers of smiley faces and peace signs plastered all over the bumpers. A shiny SUV had pulled up behind the van and sat with its engine idling, which made my blood boil. I hated it when people didn’t shut off their engines, when they operated as if the atmosphere was their own personal emissions dumping ground. But that was the least of my worries. Chris was parked across the street from my shop. What was he doing there? I took a deep breath and walked outside.

  A large, sunburned man rapped sharply on the van’s window while Chris stared straight ahead, pretending not to hear the guy.

  “Hey buddy,” the man yelled, in a threatening kind of way. “Move it along!”

  Chris was still as stone.

  “Can’t you read, you idiot?” the man persisted.

  Finally, Chris reacted. Rolling down the window, he scowled at the man. “I can read just fine,” he said.

  “Um, no you can’t.” The man laughed condescendingly, as he pointed to a parking sign partially obstructed by the branches of a maple tree. “It says Parking by Permit Only. This junk heap of yours has no permit. I paid a fortune to get my summer parking permit and I’m not gonna let some young punk come and take a spot that belongs to someone who’s paid.”

  Chris looked up at the sign, his face tightening in anger. Had he been unable to read the sign? Or had he not even noticed it?

  “Please get away from my car, dude,” Chris said, through gritted teeth.

  “Move your car, dude,” the man said mockingly.

  With lightning speed, Chris whipped his door open almost knocking the man down. Then Chris was standing on the sidewalk face-to-face with the man or rather face-to-chest—the man was huge.

  “Stop it!” I yelled, from the other end of the street. Crowds stopped to stare at me. Usually, this kind of scrutiny would’ve been enough to make me run back inside the shop. Chris, with a hopeful smile at me, started across the street. The man yelled after him, “Unbelievable! I’m calling the cops, buddy. Get this stupid van of yours towed away!”

  Chris, without even turning around, raised his middle finger to the guy sputtering in the street behind him. I thought the bully was going to run across the street and tackle Chris, but fortunately he got back in his SUV and drove away. As he sped by, I could see a woman in the passenger seat with an embarrassed expression. Not your fault, lady, I thought. Not yours, or mine.

  “I was working my nerve up to come back into the shop and try to talk to you again,” Chris said once he stood next to me.

  “What were you going to do to that guy?” I asked.

  Chris shrugged, his expression dark and unsettled. “Nothing. But that asshole deserves to have his butt kicked.”

  The look on his face unnerved me for a moment—a look of barely controlled rage as if with one push he would be over the edge. It reminded me of a creep named Stanley who had given Sara a black eye the morning of my ninth birthday.

  “You were about to punch him!”

  “I didn’t do anything, Anna,” Chris laughed nervously. “That dick wad was all over me and all I did was give him the finger, so what?”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near me or this store,” I said calmly.

  “You’re totally overreacting! I didn’t even call him any names, goddammit!”

  “Please, Chris. I’m asking nicely.”

  “Great,” he threw his hands up. “Just great. I give up. I can’t win with you. You don’t seem to believe anything I say or do.”

  I turned to go back into the store.

  “Anna,” he reached for my arm gently. “Please.”

  It felt good to be touched by him again. So good, I could barely stand it, until I thought of her. I slipped my arm away, like a shell pulled out to the sea with an outgoing tide. “Go back to Inga.”

  “Wait a minute, please!” Chris ran his hands through his hair, his fingers caught in his curls. “Did Inga talk to you?”

  “Fly off to Fiji. Go have fun in the sun. The waves are really sweet this time of year.”

  He reached for me again. “Anna—”

  “Leave, now,” I cried, pulling my arm away, much rougher with him than he had ever been with me.

  At last, closing time arrived. I gave Meghan one hundred and fifty bucks, which was more than she had expected, but she deserved every bit of it. She could sweet-talk customers into purchases better than I ever could. And she could make change without needing the cash register to tell her the amount. I decided to let her close up and asked her to open the shop on her own the following morning, which thrilled her to no end. I was exhausted an
d useless—if there was any chance of sleeping in the next morning, I was determined to take it. After trying to appear interested as Meghan told me a really boring story about her mother’s bunions, I showed her how to turn off the display lights and lock up, and left.

  I kept thinking of Chris and Inga about to fly off to Fiji. What would Chris’s other ‘little friend’ think of the photos of Chris and me when she saw them? Maybe Fiji didn’t have internet, tabloids, or trashy news feeds. Maybe Inga would never know, and Chris could play her just like he had so brilliantly played me.

  I got on my bike and high-tailed it to Myra’s, arriving before she did—no doubt she had gotten coerced into some act of do-gooding. I wasn’t sure what the tension between us was about, but we had to deal with it. The idea of Myra in Paris made me want to weep. There were so many unanswered questions, I felt like an unraveled spool of thread.

  And then there was Sara. That was the one thread I could try to wind back up. I decided to call Sara from Myra’s and give her the bad news. When my call went directly to voicemail, I started and couldn’t stop: “Sara. I hate to tell you this without seeing you, but I have to. Rusty is a total creep. A scumbag. He’s been seeing another woman—I’ve seen them together myself. He’s staying at her house, the Ramelle house. I think she’s the daughter of the movie star. Also, he tried to get this…this…guy…”—talking about Chris unhinged me but I kept going—“this famous surfer to convince me to join the Stella tour. Well, not just convince me but seduce me. That’s the thing, Sara. Rusty is the Stella scout. He’s not a venture capitalist. Screw his bogus environmental correctness. He’s been secretly taking pictures of me and he’s using you to get to me. I’m sorry. Please. When you get this message call me at Myra’s.”

  I hung up, hoping to feel better, or at least somewhat relieved, but only felt worse than before. Myra was still not home, so I decided to take another stab at her bubble bath approach to self-pity. I brought the phone into the bathroom hoping Sara would call. I used an extra cap of bath bubbles,

  but it didn’t do much good. I was a shy, incompetent human being. Chris didn’t really care about me. My grandfather needed a life-saving operation. My mother was screwing Evil Incarnate. I stayed in the bath and let the water get colder and colder. I didn’t move. I didn’t see the point. Then, I heard a voice call, “Okay, you super freak. Where are you hiding?”

  My heart lightened. Myra was finally home and she was calling me a freak, which was a positive sign. “I’m up here,” I called back. “In the tub!”

  Myra clomped up the stairs Clydesdale style and into the bathroom. She stuck a hand in the cool water. “Geez, Anna. Are you trying to poach yourself or something? You’re looking sort of wrinkly.”

  “It feels good.”

  Myra reached in and pulled the plug. “For you maybe, water-girl. For mere mortals it’s unbearable. Get out now.” She handed me a towel and sat down on the closed toilet seat while I stood and dried myself. “You hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you need to eat, and I’m starving. Meet me downstairs when you’re ready.”

  I did as I was told. Myra was in the kitchen, boiling water for pasta. She had an apron on over her daisy printed skirt. “You look like my old pal Betty Crocker,” I said.

  “Minus the preservatives, thank you very much,” Myra said as she dumped linguine in the pot.

  “I have it figured out now,” I told her, as I sliced tomatoes

  for a salad. “Rusty must’ve been the one who filmed me and posted it on YouTube. To start some kind of buzz, or whatever they call it. Now he’s gonna up the ante with those photographs.”

  “Anna.” Myra started twisting a curl of her Brillo pad hair—something she did only when she was nervous, and Myra was almost never nervous. Not even for the SATs.

  “What?”

  “I have something to tell you.” Myra looked down. “You’re gonna kill me. It’s the reason—well, one of the reasons—I’ve been acting so weird.”

  “What already? Jesus, Myra. You’ve been acting weird for days.”

  “It was me,” she whispered.

  “It was you what?”

  “I posted the YouTube video.” Her shoulders hunched up to her ears, and she shut her eyes tight.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I filmed you at Secretspot with that tiny camcorder I bought myself last year. The one you said was a waste of money because I never used it—until now.”

  I was trembling. “How could you?”

  “How could I not?”

  “But you know how I am about performing!” I was breaking into a cold sweat. “I’ve explained Shy-Person-Type B-hood to you a gazillion times.”

  “I’m sorry. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I took a risk. I even thought you might secretly be happy.”

  “Happy? Me?” I shrieked. “Are you kidding? Do you even know me anymore?”

  “Of course I know you,” Myra said and then added with an edge, “Well, at least I knew you before all this Ceekay stuff.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh come on. You know you’ve been, like, totally focused on him.”

  “But you said you weren’t jealous,” I cried.

  “I’m not. It’s just that it changed you.”

  “No, you’re the one who’s changed. I don’t know the Myra who would secretly film me and post it on the goddamn internet. That’s devious.”

  “Okay, so I lied,” Myra shrugged—like it was no biggie. “But it’s done, and now you have to deal with it.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I stormed out of the room.

  Myra followed. “Come on, Anna. What’s so bad about it? So people see you surf. So you hooked up with a total hunk of a guy, so what? So you might actually have a career? Make money?”

  “You probably just did this so you could be part of all the hype,” I snapped.

  “That is completely and totally unfair.” She was yelling now.

  “You need to get a life, Myra,” I said.

  “I have a life, thank you very much. In fact, my going-

  somewhere life is taking me to Paris.”

  My heart stopped. “Paris? You’re going?” I was angrier at her than I’d ever been at anyone, but the thought of her moving to Paris threw me as if I’d been tossed off a cliff.

  “Hell, yeah, I’m going. Judith called two days ago to tell me we’re all moving, but you were so preoccupied with Mr. Dreamboat that I never got to tell you.”

  “Don’t put that on me,” I said. “I kept asking you about friggin’ Paris.”

  “Maybe you gave it lip service, but only after we’d talked about you and Ceekay ad nauseam.”

  “That’s low,” I grumbled. “Besides, we talked about Jimmy, too.”

  “For, like, one second.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. But I knew she was right.

  “In any case, I’m blowing this popsicle stand. Leaving this one-horse town. I’ve put an application in to study at the Sorbonne in a special high school program.”

  “Another thing you forgot to mention?”

  She shrugged. “Why do you care? You seem to hate my guts right now. Maybe you’ll be better off without me.”

  “Maybe so,” I muttered.

  “Just think of me drinking espressos in a cool little Left Bank café, while you’re stuck at the safe old Shell Shop tagging Shellys.”

  “That’s even lower!” I yelled.

  “Well, sorry, Anna. It’s the truth. It’s your life that’s going down the drain.”

  “I’m leaving,” I snapped, shoving my belongings in a shopping bag. My beloved backpack was still up at Secretspot. I felt like I had body parts scattered all over town.

  “You’re like a scared little mouse who has all this ridiculous potential,
” Myra snapped back. “Wasted potential.”

  “Well, this scared little mouse is leaving now, so you can stop setting your traps!” I stormed out of the room like a raging bull. Nothing mouse-like about me—at least not on the outside.

  Chapter Thirty

  I ran the mile or so home, the shopping bag swinging from my hand, knocking my leg like a scolding. I hadn’t been to my own shabby house for days, and it came as no surprise that Sara had left it a mess before she headed to Jersey. Scared to see how truly filthy the place was, I sat in the dark for a while—feeling cruddy enough without seeing the dirty dishes piled in the sink and the clothes scattered across the floor. I had no idea who was on my side anymore. Even in my own house, I felt like a vagabond without my backpack, sketchbook, and surfboard. I needed those things to feel whole. I called a cab and fifteen minutes later was on my way to collect some of the missing parts of me.

  The Secretspot path would be impossible to navigate in the dark and my flashlight was busted. I decided to sneak around the side of the Ramelle house to the path that led to the cliff’s edge, where I had left my backpack and surfboard. Plus Joe Shore, sole proprietor and cabby of Shore’s Taxi Service, would definitely get suspicious if I asked him to drop me on the side of the road by a bunch of brush. As it was, I hoped he wouldn’t ask any questions about the Ramelles. Mr. Shore knew that under normal circumstances I didn’t hang out with movie stars.

  The homemade sign posted on the back of the driver’s seat of Shore’s Taxi Service read Be Sure with Shore. Joe was known for driving slowly and carefully, which I appreciated. I was in no rush. “Hey, Mr. Shore,” I said when I got in the back of the rattling, old mini-van. “Can you take me up to the Ramelle house, please?”

  “Of course, Anna,” he said. “You can be sure with Shore.”

  Thankfully that was all he said. I stared out the window, listening to the static buzz of the radio—the same station Grandpa liked to play in his truck. When we got to the Ramelle place, the gate at the end of the driveway was open.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Shore, can you just wait here? I’ll be back in a flash.”