Alex, Approximately
Page 14

Feeling uncomfortable, I mumble a good-bye and turn to leave. That chick from the shop, Julie, is standing outside, both arms and purple dreadlocks crossed over her chest, warily watching us. I avoid eye contact and keep walking.
“See you later, cowgirl,” Davy calls in the distance somewhere behind me.
Let’s hope not. As I pass the churro cart, I notice Porter heading in the same general direction, but his muscular legs carry him faster. Someone whistles, flagging him down. It’s a middle-aged man, maybe my dad’s age, with wavy, gray-brown hair, closely cropped. He’s dressed in board shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt and looks like he could have been handsome when he was younger, but he’s had some hard knocks. One of his arms is covered with faded tattoos; the other arm is missing—as in, completely gone.
I’m surprised to recognize Porter’s eyes in the man’s when I pass, then I glance at the puckering pink scars where the arm once was. Porter catches me staring. I quickly look away and keep going, face flaming.
I think this is probably Porter’s dad and the “horrible” thing that Grace was talking about.
What in the world happened to that family?
LUMIÈRE FILM FANATICS COMMUNITY PRIVATE MESSAGES>ALEX>ARCHIVED
@mink: What do you want to do after high school?
@alex: You mean, with my life?
@mink: I mean college. When I was younger, I used to think I wanted to go to film school. Be a director. But now I don’t think I’d be so good at being in charge. I don’t want that kind of pressure. Now I think I’d rather be behind the scenes, cataloging something.
@alex: Professional film hobbyist?
@mink: *blink* Is that a real job? Hopefully, it pays huge sums of cash.
@alex: Right there with you. My dad expects me to take over the family business, and I don’t want to. Don’t get me wrong: I like the family business. I enjoy it as a hobby. But I don’t want the pressure of doing it full-time for money. What if I want to do other things, you know?
@mink: I hear ya. And I guess we have to start applying for colleges in the fall. Sort of scary. Too many schools. West Coast? East Coast? I don’t know.
@alex: Enjoy your multitude of choices. Meanwhile, I’ll be stuck at the local community college, working two jobs. My future is already mapped out for me.
@mink: That can’t be true.
@alex: Some of us aren’t so lucky, Mink.
“I used to hate the water.”
—Roy Scheider, Jaws (1975)
7
My dad says the second day of something is always better than the first because you know what to expect, and he’s right. The Hotbox is slightly more tolerable today. I sacrifice my long waves for an updo and tie the scarf pinup-style, which keeps the sweat from rolling down the back of my neck. Grace has taken preventative measures too, bringing in a battery-powered oscillating fan from home that she’s mounted between our stations. Our biggest obstacle is juggling bathroom breaks, because we’re drinking more water than horses after the Kentucky Derby.
Halfway through my shift, I get my thirty-minute break. Shucking my orange vest, I head upstairs to the café, where I find a lull in the line. The sugar cookie Porter gave me yesterday was pretty scrumptious, so I buy two and find an empty table in a private alcove under the pirate ship. I pull out my phone and look up what’s been hounding me since I clocked in today.
Bill “Pennywise” Roth was a professional surfer who won a bunch of World Surf League championship titles and Triple Crowns in the 1980s. According to his online biography, he’s continually ranked as one of the top surfers of all time. It looks like he died eight years ago. There’s a photo of a life-size memorial statue out by the surfer’s crosswalk, taken at sunset, with a bunch of flowers and surfboards propped up against it.
I start to read about how he grew up in a poor Jewish family and started surfing at the age of six, and how he fostered this entire multigenerational family of professional surfers: his son, Xander Roth, and his grandchildren—
Hold on. Porter has a younger sister, Lana, sixteen, and she’s a state and nationally ranked surfer who’ll be competing professionally for the first time this fall and predicted to join a yearlong world tour starting next January. But Porter won’t? And what happened to his dad?
A shadow falls over my phone. I hit the power button, but not fast enough.
“Reading up on me?”
I grimace, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. How did he find me up here? “Are you stalking me on the security cameras?”
“Every move,” Porter says. Metal legs squeak against the slate floor as he spins another chair around backward and straddles it, legs spread, like he’s riding a horse. He crosses his arms on the chair’s back. “If you wanted to know something about my family, all you had to do was ask.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I start to gather up my stuff, but I’m only halfway through the first cookie, so it’s pretty obvious that I just sat down.
“I saw you staring at my dad today.” An accusation.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
A tiny groan escapes my mouth. My shoulders fall. “I didn’t know . . . I mean, Grace kind of mentioned something happened, but I didn’t know what, exactly, so I was just . . .” Just what? Digging my grave a little deeper? “Curious,” I finally finish.
“Okay,” he says, nodding his head slowly. “So what do you already know?”
I turn my phone back on. “I got to here,” I say, and point to the article.
He leans over the back of the chair and squints at the screen. “Ah. That’s it? So you know who my grandfather was and how he died?”
“Didn’t get to the death part,” I say, hoping that doesn’t sound as bad as I think it does.
He doesn’t seem to take offense. “He was a big wave surfer. That means he had steel balls. Took stupid risks, even when he got too old to be doing it. In the winter, after big storms, the waves will crest really high north of the cove, up at Bone Garden. He took a big risk one morning after a storm when I was ten. I watched him from the cliffs. The wave ate him whole and spit him out onto the rocks. That’s why they call it Bone Garden, by the way. He wasn’t the first idiot to die there. Just the most famous one.”
I don’t even know what to say. A large family stops near our table to pose for a photo in front of the sea monster. We lean to get out of their shot, once, twice, three times. They’re finally finished, and we’re left alone again.
Uninterested in dredging up his grandfather again, I try to think of something else to talk about. My mind turns to what I thought I witnessed in the vintage clothing shop. “Was that your buddy or something? That Davy guy?”
Porter grunts. “We grew up together.” He squints at me and says, “Was he bothering you?”
“Not successfully.”
Porter’s mouth twists at the corners. He chuckles softly. “Now, that I believe. He’s not very bright. But he’s pernicious. I do my best to keep my eye on him, but . . .” Porter trails off, like he was going to say more but thinks better about it and clams up. I notice his gaze flick over me, head to bare legs—not really in a lurid way. His eyes are tight, wary, and troubled, and there’s something behind that dark emotion connected to Davy that I don’t understand. I wonder if it has to do with that Chloe girl they were talking about.