Kristen (2 page)
“Once that baby’s close enough, you kids can ride her waves all the way back to Westchester.”
“Aiyyyyyyyyyeeeeeee!” Dune yelled, tying his blond hair back with a putty-colored rubber band.
“I told you, I am not, not,
not
going in there!” Ripple cried, dumping three bottles of O.P.I. nail polish out of her peach Wet Seal tote and onto her blue striped towel. “Massie would never touch the same water as a gah-ross rat-raft . . .
would
she?” Her wide eyes filled with hope as they met Kristen’s, as if praying for Massie to have a secret love of barge surfing or a fondness for wading in estuaries.
Puh-lease!
Kristen delighted in shaking her head no.
Ripple gazed out at the navy blue water and sighed. “Didn’t think so.”
“Suit yourself,” Dune said, waxing his pomegranate red Channel Islands surfboard. “Catch!” He threw a faded black wet suit to Kristen. “I hope it’s to your liking,” he added with a smirk, nodding at the CC logo on her hat and the alligator on her yellow halter, as if mocking and daring her at the same time.
Ehmagawd!
Kristen wanted to shout.
I ne-ver buy Chanel. I can’t afford it. Massie gave me this hat because she said my straw Club Monaco was more like a Club Monac-oh-no-you-dizn’t. And I have to wear something on my head or I’ll get fried. And this halter isn’t even real! I bought a pudding-stained Lacoste polo at the Salvation Army, unstitched the alligator, and sewed it on this J. Crew tank. I do that all the time!!! I’m really poor and down-to-earth, like you.
But instead she caught the stiff black jumper and tried not to gag on the salty rubber smell.
“Thanks.” She smiled proudly, hoping he’d noticed her stellar hand-eye coordination.
His wink showed that he had.
All Kristen could do to hide her blushing cheeks and silence her pounding heart was hurry behind the flapping sails and squeeze into the tight neoprene casing.
“You guys are so
un
,” Ripple sighed from her towel. She slid a pair of blush pink knockoff Diors over her heavily shadowed eyes and leaned back on her elbows.
“
Un
-what?” Dune stood over his sister, intentionally casting a buff shadow over her ivory linen–covered body.
“
Un
–everything that’s cool.” Ripple sat up and jammed a blue foam toe separator between her jagged toenails, then shook a bottle of coral polish.
Dune gave his father a mischievous smile. Brice nodded once, then quickly dropped the anchor into the water with a plop. He raced toward his daughter and, without a single word, grabbed Ripple’s legs while Dune gripped her underarms.
“What are you doooooo—”
They carried her toward the edge of the boat while she kicked and flailed like a hooked fish.
“Noooooooo,” she pleaded. “I just got this beach cover-up!”
Kristen covered her open mouth—hiding her amusement from Ripple and her shock from Dune.
They swung her once and her glasses fell overboard. Twice and her hair band was gone. The third time they let her go.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Ripple sailed over the rope railings, her blue foam toe separators still intact.
Brice high-fived his son while Kristen finished zipping up her wet suit and hurried to the boat’s edge, careful not to get too close to them, just in case she was next.
“Ehmagawd! It’s subarctical.” Ripple chattered, wiping her soggy hair away from her shadow-smudged eyes, her linen dress ballooning around her like a white chocolate Hershey’s Kiss. “You toe-dally ruined my makeover!”
“That was the point,
Rassie
.” Dune got down on his knees and offered her his hand. Ripple grabbed on. But then he immediately let go. “No OCDivas allowed.”
Kristen’s cheeks burned with shame as Ripple fell back into the muddy water.
“Dune!” Brice snicker-scolded.
“What about
her
?” Ripple grunted as she lifted herself back onto the bobbing boat. “She’s a
total
OCDi—”
Uh-oh.
“Last one in pees in their wet suit!” Kristen whipped off her hat and made a running dive off the boat, plunging headfirst into the chilly sound. The instant brain freeze sobered her senses, numbing her crush symptoms and returning her to her usual state of controlled fabulousness.
“Whoooooooo-hoooooooo!” Dune ran straight off the boat with his board tucked under his arm. His wet suit remained behind, lying flat on the deck like the chalk outline of a dead body.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Kristen asked when he surfaced. She could already feel the sun nibbling at her unprotected cheeks but refused to get out now. Instead, she sliced her legs beneath her, treading water and doing her best not to swallow the murky water.
“Nah.” He sat on his surfboard and whipped his head back, slapping his long wet hair against his glistening shoulders.
He smacked his board, inviting Kristen to join him. She glided over, lifted herself up, and in one smooth motion straddle-sat behind him. Unsure of what to do with her hands, she slipped them under her neoprene-covered butt, which felt like a cold seal.
Dune flipped around and faced her. “You might want to take that off.”
“What?”
Kristen squeaked. She was excited times ten that her crush was obviously crushing back, but come
awn
! Taking things off was moving a little fast, even for a pro surfer. She squint-glanced back up at the boat, wondering if Brice could hear his son’s advances. But he was ten feet away, eating a jelly donut and flipping though a copy of
Surfer’s Journal,
totally unaware.
“Your
necklace
.” He wrinkled his sunburned nose disapprovingly. “It could break.”
Kristen gripped the gold heart-shaped locket around her neck. “Oh.” She smile-sighed with relief, while flipping the Coach logo to the back. “I can’t. It was a gift from Massie. I pinky-swore I’d keep it on all summer.”
“Massie?”
Dune narrowed his light brown eyes. “The same Massie who turned my used-to-be-cool sister into a deck dork?” He chin-pointed at Ripple, who was sitting on her blue-and-white–striped towel trying to rub suntan oil on her lower back. She looked like an angry ape swatting at a mosquito.
Ooops.
Kristen ran her pale fingers through the dark, lapping water to avoid his disapproving gaze. He booger-flicked a piece of sea grass off his board. “A promise is a promise.”
“I like that.” Dune pinched the shark tooth strung around his neck on what looked like the thick leather lace of an old Topsider. “I made this at surf camp in Cali when I was ten, with my best buddy, Reid. I’ve never taken it off.”
Awwww.
Kristen touched her rubber-covered heart. If there was something higher than a hang-ten, he was it. Cute, loyal, athletic, and middle class. Dune was a total CLAM.
“Just make sure it’s on tight.” He winked and then gazed beyond her shoulder toward the barge.
Afraid of losing his attention to a passing bird or sailboat, Kristen quickly lured him back. “Why do you like surfing so much?” she asked, knowing he would spend hours on the topic if she’d let him.
Dune returned, his eyes darting across her wet cheeks like he was reading her freckles. “For me . . .” He paused thoughtfully. “Surfing is about truth. It’s pure. When you’re faced with a wave, you can’t pretend to be something you’re not. Either you can ride it or you can’t. There’s no faking. It’s honest.”
Kristen’s lips twitched. Her belly bubbled. And the Long Island Sound blurred like it was coated in Vaseline Lip Therapy. Kristen’s central nervous system was sending an urgent message: Dune had just received an upgrade. Infatuation just got bumped up to luh-uv. This was serious.
“Look!” he shout-pointed at the barge as it carved through the blue water and tooted toward them.
Kristen began searching her mind for ways to stay in Dune’s good graces without risking her life—and pride—riding the wave of a floating garbage truck. But all that came to mind was how much his skin was the color of caramel. And how much she loved caramel.
The barge turned left and began carving out the first set.
“Last one standing has to paint Ripple’s toenails!” Brice shouted, leaping up from his perch on
Old Man.
He tossed his burnt orange longboard over the rope rails, then stride-jumped in behind it, landing a couple inches from Kristen and Dune.
“Can you keep treading?” Dune practically shoved Kristen off the board before she had time to answer. He lay flat on his belly and began butterflying his arms toward the swell. “First watch how I do it,” he called over the hum of the barge. “Then I’ll be back to teach you.”
Suddenly, something squirmed inside Kristen’s stomach. She ran her hand along the belly of her wet suit, wondering if maybe a sea creature had wiggled its way inside. But there was nothing there. Just the sickening feeling of abandonment.
What now?
Her heart began to thump like the techno beat in the Spanish pop songs Alicia kept e-mailing the Pretty Committee. There she was in the middle of the Long Island Sound without a board, a crush, or a clue.
Thankfully, the water remained relatively flat. In fact, Dylan could fart bigger waves in the Blocks’ Jacuzzi. Maybe they got bigger as they got closer? Kristen took a few strokes toward Dune and Brice, hoping for some insight.
TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT.
“Dad, are you serious?” Dune asked as his father paddled up beside him. His board barely bobbed as the first set passed underneath. “It’s completely dead out here.”
“SUCKER PUNCH!” Brice shouted. He stopped paddling, leaned over, and playfully cuffed his son on the back of his leg. “I can’t believe you fell for
barge
surfing.”
Dune’s mouth hung open, somewhere between embarrassment and amusement. “I can’t believe you lied to me!”
“It got your mind off the tour, didn’t it?” he chuckled.
Dune slowly turned and glanced back at Kristen. “Yeah, I guess.” He smiled. The sun kissed his full lips, and the warm breeze blew it straight to her cheek.
She lifted her face to the cloudless sky and grinned peacefully, as if treading water in the Long Island Sound was the new yoga. It didn’t matter that Kristen had been the first one in the water—she still peed her wet suit.
BACKSEAT, SANDWICHED BETWEEN RIPPLE AND DUNE
Friday, July 17
4:07 P.M.
Ahhhhhhhh
.
Kristen pressed a cold can of Diet Coke against her sun-fried cheeks, even though her left knee was burning up. It had been pressed against Dune’s leg for the entire drive back to Westchester and was IM’ing severe crush warnings to every other part of her body.
“Dad! Stop the truck!” Dune slapped his hand against the Chevy’s back window and unsnapped his seat belt. “Drop me here.” He pulled his knee away and Kristen instantly lost her heat, like an unplugged flatiron.
The sprawling green grounds of the Westchester Country Club were just ahead. As always, the majestic stone clubhouse seemed to glare at her with condescension, reminding Kristen that even though she had eaten in the Blocks’ formal dining room with Massie—twice—she definitely did not belong.
It was shocking that Dune wanted to stop within a mile of the ultra-exclusive club. From what Kristen knew, it seemed like the kind of place that would make his down-to-earth CLAM blood boil. But as the truck slowed to a stop, it all became clear—the grinding sound of wheels zipping across the pavement, the clusters of helmet-wearing kids addicted to Red Bull and bruises, the rolling asphalt hills. They had arrived at Gray Acres Skate Park, or GAS Park as it was fondly called.
“Anyone else coming?” Dune grabbed his yellow, purple, and green striped Element skateboard out from under his seat, opened the car door, and jumped onto the sidewalk. He balanced his board on the curb like a seesaw and then popped an ollie.
“Not, not,
not
a chance,” Ripple muttered, flipping through the pages of
Teen Vogue
. She drew a lopsided heart around a turquoise pair of Diane von Furstenberg shorts she’d never be able to afford.
“Why not?” Kristen asked, surveying the crowd. All the super-size clothing and Billabong hats made it impossible to tell whether they were girls or boys.
“I can’t, Ms. Gregory! Look at me!” Ripple screeched at her reflection in the rearview mirror and then turned to her brother. “My hair is all frizzy and my makeup washed off, thanks to
you
and
Dad
,” she practically spat.
“Who cares, Rassie?” Dune joked, kick-flipping the board off the ground and into his hand.
“Since when do you care what you look like at the GAS?” Brice turned around to face his daughter. It was the first time his expression had been somewhat serious. Now that his face was relaxed, thin white lines of untanned skin were suddenly visible at the corners of his eyes—proving that whenever Brice was in the sun, he was smiling.
“Um, did you ever happen to notice the country club on the other side of the fence?” Ripple slid down on the tan leather interior to avoid being spotted.
“Unfortunately, yes, but I never thought you did.” Dune shook his head in disgust. “Jeez, Rassie. If you ever run into my
cool
sister, Ripple, tell her I say hi. I’m outie like a belly button.”
“Who cares? I still have math homework. Right, Ms. G?”
“Nope.” Kristen placed her hand on Ripple’s muscular, damp linen–covered shoulder. “We’re done for the day.” She added pressure, hoping her student would get the hint.
“Baxter?” a white-blond boy called loudly from the top of the half-pipe.
“Heyyyyy!” Dune tucked his skateboard under his arm and jogged away.
“Buzz me if you need a ride home,” Brice called after him.
Dune signaled “okay” with a backhanded wave just as Ripple turned down the corner of a page showing a gold Juicy charm bracelet.
“Let’s
go
!” Kristen insisted to Ripple through gritted teeth.
Ripple snapped her head up from the magazine. “Why? Is Massie into skating?” Once again her light brown eyes filled with hope.
