Summer of Love (20 page)

“Anything wrong?” I ask because I can’t take the scrutiny.

“Nah,” he says and turns to go. “I thought you were someone else. But I guess not.”

We follow him back toward the shack and climb the two steps up the porch so we’re officially inside amidst colorful boards and various people in stages of surf gear. Immediately when I’m inside, a girl comes over and says, “Hey — I was wondering when you’d…” then she backs up and waves her hands around like she’s clearing smoke. “Woah — sorry — wrong person.”

“I’m getting a lot of that, it’s okay,” I say and look at Arabella who gives me a look.

The girl shouts to someone at the back, “James — check it out. There’s a girl who looks just like…”

Some guy — probably James — comes out and nods vehemently at me like I’m on display for the surfing populace. “Dude, that’s messed up.” Then he transfers his gaze to Arabella. “D’you guys need help?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Um…” and then I’m stuck for words (it’s conceivable that I’d just wander into town and go to Zuma, but less likely that I — who have never surfed — would just show up at the surf shop right from the airport). But before I can blurble a vague sense of why I’m standing here with my bags and my British friend, another woman comes over and starts to cluck at me.

“Oh my God! It’s true — you’ve got to be…wait. Stay here,” she tells me.

I look at Arabella who shrugs since she doesn’t know what the hell’s going on either and then we stand there with the surfing posse gawking at me. The guy who took our picture sees our discomfort and confusion and walks over with a couple of bottles of water. “Here. So — I take it you’re not from here?”

I shake my head. “No — Boston.”

“Ever surf?”

“Nope,” I say right as Arabella’s saying, “Yup. In Cornwall. England.” This starts them off on a conversation about which I know nothing — they guy’s been to Cornwall, too, and surfed there so he and Arabella blather on while I stand there thinking about a potential plan b and what it should entail. Swimming? Sleeping? Surfing? Without a car and without tons of funds, I’m figuring that sleeping here while we while the time until my interview sounds about right.

“I’m Chase, by the way,” surfer guys says and shakes my hand then lingers on Arabella’s. Then he turns to me. “You must think we’re all kind of crazy with the way we’re staring at you…”

I twist my mouth and nod, “Um, kind of. What’s the deal, anyway? I feel like I’m a punch line to a joke I haven’t heard.”

“She’s a writer,” Arabella says, thumbing to me so Chase sees. “Just in case you were wondering.”

“Got it,” Chase says. “She’s got that writerly look about her.” I listen to them talk about me in the third person and wonder how I made the transition to looking like a writer when I haven’t, in fact, published anything except that article for
Music Magazine
the summer before junior year. Look, I think Jess went to find…never mind. What brings you here? Not that I’m sorry to find you lost here — or — are you lost?”

“We don’t know what we are,” Arabella says and introduces herself.

“We were given — this is going to sound all covert and weird but — we were instructed to come here, we think.”

Chase looks at us like we’re aliens spewing another language. “Okay…”

“No, wait — don’t think we’re freaks…” I try again. “My aunt — her name was Mable, and she sent me on this treasure hunt thing and she told me to get on board and we…I thought it might have something to do with this shop.”

Chase nods. “I get it. I think.” He thinks for a minute. “Look, I don’t think anyone here has anything or you — or, um, that they know what you’re doing? But — we have another store — Get on Board on the other side of the beach, so we could go there.”

Arabella squeezes my hand to say okay. “Can we walk?”

“Sure thing,” Chase says. “Just put your bags on the surf-mobile.” Said vehicle is outside the shop, an orange car with a caddy attached to hold surfboards and — now — our luggage.

Chase leads us down the length of the sand, past a few food stands, past sunbathers and surfers, bikini-clad girls and worked out guys all on display.

“Do you mind if I take a quick detour and grab a hot dog?” Arabella asks.

“I think you have to have a known destination to qualify for a detour,” I say but shrug so she knows it’s fine. “Mind if I keep going?” I’m itchy to get somewhere — anywhere — on our magical mystery tour before the Fourth of July fever sets in here and no one can help us figure out what to do or where to go.

“Chase?” Arabella asks. “I just walk down the beach, right?”

Chase looks at me with his eyebrows raised as only a guy on the prowl could — to ask if he can stay with my hot British friend. “Just point me in the right direction and I’ll see you there.” I shift my bag up so the straps stop cutting into my bare shoulders. Note to self: need to apply the SPF before I turn a shade of red appropriate only for a crustacean.

Arabella smiles at me, gives me a small thumbs up and Chase saunters with her over to one of the food stands. I gaze out at the wide, blue sea and keep walking, sand trapping itself in my flip flops then shifting out.

Finally, I’m a few yards away from another Stan’s Surf Shack complete with a Get on Board sign out front that I take to be an omen and a straggly-looking man with bleached out surfer’s hair who I take to be Stan. Not that I’m psychic or anything — the guy saw me looking at the sign and then him, and pointed to his chest and nodded. Got it.

A few wet surfers sit drying in the sun on the ramp that leads to the sliding door, a couple of girls in boy-cut shorts and tank tops wax their boards, and from the inside a slobbery, shaggy dog pokes its snout out as if to greet me. Maybe the canine holds the clue to all this, I think and decide that since I obviously haven’t got a clue about what to do, I should act like a local — that is, mellow out. I drop my bags by the ramp where I can keep an eye on them and then sit my tired butt down on the edge of the ramp, my legs dangling down while I wait for Chase and Arabella.

“Hey,” a surfer boy in wraparound dark shade nods at me as he walks the length of the ramp.

“Hi,” I say back. At least people are friendly.

“Do you want to…” sunglasses boy stops and then does a double-take. “Hey — sorry. Thought you were…”

“Let me guess — someone else?” I ask. The guys nods at me. “I’ve been getting that a lot.” It’s either annoying or amusing when people mistake you for someone else — but the amount of times the phenomenon has occurred in the last two hours is remarkable. “Who’d you think I was, anyway?”

The guy points a tanned arm toward the darkness of the shack. “See for yourself.”

A chill comes over me even though the sun’s still out, and the air is beyond warm. I slide my legs back up from their dangling position and bite the top of my lip like I always do when I’m nervous. The feelings I have are from nowhere — I mean, why be nervous about this? But something in my gut pulls at me, and I gulp as I walk inside.

Get on Board is set up just like the other one, with a wooden counter off to the right with a cash register and various surfing supplies on offer. If I surfed or had any clue about the sport or activity I might know the names for the waxes and straps and wet suits, but I don’t, so it all looks like a jumble of colors and strings.

Way over to the left rows of boards lean against the wall, some freestanding, some displayed by hooks on the wall. Despite the number of people outside, the inside is empty. I pause in the cool dim and am almost ready to leave to go wait for Arabella and her man of the moment, Chase, when a raspy female voice shouts from the back room. I can see boxes but nothing else.

“Just a sec — what do you need?” The voice calls out. The young woman has one of those voices that sound like it belongs on air — a DJ, a singer, an emcee for an offbeat invitation only event.

“Nothing,” I say because I seriously don’t know what to say. “I’m just looking.” That part’s true — though looking for what is anyone’s guess.

“Everyone needs something…” the voice says and I can hear boxes thumping and from the back storage room I see the girl’s back as she pulls a big cardboard box toward the wooden counter.

“Do you need help?” I ask, wondering when Arabella will appear. She’s probably filled to the brim with hot dogs, soda, fries, and flirting by now.

“I got it,” the woman says and then stands up and turns around so we’re face-to-face, maybe five feet apart. Her mouth hangs open. My mouth hangs open. It’s not a complete Parent Trap moment, but it’s damn close.

“Oh my god,” I say.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I’m like, the blonde you.” Then she touches her long, straight streaked hair. “Except if I didn’t do the highlights, I’d just be you. With different eyes. I knew we must…”

“Wait — what?” I steady myself on the wooden counter and the woman comes over so she’s standing next to me.

“I’m Sadie,” she says and smiles. “You must be Love.”

“How do you know?” I ask before I’ve done the visual math myself. It’s all too surprising and crazy. I stare at her more, trying to take it all in — but I’m too shocked.

“Because I know,” she says and turns her head to the side so she’s looking me right in the eye. I notice her mouth has the same shape as mine, but her eyes are totally different, brown the color of a chocolate lab. “Because I’m your sister.”

No amount of Oprah watching, no amount of Disney movies or even lottery-type fantasizing can prepare you for meeting a relative you didn’t know existed. So I just stand here, in the surf shack, freaking out. My mind flips between being overrun with questions, words, and chatter and being completely void of anything comprehensible.

“So, fine, I’m not your sister — but your half-sister,” Sadie says and tips her hair over her eyes, either checking for split ends or — more likely — giving herself a shield against the weirdness of the moment. “But half still counts, right?”

I start to talk and my words jumble in my mouth. “Yeah — but — yeah I just…” Does it count? Of course it does, on some level. But I’ve lived this long as an only child. Don’t siblings mean you share toothpaste and fight over the window seat and tell each other things you’d never tell anyone else? Maybe…

“It’s okay,” Sadie says. She’s taller than I am, a little bit more broad, but not by much. Aside from the eyes and the fact that she’s a red-head gone to the blonde side, we’re similar. Correction: intensely similar looking.

“No wonder everyone kept looking at me funny,” I say. Sadie nods her head, which freaks me out more because it’s the way I nod my head, not so much up and down but out and back — Arabella has accused me before of looking like a pigeon when I nod. “I nod like that,” I say and don’t care if it sounds stupid.

“The pigeon?” Sadie cracks a smile, “My friends always ride me about that….Listen, do you want to sit down outside so I can fill you in?”

“Sure,” I say and give a half-laugh, the still-nervous kind, my hands shaking, my whole body feeling like it’s hovering nearby. “That’d be good right about now.”

When we leave the darkness of the surf shack and emerge into the bright beach light, Arabella and Chase are making out in broad view by the thatched palapa hut. I cough loudly but it doesn’t stop them.

“Hey, Chastity,” Sadie cups her hands like a megaphone and yells to Chase. Then she explains to me, “We call him Chastity because he’s just so not.” Why does Arabella always seem to wind up with these reputation-heavy guys? Chase and Arabella jump, caught off guard. Sadie waves to them and sits cross-legged on the warm sun-faded wood of the ramp.

“Holy crap,” Arabella says breathy from her short jog over to us. “IS this double trouble or what? Bukowski — you better start explaining.” Chase stands there agog, but doesn’t speak until Sadie gives him a look.

“I gotta run — but maybe we’ll all meet up later? At your place, Sades?” Chase gives a reverse nod and walks off, the question of meeting up or where or when or if we’re invited hanging in the air. Your place, your place — her place, I realize, could be Galadriel’s — my mother’s. Our mother’s.

We all lean our backs against the front of the shack and stare out at the ocean as we talk. Maybe it’s easier not to make eye contact right now.

“You seem really calm,” I say. “I’m not saying that as a criticism, but how can you be so normal about this?” I put my shaking hands on display for her.

Sadie sighs and tucks her hair behind her ears, her tee-shirt riding up to reveal a deep tan line on her sides. At least that’s something we don’t have in common — she clearly got the tanning gene. Then the thought that I share — do I? — genetic info with the person sitting next to me freaks me out all over again.

“Okay — well, the first thing is that I’m kid of chill person. You know, the surfing mentality.” She laughs at herself and then goes on. “Not that this doesn’t rank up there with all-time bizarre events in my life. But…” she looks at me. Wisely, Arabella is tucked off to the side of us, listening but not intruding. “My mom — our mom…”

“Gala?”

Sadie nods. “She told me about you.”

“When?”

“When I was young — I don’t know.”

Part of me wants to skip right there, to Gala and where she is and what she’s like and why she left. Then it hits me. If she left me with my dad when I was little and then had Sadie — who’s pretty close in age to me — why? Why could she handle one child and not another? What was so wrong with me and my dad and the life she had back in Boston?

“Your face just fell,” Sadie says and looks at me with genuine concern.

“Sorry,” I say and twist my hair into my fingers out of habit. “It’s all pretty big stuff…”

Sadie pigeon-nods again. “I’m not going, like, make up for all the shit that went down with Gala and you and your dad….I don’t know all the details. But…” Sadie breaks her serious tone and smiles at me so sweetly I smile back. She squeezes my hand. “We’ve met! How cool is that?”

I consider the implications — once you’ve met someone, you can’t unmeet. So now I have a half-sister. “I guess it’s pretty cool.” Then I think about her name. “Sadie…as in?”

She nods. “I’ll give you one guess.”