Summer of Seventeen (22 page)

He didn’t speak, so I wondered if maybe I’d got it wrong and it was okay. I went to climb up into the truck as usual. I already had one foot on the flatbed when he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, making me lose my footing. I nearly fell, and it was only years of keeping my balance on a surfboard that stopped me from hitting the ground. Now I was the one who was pissed. He may have been my boss, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him lay his hands on me.

I shoved his arm off, breathing hard, and met his eyes.

“No!” he barked out. “You will not work with me today. You are fired. And you will stay away from Anayansi. I have forbidden her from seeing you. No more!”

What the fuck?

He turned away.

“Hey!” I called after him. “Hey! Why are you firing me? I’ve done every damn thing you wanted!”

He pulled some dollar bills out of his wallet, balled them up and threw them at my chest.

“Aléjate, muchacho! Manten tu distancia, niño! Go and never come back. Stay away from my daughter!”

Then he grabbed my skateboard and threw it into the road.

Fucker!

I sprinted after it, but was one damn second too late—a van ran over it, and I heard the crunch that meant instant destruction.

The driver yelled something at me, but I was staring down at my ruined skateboard. The wheels had snapped off and the deck had a huge crack running the length of it.

I was burning with rage. My Mom had given me that board for my fifteenth birthday. It was
mine
.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” I yelled.

I picked up the broken pieces. My board was dead. There was no coming back from that massacre. I was so furious, my vision went red and I threw the remains of my skateboard at Mr. Alfaro’s truck, taking satisfaction in the thud as it bounced off the driver’s door.

He took a step toward me, his face threatening. But I wasn’t backing down.

Then Yansi came running out the house, screaming at her father in rapid Spanish. I couldn’t catch all of it, but heard enough to know that she was angry with him and not me. Thank fuck.

He caught her shoulders and dragged her back into the house, shouting angrily, drowning out her cries. Sean’s name was shouted several times, and a cold feeling swept through me, chasing away the burn of anger.

I’d wondered if Mr. Alfaro had found out about Erin—but now it looked like he’d heard about my night in the ER and … and what? Assumed that I’d given Sean the drugs. Just like everyone else. So what was new?

Goddamn it! No wonder he didn’t want Yansi near me—he was probably thinking I was a freakin’ drug dealer or stoner or … jeez, any-fucking-thing.

I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I was so fucking angry. I marched up to the door and hammered on it, yelling Yansi’s name. I heard more shouting and the twins were crying and screaming. Mrs. Alfaro was wailing, a high-pitched keening sound. Yansi’s furious words punched through the chaos of sound. She yelled “no” over and over again.

I pounded on the door repeatedly, and the noise seemed to escalate.

Eventually, Mrs. Alfaro opened the door a crack.

“You go now, Nico,” she hissed, her mouth turned down, her face tense.

“Please, por favor!” I begged. “I just need to talk to Yansi.”

“Go! Vete!”

And she slammed the door.

I sat on the doorstep and texted Yansi again. I hoped like hell that her cell hadn’t been confiscated, too. I waited a couple of minutes, but she didn’t reply and nobody left the house.

Defeated, I scooped up the pieces of my skateboard, kicking the door of Mr. Alfaro’s truck, before I started walking home.

I couldn’t fix my board, but Mom had given it to me. I wasn’t going to leave it in that old bastard’s driveway.

I couldn’t take the loss of one more thing that I cared about.

My legs were weak and my whole body ached. Every step felt like I was weighted down by a gravity heavier than Earth’s.

Sean gone. Yansi gone. Mom gone forever. And I realized something else: I wasn’t technically an adult, but I’d stopped being a child the day Mom told me she had cancer.

Yeah, not a day I’d ever forget.

I’d been surfing with Sean, and even though I said I’d be home early, I’d stayed to hang out at the pier.

When I walked in, I thought she was pissed because I was late. But she was pissed that the doctors had told her she’d be dead at 42, and because she’d promised to be there for me. And now she was dying and couldn’t keep that promise.

“Sit down, Nicky,” she said, her voice soft and ragged. “It’s bad news, baby.”

And then she told me.

I said all the usual things.

Are you sure?

The doctors must be wrong!

There must be something they can do? Some different medicine?

New treatments are being discovered all the time, maybe…

And she’d said all the usual things too, the answers someone gives when the answer is no, but no one wants to say it. Or hear it.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

And then finally she was tired of saying maybe, and she said, “No, baby. There’s no hope. They’ve tried everything.”

I didn’t want to believe it. Of course I fucking didn’t. But over the next few days, it started to sink in.

I’d be sitting in a classroom at school, trying to pay attention to a lesson in Trig or American History, and I’d suddenly think,
Mom is dying. She’s going to be dead. She won’t be coming to anymore parent-teacher conferences. She won’t see me graduate or win any more surfing trophies. She lied. She won’t be there for me.

So you start making deals.

“God, if you let her live, I’ll stop drinking and smoking weed; I’ll study hard; I’ll do any fucking thing you want, but don’t let my mom die. Please, God.”

But she got sicker.

And sicker.

And then she died.

And I wanted to stop believing in God, but I couldn’t. So I just hated him instead.

And he hated me right back.

So now I was losing Yansi for the second time.

Walking felt really slow compared to how I usually traveled. I could have jogged home, but I was too depressed to have the energy. And I was wearing a pair of old hiking boots instead of sneakers. They weren’t really made for running.

I’d started wearing them to work after nearly losing a foot because I wasn’t paying attention while I was using a really sharp edging tool. Mr. Alfaro wore steel-toe work boots every day. I’d thought about getting a pair, but they cost like seventy bucks.

It’s weird the things you think about when there’s too much important shit going on. It’s like your brain takes a vacation because it knows you can’t cope with one more thing.

But once you think you can breathe again, your brain snaps, and you’re right back where you were: at the bottom of the heap, totally fucked.

My heart still beat, but each time it thumped in my chest, it brought a fresh wave of pain.

Bad friend. Bad son. Bad boyfriend. Loser. Loser. Loser.

I kept checking my phone, but there was nothing from Yansi. Nothing from Sean. Of course not.

It was so fucking unfair. I wasn’t the one who’d used Molly and ended up in ER. I hadn’t done anything!

But that bastard voice at the back of my brain that went by the dickwad name of ‘conscience’ was sneering.
You’ve taken Molly before. You drink till you pass out and you smoke everything going. You even fucked a girl you can’t stand because you were so wasted. What makes you so fucking special? It could have been you in the ER
.
You got lucky, fucktard.

And the fact was, if I was Yansi’s dad, I’d kick my ass out, too.

I really hated having a conscience.

Marcus’ van was still parked outside the house when I got home. He didn’t start work till either ten or two, depending which shift he was on, but he usually headed out to find somewhere the waves were working, or the paddleboard as a last resort.

I was going to knock on his door to see if he wanted to hit up some surf spots, but when I heard the sounds of a woman’s voice moaning, I headed to the kitchen instead.

It was weird not having anything to do. I’d gotten so used to being crazy busy all summer, just having time to sit around was strange. Last summer I’d been the master of lounging around. Mom complained non-stop that I was wearing out the couch by lying on it watching TV, unless there were waves, of course.

But somehow I’d lost the habit of doing nothing. If that was part of being an adult too, it sucked majorly.

I could have gone down to the pier to find someone to hang with. I could have called Rob. Instead, I trailed up to my room and gathered all the clothes that needed washing, and yanked the sheets off my bed, too.

I washed the breakfast dishes and made myself some lunch.

It was 10
AM
.

How freakin’ depressing was that?

I was finishing up a plate of eggs that had somehow got a little charred where they’d stuck to the pan, when Marcus walked in.

“’Sup, Nick. How you doin’?”

I nodded, my mouth full.

“How’s that friend of yours? Um, Sean?”

I swallowed down the eggs. “Okay. Got grounded.”

Marcus laughed. “You bet your ass he did!” Then he looked at me quizzically. “Your sister ground you, too?”

I shook my head. “Nah. My boss fired me.”

“The hell you say? What for?”

I looked at him evenly. “For the same reason everyone else is mad at me—they all think I gave Sean the drugs.”

He looked sympathetic for a moment. “Wow, tough break.”

I heard Camille walk into the kitchen behind us and I opened my mouth ready to say hi, but it wasn’t her. Instead, Cheyenne who was one of the bartenders at the Sandbar, was yawning and rubbing her eyes, wearing nothing more than Marcus’ Quiksilver t-shirt.

It was pretty damn obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and she was seriously hot.

My cheeks flushed when Marcus caught me checking her out.

“Hi, Nick,” Cheyenne yawned.

“Hey,” I mumbled, dropping my eyes to my plate and vaguely waving my fork at her.

“What’s for breakfast?” she asked.

She turned to Marcus, wrapping her arms around his neck and plastering her body up against him.

I nearly choked on a mouthful of eggs when Marcus slid his hands down from her waist and started kneading her ass. Cheyenne wasn’t wearing anything under the shirt
at all
.

I remembered Marcus’ comment about
little brother likes to watch
. Was this some kind of weird test? I dropped my fork and almost kicked over my chair as I ran to get the hell out of there, leaving my untouched coffee cooling on the table.

I heard a low chuckle as I slammed the front door behind me.

Well, this day was sure turning out to be shitty.

I decided I was going to see Sean, no matter what his parents said. We’d snuck in and out of his house enough times for it not to be a huge problem. Unless his parents were in the backyard, but I figured Mr. Wallis would be at work on a Monday, and his mom was always busy with her book club and charity work.

It was fuck hot again, but the sky was a dull, metallic gray and threatening—weighing down the air, so you could feel the pressure falling one isobar at a time.

A storm was coming.

By morning the swell would be topping eight or nine feet. Buoys in the Atlantic had sent out warning spikes during the night, and every surf-dog was waxing down his board, getting ready to ride.

But I’d be riding without Sean, and that just didn’t seem right.

I trudged along the road, feeling the heat burning up through my sneakers.

Walking sucked. I was so used to getting places relatively fast on my skateboard. It took 15 minutes to get to Sean’s place on my board, but nearly an hour to walk. I could have jogged, but it was just too damn hot.

What I hadn’t counted on was Dylan and Patrick seeing me at the roadside along Orlando Avenue.

Patrick blasted the horn on his BMW as he made an illegal U-turn and skidded to a halt next to me, kicking up a swirl of dust that threw sand into my eyes and made me cough.

Dylan pushed a button and the window wound down. A gust of cooler air rolled out, making me feel sweaty and dumb as I took in their matching polo shirts. They must have been going to play golf.

I’d never played golf. Sean told me once how much green fees cost for a day: it was more than the monthly allowance Mom used to give me. Annual membership would have bought a brand new car. Sometimes I forgot how much money Sean’s family had—he’d never made me feel it. Even when he got something new, he always shared it.

“Hey, Nick,” Dylan said, his voice aiming for neutral but sounding tense.

“Hey,” I said sourly, wiping the grit and dust from my streaming eyes.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his voice struggling to stay calm.

I didn’t reply because it must have been damn obvious where I was headed.

He sighed and shook his head.

Dylan wasn’t a bad guy. I didn’t know him that well because he was older, but he wasn’t a prick.