Waiting for Magic (8 page)

Or maybe it didn’t matter. Life stretched ahead, bleak without the possibility of ever telling Kee how he really felt about her. He’d never act on his desire. How could he? But the very thought shamed him. If Brina knew, or worse, Brian.… They’d be as filled with disgust for him as he was himself. Even if she wasn’t his sister, he could never deserve a girl like Kee. She was a bright flower floating through life. He wasn’t. Inarticulate,
studious, obsessed with the sea—not exactly qualities high on a girl’s wish list. Or a family’s wish list for their daughter.

Maybe he’d just stay out here until he froze or drowned. That might be better for everyone. The longing for Kee was so sharp in his gut he squeezed his eyes shut, put his arms around himself, and leaned over his board, shoulders shaking. A keening sound was lost in the roar of rain and waves. He realized he was crying only because the tears were warm.

So were his feet.

He opened his eyes. All around him the water was glowing. And it was warm.

What the hell? The Pacific was way too cold for phosphorescent fish.

The
ocean whispered inside him. He floated on a bright, warm circle in the black water. It didn’t move as the midnight waves rolled under him. It stayed right around his surfboard. He could feel the energy in the ocean as though it were his own. He was lightheaded, almost as if he were drunk.

Then the whisper turned into a roar. He looked behind him, out to sea.
A huge wall of water rose above him. It had broken farther out. The crest was coming. He wouldn’t survive those tons of water crashing down on him.
Now or never.
He started to paddle as fast as he could go toward shore. The wave lifted him into the night. The crest was forming just behind him, the wall almost vertical below him. The power of the wave took over, sweeping him in front of it as he scrambled up to crouch on the board.

He skidded along the face of the wave. The whole power of the ocean was behind that one huge
swell. It surged under his board.

And then something very curious happened. It was as if he went to a place that was suddenly quiet. He felt everything: how the crest would break, how fast the wave was moving, the churning blackness at its root. He saw with exquisite clarity the faint gradations of gray and black in the night around him, but all he heard was the singing of the ocean. He was powerful. The ocean was part of him and he was part of it.

The crest curled over him, a black tunnel closing in on all sides as he screamed diagonally down the wall of wave. The small circle of grayer darkness at the end of the pipeline was collapsing. He put out a hand to the wall of water and it arched over his head again. He had no time to think what that meant. The gray patch grew larger and he shot out into the open.

The wave filled his senses to overflowing. He was connected to it, and together they were rushing toward the shore.

The rocks loomed out of the rain and the night ahead. His diagonal path down the wave put them straight in his path. Strength surged up through the wave as it began to break over him again. He’d either hit those rocks at high speed, or get crushed by the crest slamming into the shore. All problems solved. All troubles melted into H
₂
O.

His chest was full, his heart near to bursting. He could no longer see the rocks for the water curling over him. And then he felt a huge heaving thrust, almost like an animal beneath him. The ocean sang in his ears, pounded in his chest. He was thrown forward, through the wall of the pipeline. Miraculously he stayed on his board.

And then he didn’t. The water crushed him down into the churn at the base of the wave. He had time for a lungful of air as he was tumbled over and over in the debris. He felt the tug of the surfboard at the tether to his ankle. He’d surface as long as he was tied to his board. Then his lifeline snapped. His last connection to anything that floated was gone. He scrambled toward the surface, kicking hard, only to be rolled under again. His lungs felt as though they’d burst. He was going to black out shortly and then it would all be over. The singing of the ocean in his ears had become a cacophonous shout.

Again, he felt the swell beneath him. He broke the surface, gasping, knowing another wave waited to push him under.

But there was no other wave. He had been thrown beyond the rocks. He was in a lull between the giant rollers. His surfboard floated at his side.

He grabbed it, heaved it under his body. The next wave was smaller over here past the rocks. The foam of its crest pushed him in toward the shore. He coasted into the sandy part of Abalone Cove and limped up the beach, out of harm’s way.

Devin turned and looked out to sea. Another huge wave was forming out there. Rain still pelted him. He realized his body was sore and looked down. He had cuts and scrapes everywhere from the debris in the water. Rain made the blood run down in rivulets across his skin. It could have been worse. Wind ripped around the silhouetted rocks to the north and plucked at the houses on the cliffs just south of him. He turned again to where the Breakers hunched a shoulder against the storm.

He wasn’t quite sure how he’d lived through that wave. By all rights he should be drowned or his naked body shattered against the rocks. He’d think about that later.

What he knew now was that there was no escaping what was about to play out at the Breakers. He couldn’t leave Kee, either by moving to Milwaukee or letting the ocean solve his problems permanently. Maybe she would need him someday, if only as a friend. And he’d be there for her.

He was in for it now. Kee would look for her destined lover, trying to find her magic. He would keep silent about his own feelings. He was good at that. No one need know about his sick longing for Kee. And no one ever could know. Especially not Kee. Maybe he ought to try keeping his distance though, just in case.

He balanced his board on his head and began the long trudge home.

*****

Kee practically ran into Devin as he came out of his room at a jog.

He stopped dead, looking dismayed.

“Oh,” they both said.

Kee frowned. There were scrapes on his jaw. She examined him quickly. He was bundled up, probably going out somewhere. Normally she would have known where he was going. It hurt that she didn’t. His knuckles were scraped too.

“You been fighting?” she asked. Then she realized that such a personal question came from a time before she’d found out he was teaching some girl to surf on Saturday. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.” But wait. He was bleeding. Even as she watched, a bright spot of blood bloomed on his t-shirt where it was just visible under his V-neck sweater. That changed things. “You are, uh, bleeding.” She tapped her collarbone.

He pulled his sweater over the stain then looked away. She couldn’t see his expression properly. “No. I haven’t been fighting.” He turned back toward her. He looked as though he was holding his face very still, like he was posing for one of the paintings she’d done of him. “I was helping Tris with an engine over in the garages. It slipped. He feels bad, so it’d be good if you didn’t say anything.”

“I won’t.” It hurt that he thought she might. Hadn’t they been sharing secrets since they were nine?

“You going down to breakfast?”

That hurt even more. It was a question you’d ask a fellow guest in a hotel. “Just a bite. I’m going up to the museum.”

He nodded, a little too quickly and too often. “Yeah. I’m, uh, out and about myself today. And then I’ve got a major paper due in a couple of weeks. Got to hit the books. Probably won’t be much in evidence for a while.” He looked around, as though a door might appear in the hallway where none had been before. “Oh, uh, forgot something.”

And then he turned around and strode back down the hall to his room.

Kee was shocked. It was almost like he’d slapped her. Jane was wrong. She didn’t have to let Devin move on from being her brother and best friend. He already had.

*****

How was he going to get through this? He couldn’t even bear to talk to her, knowing she was going to the museum, no doubt to see
Curator Guy. Bastard wasn’t really interested in Kee. He wanted to court the museum’s biggest donors. Devin only hoped Kee didn’t get hurt in the process. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe Kee was forging a “relationship” with him. God help him, but that made his blood boil.

Devin eased off his sweater and then his t-shirt. The thing was stained with blood in a dozen places. Better dump it before someone found it. He thought he’d gotten the worst of the cuts covered with Band-Aids. More work to do, obviously. He couldn’t let Brian or Brina know he was so scraped up. They’d want to know how he’d gotten that way. He was too old to be grounded anymore. But he wouldn’t relish that conversation.

Because if he told them he’d been surfing last night, they’d want to commit him. They might be right.

Why wasn’t he dead? He might have been able to take that wave in the daylight. But not at night. And not feeling drunk. He hadn’t been drunk, though. It was a family dinner, for God’s sake. He’d had one beer. So what was that feeling? And how had he avoided that first collapse of the pipeline? Waves were inexorable. They followed the trajectory of current and swell and gravity. They couldn’t just decide to open up their pipeline in the middle of its collapse. And what about that warm glowing spot around his surfboard? What was up with that?

Then there were the rocks. No way he should have been able to avoid those. The feel of the sea heaving him forward, tossing him beyond those rocks, echoed through him.

Last night had been a rush of belonging. He had belonged to the sea. Maybe because his emotions had been stripped raw, he
had been able to feel the ocean as never before.

That’s what
had allowed him to survive.

For what? He was still going to have to watch Kee fall in love with someone else. He was still going to spend his life loving someone who would never love him back. Was that really surviving?

*****

Kemble tucked the
Wall Street Journal
under his arm and headed in to breakfast. “You’re here early, Jane.”

Jane closed the front door behind her. “Will it never quit raining?” She was wearing a beige raincoat and shaking out a gray umbrella. Jane always wore beige and gray, maybe darker versions in winter. “I just have a minute. I have to take Mother to the doctor this morning.”

Kemble frowned. He hated to think Jane would spend the morning being verbally abused, but that was the likely outcome. “Well, better fortify yourself with some coffee at least.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like you could have some bacon and eggs if you have time.”

“Well, actually I’m glad to catch you alone, Kemble.” Jane blushed. “I mean, I wanted to show you something, and it didn’t seem right to have everyone know.”

Kemble raised his brows. “What is it?”

Jane handed him a copy of the little local newspaper she carried under her arm. It was a bit soggy around the edges. “Sorry. I think you’ll still be able to read it. Page four.”

Now what could be so important about something that only rated a page-four mention in the
Palos Verdes Prattler
? Jane hung her dripping coat on the coatrack and came to stand behind him as he paged forward. “There.” She pointed.

“
 ‘Residents on the cliff at Abalone Cove,’ ” Kemble muttered aloud, “ ‘report seeing a naked man with a surfboard walking along the beach during the height of the severe weather Thursday night. Complaints have been made to the city council and the Palos Verdes police department about their tolerance of public nudity.’ ” He frowned. “Why would the police be out looking for nude men during weather like that? And what loon would be out in that weather naked?”

“Read on.”

“ ‘Mrs. Rayland Sanford, of 152 Mira Mar Place, said she couldn’t see the man’s face, but his body showed many cuts.’ ” Kemble looked up. “She must have been using a telescope to see that. Bet she took a long, careful look, too.”

Jane looked up at him expectantly.

Kemble began to get a little nervous. “You can’t think we’re in any danger from some vagabond who likes to parade around in the nude during foul weather.”

Jane looked a little incredulous. “You didn’t notice Devin limping day before yesterday? Or the scrapes on his jaw and his hands?”