Page 128 of Summer Love

I breathe. The air comes a little easier. My chest rises, empties, rises. The shaking settles. The pounding in my temples slows.

The sound of paws on the linoleum.

Flip emerges from the shadows at the back of the trailer. He comes toward me, tail low. He sniffs my knees, then turns in a circle and lies down against my thigh.

The left one. The one with the scar.

He rests his muzzle on it. The warmth of his body and his steady breathing calm me.

I don’t move, hand resting on his head, back against the locked door, eyes closed. The episode’s over. The rest of it isn’t.

After a long while, I get up.

Flip looks at me, then sets his muzzle back between his paws.

I go to the shelf and dig behind a stack of old surf magazines. My fingers find the case without looking. It’s there, dried salt in the seams of the waterproof housing.

The GoPro.

I turn it over in my hands. The power button doesn’t respond. Dead battery. Figures.

I grab the cable from the drawer under my bed, plug it in. A little red light comes on.

I sit on the edge of the mattress. Flip comes and lies down beside me. I wait. A long time.

My therapist would tell me to put the goddamn camera down. To call Mom. To breathe. To sleep.

I press it again. This time the screen flickers and lights up, tiny, scratched. The picture’s grainy, the contrast too harsh. The last video file is still there. There’s only one. There’s only ever been one.

I hit play.

The image shakes. The camera’s strapped to my forehead with the GoPro harness Luke lent me the day before.

Day’s starting to break. The cliffs below Star Park stay dark, but the foam shows in white flashes down below. The wind overloads the mic. The swell hits the rock.

Then Miles’s voice, younger, less deep than it is now.

“You know, I’m not sure this is such a good idea after all. The waves are heavy, we can’t see a thing. Come on, let’s head back.”

And my eighteen-year-old voice, light, a little breathless:

“No.”

“Why?”

“For the glory, man!”

The image swings around. The edge of the cliff, the drop, the black water below. The board leaves my hands—I watch it fall, spin, hit the surface in a burst of spray.

“Jace, no!”

And I jump.

I laugh, the laugh of a kid too sure of himself.

The dull shock of my body hitting the water. I go under, come up, spit. The board floats a few yards off, pale on the black water. I swim to it, pull myself up, and straddle it.

My hands tremble with excitement as I work the Velcro on the leash. I fasten it around my ankle. The swell lifts me, sets me back down.