Page 131 of Summer Love

It’s the board I put in the “Help yourself” boxes on the beach. Not to hurt Jace, but because I couldn’t stand that inscription anymore. I’ll never be an Olympic champion.

And here it is, in his trailer, in a drawer under his bed. He got it back.

I don’t have time to wonder why. Jace grabs an old GoPro. The cable dangles, plugged into a wall outlet. He yanks it out and tosses it onto the bed.

“Here. Watch.”

And he walks out. Flip darts between his legs. The door slams.

I’m alone in Jace’s trailer, my soaked dress clinging to my thighs. The silence is brutal.

I sit on the edge of the mattress. My hands are shaking. I pick up the camera. The screen is small, yellowed with age.

A single file.

I find the volume button and turn the sound down. Whatever I’m about to see, I don’t want to hear it. I press play. Miles’s face appears.

Miles, but younger. Rounder cheeks, shorter hair, a nervous smile I don’t recognize. Behind him, the edge of the cliffs, gray dawn. Below, the dark ocean, streaked with foam.

My stomach knots. I know this place. These are the cliffs below Star Park. The Last Ride.

The image shakes with Jace’s movements. And his voice comes through—the one from before, clearer, lighter, the voice of a boy afraid of nothing.

“For the glory, man!”

The sound is crackly, distorted by the tiny speaker.

Miles shakes his head. He wants to go back. Jace laughs. He throws his board off the edge—sky-blue with a black stripe—and jumps.

A few minutes later, I’m curled up at the foot of the bed, knees to my chest, hands pressed over my ears.

I’m sobbing.

Jace’s scream. A raw, tearing howl of pain and fear all at once.

Blood everywhere. In the water around him, on his hands, on the blue board.

Jace fighting to get back to the edge, one arm beating the water, the other gripping the rail of his board, his leg useless.

The fin, coming back.

Jace tipping sideways and falling into the water. A spray of foam swallows the image for a second, then the shark’s jaws close on the board. The crack almost drowns out the screams.

Miles moving across the rocks, knee-deep in water, hitting the shark with his own board, as hard as he can. Hitting it again, screaming. The camera jerks too much, the image jumps, the sound crackles.

Miles dragging Jace out of the water and hauling him over the rocks. His hands covered in blood. Jace’s board shattered. The leash strap cinched high around his thigh, a piece of wood threaded through—a makeshift tourniquet.

The phone on speaker. 911. The dispatcher’s voice, nasal, far away. Miles crying while he talks. Saying stay with me, look at me, talk to me. Repeating it. Begging.

And Jace still screaming.

I press my palms harder over my ears. It’s no use. The screams are in my head.

Jace was just a kid, screaming on the rocks. And I wasn’t there. I didn’t know anything.

“When I tell her about this, she’s gonna think I’m crazy.”

There was a girl he wanted to impress. A stab of jealousy, brief and ugly, rises, and I’m ashamed of it instantly.