Page 40
MAY 2014
My final months of school feel especially anticlimactic. Hailey isn’t going away to college either—the only school she applied to was in LA, to be near her boyfriend, and she didn’t get in—but everyone else is. They come to class in their college sweatshirts. Girls compare bedspreads they’ve picked for their dorm rooms and share rumors about what’s to come, and it’s as if everyone around me has an engine they’ve just started, but when I turn the key in mine, it simply clicks once, then dies.
I have failed to launch. Eighteen seems too young to be deemed a failure, but no one even asks what I’ve got planned. They already expected little from me, or nothing at all.
I’ve taken vocational tests online, and every single career choice sounds more dismal than the one before it. I like music, but I don’t want to be a music teacher. Symphony fundraising was another, but I can’t imagine enjoying either fundraising or the symphony. Even the tests themselves are grasping at straws, saying, “This girl isn’t qualified for anything…just make some shit up.” I’m hoping I’ll have enough saved by August to get a room somewhere, but that’s the extent of my plans.
“Not everyone goes to college,” Danny soothes when we talk. “Maybe you’re just meant to be a wife and a mom.”
The low rumble of Luke’s voice hits my ear like a gift. “She isn’t.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a wife and mom,” Danny argues.
“No, but that isn’t what she fucking wants from life. That’s just what you want from her.”
“That’s not true,” Danny replies before he clicks the door shut behind him.
I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll hear Luke’s voice until next fall, but only a few days later, Donna is all smiles when I walk into the house. “I’ve got good news,” she says. “Luke’s coming for the summer.”
The pastor is frowning, poking a tongue in his cheek. Only good news to one of them, then.
“That’s great,” I reply. My voice is muted, my smile forced, but it’s not because I share the pastor’s lack of enthusiasm. It’s because inside me a spark has blazed into a wildfire. I’m ecstatic, ebullient, joyful; my heart races and I can’t reveal so much as a hint of it without revealing it all.
I wonder what changed Luke’s mind.
* * *
I skip my graduation. It wouldn’t feel like much of a celebration to me anyway, but mostly I’m worried my stepbrothers will show up and cause trouble.
On the night the guys are due back, I bike home from the diner. They surfed somewhere to the south on the way up, and they’re still in the garage pulling their stuff from Luke’s Jeep when I pedal inside, soaked to the bone from the rain that started halfway home. I prop my bike against the garage wall, looking like a drowned rat, and my gaze goes past Danny and straight to Luke. It’s an effort not to take in huge sips of him—his dark hair wet, pushed off his face but for a single errant strand, his eyes gleaming in the evening light.
Danny hugs me gingerly since I’m wet. “I’d have picked you up if you’d texted me.”
“That’s okay,” I tell him, wiping off my arms with a paper towel. “I had to bring the bike home anyway.”
Luke frowns. A year ago, I’d have assumed he resented Danny’s care or the mere idea of being forced to come get me. Now, I’m not sure what I think.
Over dinner, the boys talk about school, though Danny has more to say than Luke. The only time Luke really comes alive is when they discuss surfing. He went somewhere near Cabo for spring break, chasing another big wave. He also entered several competitions this spring and won each of them. It’s clear school is an afterthought for him at this point.
“You need to enter Santa Cruz this summer,” says Danny.
“There’s no way,” Luke replies, his shoulders sagging as he stabs his fork into his pork chop. “My board is garbage, and it’s a much more competitive field.”
“Luke, I hope you’re paying a fraction of attention to the actual reason you’re in San Diego,” the pastor intones. “You can’t make a living off playing in the water.”
“Kelly Slater makes three million a year,” I say before I can stop myself.
Everyone looks at me in surprise. Even I’m surprised. I never, ever, argue in this house.
The pastor’s mouth tightens. “I assume he’s a surfer, Juliet, but you’ve only proven my point: he’s the exception, not the rule, and I’ve never even heard of him.”
For a fraction of a second, Luke’s gaze meets mine. An entire unspoken conversation occurs between us, one in which Luke tells me not to bother arguing on his behalf, and I tell him I refuse to let the pastor crap all over his dreams. We’re silently bickering again, just like last summer, except this time we’re looking out for each other. We’re defending each other against them.
We’d be far better off if things would just go back to the way they were.
That night we go to the beach and meet the same crew we hung out with last year—Harrison, Caleb, Beck, their assorted girlfriends and two other guys, Liam and Ryan.
Libby and Grady come too. It’s good to have Libby back from school but I can’t say the same of Grady—now that he’s graduated and is about to begin his internship with the pastor, he’s even more uptight and judgmental than he was. I still don’t understand why he even wants to be out here, listening to them talk about surfing.
