Second Star

23

My eyes flutter open in the middle of the night. The scent of him—salt water and Tide, blue eyes and beer—fills my room. I must be dreaming. But it’s Pete’s name they say I’ve been calling in my sleep, not his.

My windows are still open, my room cool now, after hours without sunlight. The only sound is a tapping on the glass; I look to my windows, expecting to see nothing but the night-lights shining up from the city, but instead there’s a boy scratching at the glass like a cat asking to be let inside, a boy tall and muscular, pressing my window open even wider and climbing into my room. Beside me on the bed, Nana stiffens. I expect her to bark, growl, maybe even lunge at the intruder. But she must like the smell of him, because she hops off the bed and greets him with one of her enormous kisses.

I’m not about to do the same. Not to the man whose drugs kept me sick for weeks, who’s the reason behind my parents’ crazy idea to send me away, the reason my brothers got kicked out of Pete’s house, a home I still think of as a safe place, even after everything that’s happened.

I do get out of bed and run past him to the window, looking for a ladder, a rope, a bunch of bedsheets tied together. How did he get up here? Our house is perched on a steep hill and made of glass. There’s not exactly much to hang on to.

When he speaks, his voice is deep, as though strained from years of swallowing sand and salt water.

“Wendy” is all he says. The sheepishness in his voice is hard to reconcile with his laser-sharp eyes. Or with the fact that he just scaled a wall and climbed into my bedroom.

“What are you doing here?”

“I needed to talk to you.”

“Ever heard of a phone?”

“I didn’t exactly have your number.”

I nod, backing away from him, tripping over Nana and almost falling into my bed.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Do you remember what you said that night?”

I shake my head, sitting down. Immediately I wish that I’d sat at my desk and not on my bed. Sitting on my bed while Jas is in the room feels too intimate.

“I don’t remember much at all. It comes to me sometimes, in flashes, but I can’t quite put it together.”

“That sounds like you. Trying to figure things out like a puzzle.”

I’m taken aback. “How do you know what sounds like me?” I ask.

“We spent some time together, Wendy.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly myself then.” I pause. “How long exactly?” I’ve never been able to quite figure out just how many days I spent lost on dust before I found myself in Fiona’s driveway.

“About two days. You were so far gone that you didn’t fall asleep once,” Jas answers, and I’m surprised that he doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t try to sugarcoat.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Did you sleep?”

He shakes his head. “Someone had to keep an eye on you.”

“How did I end up at my friend’s house?”

“On the second morning, you asked me to take you home. We were about halfway here when you started panicking.”

“About what?”

“Some lie you’d told your parents. You said you were supposed to have been with Fiona. So I left you there, with your car. Hitchhiked my way back to Kensie.”

I nod.

As though he understands, Jas adds, “Even high on dust, you were worried about the truth. Never saw that before.”

“My brothers weren’t quite so concerned with honesty?” I spit out accusingly.

Jas shakes his head sadly. “You talked a lot about your brothers when you were in my house,” he says.

“I did?”

He nods, still smiling. “Well, maybe not talked. You shouted about them, mostly.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“You weren’t quite yourself.”

I bristle. “Thanks to you. Your cover charge.”

His smile vanishes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “People who come to that party know what they’re getting into, usually.”

“Do they know about the withdrawal?” Even though I’ve felt better for a long time, my room still has a hint of illness to it, like the scent of my sickness saturated the walls.

Jas doesn’t answer. At least he doesn’t lie.

Finally, he says, “I think I can help you find your brothers.”

“What?” I ask, sitting up straighter.

“I knew them,” he says, running his hands through his hair, pacing the length of my room like an animal in a cage that’s two sizes too small for him. His skin practically glows in the lights coming in from the city.

I sit on my hands. “I knew them, they were regulars. Up until a few months ago—January, I think.”

“January,” I echo. That’s when Matt said Pete kicked the boys out.

“I honestly hadn’t given them a second thought until you came to my party, shouting their names, and shouting about Witch Tree.”

“Belle said that when they left, they told her they were headed there.”

Jas nods. “It broke early this winter. It’s a winter wave—most of the big ones up and down the coast here are.”

“So they wouldn’t be there now is what you’re telling me? They’d be long gone?”

Jas shakes his head. “Normally, yeah. But a big northwest swell is brewing off the coast of Oregon. Never happened before, not this time of year. Surfers from all over the world are coming.”

My pulse quickens. “Including my brothers?”

Jas shrugs. “I can’t promise you that. But they might be. And I…” He pauses, stops pacing, and looks at me. “I know more than just the best places to surf up the coast, Wendy. I know the right places to look for—”

I finish his sentence for him, “The right places to look for kids who might be looking for other things.”

At least he doesn’t seem proud to be such an expert.

“The wave won’t break again until winter, if it breaks again at all this year,” he says. “None of these big waves will. That much I can tell you for sure. I don’t know when you’ll get another chance like this.”

Silence hangs between us while I consider his words. “Why are you here?” I ask finally.

Jas blinks; when his eyes are closed, the room seems to grow darker. “I told you. Because I think I can help you.”

“Yeah, but why do you care about helping me?”

Jas hesitates before answering. “I can tell you’re not going to give up until you find them,” he says finally.

“How can you tell? Just because you spent a few days with me when I was high as a kite doesn’t mean you know me.”

Jas nods. “When you talked about them you got that same look on your face that you got when you were deciding to take your next wave.”

I shake my head. “How do you know what I look like when I take a wave?”

He pauses, then looks almost sheepish when he answers. “I watched you. In the mornings. When you’d go out there and surf by yourself.”

“You watched me?”

“Just in case. You know, you were a beginner, and no one else was around. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I should feel violated. The guy was spying on me every morning when I thought I was alone, every time I took my board out while Pete, Belle, and the rest of the boys slept. But I don’t; instead, I’m kind of glad he was there. At least he didn’t try to stop me, didn’t run down the beach and tell me I shouldn’t be surfing all alone, shouldn’t try for the bigger waves, ought to wait for the gentler ones. And I’m glad that he knows something about me that no one else knows: I had the courage to take wave after wave all by myself.

Suddenly, Jas says, “I’m sorry about your brothers, Wendy. When I sold them the dust … I mean, I never meant for them to go missing.”

“As opposed to all the kids you sell dust to who go right back home to their mothers?” I ask. Something about his coming here has emboldened me. I should be scared of him. But I’m not. And much to my surprise, he blushes under my gaze.

“Come with me,” he says finally. “Let me help your brothers. Let me help you.”

I open my mouth to ask about all the other dusters who need to be rescued, but he speaks before I can say another word.

“Please,” he whispers.

Nana didn’t so much as bark when I followed Jas out the window, climbed onto his back, and slid down the side of the glass house. I didn’t so much as blink when I climbed into the truck he was washing in his driveway the day I met him, the flatbed now filled with surfboards and a Jet Ski tied down with bungee cords.

I couldn’t say no to his invitation, not really. Staying home meant going to Montana, landlocked a million miles away from the ocean, from Kensington Beach, and maybe from my brothers, too. Yes, this guy is a drug dealer; who knows how much money he’s made off of selling dust to unsuspecting kids, getting them hooked, ruining lives—if not ending them? A lot, I think, judging from the quality of this truck, the number of boards in the flatbed behind us.

But he’s offered to help, and I’m not about to refuse.

Sitting as far from Jas as possible, my body pressed against the passenger-side door, I close my eyes and let a memory wash over me—a memory, I’m certain this time, not a dream: Pete’s chin resting in the small of my back as we paddle out to take a wave. The board sticky with wax beneath me as I pull myself up to stand. The ocean dropping out below us as the board slides into place beneath the crest of the wave. And the sensation that I’m flying, weightless and carefree, with no one on the planet except Pete and me, no one else who knows exactly what this feels like.

I open my eyes. Jas is driving fast and the ocean’s to our left and I can hear the waves, wide awake in the middle of the night.

Reality has never been so crystal clear.