Second Star

24

We’ve driven about fifteen minutes when Jas starts talking. “So tell me about your brothers anyway.”

I shake my head, still determined to gather clues. “You saw them more recently than I did. You tell me about them.”

He ignores me. “You must really love them, to be searching so hard.”

“I’m their big sister,” I say. “It’s not a question of how much I love them. I just…”

“It’s just your job,” Jas finishes for me, and I nod.

“Do you have any siblings?” I ask. I try to imagine him with a family, but it’s impossible to see him any way but the way he is now, a drug-dealing surfer chasing his next wave.

“Not exactly,” he nonanswers. “Tell me about growing up with John and Michael.” When I’m silent, he adds, “It’s a long drive in the middle of the night, Wendy. Think of it as helping to keep me awake.”

Fine. I can just pretend that I’m talking to someone else.

“They always seemed twice my size, even though I was the older sister.” I pause, smiling. “John had a way of talking down to me that made me feel like I was the baby in the family.”

Jas laughs; his laugh is deep, and the car seems to vibrate with it.

“He was kind of a brat actually,” I continue, laughing just a little bit myself. “They both were. You should have seen them on the beach. They’d take on any wave they wanted, waves that the kids twice their size shied away from. Once, Michael actually picked a fight with some surfers—like, grown-up surfers—claiming that one of them had cut him off on his way into a wave. I thought he was going to punch the guy in the face, if only he could have reached his face.”

“What happened?”

I shrug. “I don’t really know. By the end of the day, he was surfing right alongside them, picking up pointers from them left and right. Maybe that had been his plan all along.”

“Sounds like they were pretty fearless.”

I shake my head. “No, actually. I mean, yeah, they were fearless on the beach. But at home—whole different story.”

“What were they scared of?”

I close my eyes, remembering. “They were scared of the dark. Once, we played hide-and-seek—the two of them against me—and they hid in a closet and got themselves locked inside. The closet is literally the only place in our house where it gets really pitch-dark.”

“How old were they?”

“Four? Five?” I’m surprised I don’t remember exactly. I do remember the sound of their voices yelling for me and the way I teased them through the door for giving up the game. I remember reaching for the doorknob to shout that I’d found them, and I remember that no matter how hard I turned the knob, the door just wouldn’t open. I remember crying for my parents to come and save them. Later, when my father finally rescued them, prying the door off its hinges, they blamed me for having gotten trapped in the first place.

That night was the first time my mother told us that the city lights were our own private night-lights. Even though they were mad at me, John and Michael slept in my room.

“What else?” Jas asks.

“Hmm?” I’m getting sleepy. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be able to sleep—not beside this stranger, not with the adrenaline that began coursing through my veins the minute he stepped foot inside my room. But my voice feels cottony in my mouth; I shift in my seat, leaning my cheek against the leather of my headrest.

“What else were they scared of?” Jas prompts.

“The usual stuff. Earthquakes. Fire. I made fun of them for it once; they were eleven. How could they be so fearless on the water and so scared on land?”

“Sounds like the things that scared them didn’t exist on the water.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds.

“You don’t have to worry about earthquakes and fire on the water.”

“What about the dark? It gets dark out there.”

“Yeah, but they always surfed when the sun was shining, didn’t they?”

I nod, remembering something Pete said about feeling more at home on the water than on dry land. “I guess.”

“How old were they when they started surfing?”

“Nine.”

“Lucky.”

“How old were you?”

Jas doesn’t answer, so I try another question. “How did you learn? My parents got the boys lessons, but they blew them off pretty fast.”

Jas takes his eyes off the road to look at me. “Why do you want to know so much about me?”

“Why not? Like you said, it’s a long drive in the middle of the night. You have to keep me awake, too.”

Jas laughs. “Just haven’t really thought about my past in a long time. Sometimes I think I can’t really remember my life before I started surfing.”

I nod; I bet John and Michael would say the same thing. My god, they hated the lessons my parents bought them. Hated learning technique on the dry sand when they ached to dive into the ocean. Still, they couldn’t deny that they learned a lot that came in handy later. The lessons were expensive; maybe Jas’s family wouldn’t have been able to afford them. Maybe that’s why he began dealing. Maybe that’s when he moved to Kensington, when he met Pete, when the war between them began. Maybe after maybe fills my head, and all these questions I’m too tired to ask. My eyelids grow so heavy that it’s impossible to keep them open. I try for a while, blinking one eye open and then the next, but eventually, sleep wins out.

I wake up in an empty car. I’m in a parking lot. I unclick my seat belt and turn around and see a flashing sign that says VACANCY. A motel. I pull my phone from my purse. It’s 4:14 a.m. We’ve been driving for three hours. There’s no way we could have gotten to Witch Tree in only three hours.

I look up from my phone; Jas is walking from the motel lobby toward the car. When he sees me looking at him, he smiles.

“Morning,” he says, opening my door for me. “Come on.”

“Where?” I want to say I’m not going anywhere with you, but why would he believe that, seeing as I’ve already come this far with him?

“I got us a room. You fell asleep a couple hours ago, and I can only keep myself awake for so long.”

“Aren’t you used to pulling the occasional all-nighter?” I ask, thinking of the nights he stayed awake with me as I hop down from the truck.

Jas lifts my duffel bag from the back and slings it over his shoulder as easily as if it’s filled with air. He doesn’t answer me, just begins walking toward the motel. It’s only two stories high, and Jas walks along the first floor, past darkened windows. I wonder if the lights are off because the people inside are sleeping or because the rooms are empty. Ours is almost the only car in the parking lot, and I’m pretty sure we’re in the middle of nowhere, though it’s hard to tell at this hour.

I follow Jas up the stairs to the second floor, breathing deeply. Wherever we are, we’re close to the ocean. I can smell the seaweed, feel the salt air on my skin. The outdoor hallway is barely lit, but I still can see the sand all over the floor. And I hear the sound of the ocean, the waves barreling against the shore, just a stone’s throw away.

“Where are we?” I say to Jas’s back.

He answers without turning around: “Halfway to Witch Tree.”

“Witch Tree,” I mutter. “Who would name a wave Witch Tree?”

“There’s a dead cypress tree at Pescadero Point,” Jas says, still not facing me. “You can see it from the water. A witch tree.”

“Well, who would want to surf underneath a witch’s tree?”

Now Jas does stop and turn around. “You want to surf where the waves are, Wendy. It’s as simple as that.” He looks so serious that it makes me blush. I have to will myself not to break eye contact with him. “You’d like Maverick’s better. A wave near Half Moon Bay.”

“Why?”

“Legend has it Maverick’s was named after a dog.”

I smile despite myself. “Really?”

“Yup. In the sixties, some guys were surfing there, and one of them brought his dog, who was named Maverick. Apparently, the dog was used to swimming out with the guys, so even though they left him onshore, he kept trying to catch them. But the conditions were too rough for him, so finally his owner had to tie him up back onshore. They called it Maverick’s, and the name stuck.”

Jas’s deep voice takes on a sweet timbre when he talks about the dog swimming after his owner and I smile, trying to imagine what Nana would do if she saw me swimming into the sea, facing down forty-, fifty-, sixty-foot waves. Of course she’d come after me. She’d want to be beside me, whatever the adventure. I wish she could be with me now. Suddenly, I’m terribly homesick.

Jas resumes walking.

“What kind of dog was Maverick?” I ask suddenly.

“A white German shepherd,” he answers.

“How do you know?”

Jas shrugs, the muscles in his back visible even through his T-shirt. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that story,” he says, sounding wistful.

He stops in front of a door marked 30. As he fits the rusted key into the lock, my heart begins to pound. Am I really going to follow this stranger—no, worse than a stranger, because I know the things he’s done—into a dark motel room in the middle of nowhere? Even if he did show up and offer to help me find my brothers? Even if he did drive all this way in the middle of the night while I slept at his side?

He surprises me by turning to me before he opens the door. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I got us a room with two beds.”

I nod. I begin to say thank you, but then change my mind; he hasn’t earned my thanks. Not yet.