Second Star

31

My duffel bag feels heavy when I lift it off the second bed in the motel room. It’s hard to believe that I was so happy here in Jas’s arms just a few hours ago. The guy at reception told me that there’s a bus stop about a mile down the road where I can catch a ride down the coast for only forty dollars. When that bus leaves, I intend to be on it. Once I’m closer to home, I’ll call Fiona. Call my parents. I’ll go to therapy if they want me to, I’ll go to rehab. I’ll do whatever they say I have to in order to be back home, to get my life back on track, to go to Stanford like I’ve been planning to do my whole life. I am done chasing phantoms.

“Don’t leave,” says a deep voice behind me, and I spin around, startled. I didn’t hear Jas come in. Or has he been here the whole time?

“I’m going home,” I say, shaking my head and walking toward the door. Jas blocks my way. “Please don’t,” I say softly. “I just want to go.”

“Let me explain—” he starts, but I cut him off.

“I don’t care if you only brought me here to get back at Pete and Belle. Maybe I should, but I really don’t.” Still too tired to be angry, I repeat, “I just want to go home.”

“I can drive you.”

“No thanks,” I say, but he’s still blocking my path. I could squeeze past him, push him out of my way, but the truth is, I don’t want to be that close to him. I don’t want to smell him and feel the heat of his skin next to mine.

“I didn’t bring you here to get back at Pete,” Jas says quietly. He steps aside, but much to my surprise, I don’t run for the door.

Instead I ask, “Then why?”

“That day when you showed up in Kensington, that day when we first met—”

“Technically we didn’t meet,” I interrupt. “It’s not like you said, ‘Hi, I’m Jas, the local drug kingpin, nice to meet you.’”

He nods. “I know,” he agrees. “It felt good. For once, there was someone pulling into my driveway who wasn’t looking for dust. Someone who had no idea that mine was the house where you could always score.”

I lower my duffel bag to the floor and sit on the edge of the bed. Jas continues.

“And watching you surf all those mornings on your own. You were fearless.”

I shake my head. I didn’t feel fearless. I was scared, but I just wanted to take those waves so much. Just like I wanted to find my brothers so much, more than anything. That desire was bigger than my fear—of going to Jas’s party and taking dust, of climbing out my window and driving up the coast with a dangerous stranger, of going to the Jolly Roger.

Jas continues, “And when you showed up at my party, knowing who I was and what I did—I just wanted it to feel the way it felt when you came the first time, when you thought I was just some surfer living by the beach. Because that’s all I ever wanted to be. And you were so angry at me, my god, I didn’t know that someone on dust could be so angry.”

“I don’t really remember,” I say, shrugging.

“Well, I do,” Jas says. “I was stone-cold sober that night and I remember every word you said. You hated me then. It felt like a punch to the gut.”

“So you showed up at my house when you heard Witch Tree was breaking to try to be my knight in shining armor?”

Jas shakes his head. “No,” he says. “More like the other way around. I thought, if I could help this girl find her brothers, that would be the first step.”

“The first step in what?”

“The first step in moving on, leaving my old life behind. See, Wendy, I started selling drugs to make enough money to buy a Jet Ski, a plane ticket, new surfboards and wax. When I started out, I saved every penny. I thought I would just deal for a few months and then move on with my life. But the truth is, I made enough money and more a long time ago. But I didn’t stop dealing.”

“Why?”

He shakes his head. “Maybe I forgot what I actually wanted to do with my life. I’m not sure.”

“Yes, you are.”

Jas takes a deep breath and says sadly, “Pete wouldn’t come with me, not anymore.”

I don’t say anything, so he continues. “Wendy, I meant it when I said that I wanted to help you find your brothers. I have the money. Every time a swell is predicted, we’ll be there. Every time, until we find John and Michael. Wendy,” he says, taking a step toward me, crouching down on the floor in front of me and taking my hand in his. “I don’t just want to help you. I want to be with you. I want to start this new part of my life with you. Will you come with me?”

His blue eyes are filled with hope; he really believes that finding my brothers is his first step in leaving his old life behind, and I can see how badly he wants it. For a second, I allow myself to want it, too. It could be magical, picking up and heading off to Hawaii, Tahiti, Portugal, Mexico; tracking waves like bloodhounds, letting the weather determine our path. Letting Jas take the lead and hold my hand and carry my bags and open every door for me wherever we go.

But how far will we travel? How many days will there be like today? How many dead ends will it take until my heart breaks into so many pieces that it simply can’t be put back together again?

I shake my head. Pete wants me with him in Kensington, wants to build a life with me in the house on the cliffs. Jas wants me for just the opposite reason—he wants to leave Kensington behind with me by his side.

Suddenly, I realize why Pete didn’t tell me the truth about my brothers. Not just because he thought I’d hate him for kicking them out, but because he wanted to protect me from knowing that my brothers were addicts. From the very first day in Kensington, when he told me to let him take the lead, to let my worries go, he wanted to give me the things he thought would make me happy.

But Jas believes I’m strong enough to dive into the deep end with him. He wants to share his adventures with me; wants us to take on the world together. Together, he wants to find my brothers, no matter how sick or drug-addled they might be when we do.

I’m not sure I’m as strong as Jas thinks I am, as fearless. “I have to go home,” I say finally. “I can’t keep coming up against dead ends. I don’t think I’ll survive too many more of them.”

I stand and lift my bag, and this time, Jas doesn’t try to keep me from leaving. I keep my gaze focused on the ground; I don’t want to see him staring at me when I walk away.

The bus stop isn’t crowded. In fact, it’s completely empty. It’s not even really a bus stop at all so much as a beat-up, weather-stripped bench on the side of the road. But this is where the kid at the motel told me to go. He said the bus’s schedule can be erratic, but it’s sure to be here sometime today. All I have to do is wait.

I drop my bag and practically fall onto the bench. It’s not even seven in the morning; at home, Fiona and my parents are just beginning their days. Strange because this already feels like the longest day of my life, and I still have such a long way to go.

I zip up my sweatshirt and pull the hood over my head. It’s a Stanford sweatshirt that I bought last year when I was visiting the campus, before I knew whether I’d be accepted. I kept it in the back of my closet and didn’t take it out until the day my acceptance letter came. The sun is still hidden behind the clouds, and the air is misty with the promise of rain. Even though I’m a little farther from the water now, the wind is still blowing hard and fast. The Coast Guard was right to shut down the beach, I decide; there’s no way anyone should be out on the water on a day like today.

I press my fingers into the wood of the bench. It’s riddled with carvings: initials with hearts around them, rough, messy surfboards. Someone took the time to carve an elaborate wave onto the widest plank. I close my eyes and run my fingers along the peaks and valleys of the wave, imagining that I’m on a board, flying over it, my hair streaming behind me, my stance steadier than it’s ever been in real life, my heart racing as the wave begins to curl over my head.

“Ow!” I shout, bringing my finger to my mouth. I open my eyes and see that my fingertip is bleeding; I must have hit a splinter in the wood. I lean down, studying the bench, as though it will make a difference if I can figure out just which piece of wood cut me.

And that’s when I see it, carved messily onto the seat beside me: JD and MD, like they were sitting right next to me.

I stand up suddenly, my pulse quickening. They sat in this very spot where I’m sitting, waiting for the same bus I’m waiting for, breathing the very air I’m breathing.

A clue. This whole summer, everything that I thought was a dead end—Kensington, the Jolly Roger, this bench—they’ve all been a series of clues. And every one has brought me one step closer.

Maybe Jas is right; we just need to keep watching the weather, following the waves, collecting these clues. I was right from the start: my brothers have sent me on some elaborate scavenger hunt, a game of hide-and-seek, just like we used to play when we were little. Well, then, ready or not, here I come.

Now my duffel bag feels light as a feather when I leave the bench behind and begin sprinting back the way I came.

Jas’s truck is still in the parking lot; he hasn’t left yet. I bang on the door to our motel room so hard that later my knuckles will be sore and bruised. I don’t care. I’m like Jas: it would take a lot more than a few bumps and bruises to keep me out of the water now.

He opens the door and I leap into his arms like a character out of some romantic movie. I press my face into his neck and let him lift me off the ground, duffel bag and all. It feels like he’s strong enough to carry me for miles.

I pull back just enough to kiss him, and when he kisses me back I think I’ve never tasted anything so delicious.

“Yes,” I say finally, hugging him tight.

“Yes?” Jas echoes. It sounds like he can’t believe that I’m really here, right now, in his arms, let alone that I’m really coming with him.

I kiss him again and then I say, “Yes.” I don’t think I’ve ever packed so much meaning into a single syllable: Yes, I’ll come with you. Yes, I’ll watch you ride every wave the ocean has to offer. Yes, you can hold my hand and open car doors and lead the way. Yes, together we can find my brothers.

Yes, I want to be with you, too.