Second Star

9

That night, I sleep restlessly in a bed that feels like it’s rising and falling with the waves. In my dreams, I’m sharing a surfboard with Pete, his hand steady on the small of my back, giving me the balance to stay on my feet. I wake up scolding my subconscious for thinking about him.

It’s early. Nana is fast asleep at the foot of my bed, twitching her legs, having dreams of her own.

I should try to go back to sleep, but I’m not tired. Actually, it feels as though my skin is buzzing, like I’ve just had a dozen cups of coffee, like I’ve been struck by an electric shock. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, stand, and walk into the hallway. Nana’s head pops up; she makes a human kind of sound, a little moan, complaining that I’ve woken her up so early.

“Shhh,” I say to her as she hops off the bed and joins me in the hall. “It’s okay, girl.”

My brothers’ room is directly across from my own, and I stare at their closed door for a split second before crossing the hall and turning the doorknob. I haven’t stepped foot inside their room since the day they disappeared.

The room is surprisingly bright; I never realized that their windows face the sunrise. Other teenage boys would have complained that the light woke them too early; other teenage boys would have wanted to sleep late. But they liked to wake up hours before anyone else, always determined to get in a few waves before school. I inhale deeply, expecting to smell some remnant of John and Michael, but the air is clear. I guess time can erase anything.

Nana hovers in the doorway, like even she knows what I’m ignoring, the unspoken rule laid down by my parents: we are not supposed to even look inside this room. It’s been left exactly as it was the day the boys left. The police searched it months ago, hunting for some clue to where my brothers went. They didn’t find anything.

I step inside. Two twin beds, the same ones they slept in when they were five. They didn’t have to share a room, but they preferred it. Two desks and one enormous shared bulletin board littered with pictures of their favorite surfers, of epic waves. I run my hands along their desks, my fingers leaving marks in the dust that’s settled over the past months. Open and close their drawers. Finally, my eyes land on the bulletin board, study the collage of photographs scattered across it.

One picture stands out like a beacon: a set of waves, perfectly glassy and hollow. The picture must have been taken from the ocean, behind the break of the waves, because beyond the waves there is a sandy white beach in the shadow of enormous cliffs, with one rickety wooden staircase built into the rocks. I lean in to get a better look. The water is a familiar but unusual blue, the sand as white as sugar.

I pull it down off the bulletin board, careful not to rip it. I flip it over, recognizing Michael’s chicken-scratch handwriting on the back: Perfect waves, it reads.

There’s only one place I know where the water is that shade of blue, the sand that bright white, the waves that perfect. I know that staircase; I ran down it just hours ago. The wood may look rough and weathered, but it feels as smooth as glass. I didn’t get a single splinter, even as my hand slid over the steepest parts.

Nana whines softly from her spot in the doorway and I turn, coming face-to-face with my father. He stands frozen in the hall behind the dog. I hold the picture behind my back.

Dad takes several slow, methodical steps toward the open door of his sons’ room, like maybe he’s frightened to look inside.

“Wendy,” he says, exhaling on the word. “What are you doing in there?” He peers through the door.

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head.

My father steps away from the door, walking backward down the hallway. I take one more look around the room, fingering the picture behind my back.

My father doesn’t look at me.

“When I saw the door open, for a second I thought…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but I can see the hope disappear from his face, like a wave receding from the sand.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I won’t do it again.”

He smiles weakly and turns away, heading to the kitchen. In a few minutes, I hear the sound of the percolator and smell coffee drifting through the house.

Back in my room, I put the picture on my desk and stare at it for a few minutes. My brothers were in Kensington. Of course my brothers were there. Of course Kensie was the hidden cove I heard them talking about. They’d always had a knack for finding the best waves, were always sneaking off to new beaches in search of the next great ride. It drove my parents crazy; we’d wake up on a random weekday morning and the boys would already be gone, driving somewhere down the coast, cutting school to get to some beach we’d never heard of. When they first ran away, we thought maybe that was all they were doing, and once the waves died down, they’d be back home.

Now, I think they must have run to Kensington, at least at first, to live by the beach with the perfect waves. There were so many kids there last night. Someone there must have met my brothers. Maybe someone there surfed with them. Maybe someone there knows where they are right now.

When my brothers were younger, I used to create elaborate scavenger hunts for them, complete with treasure maps and coded clues that they had to decipher. Each clue led to another clue that led to another clue that led to a silly little treasure, like a cookie or, eventually, a cake of wax for their boards. Sometimes these hunts went on for days or weeks. One particularly tricky one that I made for their eleventh birthday lasted a month and ended with their birthday present, a gift certificate to their favorite surf shop.

The photograph on the bulletin board is a clue.

Maybe they left it for me. They must have known I would find it. It’s my turn to go on a scavenger hunt, and I have to be a better detective than I have been so far. I missed so many clues already: I didn’t see that Pete and Belle were a couple. I kissed him and went back to Kensie to find him, when I should have been looking for my brothers. When I go back, I’ll do better. I won’t lose my focus again.

And if the squatters and runaways in Kensington don’t exactly warm to strangers coming around and asking questions, I’ll just have to make sure I don’t stay a stranger for long.

I get ready quickly. When I shower, I rinse off a patch of sand that’s stuck to the small of my back, just where Pete’s hand rested in my dreams. I pack a duffel bag full to overflowing with warm dark clothes for cool nights on the beach, cash I’ve gotten from relatives as graduation gifts, a notebook, a block of surf wax pilfered from the supply in my brothers’ room. I feel like I should pack a magnifying glass, a set of walkie-talkies. The prize at the end of this scavenger hunt will be John and Michael themselves.

Nana follows me to the driveway when I load the duffel bag into the car.

“You can’t come with me. Not this time, girl.”

My father’s voice makes me jump. “Go with you where?”

He’s holding a cup of coffee, his bathrobe tied loosely around his waist.

The lie comes to me so easily, it’s shocking.

“My road trip,” I say. “With Fiona. Remember?” Fiona and I have been talking about taking a road trip after graduation for years, since before we even had our driver’s licenses. We got our parents to agree to it when we were in the tenth grade. We were going to drive up the coast, spend some time just the two of us before moving away to our respective colleges. But ever since Fiona began dating Dax, she’d stopped talking about our trip, and I stopped bringing it up. I can’t even remember the last time we spent a full day together without him.

But, my parents don’t know that. “I’ll just be gone a couple weeks, remember? Mom said I could take her car.”

“Oh,” he says. “Of course. Must have slipped my mind.”

I shrug. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“Do you need anything?” He reaches into the pockets of his bathrobe as if he expects to find something in there for me.

I shake my head. “Nope. I’ve got everything I need.” It’s the last lie I’ll tell him today. “Say goodbye to Mom for me when she gets up,” I add, and he nods and walks back to the house. I wait until he’s out of sight before dragging two of my brothers’ surfboards from the garage and loading them into the car. They’re so long that I have to roll down the windows in the backseat so that the ends of the boards can stick out the sides.

Before I get in the car, I crouch down to kiss Nana goodbye. “You keep an eye on them for me, girl. I need you to take care of them this time.”

I pull away slowly, watching the glass house recede in my rearview mirror. I turn east instead of north. Before I can head back to Kensie, I have to talk to Fiona.