Close Out (6 page)

“But you gotta try, right?” Spazzy said. “I mean, you guys know Screamers as well as anyone by now.”

The sliding door from the house opened, and Jillian and Shauna came out. Jillian sat down next to Bean and gave him a relaxed kiss on the cheek. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who, a month ago, stood
by the window, her arms crossed tightly and a frown on her face while she watched Spazzy protectively.

“Have a slice?” Bean pulled the pizza box toward them.

“Okay.” Julian reached in. She folded a slice carefully in half, and then raised it to her mouth and took a dainty bite.

A slight breeze brought a wind chime to life, and one by one Kai and the others turned hopefully to gaze at the dark dunes and the ocean beyond them. After the long stretch of flat days in early August, there'd been a week of knee-highs and ankle-slappers, and now once again, it was almost flat. Perhaps this breeze was the first sign of a change in the weather. Or maybe it was just a flirtatious tease.

“Forget the Northeast Championship,” Everett said. “If we don't get some waves soon, we're gonna forget how to surf.”

“I guess the only good news is that it's the same up and down the east coast,” Booger said, sliding off the raft and climbing up the ladder from the pool.

“It kills me,” Bean groaned. “The whole season's five months long at best, and right in the middle of it we always get these doldrums.”

“Doldrums?” Booger repeated uncertainly as he toweled off.

“A state of inactivity or stagnation,” Jillian said. “Although originally it was used to describe the area of calm between the trade winds.”

For a moment everyone stared at her.

“It was an SAT word,” Julian said defensively.

“Hey, it's totally cool” Bean said. “Personally, I think smart is sexy.” He started to rise from his chair. “Anyone feel like Ping-Pong?”

“I do,” Julian said.

They headed toward the game room.

“Anyone for air hockey?” Booger asked.

“Yeah,” said Everett.

Booger turned to Shauna, Kai, and Spazzy. “How about you guys?”

“I'm cool here,” Spazzy said.

“I haven't had a slice yet, so I'm going to eat first,” said Shauna. “Then I'll come down.”

“I'm gonna hang here too,” said Kai.

“Okay.” Booger and Everett followed Bean and Jillian through the sliding glass doors toward the game room, leaving Shauna, Kai, and Spazzy alone around the outdoor table.
Spazzy got up. “I gotta take a leak. Be right back.”

He went into the house, leaving Shauna and Kai at the table. The light wind made Shauna's hair flutter. It may have been Kai's imagination, but it seemed as though the breeze was growing stronger, which might be a good thing if it brought swells with it.

“Jillian wants to have a party for Spazzy,” Shauna said. “Before they go back to California.”

“That what you guys were talking about?” Kai asked.

She nodded.

“Sounds like a great idea,” said Kai.

“I told her I thought she might want to invite Lucas and his friends,” Shauna said.

Kai gazed at her, surprised. “Why?”

“Well, Jillian and Spazzy are going to come back next summer, and I thought it would be nice if Lucas and his friends understood Spazzy better,” Shauna explained. “So that if he wants to surf Screamers and you're not …” Her words trailed off.

“Here?” Kai filled in the blank for her.

Shauna nodded.

A napkin blew off the table and onto the
ground. Kai reached down and picked it up. The slightest trace of fall was in the air. It was impossible to imagine where he'd be next summer. To be honest, it wasn't easy to imagine where he'd be next month.

“It's a nice idea,” Kai said. “I just don't see Lucas going for it.”

“You never know,” Shauna said.

They sat quietly after that. Kai gazed up at the night sky dotted with stars. A few thin gray clouds drifted overhead, but the sky was mostly clear. Without warning, a thin bright beam of light streaked parallel to the horizon and vanished.

Kai looked at Shauna. “Did you see that?”

She nodded. “Was it a shooting star?”

“I think so.”

“I've never actually seen one before,” Shauna said. “Have you?”

“In Hawaii a few times,” Kai said.

“What's Hawaii like?” Shauna asked.

“It's the best place on Earth.” Kai smiled. “I mean, I don't know much about what it's like on the big island or on Maui. But Kauai … Hanalei … It's just the best.”

“You really miss it?”

Kai nodded. He missed it terribly, except
for one memory so bad that he still wasn't sure he could ever go back.

“And that's where you saw shooting stars?” Shauna asked.

“Yeah. The sky there is much darker. You see tons more stars and they really shimmer. I guess it's because there aren't as many lights around. Sometimes at night my mom and I would put out lounges in the front yard and lie on them and look up.”

“Let's do it.” Shauna nodded at a pair of lounges by the pool. She and Kai moved over to them and laid back with their faces tilted up at the sky. The breeze came up again and sent the slightest chill across Kai's bare skin.

“Kai, what happened to your mom?” Shauna asked from the lounge beside him.

“I told you. She got killed in a car accident.”

“But there's more, isn't there?”

Kai gazed over at her, wondering how she knew. “Yeah.”

“You don't have to tell me,” Shauna said. “Unless you want to.”

He looked up at the night sky again. He'd never told anyone. The only people who knew were those who'd been there that day, or who'd read about it in the newspaper on Kauai.

“I used to think I was really hot stuff,” Kai said.

“As a surfer?”

“Right. You think Buzzy Frank is competitive? You should have seen me.”

“I don't believe that,” Shauna said.

“You think Sam is a jerk about being a local and trying to keep everyone off Screamers? He isn't half the jerk I was.”

“Kai, that can't be true,” Shauna said.

“Believe it,” Kai said.

“Believe what?” Spazzy asked, coming back outside.

Neither Kai nor Shauna answered.

“Uh-oh, another big secret.” Spazzy started to twitch. “I'll go back inside and leave you two alone.”

“No, it's okay,” Shauna said. “Guess what? We just saw a shooting star.”

Spazzy pointed a finger toward the horizon. “Out over there, right?”

“You saw it, too?” Shauna asked.

“No, but that's where the constellation Perseus is, and that's where most of the shooting stars come from at this time of year.”

“But they're not really stars,” Shauna said. “They're just meteors.”

“Not even,” said Spazzy. “Most of them are particles of dust. No bigger than a grain of sand.” He looked around. “If you really want to see them, let's go down to the beach and away from the lights around the pool.”

Shauna and Kai got up and went across the walkway through the dunes with Spazzy, who explained that the shooting stars were mostly particles of dust left in the trail of the comet Swift-Tuttle. “Every summer around now, the earth's orbit passes through this huge dust cloud left by the comet, and we get these meteor showers called the Perseids because it looks like they come from around that constellation.”

“I always thought meteors traveled through space and burned up when they went through the atmosphere,” Shauna said.

“Well, maybe some do,” Spazzy replied. “But most of the shooting stars we see are tiny particles just hanging in space. They don't come to us. We go to them.”

“I never knew that,” Shauna said.

“Yeah, it's amazing how much junk you can learn when you don't have any friends,” Spazzy said.

They got down to the beach and sat in the sand looking out at the horizon.

“Know what, Spazzy?” Kai said. “It's actually pretty cool that you and your sister know all this stuff. Maybe it wasn't much fun learning, but at least you know it. I mean, face it, in the long run, what's more important? Knowing where shooting stars come from or knowing how to party?”

“Knowing how to party,” Spazzy and Shauna answered at the same time, and then laughed.

“Yeah, yeah.” Kai grinned. Then he heard a sound that had grown scarce over the past week—the splash of a wave. Spazzy and Shauna stopped laughing. Kai knew they'd heard it too. All three of them turned their gazes to the water's edge where a small set of ankle-slappers were tumbling onto the sand.

“Could be the beginning of something,” Spazzy said.

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Shauna.

Kai glanced at his watch. It was later than he thought. Time for Bean and him to go.

“I gotta book, folks.” He started to get up.

Spazzy frowned. “Where?”

“Just something Bean and I have to take care of,” Kai said. “No biggie.”

“Yeah, okay.” Spazzy and Shauna got up
with him, and they went back to the house and into the game room. The loud clatter of air hockey and the pock of a Ping-Pong ball met their ears before they reached the bottom of the stairs. The room felt warm and smelled faintly of sweat. Over by the air hockey table both Booger and Everett were bare chested, their foreheads speckled with perspiration.

“Hey, Kai,” Booger said. “Want to play the winner?”

“Thanks, dude, I would,” Kai said, “but Bean and I have somewhere to go.”

Bean checked his watch, registering surprise that the time had already come. Jillian frowned.

“Go somewhere now?” she asked, more of Bean than Kai.

“It's okay,” Bean said.

“Just you two?” asked Booger.

Kai nodded. He'd hoped he and Bean could just slip away. He hadn't meant to make it seem like such a big deal.

“Is something wrong?” Jillian asked, and Kai knew at once that she was more than just book smart.

“It's okay,” Bean assured her. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

They went outside and got into the hearse.

“Why can't we just tell the police that Goldilocks has the boards and we think they belong to Curtis and they're stolen?” Bean asked as he turned the key in the ignition.

“Bean, if someone stole your surfboard and you found it, could you prove it was yours?” Kai asked.

“Yeah, because I wrote down the serial number,” Bean said, steering the hearse out onto the dark street.

“Right. But suppose you didn't write down that number.
Then
could you prove it? Do you have any paperwork? A receipt?”

“No. Who keeps a receipt for a surfboard?”

“Exactly. Now the problem with Curtis is he never wrote down the serial numbers. Everyone knows they're his boards, but no one can prove it.”

“Why do we have to be the ones to get them back?” Bean asked.

“Because it's the right thing to do,” said Kai.

“Why can't we let someone else do the right thing?”

“You're joking?” Kai asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bean said with a sigh. “We're the ones who have to do the right thing because there is no one else.”

They drove quietly for a while, then Bean said, “You see how Jillian knew right away that something was up?”

“Sorry about that,” Kai said.

“It's cool,” Bean said. “I just don't want her to start thinking you're a bad influence on me, you know?”

They both grinned. It was kind of funny to think that Kai, at the age of fifteen, could be a bad influence on Bean, who was nineteen.

“Maybe I am,” Kai said.

“No,” said Bean. “Just different. And good, if you want to know the truth. Only it'll be a lot better once this night is over.”

“I won't argue with that,” Kai said.

B
ean pulled onto Seaside Drive and headed for Belle Harbor.

“You sure you remember the way?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Kai said. “We pass 88s and make the first left after the train tracks. It's the road with the sod farm on the left and the woods on the right.”

“That much I remember,” Bean said. “But then he made us put those bandannas over our eyes. It's where we go after that that I'm asking about.”

“I'll let you know when we get there,” Kai said.

Bean gnawed nervously on the side of his
thumb. “Know what's gonna happen if he catches us?”

“First of all he's not gonna catch us,” Kai said. “And second, even if he did, what would he do? Go to the police?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of baseball bats,” Bean said.

“He doesn't strike me as the type,” Kai said.

Bean turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “How would you know? You have any experience with anyone who
would
strike you as the type?”

Kai didn't answer. There'd been some people along the way. “Associates” of his father's, who were probably pretty handy with baseball bats and not in any way that involved a ball. Not to mention those guys with the bulges under their shirts, who hung around the warehouse in Brooklyn.

“Ever try to run and swing a bat at the same time?” Kai asked.

“No,” said Bean.

“It's not easy.”

“What if there's no place to run?” Bean asked.

“Then you duck.”

They passed 88s. By this time of night the
parking lot was almost full, and the dance club was brightly lit.

Ahead, in the hearse's headlights, they saw the yellow railroad crossing sign. A moment later the hearse bounced over the tracks. Bean turned left onto the narrow paved road between the sod farm and the woods. Kai closed his eyes and started to count.

“What are you doing?” Bean asked.