Cut Back (2 page)

Shauna's head popped up in the white soup. She grabbed the leash, pulled the board toward her, got on, and started to paddle back out. The girl had spunk.

Kai turned and walked along the beach toward the jetty. After nearly a month of surfing around Sun Haven, he was beginning to understand the tides and currents. A southwest swell made Screamers unsurfable, but opened up a few lesser breaks up and down the shoreline. A swell directly out of the south produced some sectiony waves at Screamers, but a southeast swell could turn the spot into a
point break with wave after wave peeling away into perfection.

Kai got to the jetty, threw himself and the board into the water, and started to paddle. In almost no time he was outside Screamers with Lucas and his crew. Runt seriously vibed him and Kai just smiled back. The red-haired kid scowled and looked away as if he didn't know how to react. Runt would have made a good Nazi.

Kai was waiting for the next good wave when Lucas paddled out near him.

“You hear about the contest over in Fairport?” he asked.

Kai shook his head.

“It's in a couple of weeks,” Lucas said. “Me and my friends'll all be there. I figure a surfer as good as you will be there too.”

Kai just gazed at the waves and said nothing.

“Or maybe it's too small for you,” Lucas said. “I mean, it's just a rinky-dink local contest. Maybe you only surf the WCT.”

The WCT was the World Championship Tour, surfed by the best surfers in the world. Kai knew Lucas was just trying to rile him. “That's the kind of crap I expect from Sam, not from you. Cut to the chase, Lucas.”

“Some people think all this free surfing, soul surfing garbage is a pose,” Lucas said. “Just an easy excuse for not competing.”

“What's so important about competing?” Kai asked.

“If it wasn't important, why would there be all these competitions?” Lucas asked. “Why does every kid dream of being the next Pipe Master?”

“Maybe every kid
you
know,” Kai replied. “Maybe the only reason competitions exist is because without them, sunglass and shoe companies wouldn't know who to feature in their ads.”

“It's funny about some guys,” Lucas said. “They surf pretty good when there's no pressure, but as soon as it counts, they fold like a limp rag.”

“Is that what it's all about?” Kai shot back. “You think when Duke Kahanamoku traveled around the world demonstrating surfing, he told everybody that the whole idea was performing under pressure?”

“Maybe not then,” Lucas said. “But it is now. Because otherwise, all you'll ever be is the best surfer no one ever heard of.”

“What's wrong with that?” Kai asked.
“What's wrong with surfing because it's something you love, and it doesn't matter who knows?”

“Go ask your friend Curtis,” Lucas said.

“Because he used to run the local contests around here?” Kai guessed.

“Is that what he told you?” Lucas said. “He didn't tell you about surfing all over the world?”

“Yeah, he mentioned that he'd been around,” Kai said.

“Ever stop and wonder how he did it?” Lucas asked. “I mean, travel around the world year after year, surfing the best breaks on the planet?”

A good wave was coming and Kai decided to paddle over and catch it.

The last thing he heard Lucas say was, “You should ask him.”

K
ai surfed until nine thirty. His dads T-shirt shop, T-licious, opened each morning at 10
A.M.
, and Kai was expected to be there. But that wasn't the only reason he was stopping. As the month of June wound down, schools all over the northeast had closed, and the beaches at Sun Haven had begun to get more and more crowded. Even on “cold-water” days like this, by 10
A.M.
there were enough swimmers in the water to make the surfing a little hairy. A lot of swimmers didn't seem to understand that playing in a wave ten feet ahead of a rapidly approaching surfboard could have seriously unpleasant results.

Kai rode his last wave all the way in. By
now the day was starting to heat up. Beach umbrellas were beginning to blossom like flowers. Towels and blankets were being spread as families and groups of teens settled in for a day of sun and fun. Kai pulled the zipper down the back of his wet suit and peeled the black rubber off his arms and shoulders and down to his waist. Then he wrapped the leash of his board around the tail.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed someone coming along the beach toward him. It was a guy, probably about Kai's age, trotting in a weird, herky-jerky manner. His hands moved in strange, twitchy motions, and his head rolled and snapped. To Kai it almost seemed like there were two people inside the guy's body, both fighting for control over what he did. The whole effect was so bizarre that Kai actually stared.

The guy stopped half a dozen feet away, as if he knew better than to get too close.

He started to hop up and down, licking his lips with his tongue. He may have been trying to say something, but it was hard to tell. The only sound he made was “Scree … scree … scree,” like he was a crow or something. The whole thing was so whacked that Kai actually
looked around to see if someone was playing a joke on him.

But no one he knew was watching. Over at Screamers, Lucas and his crew were busy catching waves, while a hundred yards to the right, Bean, Booger, and Shauna were doing the same thing at Sewers. Meanwhile this guy seemed to be working himself into a frenzy, as if he was trying to do something, but the harder he tried, the more he jerked and grimaced and hopped and squeaked.

Finally a massive shudder shook through him, as if his whole body had gone on overload and shut down. His shoulders sagged and his jerky legs and arms went limp. He shook his head and turned away. Strangely, while he still jerked and flinched slightly, it was nothing like before.

Now something else caught Kai's attention. A dark green dump truck with
TOWN OF SUN HAVEN
written on the side was weaving through the blankets and umbrellas along the beach. The back was piled high with scrap wood. The truck stopped directly inshore from Screamers, and Dave McAllister, the stocky red-haired chairman of the Sun Haven Surf boardroom, jumped out along with two guys
wearing light green Town of Sun Haven coveralls. Big Dave pointed at a spot on the sand and the two town employees climbed into the back of the truck and started tossing out the scrap wood.

Kai watched with interest. He had to assume that delivering scrap wood for Fourth of July bonfires wasn't part of a typical town employee's job description. Dave McAllister worked for Buzzy Frank, Lucas's father, not for the town. Yet, there he was giving orders to the two guys off-loading the wood. If Buzzy Frank didn't outright own the town of Sun Haven, he sure came close.

Kai started up the beach. The strange guy had stopped about a hundred feet away and was watching him. He and Kai exchanged another look. It seemed as if there was something the guy urgently wanted to communicate, but was unable to. Kai felt bad, but it wasn't his problem.

K
ai had just let himself in through the back door of the T-shirt shop when Pat came into the back room and handed him a credit card. “Run off a charge for two hundred and sixty plus tax, and ten blanks of this,” the Alien Frog Beast from planet Dimwit ordered, adjusting his thick, square-framed glasses. Then Kai's father disappeared through the back door that led to the parking lot outside.

Kai looked down at the silver card. A Fuji Bank Visa. Clearly from Japan. This was one of Pat's favorite scams. Anytime he got his hands on a foreign credit card, he'd run off blanks and then overnight them to certain “business associates” he knew in Nevada who used
forged signatures to get cash advances. By the time the tourists from Japan got home and found out they'd been scammed out of thousands of dollars, they'd be halfway around the world and unable to do anything about it.

Kai laid the credit card on the desk where the pile of unopened mail was growing larger every day. Not only did Pat never throw out garbage—electing instead to let food wrappers, papers, and junk fall to the floor—but he also never opened mail. After all, the only mail that came to the store was junk and bills, and since Pat never paid bills, he saw no reason to look at them.

One letter, however, caught Kai's eye. It was addressed to a Mr. Pat Garrison and had a cancelled stamp instead of the usual red postal machine mark that was the sign of junk mail and bills. Kai slid it out from the pile of unopened envelopes and took a closer look. The return address was EBF Realty, 467 Seaside Highway, Sun Haven, and it looked both personal and official. Kai tore it open.

DEAR MR. GARRISON
,

IT HAS COME TO OUR ATTENTION THAT YOU AND YOUR SONS ARE LIVING FULL TIME IN THE STOREFRONT PREMISES WE HAVE LEASED TO YOU AT 3 EAST STREET
,
SUN HAVEN. PLEASE NOTE THAT SUCH INHABITATION IS A VIOLATION OF YOUR LEASE AGREEMENT. WE REQUEST THAT YOU FIND APPROPRIATE LIVING ARRANGEMENTS IMMEDIATELY. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF YOUR LEASE AGREEMENT AND WILL RESULT IN EVICTION AND FORFEITURE OF YOUR SECURITY DEPOSIT.

SINCERELY
,

EBF REALTY

The back door opened and Pat came back in. “Got those blanks?”

“No,” said Kai.

“What the hell?”

“I'm not helping you rip people off,” Kai said.

“Damn you.” His father scooped the credit card off the table and started running blanks from it in the credit card machine.

“You might be interested in this.” Kai held up the envelope.

“What is it?” Pat asked.

“Letter from your landlord saying they know we're living here and if we don't move out they're going to evict us and keep the security deposit.”

“Screw 'em,” Pat said.

“This letter was dated almost two weeks ago,” Kai said. “I wouldn't be surprised if you hear from them again soon.”

His father shrugged as if he didn't care. He finished running the credit card blanks, and headed out to the front. Kai followed him, curious to see who was getting scammed this time.

Out in the store a Japanese man, his wife, and two children were all having custom T-shirts made that said, “We've been to Sun Haven” on the front and had one of the nicer and more overpriced, colorful transfers of a sunset on the back.

“Here you go, Mr. Asoki.” Pat handed the credit card back to the man. “I've taken care of the credit verification. Before I forget, do you want color guard on these shirts?”

Kai glanced over Pat's shoulder at a pad on the counter on which his father had written “$260.” Kai quickly did the math. Two hundred and sixty dollars for four T-shirts came to sixty-five dollars a shirt. That was close to a new record. The Alien Frog Beast must have been in heaven.

“What is color guard?” Mr. Asoki asked.

Pat pointed at the colorful sunsets on the backs of the shirts. “So when you wash these clothes, the colors don't run.”

“Run?” Mr. Asoki scowled.

“Come off.” Pat gestured. “So the colors don't get on the other clothes in the wash.”

“Ah.” Mr. Asoki nodded and spoke to his wife in Japanese, then turned back to Pat. “How much is color guard?”

“Usually ten dollars per shirt, but since you're buying four, I'll do them all for thirty dollars. Of course, it'll have to be cash since I already put the charge through on your credit card.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Asoki.

Kais calculation had just increased the total charge to two hundred and ninety dollars. That plus the tax, which Pat charged but never filed with the state, put the total bill over three hundred dollars. Slightly more than seventy-five dollars a shirt. Definitely a new record.

Pat handed the T-shirts to Kai. “Color guard.”

Kai hesitated. There was no such thing as color guard. It was just another scam. The colors in the heat transfers never ran. All he was supposed to do was take the shirts in the
back, wait a suitable amount of time, then bring them out front again. Usually Kai refused to participate in Pat's scams, but he knew today it wouldn't matter. If he didn't do it, Pat would have Sean do it, or Pat would do it himself. Either way, Mr. Asoki was going to get soaked.

Kai took the shirts into the back room and dropped them on the desk. Once again he gazed down at the pile of unopened bills, the blank credit card receipts, and the landlord's letter lying on the desk. Bills that would never be paid. Receipts that would be used fraudulently. A letter that would probably be ignored. It all meant the same thing. The clock had officially begun to tick. How much time was left before the bill collectors started calling? Before the phone and electric were turned off? Before an investigator from the credit card company knocked on the door? Before the landlord changed the locks?

Kai's time in Sun Haven was starting to run out. Sooner or later it would mean another 3
A.M.
escape. Another two-or three-day drive. Another resort town with unsuspecting victims to scam. There was only one thing Kai could be reasonably certain of. The next place wouldn't have a beach, waves, or surfing.

A
t dinnertime Pat gave Kai five dollars and the usual warning to be back at the T-shirt shop in fifteen minutes or else. The “else” part made Kai laugh. There was nothing Pat could do if he was late. Recently Kai had gotten into the habit of taking as long as he wanted for dinner.

Tonight he was feeling hungry. The five bucks wasn't even enough for two slices of pizza and a Coke. The balance came from whatever he had in his pocket, but after he'd eaten the two slices, Kai was still hungry. The answer was a stop at the shop where Shauna worked, a thin sliver of a place simply called Ice Cream.