Wish (8 page)

“Then why would she stay over there?” he asked, his eyes on the television. “She usually comes home no matter what.”

“Not always.” I sighed. “You should ask her.”

“I’m asking you, Bee.”

I sat up and pushed the hair off my face. My mouth tasted gross from the french fries. My lips still had salt on them.

“I think she’s afraid of getting old,” I said. “Afraid of ending up alone. It’s complicated.”

“But we’re here,” he said. “We’re her family.”

I nodded. I saw myself in the mirror behind the television and pushed my hair off my face more.

“She doesn’t do it to be mean to us,” I said. “She does it to make herself feel better. It’s weird, I know. When she has a guy tell her she’s cool and sexy and all that, then she feels better about herself. She isn’t really thinking, she reacts to the moment.”

“It’s bogus,” he said. “Really bogus.”

“I agree.”

“Is it a girl thing?”

“A little bit. But boys do it, too. Some boys go from woman to woman thinking anything that goes wrong is the woman’s fault. They keep picking up the same rock and getting mad at it when it isn’t gold.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“Which part?”

“The gold thing. That’s ridiculous.”

“Is that so?” I said, then chucked my pillow at him. “Well, maybe it is.”

I went into the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth. When I returned, Tommy had the paper cup of soda on his belly from the night before. His straw poked around in the melted ice. He made a long sucking sound. I passed by his bed and looked out the window. Another good day weatherwise.

“Let’s go get breakfast,” I said. “Let’s get out of this room. It’s too nice out to stay cooped up.”

“Let’s go see Ty Barry,” Tommy said, the straw making a little trombone sound on the plastic lid cover. “He doesn’t live far from here.”

“You can’t just barge in on him.”

“He knows we’re around. He told me to call back today and let him know what our plans are. Not everyone is as uptight as you, Bee’s Knees.”

“You little punk,” I said. “I should rough you up.”

Another kid would have jumped to his feet and wanted to rumble, but it took Tommy three separate movements. Cup down. Slowly climb onto the bed. Assume a karate position.

“I could crush you,” I said, taking a karate stance back at him.

“Hands of death,” he said, waving his hands around.

“Beware the great white shark,” I said, snapping my teeth and moving my hands to my forehead to form a fin. Then I moved slowly toward him like a shark cleaving water.

“Some puny shark, Bee’s Knees,” Tommy said, slapping my fin.

“You’re too bony to eat, little boy. I want a big fat seal.”

“Then you have to eat yourself, because you’re the biggest, fattest seal around.”

I pretended to bite his leg. He jumped from his bed to the
other bed and almost fell. When he regained his balance, he looked at me, his hands still up in a karate posture.

“Let’s go before she gets back,” he said. “Let’s just go.”

“You mean split? That wouldn’t be very nice.”

“She wasn’t very nice to take off on us.”

“She’ll be really, really angry.”

“Maybe that’ll teach her a lesson.”

“What lesson?”

“That you can’t be a jerk and then expect people not to be jerky back at you.”

“Is that one of the Ten Commandments or something?”

He dropped his hands.

“I want to go see Ty Barry,” he said. “This is my trip. I’m going with or without you, Bee.”

So we went.

FROM GOOGLE:
Half Moon Bay is 25 miles south of San Francisco along State Route 1, the Cabrillo Highway, at 37°27′32″N 122°26′13″W37.45889°N 122.43694°W.

It is 10 miles west of San Mateo, 45 miles north of Santa Cruz. The 2000 census counted 11,842 people in the town, and 4,004 households.

We went looking for one person.

Ty Barry.

I left the note taped to the bathroom mirror.

The second bus we caught out of San Francisco smelled of diesel and brake fluid. The driver, a guy named Oti, passed his eyes in a triangle from one mirror to the next. Rear, left side, right side. Then straight forward. He did it over and over again at the same pace. Now and then our eyes clicked when he checked the rearview mirror. He had half-closed eyelids and a half-filled-in mustache. Everything about him seemed to be waiting for something to
arrive. I wanted to ask him about Half Moon Bay, but a sign on the pole above his seat said not to talk to the driver.

Tommy had been smart enough to take a seat on the west side of the bus, the side looking toward the ocean. Now and then we had a glimpse of something like ocean, or sand, or just greater spreads of light. It was Sunday morning and the bus ride felt lazy and empty.

“What are you doing down this way?” Oti asked us when we had ridden for about fifteen minutes. Only two kids had joined us on the bus and they sat far in the back, probably so that they could smoke.

“We want to see Mavericks,” I said.

Oti’s eyes darted around, then sought mine again.

“Mavericks?” he asked.

“A surf place,” Tommy said. “They get monster waves that come all the way from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. They have fifty-foot faces, some of them.”

Oti shook his head to say he didn’t know.

“I never heard of anything like that around here,” Oti said. “But there’s a lot of surfing going on.”

“They get some shark attacks down this way, too,” Tommy said. “It’s in the bloody triangle.”

“Oh, I know about those,” Oti said, braking to let a car turn left in front of him. “Great whites, right?”

“Yes,” Tommy said.

“Heck, I watch Shark Week every year on television.
Wouldn’t miss it. You ever hear about kids fighting sharks in cages?” Oti asked, giving the bus gas.

“In Mexico?” Tommy asked.

“No, in Hawaii, where I’m from. Test of manhood. They found archaeological remains of cages,” Oti said, stringing out the word
cageeessssss
until it sounded like something lethal, something like
alligatorsss
. “They put twelve-year-old boys down there with a spear, and the boys had to hold their breath and fight the sharks. Pretty awesome.”

“Never heard of that,” Tommy said.

“I’m telling you,” Oti said. “Pretty wild stuff.”

Tommy nodded. He had pushed forward on his seat so that he could see Oti better.

“Test of manhood, like sending African kids out to kill a lion. I’m not joking,” Oti said, tapping the brakes a couple of times to let traffic swirl clear of him.

I smelled cigarettes from the back of the bus.

“Hey,” Oti yelled into the front mirror, his eyes looking down the aisle. “You cannot be smoking in here.”

The kids laughed.

“If I have to pull over,” Oti said, “you won’t be laughing.”

Maybe the kids put the cigarettes out. It was hard to tell.

“A guy down here at Mavericks,” Tommy said, his breath missing a little and pulling in his chest, “a shark rammed him from underneath. He was off to the side at a place called Mushroom Rocks, off by some deepwater
kelp beds, just talking to a friend. The shark came up and knocked him into the air, and when he came down he had his arm over the snout of a great white. You imagine that? The shark took off like crazy with the guy riding him like you’d try to bulldog a steer, only a steer with teeth.”

Oti shook his head and said, “Sweet cream of wheat.”

“That was in 2000. The first attack ever at Mavericks,” Tommy went on. “They’ve had one other that we know about.”

“They mistake those surfers for seals, right?” Oti said, catching my eye in the mirror. “What’s the matter? Your sister doesn’t like sharks?”

He smiled at me. He was kind of cute in a way.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Not far,” Oti said. “You know where you want to get off?”

“I guess near the center of town,” I said.

He nodded.

“I see the cigarettes, you dubbers,” Oti shouted suddenly at the kids in the back. “Do you think I’m blind?”

Tommy ordered waffles and bacon and a tall glass of grapefruit juice. I ordered scrambled eggs, home fries, and wheat toast. A waitress brought the food in stages, almost as though she had to make a decision about each plate before
it could join its buddies. She was in her twenties and had a vine tattooed across her neck and right shoulder. Under his breath, Tommy called her Poison Ivy, one of Batman’s archenemies.

The restaurant was nice, though. It looked out on the water. It had taken us forty-five minutes to find a decent place after stepping off the bus. Oti had pointed us in the right direction to find the shopping center. He also told us the Ritz-Carlton, a gigantic resort on a hill overlooking Half Moon Bay, stood three miles from the beach. He found an old brochure on the dash of his bus. The brochure advertised horse trails and kayak rentals and a “two luxuries at once” deal where guests could rent a Mercedes for the day for sightseeing.

“It’s hard to believe this is the place,” Tommy said after Poison Ivy left the food. “I mean, it’s so nice here, it’s hard to believe that sharks are out there hitting people off surfboards.”

“Only a few people,” I said.

“They get kayakers, too, you know,” he said, cutting into his waffle. “One of them lifted the nose of a kayak right out of the water and shook the boat until the guy fell out.”

“You’re nuts, you know that?”

Tommy wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“I think Oti liked you,” he said. “He was checking you out.”

“He was at my mercy,” I said.

Tommy stopped sawing at his waffle.

“You’re really pretty, Bee,” he said, looking up at me. “A lot of guys think so.”

“I know. They break down my door every weekend.”

“You
are
,” Tommy said, his voice surprisingly emphatic, his fork straight up from his plate. “You don’t know it, but you are. And you’d have a boyfriend if you wanted one.”

“Like who?”

“Like Ricky. And Jeff. Both those guys think you’re smoking.” Ricky and Jeff worked on the school paper with me and had come over to our place a few times. “I’ve heard them talking.”

“Eat your waffles, you weirdo.”

“You could date them no problem.”

“Jeff is a nerd and Ricky is too self-involved. Besides, I don’t have time for boys right now.”

“Oh, I forgot, you don’t have time for fun. You have to run the universe.”

“You little bratasaurus.”

“You need to chill sometimes, Bee.”

“I’m not good at relaxing.”

“You can say that again.”

“Am I that bossy?”

“No,” Tommy said, appearing thoughtful, “you just care
too much about things. You have to loosen up. You don’t have to be the president of everything you join.”

“It’s always weird around boys, anyway. Half the time they just want to kind of tackle you and the other half they want to avoid you.”

“Lots of guys are going to want to date you, Bee. Mom says so. She says you’re becoming a swan.”

“She’s out of her mind. I’m no swan.”

“Yes you are,” Tommy said. “Mom says you’re going to be drop-dead beautiful by the time you finish growing and she’s right. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

“You both need glasses.”

He looked at me. I knew the meaning of his look. Tommy didn’t lie and he wasn’t lying now. That was what he meant.

“Can you ask Poison Ivy for some honey?” he asked.

I got honey for him. Then we ate without talking. I was hungrier than I realized. We ate and looked out at the water and the entire morning had a good beach feeling about it. Tommy looked happy and healthy, and for the first time it felt like we had actually escaped on vacation. I thought about my mom and how angry she was going to be, but I didn’t care. Tommy didn’t care, either, which somehow made it okay that we had taken off on her. She had done the same to us. And I knew if we had stayed, she would have
showed up midmorning with some lame excuse about a car not starting or losing track of time. Living with her was like missing a plane every day. I figured I would call her later.

“So,” I said when we had made it through breakfast, “do you have Ty Barry’s address?”

“Twenty-three Oakmont.”

“You think he’s really expecting us?”

“I called him from the hotel when you were showering. I woke him up.” Tommy looked sheepish. “He wasn’t mad. Just gave me the address and said to come down. Guys are a lot more laid-back about making plans.”

“Oh, is that so?” I had to ask.

“Yes, Bee.”

“You are so righteous,” I said.

Tommy pretended to sip through his straw until his eyes crossed.

“We need to find a room,” I said when he finished. “And you need to use the vest.”