CLICKS - The Dolphin Prophecy

CHAPTER 8

For two whole days after Darwen went down and the other boy’s body was found, we were forced to stay out of the ocean. On the one hand, I felt grateful that they were looking to link things together as more than separate random accidents, but on the other, the further disruption to my training schedule made me feel desperate.

Before summer had started, I had two training sessions each day. I alternated between swimming, surfing, paddling, and running. I’d planned to increase that to three sessions per day after First Night but, because of my injury, I’d barely managed one, and then only if Blake was with me.

Mica had been spending more and more time off Island and one of the days when our beach was closed, Blake and I tagged along with him to a surf spot he liked on the mainland. It was only twenty miles from Pinhold, but the change made for a completely different ocean. The water tasted saltier and looked more green than blue. The waves were huge and choppy, not like the smooth ones on Pinhold’s shore.

After just an hour in the water, I’d been knocked off my board so many times, I regretted coming out.

Then I got the wave. The kind you just know is coming even before it appears. I dropped in at the perfect point, I was steady on my board and I had ridden halfway into shore when a shadow came across my peripheral vision too close to me. I couldn’t turn out of the way in time and a huge guy sliced across my board, knocking me into the foamy churn.

In spite of the powerful surf, I got back on the sand quickly. I was perfectly fine, but annoyed that the ankle strap to my board had been sliced.

“Cami, are you ok? I am so, so sorry. I didn’t realize it was you,” Jonas said running over with my board. We’d known Jonas forever. He was a nice guy, a couple years older than us and originally from Jamaica. He and his crew were known to be territorial about their waves, but not usually with Mica and me. He’d bailed on the wave to bring back my board, which made his apology genuine. “I’d ‘a never cut you off on purpose if I’d ‘a realized who you were,” he mumbled, smiling as he shook the water out of his long dreds.

 “You don’t cut people on waves,” Blake growled, running up suddenly, throwing a fist in Jonas’ face, and cutting off the rest of the apology, “and you don’t own the beach.”

Too fast for me to stop it, another punch followed. The beads at the end of Jonas’ hair clacked against each other and flew through the air with the contact. Jonas retaliated immediately with a fist of his own that caught Blake right on the eye.

“Stop!” I yelled, jumping in the middle of the two of them and pushing Blake back with every ounce of strength I had. “He was apologizing to me!”

That statement plus the hit got Blake to back off. He blinked a few times, wiping the blood from his eye, just as three big guys I didn’t know ran our way. I was worried Blake was about to get it. Jonas, bless him, stopped them in their tracks. Luckily, a big brawl was averted, but that quickly brought an end to our surfing.

On the ferry ride home Mica was furious, at both of us. We made a tense triangle, alone on what should have been a crowded deck because, for the first time ever, Pinhold had red-flagged the beaches and sent incoming tourists back home. Mica stood on the bow of the boat staring into the chop that was jumping all the way up to the rails of the boat. Jagged walls of water bounced around him, in tune with the anger coming our way.

Blake sat on a bench a few feet over from me, leaning his head against the railing and using gravity to help hold an ice pack on his eye. The blood was gone, but condensation leaked down his face and I imagined his eye was already quite swollen.

I wanted to hug him. But, for the very first time, I felt torn between him and Mica. I paced back and forth between them, trying to figure out how to smooth over this very odd event.