Float

Original Edition: Chapter Nineteen

From the edge of the parking lot at Marlin Cove, I looked down onto the beach. Lena and Jesse had dragged the box of wetsuits halfway down the sandy slope, and were both shrugging off their T-shirts. Blake was standing a little further off, his hands tucked in the pockets of his black swim trunks as he stared out at the ocean. What a hipster. Didn't he have anything else to do besides stare at the horizon and contemplate life? Like, for example, start stretching, so he could help me with my rain dance.

"Hey, Waverly!" Lena called.

I squinted down at her, shielding my eyes from the sun.

"Pick out your wetsuit!"

Damnit.

I'd almost been hoping no one would notice that I hadn't set foot on the sand yet.

"Coming," I called back.

I tried to sound enthusiastic. I really did.

"Blake!" Jesse called as I trudged down to where the twins had set down the box of wetsuits. "Let's go, man!"

The roar of the waves almost drowned him out; the ocean, stretched out before us like an oversized bluish-grey carpet, looked menacing today. The water was choppy and filled with foam, and the waves were higher than I'd ever seen them before.

"Waverly, are you a medium or a large?"

Lena's chipper voice snapped me out of my so this is where I'll die train of thought.

"Uh," I looked down at myself, almost like I was expecting a large M or L to be printed across the front of me. If I said medium and ended up not being able to fit into it, I'd be embarrassed. Then again, if I said large and it was too big, I'd be flapping around in an oversized wetsuit. But that was better than the alternative. "Large, probably."

Lena tossed me a suit.

I twisted the fabric around for a moment. It was heavier than I'd been expecting; the lining was thick and the seams were double-stitched. After a couple minutes of examining the thing, though, I realized I had no idea how to put it on.

"Hey, Lena, how do I—"

When I looked up, she had already stripped off her shorts and shirt and had her legs into the wetsuit.

I decided to follow her lead.

The wind whipped my hair into my face as I shrugged off my shorts and kicked off my flip-flops. Lena noticed my struggle and handed me a hair-tie. I formed a tiny bun on top of my head, then tore off my shirt and pulled my arms through the sleeves of the wetsuit. That was where my understanding of how to put the thing on ended.

There were ties and zippers all up and down the front, like a complicated menagerie meant to showcase my incompetence. I glanced over at Lena, silently pleading for assistance.

Blake stepped around me, oblivious to my struggle, and grabbed a wetsuit out of the cardboard box. I pretended to be adjusting one of the elastic ties on the side of my suit and watched him strip off his shirt out of the corner of my eye. If I was going to drown today, I wanted to go out with a picture of Blake Hamilton shirtless burned into my memory.

The blare of a car horn shook me out of my ogling.

Jesse, Lena, Blake and I all looked up to the parking lot at the same time. A large white Range Rover, with several surfboards strapped to the top, had just pulled in. Through the tint of the windshield I could make out Alissa Hastings, her hair impeccably curled and a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose.

"I'll go help with the boards!" Jesse blurted.

I think I was the only one who noticed the way his ears went bright red as he started up the sandy slope, Lena lagging behind and mumbling something about making sure Jesse didn't drop a surfboard on his toe again. Unable to help myself, I grinned and chuckled at Jesse's love-struck eagerness.