Free In the Break by Jack Lopez Page B

knew.
    I watched Jamie and Amber take off on the same wave as I paddled back out. Jamie cranked an outrageous bottom turn and then
     flew up to the lip, where he snapped back and took the drop again. Amber just sort of angled her board right, made it past
     the first breaking whitewater of the peak, and then did a nice cutback followed by a smooth bottom turn, heading into the
     lineup in shallower water. She kicked out close to where I paddled and kept gliding on her board toward me. Then she dove
     forward, her body crossing right in front of me, first her head and then her rear and then her calves right before my eyes
     as she passed over and into the water. I dove forward, catching her from behind, and when we surfaced, we embraced, wetsuit
     to wetsuit in the warm sunny waves. Jamie yelled something, but he was too far away to hear, though I had an idea.
    “Is Jamie going to get all weird on us?” I said.
    “What’s to get weird about?” Amber said. “We’re not doing anything wrong.” She kissed me, untangled our leashes, and got on
     her board and paddled back out into the lineup.
    I followed her, thinking no, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t supposed to be in school right now or anything, and Nestor
     was probably going to give me a reward or something when we got back. Ah, give it up, I thought, as the excitement of Amber
     and the energy of the waves took over my consciousness.
    On another ride I was tubed in the walled-up shorebreak. I raised my arms in triumph, but neither Amber or Jamie had seen
     the wave — Jamie was paddling far beyond what had been thetakeoff point for a particularly large set that was approaching, and Amber was getting back on her board in the trough between
     the breaking waves and where the shorebreak formed.
    I’d never seen Puntas close out — get so big that the wave loses its shape — but the wave Jamie caught was as near to closing
     out without doing so as it could be. He took the huge drop, the face of the wave almost twice as tall as he was, and carved
     a fluid bottom turn heading left, his only mistake. It appeared that the water was deeper in the south end of the bay, the
     wave’s lip holding up much longer for a rider who would have gone right. Once Jamie trimmed his board on the wave of the day,
     you could see that it really was no longer a peak. The left, the way Jamie rode, was a huge uneven wall of water with no way
     for him to make the wave. It engulfed him with no mercy, spitting his board in the air. Jamie surfaced, hollered, and got
     back on his board
    “I’m going in,” I yelled to Amber.
    She agreed, and caught a shorebreak wave in. I caught a wave in too. Soon we were both back in shallow water, doing the careful
     dance through the mossy rocks to get in without breaking an ankle.
    It had been afternoon by the time we’d arrived, and the wind had picked up into a steady breeze, which made the relatively
     unprotected waves bumpy. This fact, along with a rising tide, made for mushy waves, ones that were no longer fun. We dried
     off in the sun, and for the first time I thought about our next move.
    “All right,” I said.
    Jamie looked at me.
    “Where to now?” Amber said.
    “My aunt’s trailer.”
    “Do you have a key?” she said, pulling on her new pants.
    “It’s not hard to get in.” Once when my father forgot our key, he’d jimmied a window and I had crawled in, then opened the
     door. I could do it again, though it might be dicey if the owners of the trailer park were around. As we loaded our things
     for the short ride back up the coast, I said, “It’ll work out.”
    Of course it didn’t. The guard gate where you check in was unoccupied, which I’d planned on, but I hadn’t figured that someone
     would be
in
my aunt’s trailer. Someone else staying there.
    We idled by, dumbstruck that a car was in front, music playing, people walking around inside. Not my aunt and uncle.
    “What the?” I said.
    “The best laid