Free Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow

Dave.”
    And they do.
    “Doesn’t it make you feel cheap and used?” Sunny asked him one morning out in the lineup.
    “Yes,” Dave said. “But there are drawbacks, too.”
    Although he couldn’t think of any at the moment.
    It was Dave the Love God who actually coined the term
betty
, and this is how it happened.
    The Dawn Patrol was out one glassy morning, and there were long waits between sets, so there was ample time for a now-infamous and admittedly sick conversation to kick up about which cartoon character they’d most like to have sex with.
    Jessica Rabbit got a lot of run, although Johnny Banzai went with Snow White, and Hang Twelve admitted to having a thing for both the girls in
Scooby-Doo
. Sunny was torn between Batman and Superman (“mystery versus stamina”), and while she was trying to make up her mind, Dave made himself an immortal in surf culture by chiming in, “Betty Rubble.”
    There was a moment of stunned silence.
    Then Boone said, “That’s sick.”
    “Why is that sick?” Dave asked.
    “Because it is.”
    “But why?” Johnny Banzai asked Dave. “Why Betty Rubble?”
    “She’d be great in the sack,” Dave replied calmly, and it was chillingly clear to everyone that he had given this considerable thought. “I’m telling you, those petite sexual hysterics, once they cut loose …”
    “How do you know she’s a sexual hysteric?” Sunny asked, already having forgotten they were discussing a literally one-dimensional character that existed only in the fictional prehistoric town of, uh, Bedrock.
    “Barney’s not getting the job done,” Dave replied with supreme confidence.
    Anyway, it was just about a half hour later when a petite black-hairedwoman came down the beach and Johnny Banzai scoped her, grinned at Dave, and pointed.
    Dave nodded.
    “A real betty,” he said.
    It was done.
    Dave’s specific figment of perverted imagination entered the surfing lexicon and any desirable woman, regardless of hair color or stature, became a “betty.”
    But Dave is also legendary as a lifeguard, and for good reason.
    Kids in San Diego talk about lifeguards the way NYC kids discuss baseball players. They’re role models, heroes, guys you look up to and want to be like. A great lifeguard, male or female, is simply the best waterman around, and Dave is one of the greats.
    Take the time that riptide hit—on a weekend, like they always seem to do, when there are a lot of people in the water—and swept eleven people out with it. They all made it back in because Dave was out there almost before it happened. He was already running for the water as it started, and he commanded his crew with such cool efficiency that they got a line out beyond the tide and netted the whole eleven in.
    Or the time that snorkler got caught up underwater in the kelp bed that had drifted unusually close to shore. Dave read it by the color of the water, got out there with a knife, dived down, and cut the guy loose. Got him back to shore and did CPR, and the snorkler, who would have drowned or at least suffered brain damage if Dave hadn’t been such a powerful swimmer, was just freaked out instead.
    Or take the famous tale of Dave’s shark.
    Dave’s out one day showing a young lifeguard some of the finer points. They’re on those lifeguard boards, bright red longboards the size of small boats, paddling south, cutting across the long bend of coast from La Jolla Shores to La Jolla Cove, and suddenly the young lifeguard sits upright on his board and looks deathly pale.
    Dave looks down and sees blood flowing into the water from his boy’s right leg and then he sees why. A great white, cruising the cove for its favorite dish, has mistaken the rookie’s black wet-suited leg for a seal and taken a chunk out of it. Now the shark is circling back to finish the meal.
    Dave paddles between them—and you get this story from the rookie,not from Dave—sits up, kicks the shark in the snout and says, “Get out of