Dolphin Dreams, page 3
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” I joked weakly.
He sighed, taking a step back toward me. Then he suddenly went all alert, like my great-uncle’s hunting dog when he spotted a bird. He was looking past me now, farther up the beach.
Glancing that way myself, I saw a trio of teenage girls in bikinis heading toward us. All three of them were carrying surfboards.
“Yo, Rachel!” Cam called, his voice suddenly a few notes deeper than usual. “What’s up?”
“Cam?” I said.
He didn’t seem to hear me. Or remember I was even there, actually. Kicking out of his leash, he jogged up toward the three girls, passing me without a glance.
Meanwhile, Mohawk heaved himself to his feet and grabbed his board. “That Cam does like the Bettys,” he told me with a grin. “But you don’t need him. Come on, just feel the wave—you’ll be copacetic.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. But I picked up my board and followed him toward the surf line.
There, I stopped short, watching Mohawk race into the surf with a whoop, tossing his board ahead and then belly flopping onto it. Within seconds he was paddling out past the breakers. I watched him catch a wave, leaping to his feet with surprising grace despite his size. He rode it almost all the way in before tumbling off to the side and popping up with a grin.
I couldn’t help smiling at the joy on his face. I wanted to feel that. So why was I so afraid?
“I can do this,” I muttered, leaning down to make sure my leash was securely fastened to the board.
Then I took a deep breath and started running, not giving myself a chance to second-guess this. Mohawk was right. I didn’t need Cam. I just had to get in there and figure it out, sort of like how I’d figured out how to ride a bike years ago when my dad was too busy to teach me.
Running through the shallows was harder than it looked. I slowed down a lot after the first few steps and ended up having to turn sideways to avoid getting a faceful of salt spray when a wave broke right around me. I almost turned back then, thinking it would be better to wait a little longer to try this.
But what good would waiting do? It had already been five years since The Incident. If I ever wanted to get over it, this was my chance, and I might as well just go for it—like ripping off a Band-Aid. So I kept going, holding on tightly to my board with both hands until I was deep enough to flop onto it.
I managed to make it out past the spot where most of the waves started to swell up and then break. It was nice and calm out there, just like the day before, and I was tempted to stay, spending another pleasant morning paddling around and looking for dolphins.
But if I let myself do that, I had a feeling I’d never get over my phobia. Besides, there was no rule that said I had to stand up on my board this first time. I could just bodyboard in, like Cam had helped me do in my first lesson. That had been sort of fun. So what was the big deal?
Thinking once more of my dolphin dreams, I turned and paddled toward shore, trying to remember what Cam had told me about how to catch a wave. I was supposed to watch until I saw a promising swell, then paddle faster and catch up just before it crested. Was that right?
I glanced in at the beach. Cam was still talking to one of the girls, a pretty blonde in a red bikini.
But never mind him. I didn’t need him to hold my hand. I could do this!
Spotting a promising wave, I kicked off, clutching the sides of the board tightly as I propelled myself with my feet. But I got a little crooked coming in, and when the wave lifted my board, I could feel myself turning, flipping …
I lost hold of my board as the wave engulfed me, tumbling me over and over. I felt the board slip out of my grip and clunk me on the shoulder and leg, but I couldn’t even lift a hand to defend myself from further attacks. The wave was pulling me down, down, down, all the way to the scratchy, sandy sea floor where I’d never be able to breathe again …
“Avery!” a watery voice called, and a second later I felt strong hands gripping my arm and dragging me upward. At least I thought it might be upward. I was totally disoriented, my head spinning, my heart pounding, my skin raw from scraping over the sand, and my eyes burning from the salt.
It was Mohawk. He pulled me the rest of the way upright. Only then did I realize we were back on the beach, the wave that had beat me up already receding. A few seconds later the water was only ankle high.
“You okay, girl?” Mohawk asked, shooting a look toward Cam, who was completely oblivious to my wipeout. “Want me to get your cousin?”
“N-no, that’s okay.” I bent and detached the leash from my ankle with shaking fingers. “I’m fine.”
“Cool.” Mohawk gave me a little salute, then jogged back into the water with his board.
I managed to drag Cam’s spare board up beyond the reach of the water. Then I did my best to shake most of the sand out of my bathing suit and hair. Feeling foolish and sore and like I might cry, I decided I’d had enough surfing for today. I left the board where it was, too shaky to carry it up the zillion steps leading up the cliff to the road. I barely made it up the steps myself. But when I reached the top, I stopped only for a second to catch my breath before heading home. Or whatever passed for “home” these days, anyway.
Mom was out in the tiny front yard when I reached the house, her cell phone pressed to her ear. She hung up as I pushed in through the gate.
“Guess what?” she sang out, her blue eyes—the exact same shade as mine—sparkling in a way I hadn’t seen for a while. In fact, she looked happier and more excited than she had since the divorce. Younger, too, with her face tanned by the California sun and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“What?” I tried to sound happy myself, even though it wasn’t easy.
Mom tucked her phone into the pocket of her seersucker shorts. “That was my lawyer. She was calling to let me know she figured out a way to free up some of the settlement money early, even though we still haven’t—well, never mind all the boring details.” She let out a breathless little laugh and waved one hand as if shooing away a mosquito. “The point is, we have some money again. She even said there’s more than enough for a down payment if I want to start looking for a house.”
“A house?” My heart jumped into my throat. “We’re moving back home?”
“What? No.” Mom shook her head, thrown off her happiness only for a second. “I mean a house out here in California. Isn’t that exciting? We’re going to be California girls for real, baby!”
She grabbed me, pulling me toward her, so close I could smell her vanilla-peach shampoo. I hugged her back, trying to hide my dismay. California girls—that was what Cam had called me, too. But that had just been a joke. We weren’t really staying here forever, were we? Somehow, this was the first time I’d really thought about it. Somehow, I’d been assuming that this was temporary, that we’d be going back to our real home and our real friends as soon as everything was settled with the divorce.
Or maybe that my dad would come to his senses, and start missing us, and call us home …
“Ew.” Mom pulled back quickly, laughing. “You’re all wet and sandy!”
“Sorry. I’ll go change.” I hurried toward the house, glad for an excuse to hide from her while I figured out how I felt about this.
The sounds of loud chatter and shrieks of laughter met me halfway up the stairs. When I pushed open the bedroom door, Kady was in there with a couple of her friends, all three of them huddled around the little desk Kady called her vanity. They looked up with alarm, then immediately relaxed.
“Oh, it’s just you.” Kady hopped up and came over to kick the door shut again. “Mom’s not home yet, is she?” She smirked at her friends. “I don’t want her to know I borrowed some of her foundation.”
“And her lipstick,” one of the friends put in.
“And this amazing Chanel blush,” the third girl said, dabbing some garish pink stuff on her cheeks.
“No, that’s my mom’s,” the second girl corrected with a giggle. “She’s so going to kill me if she figures out where it went … ”
Now I noticed that they all had shiny, glittery goop on their faces. They looked ridiculous—not that I was about to tell them that.
“Didn’t see Aunt Janice,” I said, heading for the tiny corner of the closet Kady had grudgingly cleared for me to use. I rummaged around until I found a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I headed to the bathroom to shower and change.
A few minutes later I was clean, dry, and sand-free. I dropped my sandy suit in the hamper near the laundry closet, not slowing down as I passed Kady’s room. Downstairs, I headed into the den. Uncle Phil was there watching some sports show on TV.
“Hi, Avery,” he said in his booming voice. Uncle Phil was loud and happy and outgoing—the life of the party, my mom always said. Even as kids, Kady and I had noticed that our fathers were opposites in most ways—Uncle Phil big and tan and loud and always smiling; my father slight and pale and quiet and always serious.
“Hi,” I said. “Do you have any binoculars I could borrow?”
“Binoculars?” He scratched his head and stood up. “Sure thing. You want to spy on the neighbors?”
I chuckled along at the lame joke. “Actually, I want to look for dolphins from up on the overlook.”
“Dolphins, eh?” He stepped over to the built-in entertainment center and opened a drawer near the bottom. After scrabbling around in there for a second, he came up with a dusty pair of binoculars.
I thanked him and ducked out the back door, not wanting to run into Mom again just then. Soon I was on the ridge overlooking the north end of the beach. The sign there called it a scenic overlook, and there was a bench and a few flowers and a little metal fence to keep people from tumbling down the sheer rock face onto the sand thirty feet below. Cam and his friends usually surfed at the south end, where the waves were bigger and the beach wasn’t as rocky. This end was deserted most of the time, other than the occasional old guy with a metal detector or strolling couple looking for privacy. Right now the only signs of life were a few gulls pecking at a clump of seaweed.
But I didn’t look at the beach for long. I wiped the lenses of the binoculars clean, then played with them, figuring out how to adjust the focus. We’d done a whole unit on optics and lenses and stuff in my accelerated science class last year, and it was interesting to put it into practice.
Once I had the hang of it, I started scanning the water out beyond the waves, looking for anything breaking the surface.
While I looked, my mind wandered back to my wipeout, and then to what Mom had told me. Were we really going to live here now? Because so far I was a big fail when it came to being a surfing California girl …
Just then my gaze swept past something dark and moving, and I gasped and forgot about that other stuff. Turning back to the spot, I held my breath and waited.
It didn’t take long before I saw a dorsal fin breaking into view. A dolphin! I widened my view and saw several more fins appearing and disappearing nearby.
“It’s a whole pod!” I whispered with delight, all gloomy thoughts scattering immediately.
Then one of the dolphins leaped up, coming almost all the way out of the water. A second one porpoised behind it. That was what the guy at the aquarium back home had told me it was called when a dolphin jumped just above the surface while swimming fast.
I watched as the pod leaped and played, pressing the binoculars against my eye sockets so hard that I was sure I’d look like a raccoon afterward. But I didn’t care. This was amazing!
Another dolphin breached, seeming to hang in the air for several seconds before splashing back down. This one looked different—darker, and oddly mottled. I stayed focused on the spot where he’d gone down, wanting a second look.
And I soon got it, as the mottled dolphin leaped up again, twisting and then diving back down with a dramatic flick of his tail. He was darker than the others, his glossy sides dusted with pale spots. I’d never seen a dolphin like that before. Was he a different kind, or just uniquely marked for some reason, like my friend Bree from back home who had so many freckles that her face looked more dark than light?
Either way, seeing him jump and play with his pod made me feel happier about life in general. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready to be a California girl just yet, but at least being here meant I got to have moments like this. At least there was that.
I never did see the dolphins that day. But by the time I left the cove, my drawing was as good as I could get it. Seurat seemed to be alive on the page, his wet skin gleaming beneath the bright sun, his black eyes bright and curious and gazing out at me as if he knew I’d created him. Back home in my room with my sketchpad on my lap, I traced the outline of his dorsal fin with my finger, smiling as I remembered the many times I’d seen him looking just like this, full of life and happy and leaping for the sheer joy of it. I’d done my best to capture his spirit, not just the lines of his body. And I was pretty sure I’d succeeded. If I tried to do anything else now, add more detail or fix anything that didn’t look perfect, I’d only make it worse. Besides that, the applications were due by the end of the week, and I didn’t want to wait until the last minute. The post office was closed on Sunday, which meant I wouldn’t be able to mail it today. But at least I could get everything ready so I could drop it off first thing in the morning.
The only printer in our house was in the living room. I set the sketch aside and finished filling out the application online. Then I carried my laptop down the hall with me, wanting to make sure nobody was around before starting to print. The last thing I needed right now was a lot of questions from my nosy family about what I was doing.
The house was silent—my mother always went over to her sister’s house after church, usually staying until it was time to come home and start dinner. My father had left for the store half an hour ago, Josie was probably still at the beach, and as for Nico? Well, who knew where he might be, but he usually spent as little time at home on weekends as possible, especially now that he had his driver’s license and an old beat-up Toyota that he’d bought from a friend.
First I used the copier function on the printer to duplicate my drawing, since the application instructions had specified that they didn’t want us to send the only copy of anything, just in case it got lost in the mail. Then I opened the laptop and scrolled down through the document, checking once more for typos or other errors. But everything looked perfect. Holding my breath, I hit the tab to print it out.
The printer was just wheezing into life, crunching and groaning like a troll awakening beneath a bridge, when I heard the front door slam open. Glancing up and over the kitchen counter, I saw my brother coming in.
He spotted me right away, even though I was trying to pretend I was invisible. “Hey, Maria.” He hurried through the kitchen and under the little arch leading into the living room. “Didn’t think anybody’d be home. What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” I said, though the noisy printer belied what I’d said. “Um, just printing something.”
“Duh.” He tossed his car keys on the coffee table and came a few steps closer. “Printing what? School’s out, you know.”
I forced a laugh. “Yeah. Um … ” I thought fast. I didn’t want to have to explain what it was, especially since I didn’t even know if I’d get in. “It’s … an application. For … a job.”
He looked surprised. “Job? You? You’re only, what, eleven?”
“Twelve,” I corrected. But even as I said it, I knew he was right. What kind of job would someone my age be applying for?
Before I could come up with another lie, the tinny chorus of a popular song burst out of Nico’s shorts pocket. It was his phone, and when he pulled it out and looked at the screen, his face lit up.
“Hey, Sof,” he said, pressing it to his ear without so much as another glance at me. He wandered off down the hall toward his room.
Saved by the girlfriend! I slumped with relief, then glanced at the paper now unwinding slowly, slowly out of the machine …
An eon or two later, it was finally finished. I turned off the printer, then grabbed the application and my laptop and scurried off to my room. I’d already set out a manila envelope, and soon my application and sketch were tucked safely inside. I addressed it, then hid it under my mattress so Josie wouldn’t see it and ask any nosy questions before I mailed it out tomorrow.
That night as I slid into my usual seat at dinner, I couldn’t stop thinking about the package. What would the judges think of my sketch? The rules hadn’t specified topics or medium, but suddenly my black-and-white dolphin drawing seemed childish and unworthy of such a prestigious art program. Was it good enough, or was I deluding myself?
Sunday night dinners were usually a big deal at our house. That was when my abuelita, my dad’s mom, came over, along with her longtime helper, a tiny, grizzled woman from Panama named Aggie. My mom’s sister, Tia Teresa, usually came, too, bringing her third husband and their four-year-old. Tonight Josie had brought home a couple of friends from the beach, and Nico’s girlfriend, Sofia, was there, too, so the dining room was crowded and noisy, with arms reaching here and there for Mom’s albóndigas, Teresa’s noodle casserole, and the half-dozen other dishes crammed onto every spare inch of the table.
“Maria! Wake up, girl.” Tia Teresa snapped her fingers in my direction. “Pass the rice, would you?”
“Sure.” I grabbed the dish, almost burning my hand on the hot crockery.
After I’d passed it on, I fell back into my own thoughts. The best young artists from up and down the coast would be trying to get into the program, including a few really talented people from my school. What made me think I was special enough?
Then again, why not me? Everyone had always said I had a talent for art. Well, almost everyone. My family had never had much use for my scribbling, as my mother called it. When my grandfather was alive, he used to take me to museums now and then, once even driving us all the way down to San Diego for a special exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. But the rest of them thought most art was a waste of time—time that could be spent on something more sensible, like studying hard so you’d get a good job someday, or playing sports so you’d stay in shape. Art wasn’t practical, and my family was all about being practical.
