Cut Back Read Free

settled in for a day of sun and fun. Kai pulled the zipper down the back of his wet suit and peeled the black rubber off his arms and shoulders and down to his waist. Then he wrapped the leash of his board around the tail.
    Out of the corner of his eye he noticed someone coming along the beach toward him. It was a guy, probably about Kai’s age, trotting in a weird, herky-jerky manner. His hands moved in strange, twitchy motions, and his head rolled and snapped. To Kai it almost seemed like there were two people inside the guy’s body, both fighting for control over what he did. The whole effect was so bizarre that Kai actually stared.
    The guy stopped half a dozen feet away, as if he knew better than to get too close.
    He started to hop up and down, licking his lips with his tongue. He may have been trying to say something, but it was hard to tell. The only sound he made was “Scree … scree … scree,” like he was a crow or something. The whole thing was so whacked that Kai actuallylooked around to see if someone was playing a joke on him.
    But no one he knew was watching. Over at Screamers, Lucas and his crew were busy catching waves, while a hundred yards to the right, Bean, Booger, and Shauna were doing the same thing at Sewers. Meanwhile this guy seemed to be working himself into a frenzy, as if he was trying to do something, but the harder he tried, the more he jerked and grimaced and hopped and squeaked.
    Finally a massive shudder shook through him, as if his whole body had gone on overload and shut down. His shoulders sagged and his jerky legs and arms went limp. He shook his head and turned away. Strangely, while he still jerked and flinched slightly, it was nothing like before.
    Now something else caught Kai’s attention. A dark green dump truck with TOWN OF SUN HAVEN written on the side was weaving through the blankets and umbrellas along the beach. The back was piled high with scrap wood. The truck stopped directly inshore from Screamers, and Dave McAllister, the stocky red-haired chairman of the Sun Haven Surf boardroom, jumped out along with two guyswearing light green Town of Sun Haven coveralls. Big Dave pointed at a spot on the sand and the two town employees climbed into the back of the truck and started tossing out the scrap wood.
    Kai watched with interest. He had to assume that delivering scrap wood for Fourth of July bonfires wasn’t part of a typical town employee’s job description. Dave McAllister worked for Buzzy Frank, Lucas’s father, not for the town. Yet, there he was giving orders to the two guys off-loading the wood. If Buzzy Frank didn’t outright own the town of Sun Haven, he sure came close.
    Kai started up the beach. The strange guy had stopped about a hundred feet away and was watching him. He and Kai exchanged another look. It seemed as if there was something the guy urgently wanted to communicate, but was unable to. Kai felt bad, but it wasn’t his problem.

Four
    K ai had just let himself in through the back door of the T-shirt shop when Pat came into the back room and handed him a credit card. “Run off a charge for two hundred and sixty plus tax, and ten blanks of this,” the Alien Frog Beast from planet Dimwit ordered, adjusting his thick, square-framed glasses. Then Kai’s father disappeared through the back door that led to the parking lot outside.
    Kai looked down at the silver card. A Fuji Bank Visa. Clearly from Japan. This was one of Pat’s favorite scams. Anytime he got his hands on a foreign credit card, he’d run off blanks and then overnight them to certain “business associates” he knew in Nevada who usedforged signatures to get cash advances. By the time the tourists from Japan got home and found out they’d been scammed out of thousands of dollars, they’d be halfway around the world and unable to do anything about it.
    Kai laid the credit card on the desk where the pile of unopened mail