The Star Group Read Free Page B

showered my face. Beneath my feet my board felt like a runaway torpedo. The lip of the wave began to curl over my head, and the blue tube I entered right then was a thing of dreams, all encompassing. Only dead in front of me was daylight visible, and in the center of that light were three tall cement pillars. I couldn't turn away from them; I didn't have the control. The wave itself would have to save me. If the tube closed, my life would slam shut with it because I couldn't wipe out, not in this surf and expect to survive a roll through the pier. The only way to live was to make it to the other side. The razor edge of my existence, of my mortality, filled me with a strange intoxication. Maybe my death wish was more vital than I realized.
    I shot the pier. I missed the pillars by inches, and when I emerged on the other side the tube opened up and the sun shone on my face. That wave, possibly the biggest wave of the day, I rode almost all the way to shore. When I climbed out of the water and walked back to the south side of the pier, Sal and Jimmy were waiting for me on the shore. They had both witnessed my ride, the whole pier had. They just looked at me and shook their heads and patted me on the back. We didn't go back in the water, it wasn't necessary for us to do any more that morning. We didn't even speak about what I had done. What had happened was the best – it couldn't be topped. And in a sense we had all shared in it. Right then I felt closer to my friends than I ever had. I loved them, even more than I loved my own life. Maybe that was why I'd been able to risk my life, in a strange way, for them.
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    AFTER SHOWERING AMD DRIVING TO school with Sal, I collected my yearbook and searched it for pictures of myself and Gale. There were none of me, of course, except my senior picture, but there were four of my love: Gale sitting by herself on a bench; Gale talking to an art teacher, Gale laughing with the cheerleaders; Gale taking a nap on the grass behind a building.
    The last picture made my heart pound. What would it be like to nap beside her? My darling, I memorized each page number. I would have blown up the pictures if I could. I was thinking of looking into whether it was possible. Sick, yeah, I know.
    Teresa Jettison, Teri, was the first one to sign my yearbook. She came up to me as I was drooling over Gale’s photos, but I was quick to shut the book. Teri was dressed real nice in a grown-up sort of way. She was wearing a tan suit that made her look like the smart executive we all thought she was going to be. Teri had a knack for business. Already she owned a small mail-order company that imported cashmere blankets and shawls from Scotland and India and sold them to New Age clients for meditation and stuff like that. She was only eighteen, but she had made twenty thousand last year. And she was so nice and not the least bit conceited – she blew me away.
    Being black, she had dark hair, and it was her hair that most intrigued me about her looks. It was shiny and fluttered around her head like living threads. She had a way of looking you right in the eye when you were talking to her, as if there was nothing that mattered to her except what you were saying. Her relationship with Sal pained her, no question, but she accepted the good with the bad and didn't whine. She gave me a big hug after she came up to me.
    “I heard what you did,” she said, “Nut. You could have died.”
    I smiled with pleasure. “Today is not a good day to die.” I paused. “I like the picture of you and the clown. It looks like you have your hand up his nose.”
    Teri blushed. “That guy was hitting on me. I was trying to push him away. I can't believe Shena used that picture, I told her not to.”
    Earlier in the year Shena had been editor of the yearbook, but quit after her accident. Teri knew that Shena probably had nothing to do with the clown picture. For sure, if Shena had been editor still she would