145
Sunny looks up and sees that she's going to have to take another wave or two on her head, but it's okay, because she's in a good spot, close to the base of the waves, away from the point of maximum impact. But now she does release her leash, because the board is going to go in with the wave and she doesn't want to go with it.
She takes the two waves, then the set ends and Dave pulls her onto the Jet Ski.
“That kook,” Dave says, “jumped in on you.”
“I saw.”
He takes her onto the shore.
People are running up the beach, including some lifeguards with medical equipment. She waves them off. “I'm okay. I'm good.”
But Dave is already striding over to where Tim Mackie is running his pie hole to his entourage and some surf press.
“Yo, kook,” Dave says. “Yeah, you. I'm talking to you.”
“You got a problem, brah?” Mackie asks. He looks surprised. Like, People do not have problems with Tim Mackie.
“No, you have a problem,” Dave says. “You could have killed her.”
“Didn't see her, bro.”
High Tide steps into it. “You should get your eyesight checked, then, bruddah. ”
“You don't do that shit on my beach,” Dave says.
“This is your beach?”
“That's right,” Dave says. He moves in, ready to separate Mackie's head from his body. But Tide steps in front of him. Sunny steps in front of both of them and pushes the boys aside.
“I can take care of myself. Thanks, but I don't need you to big-brother me.”
“I'd do the same,” Dave says, “if it was Boone or-”
“I can take care of myself.”
Great, she thinks as the crowd stares at her. I wanted the wave of the day; instead, I got the wipeout of the day and a hassle with golden boy Tim Mackie.
“That wasn't cool,” she says.
“Sorry,” Mackie says. “My bad.”
But he has this smirk on his face.
“A-hole,” she says.
He laughs at her.
There's only one response to that. She picks up her board and starts back down the beach, to the point where she can paddle out again. She can hear the crowd murmuring words to that effect. “She's going out again. Do you believe it? After that? The chick's going back out there.”
Damn right, she thinks, the chick is going back out there.
Going back out there to take the biggest wave.
146
Johnny Banzai runs.
It's tough going through the heavy reeds, which cut his face and slice at his arms as he tries to beat them back in front of him.
Then he hears, as if from a far distance, a woman's keening.
147
Luce lies in Tammy's lap.
Tammy strokes the little girl's hair and sobs. Her hands are hot and sticky with the girl's blood, which runs from the little hole in her neck.
“Stop it,” Tammy says. “Stop it now.”
Tammy presses her hand on Luce's neck, but the blood bubbles around it. She feels stupid, and weak, and dizzy and there's pain somewhere in her body, but she can't figure out where, and Luce's eyes are wide and she can't hear her breath and the bleeding just won't stop. She hears a man's voice saying, “I've got her.”
She looks up and Daniels is there, trying to take Luce from her. Tammy holds her tighter.
“I've got her,” Boone says.
“She's dead.”
“No, she's not.”
Not yet, Boone thinks. The girl is in really bad shape-she's bleeding out, going into shock-but she's still alive.
It's like a dream in the waking moments, part real, part illusion. Everything is still at a distance, as if from the wrong end of a telescope, and he feels as if he's wrapped in cotton, but he knows he has to keep moving if the girl is going to live.
The old Japanese man is already taking his jacket off.
Boone takes it and wraps it around Luce. Then he kneels beside her, runs his hand up her neck, finds the little entrance wound, and presses his thumb into it. He picks her up with the other arm, cradles her against his chest, and starts to move back through the reeds, toward the road, where an ambulance can reach them.
“Stay with us, Luce,” he says. “Stay with us.”
But the girl's eyes are glassy.
Her eyelids flutter.
148
Sunny wipes the spray from her eyes and looks again.
She saw what she saw.
About fifty yards out but coming fast.
Waves generally come in sets of three, and they've done the three. But every once in a while, a set has a fourth. This bonus wave is a freak- bigger, stronger, meaner.
Amutant.
Known among waterman as the “Oh My God Wave.”
Which is what Sunny says as she sees it.
“Oh… my… God.”
The wave of a lifetime.
Mylifetime, Sunny thinks. My shot at the life I want, barreling right at me. I'm in the perfect spot at the perfect time. She rises up on her hips to look around and see what the Jet Ski crews are doing. They're lying out on the shoulder, waiting for the next set.
Well, the next set is here, boys, she thinks as she sees Mackie's Jet Ski start forward, easily fast enough to steal this wave from her. But then she sees High Tide paddle out between Mackie's ski and her. Golden boy Tim is going to have to go through him, and he isn't going to go through him. Not High Tide.
Normally, that would bother her, but she made her point on the beach and she's over it. It's only The Dawn Patrol looking out for one another and she accepts that.
