“I wasn’t in the barrel.”
“You reached for me!”
“Zena, I didn’t make it. I clucked out when I saw that barrel. I wiped out and recovered just in time to see you perform.”
“But I saw you.” Zena clearly recalled Adan in the water bubble beside her.
More waves came, and Zena and Adan practiced cross steps and cutbacks. They laughed at each other as they fell off their boards. Looked after each other when the big waves came rolling through. They were talking without talking. Communicating. And it felt old. Comfortable. Familiar.
Zena and Adan watched and cheered as Zola and Alton conquered the scrappers, short waves closer to the shore.
Though she was far away, Zena could see a determination in Zola’s stance on the board. Zola leaned forward, balancing her weight on her right knee as she spread her arms wide into a T to hold her balance on a dying wave beneath her board.
“Z! Look ahead!” Adan called, and hearing some sense of urgency in his voice, Zena snapped around to see a large wave, a big surf, headed their way. “Up!” Adan shouted. “Up!”
Zena popped to her feet in time to take off on the curl of the wave and ride the crest.
“Cowabunga!” she heard one of the shaggy long-haired Australian surfers nearby holler as he made his way through the wave.
Then she heard, “Swell!”—a surfer call meaning there would be waves of the same size and speed following right behind the one she was riding.
Zena steadied her toes on the edge of the board, found her balance and held her breath as the water caught the board and flipped her over.
She wanted to curse but there was no time. She was underwater. Sand kicked up from the floor and bubbles burst all around her. She could see other surfers and their boards seeking reconnection in the blue.
Zena found her board and tugged at her ankle leash to bring it to her.
“You okay?” Adan asked, out of breath when she came up.
“Yeah, that was a tough one! Total wipeout!” Zena replied through her own bated breath as she sat up on her board.
“You ain’t kidding.” Adan nodded to the mess of struggling surfers gasping for air and trying to get back into the lineup to await the next wave.
Suddenly, and for no reason, because Zena hadn’t surfed in months since her last vacation to Hawaii and seldom ever thought it, a word came to mind that shot fear through her body—the deep. This was the deepest part of a wave, the part near its peak where surfers were most often thrown wildly from their boards and accidents, sometimes tragic accidents, occurred in seconds.
There was an eerie quiet then. A damning calm.
“Zola?” Zena called, turning toward the direction of the swell that had passed them and gone toward the shore, where Zola and Alton were practicing.
Zena spotted the surfing instructor and scanned the water for Zola’s brown face. She found Alton, but he was staring out into the water blankly. She searched backward and forward between the shore and then the sea, and there was no Zola. “Zola?”
She could see Adan stand on his board and call out to Alton. She couldn’t make out what he was saying because she was already paddling toward the empty space where she’d last seen her sister.
She heard the lifeguard’s whistle blow and saw the instructor dive into the water.
A wild board popped up. But then no one followed.
“Zola!” Zena paddled faster, but she felt as if she wasn’t going anywhere and maybe she was moving backward. She wanted to break from the surfboard and swim, but removing the ankle strap would take too long.
She saw Adan swim past, and every dark thought she could ever imagine crept into her brain, leaving a sinking suspicion that something horrible was happening. “No! No!”
By the time Zena made it to shore, the lifeguards were pulling Zola’s limp body from the water.
Adan and Alton were racing behind them as they made their way to the sand, where a crowd had already gathered.
“My sister! My sister!” Zena screamed, and some surfer she didn’t know helped her pull the ankle strap off before she was free from her surfboard and could run to Zola’s side.
“Zola!” Zena pushed through the crowd of worried spectators and tried to get to Zola, but Adan stopped her.