Blue by Lisa Glass

Author:Lisa Glass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“Take me surfing,” she said.

“Aaargh.”

“Do you have plans with Zeke or something?”

“Nah, he’s away for a couple of days at some big wave spot in Ireland for a Billabong party.”

“Come on then! I wanna stand up on a real surfboard.”

Kelly liked to kayak and bodyboard, but I’d been dying to get her on to a real surfboard for years.

I sat up and looked at my alarm clock: six thirty.

“Right this second?”

She gave me a big hopeful grin.

“Well, I s’pose you do have the same first name as the greatest surfer ever.”

“Do I? Who’s she then?”

“You are joking? He is eleven-time World Surfing Champion, Mr. Kelly Slater.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot him. To be fair, that is a girls’ name.”

“No, it’s not, and anyway that’s his middle name. His actual first name is Robert, but Kelly’s cooler.”

“Wow, I totally have a classic surfer name. Come on, let’s go get wet.”

“Is this so you can go surfing with Garrett?”

“Yep. So you have to teach me,” she said, grinning and pulling me out of bed.

“All right, all right. So, what have you two been up to anyway?”

“We’ve hung out, and that’s all I’m saying,” she said, zipping her lips. I knew she’d tell me more when she was ready, but she was superstitious about new relationships and wouldn’t say much until she was sure.

The beach was busy, and one of the lifeguards was bombing around on a jet ski, really close to shore and causing huge wakes. Seemed like he was playing more than lifeguarding, bouncing the jet ski over the breakers and only just missing kids, dogs and tourists by the skin of his teeth.

A swell was due in, but the surf was still pretty small. Nice waist-high crumbling waves that were perfect to learn on. I got Kelly a foam swell board, which she couldn’t hurt herself on, and I tried to explain to her about good paddling, the importance of arching your back and keeping your shoulders still while relaxing the muscles. Getting a nice plane through the water was the main thing. Paddling was a skill that took years to master properly, but I figured I could give her a decent head start by pointing out her errors.

“You need to move back a bit,” I said. “You’re too far up on the board and the nose is going to dig into the sea and send you ass over tit.” She shuffled down the board and the tail began to drag, slowing her down. “Up a notch,” I said.

Eventually she centered her weight so that the board was floating nicely.

“OK, you need to make your hands into cups, dig deep and pull back to your waist. You want the board to maintain a nice steady speed as it glides over the water.”

Since she was a total beginner, there was no way I was taking her out into the line-up. That was the sort of crazy that I’d leave for clueless kooks.

“I wanna go out with the hot surfer dudes!” she moaned.

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