The Only Exception (4 page)

Before I call my mother, I simply put my head back, close my eyes and listen to the rustling of the palm trees. The warm breeze washes over my face and I take a deep breath, smelling the fragrant Hawaiian flowers drifting on the salty breeze. This is my favorite feeling. Relaxed, warm with a little wind touching my cheeks, devoid of cares or worries. The feeling of being home.

Next, I tap in my mom’s number and wait for the rings to end. Just as I think her voice mail is about to begin, she answers. “Hi sweetheart!” she says. “How’s my girl?”

“Good,” I reply. “I signed up for those competitions I mentioned today.”

“Fun,” she sighs. “How’s McKayla?”

“She’s good. She has a boyfriend,” I answer.

“How sweet,” Mom replies quaintly. “You should invite a boy from your school over sometime this fall. Or maybe that snowboarder you used to train with— Jake, right?”

“Mom, the guys at my school are idiots,” I respond matter-of-factly. “And Jake moved to Colorado to train for the Olympics.”

“Have you met any boys on the island yet?” she inquires.

“Two. One is nice, but his little brother is a jerk.”

“How old is he?”

“The little brother is my age and the nice one is twenty,” I remember.

“Are they cute?”

“Mo-om!” I whine.

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I just can’t help it! I want to see my baby fall in love someday.”

“I can’t make guys fall for me mom,” I say, trying to avoid explaining the hideous truth to her again. “If they like me, they like me. If they don’t, they don’t. I can’t do anything about it.”

“Except go out with them if they do like you.”

“Mom!”

“Sorry, honey,” she laughs again. “Alright, I’ve gotta go. Client calling.”

“Okay. Love you mom.”

“Love you too.” Dead line. I sigh.

I’ve explained the whole “I don’t believe in love” thing to Mom before. She just doesn’t get it. It’s incomprehensible to her that a hormonal teenager would be able to resist going after every other boy she sees. I think she feels bad, too. She wants me to fall in love because she feels like it’s her fault that I believe this. Like she can somehow erase the pain of the divorce by getting me to fall in love.

“Why is life so complicated?!” I shout at the flowers. Sadly, no one can answer that question.

I pop inside to grab my book and settle back into my chair. I disappear into the world of
This Present Darkness
’s riveting sequel and don’t come out until Grammy taps my shoulder, telling me it’s almost ten and she’s going to bed. I nod and yawn, following her inside to ready myself for bed. I have to be well-rested for tomorrow morning to pull out all the stops.

Six

“Alright, I don’t want you to hold back,” Papaw instructs the next morning. I dig my toes further into the hot sand as I nod. The warmth of the sun filters through my rash guard, heating up my shoulders. “I want everything. New tricks, old tricks, whatever. Be careful on that knee, too. Clean rides, okay?”

“Got it,” I affirm.

“Go,” he commands, nodding towards the waves. I run out into the water and let the waves wash over my legs as I dive onto my board, paddling out. The water is crystal clear, so clear, I can see straight down to the ocean floor. My eye doesn’t bother me too much, but the water does sting more than usual.

I do as Papaw instructed and pull some radical tricks on my first wave. My bad knee hurts a little, but nothing I can’t handle. Maria, my physical therapist back in New York, cleared me for surfing before I left, so I’m not worried.

“Good. Not great, but good,” my grandpa says as I paddle into shore. “Try a slob air reverse after a vertical backhand snap.” I hold up a thumbs-up in reply.

Once back in the lineup, I wait for a wave. It doesn’t take long for one to come my way, and the pop is smooth. The pop is when a surfer stands up on a wave. I turn the nose of my board straight up and swerve forward, then prepare for the air. As I lift off the wave, I grab the toe-side edge of my board, positioning the board so my tail is behind me. I pull the board in close to my body, then let go as I turn to drop. The exhilaration of a jump always makes me feel super-human.

As I hit the water again, I pull a 360 degree carve for good measure and toss up a sick amount of spray. That’s one thing I like about surfing that snowboarding and skateboarding don’t have. I can’t carve in skateboarding, and when I carve in snowboarding, it looks really cool when the snow blows up around me, but it’s just not the same. I can’t feel the water droplets hitting my skin. I can’t feel the film of water wash over my toes as my board cuts through the wave. It doesn't feel like gliding on nothing.

“Choka!” he yells. “Go for a little more air next time and try some clidro!”

“Okay!” I shout back. Surfer lingo lesson #4,248,109: Clidro is swerving back and forth on a wave while riding down the line.

I try the same combination again, only with some clidro thrown in in between the jump and the 360 carve. Papaw waves me in and I fly in with the next wave, riding it to shore. “Nice to see your skating and snowboarding paid off,” he says, nodding. “I think you’re really ready to take on this competition.”

“Really?” I inquire, extremely pleased.

“Oh, without a doubt,” he replies. “Not many seventeen year old girls can throw down a wave like that and keep their technique from going out the window, while still adding their own style. That was great. I would work on perfecting the hardest moves you can do, and start trying some new stuff too over the week. Just play around. This first competition will be all about evaluating you.” My grandpa doesn’t just throw out compliments when it comes to surfing, so clearly, I’m doing better than I thought.

He stays for a little while longer to watch me surf, commenting occasionally, then heads out when McKayla arrives around 10AM. “So much for getting a head start on the competition, huh?” I yell as she paddles out into the lineup.

“You always were the dawn patrol girl,” she shouts back over the waves.

Having Papaw here is helpful for perfecting my technique, but when it comes to pushing me, no one beats McKayla. We surfed our first waves together a long time ago and even then, we were competitive. “That all you got?” I shout as she completes a kickflip, which is a 360° spin in the air, landing back on the wave.

“All I’m hearing is a lot of big talk,” she shouts. “All I’m seeing is a shubie.”

In response, I snag the next wave and start with another kickflip. From there, I add a little clidro, add a 360° shove-it where I spin the board around under my feet, and a layback, named such because when performing the trick, I lean back on the wave and snap the lip while my body lays horizontally. It’s hard for most surfers, but thanks to a lot of time in the half pipe, I’m used to laying back to perform tricks and my leg and core strength is such that I can perform it well. I flash her a little smile when I sit up on my board, back in the lineup.

“Shut up,” she quips, not looking at me. I smirk.

“How’re your legs holding up?” I inquire smugly. “Because with how many waves you’ve caught, you should have some pretty little surfer’s knots by now.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” she retorts. Surfer’s knots are little swollen spots of tissue on your ankles and knees you get when you kneel for a long time on your board because you haven’t caught a wave in a while.

She paddles in to the next wave that comes, pulling a clean ride. She adds a little snap at the end and loses her footing, going down instantly. “Wipeout!” I shout, laughing. She comes back up and gives me the evil eye.

“Somehow that was your fault!” she shouts.

“How was that my fault?!” I yell back defensively, stifling a laugh.

“I don’t know,” she replies, mounting her board. “But it was! Somehow!” I collapse into a fit of laughter and shove her shoulder, to which she shoves me. I shove her back and she shoves me off my board. Oh, she’s gonna get it now. Plunged under the water, I swim over and gently brush her leg with my arm.

I take my leash off so as not to disturb my board, then give the board a good hard yank, like they do in all those shark attack movies when a surfer gets bitten. I jerk it around a bit and then let it go entirely, as if the leash has been bitten off by a Great White. I brush up against her leg again, then grab hold and pull her under. I swim up to the surface and immediately burst into laughter. McKayla isn’t particularly terrified of sharks, but she wouldn’t want keep one for a pet in the bathtub, either. Every surfer should at least be wary of their surroundings.

“ANDREA KALANI MAVERICK,” she shouts upon surfacing. I put on my leash, ready to go. “Get over her so I can drag you down to a real shark!”

“Catch me if you can!” I call back, paddling into the next wave.

“Oh, I don’t doubt I can,” she yells. I laugh, pulling a few tricks to taunt her and then bail out, diving off my board, and come up to watch her sail past me. Oh, it’s good to be home.

Seven

“This is going to be the best movie ever!” McKayla states excitedly. I laugh.

“Wait, wait, wait! Here, come here,” I instruct, seeing the poster for
Three Hours Too Soon
. “Grammy, here, can you take a picture?” I ask, handing her my phone and posing with Mac. She takes a few good ones and a few silly ones and hands it back to me as we continue into the movie theater. “Thanks.”

“So what did you think of the book, Mrs. Maverick?” McKayla inquires.

“I loved it,” Grammy answers. “I thought it was brilliant.”

“I can’t wait to see what made the cut,” I comment. “I mean, Adam Reed seemed excited about it, so it can’t be that bad, right?”

“Hello, Caleb Daniels and Allison Grantz. How could be bad with those two?” Mac questions.

“A fantastic question that will be answered in three hours,” I reply, stepping into the line to buy tickets. “Three for
Three Hours Too Soon
, please.” I glance around as the woman behind the counter prints our tickets. The only people that seem to be standing around are those who are waiting in line for snacks.

On the opposite wall is a large
Three Hours Too Soon
display, with Caleb and Allison’s faces enlarged on either side. Brown-haired, blue-eyed Caleb image reminds me of another brown-haired, blue-eyed boy who has made himself scarce since the day he gave me the lovely bruise that has stuck around for almost a week now. Five days, actually. It doesn’t hurt as bad as it did that first day, but it hasn’t gotten any better in the looks department. On the upside, I’ll look tough tomorrow.

Mac and I would’ve gone to an earlier showing, but we were out on the waves, throwing down a serious practice to get on Sally Emerson’s nerves. The three of us coincidentally picked the same surf spot to practice at today. Sally’s good, but, not to be cocky or anything, Mac and I can take her any day, so we stuck around and showed off as long as we could.

“$32.10,” the ticket woman replies, handing me the tickets. I hand her the money and take the tickets. “Theater eleven, to your right.” We step to the side to sort out the tickets and let the next customers step forward.

“Two to
Three Hours Too Soon
,” a familiar voice requests. Great. I though I wasn’t going to have to put up with him until tomorrow.

“Sawyer! Melissa!” Grammy greets, surprised.

“Ellie!” the woman beside Sawyer Jerkface Hensley exclaims. “Great minds think alike, I suppose!”

“Yes, they do,” Grammy replies.

“Hey, McKayla. Hi Annie,” Sawyer greets. “Guys, this is my mum. Mum, you’ve met McKayla Atwood and this is Andrea Maverick, the girl I told you about.” I smile and shake her outstretched hand, then turn to McKayla.

“Mac, come on,” I command. “Let’s go get snacks.”

“Oh, honey, you can go with your friends if you’d like,” Mrs. Hensley tells Sawyer. Sawyer smiles, kisses her on the cheek and then follows us as I turn and pull McKayla towards the snack bar. The line has basically disappeared, but unfortunately, so has my appetite.

“One large cherry/blue raspberry swirl Icee,” I say at the counter. The twenty-something boy behind the counter rings up my order and hands me the large cup, which, to my excitement, is a reusable
Three Hours Too Soon
cup. McKayla and Sawyer both order the same, but Mac gets Skittles and Sawyer adds Sour Patch Kids to his order. Mrs. Hensley and Grammy meet up with us as we head to theater eleven.

“So, Sawyer, did you read the book?” asks McKayla. He nods.

“I don’t usually, but my little sister and my mum read it and said it was really good, so I picked it up and couldn’t stop until I was done,” he answers. “Best book I’ve read in a while.”

“Cool,” Mac returns. We enter the theater and begin to climb the stairs up to the middle row. Grammy and Mrs. Hensley go first, and I try to squeeze past them to sit next to Grammy and Mac, but Grammy stops me.

“Go sit with Sawyer. I’ll be fine,” she says, smiling. She might be fine, but I won’t be.

I do as my grandmother says, though, and take a seat to Mac’s right, next to Sawyer. We just sort of sit there for a moment in awkward silence, then a movie trivia question pops up on the screen. “I love these,” he comments. “‘What Broadway actress and singer best known as the Wicked Witch of the West in
Wicked
co-stared in the Disney movie
Frozen
?’”

“Idina Menzel,” we answer in sync, even before the multiple choice answers pop up. He glances at me just as I glance at him and we both look down in embarrassment.

“My sister loves that movie,” he explains. “I can’t go five minutes without hearing the soundtrack. Before I’d seen the movie, I’d heard the Demi Lovato version of ‘Let It Go’ on the radio and when she mentioned the song, I said ‘Oh, that one by Demi Lovato?’ She about went nuts, ranting about how the Idina Menzel one was the real one.”

“I sort of… did that to my dad once…” I mumble sheepishly. “My mom and I are huge
Wicked
fans though. We’ve seen her on Broadway twice. It gives me chills when she sings ‘Defying Gravity.’ She just has a range like no other.”

“Cool,” he replies, smiling. Suddenly another one pops up.
What roles did Ansel Elgort and Shaliene Woodley, lead roles of
The Fault in Our Stars
, play in the film
Divergent
?

Sawyer furrows his brow at the screen, exclaiming “Shoot! I know this!”

I smile and answer “Caleb and Beatrice Prior, brother and sister” confidently and even a little bit smugly. Who said movie trivia is useless?

Mac pounds her fist on the armrest on my other side and exclaims “Dang it! How’d I miss that?” I laugh. Sawyer glances at me with a devious smirk on his face and suddenly, we are competing just as hard as we will be tomorrow at Junior Champs. By the time the previews start, I’ve gotten ten out of eleven, and he’s gotten eight out of eleven. (For the record, the one I missed was about an actor in a movie I have not seen and do not care to.)

The previews play on forever as they always do, and then finally, the movie begins. As the story of Jane Thompson and Lucas Blake unfolds, I become unaware of my surroundings and lose myself in the story right up to the very end, even though I’m bawling my eyes out. The screen goes black and the lights come up as the credits play. I sigh and wipe my eyes. McKayla does the same beside me, and I hear a sniffle come from on my right. I quickly glance at Sawyer. Is it just my own eyes adjusting to the light and being full of water or are his eyes slightly red? “Were you crying?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Are you sure I didn’t impair your vision last week?” he asks defensively. “No, I wasn’t crying.” I turn away and roll my eyes. Yeah, sure. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jerkface.

The five of us stand up and file out of the theater, Sawyer staying fairly quiet as Mac and I chatter away about how cute Jane and Lucas are, how cute Caleb Daniels is and how awesome Adam Reed is. In the parking lot, the Hensleys start to head for their car as we head for ours, but as I turn away from bidding them goodbye, Sawyer exclaims “Wait!” and grabs my hand. I remove it from his grasp immediately, but his hands are soft and I almost regret letting go a moment later. Almost. But I did let go, which reassures me I have not yet completely lost my mind. “Good luck tomorrow,” he says. “Both of you. Just, you know, in case I don’t see you tomorrow before you compete.”

“You too,” Mac returns. I nod in agreement.

“See you tomorrow,” he bids, waving.

“See you,” I answer. Thirty minutes later, I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep and still thinking about Sawyer’s hand. Weird, I know. I have tried everything from replaying
Three Hours Too Soon
in my head to finishing
Piercing the Darkness
, but I just can’t get that stupid hand-grab thing out of my head. I don’t even know what it was. His hand was softer then you’d expect. It felt kind of like your skin feels after a paraffin wax dip at the spa.

I try to shake it off and tell myself that it doesn’t matter what his hands feel like, because all I need to know about him is 1. I can beat him in surfing and 2. I can beat him at movie trivia. Other than that, I stand by my earlier statements: His name might as well be Sawyer Jerkface Hensley.