Pulled Under

“Oh my God!” Ben whispers, being careful not to disturb her. “It’s amazing.”

I nod in agreement.

Once she’s done laying eggs, she uses her flippers to cover the nest back up, and then she begins the laborious task of dragging herself back to the ocean. We keep watching, but we move far enough away so that we can talk at regular volume.

“She was born here in Pearl Beach,” I say.

Ben gives me a skeptical look. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because sea turtles always come back to the same beach where they were born. It’s in their DNA.”

He thinks about this for a moment and then says, “Like me.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I came back to the beach where I was born too.”

I laugh. “That’s true. You did.”

“What will happen with the eggs?”

“In about six weeks they’ll hatch, and the little turtles will poke out of the sand and look for the moon. That’s the key.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s how they find their way,” I explain. “During hatching season all the houses on the beach keep their lights off. That way the babies can find the reflection of the moon on the water and know where to go. Then they’ll scramble back toward the ocean and disappear.”

“That sounds amazing,” he says. “We’ve got to come and watch.”

“Will you still be here then?” I ask.

I didn’t mean it as anything more than a basic question. But, given the conversations of tonight, it carries some emotional baggage.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “That should be my last week.”

I’ve already been enough of a drama queen for one night, so I decide it’s time for me to put on the brave face. I take his hand in mine and our fingers intertwine.

“Perfect,” I say. “We’ll come out and watch them together. You’re going to love it.”

I’m a total moron,” I say as I slip on a blue cami and look at it in the fitting room mirror.

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Nicole calls out from the next stall. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

“I don’t think so,” I reply. “I cried. I grilled him about breaking up with his girlfriend. Twice. It was basically a horror movie.”

“And then you were saved by a sea turtle,” she says. “Now there’s a twist on the normal environmental dynamic.”

“No kidding. Who knows how much damage I could have done if she hadn’t rescued me?”

“Let me see the outfit,” she says.

I step out and she looks it over. I’m wearing a lace shirt over the cami and a pair of white jeans.

“It’s nice,” she says. “But I like it more with the skirt than the jeans.”

“That’s a relief. I was worried the jeans would look better and then I’d have to make it through a whole meal without spilling anything on them.”

“But it’s okay to spill something on the skirt?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“No, but the white denim is just asking for it. That looks amazing on you, by the way.”

Nic’s trying on a floral baby doll dress with black leggings that really take advantage of her height.

“You sure? They’re not too tight?”

I shake my head. “You know what Sophie says.”

“There’s no such thing as too tight,” we both answer in unison.

The one drawback of life on Pearl Beach is that the nearest mall is almost an hour away. The two of us have made the trip because we’ve found ourselves in an unexpected situation. Namely, for the first time in our lives we have boyfriends. As a result we’re both looking for a little wardrobe pick-me-up. Of course we don’t have much money to spend, so we’re only looking on the sale racks.

“It was a lot easier when I stuck to dark colors and solids,” Nicole says. “You know, in order to blend in while I stalked him.”

“Good times,” I say as we head back into our stalls. “Speaking of which, how are things now that you and Cody actually talk?”

“Way more fun,” she says. “Although we’re taking it kind of slow. We only go out once, maybe twice a week.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Absolutely,” she says. “The slow helps because it’s all so new to me. I feel like I need relationship training wheels.”

“That makes two of us. I don’t think I can count on that turtle rescuing me every time I start to spiral out of control.”

“Yeah, not so much.”

We step back out and now she is wearing a graphic tank top and a high-low skirt that looked like nothing special on the rack but incredible on her.

“I should never shop for clothes with you,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because of the whole six-foot-supermodel thing. I feel like Stumpy McGee.”

“Who’s Stumpy McGee?” she says with a laugh.

“I don’t know. I just made her up. But he ca

“Well, you’re not Stumpy McGee because everything you’ve tried on looks adorable. Besides, I could never get away with wearing those,” she says, pointing at the pair of boyfriend jeans I’m trying on.

“Sure you could,” I say. “Except on you’d they’d be capris.”

We both laugh and I realize that this is the beauty of having a lifelong best friend. You can give each other garbage, boost each other’s confidence, and look out for each other all in consecutive sentences.

I remember learning how to ride a bike, and I’m still learning how to drive. (I’ve got my permit, but I do not feel a rush to get my license.) But I don’t remember learning how to surf. It was too long ago, and that’s a shame because if I did remember, it might help me teach Ben. Today is his first lesson on his new board, and he wants to make it memorable.

“It’s time we go out where the grown-ups surf,” he says.

Up until now, he’s been using my dad’s board and I’ve done the same lessons with him that I do with the summer campers. We’ve stayed in shallow water, and he’s only caught waves after they’ve broken. It’s a great way to learn, but now he’s ready to go out beyond the white water. At least, he thinks he’s ready. Just in case he’s not, I’m right alongside him reminding him of each step along the way.

First we wade out into the water until it’s waist deep, and then we lie out on our boards and start paddling. The part that surprises people the most is how hard it is to paddle. It looks like it should be easy, but it’s not. You have to get used to balancing, and you have to work hard to go against the tide.

“Don’t forget to duck dive,” I tell him.

Duck diving is what you do when you paddle into a wave that’s coming right at you. The way you’re supposed to do it is to speed up right until you’re about two feet away and then push the board down under the water and let the wave pass over you. If you forget, the wave slams your board into you.

Apparently he didn’t hear me, because he forgets.

“My bad,” he says. “I was supposed to do something there, wasn’t I?”

“Duck dive!” I say, louder this time as another wave approaches. Now he picks up speed, and although it’s not particularly graceful, he manages to get under the wave and pop out on the other side.

“Like that?” he asks.

I ignore the lack of grace and focus on the positive. “Yes. But next time try holding the rails tighter and push down with your whole body.”

“Got it,” he says.

We dive under a couple more waves before we get out beyond the break to where the water is calm. The look on his face is priceless. He is loving it.

“Now you need to straddle your board like this,” I say, demonstrating.

“Do I look at the ocean or at the beach?” he asks.

“Did you not listen to any of the lessons I gave you?”

“I tried,” he says. “But it’s hard to pay attention because you’re so pretty.”

This makes me laugh. “You look out at the ocean until you see the wave you want. Then you turn and start paddling.”

“Got it,” he says.

I look over at him and see that he’s struggling to find the right balance. His butt keeps sliding from one side of the board to the other and he overcorrects to keep from falling off.