In the Break Read Online Free PDF Page A

close eye on him, to spend time with him when I
     wasn’t around, even taking him with Robert Bonham when they went to Disneyland on one of their first dates.
    When Amber started surfing she insisted that Robert take Jamie and me along sometimes, even though we’d been at it for a fewyears already. And he did, surfing with us down the coast at breaks we would never have been able to get to.
    When F entered the scene, Amber took up the void left by Mrs. Watkins’s defection. It wasn’t that their mom neglected Jamie
     or anything. She was just spending time with a man, a guy who wasn’t Jamie’s father, and I knew Jamie didn’t like it, though
     he never said anything about it. He kept quiet, as usual. But it was weird — I could know stuff about Jamie without us ever
     talking about it. I knew he didn’t like F being with his mother. I knew he wasn’t happy when she eloped with him. But what
     could he do?
    Could he really get arrested?
    We sat there quiet, gazing out over the dark sea. In the silent roar of the waves breaking by the shore I wondered how I could
     help. I couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t gauge their emotions, but it was as if Amber had read my mind.
    “F hid the car keys,” she said.
    Jamie shouted, “The dick locked them in his safe.”
    I wondered why Jamie hadn’t just taken his mother’s car, then remembered it wasn’t running, the reason he’d taken F’s in the
     first place to get us to the morning waves. “Maybe I can get my mother’s car,” I said. A plan was formulating in my mind.
    “Could you?” Amber said.
    “Your mother won’t give you her car,” Jamie said.
    “I won’t ask.”
    We digested the implications of that remark. Remembering the warmth of Amber’s hand in mine, I thought, I could do it. My
     father was at work — he wouldn’t be home until eight in the morning,and my mother was a heavy sleeper. Besides, I didn’t want Jamie to go through any more shit. Not tonight.
    “It’s just to get Jamie out of town, get him a good start.” I’ll get the car back before my father gets home from work and
     before my mother wakes up, I thought.
    “I’ll go with you,” Amber said.

    It was after midnight as Amber drove my mother’s car. I was pensive in the passenger seat — I’d never done anything close
     to this my entire life! We drove in the Barrela family car, a brand-new 4Runner cruising next to the beach without letting
     the tires go into the sand. Tourists always tried to drive up on the beach to park, and when it was time to go they’d gun
     their engines and spin their tires, expecting the sand to release them, but the sand was unforgiving. It was tricky driving
     because Amber had turned off the headlights so as not to be seen from up on the mesa, should anybody be watching. There were
     no other vehicles on the road, and when we were directly south of my house on the mesa, I told Amber to stop the car, leave
     the engine idling. Soon Jamie opened the side door and got in. He held his backpack on his knees. There was no reason to peel
     out, but the sand covered the highway and in her excitement Amber stepped on the gas too hard and burned rubber getting back
     on the highway. After a short time she turned on the car’s headlights.
    “Lemme drive,” Jamie said. “You’re going to get us pulled over.”
    “Shut up,” Amber said.
    “Stop for my board, okay?” Jamie said.
    “You bet,” I said.
    “You can’t hitchhike with a board,” Amber said.
    “I’m not going south without it,” Jamie said. “Swell’s building.”
    Far off in the distance you could see waves breaking white against the unseen pilings of the pier. We’d often stored our boards
     in Greg Scott’s garage so we could walk to the pier after school let out, because the waves there were usually better than
     the beach break at Playa Chica. Sandbars would form around the structure, making for reeflike surfing.
    And that big south swell was heading to the coast of