Waiting for Magic by Susan Squires Page A

that was that. He’d lost his Kiwi accent over time, and he still wasn’t a great talker. But he wasn’t paralyzed by fear anymore.
    Kee had been a big part of drawing him in. She was the one closest to his age. And she had talked enough for both of them at first. She had become a translator of a sort, speaking for him when he didn’t speak for himself. She always seemed to know just what he’d say if he could. He watched her draw or paint or make lumps of clay into horses and people for hours on end. Kee made him see things in new ways. It was like she knew a thing or a person inside and out and revealed what it really was to everybody else. It never ceased to amaze him. She tamed how she saw things and expressed it. During those first months it had seemed she had a control over her life he didn’t have.
    She’d been his lifeline.
    As of now, that lifeline was gone. He’d thrown it away. He’d always loved her, of course. But now he was in love with her, and that changed everything. The wrenching feeling in his gut made him want to scream. Good thing he had all those years of practice being silent. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention now. But he couldn’t stay here, trembling in front of the window. Dinner tonight had flayed him raw.
    He needed the sea.
    He pulled open the French doors and pushed out into the rain and wind. The cold was welcome on his bare torso and feet. Maybe it would cool the burning inside him. So he didn’t reach for his wetsuit. He grabbed a long board from among several boards leaning against the fence that hid the garden shed and headed out over the lawns to the path along the cliffs. He’d need a big board for the kind of waves out there tonight. The dark didn’t scare him. He knew the way to the beach below like the back of his hand. He found the trail angling downward and picked his way down through the rocks to the narrow strand.
    Standing on the ribbon of sand, wet to the skin, he flipped his hair out of his eyes. The waves were huge, maybe twenty feet. They were rising way out, then cresting fast and crashing in foaming fury on the beach. Devin was a good surfer. Maybe great. He knew that. But only a fool with a death wish would surf these waves at night.
    But maybe that’s what he had. He felt the pull of the water calling him. It wasn’t the thunder of the waves or the howling wind. It was something more elemental that sometimes whispered to him when he felt closest to the ocean, like when he mastered a wave no one else could ride. It was like perfect harmony, a chord that vibrated in his soul and made him whole.
    That’s what he needed now. Maybe it would quiet him. Maybe it could fill up the hole Kee had left. And if it didn’t, maybe it would cure his problems in a more permanent way. He really didn’t care.
    He put down his board and stripped off his sopping pajama bottoms. Naked, he picked up his board and trotted into the freezing surf until the boiling foam was up to his hips. Then he launched himself forward onto his board and paddled like hell.
    He knew the currents around here like he knew how Kee’s eyes changed colors with the light. So he didn’t head straight into the giant waves. He struck out to the left, close to some rocks (which could also kill him) and let the outbound current help him through the waves. Tonight it was practically a riptide. He ducked through the waves until he could ride the swells over them, slowly getting father and farther out onto the black, swelling mystery of the ocean.
    His chest was heaving by the time he was able to sit up on his board and let the swells move under him. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet. The sheets of rain made visibility nearly zero. He couldn’t see the Breakers up on the cliffs. Hell, he couldn’t see the cliffs.
    But now that he was out here there was only one way to get back. A tingle of fear slid up his spine. With feet numb from the cold, could he even get up on his board? He sat there