not ask Ronan—or anyone else—not her mother or her father or Mahail to accept responsibility for her life. She was in charge. She was taking responsibility for herself. He did not hold the key to her secrets; she did.
She knew that what she was thinking must have shown in her face, because Ronan studied her, then nodded once, and the look on his face was something she would take back with her and cherish as much, maybe more, than the satisfaction of riding the wave.
She had won Ronan’s admiration—reluctant, maybe, but still there. He had looked at her, long and hard, and he had been satisfied with what he had seen.
She turned and stepped into the surf, laughed as she leaped over a tumbling wave and it crashed around her, soaking her in foam and seawater.
Then, when she was up to her knees, she placed the board carefully in front of her and tossed herself, belly down, on top of it. It was as slippery as a banister she had once greased with butter, and it scooted out from underneath her as if it was a living thing. A wave pounded over her, awesome in its absolute power, and then she got up and ran after the board.
Drenched, but deliriously happy, she caught the board, shook water from herself, tried again. And then again. It was discouraging. She couldn’t even lie on it without getting dumped off. How was she ever going to surf?
Her arms and shoulders began to hurt, and it occurred to her this was going to be a lot harder than she’d been led to believe by watching surfers on TV. But in a way she was glad. She wanted it to be challenging. She wanted to test her spunk and her determination and her spirit of adventure. Life-altering moments were not meant to be easy!
Ronan came and picked her up out of the sand after she was dumped for about the hundredth time, grabbed the board that was being dragged out to sea. She grabbed it back from him.
He sighed. “Let me give you a few tips before you go back out there. The first is this: you don’t conquer that water. You work with it, you read it, you become a part of it. Give me the board.”
It was an act of trust to hand the board to him, because he could just take it and go back to the cottage, but somehow she knew he was now as committed to this as she was. There was nothing tricky about Ronan. He was refreshing in that he was such a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy.
“You’re lucky,” he said, “it’s a longboard, not a short one, a thruster. But it’s old, so it doesn’t have a leash on it, which means you have to be very aware where it is at all times. This board is the hardest thing in the water, and believe me, it hurts when it clobbers you.”
She nodded. He tossed the board down on the sand.
“Okay, get on it, belly down.”
She recognized the gift he was giving her: his experience, and recognized her chances of doing this were better if she listened to him. And that’s what he’d said. True power wasn’t about conquering, it was about working with the elements, reading them.
And that’s what Ronan was like: one of the elements, not to be conquered, not to be tamed. To be read and worked with.
When she was down on her belly, he gave her tips about positioning: how to hold her chin, where to have her weight on the board—dead center, not too far back or too far forward.
And so she learned another lesson about power: it was all about balance.
He told her how to spot a wave that was good to ride. “Nothing shaped like a C,” he warned her sternly. “Look for waves shaped liked pyramids, small rollers to start with. We’ll keep you here in the surf, no deeper than your hips until you get the hang of it.”
He said that with absolute confidence, not a doubt in his mind that she would get the hang of it, that she would be riding waves.
“So, practice hopping up a couple of times, here on the sand. Grab the rails.”
“It doesn’t have rails!”
“Put your hands on the edges,” he showed her, positioning her hands. She tried not to find his touch too distracting! “And then push up, bend your back and knees to start, get one leg under you, and pop up as fast as you can. If you do it slow, you’ll just tip over once you’re in the water.”
Under his critical eye, she did it about a dozen times. If he kept this up she was going to be too tired to do it for real!
“Okay,” he finally said, satisfied, peeling off his shirt and dropping it in the sand. “Let’s hit the water.”
They didn’t go out very far, the water swirling around his hips, a little higher on her, lapping beneath her breastbone.
“This is the best place to learn, right here.” He steadied the board for her while she managed to gracelessly flop on top of it.
“Don’t even try to stand up the first couple of times, just ride it, get a sense for how your surfboard sleds.”
“Sleds? As in snow?”
“Same word,” he said, and she smiled thinking this might be as close as she got to sledding of any kind. Maybe she would have to be satisfied to look after two dreams with one activity!
“Okay, here it comes. Paddle with those arms, not too fast, just to build momentum.”
Shoshauna felt the wave lift the board, paddled and then felt the most amazing thing: as if she was the masthead at the head of that wave. The board was moving with its own power now and it shot her forward with incredible and exhilarating speed. The ride lasted maybe a full two seconds, and then she was tossed onto the sand with such force it lifted her shirt and ground sand into her skin.
“Get up,” he yelled, “incoming.”
Too late, the next wave pounded down on top of her, ground a little more sand into her skin.
He was there in an instant hauling her to her feet.
She was laughing so hard she was choking. “My God, Ronan, is there anything more fun in the entire world than that?”
He looked at her, smiled. “Now, you’re stoked,” he said.
“Stoked?”
“Surfer word for ready, so excited about the waves you can barely stand it.”
“That’s me,” she agreed, “stoked.” And it was true. She felt as if she had waited her whole life to feel this: excited, alive, tingling with the awareness of possibility.
“Ready to try it standing up?”
“I’m sooo ready,” she said.
“You would have made a hell of a soldier,” he said with a rueful shake of his head, and she knew she had just been paid the highest of compliments.
“I want to do it myself!”
“Sweetheart, in surfing that’s the only way you can do it.”
Sweetheart. Was it the exhilaration of that offhanded endearment that filled her with a brand-new kind of power, a brand-new confidence?
She
