patronize me.”
“So you’ll try it?” the doctor asks.
Daddy eyes us as if we’re coconspirators.
“For me?” I ask, gingerly. “Your one and only Olympic hopeful?”
“Fine,” he says, dropping back on the sofa. “For you.”
4
My day’s been a mess so far with the morning’s “ass” shoot and the mention of the word antipsychotic, but what really adds to my misery is that the waves were baby-size sucky. I can’t train on waves like that. I mean, who can train on little ocean zits? That’s why I have to go all the way to Australia for decent waves these days, waves I can up my game on—and soon I’ll be on a plane, making my way Down Under to do just that.
At the moment, I’m off in the corner under an umbrella table on the back patio at a beachside restaurant called Choke. Don’t ask. I should not have eaten that fourth slice of Hawaiian pizza because my biometrics shows a calorie surplus today. But let’s face it: the real reason I’m a perfect pig is that I’m trying to eat away the pain of Daddy’s flip-out and the anxiety of the weeks ahead.
My phone pings.
Christian, the guy I was in a lip-lock with last night before I had to rocket over to Daddy’s, keeps asking me to join him at the San Diego Zoo on Sunday evening as a “special access” observer. I tap the screen to find a photo of two Bonobo apes he’s studying, French-kissing, accompanied by a message, Nice technique, huh? It’d be creepy if I didn’t get his sense of humor. I’m on the fence about going because one, I need to pack for Sydney that day, and two, I’m not sure I want to give in to the illusion that my former-biology-teacher-turned-crush will yield a devastatingly awesome love affair.
After lunch, stuffed and regretting the fourth slice, I roll the Charger up to the Bullwinkle Surf Academy Training Center, a two-story emerald-glass gym on the Mission Beach boardwalk. Darned if I can’t get a parking place because someone’s hydrogen-powered Hyundai is in my reserved spot (a privilege bestowed upon me since I became an Olympic hopeful). I have to walk three blocks in my flip-flops with my backpack and board clutched under my arm because they dare you to park around here. I could have left the Charger at the restaurant and walked from there.
I push through the club’s glass entrance, past reception, and walk on into the open space. Chlorine bites my eyes. Weight machines clack. Members pound their workout. Several feet away, a surfer lies on his board in Sisyphus, the small, constant-current saltwater pool that allows a person to swim, or in this case, paddle endlessly in place. Pete “Bomb” Bullwinkle, my trainer and former big-wave surf god, is there beside the pool, staring at me with a totally serious look. No, hello.
“Bad news,” he says.
“What?”
“Come.” He waves me up the stairs to his loft office. I drop my stuff and follow him.
Bomb doesn’t ride big anymore. He’s in his midfifties, with salt-and-pepper hair cropped marine-grunt tight. His body is still trim and the picture of health, but his face has the red, telltale bloom of solar keratosis, or the pre-cancer surfers get after spending most of their free time in the water and under the hard sun.
“Have you checked your biometrics today?”
“Yeah, why? Should I be concerned?”
I’m guessing all the way up the stairs. We get to his office, which looks out across the Mission Beach boardwalk to the rolling Pacific. On his wall are two full-color posters of my main Olympics competition: Tokyo silver medalist, Brazilian Ipanema girl, Yara Silva, and gold winner, Kimberly Masters, an Aussie and my supreme rival. Yara is pictured ripping a wave on her short board, a white spray off its tail, her arms flung wide. Kim is crouched low on her board, popped three feet above the wave, getting some serious air.
I want to beat them both because (a) they’re stupid beautiful with tragically hot bodies, and (b) they’re stupid beautiful with tragically hot bodies. Bomb had some fun circling each of them with a thick black marker to create a sort of shooting-range target. The thing about Kim is that she’s a nine-time world titleholder, and mathematically this far into season she’ll be tough to defeat for the world title. But in the Olympics, qualifying is a clean slate. I’ve been thrashing Kim lately, and I can tell she feels it. Bomb says that the judges gifted her the medal, that she’s overrated, and that I have every chance to one-up her for gold, but there’s something confidence shaking as he walks over to his desk, picks up his ultrapad, and hands it to me. I take one look at the e-mail and meet his eyes.
“Are you fricking kidding me?”
“No,” he says. “I wish I were.”
5
Thursday, 4:37 a.m.
My mission-style La Jolla guesthouse rental ticks and creaks in the predawn light like an old man complaining of ailments. The shutters are closed to the spinning world, and the only light inside is from my phone, hard on my eyes as I swipe through rumors on social. I’m wigged out by yesterday’s news, wide awake, sitting up in bed, because get this: the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) wants to open an investigation on me and Bomb on behalf of the U.S. Olympic Committee. My agent-slash-lawyer says we have ten days to respond.
Did I even get an hour of sleep? The biometrics don’t lie. Digital readout:
0h 37m Deep sleep
2h 14m Light sleep
The remainder indicates waking every hour on the hour, and it shows on my mobile in a jagged orange-and-blue bar graph.
It’s been three months since I disconnected from social, joined the multitudes suffering from Facebook and YouMee fatigue, and dropped off—until now. Rumors of that big, fat doping lie started coming to me in person over the past few weeks through friends in the surf community. I thought it was a sick prank at first, but something in my gut said people were beginning to believe the allegation. I’ve never done drugs—OK, once: R71, a sex intoxicant that gave me a headache and cramps—but I’ve got a pretty good idea of who started the malicious lie and birthed it into the 24/7 spin cycle.
I spill out of bed, phone in hand, and stub my toe on the vacuum bot on my way to the bathroom. Lights on. Pee. Mirror. Is that my hair? I mean, really? It’s a hot-wired mess. Between the salt water, the hard sun, and the country’s freshwater shortage—everyone’s on mandatory, eco-fascist short showers—my hair goes psycho because I don’t have enough time to let the conditioner soak in to get it shampoo-commercial silky. What’s worse is that the stress from the doping allegation has turned my face into a pimple pizza—which is just dandy, since I have to be at a girlfriend’s rehearsal dinner at seven. Then, come tomorrow, I’ll be a bridesmaid, too.
I run my fingers through knotted clumps of hair and braid them into a ponytail. Daddy says I look like an old-world Irish lass with washy emerald eyes like the color of the South China Sea, though at the moment they’re seriously bloodshot. The truth is—and I’m comfortable saying it—that with freckles, the squarish jaw I inherited from him, none of the olive beauty of my mother, and the wide, manly shoulders that are the trademark of every pro surfer, I’d put myself at a definite five. My elbows, on the other hand? A perfect ten.
In the kitchen, I munch granola yogurt and rehang the dog-eared Mercator projection world map that fell off the wall
