America's Next Top Author: 1st Challenge

America's Next Top Author: 1st Challenge
by Susmi R.

A Wimpy Wave Ride

I shook out my dark curls of hair, unable to enjoy the feel of sunlight pouring down on my back.

I can do this, I can do this, I assured myself, knowing that they were looking at me patronizingly, challengingly, as I watched the waves, frothing and flitting up the water’s edge.
My fiberglass surfboard stood beside me, a quarter sunk into the endless stretch of golden sand.
It quivered slightly, as though it was nervous of the rising white crests rolling through the tempestuous ocean, too.

I can’t do this!

I gulped anxiously, and I guess it seemed obvious to Cheryl Steinberg that I couldn’t do her dare, because she laughed in that haughty voice of hers.

“Hah, see? I knew you couldn’t do it, Simons”, she smiled smugly at me, her cronies copying her every move.
My cheeks burnt red.
My thoughts were so screwed up, I couldn’t fathom why I had brought my new surfboard to Middleton Beach, but I knew it wasn’t because I wanted to be humiliated by Middleton High’s mean cheerleaders in their string bikinis.

“You can’t cheerlead. You can’t play volley ball “, she looked at my pale blue one-piece up and down condescendingly, and scoffed, “You can’t even dress properly”.

As her posse clan laughed harshly, as though they thought her speech was totally amusing, each sentence rang through my ears again and again.

Jenny had gone to get ice creams, so I didn’t even have friend support in hand.
It was just me and the populars of Middleton High.

I gritted my teeth. I felt like a slug under their presence.
Cheryl smiled satisfyingly, as though she’d done her part to mock me, and she continued, “Why don’t you just grab a Popsicle instead, and sit there sucking on it all day, like the baby you are?”

Her friends – or more like, followers – burst out in fresh peals of laughter as I stood there, humiliated, disgraced and crushed.

But that wasn’t going to last for long.

“I can surf!” I whispered back dangerously to her, as she stood there haughtily among her laughing posse, the one in the middle, staring at me with triumph.

She could only hear it, and she replied, her features hardening, “Then do it”.

My hands gripped the surfboard involuntarily, and without my consent, I had already gyrated around on one foot, walking towards the vast foamy sea.

I knew I didn’t have to prove it to them, and I knew I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t surf.

I didn’t even know how.

And I even knew the phrase ‘think before you act’ but that didn’t stop me, because before I knew it, I was standing at the edge of the water, little white foams rising to my feet and flitting away just as quickly.
My heart thudded in my chest violently as I looked up from my feet to the waves in the distance.

There were mostly guys out in the water riding those waves, but I could see some girls, too.
That came as a relief for me suddenly, as though I thought that I couldn’t possibly be worse than them, but then I realized, as I saw a blond girl spinning on the tail of her board in a perfect three-sixty, I was a goner.

The sky was the beautiful color of a robin’s egg, and the sun rained its rays on the shimmering blue water, but I couldn’t notice all this.
I turned my head, and saw Cheryl standing there arrogantly, posse-misted, her olive-colored arms crossed over her olive-colored chest, waiting expectantly.

Or maybe, not-so-expectantly, since she knew too, that I couldn’t surf and that she knew that I was going to wimp out, just like all those other times, since grade one when she had dared me to play a game of ‘truth or dare’ and I wouldn’t.
Because I couldn’t.
Because, in easier words, I was a major freak.
A wimp.
A failure of Nature.

I looked away from Cheryl’s knowing expression, and stared out blankly at the ocean again.
I had to do it, I had to.

Taking a deep breath, and knowing - knowing - that I was going to humiliate myself even more, I, waded into the water, shivering – from fear.

The waves, as I edged nearer, were larger than I had expected, and by then, my heart was practically beating like a drum, and I wondered halfheartedly why the daring surfers in front of me and the little kids behind me, making their sandcastles on the shore I just left, couldn’t hear it.

I couldn’t feel the sandy, shelled ground beneath me soon enough, and the water was soon chest-high as I paddled slowly, my board floating, following slowly behind me, as I dragged it.
Wee splashes hit me on the chin as I swam to the buoy indicating deep waters on the other side.

I didn’t dare look back.
I couldn’t have seen Cheryl Steinberg’s face anyway; I was too far out in the ocean.
Of course, there were other laughing, enthusiastic swimmers around me, but as I ducked under the barrier string of the lifeguard buoy, I could only see the surfers – with occasional expert swimmers.

I’m not a bad swimmer, so the part where I had to go deeper, to where the large waves towered, was rather easy.
My black, wet curls floated about my face on the Adam’s ale, my bangs clinging to the damp, marble-pale expanse of my forehead as the breakers rushed on closer with each stroke I took.

White horses rushed over each other, as I watched, head-high in the murky water.
I didn’t dare look down, into the water, afraid I’d see darkness, nothingness, so I stared with nervousness at the white-crested waves splashing at each other, as though they had a life of their own.
I’ve never been this far away from land before. Never.
Not even counting a boat ride.

The large combers seemed to have a life of their own, really – it was as though they were having a battle with each other, an unending fight.
I’ve really thought about it till now, but I knew it, as I gazed at them.
And the surfers… they sure knew what they were doing.

The rode on the rollers with ease, rarely were any of them sucked into the pressure-filled vortexes I was so nervous about. Because, you know, you could get sucked up in them, and never be heard of again – just like a black hole.

But maybe I’m just being paranoid, again, as I think this.

The waves were coming in sets of threes – the last wave the highest and each billow became higher and higher until the third one reached its foaming pinnacle and crashed down mightily. Something stuck in my throat as my gaze focused on these white waves.

But I gulped it back down as I draped my fair arms over the board and decided it was time to do the impossible.
To stand.

I was lifted up and down by the waves as I spotted a clear wave approaching me.

It was now or never, my head told me, as I pushed myself up on the board, setting myself up behind the breaking lip.
I gulped.

It was now or never.
And I knew it.

I took in a great breath of air, called on my Simons spirit and straightened to my full length, as the wave caught my board.

What happened, you ask?
Well, you try surfing for the very first time in your life and tell me.

Because, although here I am, on the sandy shore, with an sore and bruised body, burning lungs and searing eyes, and coughing and spluttering for all I was worth, surrounded by laughing members of the Cheryl group and Cheryl herself, I really can’t tell you what it felt like to be crushed under mountains of cascading white water and tumbling in salty green chaos.

It sucked, plainly, and I was a wimp again, and always will be, I guess.

But there was one part, just one second before I was trapped in a tumultuous vortex, where the wave scooped me up and carried me with it – I was riding high then, skimming the surface of the ocean, queen of the salty sea.
Adrenaline shot through me, salt water whipped through my hair and I knew then, that this was the sensation of flying.

And let me tell you, there’s no other better sensation – nor, experience – of flying.

Even if you still end up being a wimp.