"Your Word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path...I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to Your Word!" – Psalm 119:105, 107
The big swell that hit C Street over the weekend did not arrive alone. It brought a squall of stormy weather along with it, which caused the previously sunny skies to be enveloped with racing storm clouds and dark horizons. For Alana, it fit her mood perfectly.
It was the morning of the surf competition, but despite all of her training, she felt anything but ready. Her body, though fit and strong, was already slumped over in defeat. She burrowed deeper into her sweatshirt and watched the windshield wipers in front of her glide back and forth.
The rain continued to pour down. Alana had surfed in a rainstorm before and found it rather fun, but today it only served to put a damper on the competition.
When Dylan pulled up to the parking lot, Alana saw all the parents and competitors huddling under umbrellas and Easy-Ups on the boardwalk. No one, it seemed, wanted to venture onto the wet, sticky sand.
Dylan turned the key halfway in the ignition and unlocked the doors. Alana wished she could stay home and curl up in front of the TV, but her older brother gently reminded her, "The team is waiting for you."
She sighed and pushed open the door. Immediately, raindrops pelted every square inch of her sweatshirt, but she left her hood down and allowed her hair to get soaked anyway. She was already warm enough as it was—she was wearing her wetsuit underneath her sweatshirt to avoid she changing in the parking lot.
After throwing her clothes on the backseat and grabbing her board, she bid Dylan goodbye and ambled in the direction of the Ventura High surf team.
"Alana!" Maya cried, waving and jumping up and down. "You're late!"
Alana groaned and put on her best fake smile. She really wasn't in the mood for talking, or competing, or even surfing in general. It was a foreign feeling, and her stomach churned anxiously.
After greeting the gang, Coach Kerr, and a few of her other teammates, she found a quite spot on the sand where she could warm up in peace. She knew Coach Alvarez was coming in another thirty minutes or so, just in time to watch her first heat. As she rolled out her muscles in the damp sand, she felt her quads and hamstrings ache from yesterday's training.
When she was done stretching, the first heat of the day was already underway, and Maya was out in the water along with three other girls. Alana stood up, the bottom half of her wetsuit now soaked and covered in wet sand, and watched expectantly. She sincerely hoped her friend would do well.
In the end, Maya claimed second place, which guaranteed her a spot in the next round. But now it was Alana's turn to put on the jersey.
She reluctantly made her way to the water's edge, clutching her shortboard under one arm while rain pattered all around her. As she stood waiting for the air horn to blow, she became acutely aware of the loneliness she suddenly felt. Before every heat of every competition Cole had always been the one to give her a pep-talk on the beach. But he was grounded now. He wouldn't show his face on the surf team for a long time.
With her emotions in a whirl, the horn suddenly went off, and Alana realized she needed to get her mind in the zone. She jerked forward into a sprint, but she was already a step behind the other girls, reaching the water in last place.
The rain seemed almost nonexistent as she crashed through the waves and started paddling. The only evidence that it was raining could be seen in the thousands of the droplets that struck the surface of the water all around Alana.
When she duck dived under her first wave, the temperature of the water shocked her. She assumed it felt so cold because of the gray skies and chilly weather overhead. When she resurfaced on the other side, her teeth were chattering.
Once the set was over and the ocean was calm, the girls reached the lineup and relaxed. Alana kept her distance from the group by sitting farther to the left than everyone else. Here, if she got lucky, she could catch the shoulder of a large set wave that would otherwise close out where the rest of the girls were sitting.
But the waves were slow to arrive. Alana lifted her hands out of the water and watched the rain collect in the palms of her hands. It dripped down from her forehead and off the tip of her nose. Only when her vision became oddly blurred did she realize most of the excess water was from her own tears.
She laughed wryly. Good thing it's raining, she thought, staring up at the dark expanse of the sky and watching the rain streak down like silver bullets. At least no one can tell that I'm crying.
Her heart ached. She knew she was still a raw wound, torn and bleeding, and it would take time for her to heal. As the rain washed away some of her anxiety, she breathed a deep breath and let her tears continue to flow.
She wished her parents were still alive. They would know what to do. They could give her guidance and counsel and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. Her mom would know how to approach the situation with Cole, and her dad would make sure that Alana didn't feel overwhelmed by the pressure of competing.
As these thoughts took shape in her mind, Alana continued to cry silently, her head bowed. But when the unbroken swell of a wave suddenly jolted her out of position, she was forced to look up and regain her balance.
"What am I doing?" she wondered aloud, using her wet hands to ineffectively brush her tears away. She sniffed and regained some of her composure. What was it that she'd read in her Bible yesterday morning? Something about God's Word being a lamp for her feet and a light for her path...
Yes, she thought. She truly missed her parents, but God had given her a gift much greater—the gift of his counsel and guidance.
She laughed again, but this time it was one of relief. Though her heart still beat anxiously in her chest, its ache was lessened, and she felt her first sliver of peace since the turbulent event with Cole last week.
Alana looked over her shoulder and saw, through the rain, a crowd of indistinguishable people standing on shore. Some of them, she knew, were from her own Ventura High surf team. Coach Alvarez was probably huddling under an umbrella in the midst of that crowd, too.
She straightened up. This wasn't the time to dwell on past mistakes and worry about future problems. She had to live in the moment. She had to win this competition and bring Ventura High to the NSSA Championships.
She had won before—she could do it again.
Now that she had put her problems aside and focused entirely on her surfing, Alana once again thrived in her element. Even the waves themselves seemed fine-tuned to give Alana exactly what she needed. She found herself always one step ahead of the other competitors in her heat, placing first in every single round and surpassing Maya in the semifinals.
Now, with only one other girl from the Ventura High surf team in the finals with her, Alana knew they had to bring it home. The guys' shortboard finals only had a one in four chance of winning, so that meant the girls had to perform their best if they wanted a shot at the Championships.
As usual, Alana felt slightly nervous going into her heat, but once she reached the lineup she was completely focused. She caught the second wave that rolled in and ended up slicing two fast snaps in the pocket, giving her an average score of 4.62.
The rain continued to pour down in sheets, drenching everyone in the water and on the beach. The surfers didn't mind it in the least, but it made the waves a little harder to see and the rough patches in the water a little harder to distinguish.
When Alana hopped off her wave and lay down on her board, she prepared to psych herself up for the rest of the heat. "You're doing good," she said, breathing hard with every stroke. "Keep it up. Stay in first. Act smart."
However, a large mass looming on the horizon silenced her little pep talk. She raised her head and groaned when she saw a big set approaching. That couldn't be good.
Alana quickly increased the speed and depth of her strokes. She cut through the water as fast as possible, but it wouldn't be quick enough. Judging by the steepness of the first wave, she knew the entire set would break before she could get outside.
She continued her frantic paddle anyways. Drive and glide. Drive and glide. This was something she'd always told herself in dire moments like this, and something that Coach Alvarez had enforced multiple times over the course of their training sessions. But the approaching wave was sucking up all the water in front of it, making Alana move faster than she could have done herself.
With the lip about to break only yards away, Alana took a deep breath and prepared to duck dive. She pushed the front of her board down while placing her feet flat on the deck. In a sense, she was standing, but because she wasn't riding a wave, her board sank completely underwater. This pushed her deeper than she would have gone if she had only used her hands and knee.
With her board now beneath the surface, she cast one more wary look at the lip overhead before squatting down and letting the wave roll over her. Before she could successfully grab her board, however, the force of the breaking wave wrenched her backwards.
Alana instinctively threw her arms over her head, preparing for the moment when the wave would suck her surfboard out from underneath her feet. If the fins or the nose hit her head, there was a possibility she would be knocked unconscious. Fortunately, the only injury Alana suffered was a bad case of water rushing up her nose. She felt herself tossed up, down, and back and forth like a ragdoll, with water roaring in her ears and sand flying in all directions. When the turbulence finally passed, she swam up to the surface and broke through, gasping for air.
She spotted her surfboard bobbing up and down a few yards away. With one tug on her leash, she pulled it next to her and climbed on.
But the second wave was already boring down on her. She had a split-second decision to attempt another duck dive or bail and ditch her board. Just as the whitewater crashed on top of her, she rolled off and dove straight to the bottom. She felt a sharp tug on her ankle, then the entire force of the wave spun her in all directions.
This continued for half a minute before Alana once again swam up to the surface, gasping for air. She climbed onto her shortboard, her eyes stinging and throat burning, and groaned when she saw yet another wave approaching in the distance. This one was even bigger than all the rest. She glanced to her right and saw that she had been swept significantly farther out to sea, not back towards the beach like she'd expected. With a sudden swoop of terror, she realized that the waves had created a powerful rip current, and she was being sucked directly towards the large wave about to break overhead.
"If only I hadn't taken that wave," Alana muttered, thinking back to her four-point ride and wishing she wouldn't have paddled for it. Being caught inside was not fun. It reminded her of the time when her leash had snapped at Huntington, leaving her to battle the elements on her own.
But this time, because of the distance between her and the approaching wave, Alana thought she might be able to paddle over it before the lip could break. She kicked and paddled with all her might. The current helped sweep her out to sea, but it still wasn't enough. She felt a crushing sense of defeat when the lip curled over in a sheen of offshore mist. It looked like she was in for another round of the washing machine.
Suddenly, a large bump of backwash rolled underneath Alana's board. It hit the breaking wave just in the nick of time, causing the lip to be suspended in midair for half a second. Alana instinctively pushed her board down in the deepest duck dive she could muster. She opened her eyes and saw the crystal-clear underbelly of the wave, followed by billowing clouds of whitewater.
A sense of relief flooded over her. Finally she was going to make it past the set! But just when she thought she was in the clear, another jolt of backwash pushed her up and into the turbulence. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as she was pulled back towards the surface. The wave ripped her board out from underneath her. Though Alana tried her hardest to swim against the force of the wave, it mercilessly sucked her up and over the falls.
Only one word flashed through her mind as she was lifted, weightless, in a backwards somersault: No! Somewhere below her was the surfboard, and somewhere above was the pocket of the wave. For a split second she was motionless, and then she turbulence drove her straight down to the seafloor as it crashed on top of her.
Alana felt her body go limp when she landed on something hard and pointed. She immediately thought it was the nose of her own board, but the large gash in her forehead made her wonder if maybe she had gotten sliced by the fin. Whatever the case, it hurt like heck, and Alana let out a stream of air bubbles when she groaned.
There was no longer any light. The wave overhead blocked everything, leaving Alana in complete darkness. She wondered if she was floating in a pool of her own blood. It was a fleeting thought, however, because the next moment she landed headfirst on the bottom of the ocean and remembered nothing more.