Lying across the board, she felt weightless and free, the wind blowing past her. What glory it was to feel the ocean move with you, to ride the water. The wave delivered her, softly, onto the sand.

Nina looked at her hands, now grazing the bottom. She’d done it. She’d ridden a surfboard all the way in.

When she stood up, she looked down the beach to see her siblings all cheering for her. Her brothers stood there with their mouths open.

“You have to keep paddling your arms as hard as you can until you catch it,” Nina said, as she caught back up with them. “It takes more effort than just with your body. But then you move faster, once you catch it.”

“You didn’t stand up though,” Jay said.

“I know but I think we can work up to that.”

And so, that’s what they did.

Nina, Jay, and Hud took turns riding the surfboard into the shore with varying degrees of success, sometimes letting Kit tag along on their backs.

They rode the surfboard all afternoon, crashing and gliding in equal measure. They inhaled water as they crashed, cut their toes on rocks, bruised their ribs simply from the weight of their bodies against the board. Their eyes stung with the salt of the ocean and the glare of the sun.

Until finally, hours into their adventure, Jay took the surfboard out on his own as the three of them watched from the wet sand. “I’m gonna stand up,” he said. “Watch me.”

Jay had fallen off enough times now to believe he understood the rules. He paddled out, faced the shore, and lay on the board, waiting. He waited for one slow, small wave, just big enough to carry him.

When he saw what he wanted, he paused until just before it swelled right behind him and he started to paddle. He used his arms harder than he had ever used them before. He could feel the board catch on the wave, feel it steady itself. And he slowly got onto his knees, and then his feet, and stayed low. He was doing it. He was surfing.

He could see Nina, Hud, and Kit watching him from the distance, could feel their anticipation. It was moments like this, all eyes on him, when he understood himself the best.

Beaming, he crouched as still as he could, until the wave started to knock him off. And then, feeling the board begin to betray him, Jay jumped off and landed, half gracefully, into the water. A champion.

Nina and Hud started running toward him, Kit leading their way. And Jay started laughing so hard that tears were forming in his eyes. “Did you see that?” he yelled to them. He was lost in pure, fresh joy. The kind that keeps you weightless even after you’ve touched ground.

“Pretty cool,” Hud said, as he gave Jay a high five. Kit wrapped her hands around his neck and jumped up onto him. Nina smiled. He had been right. The whole afternoon had been exhilarating. The trying and crashing, the trying and doing, the trying harder, doing better.

• • •

Soon after, the extended lunch rush had ended and the real dinner rush had not quite started and so June snuck out of the restaurant. In her navy high-waisted shorts and white sleeveless button-up, she ran across the highway, to the beach. She found all four of her children taking turns on a surfboard that she knew wasn’t theirs.

She put her hands on her hips and said, “Now where did this come from?”

“Mom, I’m sorry we—” Nina started to explain, but June put her hand up.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” June said. “I was teasing. It doesn’t seem like it belongs to anyone anyhow.”

“Can we keep the surfboard?” Kit asked. “So we can do this together every day?”

All four of her children looked toward June, waiting for an answer.

“No, I’m sorry, honey, I don’t think so,” June said. “Just in case someone is looking for it.” June watched as all four of her children deflated. “But I’ll tell you what. If it’s here tomorrow, we’ll bring it home.”

That night, as the kids ate dinner in the break room in the back of the restaurant and June sipped her Cape Codder, they spoke of nothing but the water. June, with her cup in hand, listened patiently as her children described wave after wave. June kept them talking, asking questions about even the most trivial facts of the day. None of the kids stopped to wonder whether she actually found them fascinating or was just very good at pretending. But the truth was, June simply adored her children. She loved their thoughts and ideas, loved to hear about their personal discoveries, loved to watch them as they began to take the shape of fully formed people.

She thought of her children like the magic grow capsules you got at gift shops at the science museum. These tiny little nothings that you drop into water and then watch as they slowly reveal what they were always destined to be. This one a Stegosaurus, this one a T. rex. Except, instead, it was watching them become dependable, or talented, or kind, or daring.

June knew that her children had found a previously undiscovered part of themselves that day. She knew that childhood is made up of days magnificent and mundane. And this had been a magnificent day for all of them.

That night, they went home and watched Adam-12 together and then dispersed. Kit went to bed. Jay and Hud went to their room to read comics. Nina got under the covers and pretended to read a book from the summer reading list.

But all of them felt as though their bodies were still rising with the surf.

For Jay, the feeling was almost an obsession. His brain couldn’t stop focusing on how it had felt to ride a wave with that much power. To glide that smoothly. To ride, to float, to soar. He was lost in the thought of it when he heard Hud speak up from his bed.

“If that board’s not there tomorrow,” Hud said, “what are we going to do?”

Jay sat up. “I was wondering the same thing. Should we try to sneak out? And go get it so no one else does?”

“No,” Hud said. “We can’t do that.”

“OK,” Jay said. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Jay lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. They were quiet for a moment and Jay knew Hud was still considering it. When Hud didn’t speak up, Jay knew it was final.

“It was awesome, though,” Jay said.

“I bet we looked so cool,” Hud added, his head on his pillow.

“Yeah,” Jay said, smiling. “We totally did.”

The two of them fell asleep soundly, both hoping and planning.

Kit, meanwhile, had drifted off to sleep the moment her head hit the pillow, dreaming all through the night of the four of them surfing together on their own boards.

But it was Nina who was consumed by it, living the experience in her body. Her chest could feel where the board had been. Her arms ached from the resistance of the water. Her legs felt like rubber from the force with which she had slammed them down, used them to propel herself forward. She could feel both the ocean and its absence across her skin.

She wanted to go back. Right then and there. To try again. She wanted to stand up on the board like Jay had. She was determined now. She remembered a photo she’d seen in a magazine a few months ago, a guy on a surfboard somewhere in Europe. Was it Portugal? She wondered if she could be that sort of person when she grew up. A real surfer. Who went places just for the waves.

She tried to make herself fall asleep. But well after ten, still wide awake, she walked down to the kitchen and saw her mother sitting in the living room, sipping vodka right out of the bottle while watching the Saturday Night movie in her pajamas.