Hate at High Tide

Chapter 2- Javi

Icy blue water drips from the nose of my surfboard, sliding down my white wax to return to the ocean. Floating above sets of waves and underwater reefs, I can't stop my mind from pointing out every difference in the water. My all boys school in Mexico shared the Pacific Ocean with California, and yet the beaches in La Paz were infinitely times better. Rocky white sand coats the shore when it should be a darker color full of shells, there's a drop in temperature from my usual 26 degrees, and the water is half as salty as it would be south of the border.

Tides pull my board backwards, signaling to me that the growing strength of the ocean's current is about to introduce a new set. My fingers intertwined with the soothing liquid, rapidly paddling against the white wash to propel myself into a new wave's pull.

Moments before the lip comes crashing downwards, I push my body up from my knees, shifting the weight to the back of my ankles so that the board turns away from the wave's crest. I ride the surge for as long as I can, carving across it's surface like I was flying. The end of the wave folds in front of me, telling me exactly when it's time to fall off of my board.

Spanish was my first language, but I'm far more fluent in the dialect of the ocean.

Waves, currents, tides: they've spoken to me long before I could ever actually stand on top of a board. Telling me which waves are worth riding and how to manuever the board to embrace the natural movements of the water. The sea still speaks to me, even if I'm two thousand miles away from home.

I paddle into shore, leashing my board and carrying it under my arm once I reach the unfamiliar landscape.

Years of being sent away from home has forged a comfortability in change. I'm used to seeing new cities and finding friends in the faces of strangers, though none of it has been by choice. My home is in Mexico City, the heart of my soul as definite as it's the capital of my country, but I'm not exactly welcomed there.

Some would call my actions rebellious, my parents describe it as disrespectful, and I prefer to say that I'm finding myself. I have a talent of gravitating towards the wrong people, of betraying my parents' trust and doing exactly what they tell me not to do. Combined with failing classes and throwing parties when they were away, it didn't take long for them to become fed up with my behavior. They sent me away from my childhood house, from my family, because I stole their Porsche when I was fifteen, accidentally totaling it in the middle of downtown. Not that they didn't have the money to repair it.

As a kid, I turned towards mischief to push boundaries and discover what consequences were. I didn't realize that I would never see my parents' punishments or pressure to be better, both of them caring too much about their work to waste time on me. Ignoring my issues, their solution was to make me someone else's problem.

They hired nannies and tutors to avoid telling me to do my homework, until that didn't change my behavior and they avoided me altogether. It was easier to ignore my prescence than teach me how to act right, I guess, and that mindset only escalated. I was never reprimanded for stealing from their liquor cabinet or wallets, driving me to test my luck with bigger crimes like selling alcohol and fighting my classmates.

Never did they try to ask me why I was always causing trouble. I had wished for years that they would say something, that they would scream at me for being so destructive just so I would know they cared, but it never happened. Their solution was always money, buying replacements for the things I stole or paying cops to look the other way.

My failure was beyond redemption in their minds, especially compared to my perfect sister, and it was easier for them to move me to an entirely new state than to see me every day.

While attending the most prestigious All-Boys' School money could buy, I still hadn't learned discipline, though I at least showed up to class and graduated a semester early.