Page 31 of Instant Karma

I scramble to my feet and cup my hands around my mouth. “Leave her alone, Jackson!”

His eyes meet mine, and I know I’ve made a mistake. It’s a challenge now. Will he or won’t he?

I plant my hands on my hips and try to convey through osmosis that if he has any dignity at all, he will leave her alone.

He laughs again, an almost cruel sound. Then, in one fluid motion, he releases Serena’s legs and uses his hand to reach back and unhook her arms from his neck. While she’s still scrambling to wrap her knees around him, he hurls her as far as he can out into the waves.

Her scream pierces my ears. His friends cheer.

It’s not that deep, but when she lands on her backside with a splash, the water comes nearly to her neck. She scrambles to her feet and bolts from thewater, her dress coated in sand and clinging to her thighs. “You asshole!” she shrieks, shoving Jackson in the stomach as she rushes past him.

He barely moves, other than to reach down and brush away the smear of sand she left on his shirt. “Hey now, this is dry-clean only,” he says, his voice rich with amusement.

Serena storms away, trying to tug the damp skirt away from her hips. As she passes me, I see furious tears building in her eyes.

My teeth are clenched as I turn back to Jackson. His arms are raised victoriously. Not far away, still knee-deep in the water, Ari is watching him with evident confusion.

“Dude,” says Sonia Calizo, disgusted, but loud enough that almost the whole beach can hear, “she almostdrownedwhen she was a kid.”

Jackson sneers. “She’s not gonna drown. Jesus. It’s barely two feet deep.”

“Couldn’t you tell how scared she was?” says Ari. I’m surprised. It isn’t like Ari to confront anyone, much less a total stranger. But she also has a keen sense of justice, so maybe it shouldn’t seem surprising at all.

Either way, Jackson ignores her. His expression is still gloating, lacking any remorse.

I exhale and as Jackson takes a step toward the shore, I imagine him tripping and falling face-first in the sand. I imagine those pretty, expensive clothes of his coated in salt water and muck.

I squeeze my fist.

Jackson takes another step and I hold my breath, waiting.

Nothing happens. He does not trip. He does not fall.

My shoulders sink. I feel silly for having hoped, even for a second, that the coincidences of the past twenty-four hours could have been caused by me. How? By some cosmic retribution gifted to me by the universe?

Yeah, right.

Still, disappointment crashes over me like a wave.

Like… likethatwave.

The laughter from Jackson’s friends halts as they notice it, too. A wave, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, rears up behind Jackson, framing him beneath its frothy crown.

Seeing his friends’ expressions, he turns. Too late. The wave strikes him, bowling him over. It doesn’t stop there. The water storms up the beach, dousing his friends’ legs and rushing over their towels and chairs, sweeping cans of beer into its current.

The wave keeps coming. Heading straight toward me.

My jaw is slack. It doesn’t even cross my mind to move as I watch the wave break. The foam curls up into itself. The last vestiges of the wave’s power start to slow, from a rush of water to a steady crawl.

The edge of the water, kissed with white foam, comes to within an inch of my toes and the edge of Ari’s guitar case. It pauses, seeming to hesitate for the briefest moment, before sweeping back out to sea again.

I follow its course, stunned. When I look up, I catch Ari’s eye. She looks just as bewildered—maybe even more so. Because the strangest thing isn’t that the water came so very close to me yet left me untouched. The strangest thing is that Ari was standing so very close to Jackson, but the wave passed her by entirely.

In fact, despite the wave’s enormous size, the only people it touched were Jackson and his friends.

TEN

It takes a minute for my brain to catch up with what just happened. For the disbelief to slowly crumble and fade and then rebuild itself into something, well, almost believable.

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