I grab a large beach towel from my backseat, and we make our way down toward the sand. He helps me spread it out on the ground and kicks off his flip-flops before sitting and staring out at the ocean.
“It’s nice to see it so empty out there,” I say, stretching my legs out next to him. “During the day, this place is covered with tourists and surfers and kids running around on the beach. It’s not what it was when we were growing up.”
He laughs. “Tourism isn’t the worst thing. Crescent Cove was pretty much a tourist town, but that’s what leads you to places like Horn Island,” he says. “It’s not a place you put on a postcard, but it has depth. Gritty. Real. I don’t think Hawaii even has places like it.”
“Do you miss it?” I ask. I’m not sure if I want the real answer to that.
He nods, slowly. “Yeah, actually, I do. But I missed it here too,” he says. “I wanted to have both, and now I have neither. I don’t think I even realized how much I loved California until I was so deep with the Burkses that I couldn’t find my way out.”
“What really happened?” I ask, forcing myself to look toward him. “How did you get involved? Why you?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?” he asks.
“Yes, from the beginning,” I say.
He starts from the day his friend Topher sent a letter to the Burkses with nothing more than the name ‘Colby Taylor’ written in chicken-scratch handwriting. Nothing happened for a while, and eventually everyone moved along and forgot.
“We thought maybe the address was wrong or they never received it, but one day, this number I didn’t know called my phone, and I answered it because I figured maybe it was someone I’d given my number to at one time,” Kale explains. “But it was Colby’s mom. She found me through social media, and long story short, I was the weakest link. I didn’t see that until my lawyers played that card. I was offended at first, but they were right. I was the weak link that broke the Drenaline Surf chain.”
At first, it was just a little money to take photographs and send them proof that Colby Taylor was indeed their ‘missing and presumed dead’ son. Then it was eavesdropping on conversations, finding out where Colby would be and when.
“I gave them info on surf competitions and events his sponsors were holding,” he says. “It seemed harmless, and Topher had always said that Colby had it coming. When you play with fire, you get burned, and eventually the flames would catch up to him. I didn’t realize I was the one flicking the lighter all the time, though. The stakes kept getting higher – plant this device, we’ll send a bigger dollar amount. Leave this here, we’ll send more. The money was nice. It was my ticket to Hawaii. Then it turned into what you’ve seen on the news.”
I’ll never forget the day that Keiko banged on my bedroom door, telling me I had to see whose mugshot was on the internet. I sat on my bed crying, saying it had to be a mistake, while my brother thumbed through image after image of a crushed maroon car that’d been smashed into a tree. I watched footage of Drenaline Surf’s press conference. I watched Kale apologize on live TV. And I sobbed through every second of it because I knew it couldn’t be real.
“I never wanted to hurt Drenaline Surf,” Kale says, a real sadness floating in his eyes. “Never. They were my family there. They welcomed me in, no questions asked. That was where it all fell apart. I didn’t mind ratting Colby out, and it wasn’t a Colby issue. I like the guy. He’s chill, he’s a great surfer, and he’s not a bad guy. Stupid, maybe, and a bad decision maker, but I’m not one to talk anymore. I assumed his lies would all come out in the end anyway. But when they went after Shark’s memory and his legacy and all that Vin had done to build Drenaline Surf up after that, it was too late to back out, and it all fell apart.”
Anyone who is a surf fan knows about Colby Taylor and this scandal. He’s going to be the most famous surfer on the planet. It’s destiny. But if you know about Colby, you know about Drenaline Surf, and if you know about Drenaline Surf, you know about the tragedy of Shark McAllister. Anyone on the outside would say they’ve been through enough already. I thought that too before I saw Kale’s picture in the paper.
“You don’t blame Colby now?” I question. “I mean, if you look at the root of all of this, he’s the one who started it. He lied to everyone. He let his family believe he was dead. He started the web of lies to begin with.”
Kale nods. “I used to think that. I used to think he had it coming, but the more I dealt with his parents and saw the chokehold they had on me, I realized it was probably a hundred times worse for him,” he says. “The threats, the power trips, the egos… Death is the only way to escape his parents. He did what he had to in order to survive. If anything, I wish I had stopped Topher from mailing that piece of paper.”
I can’t give him back his California friends or Drenaline Surf, but there’s an authenticity to what he’s saying, a tone of genuine remorse in his words. I don’t like playing dirty with my own brother, but Keiko owes me a favor, and I think it’s time to cash it in.
“Do you remember Surf-N-Swells? The surf shop out on Stingray Drive?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. “I bought my first actual board there. Is it still around?”
I nod. “My brother is actually the manager there,” I tell him. “He swears that when Peko retires, he’s going to see if he can buy the place. They’ve expanded. It’s a lot bigger than you’ll remember. A little more commercial but they get a good bit of business.”
“That’s awesome. More power to the little guys,” he says.
“I’m going to see if Keiko will get you a job there,” I say. “Wait – before you argue with me, hear me out. My brother owes me a favor, and I’ve been hanging on to it for two years now because Keiko is pretty set in his ways. All strong-minded and stubborn. You know how he’s always been. But he’ll do this for me, and it’ll be good for you. For both of us.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. He hates me.”
“No, he hates who he thinks you are,” I correct him. “Once he sees that you’re on the path to redemption, he’ll help you out. He’s not as bad as you think he is. I’ve just gotta prove you both wrong to each other.”