"The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." – James 1:6

While stopped at a red light, Cole tried in vain to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He opened his mouth and let out a massive yawn. A glance at his wristwatch told him it was only 7:30 in the morning. He had driven for almost two hours already, and only now had the gang safely arrived in Huntington Beach.

"Make a right," Alana instructed from the backseat. She was on the phone with Trevor, who had been eagerly awaiting their arrival for the past fifteen minutes.

Cole turned into a metered parking lot and cruised down a small hill. "Where's Trevor?" he asked, trying to look for their friend and check out the waves in front of him at the same time.

"Turn left," Alana said. "He's parked four spots down."

The gang cheered when Trevor came into view. He jumped off the bed of his truck and waved as Cole pulled up alongside him.

In the passenger seat, Blaine cranked down the window and stuck his hand out. He and Trevor fist-bumped.

"How was the drive?" Trevor asked.

"Too long. We're all tired and itching to surf," Blaine said.

"Then let's get going!"

Cole swung into a nearby parking spot, and seconds later the gang filed out. They stretched their limbs and gazed at the gray-blue water that was the Pacific Ocean. Lines of whitewater broke up and down the coast, and hundreds of little black dots could be seen bobbing over the swells.

"Is it always this crowded?" Alana asked.

"Well, it's the weekend," Trevor said apologetically. "Northside isn't as crowded as Southside, though, so we can head that way."

There was a mad rush to grab everyone's wetsuits and surfboards. Cole helped unload belongings from the back of his Volkswagen before pulling his T-shirt off. He wrapped a towel around his waist, shimmied out of his boardshorts, and began the arduous task of getting his wetsuit on. Once he was fully clothed, he rubbed some wax on the surface of his shortboard and tucked it underneath his arm.

"Are you pumped?" Alana asked, grinning widely and jumping up and down on the balls of her feet.

"I've been waiting for this all week," Cole admitted. "The waves are a fun size and there's hardly any wind. Now all we need is reassurance that you won't get run over again."

Alana laughed. "I'll be careful."

He noticed her gaze lingering on the cuts and bruises patchworked across his face. Though his black eye was almost healed, he still had a mishmash of colors on his nose, chin, and forehead that testified to Monday's fistfight. When he had been sitting in the principal's office next to Logan that day, he'd felt buzzed from all the adrenaline. Now, he just felt guilty. He had let everyone down by jumping into that fight: himself, his father, and his friends. Mr. Anderson had given Cole a firm lecture when he'd returned home from school, but graciously allowed Cole to go to Huntington Beach with the gang since the fight technically hadn't been his fault.

Yet Cole felt like it was. Though Logan may have started their fight, Cole was still responsible for participating in it. The thought that continued to plague him was how easy it'd been for Logan to drag Cole down his level. If Cole had so easily slipped up over a stupid fight, what else would he be tempted to do?

"Okay, guys!" Blaine called. "We all set?"

Cole took that as his cue to grab the keys and lock his Volkswagen. With everyone's boards tucked under their arms, they followed Trevor to the sand and towards the water. The only person who didn't have a surfboard was Trevor himself, who carried a bright yellow water housing instead. The housing protected his Canon from getting wet, while the GoPro fastened on top was used to get extra wide-angle footage. In his other hand, Trevor carried a pair of swim fins.

The early morning sun felt brutally hot by the time the group reached tower 10, one of the lifeguard stands north of Huntington Pier, and Cole was sweating beneath his 2-millimeter wetsuit. The ocean looked extremely refreshing under the glare of the rising sun.

"Okay, here's what I'm going to do," Trevor said, walking backwards towards the water's edge. He bent down and strapped on his fins. "I'm going to move around in the impact zone, sometimes to the left of the peak and other times to the right. Just make sure you stay at the same peak so I don't have to swim all over the place to follow you. If possible, try to paddle for waves that put you in position for a great shot." He held up his camera and grinned. "I'll handle the rest."

"Are you going to be in the water the whole time?" Maya asked.

"No, I'll probably take water shots for an hour or so, and then I'll set up my tripod on the beach and get more footage there."

"Sweet!"

Trevor saluted them and began wading into the water. Once the seafloor dropped off a few feet, he ducked his head underwater and began swimming. The gang strapped on their leashes and darted after him. Cole felt adrenaline pumping through his veins. This was going to be an awesome surf session, he just knew it.

Koa and Jake, the two longboarders in the group, made it to the lineup before everyone else. They easily stroked over a few small waves during the lull in the set. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang had to duck dive under a couple peaks that crashed in front of them. By the time Cole reached the lineup, he felt refreshed and cooled down.

After shaking a few strands of wet hair out of his eyes, he sat up on his board and gazed at his surroundings. Huntington Pier looked huge and formidable to his left, its sturdy pilings rising out of the swirling water like tree trunks. At the end of the pier was a bright red building, which Cole recognized as Ruby's Diner. He smiled. He'd had one of his most memorable nights at that diner with Alana.

Cole trailed his hands across the surface of the water and turned to his right. Surfers, more numerous than the waves crashing on the shore, could be seen all the way up the coast. Meanwhile, the flat sand gave way to large, rocky cliffs that trailed off as far as Cole could see.

A slight bump of water brought his attention back to the lineup. A small unbroken wave had just slipped underneath him, hinting at the set to come. Sure enough, three swelling peaks appeared on the horizon, their blue-gray crests growing larger and steeper.

Cole, along with the rest of the gang, began paddling outside. The first wave was too small to break, but Koa paddled into it anyway. He was able to catch it and stand up with ease because of his buoyant longboard.

Alana and Maya were in good position for the second wave. They split the peak; Alana going left and Maya going right. Cole glanced over his shoulder and watched as they dropped in, their heads soon disappearing behind a sheen of offshore mist.

Cole's ears suddenly rang with the sound of crashing water. He saw another wave barreling down on him and smoothly pushed his surfboard underneath, resurfacing on the other side just in time to see a fourth wave about to break. He swiftly paddled to the shoulder, where it was less steep, and dropped in. With his board gliding over the glassy water, he raced to the bottom and pulled a wide cutback, using his arms, torso, and hips to crank out turn after turn.

At one point, he spotted Trevor bobbing up and down in the water a few yards away. Trevor reached up and held out his camera just as Cole crouched down and gave a shaka. The last thing Cole heard before jumping off his board was Trevor hooting with approval.

"Was that sick or what?" Trevor called when the set died down, leaving the ocean calm and quiet once again.

"It was great!" Cole whooped. "Did you get a good shot?"

"Come and see!"

Cole paddled over, and Trevor pushed a few buttons on his camera before a string of pictures popped up on the small screen. The sequence showed Cole racing across the face of the wave, smiling and throwing a shaka. The quality was crystal-clear and the lighting was perfect.

"Wait until you see the GoPro footage," Trevor said. "I have it set to 120 frames per second so you can see yourself in super slo-mo."

"Sweet," Cole said, impressed. "Where did you get all this equipment?"

"I've been saving up for almost a year now. Plus birthday money always helps."

Cole nodded. "I can't wait to see the video you put together. Did you get any shots of the others?"

Trevor showed him a few clips of Jake and Alana, who had surfed right past him just as Cole had done. The low perspective made the waves look huge and the surfers fearless. Cole was fascinated.

"Hey, you better get out there before the next set comes," Trevor reminded him. "If you catch another left, you'll be in perfect position for me to film you again."

Cole grinned. "Sounds like a plan."

Two hours into their surf sesh, Alana rested on her surfboard with her arms dangling in the water. The hot sun beat on her shoulders and back, but it was nice to be able to slip into the ocean and cool off in between sets.

Trevor had gone in earlier and was now standing on the shore with his tripod set up. Alana was excited at the prospect of seeing herself on camera. Though she had been recorded a few times by friends and family, she hadn't watched herself surf in at least a year. She wondered what she even looked like riding a wave.

"Are you going for this one?" a surfer asked, nodding towards a peak rushing at them.

"Yeah, I'll go right," she said, paddling into position. Though the wave was small, it spiked up as soon as it hit the sandbar. Alana suddenly realized she was about to take a really steep drop.

"You can have it!" the surfer called, quickly leaning back and pulling out of the wave. Alana was about to do the same, but she was already too far in front of the lip to bail. Hesitating would only cause her to wipeout and go over the falls. Instead, she braced herself for a short air-drop by bending her knees.

It should have been easy to land, by her standards. The wave was only shoulder-high. There were no surfers in front of her that she had to dodge because they were all outside waiting to catch their own wave. But what Alana failed to do before she stood up was make sure she had enough speed. When she popped up to her feet, she was moving much too slow compared to the fast-breaking wave. Consequently, her board got hung up near the lip, which forced Alana to put all her weight on her front foot.

The effect was instantaneous. She plummeted straight down to the trough, where her board landed flat on the water with hardly any speed. The wave bowled down on top of her, causing Alana to purl and dive off her surfboard. She heard a smack as she hit the water, then the furious crash of whitewater as she was swallowed whole. Her entire left leg hit the bottom of the seafloor as she was forced down, spun in a circle, and finally brought back up to the surface.

Alana snorted saltwater out of her nose and wiped the hair out of her eyes, gulping down air like a fish out of water. That had not been a fun wipeout.

Angry at herself for making such a poor blunder, she glanced over at Trevor on the shore. His camera was pointed straight at the horizon rather than at her. She desperately hoped he hadn't seen her.

Alana's shortboard, floating upside down a few yards away, was still connected to her ankle by its leash. She was about to jerk it closer when she felt herself being pulled out to sea. She looked up and realized a big wave loomed overhead, sucking everything towards it. She didn't have time to climb on her surfboard and duck dive, so she took a deep breath and sank underwater.

Seconds later, the wave slammed down on top of her. Because of its size, the whitewater had even more power than the previous wave. Alana was sent tumbling and spinning until she didn't remember which way was up. As soon as the whitewater subsided, buoyancy took over and released her to the surface. She was just about to break through and take a breath of air when another wave hit. This time, she felt a sharp pull on her ankle, and then nothing. She reached down and felt her thick strip of Velcro still in place, but the rest of the leash was gone. It had snapped.

With her surfboard now washing into shore, Alana was stuck without any flotation device. She opened her eyes and tried to make sense of where she was, but there were no air bubbles or breaks in the whitewater to be seen. She had to wait until the second wave rolled past before swimming to the surface.

With her lungs near bursting, she pulled with her arms and scissor-kicked with her legs until she broke through the surface. Oxygen had never tasted so sweet. She gulped it down so fast that she choked and coughed out saltwater. She glanced at the beach, but her board was nowhere to be seen.

Her attention was diverted to the horizon when she saw another wave fast approaching. "Oh no," she muttered. "Here we go again." She ducked underwater and crouched at the seafloor, ready to push off the bottom after the wave rolled past her. But since she was caught in the impact zone, it was so shallow that the whitewater was unavoidable. She was quickly ripped from her position and sent tumbling in all directions.

This continued for six more waves. Sometimes Alana would get a lucky break and resurface, gulping down air, and other times she was held under for a minute or more. By the time the set was over, she was exhausted and disoriented. One look at the beach told her she had been swept significantly farther south with the current.

Now that the ocean was calm and no more waves were coming, she ducked her head and began swimming for shore. It was long and tiring, especially without a surfboard, and even more so because of what she had just gone through. Her nose felt permanently filled with seawater, and her throat burned with salt.

When she finally trudged out of the water, she saw a lifeguard standing on shore, watching her anxiously. "You alright?" he asked, coming to her side.

Alana nodded. "I'm fine now."

"You were held under for pretty long," he said. "That was the set of the day right there."

"Really?" She paused with her hands on her hips, still breathing hard from her swim. She couldn't believe that she had taken the first wave of a huge set. The first wave was never the biggest, which was why the waves that followed it had been much larger and more powerful. Alana was disappointed that she had missed out. She could have been riding one of those big waves instead of being held underwater by them.

Annoyed at herself, Alana reassured the lifeguard she was fine once again. Then she headed up the beach to hunt down her shortboard. She found it nestled in the sand a little farther away, the leash dangling from the bottom. She picked it up and groaned when she saw that there was no way she could repair the leash. It had been ripped clean in two.

With a deep sigh, she hoped either Trevor or someone in the gang had brought an extra leash. If not, there was no way she was surfing for the rest of the day. She shoved her board under her arm and glanced up the beach. Trevor was still standing behind his camera, slowly panning it with one hand.

Alana spit a mixture of saliva and seawater onto the sand before heading in his direction. She needed a minute to rest and recuperate after that ordeal.