Beau Dunn and the Invisible Links E-Book

Kevin Ray Hadlock

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 314

Beschreibung

Beau Dunn, a high-achieving fifteen-year-old with a birth defect, was placed on Earth with a very specific purpose...to defeat an evil presence bent on widespread destruction. But, the physical body he was born into, the one that’s been hiding and protecting Beau from the evil one, is shrouded in forgetfulness, so Beau remembers neither his true identity nor his mission. Patiently guided by an unseen alien mentor and aided by his perceptive deaf brother and prescient older sisters, Beau’s life is supposed to be taking a heroic turn—but it’ll never happen unless he can get past the forgetting and his physical limitations…and discover himself in time.

Leseprobe

BEAU DUNN

ANDTHE INVISIBLE LINKS

BEAU DUNN

ANDTHE INVISIBLE LINKS

_______________

Kevin Ray Hadlock

BEAU DUNN AND THE INVISIBLE LINKS COPYRIGHT @ 2023 by Kevin Ray Hadlock. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read this book. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Kevin Ray Hadlock.

First Edition DECEMBER 2023

ISBN 978-1-7346931-1-9

For Jo Lynn, who had dreams of family…and for Stacie, Mandy, Nathan, and Sean who made them come true.

1. Insistent Voices

Before we begin, I have something to confess. Well, two things, actually.

First, this is your story. Which means, second…you are Beau Dunn.

Doubtful? Well, let’s probe a little.

Do you often find life interesting and fun?

Okay, then. That makes you Beau Dunn!

Let’s go the other direction. In your quiet times, do you notice that your challenges sometimes wear you out, and that life doesn’t always feel as hopeful as you’d like?

That makes you Beau Dunn, too.

And do you find yourself wondering “why” more and more? Like…why should I try? Why should I care? Why was I even born?

Yes? Then you’re Beau Dunn.

In fact, as you get older, is life getting harder to figure out, with new voices challenging your beliefs and pulling you in different directions all at once?

If so, you and Beau are one.

Finally, in your darkest moments, like when you’re feeling pain or loneliness, do you question God, or if He even exists? And if He does, where He is?

If you do, then you are, in fact, Beau Dunn.

Not what you were expecting, right? Then again, could it be that being Beau is…a good thing? Is it possible there’s more to being Beau—more to your unique story—than questions?

#

One thing is certain. Beau Dunn did not talk in his sleep. Smart, almost fifteen years old and soon to start high school, he wouldn’t admit to talking in his sleep even if someone caught him doing it. Yet there he was, his surgery a week away, asleep in his bed…talking. He wasn’t mindlessly babbling, though. He had heard a voice—deep, gravelly, and measured, yet soothing, like the comforting growl of his dad’s vintage Camaro as it eased into the driveway after one of his long business trips. The voice called Beau several times before the boy finally dialed in.

“I hear you…sir,” he said, rolling onto his right side. “So, umm, who are you?”

“I am Cael’Milius. And, I am real. That’s the first thing.” The voice paused.

“Okay. Cael…yeah, I think I’ve got that,” said Beau. “Is there a second thing?”

“There is. I cannot control your thoughts or actions. I can only teach you, and that will take time. Your human mind has to grow into it.”

“My human…what?” Beau’s brow furrowed as he turned over and yanked up the covers.

“The spirit minds of Home Realm Children are quicker, more accepting, limitless,” continued the voice. “That’s amazing…but it has its down side. Long ago, while I was teaching those Beings, one of their own preyed on that openness, deceiving many and turning them against me. Since spirits can’t die, I could only exile and confine him and his followers to stop the madness, meaning they could never become Earth Children. I thought that would end it. Over the centuries, though, he’s never given up…and now he’s discovered how to escape! That is the third thing.”

“And?” asked Beau, his eyes still closed and his body now a limp rag under the covers.

“And you must bury him! That’s the fourth thing. It…it could be the last thing...”

“Okay-y-y,” mumbled Beau, now more playing along than believing this strange, ominous message. “So how…”

“That’s enough for now…maybe too much,” said Cael’Milius. “Just relax and prepare your mind to listen…listen…listen…”

Beau, already mostly asleep, drifted off…and quickly forgot his visitor’s odd name. But he couldn’t forget the soothing voice. Especially since it returned night after night, with different information each time, always right as Beau was falling asleep. As the weeks passed, things got even creepier. On half a dozen occasions, he found himself in life-like episodeswhere Cael’Milius—still unseen—gave him challenges and taught him new skills. (Beau hadn’t yet been instructed how to bury a Home Realm Child with a spirit mind and a rebellious streak, but he figured that was coming.)

Then again, maybe dreaming wasn’t so crazy after all. Beau lived with his family in Antioch on the California Delta, a place where, in 2002, a child could dream. From having raised her two daughters there, his mother Abby knew firsthand the liberating, almost magical effect Antioch could have on kids. So, to take Beau’s mind off his upcoming surgery, she and her husband Blake had taken him and his deaf thirteen-year-old brother Ty on a Fourth of July field trip, the day before Beau had his first conversation with the soothing voice. Very early, while it was still dark, they drove in the family SUV into the grassy, golden-brown hills south of town to get a clear view of the sun rise over the distant mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Since it was too early to explore Black Diamond Mines a mile to the west, they hiked upwards and to the south to get a panoramic view of Antioch below and the San Joaquin River that hurried by it on the north.

Munching breakfast burritos on the way, the Dunns then motored east to neighboring Brentwood to buy fruit from the roadside stands. Beau was tired from the early start and the unexpected walk in the hills, but the fragrance of fresh-picked strawberries, peaches, and apricots perked him up, and became almost intoxicating in the closed vehicle as the family headed back toward downtown Antioch. Once there, the Dunns parked as close as they could to the river, pulled out their large rolling cooler, and placed the fruit alongside their water bottles, sandwiches, and chips. Then they grabbed their beach chairs, a sun umbrella, and the guys’ fishing gear, and headed for the alley that led to the pier.

It was late morning by then, and the streets were beginning to fill with booths and food trucks in anticipation of the holiday festivities that would begin that afternoon. As the family strolled, Beau noticed, maybe for the first time, how old the buildings looked, nothing like the gleaming new shopping centers popping up where he lived, a couple of miles to the southeast. To be sure, downtown had been renovated since the city’s founding in the late 1800s, but the buildings still looked antique to Beau. It was like turning pages in a history book, and he was finally old enough to appreciate the cool, old-town feel.

The family continued toward the waterfront, waited for a train to lumber by, and then hurried the remaining short distance onto the pier. Once they’d set up their chairs and umbrella, Beau and Ty spent the afternoon fishing, slurping fruit, eating lunch, slurping more fruit, eating churros, and exploring booths with friends who straggled in throughout the day.

By sunset, the pier was packed with hundreds of people coming to see the 4th of July fireworks. As darkness settled in, a barge shooting off the most amazing pyrotechnics ever was pulled by a tugboat from west to east up the river, and the masses cheered as the display floated slowly by. Beau and his family waited for the crowds to clear after the show, then took their time walking back to the SUV and driving home.

Beau went to bed very late at the end of that very long day, after the last firecracker in the neighborhood had popped and the final whiffs of sulfur had been inhaled by the night sky. As he settled in, he heard what he always heard…absolutely nothing, interrupted only by the occasional chirping of crickets, the din of distant dogs barking, and the wailing of another whistling train. And, just as his mother had hoped, he fell asleep feeling like he always felt in Antioch—safe and unrestrained, free to move and grow, and, most importantly, free to dream.

With what was about to happen, the momentary escape was a welcome one.

It’s not that Beau needed coddling. On the contrary, he was quite the independent achiever. For one thing, he had a mathematician’s mind. Everything for Beau had to be thought through and logical. And his physical side was a cut above as well. Athletic and light on his feet, he excelled at sports and dancing. And he sang as well as any boy in any boy band of the day. All of that, together with his light brown hair, soft hazel eyes, and natural confidence, fueled Beau’s hopes of one day being a performer.

But his birth defect had other ideas.

Beau had been born with a deformed colon that didn’t work. Four major surgeries had failed to fix it. That left him no choice but to have one last operation to remove the organ entirely and leave his small intestine poking through his skin and emptying into an ostomy bag glued to his side. He knew he’d have to empty the Bag several times each day and replace it twice a week. Nurses would help him at first; but, soon he’d be on his own. That, plus the fact that some of his favorite physical activities would become much more difficult, was soul crushing. Those new realities made it difficult for Beau to keep his dreams alive…and almost impossible for him to buy into the encouraging, soothing voice and visions he was experiencing.

That is, until he heard a second voice—a very bad voice—a few weeks after his surgery.

Once home from his operation, his first attempts at replacing the Bag had left Beau frustrated and angry, but he got better and better at it, and soon felt he had the hang of it…until the first Thursday night in September.

“Stupid Bag,” Beau yelled a whisper.

It was nearly midnight, he was by himself in the upstairs bathroom, and, in frustration, he’d just smashed his round-nosed scissors to pieces against the wall across from the toilet. Two tall, thin candles provided the only light in the room. They were sitting on the counter on either side of the sink, right in front of the big mirror. Their flickering glow helped calm his nerves and were less glaring than the lightbulbs mounted high on the wall. They also had a gentle aroma and made the whole chore feel more like a meaningful ritual than the messy, tedious process it actually was.

Beau craved sleep, but he wouldn’t be able to get there until he got the sticky disk that held the Bag to his skin to lay flat…and it just wasn’t working. A full day at school and four hours of homework weren’t bad enough. Now he’d been trapped in the bathroom for over an hour, trying to get the stupid disk to stay put.

What was most aggravating was that he knew he was doing it right. He’d cut a hole in the wafer so the end of his intestine could poke through and into the Bag. And he’d peeled off the backing and pressed it onto his skin. But every time he thought it was all set, an edge would pop loose. It was as if someone was tugging on it and pulling up the edge on purpose just to spite Beau. And right when he’d get one part pushed back down and it all looked good, another edge would roll up. It was like that Whac-a-Mole game down at the arcade.

Finally, he got all the edges smoothed out at the same time. The gluey backing held, suctioning his raw skin. He watched for a couple of minutes to make sure nothing sprang back up. When it all seemed settled, he pulled up his hospital pajama bottoms with the name B Dunn still visible in the waistband and knotted the string. He bent over to pick up the pieces of his scissors…and was stunned to see they’d somehow been put back together!

What the crud? he thought. His breathing quickened.

Then he felt an edge of the wafer rip away from his skin again, hard. This time it hurt more than all the others!

He started to turn back toward the candles and the mirror to get more light, when he noticed a mist growing around him. He had no idea where it was coming from. Nothing at all was flowing out of the taps or the showerhead.

The mist thickened. Beau shook his head as his eyes rested on the mirror. Suddenly, something knocked the scissors out of his hand and they crashed against the wall across from the toilet again! And then the candles puffed out. The glow of the full moon shining through the tiny window above the bathtub was now all that stood between Beau and total darkness.

As he faced the mirror, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light, Beau noticed a dark figure behind and slightly above him, getting bigger, in the shape of a person. He squinted to try and make it out. He knew it couldn’t be his shadow, because the moonlight was coming in from the side and above. He breathed faster. Then he gasped and spun to look at the image.

As he did, the bathroom door flew open. There, dressed only in his T-shirt and white pajama bottoms, stood his dad. The eerie moonlight made him look like a massive ghost. Beau yelled and stepped backward, tripping over the toilet and falling into the tub. He grabbed for anything to stop his fall and pulled the shower curtain and rail down on top of himself.

“What in the world are you doing in here?” chuckled his father as he flipped on the light. “All kinds of weird noises, broken scissors on the floor, and you standing there in the dark. Well…you were standing there in the dark. You should be done by now. Why don’t you clean this stuff up and go to bed?”

He reached down and helped Beau to his feet. Then, like always after getting on his son’s case, Blake turned and walked away without a word, leaving the young man to figure out what to do next. Shaking, Beau struggled to put the shower curtain back up by himself. Then he focused on the edge of the wafer that was still poking up. He pressed and held it down again and waited.

That was when he heard the second voice.

“Give up,” it said. The voice was scratchy and tinny, as if coming through an old radio speaker.

Beau decided to get out of there. Before he could move, though, the bathroom lights flickered off. Then the candles reignited on their own, slowly at first, and then bursting into huge flames that reached almost to the top of the mirror. Shocked, Beau fell back against the opposite wall and slid to the floor. It took a moment to pull himself together. When he had, he noticed the intensity of the heat coming from the candles. Besides being scared because of everything else going on, now he was afraid the whole house might burn down. He edged up to the sink, grasped a candle in each hand, and plunged them wick-down into the toilet. Their flames doused, he left them there and stepped toward the door. It slammed shut in front of him and locked. Now he was back in the dark and trapped, with only the moonlight, again, to help him.

“Give up.”

By now, Beau was hyperventilating. He made out the doorknob and grabbed it, but it was covered in slime so slick he couldn’t grip it. Maybe it’s that misty stuff, he thought. He tried and tried to turn the knob, but it was no use. Panting, he dropped to his knees and reached for the scissors on the floor by the toilet. They were back together, again. What in the world?

Panicked, he snatched them. Then he spun back to the door and found the knob. He opened the scissors wide, and slipped one rounded end into a screw head. He turned it hard, too hard, and bent the blade until it was useless. So, he tried the other one, more carefully this time. It bent a little, but the long screw finally gave way. He turned it and turned it until it came out. Then he did the same with the other one, the doorknob banging and scraping the whole time. At last, he wrestled the knob out of the door and pried the latch to one side with his little finger.

Beau yanked the door open, stumbled from the bathroom and rushed into the bedroom he shared with Ty. He closed the door behind him and slipped into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin, as if they could protect him.

Terrified but exhausted, he fingered the sticky wafer to make sure it was all in place and holding. That was the last thing he remembered. That and spying the bedroom door, listening for the bad voice.

In the days that followed, that voice, too, returned often—always with the same message—usually while he was awake, and apparently just to discourage him.

It succeeded. Having to wear the Bag was depressing enough. Now Beau had a heckler he couldn’t even see. Yet he couldn’t dismiss this voice. He’d discovered early in life you can’t pretend you don’t notice when something is bringing you down. Yet the bad voice’s very existence made Beau wonder if the first voice—the soothing voice—might be every bit as real.

2. Ty’s Secret

Beau wasn’t the only Dunn boy going through medical trauma during the unusually stressful Summer of 2002. At the end of July, Ty suffered through his own operation. He received a cochlear implant in his right ear. Contrary to Beau’s downer, however, Ty’s surgery was celebrated by almost everyone in the family, because it held the hope of improving the youngest Dunn’s ability to hear. Yet, Beau had trouble maintaining the enthusiasm. This was especially true the morning after Beau’s Bag-changing drama. That episode had left Beau with only four hours of sleep, from which he was awakened by his brother’s loud, high-pitched voice.

“I am taking da camera,” Ty yelled at his mother who was shuffling around down in the family room. Shorter than Beau and a bit chunkier, Ty’s deafness had focused him on visual activities, like computers, art, movies with closed captioning, and photography. (He liked sports well enough, but he didn’t bother himself with the details. He preferred brute force to Beau’s agility and finesse…a “see your opponent, destroy your opponent” kind of guy. It was simpler that way.)

Beau rolled over and glared at his younger brother. Ty’s bed head was a weed field in full bloom. “Why can’t he sign everything like he used to?” Beau muttered. He knew that if he’d shouted at Mom like that, she’d be jumping up the stairs at him. But Ty was still getting used to his implant and he didn’t yet hear or say everything just right. He had relied on sign language and regular hearing aids until now, but he really liked the new louder, clearer sounds. He would often say that, before the implant, he could barely hear the rain splash, and now he heard it fall. Yet he was a long way from knowing all the words, and he still had to get a handle on the volume and pitch of his voice.

Worst of all for Beau, Ty would taunt him with the implant…like now he could hear, so Beau had to talk to him. He kept saying he had something urgent to tell him. A few days earlier, Beau had almost given in and listened. Thankfully, his best friend Jesse had showed up with a new miniature rocket needing to be launched “right now” and saved the day.

As ticked off as he was at Ty on this morning, though, Beau was strangely upbeat. Then his swimsuit at the foot of the bed reminded him. It was Friday, and the year’s first teacher prep day, so no school!  The Dunns were headed to the ocean, taking along Jesse and Ty’s best friend Jonah. Great white sharks had been seen off Stinson Beach earlier in the week, so the boys were hoping to get a glimpse of one of the beasts. The trip had been Abby’s idea to get the guys out of the house, but Beau had told her he didn’t want to go without Jesse. She’d agreed. So then, of course, Ty had to invite Jonah. It was a copycat move, but it was working out great for Beau: he’d get Jesse, and Jonah would keep Ty occupied.

Beau wandered downstairs to find out when they were leaving.

“In about fifteen minutes,” said his slender mother as she struggled to park the heavy, packed cooler by the front door, her shoulder-length red hair glancing off her freckled, worn cheeks as she trudged. She turned and sat on the cooler, then managed a grin as she looked up at Beau. “By the way, I told your dad to bring the boogie boards in case you guys are allowed in the water.”

“Awesome! Then I’ll bring my new wetsuit, too!” The water at Stinson Beach was liquid ice, and Beau figured the wetsuit would help keep him warm…and help hide the Bag.

Abby asked him to please tell Ty not to bring his camera because it would get ruined in the sand and sea. Beau rolled his eyes, climbed back upstairs, and relayed the message.

“I’m taking da waterproof one Mom got me from da grocery store,” Ty said in his heavy deaf accent. “It will work good.”

As Beau looked at the small camera lying on the floor, it struck him that it had no zoom lens like Ty’s Nikon. A shark would have to stop and pose on the beach ten feet away for him to get a decent shot. “Look, if you’re really going to all this trouble, you should probably—”

Ty turned off his implant processor, looked away, and went back to his packing. This “tuning you out” tactic was already becoming a habit, and it was another new thing that frustrated Beau. He hurriedly slipped into his T-shirt, swimsuit, and flip-flops, and then stormed out of the bedroom with his backpack. He stuffed his wetsuit into it on the way to the bathroom. Once there, he threw in a first aid kit, scissors, gauze, white tape, and a brand-new tube of Neosporin. As he exited the bathroom, he noticed his mom had already cleaned up the mess he’d left the night before. How embarrassing, he thought, shaking his head.

Beau hustled downstairs, grabbed a bagel and a glass of orange juice from the kitchen since he’d overslept and missed breakfast, and then made straight for the SUV. His dad was shoving in the boogie boards and closing the tailgate. Ty came down a minute later and joined Beau on the middle bench. Abby planted herself in the front passenger seat while Blake climbed behind the wheel.

And it quickly became clear this trip was not going to go as Beau had planned.

Blake was turning the key when Abby’s cellphone rang. It was Jesse. She handed Beau the phone.

“My mom isn’t letting me go,” Jesse said. “Things were fine until I walked out with my BB gun. That made her crazy. She thought I was actually planning on hunting sharks.”

As Beau told the others what Jesse had said, Abby shook her head. “A BB gun? At the beach?”  She glared at Beau. Then she sighed as she turned back toward the front and muttered, “Jesse will always be Jesse.”  Being reminded his best friend was generally a random, out-of-control kind of guy just made things worse for Beau. He spiked the phone onto the seat next to him. It bounced onto the floor.

“Oh, well,” said Ty as he scooped up the device and handed it back to Abby. “You still has me.” 

“Okay, and that means I have what exactly?” said Beau with a scowl.

“Well, maybe it’s good I’ll have Jonah,” Ty said, hurt.

As Blake backed out of the driveway, the phone rang again. This time it was Jonah. Abby listened for a minute, told him to get better, and hung up.

“Jonah can’t go, either,” she said, turning toward Ty and speaking slowly while she signed. “He hurt his ankle wrestling with his brother last night, and it’s all swollen this morning. He said he’s sorry and he’ll see you at school on Monday.”

Now it was Ty’s turn to be disappointed…only he didn’t seem that disappointed to Beau. He actually seemed more relieved than upset. Beau still couldn’t pass up a chance to rub it in. He put his face right in front of Ty’s and let out a loud, taunting laugh. Abby slapped him on the shoulder and pushed him toward his side of the bench.

Blake stopped the SUV and put it in Park right there in the middle of the street. He turned toward his sons. “What do you guys want to do?” he asked. “We still going?”

Beau wasn’t sure if his dad was bluffing, or just trying to get out of the trip, but he didn’t really care. “Yeah,” he said. “Be better than sitting around here all day.” Ty nodded his agreement. As Blake looked at Abby, she looked away. So, he shifted into Drive, and the four of them were off.

For Beau, the mind-numbing ninety-minute drive was like coming out of anesthesia all over again. His dad listened to a baseball game on the radio (the Giants had a day game in New York, so it was on early in California). His mom sorted through bills. Ty tried to do homework, but he seemed distracted. He spent most of his time looking straight ahead, blinking often, and glancing at Beau every couple of minutes. Beau had finished his homework the night before so he could chill with Jesse today. He stared out the side window, thoroughly bored.

Out of the blue, Ty tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry for making you feel bad about Jesse,” he signed.

“Forget it,” said Beau, rolling his eyes and looking away.

Ty waited a few seconds, and then tapped him on the shoulder again.

Annoyed, Beau looked back at him. Ty was wearing the same intense expression he’d had a few days earlier when he absolutely had to talk about something urgent. Only this time Beau was trapped, with no Jesse to rescue him.

Ty leaned toward Beau and whispered a question. “Do you do dreams?”

Even for Ty this was a strange one. Beau chalked it up to his hearing and speech issues.

“Look, I have dreams,” Beau said, correcting him. “We all have dreams.”  Beau barely glanced at Ty, refusing to believe this is what was so important.

“Nooo. Do you do dreams?” Ty said, louder this time. Beau turned away. “I have dreams. But I do dreams, too,” Ty said, not letting it go.

Beau pulled out his iPod and headphones, signaling Ty to back off. Before he could slip them on, though, Ty said something that piqued his interest.

“Instructions comes to me in some of my dreams dat makes me have to choose tings and then do stuff on purpose. It’s like somebody wants me to get someting done, not just lie dere with my foggy mind wandering all over da place while I fall to sleep.”

I know what he’s talking about, thought Beau, glancing back around. “Kind of like you’re supposed to learn something?” he asked.

“Yes. And it’s not all my dreams…only some of dem,” said Ty. “It’s like sometimes I’m leading and other times I’m following…but I’m learning and doing good tings on purpose. And I remember all da little details when I wake up. Regular dreams don’t work like dat.”

It had been a long time since Beau had dialed into Ty. It had been months since they’d had a conversation even this long. But Ty was describing what Beau had been experiencing, and he had to know more.

Beau leaned forward to see if his mother was picking up any of this. She had dozed off, having spent half the night on the Internet and looking through magazines, pulling things together for the wedding planning she’d be doing with the boys’ sister Madisen over the weekend.

Then Beau sat up and looked in Blake’s rearview mirror to see if he was watching them. He was lost in his game. So, Beau turned back to Ty and whispered, pronouncing carefully—as loudly as he dared—and signing as much as he could to make sure Ty understood.

“The same thing’s been happening to me, okay. At first there was just a voice…somebody named “Cael” something. And then there were like, visions. But then I got more used to them. Are you used to them yet?”

“No. It just started happening few weeks ago. I don’t want to tell no one about it. People already avoid me ’cause I’m deaf.”

“Wow! This didn’t start happening to me until just before my last surgery. You’ve started way younger than I did.”

“Dat’s because I am more smarter than you,” said Ty, smiling. “I learn faster and I understands tings better.”

Beau slumped back in his seat to think, to get his mind around this. He was stunned Ty might be going through visions like he was. (He couldn’t help wondering if Ty was hearing the bad voice, too. He decided to leave that for another time…unless Ty brought it up.)“Do you think they mean anything?” he asked finally.

“I don’t know,” said Ty. “But I know dey help me figure tings out and do better. Do yours do dat sometimes?”

They did, but Beau didn’t want to admit it. He was already further into the conversation than he wanted to get. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t escape his curiosity.

“Well, they help me be more confident, braver,” Beau signed. “If I have a vision where I have to conquer something new, the next day I’m, like, yeah…braver.”

“Braver?”

“I mean I’m not afraid to do things. Like take a stab at calculus, or talk to Jesse’s sister, or learn new signs. It’s like I feel I can be successful after those dreams…and I don’t always feel that way.”

“Same here,” said Ty. “It feels pretty good, huh?”

Again, Beau hesitated. Ty was right, though. It felt good. Really good.

Abby snorted herself awake, almost snapping her head off. She looked back at her sons, her arms stretched as high as they could go inside the SUV, her blue eyes noticeably fresher after her brief nap.

“How are you guys holding up?” she yawned.

“Okay,” said Beau. “But I don’t remember this ride taking so long…”

Abby then glanced at Blake. More Jonah Hill than Chris Hemsworth, his paunch was a blimp tethered to the front of his otherwise skinny body, and what hair he had left was retreating swiftly toward his ears. He leaned forward as he drove…and he was a million miles away with that game on. Abby waved her hand right in front of his wire-rimmed glasses. He didn’t even blink.

“How can he drive like that?” she signed. “What an idiot.”

She turned her gaze forward again. As she did, she adjusted her posture and looked down and groaned as her stack of magazines slid to the floor. Now that she was awake, there was no way Beau could continue his conversation with Ty. In a way, that was a relief. But he was still intrigued. He decided to bring it up again later when the two were by themselves.

Beau slipped into his headphones and cranked up the volume on his iPod. He lost himself in the music and sang along, drumming the bench seat to the rhythm. He was really getting into it when Ty tapped him on the shoulder again. Beau slid one of the speakers off his ear, looked at his little brother, and signed, “WHAT?”

“You sounds like a deaf person when you sing with dose tings on,” said Ty, laughing.

“Shut up, dude.” Beau defiantly started singing again, quieter this time.

Mimicking Beau, Ty took out the iPod Blake had bought him after his surgery and plugged it into his cochlear implant. He seemed to like music, though Beau didn’t know how it sounded to him. But liking music was something Beau understood. He watched Ty fiddle with the volume and then sit back and listen. After a few minutes, Ty dozed off, his head lowered and nodding.

Suddenly Ty sat straight up, eyes still closed, as if trying to escape a bad dream. He twisted and swayed from side to side until he banged his forehead against the side window. Beau cringed, but this was way too cool for him to look away!

The collision with the window brought Ty out of it. He never looked over at Beau, and didn’t notice him watching. His eyebrows just scrunched together and froze as he looked outside, like he was trying to figure something out. He shook his iPod and turned the volume down and then back up, his body still tense. Finally, he unhooked the device from his implant, looked around the SUV, and sat back, seeming more puzzled than ever. Clearly upset, he never really relaxed for the rest of the trip.

Not that he should have…

3. The First Challenge

The Dunns finally pulled into the dirt parking lot at the south end of Stinson Beach. It was nearly noon, but the morning fog hadn’t yet burned off. As he got out of the SUV, Beau looked almost straight up at Highway 1, the road they’d come in on, as it descended from the cliffs above the beach. For his part, Ty pulled out his backpack containing his waterproof camera, snacks, and water, and hurried to a large boulder overlooking the shoreline to wait for a shark to show up. He climbed the rock and sat there, motionless and stealthy, like a downwind lion waiting to pounce on its prey, his cheap grocery store camera primed for action.

“Look, he won’t get any detail with that thing, even if he sees a shark,” Beau told his mother. “I tried to tell him before we left, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s never going to get close enough for a good shot.”

“Uhhh! I was so worried something might go wrong, I didn’t stop to think something needed to go right,” Abby shook her head. “I should have let him bring the Nikon and the zoom lens and taken my chances. He’s going to be so disappointed.”

Serves him right, thought Beau. At least he won’t bug me while he’s glued to that rock.

Blake, Abby, and Beau collected the beach chairs, cooler, boogie boards, and sun block and slogged through the soft, pebbled gray sand to a spot near Ty’s boulder at the water’s edge. Twenty miles north of San Francisco, the beach stretched for more than three miles as it bent around Bolinas Bay. As his parents unfolded the chairs and threw down a couple of oversized towels, Beau pulled on his wetsuit and grabbed his boogie board. No sharks had been seen since Tuesday, so the lifeguardswere letting people swim away.

“Be careful out there!” said Abby, slipping her arm around his waist and pulling him close. “The cold water could cause your stomach muscles to cramp, way worse than when you’re lying in bed. And you can’t drown in a bed!”

“I think it’ll be okay,” said Beau. “I haven’t had cramps for a while. And, besides, I’m pretty warm in this wetsuit.”

“Yeah, but you’re not in the water yet. Take it slow!”

Beau heard the words, but his enthusiasm got the better of him. He headed out to where the water rose to his chest, pushing through the swells as he went. He forced himself to not worry about how the Bag would handle the stress, and he soon found he could work around it reasonably well. Once he saw a wave he liked, Beau would turn around and plop stomach-down on the board and ride it to shore. He did it again and again. Actual physical activity, his first real exercise since the operation. His stomach was tender, but no cramps. He couldn’t get enough.

As the day stretched into late afternoon, Beau had to admit the beach was awesome, even without Jesse. He doubted Ty saw it that way, though. His brother had wasted hours on his rock with no sign of a shark. Ty finally gave up and climbed down. “I didn’t get no shark pictures!” he yelled as he walked toward the others. “Nothing’s going to happen here. I want to go home.”