The Worst Mistake Yet!

Well, that was about when I lost it. Lost what? My patience, I guess. I'd say my marbles too, but I think by this point those were already long gone.

"Oh come on!" I threw my hands up, in the air and in defeat. Of course I had already given Snowball back her phone before I did this. I'm not some reprobate who goes around tossing other people's phones every which way. What do you take me for?

I was still pretty upset about the whole situation though.

"You mean I had to go through everything today cause of a freaking typo?!?!?! No, wait, it wasn't even actually a typo! It was just a lousy misreading!"

As I channeled all the frustration that had built up over the past couple of hours out — this long, long, two-ish hour beach trip, not to the most cursed beach in the world, but the most curved — I felt good. Better than I had all day, actually. Not that that was saying much, but still.

"Snowball, you… you… you…" I was about to call her a nasty name. Then I flashed back to that one time when I — jokingly, mind you — called her a dummyhead and she spent the next three and a half hours crying and honking her nose out… with my shirt as her tissue. So, considering I wasn't even wearing a shirt at the moment, instead I just said: "YOU READ IT WRONG, YOU DUMB STUPID IDIOT!"

Oops. I called her a name anyway. Oh well. I just couldn't hold back. I was pretty upset at this point, in case it wasn't obvious.

"This doesn't say that Waxing Bay is the most cursed beach in the world! It says 'curved,' as in 'most curved beach in the world!'"

All of this, for the dumbest reason possible. All because Snowball was too lazy to roll over and grab her glasses while reading in bed. All because she couldn't see worth a flying fart without them.

Sigh.

It was exhausting me just thinking about all this. If I wasn't so ticked off, I probably wouldn't even have the strength to keep standing.

I know what you're thinking: wasn't I being a little theatrical? And yeah. Sure. I was. Was I being a drama queen? I'll even grant you that, maybe. But considering all I'd gone through over the course of the morning, you'd think my particular plight at this particular moment would be appreciated at least a little by my friends.

Speaking of my friends, they sure were being silent. Here I was giving them a piece of my mind and they weren't even talking back. That was so unlike them that if I didn't know any better, I'd think they weren't even here—

"Wait, huh?"

I looked around.

Everyone was gone.

The surfers were still surfing. And throngs of people by the shore were still watching on, immersed in all the wave-shredding and probably invested in who could come out on top in this competition that was apparently going on.

"You mean… you mean… you mean I was letting all that pent-up aggravation out on literally no one?!"

As for where Snowball, Fence, and Samson had got off to…

"Hey, there they are!"

They were a way's up the beach. Err, down? Hard to tell with the place shaped like a horseshoe. I ran after them…

… and was huffing and puffing harder than the world's most famous fictional wolf by the time I got there. Big and bad though? Decidedly not. Without the adrenaline rush of being almost eaten alive by overgrown weeds with a taste for human flesh, and without any exercise in months outside the bare minimum required to pass my state's laughably low phys ed requirements, I was winded already.

"There you are," Snowball said. "Took you a while to catch up."

Catch up? The phrase reminded me of the story of my most epic fail. The time I fell off the school roof into a giant vat of processed tomato product. All at once, the memories came flooding back in a tidal wave of shame, disgrace, and Red 40. A tsunami of painful memories so strong I didn't even have the strength to repeat any of my reprimands from before. Something told me everyone had moved on anyway.

Snowball and Fence, for instance, were focused on Samson, while Samson was concentrating hard on making his remote-controlled robo-panda surf. I guessed he had moved over to this stretch of beach to see the action a bit better.

"So," I said, "what's this about anyway? I take it you built that…" I trailed off. How was I supposed to describe a robotic bear armed heavily enough to take on a small army? "... thing? Why did you enter it in the surf contest? And why are there so many people surfing today anyway?"

It was definitely the most hectic and crowded surfing competition I had ever seen.

Of course it was also the only surfing competition I had ever seen, but that wasn't the point.

The point was I had bigger issues on my mind. Take my most burning question for instance — the one whose answer I was more curious than anything to know:

"And if this place isn't actually cursed, how do you explain all the crazy shit that's been happening all morning?" Most of it, unfortunately, to me. Classic.

"Well," Samson said, smearing his tongue across his upper lip. It was too dry to call it a lick. He was totally honed in on the surfing, barely paying us any mind. But he managed to answer my questions anyway. "First of all, those aren't people surfing out there. They're pets."

"Wait, what?"

It sounded stupid for half a second, but the other half was all it took to see Samson was right. Spot on, even. The ones dishing out the sick tricks and shredding waves out in the open blue weren't people.

They were pets.

And not just your regular pets either. Sure there were cats, dogs, birds, hell, even a few frogs and lizards and snakes, all surfing their adorable hearts out. At risk of sounding totally lame, I actually have a pretty big soft spot for animals so the sight was a welcome surprise to behold. Of course it only made the way I had been treating Matchstick — and whether me and him would even remain together in the future — weigh even more heavily on my mind. But even still, I couldn't help but break into dumb smile seeing all those surfing pets.

But there was more to the story here. The cats, dogs, hamsters, and the like were only half the story. The other half was made up of pets of all shapes, sizes, and species. Pets the likes of which you'd never find in any animal shelter, or even the most outlandish of exotic pet stores, or even the zoo.

Waxing Bay's half circle of waves was an explosion of xtreme pets doing xtreme sports.

To my left, a chambered nautilus hung fifty with all of its tentacles.

To my right, a koala mom high-fived her owner as she sloshed back to shore, board under her arm and joey safe in her pouch.

And my heart swelled most of all when I saw, right in front of me, a tardigrade riding a towering wave of crystal blue, spray dancing off the swell like tiny motes of pure light.

And that was just the tip of the animalian iceberg here. If I described all the pets I saw in all the glory I saw them in, we'd be here for hours. They were all so majestic/cute/cuddly/badass that I had a hard time even believing that the three of us had totally missed them until Samson spoke up.

In that moment, I took it back. I took it all back. Today, this trip, and even the whole "getting beaten black and blue to lose the lamest game of volleyball of all time, followed by being added to the lunch menu for an oversized plant too good for photosynthesis" thing — none of it was a mistake. Not if I got to see something as beautiful as this. The only mistake was thinking this was all a mistake to begin with.

And I also made a promise to myself. Seeing all these pets and their owners surfing together in the light of the sun moved me. I felt something inside me shift, transform, and become something new. Become an indescribable inspiration that told me, deep down, that…

"... I can't abandon him."

"Hm." Snowball was by my side, smiling. That was just like her. She knew what I was trying to say without me even saying it.

"I can't give up that easily," I said.

"That's great, dude." Fence was there too, as perfectly on page with me as Snowball. Heck, he knew me so well he probably knew I would come to this decision before I did.

"Me and Matchstick… as long as he's up for it, we'll give it another shot!"

To be continued!