“Show up at LeCount before sunrise tomorrow. I’ll introduce you to some people who can help you work your board. Real surfers.”

“That’s early.”

“That’s the best time of day.”

“I’ll be there.”

RYE AND SKIP COULDN’T BELIEVE Poppy had dropped in on Dirk and survived. He was one of the outer shore’s resident surfing legends, one of the old guard who got started in the seventies. For the old guys, surfing was as much a spiritual thing as it was athletic.

Poppy didn’t tell Kit about her meeting with Dirk, because it was like discussing a party only she’d been invited to.

It was tough to get up before sunrise the next morning, but she woke early and went to LeCount Hollow, where he told her he’d meet her. She sat on the bench where the parking lot met the steep bluff that led down to the ocean. The sun was beginning to rise, and a layer of yellow like a line of highlighter shone at the crease of the horizon. The wind pushed the cold off the ocean to shore and made her hair whip around her head. She could taste the salt on her lips. She liked being there early. It made her feel like she had the world all to herself.

A few minutes later a caravan of trucks drove into the lot, led by Dirk. His truck was white and covered with bumper stickers her dad would approve of, like the Grateful Dead marching bears, RELAX, a mustache, a Greenpeace logo, RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT OF OUTER SPACE. A series of doors slammed and a group of guys close to her own age gathered around her. The last person to approach was a girl.

“Kit?”

“You didn’t know I’m a local? I guess you are too, now, Wisconsin.”

UNLIKE THE “WASHASHORES” WHO started surfing in the afternoons and evenings—after their hangovers began to lift—the locals got started first thing. Their days began with a sacred ritual of coffee at sunrise. Then they’d check the breaks to see where the surf was best. They’d cruise the coast from Truro to Orleans chasing swells.

“You have to be gnarly to surf with them,” Kit said, and Poppy soon learned what that meant. Dirk taught Poppy that surfing with the locals meant peeing in your own wet suit. It meant shitting in the dunes. It meant staying in the cold waters of the Atlantic as long as the swell would last, because it might be another tide or day or week before you’d hit a good one again. It meant keeping up with the guys, some of them about her age, some as old as Dirk. They felt like a family of brothers who were different than Michael. Poppy felt protective of him, while these guys looked out for her safety, taught technique, and let her drink and get high with them.