After receiving outloopish gift, she appears more gur-roid than ever. Cause unknown. Maybe she’s allergic to parrots. End Transmission The sun was just rising as Chad Steel sat on his surfboard, waiting for the next set of waves to roll in. School wouldn’t start for another hour. But that was okay. He never minded getting up early to surf. There were three things he loved about it: 1. The beauty and silence of being alone on the water. 2. Leaving his phone on the beach so he couldn’t receive Hesper’s calls. 3. The thrill of catching the right wave and working its power. 4. Leaving his phone on the beach so he couldn’t receive Hesper’s text messages. Actually, that was four things, but Chad was a surfer, not a math geek. He’d leave the math (and the geekiness) to such brainiacs as “How’s my ten-four, Chad? Do you (sniff-sniff) copy? Repeat, do you (snort-snort) copy?” Doug Claudlooper, who was currently speaking through Chad’s earpiece. And if you couldn’t tell it was Doug by all the sniff-sniff-ing and snort-snorting (Doug had a permanent case of hay fever), you could tell by the way he was waving at Chad from the beach like a madman (or in Doug’s case, a mad scientist).
