Chapter 1

"Go Liah!"
Merliah Summers heard her friends cheering from the beach as she paddled her surfboard out into the ocean. In the distance, she spied the perfect wave.
Merliah turned her board toward the shore. As the wave swelled under her, she checked her balance and tried an aerial.
"Yes!" the young surfer cried as she nailed the trick.
Merliah waved at her best friends, Fallon and Hadley, and at her grandfather Break, all watching from the beach. There was nothing like a day on the waves: the warm sun on her back, the wind in her long pink-streaked blond hair, and the smell of the salty ocean water.
But the amazing setting didn't distract Merliah from the important competition she was surfing in-or from her rival, Kylie Morgan from Australia. Just as Merliah caught another wave, Kylie dropped in next to her, cutting her off.
The girls zigzagged across each other's paths. Merliah answered Kylie's signature cutback with a flip of her own. She entered in the tube of the wave with Kylie right behind her.
The crowd on the beach held its breath. Both surfers had talent, and this contest was just the latest in a neck-and-neck race that had been going on for the past year.
Merliah adjusted her feet to steer her board toward the shore. She pulled a final snap and rode the wave all the way to the shallows.
Break, Hadley, and Fallon splashed into the water to greet her. Break wore board shorts, and the girls were both in colorful two-piece swimsuits."
[...]