After studying the map, I strap on my scooter helmet and head down Gold Avenue toward the northern end of the boardwalk—opposite the Cavern Palace, a mile or so away. Sunshine’s burning through the morning fog, the air smells like pancakes and ocean. ?e beach is already bustling with people. Locals and tourists, freaks and geeks. ?ey throng the boardwalk like ants on a picnic. ?e water’s too nippy for swimming, but that doesn’t stop people from lining the sand with blankets and towels. Everyone’s ready to worship the sun.
I’ve always disliked the beach, but as I nd a place to park near the north end of the boardwalk and slather my vitamin-D-de cient legs and arms with mega-super-sensitive sunblock created for babies, the frail, and the elderly, I’m feeling slightly less hateful at the horde of bouncy string bikinis and tropical-patterned board shorts jostling past me, laughing and singing as they le toward the sand. ?ere’s not a soul here that I need to impress. No one to worry about accidentally bumping into. Coming out west is my do-over. A clean slate.
?at was one reason I wanted to move out here. It wasn’t just missing my dad, or Mom and Nate LLC ghting, or even the prospect of meeting Alex. In a strange way, the reason I don’t know much about Alex, and vice versa, was one of my main incentives for moving.
Mom’s a divorce lawyer. (Oh, the irony.) Four years ago, when I was fourteen, Mom took a case that ended up giving the wife full custody of the couple’s daughter, a girl about my age. Turned out the jilted husband had a leak in the ol’ brain pipe. Greg Grumbacher, hell-bent for revenge against my mother, found our address online. ?is was back when my folks were still together. ?ere was … an incident.
He was put in prison for a very long time.
Anyway. It’s a relief to have an entire country between me and old Greg.
So that’s why our family doesn’t do “public” online. No real names. No photos. No alma maters or job locations. No breezy status updates with geotags or posts with time stamps like, Oh my gawd, Stacey! I’m sitting at my fav tea shop on 9th, and there’s a girl wearing the cutest dress! Because that’s how messed-up people track you down and do bad things to you and people you care about.
I try not to be paranoid and let it ruin my life. And not everybody who wants to track somebody down is a sicko. Take, for instance, what I’m doing now, looking for Alex. I’m no Greg Grumbacher. ?e difference is intent. ?e difference is that Greg wanted to hurt us, and all I want to do is make sure that Alex is an actual human being my age, preferably of the male persuasion, and not some creep who’s trying to harvest my eyeballs for weird, evil laboratory experiments. ?at’s not stalking, it’s scoping. It’s protection for both of us, really—me and Alex. If we’re meant to be, and he’s the person I imagine him to be, then things will all work out ne. He’ll be wonderful, and by the end of the summer, we’ll be crazy in love, watching North by Northwest at the lm festival on the beach, and I’ll have my hands all over him. Which is what I spend a lot of my free time imagining myself doing to his virtual body, the lucky boy.
However, if my scoping turns up some bad intel and this relationship looks like it might have more zzle than pop? ?en I’ll just disappear into the shadows, and nobody gets hurt.
See? I’m looking out for the two of us.
Shoulders loose, I slip on a pair of dark sunglasses and fall in step behind a herd of beach bunnies, using them as a shield until we hit the boardwalk, where they head straight to the beach and I go left.
?e boardwalk area is just under half a mile long. A center promenade spills out onto a wide pedestrian pier, which is anchored by a Ferris wheel at its base and capped by a wire that ferries couples in aerial chairlifts to the cliffs above. And all of that is enveloped in midway games, looping roller coasters, hotels, restaurants, and bars. It’s half this: laid-back California vibe, skaters, sidewalk art, comic book shops, organic tea, seagulls. And half this: bad 1980s music blasting through tinny speakers, schlocky Tilt-A-Whirls, bells dinging, kids crying, cheap T-shirt shops, over owing trash cans.
Whatever my feelings about what this place is, I suspect it isn’t going to be easy to nd Alex. ?ose suspicions only grow stronger when I veer away from the Midway area and hit a stretch of retail shops near the promenade (maybe here?) and realize the scent that’s been driving me crazy since yesterday isn’t the Pancake Shack, it’s freshly fried dough. And that’s because there’s an official Coronado Cove boardwalk churro cart every twenty or thirty feet down the promenade. Churros are like long Mexican doughnut sticks that have been fried and dipped in cinnamon or, as the sign tells me, strawberry sugar. ?ey smell like God’s footprints. I’ve never had a real churro, but halfway down the promenade, I make a decision to give up on everything: nding Alex, nding another job, the meaning of life. Just give me that sweet fried dough.
I plunk down some cash and take my booty to a shady bench. It is everything I hoped for and more. Where have you been all my life? It makes me feel better about my failed morning. As I’m licking the cinnamon sugar from my ngertips, I spy a fat orange tabby cat sunning on the sidewalk near the bench.
No. Could it be?
I glance across the promenade. Looks to be a vintage clothing store, a surf shop—Penny Boards, which may or may not be named after Porter’s stupid grandfather—a medical marijuana dispensary, and a café of some sort. ?e cat stretches. I pull down my shades. Our eyes meet. Am I looking at Alex’s stray cat?
“Here, kitty,” I call sweetly. “Sam-I-Am? ?at wouldn’t be your name, would it? Sweet boy?”
His listless gaze doesn’t register my voice. For a moment, I wonder if he just died, then he rolls to one side, turning a cool shoulder to me with snotty feline aplomb.
“Was that your lunch?” a tiny English voice says.
My pulse jumps. I jerk my head up to nd a friendly, familiar face staring down at me. Grace from work. She’s dressed in shorts and a white spaghetti-strap top that says NOPE in sparkly gold rhinestones.
“It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” I tell her. When she squints at me, I explain, “I’m from New Jersey. We only have boring old funnel cakes at the beach.”
“I thought you were from DC.”
I wave a hand, dismissive. “It’s a long story. I only lived in DC for a few months. ?at’s where my mom and her husband are. My dad went to college in California, at Cal Poly, and moved back west a year ago. A couple of months ago, I decided to move out here with him, and, well … here I am.”
“My dad’s a lab technician. He’s from Nigeria,” she says. “I’ve never been, but he left Nigeria and met my mum in London. We moved here when I was ten … so seven years ago? To tell you the truth, except for ying back and forth to England for Christmas, I’ve only ever been out of the state once, and that was just to Nevada.”
“Eh. You aren’t missing much,” I joke.
She studies me for a moment, adjusting her purse higher on her shoulder. “You know, you don’t really have a New Jersey accent, but you do sort of sound like you’re from the East Coast.”
“Well, you don’t have a California accent, but you do sort of sound like a British Tinker Bell.”
She snorts a little laugh.
I smile. “Anyway, this was my rst churro, but it won’t be my last. I’m planning to quit the museum and become a churro cart owner. So if you don’t see me at ticketing tomorrow, give Mr. Cavadini my regards.”
“No way,” she squeaks, looking genuinely panicked. “Don’t leave me in ticketing alone. Promise me you’ll show up. Porter said three people already quit. We’re the only people scheduled tomorrow afternoon.”
