He smiles at her, and she feels that familiar pang in her heart. “Do you remember when I told you about that secret beach?”
She does, and looks at him in surprise. “Really? Can we go there?”
He nods at the school’s entrance. “My car’s across the street. Traffic shouldn’t be bad.”
The Peninsula is a curious outcropping of land at the southern point of Angel City, a spot far from everything and little known even to locals. It is a stunning and isolated place—rows and rows of Spanish homes line the rolling hills and overlook a vista of the ocean so beautiful that it should belong in a national park.
Ari drives them past town centers filled with tiny grocery stores and sandwich shops, past library parking lots filled with children racing back to their cars, mothers hauling tote bags full of books. To Sam, it looks like a scene in a movie, a place that can’t possibly be part of the same city she grew up in, grime and graffiti and buses and concrete. But then, hasn’t she been inducted now into this kind of world, of lavishness and refinement?
Why did you first come to me that night, Sam?
The memory fades as Ari reaches a winding section of road where nothing but beach after beach lies glittering under the afternoon sun, and Sam closes her eyes for a moment so that all she sees under her lids is a haze of glowing red. Everything is going to be different now; she belongs to Grand Central, and she has a new name in addition to her own.Mozart.The memory of Diamond’s words gives her strength, makes her feel reborn. Like she belongs to something.
Ari’s presence beside her is solid and warm. She knows she isn’t supposed to talk about alchemy, but he deserves to know something this significant about her. How long will she keep such a big part of herself away from her only friend?
And then she opens her eyes. They’ve been close for so long, and now they’re graduating. They’re adults, surely capable of handling each other’s secrets.
Suddenly, she feels ready to be vulnerable, and it leaves her feeling giddy.
What if she just tells him everything today?
At last, Ari parks next to a long-broken gate hidden behind bushes of overgrown sage. Sam looks skeptically at the path as they climb out of the car.
“Come on,” Ari says, taking her hand, and she follows him, tingling with anticipation, as they step gingerly around the gate and through the foliage.
Here, she can see the faintest remnants of a trail that must once have existed, a curving, heavily overgrown path winding down to the ocean below. At first glance, it looks impossible to get through. But Ari walks ahead ofher, and somehow they carve their way through the long grasses and massive bunches of coyote brush growing against the cliffside. As they go, the plants seem to make way for them, bush turning into patches of wild roses, of orange poppies and baby-blue lupines.
At last, she finds herself standing with Ari along a narrow stretch of sand hidden beneath protruding bluffs, shaded from sun and wind, the strip lined with giant black stones and a series of stone archways hollowed out against the stone walls, their legs disappearing into the tide.
It’s not a good place to picnic or tan; it doesn’t get enough sun, and it’s clear the land disappears when the tide comes in. But Ari leads her to a soft stretch of sand right before the archways carved hollow by the sea, where he sits down on a flat, black rock. Sam follows suit, taking off her shoes and sinks her toes into the cool sand. She closes her eyes and listens to the waves, then opens them again and notices the patches of sea daisies growing nearby, cheerful little heads bobbing in the breeze.
She lets out a breath. “Oh, Ari,” she murmurs, admiring the white crests of the waves. “It’s perfect.”
When she turns to him, she realizes that he’s looking at her. A flutter in her heart makes her feel light. Somehow, she gets the sense that he wants to tell her something important too. She thinks about how far they’ve both come. How much he means to her.
He looks out at the surf. His expression sobers, and after a long while, he says, “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong here?”
It takes her a moment to understand that he means here, in Angel City, in this country. She sits with his question for a moment, unsure how to answer. All she has ever known is this city. Every bit of it flows through her veins, even the dirt, the concrete, the mess, the endless imperfections, the parts that are hard to love. It is her home in every sense of the word.
How can someone not belong to a place that is their home?
“My mother told me,” she starts to answer, “that I was a baby when we first came over, so I always try to picture myself that small, being carried on the bow of a ship.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. My mother chose the name Connie for herself, to fit in. Even changed her last name from Su to Sun, to make it more Western. She’s struggled sometimes, I think. But all I remember is here. That’s as close to belonging as possible, isn’t it?”
He murmurs in half-hearted agreement. “I remember life before this,” he says. “But I was older than you when I came here.”
She feels a flash of envy so bone-deep that it hurts. It catches her off guard. Where had that come from? They have never talked about their earliest years; as far as she is concerned, their lives began when they met each other. She hasn’t thought much about what it might feel like to remember another home, had no idea that she wishes she did.
“Do you miss it?” she asks him, nodding out at the sea.
He says nothing, which is its own answer, but after a while, he gives her a quick little smile. “You made it easier,” he says, and her heart pulls tight.
They sit back against the rocks, Ari propped up on his arms, Sam resting gently against his shoulder. She is wearing a white summer dress today, and Ari is in a flowy shirt and trousers that he now rolls up to his elbows and knees. She braids sea daisies into her dark locks and wonders when to tell him, where she should even start. Waves foam nearby. Moisture dampens the hems of her dress. She buries her feet in the wet sand and senses the structure of the shifting water and salt and earth, idly pictures their geometries in her head.
Their chatter comes and goes, returning to the surface as it always does, to things they’ve learned or watched, opinions they have about the world. Soon, their conversation falls away completely, giving way to a comfortable silence. It is the way they have always been, and yet, under the surface, Sam knows that something between them is about to change forever. Now and then, she leans forward to run her fingers through the idling water. As she does, she glances over at Ari, who watches the ocean as if he can see something along the horizon. Secretly, she hopes she can catch him looking at her again. She memorizes him in this instance, his wild dark curls and exquisite eyes, the line of his jaw, the dreaming expression.
And deep down, she knows this is the right moment. She takes a breath, steadies herself.
But he speaks first.
