My eyes want to glue themselves shut. Every bone and muscle in my body is desperate to power down. I shouldn’t have let myself doze off on the train from Seattle airport. I wasn’t on it for long enough, and now this damn Lyft is rocking me to sleep.
My mind goes fuzzy and my eyelids close on their own right before my head bangs against the window and I jolt back upright.
“You alright, kid?”
“Yeah,” I tell the driver as I prop my chin on my hand. “I’ve just been up since yesterday.”
He glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Where did you fly in from?”
“Denpasar.”
“Is that in India?”
“Indonesia… Bali.” I correct him and look out the window, trying whatever I can to keep myself alert.
“That must’ve been a long one.”
Yeah, no shit.“Nineteen hours with a stop over in Hong Kong.”
He whistles his response with a shake of his head, but I’m already slipping again. I just can’t small talk right now.
I let go for just a second and I’m surrounded by serene blackness. It’s perfect. It’s—
My chin slides from my hand, and when I look back out the window I see the Lyft has stopped and we’re out the front of an apartment building.
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in Broadrock, apart from the mountains and the ocean. It’s new, and bright, and so out of place I lean towards the driver as he gets out; “Is that it?”
He leans back inside. “According to the GPS.”
I know I have to move but it feels impossible right now.
I reach for my skateboard, my hand as heavy as lead, and tug it, along with the backpack it’s strapped to, towards myself. The driver already has my suitcase out of the trunk waiting for me by the time I’m out of the car, and is making quick work of getting my surfboard down from the roof racks.
The soles of my shoes and the worn out hems of my oversized light-wash jeans drag across the road as I scuff my way towards the curb.
The frosty grass looks nice and soft. I could lay down for just a minute between the stacks of boxes, king-sized mattress, and… spider plant?
I drag my suitcase toward the building’s front and leave it by the stoop before returning to take my board from the Lyft driver. He offers me a friendly goodbye, and I think I reply. I intend to, anyway.
Weaving through the shit show strewn across the front lawn is a lot harder with a six-foot surfboard than with wheelie luggage, but I manage to make it to the intercom without knockinganything over. I press the buzzer for 5F and wait to hear my brother’s voice. When it doesn’t come I punch at it with more force.
I lean in close to the speaker, yet I still hear nothing.
I try opening the glass doors but they’re locked—just like I knew they would be. I check the mailbox but it’s jammed with take-out pamphlets. Between Shawn and my brother you’d think one of them would be adult enough to clean it out.
I check my phone in case it glitched and didn’t alert me of a text, but there are no missed calls or messages from Eden.
I try the buzzer a third time, holding my finger down for a good five seconds before releasing it. There’s a hollow thump, like something rubbed up against the microphone, then Shawn’s voice shrieks out through the speaker. “Stop pressing the fucking buzzer!”
“Tell Eden I’m here,” I quickly speak into the intercom. I can’t tell if she responds or just hisses, but it goes dead either way.
They’re probably having sex. I swear they do it more than they breathe. I’ll give them ten more minutes, then I'll press that damn buzzer until someone lets me inside.
I rest my board against the front of the building and haul my suitcase up over the icy concrete edge of the stoop.
Broadrock’s not a big place. Sometimes it feels like everything has been designed to be as unwelcoming as possible with even nature in on the joke. For months every year there is a haze that hangs over it. It’s cold and damp, and so far from the eternal sunshine of San Diego, or the tropical paradise's I spent the past three years living in. But I still miss it.
I know it makes me sound stupid.
