Johnny, on the other hand, was a natural. He got the elementary schoolers to sit still and convinced the tweens to put their phones away. The parents beamed at him as their kids grabbed onto Johnny’s leg and whined that they didn’t want to go home. When he was on shift, Johnny was the glowing center of Achieve!
At first, they barely talked over closing—whose turn it was to take out the trash, whether the keyboards had been cleaned yet. Dan assumed that if he wanted to talk to her, he would, and anything else would probably be bothering him. But then he asked her for help on when to use the imperfective in Spanish and commented approvingly (“Nice”) of the IronWeaks patch on her backpack.
After that, it was all music all the time—classic punk, new wave, indie rock. Liss wasn’t really into music, and now Dan realized there was a special thrill in discovering new bands cool enough to tell Johnny about and listening to his recommendations. When he heard Dan didn’t have a record player, he invited her over to listen on his, because everything sounded better on vinyl, although they never actually made plans to do it and Dan never found the nerve to follow up. Once, they stayed late after closing to watch videos of the Germs on the computer in the back office. She only half watched the clips—pale bodies covered in sweat and convulsing with rage—and instead her gaze wandered to Johnny, shards of black hair bouncing along with the frantic beat as he tapped out the drum line to “Lexicon Devil” on his thigh.
He ran his fingers through his hair in a totally unselfconscious way that snagged Dan’s brain, and she blurted, “You don’t seem angry enough to listen to music like this.” Johnny looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t apologize.” He brushed his hair back again, but it was silky and long and always falling where it looked perfect but didn’t belong. The lights of the rest of Achieve! were already switched off, and when he turned to her, Dan felt sharply how alone they were. “You don’t have be angry to listen to punk. It makes me feel alive. All that energy. It makes me want to . . .” He spread his hands wide.
“Yeah, I know,” Dan said. “It makes you want to escape your whole life.”
Johnny shook his head. “Not even close. This music’s angry, but I guess it makes me feel happy to be alive enough to be angry or happy or bummed or whatever. That sounds so dumb.”
“No, it doesn’t. I totally get that,” she said, although she definitely didn’t.
Johnny cleared the browser search history. “We should get out of here. Get home safe, okay, Daniela?” He called her by her full name with a Spanish flourish to tease her around Achieve! Dan was never sure if he knew that was actually how it was pronounced. He never said it like that in Spanish class, where he never said her name at all.
“You too, Juan.”
Dan didn’t know what to think. She was sure she was one dumb comment away from making him realize how annoying she was. It didn’t help that at school he basically ignored her, sometimes throwing her a nod in the hall when he was with his friends. Once he overheard her complaining to Liss about her period cramps, and she was so embarrassed she’d nearly skipped work that afternoon.
Then other times, she could barely bring herself to care about him. It was a crush, that was all, and of course, he didn’t like her back. Why would he? Lately she felt heavy nearly all the time, and no one wanted a girlfriend who couldn’t get it together enough to smile. Dan was looking forward to summer, so she could stop pretending she wanted to do anything other than sleep all day.
But then they let magic into their lives, and things felt brighter, here and there. Liss was always looking for spells that would fix something: a goal at her soccer game, a nasty zit to clear. Liss approached each with the same serious excitement, like every spell was bringing her life that much closer to perfection. It felt like magic every time they cast, and magic felt like something, at least, but Dan struggled to think of what to ask the Black Book. She rarely knew what needed changing, and when she did, she didn’t want to say it out loud to Liss.
Then summer started and Achieve! moved to eight-hour shifts. It was exhausting work, not interesting enough to fight off boredom, but there was too much going on to completely zone out. Watching the summer days go from socked in with fog to sun-blistered blue and back to foggy again in the evening made Dan feel she was watching her life slide by. Liss still asked her about Johnny, but the more she did, the more he felt like an impossible problem: something she was supposed to want, although she hadn’t figured out exactly how wanting worked.
When Rickey IronWeaks died in July of that summer, Dan felt something in her come unmoored and sink, stone-heavy. It hadn’t changed by the time school started at the end of August. When she wasn’t slogging through junior year, she spent more and more time curled up in bed, although most of the time she wasn’t sleeping, not really—just existing. She felt the same way when she was at her classes, at work, or sneaking out onto the roof of her house with Liss to do a spell. Like she was always half asleep, part of mind floating in some melancholy place, far away from the strange and useless anchor of her body.
“Same as Darby Crash from the Germs,” Johnny said, shaking his head in disappointment. It was the end of their first shift together since Rickey’s death. “They gave too much to the music.”
Dan glared at him, a blister of anger bursting in her throat. “Darby Crash died of a drug overdose, so it’s totally different. And anyway music is supposed to make things better.”
After work, Dan crawled into bed and listened to the saddest music in the world.
* * *
—
The kiss happened two weeks into school. Dan’s car broke down. She managed to get the car to an auto shop, cursing the whole way there that all her savings would be gone. She showed up late to Achieve!, flushed with frustration as she explained to Johnny what happened.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, relax. Don’t worry about being late. You need a ride home?”
It took her a second to reply. It was the first time he’d ever touched her on purpose. “Dogtown’s forty-five minutes away.”
“So it’s too far to walk.”
But they didn’t go home after changing out of their red Achieve! polos. The sun was setting, and they went to watch it at the overlook south of Gratton, where the Pacific had carved jagged monoliths out of the cliffs. They smoked a bowl, then went to 7-Eleven for snacks.
They leaned against his Volvo watching the sky light itself on fire and eating Doritos. The weed made Dan feel warm and sweet and empty, and also anxious that her mouth was covered in powdered Cool Ranch.
Then Johnny put his arm around her. Probably just in a friendly way, Dan told herself, even as she let herself sink into him. When he asked, “What do you want to do now?” she tilted her face to his. The moon was rising clearly over his shoulder, above the jagged edge of the distant trees, and he was looking at her shyly, as if they were a secret. She was caught on the ocean wind, drifting away. He could kiss her, he could not; what did any of it matter? She answered, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”