He slaps his hand to his forehead. “Dude! I almost forgot.”
Mom smiles and hands her debit card to Otis, who furrows his brow and looks at the register terminal.
“Stop flirting, Otis.” It’s the girl behind us. I do another quick turn. The girl smiles again.
I watch to make sure Mom remembers to tip. She gets her card back and we leave the register. Mom and I head toward the door, and the girl stares at me, like I must be the strangest thing she’s ever seen.
“Hang loose!” Otis calls out as we leave.
Pinkie Promise is tiny, with no tables, so we eat on the sticky bench outside. The girl who laughed at me comes out with her cup of ice cream, mashing her face against the whipped cream on top like she’s in a commercial for this place. She smiles again, and gives a little wave, then makes her way down the sidewalk, all beach-movie-like in her bathing suit and bare feet.
I look at my reflection in the store window, at my Goth makeup. Maybe it’s a look the girl hasn’t seen much of.
We go to the shore as the sun lowers toward the sea. Mom sets her bag on the sand and kicks her feet in the water. It’s sad to watch. She thinks she’s having fun, she calls me to join her. But I stay standing in my black high-tops, watching the waves. I could go into the water, maybe manage to enjoy myself. But then the waves would get bigger, and the tide would roll away suddenly, only to come roaring back in a giant wall of water that washes all this happiness away.
2
ON THE SECOND of July I wake up late. Mom left the windows of the little house open, and the white curtains blow into my temporary bedroom. It’s like she doesn’t even care if raccoons come in and maul me. Or if someone crawls in and takes me away. I can spend the rest of my childhood in a cult as far as she’s concerned. They’ll most likely brainwash me, and the next time Mom sees me I’ll be selling friendship bracelets on a sidewalk somewhere, with my new sisters, while some guy in a van waits and counts the money.
I think about this and other likely outcomes from beneath the sheets, until thoughts of the sweet cereal in the cupboard get me out of bed. Mom only buys healthy cereals, but this cottage is stocked with the kinds of things kids like.
It’s only nine o’clock here in California. It’d be noon back home in Michigan.
Mom went to the hospital before the sun came up. She won’t be back here until the sun goes down. In the kitchen I see that she made coffee, which has turned to sludge. I pour a bowl of sugar-laminated flakes and sit in the front room eating them.
Mom has the Beach Boys playing surf music on internet radio. She’s obviously trying to make me excited about a whole month where I’m within reach of sharks and tsunamis.
The summer morning passes through the open windows of the front room. The breezy white curtains make me feel like I’m in a commercial for laundry detergent.
Over the Beach Boys and the chirping of birds outside I hear the sound of a skateboard coming my way, the wheels hiccuping at every new section of sidewalk. Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh.
Then it stops. I hear a scratching noise, faintly, in the quiet between a song about a girl and a song about a wave. Then the skateboard noise again. Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh, back the direction it came from.
Then just the crunch of sugar-laminated breakfast flakes, the Beach Boys, my footsteps on the hardwood floors, the clink of my bowl set in the kitchen sink.
There’s a note from Mom on the counter that I missed while pouring my cereal and milk.
Juillet—
Good morning! Happy first full day of your summer holiday! Here is a list of goals for your month in Ocean Park:
More exercise and fresh air.
Confront your fears.
Go outside your comfort zone!
I’ve left space for you to add to the list!
Also, please go to the grocery today and get the following:
Blueberries
Bread
Butter
Ground coffee, dark
Maybe a healthier choice of cereal?
Anything else that sounds good to you!
There’s a healthy grocery store nearby, called Conscious Consumption. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Reusable grocery bags are under the sink.
See map below, and attached cash. Keep the change for fun.
You’re a smart, capable young woman. You can navigate this neighborhood and stay safe during the month we are here. It’s time for me to be brave enough to let you prove it.
That said, please don’t cross Lincoln, and stay between Rose Avenue and Colorado Avenue, which is where the pier is. The library is just a couple blocks away, and there is plenty to see on Main Street. And of course the beach!
Thank you, and enjoy!
Love, Mom
PS. Keep your phone with you so I can track where you are!
Attached with a paper clip is a hundred-dollar bill, which eases my dread only slightly. My hope was to not leave this house the entire month, but it looks like that’s not going to last the first full day. Mom’s crazy idea is that being in a strange place without my only friend for thirty-one days will somehow be fun and adventurous.
I tear off the top part of the note—the part with Mom’s goals for me—and crumple it up and throw it in the wastebasket beneath the sink. She should make some goals for herself instead, like possibly spending time with her daughter every now and then.
In my room I pull on my jeans, my big toes getting caught in the rips in the legs once on the left and twice on the right. Next I deck myself out with my black Monkey Experiment T-shirt, and my skull-and-crossbones high-tops. Then I do my face with pale foundation, ivory powder, black eye shadow, black eyeliner above and below, black lipstick, and three passes of mascara. I put my copper-colored hair into two ponies just to keep it out of my face.
I don’t really make myself up this much when I’m with Mom. She’s not a big fan of this look. She says she feels like she’s attending my funeral every time she sees me in this makeup. But we hardly see each other anyway.
I grab one of the grocery bags from under the sink, open the front door, and am greeted by something paperish stuck in the screen door.
It’s a postcard. On one side is a photo of a Ferris wheel and the words Greetings From Santa Monica! I flip it over and see words handwritten in blue ballpoint pen.
Hey, Betty! Meet me at 10. Ignore Alien Orders. Ciao!
I feel something crawling up my spine, but crawling quickly. It’s not an iguana or anything like that. It’s a feeling.
How does Otis know where I’m staying? Mom would kill me if I hung down with a surfer boy who’s practically a surfer man. And it’s kinda creepy that he’d want to. But it’s kinda incredibly exciting, too, not unlike an iguana crawling quickly up my spine. I don’t know why iguana comes to mind, other than that it seems strange and terrifying.
Not that I’m going to meet him at ten, but where does he want to meet? And what does he mean by ignore alien orders? Maybe that’s some kind of surferspeak. Like cowabunga.
Doesn’t matter. Isn’t gonna happen. I fold the postcard and put it in my back pocket, so I can throw it away later. Then I come around the hedge and out onto the sunlit sidewalk.
I put the list with Mom’s hand-drawn map into my other back pocket, and pull out my phone.
“Siri, find Conscious Consumption.”
Siri tells me I need to go several blocks down Fourth Street, then left on Rose. But as I walk, looking down at the route on my screen, before I get to the next block I come upon a section of sidewalk with words that were etched into the cement when it was wet.