“Hey, I missed you,” I said. That bike was so pretty, with its metallic speckles. The tires were a little flat, though.
I hauled it to the front garden, along with the small repair kit that came with it. I leaned over and filled the tire using the air canister. When the tire was nice and fat, I stood straight again.
It was suddenly quiet. The hammering next door had stopped. I could hear a bird tweeting and a far-off lawn mower, but that was all. I looked over at the construction site. So far, the new house was only a poured foundation and the beginning bones of a structure. Last Christmas, an old mansion had stood there. It looked like a mini Roman temple, with enormous white columns and a huge entry, but it was gone now. The new one was going to be modern, you could tell. There were lots of right angles and huge spaces for windows, where the sea and the sky showed through the skeleton.
And then I spotted him. You know, for the first time. A guy in jeans and a T-shirt, with a leather tool belt around his waist, looking at me from where he stood, high up, in that outline of a house. When he saw me looking back, he grinned. And then he whistled his appreciation for my ass, which had been in the air.
He was, I don’t know, thirty? My first thought was, Ick. And then, A construction worker, what a cliché. And then, a whole bunch of thoughts that didn’t go together.
That morning, I’d turned sixteen.
It was a number that mattered to me. It didn’t matter so much to him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Exhibit 19: Photo of Baker Beach to China Beach, with red arrow marking location of south end cove
Exhibit 20: iPhone belonging to Sydney E. Reilly, found at south end cove of Baker Beach
Exhibit 21: Silver locket w/ broken chain belonging to Sydney E. Reilly, found at south end cove of Baker Beach
My favorite beach was Ocean Beach, next to the Cliff House and Lands End. But I decided to go to Baker, which was closer. On my last two visits, those beaches were cold enough to freeze your fingers into little fish sticks and make your eyes water. Now it was summer.
If you rode all the way down Twenty-Fifth, to the end of the big gated cul-de-sac, you could take a sneak set of stairs to the beach without going all the way to the parking lot another mile or so from there. I wheeled my bike out into the street, hooked a leg over, and got on. As I pedaled past the house next door, I swear I could still feel that guy staring, though I didn’t dare check to see if I was right.
After that whistle, I felt eyes on me. No. The possibility of eyes on me. It was different from when the men looked at us over their laptops in Victrola. They were looking at girls, but this was me, one girl, my own self. I was suddenly aware of my body on the bike, my butt on the seat, my ass pointed toward any driver who might pull up alongside me at the stop signs. I wondered if my shorts were too short, or if my tank top, like my T-shirt the day before, was too tight.
But I also wondered if I looked good. Maybe I did. Maybe Lila was right, and I had gotten sexy or something since I saw her last. I was kind of pleased that the guy had noticed me, but creeped out. It was a compliment, but yuck. Sexy seemed sort of great but slightly dangerous. How were you supposed to tell if it was the good, exciting variety of danger, or the bad, frightening type? I thought for sure I’d somehow know, but an older guy seemed like both.
Either way, the whistle buried under my skin and became a permanent part of me. I had a radar for certain eyes afterward. It was a heightened awareness of the bad shit that could happen if I wasn’t careful, and I could adjust the degree of it, but I would never be able to turn it off. His eyes on me like that—it also told me some terrible, guilty truth about myself, even if I didn’t have exact words for it. Mostly, that my body would always be an invitation.
I braked at the end of the street before crossing.
“Whatever,” I said out loud, and pushed hard on the pedals. It all seemed pretty much out of my hands. Becoming sexy seemed to happen while you were minding your own business. Like, one day you weren’t in the world where grown men wanted you, and then you were.
* * *
I reached the end of Twenty-Fifth and veered into the small lot. I locked my bike and took the stairs down to the shore. This beach was so different from the showy ones in Southern California lined with palm trees. It was more like a beach at home in the Northwest, with big rocks and roaring waves and sudden, misty sprays of seawater lifted by wind. One day, it would be blue and sparkly, and the next, dark and dangerous, like the friendly but moody uncle who drinks too much on holidays and starts a fight. Baker was supposed to be haunted, too. After dark, a woman supposedly walked the shore, and her voice was so hypnotic that she could lure you into the currents to your death.
I slipped off my shoes the second I reached sand. Happy birthday to me, I thought, because look. The bridge was scenic-postcard close, and the ocean smelled magnificent, and little kids were flying kites, and a cute couple was taking photos. A row of fishing poles stuck out from the sand, their owners lounging casually beside them.
That morning, the texts had rolled in, from Meredith and Hoodean and Cora, from Gia and Sarah and Ames, everyone wishing me a happy birthday. I decided to take some photos so that I could lie to them about what a great time I was having. I walked all the way down the other end of the beach to get a good shot of the bridge, and that’s when I almost ran smack into a naked old guy wearing a Dodgers cap, with an allover tan and, oh, wow, wrinkled nuts hanging down like rocks in a hammock. And then I spotted another naked old guy sunning himself on a colorful towel, his penis curled up like a little pet he’d brought for a day at the beach. And then, bam, an old woman walking by the shore, with deflated-balloon boobs and woggly legs, the ancient crevice of her butt pointing up toward the sky as she bent down to pick up shells.
I’d forgotten that the far end of Baker was also a nude beach, though by the look of it, one for senior-citizen nudists only. Childishly, I got the giggles, then tried to take a selfie with one in the background so that I could send it to my friends, but then I felt bad about it and stopped.
The thing was, they were kind of great. That woman—she was wrinkled as an apricot, the opposite of what any Victoria’s Secret ad would tell you beauty was, but she was fine with that. It seemed almost heroic, to be okay with who you were. To show the apricot to the world. She seemed to say, Fuck you, my body is mine, and once I got over the shock and my stupid, giggly nerves, I realized something else. There actually wasn’t much to see. So what, breasts. Big deal, bare ass. Penis, whatever. They really didn’t care about their bodies, so you didn’t really care either. It was like… the body was a fact. I mean, who didn’t have one?
It all made me so happy, and ridiculously hopeful. I decided to remember her, that old woman. She’d be my new role model. My sixteenth-birthday message. The confident whatever that I’d aim to have. The attitude I’d bring to IT.
This lasted maybe two minutes. Until the moment I spread out my towel and wiggled out of my cutoffs and took my tank top off. I lay there in my bikini. Every fault seemed to shout, Don’t look! Every part that might be beautiful whispered, Look. Displaying faults or beauty seemed equally hazardous.
* * *
I propped myself on my elbows. I watched a kid dig a hole and try to fill it with water, and spied on a couple that seemed to be having an argument. The sun got warmer. I took out my lotion and rubbed it on my arms and legs, and dotted it on my face. I tilted my chin up and remembered that it was my birthday.