Page 5

T he Cave Train let out its steam and with it came a declarative choo choo!

signaling its arrival into the boarding bay—and my arrival to reality, too.

Riders disembarked from their time-traveling voyage into the attraction’s eclectic version of the Stone Age, dusk settled amongst the stars, a hint of fresh caramel apple mixed with the stench of the estuary…

Life returned as if it had never paused.

But it did. It did pause.

So why did everyone seem so nonchalant about it?

I didn’t need a mirror to tell me I looked like a fish out of water.

My gaping mouth did not match their beaming smiles.

“River?” I got the impression that was the third or fourth time Javi had said it.

“Sorry, yeah?” I faked a tone of indifference.

He saw right through it.

“Youuu okay?” He squeezed the sweet spot between my thumb and index finger.

Clearly, he hadn’t experienced anything out of the ordinary.

A quick sweep of the few people in eyeshot confirmed it—no one else had, either.

Just me again.

My nails shot to my mouth and took the brunt of my stress.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I lied, avoiding the concern in his gaze by returning to the deck of cards.

All had been reverted to a normal pattern, in the shape of a V, the extras stashed into a neat pile.

No wings. No cups.

I released a breath, relieved to see the Grim Reaper’s faded silhouette again, instead.

“You look like you’re about to chew off a finger.” He gently guided my hand away from my mouth.

“And you’re hovering over me like my abuela when she senses something is wrong.”

“Oh.” I stepped back to put a few inches between us.

“My bad.”

This time he grabbed my whole hand and pulled me even closer to him.

“Hey. You’ve got a little something on your chin.” Heat flooded my face.

Oh God, there must’ve been puke—dried puke from the break-in-time-that-couldn’t-have-happened.

He raised a brow and eyed me suspiciously.

“Everything good?”

I brushed my chin and attempted a smile.

“Yeah, thanks. Did you get what you wanted?”

“I did.” He strummed the edge of the tablecloth and dropped a couple bills in Myrian’s tip jar.

“Thanks for the reading.”

Judging by the complete sense of vacancy behind Madame Myrian’s eyes, she didn’t hear—or care—that we were done.

As we turned to leave, a calloused hand gripped my wrist and I boomeranged backwards, my shoulder nicking the sharp edge of a crystal as my body slammed into the table.

Tarot cards fluttered in the air, until a petite, rumpled frame loomed above me and blocked everything else from sight.

Risen from her chair, the psychic hooked her stare on to mine.

Her gleaming irises were so black and shiny, dilating wildly, and the receding sun cast a devilish veil across her weathered face.

Pinned in place by Myrian’s sudden—and unexpected—strength, there was nowhere for me to look except directly into the hollow of her haunting expression.

And her expression said it all: She knew that I knew she’d witnessed the blip.

She had seen me.

She had seen everything .

Those taut lips started to spasm, hacking and spitting, twitching with frantic purpose.

Her garbled words intensified, growing louder.

Sharper.

I willed myself to focus on each syllable flowing from her lips, and soon, with repetition, the words became a bit more coherent.

“ Quarto vigil ,” Madame Myrian bellowed.

“ Quarto vigil ,” she repeated again.

And again. And again.

Without stopping for breath.

The fortune teller’s throat croaked from the lack of air and her sunken cheeks bloated with rage.

Something controlled her and propelled the chant forward and monopolized each of her muscles in its wake.

A shocking familiarity swept over my body, pushing my fear away.

As I was readying myself to ask if she’d heard the Voices too, a tug on my free arm stole my attention.

Javi.

“LET HER—whoa!”

The distraction broke us apart.

Myrian’s grip lifted, and whatever spell she had cast, or whatever spell had bound her, ceased.

Javi and I tumbled like a sideshow’s milk bottles onto the gum-specked promenade.

Lucky for me, I didn’t hit pavement.

Not so lucky for Javi, I landed on him.

His arms stayed wrapped around me, a blockade against the littered ground.

Our chests lifted in unison with each breath.

His cheeks flushed—probably from the fall.

I’m sure that’s why mine burned, too.

In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t because I was literally on top of him, and our pulses seemed to be syncing with each rattled beat.

For a few more winded inhales, neither of us moved.

Then he whispered, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Yeah—good idea.

After getting up and securing myself on my own two feet I moved to help him, arm outstretched.

His words ghosted on my lips, and with a smile due to the irony, I asked, “Hey, you okay?”

He wriggled his eyebrows in response, tucking me into him once he was up.

“That’s my line,” he muttered into my sun-kissed highlights, giving me a light squeeze, when his grip suddenly tightened.

“Jesus, Riv, you’re shaking.”

I pushed off his chest, curling my hands behind my back, trying to hide that every limb and bone within me was indeed trembling.

“Am I?”

“Yes.” He took a tentative step forward.

“You sure you’re okay? I know tonight’s been wild, with Chet and then whatever that was?—”

“I’m fine.” It sucked to lie, but even worse was seeing the recognition of it flash across his face.

He tapped my arm, the goosebumps disappearing under the imprint of his touch.

“C’mon, let’s go catch the band. We don’t want tonight to be a total bummer.”

“Music cures all, they do say.” I deigned a final glance at Madame Myrian’s unlit space.

She’d reverted back to her glazed-over look, her body locked into position no different than any of the other odd cave-people sculptures found throughout the Boardwalk.

Blinded by the colorful neon lights, we emerged from the Boardwalk’s crevices, and the park’s amusements summoned me with an insincere playfulness.

Festive music played from the scrap metal interiors yet warped into a tuneless loop.

Shopkeepers bowed their top hats but hid their expressions within the shadows of their brims. Game hosts beckoned with bloodred painted smiles that smeared across their lips and teeth.

The calm face I wore, also a lie, drawn with a hint of a frown and a tinge of rosy panic.

Attempting to make things normal, I said, “Thanks for saving me—it’s, like, your job.”

“I know, what are you going to do without me?” Javi grinned.

I didn’t want to talk—even think—about that.

Didn’t want to think about what happened after tonight or what would happen a few months later, when our summer drew to a close.

When he’d box up his board games, comics, skateboards, and Santa Cruz tees, and head for his new life as an undergrad at Santa Barbara.

While I stayed and repeated a class at the city college.

Just to get my stupid diploma.

I scoffed at a green-and-gold Future is bright!

banner, the pirate mascot stamped next to the words as unimpressed as I was.

My future wasn’t bright.

My future was shit.

I only had things to lose.

Like Javi.

I knew how intangible some of our greatest aspirations were—slay a sea monster, surf in the Arctic Circle, get out of Santa Cruz and see the world—but when dreaming them up with him they somehow felt unleashed, alive, and possible.

That’s exactly what Javi’s dreams had become when he received his acceptance package.

Mine died when I watched him read the letter.

I’d known it was coming—I’d given up on getting good grades, hardly able to hold a C, but it still felt like the veins had been disconnected from my heart.

He hadn’t even left, and I already grieved him.

He must have sensed it.

“You know, you can visit me at UCSB.”

I knew.

It wasn’t the same. But I just nodded, eyes locked on the whirling spotlights from the stage coming into view ahead.

“What was up with that fortune teller, by the way? What did she want?”

The image of her empty onyx stare made me shudder, even if we were a solid six rides away from her.

“She kept repeating the same thing over and over.” I was definitely going to butcher it.

“ Qua … quarto … vigil ?”

“ Quarto vigil ?” Of course, it rolled off his tongue in perfect form.

“What is that, Latin?”

“Sounds about right.” I harrumphed like a crotchety old lady.

“I don’t know what it is, or what it means.”

“Let’s Google it.” He whipped out his phone.

“My guess is that she had a breakdown,” I continued as he swiped and tapped, “and took it out on the closest person. Me.”

“I know the feeling. Kidding!” He threw his hands up in surrender, the bright background of his screen shining between his fingers.

I stopped in my tracks, hating myself for needing the validation.

“I’m not that bad, am I?”

“Of course not.” He shot me a devious smile.

Great, so, I was.

“Well, since we’ve got an unreliable fortune teller on our hands here, my reading is most definitely shit.” He folded Madame Myrian’s business card into his pocket.

“Won’t be needing this.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine.

“Aw, were you hoping all her predictions might be true?” We resumed walking, forgetting about the unfinished phrase in his phone’s search bar.

“What did she tell you, anyway?”

The hair-lifting bass from the concert muted his response.

At least the organizers didn’t tie the live music to Grad Night’s theme.

I’d heard enough flutes and bagpipes and tambourines and the soundtrack to Midsummer Night’s Dream .

We leaned against the metal railing overlooking the stage and scanned the beach for a good spot to sit.

Spotting one, we broke through the perimeter of the swaying crowd, plopped down onto an unclaimed woven blanket, and burrowed our toes in the cool velvet sand.

I attempted to calm my fretting nerves by belting out the lyrics to some popular nineties song, letting the music sweep the incidents of the night from my mind—but in between the long breathes a chill ran over my spine, and unease broke the cracks of my forced excitement.

This wasn’t the first fight I’d had with the Voices, so I didn’t know why this one shook me so much.

Maybe it was because time and space had also glitched…

but had it? Or had I just imagined that?

I couldn’t say for sure—the hard line of reality was always a little blurry for me.

Grooved rings indented my skin, interrupting my anxieties before they tossed me into a pit of distress I couldn’t climb out of.

Javi’s palm layered the back of my hand, fingers weaving through mine.

He squeezed lightly.

“Do you know what time it is?”

My nose crinkled.

“Midnight, I presume?”

Chuckling as if I’d said the cutest, most endearing thing in the world, his dark brown eyes lit up like fireworks.

Drawing in closer, he whispered, “Happy birthday.”

He draped his arm around my shoulders, and I tilted my head so it tucked under his chin.

For a second, the rush of blood was the only thing that filled my ears, racing as fast as my heart.

It was just a hug—just a birthday wish.

One I hadn’t acknowledged yet because I was too caught up in my own head.

“Thanks,” I whispered back, never wanting to let go of my best friend.