Page 8

I bolted upright, clutching my chest, choking for air, my hands slick with sweat.

My mom’s necklace lay atop my heart, hot on my skin, the heat radiating to my core.

Instinctively, I tugged it away from my chest and it cooled against my fingertips.

No trace remained of the strange sensation except a red mark on my chest, and that soon faded into my overall flush.

I dipped my head back so the fan above my bed cooled my temples and cheeks.

Steph, Carissa, Kelly, all the greatest surf legends greeted me from the barrels of the biggest waves on the posters taped onto every spare inch of my ceiling.

Half-open drawers and messy furniture tops around me almost threw me into another fit of terror.

I’d meant to clean my room days ago but…

priorities, surfing being the main one.

Now my clothing was piled on the carpet like a fabric tsunami had hit.

Shielding myself in a cocoon of cool percale bedding, I checked my watch.

Six AM. I forced my eyes shut, but the sting of my throat thrust them open, raw from the nightmare or the circulating air.

My fingers found my water bottle on the nightstand.

Empty, of course.

Tossing the sheets aside, I slid my feet into my cozy fleece slippers and shuffled down the hall.

Pots and pans clattered in the kitchen—my dad must be getting a head start, a really big head start, on his annual birthday tradition.

I lifted my nose but didn’t catch the waft of his famous paprika potatoes.

As I inched closer, something bit into my foot.

I jerked back on instinct.

A dirty fork lay in the middle of the hallway.

Why was that there…?

My thoughts trailed off as another glisten of silver caught my eye.

Scattered utensils littered the floor like shrapnel, leading to the checkerboard tile, which was splattered with food.

My toes left the carpet and a spoon skimmed across the granite island.

What the…?

Cupboards flew open, and the culprit wasn’t my tall, ungraceful dad surprising me with anything.

It was the cobalt sprite from my dream.

Hoping reality would come crashing down harder than the plates now striking the ground, I pinched the inside of my arm.

I didn’t wake; I didn’t snap out of anything.

My wide eyes darted around—because this was my reality.

The realization unrooted me and I started backing away.

Slow, cautious. “OW!”

A piece of glass from a splintered baking dish tore my skin.

The sprite’s head swiveled to face me, but its body stayed forward—some real exorcist shit.

Keeping its distance, it hissed and bared its slimy fangs, black eyes swollen and lightless beneath a prominent hairless brow ridge.

Daybreak illuminated the creature’s leathery skin; a sickly blue, stretched so tight over its bald head I could count the veins in its scalp.

Its glittery undertones shimmered in the spotlight, reflecting off the surfaces like a disco ball.

My breath caught in my throat as it raised the spikes on its spine and hissed.

Snapping its neck into place, it shot out an open window, and the dawn beamed it up like an ET.

The silence set in quicker than the disbelief.

Quiet, yet also deafening.

I stared at the wreckage, done by something born of nightmares—because that’s what this was.

No matter how hard I’d pinched myself to try and wake up, that’s what this had to be.

A dream. A bad, bad dream.

Or…maybe it wasn’t all in my head.

Maybe I’d imagined the sprite, but then that meant I had made this mess.

Maybe if I just picked an excuse my brain would stop churning, move on, and accept it.

A sting on my foot interrupted my panicked thoughts.

My attention drifted to the tile and the small puddle of red that grew slowly beneath the soles of my feet.

Hobbling to the sink, I lifted myself onto the counter and put my toes under the faucet.

A flare of pain shot through me as the water cleaned my minor wound.

I picked the shards out of a callus, the glass clinking in the aluminum sink and somehow, at the same time, inside my skull.

Crisp coastal air blew in through the window, brushing the curtains and raising the hairs on my arms.

With bated breath I waited for the Voices—I was sure this’d be their moment.

But the sounds of the water and the wind and the reel of anticipation became nothing more than what they were.

“Not so fast,” I said aloud, hoping it’d induce a response.

When it didn’t, I closed my eyes, ground my molars, and tried to lasso the noises with my mind instead, focusing on the dips and pitches, grabbing at the crack s and hum s.

A whisper had to be just one frequency away—it always was.

Ah ha! I heard a voice, hushed and invoking.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” False alarm.

That was my own.

When I opened my eyes, lightheadedness hit me so fast I almost fell off the counter.

I managed to swing my legs out to keep that from happening and once stable, rested my head against the side of a cabinet.

I picked at my cuticles, flustered, tired, mostly desperate for some sort of explanation—it didn’t even have to be a rational one.

I just wanted to get their take on what was real or an illusion.

But no one wanted to speak to me.

Ignoring the throb in my head and the hole in my foot, I began disposing of the evidence.

I grabbed a bottle of bleach and a trash bag, and with yellow-gloved hands I cleared the debris from the floor.

Tile by tile, the traces of my encounter with the sprite disappeared.

Now at least things looked normal.

Without the chaos I went back to wondering if it was a hallucination or reality, and which one I’d be more okay with.

“River, what are you doing?”

A gasp slipped out of me at my dad’s sudden presence.

In the middle of cleaning, I hadn’t heard him come in.

Caught yellow-handed, I fumbled with my words.

“Um, giving the kitchen a deep clean?”

“This early? On your birthday?” He crossed his arms. “I thought you’d sleep in. I was going to make breakfast burritos.”

I clasped my hands.

“As a token of my appreciation, you have a perfectly clean prep station.” My smile was so fake my lips felt like they’d split.

He eyed me, a bit suspicious.

“Well since you’re up…help me chop these.” He threw me two bell peppers and opened the fridge, mumbling, “That’s weird, I could have sworn we had half an onion in here…”

I, perhaps a little too eagerly, accepted his offer as sous.

Dicing the veggies as slowly and purposefully as possible was a good diversion from his comments on the messy state of the fridge and the garlic that also seemed to have disappeared.

Soon the smoke from burnt sausage and the sizzle of bacon filled our cozy galley.

It snuffed out my dad’s lingering wariness, watered our eyes, and made both our stomachs rumble.

As my dad measured coffee grounds, I sat down at the table and packed my tortilla with eggs.

Hurried footsteps struck the stairs—at least this intruder used the front door.

Javi’s eyes glinted with hunger.

“Ah, just in time.” And at least he was human.

It should have made me smile, but all I could think about as he waltzed in and sat down, flipping those black wavy strands out of his eyes as he filled up a plate, was that it might be the last time he interrupted a birthday breakfast. Because who knew what next year at college would bring and if he’d find himself preferring to stay in Santa Barbara instead of coming home for the summer, for my birthday.

Even though I didn’t want to dwell on that, my frown stayed put as I teased him.

“Great timing, Jav. The hard work’s over and the feast is about to begin.”

“Perks of being the guest of honor.” His wink combatted my eye roll as my elbow landed on a rogue potato that had rolled off his over-stuffed plate.

I peeled its mushed interior off my skin and threw it at his forehead.

“Bullseye,” he said mid-chomp.

That got a stifled laugh out of me.

Gobbling up a cheesy bite, he leaned in and whispered, “You okay this morning? You seemed a little tense when I walked in. Is it what happened with Chet yesterday?”

I chewed a bit more aggressively at the sound of that d-bag’s name.

That’s not what bothered me, but I didn’t have the guts to say what did: It’s not Chet — it’s you.

And it stirred something in me to see him walk in like he owned the place.

I hadn’t realized how much I was going to miss it.

So, I deflected. “No, I just…I had the weirdest dream last night.” A cold shiver worked its way through me as I envisioned the fairy-sprite-creature thing’s bald head rotating almost full circle.

I eyed the other side of the kitchen as the teakettle whistled, and my dad poured the hot water into his French press.

“You know when you wake up and it feels like you’re still in it—like you’re in some sort of illusion?”

Javi held up his fork, wiggling it to his words.

“Ah, lucid dreaming?”

“Hmm. No.”

“Sleepwalking?”

“No.”

“Still half-asleep?”

“Maybe I was.” I shook my head.

“I mean…I woke up to a blue sprite the size of a crow, raiding my kitchen, after all.”

He snorted and I swore a droplet of orange juice spewed out of his nostrils.

“River, you kill me sometimes.”

“Yeah…” Hadn’t meant for that to be a knee-slapper.

“Pretty wild.”

“Surf report looks good today,” my dad announced as he joined us at the table, tendrils of steam wafting from his mug.

The caramel streaks in his hair glinted in the light as it curtained his forehead and he dove into his food, too.

“You guys want to head to the Point after this?”

Our chipmunk cheeks stopped any verbal answer.

Javi nodded and I gave a thumbs up.

“Great. I might need to leave early to work on my syllabus—classes begin next week.” My dad turned to me with a look of sympathy.

“When does summer school start for you again, Riv?”

“Monday.” I bowed my head in dismay.

“What about you, Javi? When does school start?”

Javi spread his arms wide, as if they were wings.

“I’m a free bird till September.”

This subtle reminder of his imminent departure hit me square in the heart.

I tried to let it slide; I knew he hadn’t meant to irk me.

“Lucky you,” I muttered.

The grief dug deeper, churning in my gut, bunching in my shoulders.

My dad shot me a look.

“You should be happy you still got to participate in graduation, Riv.” Oh, here came the parental lecture I’d sorely missed.

“And that they’re letting you retake economics at the City College over summer.”

“Only cause the high school isn’t offering it,” I mumbled into my burrito.

Javi spun his torso towards me.

“Look at it this way, you can check out the campus ahead of fall semester, get a feel for where everything is. That’s what my sister and I did.” I’d already heard this story, but the way he lit up when he talked about college…

I let him tell it anyway.

“Her roommate at Berkeley’s from SB, so she got to introduce me to some people she knew there, too. Now I won’t be going in totally clueless.”

I forced air out my nose as I tried to keep my irritation in.

I really didn’t want to hear a “bright side” right now.

A serving of cold, hard truth would go down much better.

I failed a class. Now I had to repeat it.

Just to get my high school diploma—a piece of paper that had come so fucking easy for the rest of my class.

With their golden tickets and the next four years mapped out at the school of their choice.

I wanted to be happy for him, wanted to plan out my visits, wanted to flip through the brochure and learn all about the life that awaited him.

Javi was going to break out of the bubble, something we’d always dreamed of, but still.

The only thing I could muster right now was a glare, especially when he said, “Maybe you’ll meet some new people, too.”

“Easier said than done.” It came out harsher than intended, but my insecurities had entered the chat.

If it were that effortless, I wouldn’t be mourning the loss of my best friend before he even left.

Because most people, whether he believed it or not, weren’t drawn to people like me.

How could he not know that?

How could he not see what a unicorn he was?

My fingers replaced my food, every nail I spat out a visual score of my stress.

A prick of blood dripped from my pointer’s cuticle.

I wrapped it in my oversized Nirvana tee as a makeshift tourniquet and loosed an exhale, forcing my shoulders to release some tension.

I shouldn’t be blaming Javi for my lack of friends—I should be blaming the Voices.

They ruined my social life just like my senior year, growing more and more restless over the past few months like they had some divine version of senioritis.

Concentrating had become a mere art form—it’s a miracle I passed anything with them around.

Almost as miraculous as this permeating silence of theirs.

The soft pings of intuition that’d been trying to get my attention finally broke through—the Voices hadn’t just been threatening to leave during our fight at Grad Night.

They actually did .

My spiral must have been written all over my face because Javi changed the topic.

“Hey, Corbs, what’s the worst that can happen at college if I decide to surf instead of going to class?”

“Is that a trick question?” My dad’s laugh lines went slack, and I could tell a little part of his teaching heart died at the thought of giving Javi advice on how to ditch.

For the first time that morning, I felt an upward tug on my lips.

I answered on my dad’s behalf, “The opportunity cost is missing the lecture. Attendance doesn’t actually count, and you could easily get the notes from someone else. I say when the surf’s up, go for it.”

Javi’s grin was worth my dad’s frown.

Now those were some economics I’d ace.

I clutched the frame, marveling at the picture inside of it.

“Javi, when did you even have time to develop this?” Despite rinsing off, I still had remnants of sand stuck to the undersides of my ankles.

I brushed them off with my feet, the tiny pieces of grit dispersing into my living room’s shaggy carpet.

“I snuck away after the first hour of surfing,” he answered, his chin grazing my shoulder.

I grinned, my muscles tingling as I replayed the best day in my head.

For three plus hours after our breakfast burritos, I had sparred with the ocean, chasing the wipeouts just as much as the waves.

Surfing was so addicting.

When he’d disappeared from the lineup, I figured he was chilling at the lighthouse, where we always met.

But the texts I read, after I got out, said he was passing on post-surf tacos to run a couple errands and promised to meet up with me later.

When he’d really been developing this .

“I love this one.” His breath caressed my ear.

“It looks like you have wings.”

The corners of the driftwood frame indented my fingers as I studied the picture within it, one he’d snapped only yesterday.

It was a photo of me, fresh out of the water—but he’d captured the moment so well I smelled the brine of the air, felt the rays on my skin, saw the arched shadows splaying from my back.

Like wings. It was a beautiful trick of the light that met the angle of the surfboard I’d been balancing on my head.

“Thank you. I love it.”

“Please, Riv—” It came out hitched, like his words were getting away from him.

“Don’t forget me while I’m gone.”

I snorted, even though I couldn’t seem to get the proper air behind it, like I was catching some of that breathlessness.

“I should be telling you that, Jav. I’ll just be here.” Leaning against the central breakfast counter, I gave a mocking salute to my connected living room/kitchen that we stood in.

“Not as sexy as UCSB. But hey, at least you know where to find me.”

My response tethered whatever hovered on his lips, and instead, he gave me a peck on the cheek.

An unspoken promise he wouldn’t forget.

Heat bloomed from the touch and swept over my face, and I hooked his pinky with mine.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I’d never think about trying.” His grip shook with his voice.

I’m not sure how long we looped pinkies like that, but I wasn’t going to be the first one to let go, and I don’t think he wanted to, either.