Page 15 of The California Dreamers

14

Underground

1985

Near San Diego, California

Fifteen years old

Charlie’s time with us flies, and too soon, it’s her last day.

We’re lying side by side in her bunk, and as she walks her feet up the wall under her Billy Idol poster I take a mental picture: her chipped fluorescent-white-painted toenails exactly match the white teeth in Billy’s sneer.

Life will be gray and dull without Charlie in it. It’ll be LaPush Beach in winter, without anemones. I ache to cross the border with her. But I look up at her map, studded with its thirty-seven pins, and ask enthusiastically: “Tell me about Guanajuato, again?”

A silence, then Charlie says, “You don’t really want to hear about Guanajuato.”

“Of course I do!”

An even longer silence. Does it hold pity because my world is confined to California, Oregon, and Washington? I have more freedom than any citizen girl. Freedom is our motto. Cap’s logo, even. I show Charlie now, pulling a penny from my pocket, tracing the design stamped out of the center, telling her how Cap punches coins after each garage job.

“He uses a tiny die he made. Coins minted before 1982 work best because they’re all copper, without zinc.” Cap had said that long ago. What he hadn’t explained, what I’d been too young to wonder about then, was when he’d started making them, or why.

“Take this as a going-away present.”

Charlie traces the shape cut into it as I did, the M that’s also a seagull and a wave, but says, “I don’t need a present. C’mere.”

“Why?”

“Just c’mere.”

So I do, holding my breath. She whispers in my ear. “We’re not going.”

“What?” I laugh, shocked.

She grins. “You’re better than my thirty-seven pins.”

The next morning

Cap tips his hat back at Charlie, who’s joined exercises.

The hat-tip is high praise. Charlie deserves it for her perfect form, when even showing up impressed him. It can’t be past four, a misty predawn, but she’s foregone half an hour of sleep in the warm Winnie to wind-sprint and squirrelly with us in the dark, by flashlight, on wet sand.

She beams at us as we head to the water, but seeing how Mag keeps his distance, Charlie murmurs to Griff and me, “Mag’s pissed.”

“Don’t mind him, he’ll be civilized after a few waves,” Griff says, walking ahead.

I fill Charlie in. “Cap hasn’t tipped his hat at Mag after calisthenics in months. It’s this age-old battle between the twins. Mag slept through exercises once last fall, and Cap acted…”

“Pissed?” Charlie finishes.

“That would’ve been better. Cap pretended Mag hadn’t been missed. Griff took Mag aside later and lectured him.”

“And how many times have you won a hat-tip?”

“Oh, it’s a competition for the twins. You know.”

“The male Merricks,” Charlie says.

“The taller Merricks. Dyl’s not included, either.” It’s not the first time she’s prodded me like this. The larger half and the smaller half, the male inhabitants of the van and the female/baby, and how we fit. Once, spotting a Student Driver car, she asked why Cap taught the boys to drive at ten, but still won’t let me helm the Gull.

“There’s no point in talking about it,” I’d said, and her silence argued that there was.

But it’s too beautiful a morning for self-pity, and I head her off: “Charlie, I’m five-two. These aren’t wind-sprint legs. But speaking of wind, it’s perfect right now.” I slosh in and paddle off.

Cap finishes surfing early—he’s driving Bass to the RV graveyard to hunt for an air-conditioning compressor for the Winnie, although he doesn’t believe in AC himself, and won’t return until late. Mama and Dyl are going along to explore a lake nearby.

Mag was supposed to go on the graveyard trip, but he’s still prickly over this morning and says he’ll stay behind with the rest of us instead. Mag’s hurt, I know, when instead of protesting, Cap says breezily, “It’s your day.”

But the offshore wind’s perfect, and the four of us stay out a long time. Eventually the twins bail to nap in the Winnie, since the Gull’s gone until late tonight.

It’s just me and Charlie now. When I catch a twenty-second ride that carries me way in, she gestures with her index finger next to her temple, pushing up through her wet hair.

I tilt my head in confusion.

She does it again, more slowly, and I laugh. She’s tipping an invisible hat at me.

***

When we paddle in for the day, a boy wades over to us in the shallows. “Where’d you two learn to surf like that?” he calls, which always feels like an insult.

He’s tall, with a brand-new board, brand-new orange baggies. Rich. His Talking Heads concert T-shirt is the secret password for Charlie’s attention.

“Did you go to that concert?” She coils her leash, ignoring his question.

I resist the urge to tug her away. She’s forsaken her thirty-seven pins for me, and I can’t bear for her to decide it was a bad trade.

The boy’s been to Hawai’i, and they discuss KPu’ena Point, her tattoo, how big-wave surfing’s cool but not their thing. How he applied to University of Hilo but attends UC San Diego. They talk easily, the boy reaching for a strand of kelp stuck to Charlie’s board and brushing it off.

It’s so intimate, like removing an eyelash from someone’s cheek without asking.

I want to join the conversation, but how? Hey, do you know a classmate who works at your school newspaper? My father threw his camera in our fire… Hey, I know every kelp section by heart because there’s a diagram on my little brother’s journal! Canopy, stipe, blade, float, sporophyll…

I can only watch, a child, with nothing to contribute.

“Hey—there’s a party today,” the boy says. “An underground party—467 Monte Rialto, in the hills.”

“Nice!” Charlie says.

Does underground mean a secret party? One in a basement?

The boy asks where we go to college, and Charlie says casually, “I’m applying to a bunch, but I’m not sure college is my thing.”

My skin prickles like she’s thrown sand at me. She’s never mentioned college, not once. I’d been so focused on her return to Oahu that it never occurred to me: soon she’ll leave me behind in another way.

I tell her brightly, “You should go to that party,” and wander down the sand to the public restroom’s outdoor shower.

“What’s up with you?” she asks when she joins me under the water, peeling down her wet suit. “That’s freezing! I didn’t tell him. You know. Anything I shouldn’t’ve.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” I shut my eyes, letting icy water pound my face. “You should go to that party. Your flight’s not ’til midnight, right? He likes you.”

“He asked if you had a boyfriend, Ro.”

I’m supposed to be flattered and fluttery in my stomach, I know. But all I can imagine is Charlie at college, forgetting me. Worse—learning to pity me.

***

In the Winnie, Griff snores, sprawled on the kitchen banquette. Mag’s spread-eagled on the floor. We step over them, Charlie making faces like it’s a game, and I pretend I’m still in a good mood. We grab bread and orange juice and climb onto the roof where it’s shaded and breezy, wind rattling through silver eucalyptus above us and all the way down the bluffs. Charlie’s penthouse—that’s what she and Bass call it.

“I went to an underground party in Kailua.” Charlie lays her wet suit out to dry. “It was a good time. Here, I’ll do yours.”

She spreads my suit carefully, and it looks so small next to her long one, the elbows and shoulders grayed and worn, while her suit is as deep black and shiny as a seal’s coat. She’s ten months older, but it feels like ten years.

Charlie has thrown herself so headfirst into our lives it hasn’t occurred to me until now that I haven’t returned the favor. She probably spends every weekend at home partying. Our big plan for this afternoon is sketching tide pool diagrams for Dyl.

I blurt it out: “Let’s go.”

“Cap would let you?”

I don’t answer.

“Oh no. I’m not sneaking you to a party while they’re away. I’d never get a hat-tip again. He’d never let me near you guys again. He’d kill me.”

“He doesn’t believe in violence.”

“Hilarious. Why are you interested in parties all of a sudden?”

“Who’s getting killed?” Griff’s bleary-eyed face appears above the ladder, and he climbs up to the roof, sprawling on his back next to us. “Too hot in there.”

“It’s nothing,” Charlie says.

“Charlie and I are going to an underground party,” I announce. Childish, because I know Charlie will say no. And obvious, too. But I can’t undo it now.

“No, we’re not,” Charlie says.

“Well, I’m going,” I say. “467 Rialto.”

Charlie lies flat on her back, like Griff, and bats at a eucalyptus branch. “ Monte Rialto. Great, Ro. Wander into some stranger’s mansion and get shot to prove a point.”

Mag joins us just as Griff says, “Of course you’re not going.” Like he’s Cap. Like it’s a rule of the universe.

“Thanks for waking me up.” Mag scowls, his face red and creased from his nap.

“There’s an underground party nearby and Charlie and I are going,” I say. “Mag, you should come, too.”

Mag’s too proud to admit he doesn’t know what an underground party is, either. “A citizen party?” He hesitates.

He talks about rebelling sometimes, hitching or earning money. But Cap’s rule about mixing with citizens unnecessarily is sacrosanct. Charlie and I will end up sketching tide pool diagrams for Dyl to paste in his field journal, which is what I’d vastly prefer anyway. And at least she’ll know I tried.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of party because it’s not happening,” Griff says.

And that does it. Mag gets steely eyed. “You don’t decide what I do, Professor. I’ll go with Ro and Charlie. I’m not afraid.”

Griff replies, “I didn’t say you were! I’m just trying to point out that… Charlie, reason with them.”

“Oh, no. I’m not getting tangled up in your Merrick mess.”

Griff rubs his hair, weighing options. Then he sighs. He’s outvoted. “All four of us will go. For one hour . We’ll take a walk nearby and just…”

“Just scope it.” Mag seems as surprised as I am by how this plan came together. “If it’s lame we bail.”

Charlie laughs. “Mag, I’m sorry, but you cannot pull off ‘scope it’ and ‘lame’ and ‘bail.’ Okay, guess we’re going. But do not blame me if Cap finds out.”

***

The four of us are high in the San Diego hills, minutes from a party packed with college citizens. We’ve come for the flimsiest of reasons—because Mag didn’t get a hat-tip this morning, because a stranger on the sand stole Charlie’s attention for two whole minutes, and because she sent away for college brochures.

Now it all feels foolish.

But we keep walking, passing estates, gated neighborhoods. Green lawns fade to gold as we climb higher into the drought-stricken hills. There are homes in every stage of construction—some just foundations, some complete except for gaps where there should be windows and doors, some still boasting For Sale signs. But even these look given-up-on. The geraniums in their pots are as crispy and faded as their front lawns.

Cap told us people can’t afford houses, that developers overbuilt into the hills from greed and now it costs too much to borrow. Poor, deluded souls , he says.

“This is pretty high up for an underground party.” Griff tries to sound light but his voice is strained with nervousness.

His ponytail is too tidy, too dry, and he doesn’t smell like himself. None of the three of us do: we showered in the Winnie, so instead of Mama’s orange-and-clove soap, we used Charlie’s. Plumeria and coconut.

We pass three empty lots before Charlie says, “We’re here.”

Young voices and music in the distance, but where? The sun’s dropping behind us, casting our shadows east. But beyond these four elongated shapes, there are only weeds, rolling up, inland, as far as I can see.

At last Charlie offers a hint. “These are parties made possible by drought. Can you water-babies even imagine it?”

In the distance, a boy on a skateboard shoots above the golden weeds and arcs back down, invisible again.

Underground means it’s a party in an abandoned swimming pool.

***

I spend my first party in an empty hot tub.

There are at least a hundred people, presumably college students. We weave through them, a blur of neon tops and sunglasses and bangs arcing as high as the waves off Mavericks.

The four of us cross the weedy back lawn, passing a hip-high black speaker throbbing the song people belt along to on the beach: “Red, red wiiiiiiyiiiine…” Charlie glances back at me often, checking on me, but it’s useless to try to talk with the speaker so close.

No one challenges our presence. We keep moving, getting a feel, finding our spot. So this is a college-citizen rager . The heart of it is the pool, where skaters roll and swoop in and out. A long, curved bench rims the shallow end—the blue tiles are half-finished, and now it’s a bar: beers and cans of Hawai’ian Punch and bottles of liquor cover it.

There! Charlie mouths, points, leading us to the empty hot tub on the other side of the pool, where it’s quieter.

When we reach it I turn to talk to the twins, but they’ve gone off on their own.

“Will they be all right?” she asks as we settle at the bottom of the tub.

They’d been so unsure at the beginning of the Quiver. But that adventure, nearly a year ago, seems to have emboldened them. “They can study the concretins,” I tell Charlie, using Cap’s name for skateboarders, whose preference for asphalt over water he says he’ll never understand, though he has a grudging respect for them.

“Are you all right?” She taps my foot with hers.

I admit it. “Now I am.”

“You stubborn girl, Ro. It’s our last day together! I would’ve been happy sketching urchins for Dyl to glue in his journal.”

“Let’s analyze these creatures for him instead.”

I like this spot, apart and hidden. From down here, we occasionally catch a glimpse of a skateboarder midair, the fiery sunset behind him. But it feels cozy and safe, just big enough for the two of us to lie on our backs, knees bent, while scraps of conversation waft overhead:

“A babe. Total babe.”

“Hello, beer goggles.”

“Forget your board?” I have to remind myself the voice means skateboard.

“Coach’ll kill me if I thrash my pitching hand…”

“You skank, you snaked my woo woo!”

Charlie and I knock knees, make faces, cover our mouths to stop from laughing too loud and drawing attention to ourselves.

“‘You skank, you snaked my woo woo,’” I mimic, and when she comes up for air, Charlie explains that a woo-woo is some strong drink with cranberry and peach liquor. “You sound so utterly wrong talking like that, Ro. Don’t be like Mag. I love the way you talk.”

“Don’t snake my woo woo, skank,” I say gravely, for the pure joy of watching her collapse in laughter again. It feels like it did six hours ago, when we surfed together.

A girl above complains about Botany class: “I got a B, I’m so pissed. Like I know which soil chaparral grows in…”

I boast, softly, for only Charlie to hear: “North and east-facing.”

“A-plus.” Charlie lifts her arm, her right index finger up high, and moves it in deep concentration. “Hey, I’ve invented something relaxing. Tracing the clouds. Let’s show Dyl.”

I copy her, tracing clouds. “You always seem relaxed, whether you have something to trace or not.”

“You see me here, with Bass, and you, and the rest of the lovely Merricks. You relax me.”

I keep tracing. Her voice has an edge I’ve rarely heard. “Because your mom schedules you and all that?” I remember every word of our conversation on our shared board.

“That, and… I hate the men she dates. They dump her and break her heart. I envy how much your folks worship each other. And I feel guilty about splitting my time between my mom and dad. Sometimes I’m on the plane halfway there or halfway here, and I want to turn it around, right over the Pacific.”

Charlie projects such ease and confidence, I’ve never realized how torn she must feel between her parents.

She traces wordlessly for a long time before adding, so fake-casually I know she’s only bringing it up because of what I heard her say earlier, “My mom wants me to go to college. She’s always on me about it, because she went, and her sisters and aunties and all the way up the line. You know, got to keep up the glory of the Akamus going. That’s her family name. But my dad says it’s up to me. They fight about it.”

My heart seizes up again. “You should go.”

“It’s so much money. Maybe I should just surf, be like you guys.”

I hesitate. As much as I don’t want things to change, college is an opportunity for her. “You’re smart. You should go.”

“Your parents are smart. They didn’t go.”

“Cap went.”

Charlie, shocked, rolls onto her side to face me. “Really?”

“He studied engineering for a while, Griff told me. Cap doesn’t believe in it, though. Not anymore.”

“Not for you.”

“Mama doesn’t believe in school, either,” I point out.

“Sure, but…you know. He makes the rules.”

The truth is I have thought, once or twice, about Dyl going to college. I don’t know how he’d fare among citizens at a real campus, but he seems like a natural scientist.

And me? The botany that Mama has taught me is interesting. I’m curious about psychology, how to make kids comfortable. I’m good at it, if Dyl’s any test. Maybe I’d enjoy studying in a library far from the vanilla one.

A wisp of cloud moves across the sky, a flossy curl dipped in pink. I take a mental photograph: Click.

That’s what I would study. Photography. Really learning, instead of watching photographers on the beach when no one’s looking.

***

The sky darkens and someone wants to start a hot tub bonfire so we climb out and help. They’ve got a stack of old newspapers and they’re separating pages, twisting them for kindling. Charlie and I do the same, then after making a dozen or so I notice a familiar three-pronged Poseidon staff logo on one of the sheets.

“What?” Charlie asks.

I show her the cover page in my hand: it’s the UCSD Triton .

It takes her a moment, but then, remembering the Triton photographer from her first visit, she says, “We could’ve been in this. Famous!” Her tone’s ironic, because it’s just a dinky student newspaper. Soon to be kindling. “Was that only a year ago? Hey, listen…”

She reads an article about a sand dune–preservation project, how a professor takes her class to seed native grasses, and I half listen, my focus on the back page’s collage of black-and-white photos. “SunDays,” it’s headlined. Students and townies lazing on a lawn, playing Frisbee. Shots taken in town, on the pier. The subjects aren’t named, and neither are the photographers; it’s just for fun.

There’s a cheerful line underneath:

Got a news item or photo to share with the Triton ? (818) 555-1234, Eustice Hall, 44 Jacaranda…

“Ro! Charlie!” It’s the twins, calling us to join them on the grass.

A bunch of people build a fire in the pool, too, twisting more Tritons for tinder, piling branches. There’s no shortage of them, and the fire doesn’t stop the skaters rolling in and out; they merely adjust their ellipses by a foot or two to avoid the flames.

On the sloping lawn at the rear edge of the lot, someone’s set a row of skateboards upside down, their wheels up. And a boy’s “surfing” down the wheels on his shortboard.

“What a circus,” Mag says. But I know he wishes he’d brought his surfboard.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Griff murmurs. “Or thrash their board.”

Mag doesn’t answer. He’s too mesmerized by the surfers gliding down the line of upside-down skateboards. Twitching to try it himself.

Eventually he turns his back on them and, like the rest of us, focuses on the skateboarders in the pool, how they “drop in.”

Charlie explains. In surfing a drop-in’s bad—it means you stole someone else’s wave. In skateboarding it’s riding your board on nothingness, over an edge and down, onto a ramp or into a pool, like these kids. We watch the concretins roll, wipe out, laugh.

I like the rhythm of it. The sound. Thunderous rolling, a breathless pause while they’re aboveground, turning, then their wheels hit concrete again and the thunder returns.

While we’re watching, a girl offers us paper cups of red gel.

“A Jell-O shot,” Charlie tells us. “It has alcohol.” She hesitates, then slides it down her throat, winces, beams. She’s always said she doesn’t drink much, even when she’s not around us. I wonder if her interest in it now has something to do with what she revealed in the hot tub—how when she’s on a plane headed home or here, she sometimes wants to turn it around. She’ll be on that plane in seven hours.

Griff tosses his drink in the garbage, and when Mag and I don’t immediately do the same, he shakes his head at us.

I think of what Charlie said regarding Cap: You know. He makes the rules.

Impulsively, I tip a bite of red goo into my mouth and grimace: underneath the sickly sweetness of the Jell-O there’s a burn. Mag follows my lead, swallowing his.

“We should go,” Griff says. “It’s after nine and it’s getting too crowded.”

It’s true—there have to be three hundred people here now, and by the looks of them, they’re not just college kids. There are older people, some sloppily drunk. And if we don’t beat the Gull home, we’ll have a lot of explaining to do. But I know Griff really wants us to leave because he’s lost control.

We were only coming for an hour, to “scope it out.” And now we’re taking shots. Charlie and I stop at one, but Mag asks for another, forcing it down with zero evidence of pleasure.

“Mag,” Griff says. “Let’s go.”

But Mag marches around to the other side of the pool.

“He’s not getting more alcohol, he’d better not…” Griff trails off as it becomes clear what Mag’s doing.

He talks to a skinny boy with a bleeding elbow, borrows his sticker-covered board. Not hesitating, not looking at us, Mag sets the skateboard on the ground and stands on it. He mimics the skaters, the blasé expression, the mysterious heel-press-lean-swerve that they make seem so effortless when they drop into the pool.

“Come on, Mag,” I whisper. But his board flies away from him immediately and he skids to the bottom of the pool on his left hip.

“Shit,” Charlie says.

Griff flinches, feeling his twin’s pain.

“At least he’s in the shallow end,” Charlie says, as Mag jumps up, heaves himself out with his left arm, the other hugging his borrowed skateboard, and tries again. This time he anticipates the fall and separates from his board even earlier, sliding down the side of the pool, scrambling back up.

“He’s going to try a hundred times ’til he gets it.” I stand next to Charlie with my arms crossed. “Give him some coaching or you’ll miss your flight.”

“Should I, after the hat-tip thing this morning?” Charlie asks me.

“Yes.”

“Help him so we can leave,” Griff says grudgingly.

Because Charlie knows how to skateboard. Maybe Mag’s just too focused on nailing this move to worry about his pride, but he accepts her advice willingly. “Lean forward way more than you think you have to. Commit. See?” She drops in, rolling back and forth easily, letting her momentum subside and climbing out.

With Charlie’s pointers Mag fares slightly better, but he hasn’t got it, still finishing in a heap at the bottom of the pool each time.

Now Griff can’t resist a go, even though moments ago he was trying to shepherd us out of here. “Let me try.”

The twins take turns, scraping their legs and arms. Seven times apiece, eight, but their feet and the board never seem united. At one point they both gaze longingly at the other hub of activity—the line of upside-down skateboards and the drunk college kids “surfing” down them. I know they wish they could try that instead.

“The solidity under you feels so different from surfing, right?” Charlie says as they’re catching their breath by the rim nearest us. “You’d think it’d be more natural, and once you nail the drop-in it will be. But the start, getting used to concrete instead of water, is brutal.”

I like the certainty in her voice: It will be.

I hold my hand out to Griff, indicating that I want a turn, but he shakes his head. “And how will I explain you breaking your arm to Cap?”

Also, I’m in a sundress from the thrift store. So much skin to get scraped, way more than the twins in their shorts and T-shirts; they’ve got road rash everywhere. Well, pool rash. But I’m in a funny mood. Charlie’s leaving, and the twins’ competition is tedious, and I need to prove to myself I don’t need any of them.

I go up to another kid and ask to borrow his board.

“Sure!” he says. “I just had the truck tightened.”

Whatever that means.

As I approach the pool and step on the board Griff says nervously, “Don’t, Ro.”

“Oh, let her,” Mag says.

Charlie says nothing.

I don’t look at any of them. Commit, commit, indecision is a decision.

The last thing I see, before I go over the edge, is the fire. A bright blur of amber in the corner of my left eye.

***

Griff carries me from the party on his shoulders.

Not because I’m hurt. Because I did it.

“The only one to drop in,” Charlie says, gleeful. “On your first try!”

My ride was jerky and I’ll have a beauty of a bruise on my left elbow tomorrow from hitting the pool wall to stop myself, but I did it. Hurled myself into a pit of concrete for a two-second, lopsided-U-shape of a ride.

“I think I prefer surfing,” I say.

“She’s so modest.” Even Mag seems to share in my triumph. “We should buy you a skateboard and—” He gazes across the street, stops walking.

Griff freezes, too, catching sight of what’s startled Mag, and from my perch on Griff’s shoulders I see it.

“What?” Charlie asks.

“That VW van,” I say. “It belongs to this weird guy we met once.”

Griff sets me down. “C’mon.”

We walk off, filling Charlie in on the ridiculous citizen we met nicknamed Jaws, on his tall tales of a shark attack and the bear trap he used to make it look like a great white had chomped his surfboard, and how he affixed the “bitten” trophy to the top of his VW bus, like a fin, to impress people.

We leave out his disrespect to Cap, or how he and Mag almost came to blows.

“I’m so sorry you didn’t get to meet him, Charlie. He’s such a pleasant person,” Griff says. “Mag? Time to go.” He has to tug Mag’s elbow to get him moving faster.

“You Merricks lead such interesting lives,” Charlie says in awe. “I’m going to miss you.”

***

In bed, I comfort myself with the idea of our letters.

I drift off, but it’s a jerky sleep, interrupted by someone leaving to use the bathroom. Mag. Sick from that gross jelly drink… I drift off again, feeling a skateboard under me, seeing Charlie’s hat-tip on the water, in the window… At least I know when I’ll see her again—her fall break. Three months from now…

And then, far away, glass breaks. Not a new sound—distant glass shattering is our home’s familiar nighttime chime, dependable as the grandfather clocks I’ve read about in old books. Beer bottles get kicked, thrown. In anger, celebration, frustration. We ignore it all. But this sound is closer than usual. And when I scan the darkness over Mag’s bunk and his familiar mountain-range shape’s not there, I know the broken glass has something to do with him. I extricate myself from Dyl, slip down and over to Griff’s bunk, tiptoeing, pausing to check that Cap’s steady snoring continues.

I touch Griff’s shoulder and he grunts.

“Mag’s gone,” I whisper.

Griff has the same gut fear—he scrambles down from his bunk and is out the door before I am. “I knew he was going back to that party. I just knew it…”

We spot Mag slumped on the parking lot curb two hundred feet away, his head in his hands.

I run to him. “Mag, are you—”

His board. His absurdly expensive, custom-made, Cap-designed board is at his feet, broken in two.

I touch the splintered edge, too astonished to speak. Griff lays a hand on Magnus’s shoulder.

Mag doesn’t look up. “He’ll kill me.”

“Tell us what happened.” I lean close—Mag smells like gas station. I pick up a bottle from the pavement with a pissed-off-looking bird on it: Thunderbird: The American Classic.

“Where’d you get this?” Griff asks.

“I lifted it from the party.”

We don’t drink. It rots the heart.

We don’t steal. They expect us to steal.

“Get to this, Magnus.” I touch the wrecked board, anise scented from the licorice wax I gave him.

Mag gestures with his right hand on his left: a chomping motion.

“Jaws,” I say.

“He did this?” Griff says, furious.

“He and…”

“They ganged up on you at the party?” Griff balls his right fist, like he and his twin have swapped body language.

“Snapped it over a keg, had his friends hold me down. Funny, huh?” Mag looks up and Griff and I gasp. His cheek’s raw meat, his right eye only a slit.

Griff clenches both fists this time. We don’t ask why Mag returned to the party with his surfboard. We’d both felt him itching to “surf” down that line of upside-down skateboards.

“But why ?” I daub a corner of my T-shirt on Mag’s eye. What to say? I’m so sorry ? We’ll make them pay ? We can’t. We’re supposed to leave no trace—on land and with people.

“I don’t know,” Mag says. “He was drunk. I didn’t go back to make trouble, I swear. I only wanted to try surfing the wheels. He said, ‘Here’s a message for your captain.’”

“We should tell Cap,” I say. “Right now. This is ridiculous.”

“No, Ro,” Mag pleads. “Griff? I’ll tell him something else. I’ll tell him I wiped out and the board broke.”

“It was my idea to go to the party,” I say, more bravely than I feel.

Griff says thoughtfully, “He’ll want to see the pieces. And it won’t explain your face.”

I take in the pitiful sight of Mag…and the smell. If we tell Cap we went to a citizen party, that there was alcohol, that two-thirds of us drank it, any parts of the truth, he’ll be livid. He could blame Charlie, and I couldn’t bear that.

But there’s more to it for Mag. He’s ashamed he lost a fight.

And Griff… I see on his face that he could never deliver such an insulting message to Cap, whatever his connection to Jaws. I ache to know, but even I don’t want to give that joke of a man the satisfaction.

“Wait here.” Griff takes off, then hurries past again with his own board.

Mag’s twin telepathy alerts him instantly. “Griff, don’t!” he calls.

But there’s bashing noise, a sickening crack as Griff breaks his board over a bike rack. He’s sweating when we get to him—Griff’s grown strong, but a beautiful board like that doesn’t give up its life easily. He hurls the two parts in the parking lot dumpster without a second glance.

Then he throws Mag’s pieces out, too.

Griff’s calm, as if he’s just tossed four ordinary pieces of garbage. “Tomorrow we’ll disappear early, and pretend we’re surfing, and when we come back we’ll say they were stolen. That we both got careless.”

“You colossal idiot.” For the first time since we found him here, there’s a little normal Mag attitude in his voice, and it’s a relief to hear.

Griff grins. “It will be better if he’s mad at both of us. It might…spread out the rage.”

I jump in, “I’ll say I saw your boards get stolen, but we have to explain your face, too.”

“You’re the storyteller, Ro.”

“You two are…” Mag shakes his head, but can’t hold back his lopsided, grudging smile. “Griff, man. You just wasted a perfectly good seven-hundred-dollar board.”

“Hey. I never gave you a birthday gift.”

***

Cap believes us. He’s furious at the twins, but more furious at the fancy convertible of punk college kids I invent, the fictitious board-thieves.

I use my best storytelling magic. I take pictures in my head until I can see what I describe, how the three of us ran after the car together, how one of the rich citizens threw a bottle and it hit Mag’s face because he was the fastest, and closest. By the time I’m done, Cap nods in something close to approval.

For Mag, it seems to mean more than all the hat-tips Cap has withheld over the years.