Page 25 of The California Dreamers

24

Shells, seagulls, flowers, sandcastles

1986

Half Moon Bay, California

Sixteen years old

After we appear in the Kenny’s ad, the six of us cavorting in a cartoon image of the sun, the twins and I vow that we will never again hide anything from Cap, that we will follow his rules and stay close to the van.

“We’ll be a good example for him,” Griff announces, meaning Dyl.

I tuck the camera away, deep inside the Gull’s back door, and any time I get the urge to take a picture, mental or film, I plunge into the water to swim or surf instead. My stomach is a hollowed-out cave from the constant exercise, and my limbs have never been so strong.

Three weeks after the advertisement appears, I finally get a quiet moment alone with Mama. We are in Half Moon Bay, washing clothes in our plastic tub with water I’ve retrieved from the rest-stop pump. Dyl and Cap and the twins are napping, and this is my chance to ask Mama about the photograph, to ensure there’s no chance of my being discovered. I’m wringing out Griff’s favorite T-shirt and ask, casually, between squeezes, “Did Cap ever get any answers about how our photo appeared in that ad?”

She rests back on her heels, examining her water-pruned hands. “Are you still worried about that silly flyer, Little Seal? It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Cap worries. He made us leave that town.”

“Ohhhh. Well, that’s just habit from when he was younger. I’m sorry, have you been thinking about it all this time? It’s nothing you need to bother about.”

“I know. But what did they say to Cap at that shop, about how they got the picture for their advertising? Did he ever tell you?”

“The man who does their advertising got the picture from what they call a photo pool, so it wasn’t their fault.”

“What’s a photo pool?”

“It’s… Well, I don’t know, exactly. Now help me hang these up while it’s nice and sunny.”

***

For a while, it’s just as Griff predicted. If anyone besides our friends at the bait shop asked Cap about that advertisement from Kenny’s Surf Outfitters in the contest brochure, he hasn’t mentioned it. New ads without our photograph come out. The old ones get tossed. Nothing awful happens.

It’s a strange, uncomfortable feeling to know we still can’t return to Santa Oro or any other town that has a Kenny’s—four favorite stops wiped from our migration. Four beloved breaks we cannot surf until Cap decides the advertisement has been forgotten.

He hasn’t told us when that will be, or how we will know.

But otherwise our life has gone on like before, at least on the surface. Though Cap’s hand will never be the same, it has healed enough for him to pick up a little garage work, and we have enough money to get by.

We wake to cereal and exercises, we surf, Griff grins, Mag scowls, Dyl writes in his field journal and reads from the oceanography books Charlie has shipped him care of the bait shop.

And when I find a precious few minutes to myself, I swirl the radio from KOLD to one of Charlie’s stations, searching for clues of what she might be doing, if she’s thinking about me, in the lyrics.

***

Mama, Dyl, and I collect salmonberries and late-spring mushrooms in a field adjacent to a public park. We’re excitedly drying and preserving for our feast with Bass and Charlie, who will link up with us in three days.

“Are these all right?” I ask Mama, though I know the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms as well as she does. I like how she cups her hand next to mine so that I can tip what I’ve gathered into it for her inspection.

“Ohhh, aren’t those beauties?”

We’re walking home when I stop short on the sidewalk.

By the public sprinklers, a girl flaps her beach towel out, and the design on it… No. No. Impossible.

Her friend blocks my view before I can make it out, but for a second, I’m sure it’s us. The same image that was in the Daily Triton and then the Kenny’s advertisement in Morro Bay—somehow blown up and printed on terrycloth. Someone’s sick idea of a souvenir.

I swallow, glance over. The girl has wrapped herself in the towel. I can’t make out the image at all. It was a blurry shape next to a surfboard, that’s all. It’s guilt playing tricks with my imagination. There are so many things to print on a towel. Shells, seagulls, flowers, sandcastles…

“Hurry up, Little Seal!” Mama and Dyl are in high spirits, their faces brimming with happiness. Our precious friends are coming, Cap is working again, our baskets are full. What is there to worry about?