Page 26 of The California Dreamers

25

Curl of glitter

“Miss me?” Charlie asks.

A question so laughable I don’t bother to answer.

It’s not just Bass who’s good for Cap; Charlie is good for all of us. She stares, rapt, as Mama flings up her Marana seed pod one morning to decide our next direction. It lands in a perfect V on the asphalt, and Charlie whispers reverently, “South.”

Cap and Bass go off for long talks, and Cap always steps lighter when he returns. Charlie teases the twins about being adults now, and asks if they’re going to settle down. She says it like it’s the most absurd thing ever, and even Cap laughs.

Ten days after Charlie’s arrival, I see a flyer from the Parks Service in the restroom when I’m brushing my teeth. I get an idea, and ask Mama to help me. We tell everyone we’re going on a midnight ramble.

“It’s a surprise,” I say. “Not far.”

“What do I wear?” Charlie asks.

“Your Police sweatshirt with the hood, over your full suit and booties. And bring your board.”

“One more hint,” Griff says.

I take a mental picture in advance and describe it. “It will be like surfing a curl of glitter.”

Cap hasn’t spoken, but he smiles at this, tipping his hat back for a second to peer at me. He knows where I want to take them.

Mag balks. He and Griff got into a fight earlier because Griff teased him about paddling close to some girl. Some naiad, as Griff calls them. But Charlie persuades Mag to come.

“Magnificent, you don’t want to miss whatever the surprise is, do you?” she asks him. Only she could get away with calling Mag Magnificent .

He relents, bringing up the rear.

“Where’re we going? C’mon, I won’t tell,” Charlie begs me as we set off.

“Let’s run to get warm.”

“You’re in a funny mood, slow down!” She laughs as I race ahead.

It’s misty out, the moon watery, but it gives us just enough light as we carry our boards along the beach, and the weather clears just in time.

And then, up ahead, the sand flashes silver.

The grunion are running. Masses of them, thousands of silvery, wiggly fish flopping on the sand as far as we can see. We feel them on our ankles, tickly little creatures with their prehistoric minds on laying eggs.

The eight of us wade in, Bass only up to his ankles. Mama and I act nonchalant, paddling, careful not to look at the sky, as if the evening’s only sight is on land. The rest think we only wanted them to view the grunion from afar, and it is something to see—from here, in the water, the beach is iridescent.

Mama and I glance up… Not yet, not yet, then she nods to me, letting me do the honors.

“Now look up,” I say.

And there it is—a meteor shower.

Glitter above, glitter on the beach, great swaths of shine above and below. It’s a long time before anyone bothers surfing.

Cap sees a little wave he likes. He’s abandon and control together. The graceful, unmistakable arc from his shoulder to his bandaged fingertip, trailing in foam as he glides out of a perfect four-foot curl. As he backflips off, I know he’s seeing the Lyrids.

The tension between the twins vanishes as they surf close to each other, almost too close, like they did as little boys, their laughter loud enough to carry over the pounding waves, the calls and shouts and delighted squeals from the silver-clad beach.

Charlie paddles near me. “This is glorious.”

The voices of grunion-watchers on shore are only a soft murmur out here, everything unimportant except the sparkle of stars and fish.

***

“You’re soaked, c’mon!” Charlie says. It began drizzling an hour ago, at least, but all of us stayed out long after the Lyrid show ended. The rain only seemed to make the grunion on the beach more happily frantic.

We sloshed to the sand, unleashed in a hurry, and dashed under the pier, toweling ourselves off.

“Why do you love them so much, you nut?” she asks, knocking my knee with hers.

“The grunion? Because they don’t care about us, and they’re ridiculous but sort of…beautiful. You know?”

Charlie smiles, nods, and I go on: “Our silly problems don’t affect them in the slightest. And they’re optimistic. Mama always says she can’t respect pessimists, and how nothing could be more optimistic than a thousand fish mating, hoping for just a handful of eggs to survive into adulthood.”

“You’re an optimist, too.”

“Am I?”

“You worry. You worry about your family. But yes, I’d say you’re an optimist. Only an optimist would plan an outing involving fish and rain and Cap and citizens and Magnus. But he loved it. Every last one of us did, Ro. Look at them.”

We watch the others, who are heading back to the vans. Bass, in a yellow slicker and nor’easter hat, looks big and clumsy, walking backward to talk to Cap, but he’s picking his way around grunion masses so he doesn’t harm a single one. The twins joke around, boards balanced on their heads as roofs. Cap has Dyl on his shoulders; it’s been years since he’s done that. Dyl’s hands gently rest on Cap’s hat so as not to move it. His hands are cautious but his face beams. And Mama holds Cap’s hand.

“Coming, you two?” she calls to us softly.

“Soon!” Charlie answers.

So everyone else goes back to the vans. It’s dark under the pier, and we’re alone and the flutter’s back, the flutter that might only be wishful thinking or the otherworldly spell of tonight.

“You’re drenched,” she says.

“Am I?”

“Yes. You’ve collected rainwater. It drips down your hood to here…” She touches the side of my neck, runs a finger down and around to my left collarbone. “Then here. It’s a little fairy pond, right here…”

I wait for her to laugh, to remove her hand, to change the subject. Instead her voice thickens. “Is this all right?”

I swallow, and surely she can feel it. Her fingers are right there at the base of my neck. It feels so obvious, like any fool could tell, with that one swallow, what her fingers grazing my neck have done.

“Ro?” she asks.

I nod, tilt my face. Hers is glazed with rain, and she’s smiling at me, taking in my answer.

“I remember how nervous you were when you first met me. You didn’t know why, did you?” She says it with a smile that clenches my heart. She knows. She knows she knows she knows. And she’s thought about it, too.

Is it only the silver field of grunion working their magic, and tomorrow, when they’re hidden in the sea, we’ll be embarrassed and pretend it never happened?

The crowd’s clearing out, so it’s just me and Charlie in our shelter under the pier. And I am full of optimism, just like she said. So I do it—the thing I’ve been thinking about since we darted under here.

Or maybe I’ve been thinking about it longer.

Maybe I’ve wanted to do it since she first hugged me, saying goodbye before her flight to Hawai’i a week after we’d met. Or maybe, yes surely, since the first afternoon I saw her, and she shrugged her bare shoulders.

I lean in and kiss her.