He nudges me with his shoulder, and I nudge back, and just like that, we’re falling back into our old routine. Thank God. His new (old) car smells like the stuff that neat freaks spray on leather, and there’s no accounting paperwork stuffed in the floorboards, so I’m getting the posh treatment. As he revs up the crazy-loud engine, I turn on my phone for the first time since I’ve landed.
Texts from Mom: four. I answer her in the most bare-bones way possible while we leave the airport parking garage. I’m finally coming down from the shock of what I’ve done—holy crap, I just moved across the country. I remind myself that it’s not a big deal. After all, I already switched schools a few months ago, thanks to Nate LLC and Mom moving us from New Jersey to Washington, DC, which basically means I didn’t have a notable friend investment in DC to leave behind. And I haven’t really dated anyone since my dad left, so no boyfriend investment either. But when I check the nonemergency notifications on my phone, I see a reply on the film app from Alex and get nervous all over again about being in the same town.
@alex: Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend? Please talk me down from planning his funeral. Again.
I send a quick reply—
@mink: You should just leave town and make new friends. Less blood to clean up.
If I look past any reservations I may have, I can admit it’s pretty thrilling to think that Alex has no idea I’m even here. Then again, he’s never really known exactly where I’ve been. He thinks I still live in New Jersey, because I never bothered to change my profile online when we moved to DC.
When Alex first asked me to come out here and see North by Northwest with him, I wasn’t sure what to think. It’s not exactly the kind of movie you ask a girl out to see when you’re trying to win her heart—not most girls, anyway. Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, it stars Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, and it’s a thriller about mistaken identity. It starts in New York and ends up out West, as Cary Grant is pursued to Mount Rushmore in one of the most iconic scenes in movie history. But now every time I think about seeing it, I picture myself as the seductive Eva Marie Saint and Alex as Cary Grant, and we’re falling madly in love, despite the fact that we barely know each other. And sure, I know that’s a fantasy, and reality could be so much weirder, which is why I have a plan: secretly track down Alex before North by Northwest plays at the summer film festival.
I didn’t say it was a good plan. Or an easy plan. But it’s better than an awkward meet-up with someone who looks great on paper, but in real life, may crush my dreams. So I’m doing this the Artful Dodger way—from a safe distance, where neither of us can get hurt. I have a lot of experience with bad strangers. It’s best this way, trust me.
“Is that him?” Dad asks.
I quickly pocket my phone. “Who?”
“What’s-his-face. Your film-buff soul mate.”
I’ve barely told Dad anything about Alex. I mean, he knows Alex lives in this area and even jokingly dangled this fact as bait to come out here when I finally decided I couldn’t handle living with Mom and Nate anymore.
“He’s contemplating murder,” I tell Dad. “So I’ll probably meet him in a dark alley tonight and jump into his unmarked van. That should be fine, right?”
An undercurrent of tension twitches between us, just for a second. He knows I’m only teasing, that I would never take that kind of risk, not after what happened to our family four years ago. But that’s in the past, and Dad and I are all about the future now. Nothing but sunshine and palm trees ahead.
He snorts. “If he’s got a van, don’t expect to be able to track it down.” Crap. Does he know I’ve entertained that idea? “Everyone’s got vans where we’re headed.”
“Creepy molester vans?”
“More like hippie vans. You’ll see. Coronado Cove is different.”
And he shows me why after we turn off the interstate—sorry, the “freeway,” as Dad informs me they’re called out here. Once the location of a historical California mission, Coronado Cove is now a bustling tourist town between San Francisco and Big Sur. Twenty thousand residents, and twice as many tourists. They come for three things: the redwood forest, the private nude beach, and the surfing.
Oh, yes: I said redwood forest.
They come for one other thing, and I’d be seeing that up close and personal soon enough, which makes my stomach hurt to think about. So I don’t. Not right now. Because the town is even prettier than it was in the photos Dad sent. Hilly, cypress-lined streets. Spanish-style stucco buildings with terra-cotta tile roofs. Smoky purple mountains in the distance. And then we hit Gold Avenue, a two-lane twisting road that hugs the curving coast, and I finally see it: the Pacific Ocean.
Alex was right. East Coast beaches are trash beaches. This . . . is stunning.
“It’s so blue,” I say, realizing how dumb I sound but unable to think of a better description of the bright aquamarine water breaking toward the sand. I can even smell it from the car. It’s salty and clean, and unlike the beach back home, which has that iodine, boiled-metal stench, it doesn’t make me want to roll up the window.
“I told you, didn’t I? It’s paradise out here,” Dad says. “Everything is going to be better now. I promise, Mink.”
I turn to him and smile, wanting to believe he might be right. And then his head whips toward the windshield and we screech to a stop.
My seat belt feels like a metal rod slapping across my chest as I jerk forward and brace my hands on the dash. Brief pain shoots through my mouth and I taste copper. The high-pitched squeal that comes out of me, I realize, is entirely too loud and dramatic; apart from my biting my own tongue, no one’s hurt, not even the car.
“You okay?” Dad asks.
More embarrassed than anything else, I nod before turning my attention to the cause of our near wreck: two teen boys in the middle of the street. They both look like walking advertisements for coconut tanning oil—tousled sun-lightened hair, board shorts, and lean muscles. One dark, one light. But the towheaded one is mad as hell and pounds the hood of the car with his fists.
“Watch where you’re going, dickwad,” he shouts, pointing to a colorful hand-painted wooden sign of a line of surfers marching their boards through an Abbey Road–looking crosswalk. The top says: WELCOME TO CORONADO COVE. The bottom reads: BE KIND—GIVE SURFERS RIGHT-OF-WAY.