Linzi hesitates as to whether she should knock on the front door, but since it’s a business, she invites herself in. The ding above the door and a sea of cow print welcomes us. From the countertops to the curtains to the hairdryers, black and white cow patterns dominate the room. It smells like cheap hairspray, and I taste it when I inhale.
A lady who’s probably my mom’s age walks out of a back room with a beehive of bleached hair teetering on her head. Her apron is – no surprise – cow print.
“And what can I do for you lovely little ladies?” she asks.
Linzi snaps into CSI mode. “I was hoping you could give me a little information. I’m trying to find someone who I believe was here within the last week,” she says in her serious voice.
The lady crosses her arms. “Well honey, if they came in here, I’ll sure bet you I saw ‘em. I’m Stella, and I remember every person who walks through my door. Have a seat,” she says.
Stella points to the spinning chairs. “So,” she says, “tell me about this guy.”
I sit down but instantly lean forward in my chair. “How’d you know it was a guy?”
She waves away my ridiculous question with her hand and laughs. “Believe it or not, I’ve been a teenage girl before. So, spill it. Who ya looking for?”
Linzi does the unthinkable and pulls the Ziploc bag from her purse. She swore the “evidence” had to be concealed or else it could be comprised.
“This receipt is dated…” She stops midsentence and turns the bag in different directions trying to make out the date through the green gum. “It’s from last week,” she says, sticking the bag back into her purse.
I fall back into the chair. “He came in a blonde and left with jet black hair,” I say, hoping this will be an uncommon enough occurrence to trigger a memory of him.
Stella buries her face into her hands. “Oh God, yes, I know who you’re talking about. Such a nice-looking young man. Most gorgeous blonde hair I’ve ever seen. I tell ya, people bleach and dye and spend years trying to get that sun-kissed sparkle, and if he didn’t walk in with it and want to cover it up.”
It’s more than obvious that Stella is one of those who has spent years trying to get that sun-kissed sparkle just right. Her hair is more of a fried honey color, though.
“Did he say why he wanted to dye it?” Linzi asks. She scribbles something in the little pink notebook she brought along for her CSI mission.
“No,” Stella says, “but I told him no one would recognize him anymore, and he said that was exactly the point.”
So he was in disguise! He didn’t want to be recognized, but that still doesn’t explain why he faked his death or came back and snuck me away from a party with him. If anything, it just raises more questions.
“So you dyed his hair?” Linzi assumes.
Stella shakes her head. “Heavens no! I couldn’t bring myself to destroy perfection like that. He said he wanted to go back blonde a day or so later, and I knew if he bleached it, it would be the end of that God-given…”
“His hair was black,” I say, prompting her back to the point of the story. I don’t have time to listen her to bask in the glory of his blondeness.
Linzi continues to scribble everything Stella says into her notebook.
“Right,” Stella says. “We sprayed it black. Rinses out in one washing, looks as good as a dye job, and no damage is done.”
She reaches behind her and grabs a spray paint can to show us the newest device in testing hair colors before actually dying the hair.
I use this as my chance to interrogate about more than his outward appearance. “He didn’t mention where he was headed or where he’d come from? No small talk?”
Stella seems like the small talk type, the kind who’d make you talk to her even if you didn’t want to.
“Oh honey, I had to pry the words from his lips. Poor boy didn’t want to talk. He was exhausted, said he’d driven all night. The only thing keeping him awake was the coffee high he was on. He brought the cup in and asked if I’d throw it away for him,” she says.
Stella’s eyes light up. Then her face turns pale. It reminds me of how I felt the moment Mom said that Spence had been dead for three years. If I weren’t scared of giving this lady a heart attack, I’d tell her not to fear anything because she’s already seen the undead and lived to tell us about it.
She jumps up from her chair, sending it into a cyclone spin when she moves, and hurries back to the room she was in when we arrived. I swap glances with Linzi and wait impatiently for Stella to return and reveal whatever sudden epiphany she just had.
Muffled words float from the back, and we hold our breath hoping to hear something that may help. Stella eases back out, her face calm again, with a teenage girl in tow. Her hair is golden brown, and I’m thankful Stella hasn’t tried to bleach it too.
“This is my niece, Katie,” Stella says. “She works here part-time.”
Katie holds up an empty coffee cup. “His name is Colby Taylor,” she says. She sets the cup on the countertop behind us, in between my chair and Linzi’s.
Linzi pulls out her cell phone and moves toward the cup. “Exhibit B,” she says, to no one in particular, as she zooms in on the plastic logo.
Blue squiggles decorate the orange cup. The word Jitters is italicized in purple. Linzi spins the cup around and studies it from all angles.
“He’s a surfer in California,” Katie explains. “My brother is in school on the east coast, so he keeps up with the surf community. There’s a whole east coast-west coast rivalry. Colby Taylor is the west coast surfer.”
It’s only now that I notice her summer tan and hot pink Fort Walton Beach T-shirt. If she thought for a second that I was chasing the west coast surfer, she’d be in my backseat, coffee cup in hand, shouting out directions to the nearest surf competition.
“So you saved the cup because he’s famous?” I ask.
Katie shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Have you not seen the guy? He’s so hot, like insanely hot…like the sun hot.”
Linzi raises an eyebrow in my direction. I shake my head because I know she’s asking for permission to search the internet high and low for this Colby Taylor guy, even if it’s just to see if he’s as hot as the summer sun.
“It’s a witness testimony,” she says through her teeth, like Katie can’t hear her anyway.
“If we start looking into him, we’ll convince ourselves it’s him even if it’s not, and you know that,” I say. “Let’s follow the coffee cup, and if the trail goes cold, we’ll search the surfer.”
Linzi nods her head and looks back at Katie and Stella. “Do you have a computer I can use? We have to find this Jitters place.”
Stella motions us to the salon’s office. Linzi does a quick search for a coffee shop named Jitters. She scrolls up and down the screen a few times then looks at me.
“It’s a small chain. There are only three in the country. One’s in New Jersey. Another in Florida. And…Oklahoma! That’s the one! He went from Oklahoma to Tennessee to North Carolina,” she says.
Six hours later, night has fallen, and I drive into a black abyss looking for a coffee shop. I wish we’d invested in a GPS before we set off on this grand adventure of chasing an undead boy. Linzi tries to help by giving me street directions from her phone, but the connection must be slow because she’s rattling off street names that we passed three blocks ago. I stop at a dead intersection and let her phone catch up with our current location.
“Jitters should be two blocks up,” Linzi says. “3108 Locust Street.”
For once her directions are correct. The purple lights draw more attention to the shop than necessary. I’d much rather be wrapped up in hotel bed sheets right now, but with Jitters all lit up in front of me, I know we have to do this. Sleep can wait just a little longer.
The atmosphere is stale inside. No late night computer junkies using up the free Wi-Fi. No scent of coffee, which is a relief because it reminds me of burnt dog food. Ins
tead there’s a strong hint of lemon in the air. A starving musician in the back corner scribbles on a notebook and fills the air with notes from a small piano. The mixture of his voice with the notes is so incredibly beautiful that I don’t even want to step forward for fear of his hearing me and stopping.
He can’t be any older than Spence Burks, early college-aged, with dark hair, a scruffy face, and rubber bracelets lining both his arms. I play out scenes in my mind in fast forward, imagining him playing here in this coffee shop to playing in a huge auditorium with thousands of people singing his words back to him. I imagine girls screaming for him and bursting into tears as soon as his fingers hit the keys and his voice lights up the night sky. And while I know nothing of this guy except that he’s as beautiful as his voice, I know that he’s a forever-chaser.
He pulls back from the piano, grabs his pencil, and sings lyrics to himself, changing words and rearranging sentences, and I don’t know how long it’s been since we walked through the door and became zombies in a trance before he sees us.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, walking toward us. “Can I get you something? Or help you with something?”
His face floods with panic, and he grabs his abandoned apron off the counter. As he pulls it over his T-shirt, his name tag hits the floor and spins across the tile toward me. I drop down and pick up the plastic, running my index finger over his name. Tim.
“It’s okay,” I say, handing him the tag. “I was just looking for someone.”
“Oh,” he says. “I’m pretty much the only one here at this hour. I come straight from night classes. Crowd’s usually dead, so I can work on my music.” He motions around the empty coffee shop.
Linzi yawns behind me, reminding me that she’s still in the room and as tired as I was before I heard Tim playing the piano. She pulls a chair out from a random table and sits down. She’ll never make it as a CSI at this rate. Doesn’t she know they never sleep?
“You always work nights?” I ask.
He nods as he readjusts his name tag on his shirt. “Nine to nine or ten to ten, depends on which classes I have. Twelve-hour shifts, three times a week. They just need someone here really, but it works out perfectly for me.”
Three times a week. I pray he was working the night Spence needed coffee to drive to Stella’s and change into disguise.
“This guy I’m looking for was in here sometime last week, probably late,” I say. I glance around the empty room and breathe in the lemon fresh chemicals. “He’s probably your age, blonde, and was headed out on a long drive, most likely just dropping in to get something to keep him awake.”
Tim stares behind me, like he’s looking for something that is roaming the streets outside. “Yeah, I know the guy you’re talking about,” he says. He looks back at me. “He said he was driving and needed something with a lot of caffeine. He needed to make it to Tennessee without falling asleep, pushed on time or something.”
The effects of today’s lengthy drive flee from my body. My heart thumps, and my adrenaline surges, and knowing I’ve found the right coffee shop as well as the right coffee shop employee gives me a brand new sense of hope. The paper stars of the universe have aligned and brought me incredible luck.
“Where was he driving from?” I ask.
I pray that Spence was more talkative with Tim than he was with Stella. By the time he reached Stella’s, he was tired and pressed on time. Besides, Stella and Tim are nothing alike. I could see Spence being friends with Tim.
Tim shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, shattering my thumping heart with those few words. “He just said he’d been on the road for a few days, and he really needed to make it in time. I don’t know where he was headed.”
The trail has run as cold as the vanilla frappe I could go for right now. My weariness sneaks back up on me, plaguing me with heavy eyes and sudden hopelessness. I spare Tim from having to let me down any more than he unknowingly already has and don’t ask any more questions.
“But he did ask if he could put up tour flyers,” Tim says. He points to the corkboard near the door. “The orange one. He said some friends of his were just starting their summer tour, and they had a show in this area later in the summer. They’d asked him to put some up on his way through.”
Linzi nearly topples over in her chair. She’s up and over to the board quicker than I could have been already standing. She jerks the orange paper from the board, and her dropped jaw and huge eyes can only mean one thing – The Ocean in Moonlight.
CHAPTER 4
Jitters is booming this morning. Linzi insisted on coffee before we hit the road to Arizona. I insisted on Jitters, and I didn’t bother denying it when she said I only wanted to see “the hot coffee shop guy” again.
“And one vanilla frappe,” Tim says from across the counter.
I watch the bracelets on his arm as he reaches across the counter. The words Live to Ride are engraved in red and black rubber, but he pulls his arm back before I can read the rest. I wonder about the untold stories behind his bracelets, if he’d leave a rubber bracelet behind just like Spence left the paper star.
I drop a few bills into the plastic tip jar as Tim tells us the best route back to the interstate. He wishes us a safe trip, and I hope this frappe wakes me up soon because the lack of a good night’s sleep mixed with road tripping has me barely running.
“Hand me the keys,” Linzi says in the parking lot. “I’ll drive a while. You need more sleep.”
I wait until after the vanilla frappe brain freeze to let the passenger seat back. Linzi says it’s just interstate for the next few hours and puts The Ocean in Moonlight’s CD into the player. Billboards fly by my window for miles and miles until even Tim’s coffee can’t keep me awake.
The yellow sign at the gas station stings my eyes. Linzi slips back into the driver’s seat and cranks up. She watches the fuel hand rise and tells me it’s about time I woke up. We’re near the state line, about to leave New Mexico and enter Arizona.
“Switch,” I tell her as I unhook my seatbelt. I can’t believe I slept that long. Or that I’m actually still kind of tired.
We run inside for a restroom stop and more caffeine, then trade seats, and I drill her on directions to this night club because I’m certain she’ll be asleep or just waking up by the time we get there.
“It’s called Night Owl. I searched for images of it earlier. The O is actually an owl,” she says.
As tired as she is, she can’t stop rambling about The Ocean in Moonlight, guessing which songs they’ll perform and giving me play by play of the fantasies she’s played out in her head all day while I slept, like her meeting the Moonlight guys and becoming Keegan’s roadie girlfriend. She falls asleep just after telling me about how she’d take pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower with him, if they let her go overseas on a tour with them. I just want to make it to Night Owl. Paris can wait.
I still don’t know how a Moonlight concert is going to give me answers. But they know Spence. They gave him flyers. Maybe they’ll give us some answers. I feel like I’ve made a full circle – from the cover band back around to the real band – and while I know no one can rock out to a Moonlight song on drums like Keegan can, I actually wish I was back in Fallen Elk Grove at The Lyric listening to the cover band. If my chase for forever ends, it will be at Night Owl. I hope they’ll at least play my song.
The orange owl stares at me, reading me, questioning me, and I start questioning myself all over again. Then I question why I’m letting an owl in the form of neon lights lead to this kind of stress. Linzi pulls me through the crowd, but our chances of nearing the stage are slim to none. We’re in Moonlight territory with Moonlight fans who have been with the band since before the days “Ocean Air” dominated radio stations.
“Do you think we’ll get to meet them?” Linzi asks. Her eyes sparkle with glimmers of hope and stage lights, and I don’t want to burst her bubble of excitement.
I shrug my shoulders. “You never know,” I say, h
oping the opening act’s bass drowns out my doubtfulness. I do hope we get to meet them, though. I just have to figure out a good icebreaker to ask them about their undead friend with flyers.
We only advance about three feet forward before a barricade of drunken college idiots block us from closing in on Linzi’s band. Between the puddles of spilled beer and flying legs of crowd surfers, I find myself regretting this even more. If it wasn’t Linzi’s dream band, I would have already hauled myself to the back of the room. Instead, I remain standing, staring at the picture of an ocean with a full moon on Keegan’s drum, willing him with my mind to come on stage and make this worth it.
And my luck hasn’t run out just yet. Their lead singer emerges on stage and introduces them, like they really need an introduction. Their lead guitarist plays a few chords, and the chaos begins. Everyone around us jumps up and down and shouts out lyrics. I regret my decision to wear flip flops tonight. But Linzi is right there with the crowd, here in Moonlight territory, screaming the words and slinging her hair and telling me how OhMyGod! That is TheKeeganLawrence!
I want to close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else. Back inside The Lyric watching a Moonlight cover band. Watching the stage lights reflect off the face of undead Spence Burks. I want to be surrounded by forever chasers, and no one in this room fits that description. The Ocean in Moonlight doesn’t even fit. Keegan is steady and calm. The bassist has a half-drunken sway going on. The random violinist who makes this band sound different looks about he’s as bored as he’d be playing in a symphony orchestra. I seriously hope they’re just tired or partied too hard during their pre-tour celebrations.
“Haley!” Linzi screams into my ear. “This is your song!”
At least I think she was trying to tell me this was my song. The bass vibrates through my flip flops, and when I attempt to speak, I feel it buzz in my throat, and I know she can’t hear me anyway. “Chase Forever Down” blares, sizzling through my veins from the floor up, and it’s not the bass that’s making the room buzz. It’s the lead guitar.
Chasing Forever Down (Drenaline Surf Series) Page 3
