How typical of Linzi to name an inanimate object. But as she rambles names off into the salty air, I realize she has a point, and all spirits deserve a name. Anyone who watches over me on this crazy forever-chasing journey especially deserves a name. And there’s only one name that fits – the one who watched from the very beginning.
“Solomon,” I say. I stop and make sure he’s wedged tightly into my purse so he can’t be broken between The Strip and the hotel.
Linzi twirls in a circle, catching falling rays through the purple glass in her hand. “Then I shall name her Sofia. Solomon and Sofia, our spirit guides and happy lights,” she says.
She hugs the glass whale close to her chest and spins in circles. I laugh hard enough to forget about the Hawaiian vendor and the laughing waiter and everyone else around us who thinks we’re just tourists playing stalkerazzi with the local surf king.
I laugh my way right into a clumsy collision with a pissed off twenty-something with spiky black hair and icy blue eyes. And by icy, I don’t mean that dreamy see-through blue. I mean literal ice, like the bottom portion of an iceberg that you can’t see, but you know it’s out there and dangerous, and the fact that you can’t see it coming makes it all the more frightening.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, stepping back away from him.
He says, “My bad,” simultaneously with my apology, but he doesn’t move. He hovers over me, his height more intimidating than it probably should be. The iceberg fright sends chills through my veins. Please, God, don’t let him mug me while I’m 2000 miles away from home and lying to my parents.
“Are your highlights natural?” he asks.
I try not to stare at him with one of those “What the hell?” looks, but I know it’s splattered across my face. Then I silently curse Linzi’s perfectly blonde hair and my own genetics for making me a brunette who gets asked the stupid questions like if my highlights are natural.
“What’s it matter?” I ask.
I try to channel Linzi’s nonchalant vibes, like how she drops Colby Taylor’s name into conversation like it’s an everyday thing, but my voice isn’t nearly as silky smooth and believable as hers.
He holds up a can of spray paint, and I wonder how I didn’t see him holding it this whole time. The top is a bronzy color, like Solomon Worthington’s picture frame. The words Honey Gold are a dead giveaway that this isn’t spray paint.
“This,” he says, shaking the can, “is the future of hair dye. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than salon highlights. It holds longer, and it’s easy to use, great for do-it-yourself touch ups.”
I know where I’ve seen this stuff – Stella’s. But her spray can had a black lid. That exact can transformed the west coast surfer into an emo rocker boy for one night of faking existence. Rinses out in one washing and looks as good as a dye job. Who is this guy kidding?
“Nice try,” I finally say. “I’ve seen this stuff. You’re right. It’s cheap and easy and a total rip off. All I need is the sunshine.” I flip my hair over my shoulder and attempt to push past him.
“Hey!” he shouts out.
His iceberg eyes freeze me in my tracks. He shakes his head and says, “Just thought I’d try and help you out. You don’t have to go all psycho bitch about it.”
Linzi links her arm with mine. “Highlight of my summer: meeting a con artist on the beach,” she says. She lowers her voice. “Let’s go. He’s probably got some creepy con artist name like Spike or Rocky or something.”
“It’s Vin,” he says, making it obvious to Linzi that her discretion is anything but discreet.
“Oh,” Linzi says. “Like Vin Diesel?”
She loosens her arm from mine. Now all she’s thinking is ocean air and hot summer sun and Vin Diesel, and I’m thinking miles from home, con artists, and icebergs! We should’ve just stayed on the east coast with our stale Atlantic air.
“No,” he says. “Like VIN number. When you steal a car, it’s the first thing you dispose of. Scrape it off or whatever you gotta do to make the vehicle untraceable.”
He leans in, a smirk painted on his face, like he’s about to tell us a life-changing secret. The spikes of his hair look like black daggers ready to pierce through me if he comes any closer. He’s kind of crazy beautiful in a terrifying way.
“I tried getting out of that business,” he says so quietly that I have strain my ears to hear him. “But going from carjacking to a salesman ain’t so easy, especially when people act like you.”
His finger twirls around a strand of my hair. My fingers tighten around his forearm, and every muscle from his wrist to his shoulder constricts as I sling his arm away from me. He laughs this criminal laugh and steps away. The summer sun beats against my skin from behind his silhouette.
“See ya, Sunshine,” he says before disappearing into the crowd of tourists.
Linzi and I finish each other’s sentences as we remind ourselves and each other that we’re still implying the buddy system, regardless of the fact that it’s just the two of us.
“And we always need to be back at the hotel before dark,” Linzi says as we approach a hot dog stand. “We can chase Colby Taylor during the daylight. I mean, he’s not out surfing at night anyway. The boy’s gotta sleep.”
She orders a small lemonade from the vendor, and my eyes catch a slew of surfers emerging from the orange glaze on the ocean. A red sun falls behind them. Darkness will soon blacken the ocean, and the surfers of Crescent Cove will call it a night.
I tug on Linzi’s arm and motion toward the guys dragging surfboards onto the shore. She takes her lemonade from the vendor without looking up at him and focuses on the guys. We step away from the hot dog stand, lost in our own little surfer zone, while Linzi singles them out as not being Colby Taylor.
“Brunette. Brunette. Too short. Out of shape. Red head. He’s not with them,” she says.
Our eyes follow them anyway as they move up the beach, kicking up the sand around their feet.
“You’d think Colby Taylor would hang out with surfers, right?” I ask her.
She’s not given a chance to answer me. A half-grunt half-laugh comes from the man behind us. He leans over the counter of his hot dog stand.
“You won’t see Taylor out here ‘cause he don’t come out here,” he barks. “All you tourists are the same, teenage girls walking the beach half naked like he’s going to surf out of nowhere and sweep you off your feet. Ain’t gonna happen!”
Linzi chokes on a swig of lemonade, then clears her throat. She pulls the plastic lid off of her cup, banishing it and the straw to the sand beneath us. She throws her head back, chugs a huge gulp, and storms back to the hot dog stand, stomping her flip flops with purpose the entire walk over. No one but Linzi could pull off a threatening flip flop walk over the course of six feet.
“She didn’t ask you,” she says to the man.
“Hey now,” he says. “You came to my beach, to my stand, breathing my air, and if I want to tell you that you don’t stand a chance with him, I’ll tell you…because you don’t.”
Linzi pulls her arm back, and in a perfect maneuver, she slings her lemonade in the man’s face, drenching his salt-and-pepper hair, his wrinkled sun-damaged face, and his mustard-stained shirt. And with the intensity in which she’d approached his stand, she stomps away.
We seek refuge in between a black booth and a skate shop. I lean against the skate shop’s side wall, under graffiti that reads SK8 4 LIFE! Anger burns my face, but I refuse to let any tears fall. These stupid locals aren’t worth it. Linzi paces in front of me, ranting too loudly about how people have no right to act the way they do around here.
“We didn’t even ask him,” I say. “If I’d asked for his expertise in Colby Taylor, then sure, blast me and make me look like an idiot. But I didn’t say a damn word to him!”
The girl inside the black booth steps out and looks at us. Her yellow shirt has the name of rock band Sebastian’s Shadow wrapped around her body multiple times, alternating between
pink and purple writing. Her black skinny jeans and zebra print Converse don’t fit into the beach scene. Her heavy eyeliner matches the little black heart drawn outside of the corner of her eye. She’s probably laughing at us in her head. I bet she could care less about surfers.
Linzi throws her hands into the air. “This place is full of jackasses and con artists and hardly a surfer in sight,” she shouts out.
“You looking for Colby Taylor?” the girl asks.
My eyes follow the sound of her voice but zone in on the turquoise letters of her booth. Emily’s Enchanters. She must be Emily.
“Actually, yeah, we are,” I say.
I walk around the booth and realize that even the rocker chick’s booth is decorated with stars and moons…full moons, unlike everywhere else here in the cove. The inside walls of her booth are lined with hand sewn voodoo dolls, though. At least they look like voodoo dolls. Enchanters is definitely a better phrase for business.
“But,” Linzi interjects, “if you’re just going to laugh at us and tell us how stupid we are, then no, we’re not looking for him.”
“Chill,” the girl says, climbing over the wooden edge and back into her booth. “I was actually going to tell you where to start.”
CHAPTER 6
“Colby Taylor doesn’t get out much,” Emily says. “When he does, we just pretend not to notice him.”
I wonder how often that is. Does he stroll down The Strip like a local? Do the tourists stare and take pictures and chase him down for autographs? Even if he wasn’t a local celebrity, I don’t know how people could pretend not to notice him. He has an aura about him that shines brighter than the California sun.
“And all the outsiders ask about him,” Emily continues. “Doesn’t matter if they’re from a town over or the east coast. Anyone who doesn’t live in the cove asks about Colby Taylor. And you can guess what the locals do.”
“Laugh,” Linzi says, slinging her hair over her shoulder. “They freaking laugh and make us look like idiots.” She folds her arms over her chest and shakes her head.
Emily laughs, and her drawn-on heart scrunches up in the corner of her eye. “Think of it this way,” she says, leaning against a small table behind her. She bumps into a stack of booklets and reorganizes them as she speaks. “Colby Taylor is the like hottest night club around, minus the strippers and STDs. Obviously everyone wants to get in, but you can’t get in the door because of…”
Linzi and I stand silently, watching the words Sebastian’s Shadow twist back and forth as Emily moves. She looks back at us, waiting for us to finish her sentence.
“The bouncers,” Emily says, like people compare surfers to night clubs in conversation all the time. “He has four of them, and no one has ever gotten through. A few have tried, but all have failed.”
She picks up one of her Enchanters. His head and arms are white and red striped, and he’s dressed in all black, like a ninja. She smiles at him and continues talking, more to the doll than us.
“The first two aren’t so bad, the nice guy and the player,” she says. “But no one has ever made it past the party boy. He’s a little crazy anyway.”
Linzi looks around the booth and leans against the wooden railing. “What about the fourth one?” she asks
“Jerkoff mechanic,” Emily says. “You’ll never make it to him, but be glad. Even Colby Taylor isn’t worth having to deal with that guy. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never had the pleasure of dealing with him myself.”
She may be from the cove, but there’s a lot she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how Colby talks about his forever and looks at the stars and rocks out to cover bands. She only knows the west coast surfer side of him. I’ll deal with the jerkoff mechanic. It’ll be worth it.
But even with this new information, I feel like we haven’t moved forward since we left Night Owl. “Okay, so these four guys,” I say to Emily. “Where do we find them?”
Emily places her ninja-dressed doll back onto her table. She stares at him momentarily, like she’s having a great debate in her own mind as to whether she’s doing the right thing by letting me in on the Crescent Cove secret and she’s hoping he’ll give her a sign to let her know it’s okay.
“Strickland’s Boating,” she says, finally looking up and past me. The red sunset bounces off her brown eyes in a starved vampire kind of way. “Ask for Reed. No, don’t. He’ll be working. It’s two shops down.”
Linzi inhales a squeak of excitement, and I grab her arm to keep her from running down to The Strip until she finds this Reed guy.
“Hold on,” I say. I pull her away, hoping Emily won’t hear. “Look, if what’s she’s saying is legit, I’m doing the talking. Your approach hasn’t worked so far, and we cannot blow this.”
“Okay, okay,” Linzi says. “The reins are yours. I’m just along for the ride.”
Emily clears her throat, and I throw her a glance over my shoulder. I pull Linzi back toward the booth with me.
“One more question,” I say. “Why are you even telling us this? Isn’t that against some kind of Crescent Cove law or something?”
She laughs. “You’re different. One, you’re not dressed like a slut. Two, you’re not squealing over how hot he is, and three, you’re not decked out in shell jewelry.”
Emily glances at Linzi, who does her best to hide the big purple flower sprouting from her index finger, then glances back at me. “You better hurry if you’re going to catch Mr. Nice Guy before they close. You have about twenty minutes,” Emily says.
“Saying ‘thank you’ doesn’t feel like enough,” I say.
“Well…” Emily glances at the wall of dolls behind her. “Girl’s got a cell phone bill to pay.”
Linzi steps back, shaking her head. Her eyes widen, as if she’s seen the ghost of Spence Burks lurking in the enchanted booth. “No, we can’t,” she says.
She pulls Sofia from her bag and unwraps the tissue paper from around the glass whale. “This is my spirit guide, my bright light who sends me good vibes and blocks out the demons. We can’t buy voodoo dolls.”
“Oh God,” Emily says, throwing her arms into the air. “For the millionth time in my life, they are not voodoo dolls. They’re Enchanters – dark little creatures who are diverse and beautiful and find beauty in tragedy and just need love.”
She watches Linzi rewrap the whale in tissue paper then turns around and scans her back shelf of dolls. She grabs two of them off the third row from the top. They’re dressed in purple and match Sofia the suncatcher.
“Do you have a favorite band?” Emily asks Linzi.
Linzi looks up from her bag. “The Ocean in Moonlight.”
Emily turns her back to us, scribbles something into one of her booklets, and spins back around. “This is Holly and her twin brother Alex,” she says, holding up the two tiny dolls. “Alex is a recovering heroin addict, which he resorted to after the hiatus of his favorite band, The Ocean in Moonlight.”
She lays the booklet flat on the wooden rail and points to where she’s written in the band’s name. “His sister, Holly, was a groupie. She’s street smart, a total music junkie.”
Linzi picks up the dolls, neither taller than six inches. Holly’s dress is frayed, and Alex is wearing a silver bracelet. Emily explains that the fraying is due to crowd-surfing and rocking out on a nightly basis, and Alex’s bracelet is his “I’m with the band” souvenir. Linzi is sold even faster than I thought she’d be, and I wonder if Emily is slightly enchanted herself.
“And for you,” Emily says, turning to me, “Zombie Asylum – my first rock band.”
She hands me the five dolls, insisting they must stay together. I question why this special set is so right for me, and Emily has already thought up a great sales pitch.
“Nicholas is the heartthrob of the band. He’s the bassist, and he’s the most unattainable. The way I see it, he’s like Colby Taylor. You have to get through his four bouncers just like you’d have to get through Nicholas’s fo
ur band mates. Take care of them?” she asks before handing me a booklet containing each band member’s story.
I nod and tuck the rock band into my bag, along with Solomon the glass seahorse. I hate how I’ve allowed myself to be sucked into the silly souvenir buying only halfway down The Strip. Emily wishes us luck once more, and I thank her again because luck is something I need more than voodoo dolls now.
Strickland’s Boating reminds me of a beach house with its floor-to-ceiling windows. Rental prices for jet skis and sailboats printed on bright yellow flyers plaster the glass door. I can’t focus on anything around me when we step inside. It’s a boater’s heaven – life jackets, fishing poles, snorkeling and scuba kits, and endless rows of T-shirts and sweatshirts with the Strickland’s Boating logo.
He’s standing behind the counter, under a giant black and white photo of a Great White shark that would look even more incredible in a driftwood frame. His shaggy brown hair falls over his eyes, and he shakes his bangs to one side when he looks up at us. He meets us halfway across the floor, and even before seeing his name tag, I know this is Reed.
“What can I help you ladies with?” he asks, shaking his bangs again and revealing his hazel eyes.
He’s unbelievably cute in his own way, like how every girl in school lusts after the gorgeous pitcher and one day you accidentally bump into the third baseman and his dreamy green eyes on the way to your locker and wonder why no one chases after him as well.
“Well,” I say, “we’ve been in town less than twenty-four hours, and I’ve already lost count of how many times people have recommended this place.”
Linzi shoots me an impressed smile, and by the smile on Reed’s face, I think he totally bought it.
“It’s a little late for spring break, so I’m guessing senior trip? Or summer vacation?” he asks.
“Vay-cay,” Linzi says. “A much needed one at that.” She smiles and slips into the background, and I’m actually impressed she’s keeping her mouth shut.
Reed motions around the store. “We’ve got just about any and everything you might want to do on the beach. Most popular thing is probably jet skiing,” he suggests.
Chasing Forever Down (Drenaline Surf Series) Page 5
