Alex, Approximately

by Jenn Bennett

* * *

  The rest of my training is a blur. I’m not even sure how I manage to find my way back to my dad’s house. All I know is by the time Pete Rydell walks in from work, I’m armed and ready with a memorized list of calm, collected reasons as to why I can’t work at the Cave . . . which quickly degenerates into me flat-out begging him to please-please-please let me quit. But he’s not having it. Not even when I promise to apply to Pancake Shack and bring us home free pancakes every day for life. “It’s just a ticket booth, Mink,” he says, flabbergasted that I could be so bent out of shape about taking money from strangers. And when I try to justify my bitter dislike of Porter, one of his eyebrows is lifted by so much rising suspicion, it could inflate a hot air balloon. “The boy we almost hit on the crosswalk?”

  “I know, right?” He remembers the drugged-out friend. He sees the light now.

  Only, he doesn’t. Things are now being said about how much trouble he went through to pull strings to get this job, and how bad it would look for me to quit so early, and how living out here isn’t cheap, especially on a single parent’s salary—one that isn’t a lawyer’s salary, like Mom’s—and that he’d like me to help pay for the insurance on the Vespa and my cell phone bill.

  “This is good for you,” he says in a softer voice, squeezing my shoulders. He’s still in his CPA long sleeves and tie, not in one of his geeky 1980s sci-fi T-shirts, so he looks like more of a responsible adult at the moment. And I don’t ever remember him being this decisive and firm. It’s weird, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s making me a little emotional. “I know you don’t believe me now, but you will. Sometimes you have to endure painful things to realize that you’re a whole lot stronger than you think.”

  Ugh. He’s so earnest. I know he’s talking about what he went through in the divorce, and that makes me uncomfortable. I blow out the long, deep sigh of a girl defeated and duck out of his kind fatherly grip in one smooth movement, instantly feeling relief.

  Once I have time to think things over rationally, I understand where he’s coming from . . . in theory. If the point of me sticking it out at the Cave is because I need to be bringing in my own paycheck and showing him that I can be responsible, I’ll just have to tough it out somehow. Figure out a way to see as little of Porter Roth as possible.

  I might be an evader, but I suppose I’m no quitter. It’s just a summer job anyway, right? That’s what I tell myself.

  Besides, I have other things to think about.

  The next morning, I break out a map of Coronado Cove the second Dad’s car has rumbled out of earshot. Time to do a little detective work. The Cave didn’t schedule me for my first real shift until tomorrow, so at least I have one day of respite before I’m forced to start serving my jail term. I’d already messaged Alex, but he doesn’t answer right away. I’m wondering if that’s because he’s at the day job. During the school year, he only works the day job after school, and every once in a while on the weekends. But now that it’s summer, he said he’s working there pretty much every morning, and clocking in at another job later.

  My stomach goes haywire just thinking about it.

  This is what I know about Alex’s day job: I know that it’s a family business, and that he hates it. I know that the business is on the beach, because he’s said that he can see the waves from the window. I also know that there’s a counter, so obviously it’s a retail business. A retail shop on the boardwalk. That narrows it to. . . I dunno, about several hundred stores? But two details that may help me pin him down are ones that seemed unimportant when he first mentioned them. First: He complains that the scent of cinnamon constantly makes him hungry because a churro cart is nearby. Second: He feeds a stray beach cat that suns itself outside the shop and answers to the name Sam-I-Am.

  Not a lot, but it’s a start.

  After studying the map, I strap on my scooter helmet and head down Gold Avenue toward the northern end of the boardwalk—opposite the Cavern Palace, a mile or so away. Sunshine’s burning through the morning fog, the air smells like pancakes and ocean. The beach is already bustling with people. Locals and tourists, freaks and geeks. They throng the boardwalk like ants on a picnic. The water’s too nippy for swimming, but that doesn’t stop people from lining the sand with blankets and towels. Everyone’s ready to worship the sun.

  I’ve always disliked the beach, but as I find a place to park near the north end of the boardwalk and slather my vitamin-D-deficient legs and arms with mega-super-sensitive sunblock created for babies, the frail, and the elderly, I’m feeling slightly less hateful at the horde of bouncy string bikinis and tropical-patterned board shorts jostling past me, laughing and singing as they file toward the sand. There’s not a soul here that I need to impress. No one to worry about accidentally bumping into. Coming out west is my do-over. A clean slate.

  That was one reason I wanted to move out here. It wasn’t just missing my dad, or Mom and Nate LLC fighting, or even the prospect of meeting Alex. In a strange way, the reason I don’t know much about Alex, and vice versa, was one of my main incentives for moving.

  Mom’s a divorce lawyer. (Oh, the irony.) Four years ago, when I was fourteen, Mom took a case that ended up giving the wife full custody of the couple’s daughter, a girl about my age. Turned out the jilted husband had a leak in the ol’ brain pipe. Greg Grumbacher, hell-bent for revenge against my mother, found our address online. This was back when my folks were still together. There was . . . an incident.

  He was put in prison for a very long time.

  Anyway. It’s a relief to have an entire country between me and old Greg.

  So that’s why our family doesn’t do “public” online. No real names. No photos. No alma maters or job locations. No breezy status updates with geotags or posts with time stamps like, Oh my gawd, Stacey! I’m sitting at my fav tea shop on 9th, and there’s a girl wearing the cutest dress! Because that’s how messed-up people track you down and do bad things to you and people you care about.

  I try not to be paranoid and let it ruin my life. And not everybody who wants to track somebody down is a sicko. Take, for instance, what I’m doing now, looking for Alex. I’m no Greg Grumbacher. The difference is intent. The difference is that Greg wanted to hurt us, and all I want to do is make sure that Alex is an actual human being my age, preferably of the male persuasion, and not some creep who’s trying to harvest my eyeballs for weird, evil laboratory experiments. That’s not stalking, it’s scoping. It’s protection for both of us, really—me and Alex. If we’re meant to be, and he’s the person I imagine him to be, then things will all work out fine. He’ll be wonderful, and by the end of the summer, we’ll be crazy in love, watching North by Northwest at the film festival on the beach, and I’ll have my hands all over him. Which is what I spend a lot of my free time imagining myself doing to his virtual body, the lucky boy.

  However, if my scoping turns up some bad intel and this relationship looks like it might have more fizzle than pop? Then I’ll just disappear into the shadows, and nobody gets hurt.

  See? I’m looking out for the two of us.

  Shoulders loose, I slip on a pair of dark sunglasses and fall in step behind a herd of beach bunnies, using them as a shield until we hit the boardwalk, where they head straight to the beach and I go left.

  The boardwalk area is just under half a mile long. A center promenade spills out onto a wide pedestrian pier, which is anchored by a Ferris wheel at its base and capped by a wire that ferries couples in aerial chairlifts to the cliffs above. And all of that is enveloped in midway games, looping roller coasters, hotels, restaurants, and bars. It’s half this: laid-back California vibe, skaters, sidewalk art, comic book shops, organic tea, seagulls. And half this: bad 1980s music blasting through tinny speakers, schlocky Tilt-A-Whirls, bells dinging, kids crying, cheap T-shirt shops, overflowing trash cans.

  Whatever my feelings about what this place is, I suspect it isn’t going to be easy to find Alex. Those suspicions only grow stronger when I vee
r away from the Midway area and hit a stretch of retail shops near the promenade (maybe here?) and realize the scent that’s been driving me crazy since yesterday isn’t the Pancake Shack, it’s freshly fried dough. And that’s because there’s an official Coronado Cove boardwalk churro cart every twenty or thirty feet down the promenade. Churros are like long Mexican doughnut sticks that have been fried and dipped in cinnamon or, as the sign tells me, strawberry sugar. They smell like God’s footprints. I’ve never had a real churro, but halfway down the promenade, I make a decision to give up on everything: finding Alex, finding another job, the meaning of life. Just give me that sweet fried dough.

  I plunk down some cash and take my booty to a shady bench. It is everything I hoped for and more. Where have you been all my life? It makes me feel better about my failed morning. As I’m licking the cinnamon sugar from my fingertips, I spy a fat orange tabby cat sunning on the sidewalk near the bench.

  No. Could it be?

  I glance across the promenade. Looks to be a vintage clothing store, a surf shop—Penny Boards, which may or may not be named after Porter’s stupid grandfather—a medical marijuana dispensary, and a café of some sort. The cat stretches. I pull down my shades. Our eyes meet. Am I looking at Alex’s stray cat?

  “Here, kitty,” I call sweetly. “Sam-I-Am? That wouldn’t be your name, would it? Sweet boy?”

  His listless gaze doesn’t register my voice. For a moment, I wonder if he just died, then he rolls to one side, turning a cool shoulder to me with snotty feline aplomb.

  “Was that your lunch?” a tiny English voice says.

  My pulse jumps. I jerk my head up to find a friendly, familiar face staring down at me. Grace from work. She’s dressed in shorts and a white spaghetti-strap top that says NOPE in sparkly gold rhinestones.

  “It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” I tell her. When she squints at me, I explain, “I’m from New Jersey. We only have boring old funnel cakes at the beach.”

  “I thought you were from DC.”

  I wave a hand, dismissive. “It’s a long story. I only lived in DC for a few months. That’s where my mom and her husband are. My dad went to college in California, at Cal Poly, and moved back west a year ago. A couple of months ago, I decided to move out here with him, and, well . . . here I am.”

  “My dad’s a lab technician. He’s from Nigeria,” she says. “I’ve never been, but he left Nigeria and met my mum in London. We moved here when I was ten . . . so seven years ago? To tell you the truth, except for flying back and forth to England for Christmas, I’ve only ever been out of the state once, and that was just to Nevada.”

  “Eh. You aren’t missing much,” I joke.

  She studies me for a moment, adjusting her purse higher on her shoulder. “You know, you don’t really have a New Jersey accent, but you do sort of sound like you’re from the East Coast.”

  “Well, you don’t have a California accent, but you do sort of sound like a British Tinker Bell.”

  She snorts a little laugh.

  I smile. “Anyway, this was my first churro, but it won’t be my last. I’m planning to quit the museum and become a churro cart owner. So if you don’t see me at ticketing tomorrow, give Mr. Cavadini my regards.”

  “No way,” she squeaks, looking genuinely panicked. “Don’t leave me in ticketing alone. Promise me you’ll show up. Porter said three people already quit. We’re the only people scheduled tomorrow afternoon.”

  Suddenly, my churro isn’t sitting so well inside my stomach. “You and Porter sure are buddy-buddy.” I don’t mean to sound so grumbly about this, but I can’t help it.

  She shrugs. “We’ve been mates for years. He’s not so bad. He’ll tease you relentlessly until you push back. He’s just testing your limits. Besides, he’s been through a lot, so I guess I give him some slack.”

  “Like what? His world-famous grandfather won too many surfing trophies? It sure must be a drag, seeing statues of your family members around town.”

  Grace stares at me for a moment. “You don’t know about what happened?”

  I stare back. Obviously, I don’t. “What?”

  “You don’t know about their family?” She’s incredulous.

  Now I’m feeling pretty stupid for not bothering to look up Porter’s family on the Internet when I got home last night. Truth is, I was so mad at him, I didn’t care. Still don’t, really. “Kinda not into sports,” I say apologetically, but honestly, I’m not even sure if surfing is considered a sport or a hobby or an art. People get on boards and ride waves, but is it an Olympic thing, or what? I’m clueless.

  “His father was a pro surfer too,” she tells me, sounding like she truly cannot believe I don’t know this already. “The grandfather died, and then his father . . . It was all pretty horrible. You haven’t noticed Porter’s scars?”

  I start to tell her that I did but was too busy being humiliated in front of my coworkers, but Grace is now distracted. Someone’s calling her from a store down the promenade.

  “Gotta go,” she interrupts in her tiny voice. “Just please be there tomorrow.”

  “I will,” I promise. Don’t really have any other choice.

  “By the way,” she says, turning around and pointing at the orange tabby with a sly smile on her face. “That cat isn’t answering you because he is a she.”

  My heart sinks. Wrong cat.

  Well, it’s only the beginning of summer, and I’m a patient girl. If I have to eat my way through every churro cart on the boardwalk, come hell or sunstroke, I will find Alex before North by Northwest.

  LUMIÈRE FILM FANATICS COMMUNITY

  PRIVATE MESSAGES>ALEX>NEW!

  @mink: Guess what I got in the mail today? A brand-new copy of The Philadelphia Story.

  @alex: Nice! Love that movie. We should watch that together sometime if I can find a copy.

  @mink: Definitely. It’s one of my favorite Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn films!

  @alex: Well, in other good news, since I know you LOVE gangster movies so much [insert sarcasm here], I just sent you a ton of Godfather screens with Alex-ified captions, changing things up for you.

  @mink: I’m looking at them right now. You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?

  @alex: Only if you do.

  @mink: You made orange juice go up my nose.

  @alex: That’s all I ever wanted, Mink.

  @mink: Your dreams may be closer to reality than you can possibly imagine. . . .

  “You won’t find anything cheap around here!”

  —Lana Turner, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

  5

  * * *

  My first real shift at the Cave begins the next day at noon, and when I see the jammed parking lot, I nearly turn the Vespa around and head back to Dad’s house. But Grace spots me before I can. She’s waiting at the employee door, waving her arms, and now there’s nothing I can do but march off to my doom. We clock in, stow our stuff in our assigned lockers, and don our orange vests.

  Shit just got real.

  Mr. Cavadini and his pointy blond vampire hairline greet us in the break room, clipboard in hand. “You are . . . ?”

  “Bailey Rydell,” I supply. It’s been one day; he’s already forgotten.

  “Grace Achebe.”

  “What’s that?” he says, leaning closer to hear her.

  The irritation in her eyes is supreme. “ACH-E-BE,” she spells out.

  “Yes, yes,” he mumbles, like he knew it all along. He hands us plastic name tags. The sticker printed with my first name is stuck on crooked. It feels like a bad omen. “All right, ladies. Your supervisor on duty is Carol. She’s tied up with a problem in the café right now. The morning shift at ticketing is ending in three minutes, so we need to hurry. Are you ready to get out there and make some magic happen?”

  Grace and I both stare at him.

  “Terrific,” he says with no feeling, and then urges us out the door and into the employee corridor. “
First thing you usually do is go to security”—he points down the hall toward the opposite direction—“to count out a fresh cash drawer, like we showed you in training. But today there’s no time. You’ll just have to trust that the supervisor on duty didn’t steal anything or foul up the drawer count, because it comes out of your paycheck if they did. . . .”

  I freeze in place. Grace speaks first. “Wait, what’s that?”

  “Come on, now,” Mr. Cavadini says, pushing me forward. “Two minutes. Shake a leg. Security will meet you at the ticketing booth to get you set up and answer any questions. If you last a week, we’ll consider assigning you a key to the booth. Otherwise, you’ll have to knock to get inside, because it locks automatically. Good luck and don’t forget to smile.”

  And with that, he guides us into the lobby and promptly abandons us.

  The museum was empty during orientation. It’s not now. Hundreds of voices bounce around the rocky cavern walls as patrons shuffle through the massive space, heading into the two wings. The café upstairs is packed. People are eating sandwiches on the slate stairs, talking on cell phones beneath the floating pirate ship. So. Many. People.

  But the only person I really see is standing against the ticket booths.

  Porter Roth. Beautiful body. Head full of wild curls. Cocky smile.

  My archnemesis.

  His eyes meet mine. Then his gaze drops to my feet. He’s checking to see if my shoes match. Even though I know they do, I check them again, and then want to take them off and bean them at his big, fat head.

  But he doesn’t say a word about it. He only says, “Ladies,” and nods when we approach. Maybe this won’t be as bad as last time. Balancing two covered cash tills in one hand, he raps on the ticketing booth’s rear door four quick times before turning toward us. “Ready for the thrill of hot cash in your hands?”

  The door to the booth swings open. For what seems like forever, Grace and I stand waiting while Porter enters the booth, swapping out the cash drawers, and two wide-eyed new hires spill out of ticketing, wiping away sweat like they’ve just been inside the devil’s own boudoir and seen unspeakable, depraved acts that have scarred them for life.