The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

by Tim Pratt

  “You’re still a champion sloucher, though,” Marzi said.

  “Good posture is crucial,” Jonathan said.

  Pedestrian traffic thickened as they approached the wharf. They passed thin teenage girls with their sweaters tied around their waists, an Asian boy in a long black trench coat trying to look remote and cool, a few surfers, dripping wet and walking intently away from the sea, all walking across the street, ignoring the traffic lights with the blithe assurance that such a critical mass of jaywalkers was a match for any car. Marzi, Lindsay, and Jonathan jostled together, clustering up close out of necessity. “Are these all tourists?” Jonathan asked.

  “Mostly,” Lindsay said. “They start to come as soon as it stops raining every year, pretty much. More on the weekends, of course. Everybody streams in from over the hill in Silicon Valley for fun and sun and so on.” Lindsay put her arm around Jonathan’s waist. “But you’re no tourist! You’re a Santa Cruz native by association.”

  “Lindsay bestowed the same honor on me years ago,” Marzi said.

  “Oh, you’re from Humboldt County,” Lindsay said. “Your people are my people. Come. The boardwalk beckons.”

  They passed the arcade, Neptune’s Kingdom, and Marzi couldn’t resist glancing inside as they passed. The decorating motif was faux-nautical, with life preservers and fishing nets hanging on the walls—like a bad seafood restaurant, only without the grease stains. Just inside the door a fake bathysphere with pincer arms moved slowly up and down on wires, claws opening and closing, and a surprisingly lifelike animatronic pirate climbed a long rope to a crow’s nest suspended from the ceiling. Steps led up to the second floor, where you could buy overpriced food with kitschy names like Barnacle Burgers and Foot-Long Sea Dogs. The rattle of pinball machines and the hum of arcade games drifted out. No rustling, no monsters, no oracles, nothing unusual at all—Neptune’s Kingdom was as prosaic as ever. That should have reassured Marzi, but it didn’t. Instead she felt the resurgence of her old feeling that there was a world just beyond the visible, that behind any door she might find monstrous wonders and wondrous monsters. Lindsay and Jonathan didn’t slow down as they passed the arcade, Lindsay chattering away and Jonathan nodding, so Marzi didn’t break stride, either, but the hairs on the back of her neck rose as she passed the building. Having Neptune’s Kingdom at her back gave her the distinct, ridiculous feeling that she was being watched.

  Lindsay led the way, turning right to cut between two bright yellow buildings, onto the boardwalk proper. “And here we are. The world-famous beach boardwalk.”

  Jonathan scuffed his boot heel against the concrete. “If it’s a boardwalk, shouldn’t there be actual boards?”

  “I thought you were an artist,” Lindsay said. “It’s an impressionistic boardwalk!”

  “Yeah,” Marzi said. “Why be so literal? It’s a boardwalk in spirit.”

  “There’s even Skee-Ball!” Lindsay said. She arched an eyebrow. “You don’t look impressed, Jon-jon.”

  “I’m reserving judgment,” he said.

  “Perhaps a deep-fried Twinkie will do the trick,” Marzi said, pointing toward the Extreme Fried Foods! booth.

  “Those were invented in the South,” Jonathan said. “We’ve had them at state fairs for years.”

  Lindsay poked him in the shoulder. “Fine, be unimpressed. Go get us some tickets. Lots. I like to ride the rides and play the games.” She pointed toward the ticket booth, and Jonathan walked amiably in that direction.

  Marzi leaned toward Lindsay. “He’s a hard sell,” she said. “He thinks our boardwalk is lame.”

  “Oh, we’ll get him,” Lindsay said. “You’ll note I’m wearing a white top, and no bra, and I have every intention of going on the log flume ride, which, as you know, has copious splishy-splash tendencies. We’ll see if me all dripping wet and clingy cheers him up.”

  Marzi knew Lindsay’s lasciviousness was as natural for her as breathing, and quietly quashed the little upsurge of jealousy she felt.

  “Maybe you should save something for the second date,” Marzi said dryly.

  “Speaking of which, I hear this is your second date with him, Marzipan,” Lindsay said. “Something about true romance amid the tide pools?”

  “We had a moment, but who knows what’ll happen? He’s only here for the summer anyway.” She was reluctant to express hope for something deeper, to even allow herself such hope.

  “A summer can be like a lifetime, if you do it right,” Lindsay said. “I’m glad you’re giving him a chance.”

  Jonathan returned, holding a roll of blue tickets and looking amused. “Bumper cars,” Lindsay said, and grabbed their hands.

  As Lindsay demanded, they rode the rides and played the games. Jonathan admitted to being impressed by the unusual amount of maneuverability on the Space Race bumper cars, but was less than wowed by the house of horrors. As they creaked slowly along the tracks beneath red lights and artificial cobwebs, Marzi found herself wishing that her fears were as simple as this—big spiders, mummies, screams in the dark. Her fears were entirely too baroque. Lindsay was squished in close next to her, with Jonathan sitting in the seat behind them, distinctly not screaming in fear at every new scare. Lindsay whispered, “I want. To suck. Your—”

  “Blood,” Marzi said firmly.

  “Well, if you insist on being so traditional about it,” she said.

  Jonathan leaned forward, resting his head between theirs. “Can we do something that goes fast next?”

  So they went to the Big Dipper, the centerpiece of the boardwalk, and ratcheted up the track, zoomed down the incline, and whipped through the curves. There were no loop-the-loops or spirals, not on a roller coaster that old, but the structure rattled and shuddered and seemed to tremble as they rode, which was terrifying enough. As they got off, Jonathan said, “That was sort of the Model-T Ford of roller coasters, but it was fun.”

  “Time to get wet,” Lindsay said, and they got in line for the log flume waterslide. It was a short line. The night was turning cool, and most people weren’t eager to get wet, but Lindsay, of course, could not be discouraged. “If we get cold, we’ll just huddle up,” she said. “This is my date, so no arguments!”

  The log-shaped boat was divided into two compartments, with each big enough to fit two people sitting single file, straddling the long, narrow central seat, so that the one in front was necessarily tucked up against the one in back. Lindsay climbed into the front, and when Marzi tried to get in behind her, Lindsay slid back and said, “Nope. I need the space.” She grinned, and Marzi scowled, but she climbed into the back, where Jonathan had already situated himself. There was no choice but to slide back snugly between his open thighs, and he had nowhere to put his hands but the sides of the boat or around her waist. He held on to the edges of the boat.

  “I didn’t expect us to get so cozy tonight,” Marzi said. The closeness was oddly more uncomfortable since they’d kissed earlier in the day. Being snugged up between his thighs seemed like too much too fast.

  “I can wait for the next log, if you want to ride alone,” he said, and just the fact that he’d offered made her more comfortable riding with him.

  “I’ll be okay,” Marzi said. “At least with two of us back here, we’re less likely to fall out and die.” And it did feel good, leaning back against him, feeling his warmth.

  “And all this weight in the back will lift the nose of the log, so Lindsay will get splashed all to hell and back,” he said.

  “I’m counting on it!” Lindsay said, and the log started forward with a jerk, sliding out along the flimsy-looking chute, which wound its way sedately through riverlike S curves, sloshing gently. Jonathan kept his hands on the side of the boat, and Marzi held on to the divider between her compartment and Lindsay’s. She looked out at the ocean, the sailboats bobbing, the moonlight on the water, and for a moment it struck her as terribly romantic, being nestled up against a cute boy on a spring night.

  The log approached the final
, precipitous slope, the nose edging out briefly into empty air until the weight made it topple forward into the near-ninety-degree drop. Lindsay gleefully chanted, “Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Marzi felt her stomach lurch and have its own out-of-body experience, and Jonathan wrapped his hands around her waist in what could only be pure terror. Having his arms around her made Marzi feel both safer and more stomach-tinglingly nervous as they hurtled down. When they hit the straightaway, a great gout of water leapt up and soaked Lindsay, but only splashed Marzi and Jonathan.

  The log coasted to a halt, and they climbed out, Lindsay happily dripping. Her top was not particularly transparent, though it did cling. Marzi wiped water out of her eyes, but Jonathan was mostly dry. “I didn’t get wet at all, sitting behind Marzi,” he commented.

  “Mmm,” Lindsay said. “I wonder if Marzi can say the same thing about sitting in front of you?”

  Marzi smacked her on the arm. “We don’t all get damp as easily as you do, Linds.”

  “I’m glad I’m too young and innocent to know what you’re talking about,” Jonathan said. “And on an unrelated note, we’re almost out of tickets. One more ride?”

  “Something that doesn’t leave my stomach a hundred feet up in the air would be appreciated,” Marzi said.

  “I suppose we should ride the sky glider,” Lindsay said, looking up. “Your stomach will still be way up in the air, but so will the rest of you.” Jonathan and Marzi tilted their heads back, too, and looked at the slowly moving basket-shaped seats that hung suspended from a continually spooling loop of cable above them, like a chair lift at a ski slope. The sky gliders ran the length of the boardwalk, affording good views of the town and the ocean. Most of the seats were empty—it was hardly a thrill ride—but it looked like a pleasant end to their boardwalk experience. They went up the concrete steps and waited their turn, and when an empty car arrived, Lindsay told the attendant, “I’m riding by myself,” leaving Marzi and Jonathan behind before they could protest. The attendant showed Lindsay where to stand, and when the seat slid up behind her, Lindsay did a little hop and sat down. The attendant put the bar down across her lap, and Lindsay was off, looking back at them, grinning.

  Marzi and Jonathan got into the next car—they were built for two—and sat, their knees touching, Marzi holding her bag in her lap. It was noticeably cooler up here, above the boardwalk, and as they rose higher, above the roof of the haunted house, nearly on level with the highest peak of the Big Dipper, a breeze began to blow, and the basket swayed. “Are we being matchmade?” Jonathan said. “Lindsay seems to be going out of her way to put us together.”

  “As far as she’s concerned, the match is already made, and it’s all her doing anyway.”

  “I’m sure she just wants you to be happy,” Jonathan said. He hesitated. “She told me so. She worries about you being lonely, I think.”

  Marzi started to say “I am happy,” but that wasn’t really true, and the air up here was so cool and clear, she couldn’t bear lying. “I’m not unhappy,” she said, which was perhaps a bit of misdirection, but at least not a lie. Her life, at best, was a sort of pleasant neutrality, characterized more by a lack of fear than by joy. A day without an anxiety attack—lately, a day without a hallucination—was a successful day. And she did have her comic. That filled a lot of the dark corners of her life with light. “Things aren’t so bad.”

  “A ringing endorsement.” They rode for a while in silence, swaying, and Marzi looked out at the lights of Santa Cruz in the distance, then looked the other way, over the dark beach and the ocean. Tiny lights, right up against the void. It was enough to make a person get all symbolic and metaphorical. She waited for the vision to shimmer and decay, for rotting vultures to come flying in over the ocean and perch on the big seahorse sculptures that topped the arcade, for sand to cover the lights. But nothing changed. No vision this time, at least. The world was whole and safe for another moment.

  “You’re a good artist,” Jonathan said, and such a sentiment was so far from Marzi’s thoughts that for a moment she didn’t even understand what he was saying, any more than if he’d cried out in the voice of a gull. When sense caught up with sound, she blushed and shook her head, a motion of modesty so instantaneous as to be almost reflexive.

  Jonathan went on. “I mean it. Your comics are very good. I have a lot of respect for people who can do what you do, turn their thoughts into pictures. A lot of respect, and maybe even more jealousy.”

  “You want to be an artist?”

  “Oh, I can draw. I’ve got a steady hand, a decent eye. But whatever it is that drives you, that makes you stay up late working, whatever lights you up inside and guides your hand . . . I don’t have that. I wish I did. I wish I could get that passionate about anything.”

  “Don’t confuse drawing and religion,” Marzi said. “It’s not so much a sacred fire as it is a lot of sweat and effort. Ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration, remember.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s become unfashionable to say that artists are touched by the gods. But that ten percent inspiration is pretty crucial. Anyway, I’ve come to terms with my limitations. I’m an appreciator, more than a creator. What I’m trying to say is—I don’t really know you, or Lindsay, beyond the fact that you’re both nice, and brave, and funny. But I’ve read your comic, and I’ve listened to you talk, and, all matchmaking aside, I want to get to know you better.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Marzi said lightly, but the breeze that made the basket sway seemed to blow through her whole body, now, as if her nerves were exposed to the air. “And I don’t think you’re without passion. You got pretty excited about Garamond Ray.”

  Another ghost of a smile. “I get passionate about passion in others.”

  “No wonder you like Lindsay so much.”

  He laughed. “She’s fun, yeah. But I was talking about you.”

  Unsettled, Marzi looked out toward the lights of Santa Cruz. The aerial view reminded her uncomfortably of her vision of the city destroyed. Santa Cruz was thriving now, though, a town bisected by a slow river, a town of hills and redwood cathedrals, of duck-filled ponds and long, graceful footbridges, of fanciful outdoor sculpture and houses full of sleepless, brilliant graduate students. Maybe a town haunted by something monstrous. Or maybe just a town inhabited by one Fine Art school dropout comic-book artist who was going rapidly insane. Though that hypothesis didn’t explain Beej’s behavior, or Jane’s.

  The car approached the platform at the far end of the boardwalk. Lindsay’s arrived first, and she hopped off and waited for them on the stairs. Jonathan and Marzi arrived, and followed suit, and they all went down the stairs together. “Well?” Lindsay said. “Did you get even better acquainted?”

  “You’re not even a little bit subtle, are you?” Marzi said.

  Lindsay shrugged. “What can I say? Even in the depths of my horrible solitude, I want to make other people happy. Come. Now we walk on the beach.” She set off, and they followed.

  “I used to go running on this stretch of beach,” Marzi said, walking close to Jonathan, heading toward the place where the San Lorenzo River touched the bay, next to a crumbling sea cliff. “I’d come out here early and run from the rocks at the far end, past the pier, all the way to the river, and back again, two or three times. It was a good workout, and there was something wonderful about being here just after sunrise, with just a couple of boats on the water, and almost nobody else on the beach.”

  “Why did you stop?” Jonathan said.

  “Oh, this was when I was in college, before I dropped out. Now that I work evening shifts, it’s a lot harder to get up at dawn.”

  “Did you drop out to concentrate on the comic?” Jonathan asked.

  Marzi hesitated. Her dropping out—and the real causes behind it, the phobia, the anxiety attacks—wasn’t something she felt ready to talk about after all. And, in a way, it was tied up with her comic. Rangergirl had been born after she left school. “Pre
tty much,” she said, but she could taste the half-truth in her own mouth, and thought she sensed a subtle shift in Jonathan’s body language, as if he understood that a wall had just been erected, a door closed between them.

  Lindsay came back to them, pointing. “Hey, look at that,” she said. “There’s someone building a monstrous big sand castle by the river.”

  Marzi squinted, and now that she was looking for it, she was able to resolve shapes from the shadow of the sea cliff. Someone was piling handfuls of sand onto an already waist-high mound of sand.

  “Who builds sand castles in the dark?” Marzi said.

  Lindsay shrugged. “Dunno. Let’s go take a look. I’m a sucker for sand castles, but the ones I make always look like anthills.”

  They drew closer to the sand castle, which didn’t look like much but a pile of mud at this point; the turrets and gates and moat, Marzi supposed, would come later.

  “Hi, there!” Lindsay called. “Wow! You must’ve been working on this for a while. It’s gonna be a hell of a castle when you’re done.”

  “It’s not a castle,” the builder said, voice low. Marzi couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, not from the voice, or from the body, as the builder was mostly hidden behind the mound of sand.

  “Oh?” Lindsay said. “What, then? A giant turtle? A whale?”

  “It’s a practice burial mound,” the builder said, and jumped to the top of the hill of sand, which shifted under the weight but didn’t collapse. The builder crouched on all fours, moving her head forward to peer at them, dreadlocks swinging.

  “You,” Jonathan said, disgusted. “You again. Shit.”

  “Shit and mud and ashes,” Jane said agreeably, and leapt, driving herself off the mound of sand, straight at Marzi.

  Jonathan shouted wordlessly and shoved Marzi aside, putting himself in Jane’s path instead. Marzi fell into the sand, landing hard on her elbows and her ass, wind whuffing out of her, leaving her stunned and still for a moment. Jane slammed into Jonathan, and the two went down in a tangle, Jonathan gasping, Jane laughing, almost a witch’s cackle. Lindsay helped Marzi to her feet, and they rushed to where Jane was thrashing Jonathan. She’d somehow half-buried Jonathan, his legs and one arm covered by wet sand, trapping him. Contemptuously, Jane kicked a shower of sand toward Jonathan’s face, and he turned his head away, coughing. As Marzi approached, Jane stood up, smiling dangerously, her teeth like polished white shells.