by Carrie Arcos
“Be careful you don’t step on glass or anything.”
She looks at the ground. “You think there’s glass?”
“We’re downtown on a dirty street, there could be anything. Hope you’ve had your tetanus shot.”
That makes her stop.
“Here,” I say, and hold my arms out in front of her.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a lift.”
“I’m fine. It’s not that far of a walk.”
“Come on. I don’t want you getting tetanus on my conscience.”
“I got my shot this year.”
I pick her up and stumble a bit. I try to hide it by swaying side to side and making an airplane noise like she’s a kid.
She laughs. “I’m too heavy.”
“No you’re not.”
She giggles close to my ear, and my whole body buzzes.
“You’re crazy,” she says.
“Says the girl who dresses up like old movie characters.”
“You did too!” She’s laughing harder now and buries her face in my neck. “Only by force.”
“Only by force,” I repeat, and carry her all the way back to my scooter with a smile plastered on my face.
• • •
When we get to Callie’s house, I walk her up to the front door. The outside light is on, but it casts more of a glow than a bright beam.
Callie turns toward me and I can feel it. This is my moment.
She laughs.
If there’s anything that annihilates my nerve, it’s Callie cracking up at me a split second before I’m about to kiss her. I back away from her instead.
“You’ve got to see your face,” she says.
She takes out a compact from her purse. At some point, the makeup had started to smear, or maybe I smeared it with my hand, and now I look like I’ve let some little kid color with crayon all over my face. I’m a sad, demented clown. I laugh too, trying to save face.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she says. “And for helping me avoid tetanus.”
She comes toward me and gives me a hug. It’s not a pat-on-the-back, side kind of hug. It’s a real, full hug. I let my head fall on her shoulder and feel her body absorb mine as if we are a perfect fit. I smell her hair and feel her cheek against my own.
Everything slows down. I feel her heart beating. Or maybe it’s mine. We’re so close, I can’t tell.
All I know is that there won’t be another moment more perfect than this.
I turn my face toward Callie and kiss her.
My entire body tingles with excitement and energy.
I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times. I have tasted her lips in my dreams. It feels like the earth is shifting and the stars are exploding—the way they do in my mind.
Then I realize. Her body is tense, her glossy lips are stiff.
I pull back and see that her eyes are wide and dark.
I drop my gaze and stare at a crack in the concrete. I watch as the crack becomes a jagged scar, providing a newfound clarity, a certain truth that now lies like a wide fissure between us. I feel a slight chill in the air.
“Neruda,” she starts to say, pulling the cape tighter around her body.
“Sorry,” I say.
I stumble away from the door and the light, my heart bleeding with each step, thankful when I reach the dark of the street and my bike. My chest feels heavy and it’s suddenly hard to breathe. Everything I ever learned about love from The Poet swarms me like bees wakened from their hive. The passion and the joy, the cruel ache that has grabbed hold of me. The knowledge of that gap in my soul. My head swells with all the buzzing. I hold my chest and feel the pain tightening around my heart.
SHORE OF THE HEART
The next day, I wait for Ezra at our designated meeting spot—Union Station underneath the City of Dreams/River of History mural. It’s this iconic mural containing huge portraits of the people of LA, from the original Native Americans to contemporary Angelenos.
I take a couple of pictures for reference, not that the mural Luis and I are working on will look anything like this one. I’m not as talented as this artist, but it’s good for perspective. I love the color of it all against the striking blue background. The different shades of brown on the faces. I look up the specifics on this mural; it’s twenty-five by eighty feet. I wonder if I’d be able to do a mural this large in scope someday.
Ezra finds me as I’m making notes in my phone.
“Hey, man.” He’s carrying a huge backpack.
“You look like you’re going to scale a mountain,” I say.
“That’s the plan.”
“Really? Because I don’t think I’ll make it with this.” I refer to my bulky school backpack and sleeping bag. Ezra said I only needed a change of clothes. He didn’t say anything about hiking.
“Not this weekend, but in the future.”
“Oh,” I say. I wonder where we’d go. Maybe we could take one of those backpacking trips around Europe, sleep in hostels, meet European girls. Maybe I’d have more luck with love in another country.
As Ezra and I walk to the train, a brown-haired girl crosses my peripheral vision. I snap my head in her direction.
It isn’t Callie.
I’ve done that three times already. Every girl looks like Callie today. She haunts me. Trailing me like some broken promise.
Was it only just last night that I had the best and worst night of my life? Where Callie and I began and ended in one half-lit moment on her porch?
I check my phone. A compulsion, an instinct I can’t seem to shake.
There’s no text from Callie. Not that I expect one. Part of me wonders if I’ll ever hear from her again. I certainly haven’t tried contacting her.
Thankfully, it’s the weekend. Hopefully Ezra won’t ask me about Callie. Hopefully I can go a day without thinking about her. So far I haven’t been able to go five minutes without seeing the way her eyes looked after I kissed her. How surprised and sad they were at the same time.
And I can’t help but wonder if I know anything at all about love. If it’s possible to have a love that is lasting and true. More important, I wonder if love is real, or if it’s this elusive thing that might always be just out of reach.
“Ready?” Ezra asks, bringing me back to the present.
“Ready,” I say. I shake off thoughts of Callie, pick up my stuff, and follow Ezra’s lead.
• • •
The train isn’t crowded, so we grab a four-seater and settle in for the ride. Ezra takes out a book and begins reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
“How is it?” I ask Ezra.
“Really good, man. I’m still in the early years. Did you know he went to prison too?”
“Because of civil disobedience?”
“No, it was before all that. When he was Malcolm Little.”
Ezra looks out the window. The blinding morning light reflects off the ocean, making it a huge blue mirror as we speed past. The sky is cloudless.
“In prison, you become obsessed with time. You count days, hours, weeks. You fill time with whatever you can. You work out. You read. You take classes. You have to do something. Because you’re suddenly aware of time and how it takes up everything. How it presses in on you from every side and there’s no escaping it because it’s all you have.”
“What happens with the time when you get out?” I ask.
He sighs. “You try to get it back, but you realize it’s impossible.”
“Do you ever wish you could? Just go back to that night and undo everything, I mean?”
Ezra stares at me as if he’s looking past me or through me to someplace deep in memory.
“Nah. The only thing you can do is try to focus on the time you have left, think about the future.”
<
br /> He drops his gaze back to his book.
If I could time travel, I’d go back to Friday night and never kiss Callie.
No, I’d travel back to that day in Mr. Nelson’s class. I’d remove my name from the coffee can so that when Callie reached her hand inside, she couldn’t pull mine out. We’d never be partners. We’d never become friends. I’d never fall in love with her or feel her rejection.
And I’d never know the feel of her lips, so still, against mine.
We get off the train in Goleta, a city just north of Santa Barbara, where the campground is. The train station is more like a dock with an overhang. Lots of college-aged people with bikes get off and speed away. UCSB must be close.
Ezra sniffs at the air. “Smell that?”
“What?”
“The ocean.”
He’s right. The air is cleaner and crisper here, almost as if we’re at a higher elevation. There’s just the slightest bit of chill. Ezra wraps a scarf around his neck.
We walk to the campsite, which spreads out across the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean and meanders down a hill and up against the sand. Even though it’s November, the place is packed with RVs and dotted with tents of all sizes and shapes and colors.
We check in and find our site covered in shade beneath two tall palms, set close to the sand. It’s away from most of the RVs and other campers. A couple of kids play in the distance behind some ferns and bushes, and a dog barks out of sight.
I help Ezra set up a tiny orange tent.
“Where do I sleep?”
“In here,” he says.
I open the flap and peek inside.
“You sure it’s big enough for both of us?”
“Definitely, man. It’ll look bigger once you set up your stuff.”
Our sleeping bags fit side by side, just barely, but it’ll work. There’s pretty much room to sleep and sit up, that’s it.
“Kind of small,” I say.
“It’s a tent.”
“Yeah, well, you should see what my parents call a tent.”
“Oh yeah?”
“They have one with three compartments, and my mom brings a huge blow-up bed that she decorates with pillows. She even puts a flowered welcome mat at the entrance.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“That’s a whole other level of camping.”
“Yeah,” I say.
But I don’t want to think about my parents. I’m annoyed with myself for bringing them up. I change the subject quickly.
“So, um, what’s the deal for dinner?” I ask.
I look around and don’t see a cooler.
“I figured we could buy stuff up here to make,” Ezra says. “There’s a market somewhere on the grounds. I brought some protein bars though, if you want one.”
I nod and he tosses me a peanut butter one. Then we decide to explore the grounds a bit. We walk down a narrow path that weaves in and out of green bushes and make our way to the beach. To our right is the coastline, covered with rolling hills that end at the water in cliffs. To the left is more beach and Santa Barbara.
The sand is filled with small clusters of people sitting in beach chairs or on blankets. There’s an abandoned blue lifeguard tower.
We take off our shoes and socks and leave them on the beach, then roll up the bottoms of our jeans and step into the water.
I immediately jump back. It’s super cold.
Ezra stays planted in place and lets the water break over him. The waves rush up to the middle of his calves.
“It’s not that bad,” he tells me.
“Yes, it is that bad.”
But I keep him company anyway.
For a long time we just watch the water as it comes and goes. Then Ezra removes his hat and shirt.
“Come on,” he says.
“You’re going in? You’re crazy.”
“Yeah, man. It’s perfect.”
“Without your shorts?”
“Already wearing them.” He drops his jeans and, sure enough, he’s got a red bathing suit on.
I don’t really want to go in, but I decide that in this moment I don’t have to be me. I can be someone who sees the ocean and doesn’t think of love and loss. I can be someone who feels alive in the rush of its waters instead.
I run back up to our tent and put on my suit. By the time I return to the beach, Ezra is pretty far out.
There’s only one way to do this. I take a long breath and yell and rush into the water. The ocean is ice breaking against my skin, but I smash through it and dive into a wave. My ears burn as I break through the surface.
“It’s freezing!” I yell, and swim over to Ezra.
He laughs. “But you’re alive! Isn’t it amazing? Here comes one.”
A large wave rolls toward us. Ezra swims out a little ahead of it and throws his body forward in a dive, but he gets taken under and is tossed around. He comes up for air and shakes his head to get the water and hair out of his face.
“So close,” I tell him.
“I haven’t bodysurfed in years, man. I think I forgot how. You ever try it?”
I nod and show him a few tips that I picked up from my dad when I was younger.
The waves are a good size, not too big, and Ezra catches more waves than he misses.
After a while I’m either too numb to feel anything or my body has gotten used to the temperature. I glance back at the shore. Our shoes look tiny, like remnants of small people whose bodies have been ripped away from them.
We swim until we’re both exhausted. Then we sit on the sand, towels wrapped around our skin, watching the water.
“This is perfect,” Ezra says.
“Yeah,” I agree. Here there’s no parents, no Callie, no problems. It’s only Ezra and me.
We stay that way, like two Buddhas planted in the sand, our shadows shifting with the sun until it has set.
• • •
Later that night, we head to the market and pick up everything we need for dinner tonight and tomorrow’s breakfast.
Ezra makes a fire and cooks the hamburgers on the grill rack. We eat in silence, each absorbed in our own thoughts. I’ve been trying not to think about Callie, but she keeps worming her way into my head. I keep seeing the way she looked after I kissed her, the shock and unexpectedness of that kiss. Like she’d rather be anywhere but there with me.
I finish the burger with tears in my eyes and look away so Ezra doesn’t see.
• • •
We spend the rest of the evening reading by the fire. I’ve decided to give The Poet another chance, but his words are raw, more visceral than ever before. I struggle through them and read from his biography too, hoping to understand the man behind the words a little more.
I’m surprised to learn that at the end of his life The Poet had cancer, but he was supposedly doing well, maybe even in remission. Then there was that military coup in Chile. Since The Poet was an influential, outspoken member of the Chilean Communist Party, he was a target of the new dictatorship. He was actually supposed to flee to Mexico because the Mexican ambassador offered him safe passage. But only twelve days after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup, The Poet suddenly died.
“Do you think Neruda was poisoned?” I ask Ezra.
He’s got a small notebook he writes in every now and then; he pauses from his writing to look up. “Didn’t they exhume his body and find he died of natural causes?” Ezra asks.
“Yeah, but . . . it still seems kind of suspicious, don’t you think? Maybe one of the many women he wronged killed him.”
“Well, look who’s jaded now.”
I pick at a thread hanging from my shirt.
“The simplest answer is usually correct. Occam’s razor and all,” Ezra says.
“Oh.” I pretend like I know what Occam’s razor is.
“Hey, did you know Malcolm X taught himself to read in prison?” he asks.
“Really?”
“He started with the dictionary. He copied every word and definition by hand because he couldn’t read and understand the books he wanted to. He spent as many hours a day he could studying and reading. He taught himself history and philosophy and psychology. He said he was actually grateful for the time he spent in prison. It changed his life. If there ever was an argument for educating those in the prison system, this is it, man. He was brilliant. But he was also angry. Too bad his anger fueled everything.”
Listening to Ezra talk makes me wonder if there’s a part of him that feels grateful for his time in prison as well.
I put another log on the fire.
“So . . . what’s the plan?” I ask.
“Hmm?” Ezra keeps his eyes on his book.
“The plan. I mean, I assume we’re here for a reason.”
“We’re camping, man. That’s the reason.”
“Yeah, but . . . we’re in Santa Barbara. You’re trying to tell me that’s just a coincidence?”
Ezra closes his book and sets it down in the dirt. He pokes the burning wood, nudging the embers with a stick. They brighten to orange and quickly fade. I wait for him to speak.
“I’m meeting Daisy tomorrow for lunch.”
“I knew it. Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“You just called her up?”
“Yeah.”
Ezra keeps messing with the fire. Half of his face is covered in shadow.
“Awesome,” I say.
“We’ll see.”
“No, it’ll be good. You’ll see her, she’ll see you, and it’ll be just like old times. You guys are meant to be.”
“We’ll see,” he says again.
I’m happy for Ezra. If I can’t have love, at least he should be able to.
He faces the fire again. But out of the corner of my eye, I see his mouth turned upward in a smile.
IF YOU FORGET ME
In the morning, I wake up all stiff, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from sleeping on a slope and a rock, or from tossing and turning to escape the thoughts of Callie that pursued me all night. The more I think of her, the more it hurts. I’ve fallen for girls before, been disappointed, but it’s never felt like this. It’s never felt like someone has ripped my heart out, backed over it multiple times with a semi truck so that it’s all mangled and torn, and then shoved it back inside my chest. It’s only been two days, but it feels like I’ve carried this hurt for months.