“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know, Ryder. Where are you?”
“I’m on the beach at Santa Monica,” he said. “Just to the left of the pier.”
“You didn’t go home yet?”
“No. I don’t want to ever go home.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”
“I said I’ll be right there.” I hung up before he could utter another word.
The pier was always busy because of the restaurants, the merry-go-round, and the Ferris wheel. On weekends, it could be wall-to-wall with people, mostly tourists. I remembered how my mother and I would try to sell her calligraphy and my lanyards there because there were so many people in one small area, but the police usually moved us away. Sometimes we were just there to get something to eat ourselves. I recalled one time when my mother insisted we go on the Ferris wheel and I go on the merry-go-round.
To me, even at that young age, it seemed to be a terrible waste of the little money we had at the time, but she was adamant. She so wanted us, especially me, to feel as though we had a normal life, even if it was only for twenty minutes. On that Ferris wheel and with me on the merry-go-round and her smiling and watching, we had put our misery on pause. Smiles and laughter were rare birds that flew in, alighted on our faces and in our hearts, and then left us longing for the whisper of their wings, the sound of their songs.
I remember when we walked away from the pier, leaving the music and the chatter, the lights and the aromas of food behind and entering the darkness again. The pier was one place I had avoided all this time. I was afraid of the memory, like someone who was afraid that where she was now was really all a dream. The moment I was near or on the pier, I feared I would wake up and be homeless and lost again.
However, it did seem to be a fitting place to meet Ryder now, considering how dark and unhappy we both were. After I parked, I walked slowly toward the pier and then turned left. The sun was still quite strong and bright, even though it was sinking into the western horizon. Back when Mama and I were homeless, the sunsets weren’t romantic. They were beautiful, of course. The clouds would sometimes take on a pink-grapefruit shade, and then the turquoise would deepen around the puffs. Other times, they just looked as if they were embarrassed and blushing. To me, they would brighten more as the sun dipped. It was like a last shout and cry.
The reason we sat quietly as the sun set was that we knew darkness would soon follow. As if they had been sleeping under the sand, other homeless people would come out. We’d see people wandering without any particular destination in mind. It was simply important to keep moving, even if it was in a large circle. Mama used to say that they were all hoping for a train or a car that would stop to take them away. Some, the ones who were recently homeless, still had that spark of hope lighting their eyes, and some had already fallen through disbelief into a mindless oblivion, where they didn’t have to keep questioning and complaining or even hoping. They could drift like one of those lost clouds.
Being here now, walking where I had once walked timidly, often terrified, tightened every muscle in my body the way someone would tighten up before the dentist put a drill in her mouth. The dryness in my mouth made my tongue feel like slate. For a moment, I couldn’t swallow. It was as if the air had disappeared around me. All sound dulled. My heart began to race. I could hear it beating in my ears. I felt light. Any moment, I might just get swept up in the breeze and drift out over the ocean like some human kite. I glanced quickly at some of the homeless people, the women with greasy, dirty hair, their cheeks red or smudged, and the men shuffling along in shoes too large or too tight. No one seemed to look at me. Perhaps instead of them becoming invisible, I had become invisible.
I stepped onto the sand, slipped off my shoes to walk more easily, and searched the beach for a sign of Ryder. I didn’t have to go far. He was almost directly in front of me, sitting with his back to me, his arms around his pulled-up knees, his head down. I hurried toward him.
“Hey,” I said.
He turned, looked at me, and then looked out at the ocean. I sat beside him.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you so fast,” I began.
“What? You think those guys wouldn’t have started teasing me if you hadn’t told me what Summer had done? You had nothing to do with it.”
“What did they say?”
“You don’t want to hear it,” he said, and threw a handful of sand at the water.
“What’s going to happen now?”
“My parents will find a way to blame it mainly on me.”
“But why? They’ve already had problems with your sister. It won’t be a surprise.”
“They’ve had problems with both of us. My sister is an idiot. They said that if things didn’t work out here, they’d send us both to more military-style schools. I’m not going to any place like that.”
“What will you do?”
“Disappear,” he said. “Like you did out here.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I said.
He stared at the sand and then looked at me. “I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Then I’ll tell you what to do. Go home. Yes, apologize for losing your temper, but also explain how hard Summer made it for you today.”
“My father will say what he always says. ‘You should have known better.’ No matter what, it’s always that. Like I have this committee of advisers with me all the time, and I would always know the best way to handle anything, but I don’t listen. Look, even though I’ve told you some of it, you really don’t know. No one knows how we live, what my family life is like, if you want to call it a family life. You saw some inkling of it yesterday, but in case it didn’t sink in, I’ll tell you. My parents are totally into themselves. End of story,” he said, and stood. “I guess I’ll go home and let them play their parts.”