The Incident on the Bridge (3 page)

“What?”

“Yeah. You're, like, on the golf course, say, and the cops are out. You have a key to the yacht club gate, right?”

She nodded. Her family did, anyway.

“This is the key to our boat.”

“So, what,” she said, “I'll let myself in when you're not there?”

“Or when I
am
there.”

Stay out after curfew, run from cops, and go to a boy's boat? Why did he think she would do that?

Because she would, it turned out. Not the running-from-cops part, but slip out of the house after eleven o'clock and meet him at the boat, stay two hours, sneak back home? Yes.

Ted had caught her in the bathroom afterward, the one that connected their rooms and so gave them pretty much
no
privacy. She said, “
Clay?
Clay
Moorehead
! You know he deals, right?”

“No, he doesn't,” Thisbe said, though of course he did.

Thisbe knew where he kept the dealables, too. She could use the spare keys right now, while he was down at the Of with Isabel. She could walk back down the ramp and unlock the door of his now-empty yacht cabin.

Black sky overhead. The stink of wet iron and mud. She found the key under the yellow kayak: simple. Walked down the ramp to the slips, turned right, then left, then right: simple. Stepped onto the deck like she'd been sent there on an errand. Laughed a little and said, “Whoopsy!” when she lost her balance. Turned the lock like she'd been sent back for a lighter or blanket or coat. The yellow Havaianas and the flowered bag were gone, as she'd known they would be. She didn't even have to flip on a light, because he'd left a bulb burning. She could see blankets heaped on the unmade bunk, Clay's hoodie on the deck, unwashed dishes askew in the sink, bits of food—noodles and blobs of steak fat—stuck to them. Two glass cups where chocolate mousse had been scraped out with greedy spoons. Same exact food to do the same exact thing. “You know he has about a million girlfriends a year, right?” Ted had asked. “He's like a serial killer, only with, like, girlfriend changing.”

What kind of person fell for a guy like that?

It was now 10:55 p.m., so she had five minutes to make curfew, six percent power on her phone. She could just type,
I'm home
, and hope her mother was upstairs in bed, not on the couch.

Risky.

I'm at Nessa's
, she type-lied.
We're watching a movie. Can I stay?

There it was, the devil's cabbage, ha ha. Hidden in Starbucks bags all lined up like books on a shelf. Just one bag, mahalo. A pound of French roast to go.

Her mother's reply was so gentle that it gave her a stab-and-twist:
Ok. Call me in the morning. Have fun!!

She was not having fun. People should stop telling her to have it. Still, her mother was so good. She was trying to be nice. Thisbe walked past all the boats with a bag that said
Starbucks
but was light as air. She'd had Clay's permission to drive his car anywhere, anytime, when he so-called loved her, so mahalo, Clay! Mahalo, tiki doll swinging from the mirror! Mahalo, yacht club gate, which opened as she touched the clicker Clay kept by the gearshift. Maybe she would toss the clicker in a trash can later on. The club made you pay to replace those and it was always a big fat deal, like you'd given away the keys to the White House and
now everyone would get boat-robbed!

She had no place to go, but that was the whole, entire, total, unchanging problem. She'd killed her chances to leave, and she'd mucked up any chance she had with Jerome. She had to do something with Clay's weeded-up car.

F
rank Le Stang rowed to Coronado Island from the
Sayonara
with his usual supplies: the week's garbage, a clean Hefty bag for any recyclables he might find in the park trash bins, duct tape, stun gun, wallet, canvas sail bag. It was not, however, an ordinary night. The girl in pink boots, the one who came all the time to the boat ramp near Glorietta Bay Park, filling jars with seawater, measuring creatures—she was Julia reborn. Julia was here, on this very island, 229 nautical miles from the place where she died, and he had found her. It was akin to sifting sand every day for forty-eight years and finding, in the very last handful, the pearl that had fallen out of its setting all those years ago, the pearl that he alone—he
alone
—remembered.

The girl in pink boots was Julia, he was sure of it. Her walk, her manner, her eyes were the same! Her concern for creatures. When one dies, another is created. Shiva protects souls until they are ready for rebirth. She knew that, and when she stared into the water, she seemed to be watching for it to happen.

But how could he make the girl see that he was the same Frank, just older, but that he was different now? That he had been given another chance?

“Do not expect the Lost One to remember you,”
the Seer had warned. The Seer was very cryptic on this point, and the letters, especially of late, were discouraging.
“The past is present as the moon is present when the earth is turned away, but can the earth make the moon look at her? Yea, it must.”

Frank couldn't go to Julia in daylight, because the ignorant families on the beach, the boaters, the swimmers on the pier would not see the seven signs. They would not see that this girl was his sister come back to life. How could they? He had to approach her in darkness. If he had to be the stronger one for now, it would all be worth it when Julia said, “Yes, I remember now. I remember you.” He would tell her why it took him so long to come back to the cave that day and how sorry he was, and how long he'd been preparing for her return.

Frank had seen the new Julia many times, mainly on the rocks where she took notes and pictures, but also on her bike, on the docks at the yacht club where he was not a member, and on a catamaran with another girl, perhaps the sister of her new life. With each glimpse he was more certain and more determined. He didn't want to make another mistake, like he had in Oceano. That girl wasn't Julia, though she shared some traits, a few, enough to fool him.

He had learned from his mistake: Don't be impulsive. Observe. Bide your time. Trust in Shiva.

He had an inflatable Ribcraft he used for fishing in both bays, the big and the little, plus a dinghy for going back and forth from the
Sayonara
to Tidelands Park, where he kept a bike for doing errands in town. He had the stun gun, which he would use only if he had to, if she wouldn't listen.

Initially he had come to this place off Coronado Island to save money, not just because of the girl in Oceano. Mooring in the bay and living aboard would make his percentage of the inheritance last until he found Julia and bought her a little cottage close to Pismo so she could live near Cousin Telma if something happened to him. It wasn't bad living on a boat, and when he needed to get off the water, there was a lot of undergrowth along the bike path and on both sides of the hill where the bridge connected with the island—a forest, really, a small piece of wilderness between the golf course and the park, with all manner of trees and dense acacias. He kept a few things there for safety and convenience, wrapped in plastic so the weather couldn't rot them, buried in the soil so the world wouldn't steal them, and from the forest he saw women and girls go under the bridge. Cycling, laughing, walking. Julia's soul did not shine out, though, until he saw the girl with brown hair and pink boots staring into the water and making notes. If he could only be alone with her the way the Seer had instructed, she would remember.

“Can the earth make the moon look at her? Yea, it must.”

Maybe tonight was the night. He would do his circuit in town: sort through the trash bins, take bottles and cans to the machines at Albertsons, withdraw cash, buy supplies, check his camp in the acacias. Keep his eyes open for the seventh sign. On the water or on the earth she would come to him.

T
hisbe had never noticed before what a lot of streetlights burned around the library, turning the air yellow, particulate, plus there were a surprising number of people walking around—tourists, it looked like—though that guy on the steps was definitely Jake Grossman, and the girl with him was Mandy Shue, both of whom had been at Clay's party three weeks ago. They'd see her get out of Clay's car in her pink rubber boots and remember her lying there on the rocks with her head all bloody. What was she going to say when she got out of Clay's car?

Why aren't you down at the Of, Jake? I think all the cool people are down at the Of.

Better to cruise for a bit down Orange Avenue and find a darker but still conspicuous place to leave the car. Roll down the window and stop inhaling the weed-coconut-tequila smell that was an extension of Clay's body, a unique and powerful drug. She breathed Clay Moorehead out of her lungs and turned right on Ocean Avenue, but the pangs rose like the waves that rose and fell in the dark, one following another following another following another.
You could have waited for Jerome. Once you knew the fortune cookie was not from Jerome, you should have said no to Clay Moorehead
.

She'd tried to tell Jerome it was all a mistake and he could trust her—they could start over—but he wouldn't talk to her. She didn't blame him. Why should he? Why would he even be interested in her now?

You could ask yourself the same questions a million times, but if you didn't know the answers, you didn't know.

The houses along the beach were
grandiferous,
one of Ted's made-up words. Also beautiful. You could hate them and think they cost too much but part of you still wanted one.

She turned Clay's car inland to cruise past normal-er houses that had soccer nets in the yards, minivans in the driveways, wet suits hung up to dry: Ashlynn Myrick's house, Eric Feingold's, and Daisy Koop's, where a banner that hung down from the porch roof said
USC
. Meaning,
Look where our daughter got in!
Five months ago, all Thisbe had thought about was getting a letter that said
Welcome to the Trojan Family.
She hadn't known Clay at all except as a boy who took easy classes and drank a lot.
Say goodbye to that situation, Thisbe Locke. Grade point average down the toilet. You're not getting into USC with a 3.5.

These streets were no good. There were no red curbs along here where she could leave Clay's car, and his Starbucks French roast weed sitting out for cops to see when they towed it, just quiet houses, one sleeping block after another until she got to Fourth Street, the Way Out of Coronado via the bridge.

She felt in her hoodie pocket at the red light on Orange and there was her driver's license—so
that
's where she'd left it—and a little slip of paper, one of the stupid fortunes, probably. The light turned green and she held the slip in her hand—just, like, rolling it in her fingers as she floored it to make the car climb up the bridge. Not the strongest car, this one. Kind of weak.
Tick tick tick
went the streetlights like a picket fence, on and on, up and up, and it felt so different being the driver. When she was a passenger, she could look over the rail at the huge navy ships made small like models in a museum, the water rippling with moonlight and yellow sodium, but she had to concentrate when she was driving and keep Clay's car close but not too close to the concrete zipper that curved down the center line. Where was she going, anyway? It felt good to leave.

The road was like a tunnel to the sky, a ramp that went up and up and up, but really she was just headed for San Diego. What was she going to do? Drive north on the 5 until she ran out of gas? She needed to get off the bridge and think, which meant the Barrio. She turned right where the bridge curled slowly into Cesar Chavez Park. The concrete pylons that supported the end of the bridge were painted all over with the faces and fists of angry women and men, Aztec gods, enormous flowers, the Virgin of Guadalupe. The lights were so bright that she could see every color in all its intensity: purple, green, blue, orange, red, and yellow. The grassy playground was empty, and no one sat at a concrete table painted to look like the Mexican flag. She slowed as she approached a crosswalk and came to a full stop before she realized there was no stop sign. A group of men turned to look at her, wondering why she was here by herself at midnight.

Don't hurt me,
she thought racist-ly. Racistentially. She had to go back to Coronado because she didn't belong on this side of the bridge. When she went back, everything would be just as she'd left it: Jerome would never talk to her again, and her grades would be too low for an exceptional future, the one that would allow her high school failures to reveal that all along she'd been a swan, not an ugly duckling. She might even have to stay at home after her senior year and go to a local college if Hugh went on being mad at her. She wasn't smarter than Ted. Not now, maybe not ever, not in the important ways. That was why she had fallen for Clay, maybe. So there would be senior year with homecoming and prom and parties and hanging out at the Del (not the Of) and everyone getting their college acceptances and bragging about it on Facebook and hanging the flags over the doors. She found her way to the place where she could get back on the bridge. She drove more slowly now, as if dread were a huge trailer she pulled behind Clay's car.

It was weird how empty the bridge was. Only one car, a little red truck, appeared behind her, and she slowed down even more, thinking he'd pass her, but he didn't. She stopped; he stopped.
Go away,
she told him with telepathy.
I am going to leave now.
There was no forward and there was no back, so she must go down. Dive like an Olympic swimmer and part the water like an arrow and sink into the Depths. Travel to an underworld of castles and mermaids and turtles like in
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales.
Well, no. She knew better. Under the water were black sea nettles and ruffled sea hares and leopard sharks. As many as 625 sand dollars per square yard, on edge, their purple cilia quivering as they moved captive sea crab larvae to their O-shaped mouths. All the lost sunglasses in the world. Water bottles and dead phones. At least there, though, she wouldn't have to
think.

She felt in her pocket for the fortune she'd been fiddling with. Whichever one it was, she would know it was a sign. A harbinger. Synonym:
omen
. From within the car she breathed coconut and it did make her want Clay a little bit. Wind huffed the car and the glass rattled. Still the red truck behind her shone its headlights at the back of her head. She unrolled the paper and read,
I AM CLAY AND YOU ARE HANDS
. Oh, God, the stupidest one of all. It had seemed a sign of his poetic nature at the time. She had snuck out of her bedroom, ridden her bike to the yacht club, knocked on the door of his perfectly named, how-could-you-be-so-stupid boat! Enjoyed most of it, some of it, well, the beginning, but mostly the way he looked at her before. Kissed him the next day in Spreckels Park, middle of the day, people everywhere, even though Clay was acting really weird. She kissed him the second time and looked where he was looking, and they both saw Jerome. “I gotta go,” he said, and he practically sprinted across the park, but Jerome didn't let Clay catch up.

Such a fool.

She put the fortune on her tongue and found that it tasted of nothing but sour paper and sour ink. She chewed it a few times to compact it into something small and hard she could spit onto the floor. Then she shifted the gear into park and opened the door and stepped onto the Coronado Bridge.