The ocean. I’d almost forgotten about it. Seeing Kyra Kelley seemed like a more ridiculous idea every time I thought of it, but the ocean didn’t. I thought of Finn’s letter, and how he’d said to go on a trip and put my feet in the ocean. Rusty wasn’t Lilah, but he had a point. We’d come this far already. “How far away are we?”
“Couple hours.”
“Fine,” I said, climbing into the backseat. “Wake me up when we get there.”
27
“Hey. We’re here.”
Rusty cut the engine. I creaked one eye open enough to see the dotted ceiling of the Pala, or Paula, or whatever we were calling it (her) now. “I don’t have to pee, okay? Keep going.” I rubbed both eyes with the heels of my hands and blinked away what felt like only a few minutes’ sleep.
“No, we’re here.” Rusty grinned back at me, then turned around and looked out the windshield, shaking his head. “I’ll be damned.”
I sat up quick and looked around, trying to get my bearings. We were parked on the side of the highway, in front of a small yellow building with white trim and a sign on the front that read THE SHAKE SHACK. To the side of it was a big blue deck with a giant postcard-perfect palm tree right in the center, its fronds sticking up against the dusky sky like crazy morning hair.
“We’re here here? Oh my god!” I yanked on the metal handle and gave the door a nudge with my shoulder, just as Rusty did the same thing from the front seat. And then we both stepped out into balmy, warm air that smelled like nothing I’d ever smelled before. And then I heard it. Above the sound of the cars zooming by on the highway, I heard a loud crash, a staticlike rush, and then another crash.
Rusty’s eyes met mine for an instant, and I saw in them the same glee that I felt right then. Without having to say anything, we both hopped up the steps onto the deck, and I realized we were high on a bluff. And spread out below us, vast, and huge, and sparkling, was the ocean. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I’d seen it in movies plenty of times. Run my eyes over the blue of it in pictures and posters, and tried to imagine what it would really feel like to be there. And now there it was, right in front of me, loud and alive and real. I wanted to capture that moment, that feeling of seeing something so very big, and so beautiful, it made my heart want to burst right open.
Neither one of us spoke for a long time. We just stood there, side by side, and stood there, and kept standing there, trying to take it in. The fiery ball of a sun melted into the horizon, throwing pink and orange light that broke into a thousand tiny diamonds when it hit the water. Far below us, the sand glinted slick and shiny and inviting. The happy voices of a couple of kids playing in the water drifted up on the breeze, and I watched as the boy took the little girl’s hand and they ran together, away from a wave that crumbled into white foam in front of them. After a long moment full of too many feelings to sort out, I grabbed Rusty’s arm. “C’mon. Let’s go put our feet in the ocean.”
A slow smile, a real one, crept across his face. “I saw some stairs over there when I pulled in.” He headed down the steps and toward a path lining the bluff. I lingered a second, not quite ready to take my eyes off the water or let go of the feeling that this was one of those tiny moments that turned out to be one of the big ones later on.
“You comin’?” Rusty called. He was on the path already, barefoot and smiling like a little boy.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” I swept my eyes over the water again, all the way to the horizon, before turning to go with him, and a warm kind of peace spread out in me. I kissed it into my fingertips, then blew it into the breeze, a silent thank-you swirling its way up to Finn.
We sat on the sand, feet and legs glistening with salty water in the leftover glow from the sun. Just as the last sliver of it dipped into the ocean, we’d put our toes in the water and let it splash cool and foamy up our legs, laughing together with a lightness we hadn’t had since we were kids. No hurt feelings or undercurrents of complications. Just true, simple happiness. Rusty leaned back on his elbows, watching the waves line up, then break, and I raked lines in the sand with my fingers, wondering at the fact that we’d really made it all the way to the beach.
“Hey, Rusty?” I said suddenly, “I’m sorry about how I acted earlier today. I just . . .”
He turned to me, eyebrow raised. “Woke up on the wrong end of a tequila bottle?”
“Yeah.” I laughed, feeling more than a little sheepish, but happy he wasn’t one to hold a grudge. “I guess I did. I’m sorry.”
Rusty waved it off. “Been there plenty of times.”
“And I wanted to say thank you. For getting us here. To the ocean. I think Finn would be happy.”
“Yeah.” He nodded but didn’t seem to be paying attention anymore.
I followed his gaze, expecting to see a hot girl in a bikini, but instead I saw a big crowd of people walking up the beach toward us. And not just any people. Most of them had their heads bowed, and they all carried what looked, from a distance, like white boxes. An elderly Japanese man dressed in a long yellow robe held a torch, and in between the crash of the waves, his voice drifted toward us, singing or chanting words I didn’t understand.
I looked around for cameras or something. Maybe they were filming a movie? We were close to LA and Hollywood and all that.
We kept watching as the group, a mix of all ages, made its way to the mouth of a wide creek near us that emptied lazily into the ocean. The leader—priest, I guessed, stopped at the edge of it and waited quietly as they gathered around him. I looked away because it felt a little like intruding to keep watching, but Rusty was watching them intently, and the few other people on the beach had gathered to do the same, so I brought my eyes back to where they stood.