had enveloped me in silence. So long as I held her duffel, I wasn’t a part of this group—in their minds I was already gone—and none of the girls paid any attention to me.
Pothan told me to drop that shit and come with him to buy more beer.
“No, I’ll, uhh, I’ll do this.”
“Seriously, dude. What is wrong with you? It’s over.”
I carried the duffel bag to the other side of the rocks, where the waves, now in low tide, had left behind hundreds of yards of mucky-soft sands. I opened the duffel, got out the blankets, and laid them on a dry patch of sand, next to a firepit. In the distance, about a hundred yards away, another group of kids was clustered around a bonfire. Up on the cliffs, silent cars pulsed through the curves of Highway 1.
I texted Avani, saying I’d found a good spot. Then I saw a message from Dave.
Dave: Mari is on her way. Wish me luck!
Me: You two are staying here? Come by the blind spot! I think there’s gonna be a to-do? A foofaraw? Not sure of the technical terminology.
Dave: You might be thinking of the term “hoedown.”
Me: Pretty sure you need bales of straw for that.
My fingers flew across the phone, sending energy through the ether, directly into Dave’s brain. Texting him was different from texting Avani. He responded instantly. Like he actually wanted and needed me around. I just wished that I didn’t feel so . . . so . . . so . . . sick for her presence. I didn’t want to hook up with her—that was done, I knew—but even those few seconds in the car with her and Carrie and Jessie, earlier, had felt so right.
What Pothan forgot was that Avani and I had always been friends! We’d hung out for months before we started “hanging out.” And we talked about stuff too! I told her all my crazy theories about how to get ahead. Heard about her constant friendship drama with Carrie. We’d spend hours sitting in silence in her basement, drinking from the cup of each other’s company. And when we weren’t together, we were texting. Just gossip. Or little jokes. But it’d been so important—that sense of being always connected to another person. And now it was ruined.
Dave was totally game to come out, and in ten minutes I saw a tall form striding toward me. He was with a girl, short and a little chubby, whose smile I saw from thirty feet away.
The figure waved an arm, and I waved back.
We met in a nowhere spot, a few blankets set down at the edge of a little cove of rocks, and most of the light came from the intersecting beams of our phones.
“This is cool,” the girl said. “So this is where it happens? The rich beautiful people getting into trouble on the beach stuff?”
“Hey, I’m Nandan.”
“Mari!” she said. “Dave! You’re supposed to introduce me!”
The three of us sat down, folding the edges of the blankets over our laps to provide some shelter. The song of the wind got louder, and now it blew sand off the rocks and into our faces.
Avani: Thanks for finding a spot! Can you get some driftwood? Pothan is being a dick, but I’ll get him out there soon.
Me: Sure.
Mari peered over my shoulder. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Avani wants me to gather driftwood,” I said.
“I can help!” Mari said.
The blanket was held tight around her shoulders, and she looked heavy and padded and crone-like.
“What?” I said. “No. No. . . . No. We are not doing this.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, let’s pick up all this stuff,” I said. “Wait, actually let’s just leave it here.”
Crossing to the other side of the rocks instantly halved the wind. We walked far from the dying lights of the boardwalk. I had texted Avani that I’d left the blankets behind, and now I was afraid to look at my phone.
Mari chattered between us, and Dave hardly said a word. He pulled away from Mari when she reached for his hand to get help climbing over the rocks.
Pulling myself out of my own head, I said, “Uhh, did you drive here?”
“My mom dropped me off!” Mari said.
“Seriously? Your mom dropped you off at the Santa Cruz boardwalk after dark?”
“Why?” she said. “Is that stupid? My mom would love to hear this. She’s always wondering if she’s a bad mom.” Her fingers flew over her phone. “Just told my mom the consensus is that she