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YULUNGA (SPIRIT DANCE)
My room hadn’t changed. I had.
An inescapable conclusion and yet it didn’t have the ring of truth. I didn’t feel any different. I was still the same person. But every individual is actually a ship of Theseus. Little things change, one by one, and suddenly, you turn around and you are entirely different. You end up standing in a room you lived in for your entire childhood, and it’s the room of someone you no longer know.
It was early June of 2002 and I was home for the first time after graduating college. Drove all the way from Santa Cruz in my old Nissan. I had a degree now. I was supposed to be ready to start my adult life. And the scary part was, I had no idea of what I was supposed to be doing.
I went to my window, which looked down onto a grungy alleyway and the rooftop patio of Rosarito’s Mexican Kitchen on the other side. The iron fire escape gave me a tiny balcony barely big enough for two if they didn’t mind getting friendly. In high school, I’d spent more than one night brooding while the cool ocean air while the sounds of Rosarito’s washed over me. That place had been the soundtrack of my childhood, the steady thump of banda music, the accordion over top, and below, the susurrus of conversation and the clink of margarita glass.
“Hey, kid. Good to have you back.”
My dad leaned on my doorframe. I’d never seen him look so old. His sunbleached hair was thinner than I’d remembered, and the windburned wrinkles of his dace had never been deeper. He looked like what he was, a man who had surfed since he was little, the sun finally catching up to him. I’d probably look the same, no matter how much sunscreen I slathered on before going out. It was that or give up surfing, and I’d never do that.
“Good to be back,” I lied. I didn’t want to be here, but then, I didn’t know of anywhere else I wanted to be either. Nowhere else I could be.
“Can I count on you in the shop this summer?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” I hesitated. I wanted to do anything else other than sell cheap plastic shit to tourists, but it was a job. And I couldn’t let my dad down. “Sure, yeah.”
“Great. I know you probably want to do anything else. When things slow down at the end of August, maybe that’s when you start looking?”
“And next summer?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
He left me, leaving me in this space I no longer recognized.
Every spare inch of wall in the room was bookcase, filled with stacks of old scifi and fantasy. The classics. Asimov, Niven, Anderson, Tiptree, Campbell, Tolkien, LeGuin. Go into those shelves and trace my evolution as a fan, as a writer myself. The way those spellweavers had shaped my dreams and the way those dreams shaped me. Now, staring at those creased spines, I had the realization that the dream was over.
I was awake.
I woke up before dawn and was in the water by the time the sun peeked over town. I spent a couple hours on the waves before making my way to shore. I rinsed off the frigid Pacific under a beach shower, stripping out of my wetsuit in a parking lot filled only with other surfers and seagulls scavenging for dropped food from the previous day. I was behind the register at my family’s shop by nine.
We’d had the store since I was born. My sisters had worked there before they grew up and moved away. That was the thing about Aragon Beach. When you got old enough, you left, or you’d become one of the sunsoaked townies. We were a community of burnouts. Hippies from one generation, slackers from another, united by not fitting in anywhere. Back in college I thought about making it out, but now, I had no idea how that would look.
The store didn’t even really have a name. ARAGON BEACH SOUVENIRS said the sign outside, but we were the kind of place that didn’t need a name. It was somewhere tourists wandered into to look at overstuffed shelves. Racks of Aragon Beach tshirts and hoodies, animals made out of seashells, funky magnets. If you wanted something weird to remind you that you once visited a small California beach town, we had it. It was one of nearly a dozen functionally identical shops in town.
I was starting to think about lunch, wondering if I’d hit the taco truck that always parked at the corner of Vista and Pacific, or if I’d take the walk down to Gremmie’s for a burger. I was weighing the pros and cons of each option when a familiar face came through the front door.
Tessa van den Berghe was my best friend through two years of high school. That might not sound like much, but it was. Two years of high school is like ten years anywhere else. It’s when you built memories you’d never love and couldn’t quite hate. The last time it felt like anything was possible, but knowing that was a lie. It was the last time you could try a new identity on just to see how it fit.
Tessa and I were best friends for only two years because she was a year older than I was. My senior year, when she was gone, was the longest of my life. We saw each other on breaks, and it was always like we were right back to where we were. Best friends.
Tessa pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head and her eyes hit mine, her face lighting up. She had lovely eyes, blue like an iceberg. Her hair, cut in a long bob with flat bangs, was dyed a matching color. She’d been dyeing it so long I only knew her natural ash blonde color from the pictures of her as a kid on the wall of her house. Tessa, as she liked to point out, was the palest person in Aragon Beach, the only person whose skin wouldn’t hold even the slightest hint of a tan. Her complexion was so pale it held a touch of blue, and at night it could look silver.
It might sound like I had a crush on her, but I didn’t. I had one when we first started hanging out, when I was a nerdy 10th grader and she a worldly 11th grader, but it faded quickly. I could recognize her as beautiful without dwelling.
She was a few inches under six feet with a willowy figure, long legs with small breasts and hips. She was dressed in summer Tessa wear, which meant a black Depeche Mode tshirt, black cutoffs, and scuffed black Converse Allstars.
“Theo Bright,” she said, like she was seeing me for the first time. “As I live and breathe.”
“Tessa van den Berghe,” I drawled back at her. “Ah, fuck it.” I came around the counter and hugged her. She smelled of citrus sunscreen.
“You hungry?”
“Yeah, I was thinking of hitting Gremmie’s.”
“Of course you were. Adam around?” Adam, my dad.
“Yeah, he’s in the back.” I raised my voice. “Hey Dad, I’m taking lunch!”
My dad came out of the back, framed by the doorway and our collection of novelty shirts, and broke into a smile when he saw Tessa. “Take your time, Theo. Hey, Tess. Good to see you.”
“It’s always good to see me,” she said. “I’ll return your son in approximately the same condition.”
“You break him you bought him.”
The boardwalk was just out the door and to the right, past Rosarito’s. I looked up at my fire escape. Our place was the second floor over the shop. Not quite a house, not quite an apartment. Tessa followed my look.
“We spent way too much time out on that rickety thing,” she said. “I think I still have the imprints on my ass.”
“I could check later.”
“You wish.”
Gremmie’s was at the very northern tip of the boardwalk, where it gave up and turned into sand. Behind it, the cliffs rose up, sprouting iceplant and yarrow. The restaurant was a rundown shack with a wooden patio, plastic tables and chairs under sunfaded umbrellas. Built in the ’60s, it originally catered to surfers, but it had become a local institution and now everybody went there. A radio blasted old school Madonna over the sand, the wind making the Material Girl sound tinny.
A portly guy with a bit of black hair still clinging to his skull worked the flat top grill. That was Tony MacLaren. His daughters rung up the orders and brought the red plastic baskets full of burgers and fries to tables. The savory aroma of the grill mixed with the salt air and brought me back to high school, when I had wasted more time here than anybody.
Another bolt of nostalgia hit me when I recognized the daughter working the register that day. She was cute as ever, her face and shoulders a mass of freckles and her hair as fiery as ever. She’d put on a few pounds, but it sat well on her. I found myself following the pillowy contours of her, from her tank top down to the blue jeans that fit like a second skin. She and I had been in school together since kindergarten, always friendly and sometimes friends.
“Theo?” she said as I approached, breaking into an unsure smile.
“Hey, Beth.”
“You’re back! For how long?” The smile widened, recognition blooming in her soft brown eyes.
“Search me. Summer at least.”
“We should hang out! Catch up.”
“That sounds awesome. I’m at the shop most days.”
“Yeah, cool. Let me see if I remember…cheeseburger, grilled onions, no sauce, extra crispy on the fries.”
“And a Cherry Coke, yeah. That’s amazing. How’d you do that?”
“It’s this stupid brain,” she said.
“I too am here,” Tessa said.
“Right, sorry. What can I get you?”
“My usual.”
“Which is…”
“Turkey burger, extra spread, onion rings, and a pink lemonade.”
“Right, yeah. Tip of my tongue.” She wrote up the ticket, we paid, and after she got our drinks, we found a table.
“Oh god, she was all over you,” Tessa muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
Tessa’s voice went up an octave as she put the ditziest face on she could manage. “Uh let me see if I can remember?”
“She memorizes orders.”
“She memorized your order.” Tessa sipped her lemonade. “You could do better than Beth MacLaren.”
“Like Grace Soto?”
“Please tell me you’re not still hung up on her.”
I shrugged. I thought I was over her, as much as one could be over someone that important, but the last twentyfour hours had my old life crashing over me. Now I was pining for my senior year girlfriend. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you get any in college?”
“I had girlfriends.”
“How many?”
“I take refuge in the vagueness of the plural.”
“Okay so you had two girlfriends.”
“Three.”
She snorted. “And that’s a miracle if you can’t tell when she’s flirting with you. She couldn’t have been more direct if she smeared a snail trail over you.”
“Jesus Christ, Tessa.”
“I’m just saying.”
“What about you?”
“I’m single,” she said. “I was seeing this couple, but the guy got weird on me.”
Tessa coming out as bi in high school had been a minor scandal. It was the ’90s and though not unheard of, it was unusual. She was always free about it too, dating men, women, and couples as the whim struck her. It was funny for me, as while I did fine, I tended to need a clue hammer to understand when someone was into me. Another way Tessa was worldly while I was stuck in my own head.
I looked over at Beth. She caught my eye and smiled back. I felt my cheeks get hot as I’d been caught, but she didn’t mind. Maybe I should try something with her. She was always fun and she was definitely cute.
“Got weird?” I said suddenly, when I realized Tessa was watching me watch Beth.
“Yeah, he was calling me when she clearly didn’t know about it. And no. I’m fine them one at a time or both at once, but it’s gotta be aboveboard, you know?”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Anyway, I’m free as a bird. You’re working in the store all summer?”
“Looks that way. What about you?”
“Bartending over at the Darkhouse.”
“Is that good money?”
“If you’re a hot girl who flirts with everybody, it is.”
I laughed. “Yeah, fair enough.”
“You should get a job there too! We can hang out all night!”
“I’m not a hot girl and I’m terrible at flirting.”
“True, but you are hot.”
“I’m hot?”
“Oh, knock off the false humility. You’ve got the whole tall, dark, and handsome thing going.” Maybe she was right. Surfing kept me in shape, I knew that much. “Hey, why don’t you come down on Friday night? I’ll sneak you drinks and you can soak in the ambience.”
“Sure, why not.”
“Your food,” Beth said, putting the baskets in front of us. She brushed me with her hip as she moved off. My attention went to her heartshaped ass, moving back and forth encased in jeans that hugged her like a second skin.
“Ugh, just fuck her already,” Tessa said with an eyeroll.
“You don’t have to sound so mad.”
“Beth MacLaren is just so…basic.”
“Aw, she’s nice,” I said.
“Exactly,” Tessa said, jabbing the air with a shred of onion ring.
The Darkhouse was a club located on the edge of the couple square blocks where Aragon Beach kept our bars. Pushed to the edge, it was like the other places, all spring break vibes, didn’t want the weird goth kid. The Darkhouse was the one and only place where Aragon Beach acknowledged a counter culture that wasn’t beachrelated.
Because it had to be a bit of a catchall, the Darkhouse had a minor identity crisis. It was mostly a goth club, but they had industrial and metal nights, and there was always bleed over. Goths, metalheads, ravers, and so on needed somewhere to get drunk that’d play music they tolerated. I’d only started going in the summers after my sophomore year, when I’d gotten my fake ID. Theo Bright of Aragon Beach, California might have been underaged, but Elijah Bailey of Corpus Christi, Texas was in his early twenties.
After we I closed the shop on Friday I got changed. Thanks to Tessa and my music taste, I was always gothadjacent. I had more black clothing than most people in town, but I never went in for the heavier stuff, like makeup or lace or chains. Tessa had tried on all three counts, but I was always too selfconscious for that. I put on my best Cure tshirt, a black coat, black jeans, and my boots. This year, as with my one visit last summer, I could use my legit ID.
The entrance to the Darkhouse was on the corner of Fairview and Balboa. A short, two tower, painted black, was the entry. A bouncer on a stool outside checked IDs, waving me inside after a cursory glance.
The walls inside were black, punctuated by the occasional halfscraped away band sticker. A dance floor took up the middle, along with a stage that usually held a DJ but occasionally hosted a Dlist band. The bar ran along the right side, and I caught sight of Tessa, her blue hair a beacon.
She wore a black tank top, showing the tattoo on her shoulder she’d gotten the previous year, a stylized eye with symbols above and below. She was made up too, with heavy black eyeshadow and black lipstick. With her already ghostly complexion, it was impossibly dark. She looked like a different person, or at least different enough that I saw her as a woman rather than my friend. She was gorgeous.
I was hard up. If I was ogling Tessa, there was no other conclusion. I thought of Beth MacLaren. Maybe that was the way to go. Get back on the proverbial horse with a sure thing. In the meantime, I was going to have some free booze.
I sidled up to the bar. It was still early, so the real night owls hadn’t come out yet. I got a seat and Tessa found me. “What are you drinking?”
“Surprise me.”
“Okay, we’re run through some basics. We’ll start with a sazerac.”
She built me the drink and set it in front of me. She flirted with everyone who bodied up to the bar, and it was funny to watch. Whenever one of her marks dropped a big tip, she’d flash the money at me and wiggle her heavily drawnon eyebrows. Look what I got, said the look. Every free moment, she was hanging with me, getting me a new drink whenever I drained the last one.
The club slowly filled up, and I was enjoying myself. Drinking for free, listening to good music, hanging out with my best friend. Tessa only paid attention to customers she was actively serving, and when she was, they were her whole world. She was good at that. She never gave new arrivals so much as a glance until they got within serving range.
Except one.
That one swept through the door a few minutes before midnight. She was tall for a woman, though not especially so. The thing was, you noticed she was only 5’8″ or 5’9″ when you actually thought about it. The way she moved and the way everyone reacted to her, it was like she was the tallest person in the place.
She was beautiful, but it was a strange, quirky beauty that was hard to quantify. She was around forty, and that too was clear if you looked closely enough, but she was in incredible shape and wellpreserved. Her skin, a brownish goldish color I’d never seen before, carried the years well, making her look almost like a statue. I had no idea what her ethnicity was. She might have been Black, Middle Eastern, even Asian. I’d find out later that was a common reaction, and everyone eventually settled on “Egyptian,” which was at least partially thanks to her style. Or maybe it was all the ankhs she insisted on wearing.
She kept her black hair short and slicked to her skull in an old style like Josephine Baker. Her eyes were so dark that the pupils looked lighter than the irises, producing a distinctive alluring sight. Her nose was long, narrow, and sharp. Her lips were full, over a dimpled chin. She wore a black gown that shined under the lights and clung to gymsculpted curves. She was the kind of woman who was beautiful at a glance, but the more you thought of her, the more attractive she got. She was y in a way that spoke directly to the animal nature of everyone in the room. Everyone looked, whether it was stolen glances or open stares.
She arrived with an entourage. Men and women, an eclectic mix ranging in age from just out of high school to early middle age. Their style fit into the general feel of the Darkhouse, and that was all they had in common. That, and orbiting the strangely beautiful woman in the middle.
I turned to ask Tessa who that woman was and caught her looking. With the dark makeup around Tessa’s eyes, the icy blue appeared white. A visible shiver ran down her spine. Then she noticed me looking, and shot me a broken grin.
“Who’s she?”
Tessa looked down, a blush rising in her ivory cheeks. She didn’t bother to play dumb. “You know the Raven’s Roost?”
“Sure, yeah.” The Raven’s Roost was a store that sold everything from soap and lotions to books that pretended they had spells in them. I’d been in there once or twice in high school and had even bought a crow skull that still sat on my bookcase. I didn’t remember seeing that woman.
“She owns it.”
“You know her?”
Tessa nodded, looking down and then turning away from me. I wished I could read her face. “Her name’s Blaise. Blaise Black.”
I looked over. Blaise had found a table, and I didn’t remember a free one. Her group sat down and one of the guys shambled over to the bar. Blaise looked over the bar. As her gaze fluttered over the assembled people, it landed on mine. For a moment, our eyes met. A shiver went through me, going right through my belly and down into my cock. I was stirring, somehow, like she was using witchcraft to get me hard. She gave me a small smile, and her gaze moved along.
“Hey, Tessa.” One of the guys from the group had come over. He looked to be hovering around forty. His bottle black hair was buzzed and he wore a short goatee. I realized then that he and I were dressed almost identically. That didn’t feel great. “How are you doin’?”
“Not bad,” she said, and her smile was as far from flirty as I’d ever seen her get. “Usual?”
“Yeah. Listen, I was wondering if you were free tomorrow night.”
“Blaise tell you to ask me?”
“No,” he said, but the tone implied that Blaise might have suggested it. “I just wanted to see you again.”
“Sorry, Terr. Went out and got myself a boyfriend.” She gestured at me.
“Wait, what?” I managed.
The guy looked at me with big eyes. “Oh, shit. Sorry.” He stuck out his hand. “Terry Mendez.”
ero
