Stick (13 page)

Bosten was smart. He knew when to quit. He said good night again and disappeared down his hallway.

I went down to the basement.

And I hardly had the chance to explain things to Emily, that at least we'd be back for the second week of vacation and, please, could I stay over at her house then; because by Tuesday afternoon, Bosten and I were at Aunt Dahlia's house, a thousand miles away on a wide sandy beach, in a place called Oxnard.

AUNT DAHLIA

We didn't even know who
we were supposed to be looking for when we got off our plane in Los Angeles, but Aunt Dahlia apparently knew us.

I wondered how.

When I looked at her long enough, though, she looked like an older, happier version of Mom. One who didn't smoke.

She came right up to us and hugged Bosten first. Then she hugged me. And, as I expected and dreaded, she held me back at arm's length and said, “What     happened there?”

Just like Emily would say, if she was about eighty years older and had never seen me before.

Dahlia, not the least bit timid or reserved, lifted up my beanie and turned me so she could look at—no,
examine
—the right side of my head. All at once, I felt myself going pale.

I believed Dahlia was probably a woman who'd taken plenty of baths with boys in her life.

I saw Bosten beginning to tense up, look defensive. Neither one of us was happy to be there, anyway.

As I swiped at my hat to pull it back down, Dahlia said, “Did you     get into a fight with a grizzly bear or something?”

She smiled at me, and her fingers stroked the side of my head like there was nothing at all wrong with her doing that.

Finally, I squirmed myself away from Aunt Dahlia's grasp.

“I was born that way.”

I felt dirty and embarrassed.

Ugly.

I pulled the hat back down as low as it could go, so it completely covered my ear.

“I       never knew     that,” she said, and her voice was filled with a kind of joy and wonder. I looked at my brother. I was mad enough to walk back to Washington, and I wanted to leave right then.

“He         doesn't like          for people to touch him,” Bosten said.

Aunt Dahlia looked hurt. “I apologize, Stark.  That was rude of me.                                Can you hear all          right?”

She craned her head around to my normal side. I wanted to die.

“I can hear things,” I said. “And they call me Stick, by the way.”

“Oh.”

I wanted to let her know, clearly, that I was not planning on making anything easy for her after the greeting she'd just given me.

I wished I were back at Point No Point, at Emily's house.

Aunt Dahlia put her hand on my shoulder, soothingly. “There's        so many things      I didn't know.”

“We're all real good at keeping secrets,” I said.

*   *   *

She drove us,
in a 1968 Dodge Dart, north to her home on the beach. Bosten and I both wanted to sit in the backseat, but Dahlia said she thought that was creepy, and made us stay up front, next to her. I sat in the middle, so I knew I wouldn't be able to hear Bosten very well.

I had the feeling he wasn't in a talkative mood, anyway. He'd hardly said anything at all to me on the flight down, and I knew he was still hurting and worried about Paul Buckley.

“Do you know,” she said, “that I met your brother when he was,      oh, two years old, I think? But I've only ever seen you in a          photograph, Stark.”

“Stick.”

“Do you           mind         if I call you            Stark? It's a handsome name. There is something cruel, I think, in calling you the      other one.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don't care what you call me.”

“Good        then!” Dahlia slapped my knee playfully. “Stark     it shall be!”

*   *   *

Dahlia's house
was a white and green, flat-roofed bungalow built right on the sand, with single-sided walls and no attic. It looked like it could blow away in a storm, and I wondered how she ever kept warm in it during wintertime.

We dropped our bags inside the door, and Dahlia pointed to a room at the back of the house. “That's you boys'                   bedroom. Here. Let me            show you the place.”

There were only two bedrooms with a single bathroom between them; a living room with windows that faced out onto the ocean and a rock jetty in front of the house; and a long, wide kitchen with a clay-tiled floor in the back. Her property was fenced, all the way around, with rotten, gapped cedar that tilted and leaned in the wind, and the yards were nothing more than sand hills and tufts of native grasses.

It was the exact opposite of Washington.

We put our stuff into our room. It was sunny and light, and I realized that every window in the house was wide-open, still the place wasn't cold at all.

Dahlia stood behind us, watching.

There was only one queen-size bed in our room.

Bosten still hadn't said anything.

“If it bothers you                  to share a bed, one of you can sleep on the couch in the living room,” Dahlia said. “The place is         small,       as you can see.”

“I don't care,” I said.

Dahlia sighed. I knew I wasn't being very nice to her.

Bosten sat on the bed.

“Do you           have any trunks?” she asked. “Boys in California don't dress all tucked-in and buttoned-up like you boys do.”

“It's how we          dress         at our house,” Bosten said.

“Well.            Then I have an idea.   Let's go to Ventura and pick you out some beach clothes,               so you look like you belong here.”

I looked at Bosten.

He shrugged.

I guessed it was okay.

And, on the way out the door, Dahlia said, “And you really should take off that wool cap, Stark.      This is the beach, after all.”

Something about her made me begin to feel it was okay.

I left my Steelers cap sitting on the bed, and Aunt Dahlia drove us up the beach to a city called Ventura.

*   *   *

She bought us some new clothes
and took Bosten and me out to a place called Sal's for Mexican food, which neither of us had ever tasted before. It was really good. And I didn't want to, but by the time we came back to her house that evening, I was starting to like Aunt Dahlia.

Bosten was, too.

We'd stuffed our Washington clothes into shopping bags and wore our new stuff—baggy shorts, Adidas sneakers, and colored T-shirts (actually colored, and
not white
, which we could wear without putting on anything else over them or under them)—for the rest of the day. And I felt particularly tough because Aunt Dahlia insisted on buying me a “Mr. Zogs Sex Wax” tee, explaining that all the boys on the beach wore them.

It was like an unofficial uniform for teenage boys in the State of California, she said.

I didn't know what Sex Wax was, so I felt extremely uncomfortable when Dahlia waved the shirt like a flag in front of my eyes, in public, in a store where people could see us.

Dahlia explained that Sex Wax was used to keep you from slipping off a surf board.

So when she paid for the clothes, the guy at the counter of the surf shop gave me a plastic-wrapped chunk of Sex Wax for free, since I didn't know what it was. I felt myself turning completely red, but that stuff smelled better, I think, than anything I'd ever smelled before in my life.

So I didn't really get the
Sex
part of the name, but I realized there wasn't very much about sex I understood in the first place.

No matter what, I knew I'd never be able to wear the shirt around my parents' house, and that made it even more attractive to me. And if I brought the Sex Wax home and attempted to hide it in my room, it was a sure thing Mom would find it and throw a fit about me jacking off or something. So I was just a little bit sad thinking that my new favorite shirt, along with that amazing-smelling Sex Wax, would probably both have to be left in Aunt Dahlia's care when Bosten and I went back home to Washington.

*   *   *

She didn't make us
get out of bed, either.

The only reason I woke up the next morning was because I had to pee.

And when I came out of the bathroom, Aunt Dahlia and the smell of bacon stopped me, and she took me by the hand and made me sit down at the kitchen table—barefoot and in my underwear—so I could eat breakfast while she cooked and talked to me.

It really was as opposite to Washington as I could ever dream.

Maybe things were supposed to be this way.

“Do you like            coffee?” she asked.

“Uh. No, thank you.”

“I       guess it probably is bad         for you, at your age, anyway.” Dahlia opened a fresh carton of milk and poured a glass. Then she put a full plate of bacon, eggs, and toast down on the table in front of me.

“Thank you, Aunt Dahlia.”

She scooted out a chair and sat beside me. “Oh, don't be so       formal, Stark. Just call me Dahlia. Everyone does.”

“Okay.”

She smiled. She looked so happy, just sitting there, watching me eat.

I decided that being in California wasn't so bad, after all.

“What          do you like to do?” Dahlia asked.

“Huh?” I took a bite of toast.

Dahlia frowned a bit, then stood up and moved around so she could sit next to me on my left side. She put her hand on my bare thigh. It felt almost funny, like being tickled. I thought it was maybe something real moms probably did all the time in California.

“I heard you okay,” I said. I thought about it. I decided it probably wasn't a good idea to tell her that I liked taking baths with Emily Lohman. I'd save that for another time when I didn't have something to say. Because I got the idea Aunt Dahlia would probably be completely okay with me taking baths with a girl. “Uh. I don't know what I like to do.”

“Well. It's a  glorious day. I think after your brother has breakfast, we should all go out and explore the beach.”

“We never get to stay in bed at our house. We might not see Bosten till tomorrow.”

“Ha!” Dahlia laughed. A genuine, warm laugh.

How could I not smile back at her?

“There's someone you might like      to meet. Evan and Kim, the twins. I told them about you. They live two houses down. It's important to make friends with people your own age,           after all. You don't want to be hanging around with                 me              all the time.”

“It's not so bad,” I said.

Just then, Bosten came into the kitchen, fully dressed, with a tucked and buttoned shirt.

Dahlia hitchhiked a thumb at him and rolled her eyes for me, smiling.

And Bosten said, “Stick,      do you realize      you're sitting              at the table          in just your        underwear?”

Dahlia laughed, and I said, “I know. Pretty cool, huh?”

Bosten looked at us both like we were crazy.

I chewed a piece of toast. “I told Dahlia that in the State of Washington, thirteen-year-old boys make the rules in houses. I proclaim no pants at breakfast. Ever.”

Aunt Dahlia nodded.

And my brother dropped his pants and kicked them out into the living room. Then he sat down like that's how you do things.

I tapped his hand with my finger. I pointed at his shirt collar and shook my head disapprovingly. He grinned, made a ball with his flannel Washington-State collared shirt, and threw it out the kitchen door.

Then I announced, “Now you may eat.”

Bosten was the best person in the world at playing California.

EVAN AND KIM

We went through the gate
in Dahlia's fence and walked barefoot, out across the sand toward the jetty.

“That's            Evan and Kim.” Dahlia pointed at two black figures bobbing like seals in the waves near the end of the rock breakwater. “I'm going back to              clean up our breakfast. You two just sit              and wait for them. I told them you'd be here. They'll come in when they     see you.”

Bosten sat down next to me in the sand. It was so warm, we took our shirts off.

“They      surf         here,” Bosten said.

Behind the two kids on surfboards, miles out in the water, I could see the hazy outline of islands.

I kicked my brother's foot softly. “This is about the most bitchin' place in the world.”

“Stick?”

“What?”

“Do you                  ever wonder what—”

Bosten began to ask something, but I cut him off. “No. Never.”

Because I knew what he was going to say, and I wondered it all the time—what it would be like to live away from Mom and Dad. He knew it, too. He didn't have to say it out loud.

A swell came in. The deep green water rose up beyond the top of the jetty's point, spitting white blobs in the air over the toothy rocks. I watched as the kids in the water both flattened out on top of their boards and began paddling diagonally toward the peak of the wave.

I wondered if they used Sex Wax.

One of the black figures nosed the surfboard back and spun out of the wave at its top, while the other pressed up, back bent, with straight arms, kicked into a squatting position, and, just like that, glided down the churning face of the wave, turning at the bottom, cutting back up, and then down again, until vanishing, completely swallowed in a tumbling froth of foam.