Alex, Approximately

@alex: Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend? Please talk me down from planning his funeral. Again.

I send a quick reply—

@mink: You should just leave town and make new friends. Less blood to clean up.

If I look past any reservations I may have, I can admit it’s pretty thrilling to think that Alex has no idea I’m even here. Then again, he’s never really known exactly where I’ve been. He thinks I still live in New Jersey, because I never bothered to change my profile online when we moved to DC.

When Alex first asked me to come out here and see North by Northwest with him, I wasn’t sure what to think. It’s not exactly the kind of movie you ask a girl out to see when you’re trying to win her heart—not most girls, anyway. Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, it stars Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, and it’s a thriller about mistaken identity. It starts in New York and ends up out West, as Cary Grant is pursued to Mount Rushmore in one of the most iconic scenes in movie history. But now every time I think about seeing it, I picture myself as the seductive Eva Marie Saint and Alex as Cary Grant, and we’re falling madly in love, despite the fact that we barely know each other. And sure, I know that’s a fantasy, and reality could be so much weirder, which is why I have a plan: secretly track down Alex before North by Northwest plays at the summer film festival.

I didn’t say it was a good plan. Or an easy plan. But it’s better than an awkward meet-up with someone who looks great on paper, but in real life, may crush my dreams. So I’m doing this the Artful Dodger way—from a safe distance, where neither of us can get hurt. I have a lot of experience with bad strangers. It’s best this way, trust me.

“Is that him?” Dad asks.

I quickly pocket my phone. “Who?”

“What’s-his-face. Your film-buff soul mate.”

I’ve barely told Dad anything about Alex. I mean, he knows Alex lives in this area and even jokingly dangled this fact as bait to come out here when I finally decided I couldn’t handle living with Mom and Nate anymore.

“He’s contemplating murder,” I tell Dad. “So I’ll probably meet him in a dark alley tonight and jump into his unmarked van. That should be fine, right?”

An undercurrent of tension twitches between us, just for a second. He knows I’m only teasing, that I would never take that kind of risk, not after what happened to our family four years ago. But that’s in the past, and Dad and I are all about the future now. Nothing but sunshine and palm trees ahead.

He snorts. “If he’s got a van, don’t expect to be able to track it down.” Crap. Does he know I’ve entertained that idea? “Everyone’s got vans where we’re headed.”

“Creepy molester vans?”

“More like hippie vans. You’ll see. Coronado Cove is different.”

And he shows me why after we turn off the interstate—sorry, the “freeway,” as Dad informs me they’re called out here. Once the location of a historical California mission, Coronado Cove is now a bustling tourist town between San Francisco and Big Sur. Twenty thousand residents, and twice as many tourists. They come for three things: the redwood forest, the private nude beach, and the surfing.

Oh, yes: I said redwood forest.

They come for one other thing, and I’d be seeing that up close and personal soon enough, which makes my stomach hurt to think about. So I don’t. Not right now. Because the town is even prettier than it was in the photos Dad sent. Hilly, cypress-lined streets. Spanish-style stucco buildings with terra-cotta tile roofs. Smoky purple mountains in the distance. And then we hit Gold Avenue, a two-lane twisting road that hugs the curving coast, and I finally see it: the Pacific Ocean.

Alex was right. East Coast beaches are trash beaches. This . . . is stunning.

“It’s so blue,” I say, realizing how dumb I sound but unable to think of a better description of the bright aquamarine water breaking toward the sand. I can even smell it from the car. It’s salty and clean, and unlike the beach back home, which has that iodine, boiled-metal stench, it doesn’t make me want to roll up the window.

“I told you, didn’t I? It’s paradise out here,” Dad says. “Everything is going to be better now. I promise, Mink.”

I turn to him and smile, wanting to believe he might be right. And then his head whips toward the windshield and we screech to a stop.

My seat belt feels like a metal rod slapping across my chest as I jerk forward and brace my hands on the dash. Brief pain shoots through my mouth and I taste copper. The high-pitched squeal that comes out of me, I realize, is entirely too loud and dramatic; apart from my biting my own tongue, no one’s hurt, not even the car.

“You okay?” Dad asks.

More embarrassed than anything else, I nod before turning my attention to the cause of our near wreck: two teen boys in the middle of the street. They both look like walking advertisements for coconut tanning oil—tousled sun-lightened hair, board shorts, and lean muscles. One dark, one light. But the towheaded one is mad as hell and pounds the hood of the car with his fists.

“Watch where you’re going, dickwad,” he shouts, pointing to a colorful hand-painted wooden sign of a line of surfers marching their boards through an Abbey Road–looking crosswalk. The top says: WELCOME TO CORONADO COVE. The bottom reads: BE KIND—GIVE SURFERS RIGHT-OF-WAY.

Umm, yeah, no. The sign is nowhere near official, and even if it were, there’s no real crosswalk on the street and this white-haired shirtless dude doesn’t have a board. But no way am I saying that, because (A) I just screamed like a 1950s housewife, and (B) I don’t do confrontation. Especially not with a boy who looks like he’s just inhaled a pipeful of something cooked up in a dirty trailer.

His brown-haired buddy has the decency to be wearing a shirt while jaywalking. On top of that, he’s ridiculously good-looking (ten points) and trying to pull his jerky friend out of the road (twenty points). And as he does, I get a quick view of a nasty, jagged line of dark-pink scars that curves from the sleeve of his weathered T-shirt down to a bright red watch on his wrist, like someone had to Frankenstein his arm back together a long time ago; maybe this isn’t his first time dragging his friend out of the road. He looks as embarrassed as I feel, sitting here with all these cars honking behind us, and while he wrestles his friend back, he holds up a hand to my dad and says, “Sorry, man.”

Dad politely waves and waits until they’re both clear before cautiously stepping on the gas again. Go faster, for the love of slugs. I press my sore tongue against the inside of my teeth, testing the spot where I bit it. And as the drugged-out blond dude continues to scream at us, the boy with the scarred arm stares at me, wind blowing his wild, sun-streaked curls to one side. For a second, I hold my breath and stare back at him, and then he slides out of my view.

Red and blue lights briefly flash in the oncoming lane. Great. Is this kind of thing considered an accident here? Apparently not, because the police car crawls past us. I turn around in my seat to see a female cop with dark purple shades stick her arm out the window and point a warning at the two boys.

“Surfers,” Dad says under his breath like it’s the filthiest swearword in the world. And as the cop and the boys disappear behind us along the golden stretch of sand, I can’t help but worry that Dad might have exaggerated about paradise.