I feel like I should say something else and try to imagine what Adam would do in this situation. I give Zoe a light hug, unsure where to put my arms. Hugging doesn’t exactly come naturally for me. “You’re going to do great.”
“Thanks, Elena,” she says, hugging me back.
We find the aisle with the skateboarding kneepads and grab some that look like they’d fit her. Then Zoe sees something and skips down to the next aisle.
“Look!” She holds up a walkie-talkie headset for kids. “We can use these to keep in touch.”
“Good idea. See, you’re making the plan better already.” I grin at her and we throw six of them in our basket. “Let’s grab some ice and see what kind of trouble the guys are getting into.”
We track down Chris and Adam in the aisle with the household cleaners, where they’re loading the cart with rags, latex gloves, bleach, and God only knows what else. Trent joins us a minute later with some flashlights and one of those laser pens he stole earlier, and then we head to the checkout. There’s nobody working in the store—just a self-checkout—which saves us any awkward questions about why we need so many cleaning products.
I check my watch. It’s 9:16 p.m. “We have about six hours before we’re meeting Lynne. Maybe we should get something to eat.”
“We’ll need some time to get all of this ready,” Adam says. “But yeah, we should probably eat first.”
“And a nap wouldn’t hurt either,” Trent adds. “Don’t want to be tired when we break in.”
“Shh!” I glance around quickly, but no one’s close enough to hear him.
He shrugs, and we bag all our stuff and head back to the car. Once we’re driving along the Pacific Coast Highway with the dark ocean to our right, Chris asks, “Where should we eat?”
As the white spray splashes against the shore, I think back to my body again. I still don’t know why it ends up on the beach or why I’ll choose that spot to kill myself. But I have a few hours to find out. “Let’s go to the pier.”
15:16
We stroll under the arch of the Santa Monica Pier sign and onto the rickety wooden walkway heading toward the ocean. The beach stretches to our left and right, the sound of the waves mixing with laughter from farther down the boardwalk. The clouds have thinned out now, and a soft moon peeks over the twinkling dark water and the bright lights of the Ferris wheel.
The pier is another classic Los Angeles landmark, and like Hollywood Boulevard or the Central Library, this one hasn’t changed much in the last thirty years. The most obvious difference is that there are more roller coasters at the end of the pier now, jutting out over the waves and curling into the sky. I stop and take a long breath of the salty air as memories of happier times come back to me, mixing with the creeping dread of seeing the spot where I might die in a few hours.
“What exactly are we doing here?” Chris asks.
“Getting something to eat,” Adam says with a shrug.
“Yeah, but there are a hundred restaurants between Lynne’s place and here. We could have stopped at any of them.”
“I just thought we should have some fun,” I say, thinking quickly. I can’t tell them the real reason we’re here. “Tomorrow might be our last day alive, and we’ve spent all of today running from the cops and searching for clues. That’s not really living.”
Zoe nods. “She’s right. We should enjoy every minute we can.”
“Sounds good to me,” Trent says, grinning.
Adam flashes me a warm smile, and it rekindles all those feelings from when we kissed. I pushed them deep down while we were with Lynne, but now they bubble to the surface again. We hang back a bit from the others, walking close and sometimes brushing shoulders, but otherwise not touching.
We pass by shrimp shacks, an old-fashioned arcade, and tourist shops with Los Angeles or Santa Monica written all over mugs, sweatshirts, and random tchotchkes. Most of them look like things you could buy back in our time, except for a snow globe with a miniature version of the pier inside, complete with moving roller coasters and Ferris wheel, seagulls flying overhead, and crashing waves. It looks as real as the pier we’re standing on, yet fits in the palm of my hand and has no glass surrounding it. I turn it upside down and sparkly lights appear instead of snow, dancing around the tiny pier. They vanish the second they hit the “ground.” The birds continue to fly in circles, and when I touch the water, it’s cool and wet. Incredible.