Chapter 1

1987

When her digital alarm clock’s radio clicked on at eight AM on Saturday, the day before her eighteenth birthday, Charlie Watson was in no mood to wake up or get out of bed. And it didn’t improve when the disc jockey predicted scorching heat for her hometown, Brighton Falls, California. Then the disc jockey started playing Madonna’s latest hit single, “Who’s That Girl.”

“Shut up,” Charlie muttered into her pillow. With her eyes still closed, she reached out and tried to hit the clock’s snooze button. She missed three times before she knocked the clock off her night table. When the radio went silent, she hoped she’d broken it permanently.

She opened her eyes and climbed out of bed. She wore a T. rex T-shirt, boxers, and mismatched socks. Posters of David Bowie, Roxy Music, Adam Ant, and The Smiths decorated the walls of her messy bedroom. The only evidence of any effort to tidy up was a shoebox filled with her medals and trophies from her school’s swim team. As she made her way to the bathroom, she brushed her fingers over a framed photo of herself, a few years younger, sitting with her father on the hood of a red 1959 Chevrolet Corvette. Her father had bought the Corvette as a restoration project, but it remained unfinished and still took up space in the two-car garage attached to Charlie’s house.

After brushing her teeth and putting on some torn shorts and a shirt that she’d worn a few days earlier but hadn’t bothered to wash, she grabbed the shoebox and went downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother, Sally, was washing dishes, and her stepfather, Ron, was drying. Sally was a nurse and was wearing scrubs. Sally and Ron giggled about something, and then they kissed. Gross, Charlie thought. She moved past them and dumped the shoebox and its contents into the garbage can.

Sally turned, looked at the garbage can, and said, “What are you—are those your diving trophies?”

Charlie shrugged. “They were taking up too much space in my room.”

Sally lifted her gaze to meet Charlie’s eyes. “You’re gonna regret doing that someday. Just like you’re gonna regret that mess you call your haircut.”

Ignoring her mother, Charlie noticed the family dog, Conan, sniffing at the bottom of the garbage can. Then she noticed Conan’s empty food bowl. “Did you guys feed Conan, or were you just gonna let him starve?”

“You’re welcome to feed him yourself,” Sally said, “and help out a little around here.” She handed a bag of dog food to Charlie.

As Charlie poured food into the dog’s bowl, she said, “You know how I could be an even bigger help? If I had a car, I could run errands, do stuff you don’t want to do. Really contribute.”

Sally sighed. “Charlie—”

“And whaddaya know,” Charlie said, “it’s my birthday tomorrow. Perfect timing for a large cash gift. Five hundred bucks and I can finally finish the Corvette.”

Sally sighed again. “Charlie, we’ve been over this. We’re not in a position to throw gobs of money at a car we’re not sure will ever even start. We just… We can’t.”

Before Charlie could protest, someone behind her said, “Hiiiii -yah!” She turned to see her twelve-year-old brother, Otis, enter the kitchen. He was wearing his martial arts uniform, a white gi with a yellow belt around the waist.

“Ah, Otis-san!” Ron said.

“Hiiiii -yah!” Otis said again. His hands launched out and chopped at the air in front of his stepfather.

Playing along, Ron fell back and said, “Oh no, he got me!”

Otis laughed. “Master Larry told me I’m the fastest one ever to get a yellow belt.”

Sally beamed at Otis and said, “You look so grown up in that karate suit. My baby boy is becoming a man.” Then she glanced at the kitchen clock and said, “Oh shoot. I’m gonna be late.” She turned to Charlie. “Could you drop your brother at karate on your way to work?”

“I could if I had a car.”

“Just let him follow you on your bike so nobody abducts him.”

“Abducts him?” Charlie said. “You just said he’s a grown man now.”

Otis said, “If anyone tries anything, I’ll rupture their spleen!” Next to the front door, Otis had propped up his skateboard. He grabbed it and said, “Come on, Charlie, let’s go!”

Charlie groaned and followed Otis out of the house, which was at the end of a cul-de-sac that bordered a grassy marsh and had an ocean view from the backyard. They went to the driveway, where Charlie had parked her late-model moped. Despite her efforts to restore and tune the moped’s engine, she couldn’t get it to go faster than fifteen miles per hour. As she climbed onto the moped, Otis tied an old jump rope to the back of its frame. He tugged the rope to make sure it was secure and hopped onto his skateboard. Charlie started the ignition and took off at a crawl, pulling Otis along on his skateboard. Charlie kept her gaze forward, not looking at any of her neighbors’ houses—if she was lucky, she could avoid eye contact with anyone. Towing her brother always made her beyond embarrassed.

Winding over back roads, they eventually arrived on Main Street, which was lined with trees, food markets, home-supply stores, restaurants, and other small businesses. They passed a woman sweeping the stoop outside her frozen-yogurt shop. She smiled and waved at them. Otis must have recognized her. He waved back with one hand as he held tight to the jump rope with the other. He smiled and said, “Morning, Mrs. Calloway. Beautiful weather this morning, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Calloway nodded and laughed. As the moped putt-putted past her shop, Charlie glanced back at her brother and said, “You’re such a suck-up, Otis.”

“I’m charming,” Otis said. “And I get a discount yogurt now. You should take notes.”

Children wearing white gis with cloth belts were on the sidewalk, waiting to enter Master Larry’s karate dojo, which had Japanese words painted on its facade of large windows. As Charlie and Otis approached the dojo, Otis let go of the rope and angled for the sidewalk, where the other children saw him coming. He jumped and stomped on the tail end of the skateboard, flipping it into the air and catching it as he landed on the curb. Charlie heard Otis’s friends laugh and cheer at his stunt as she rode on, dragging the jump rope along the street.

She arrived at Brighton Falls Boardwalk, an old amusement park with a wood-framed roller coaster and a stretch of arcade stalls and eateries that extended past a public beach. She worked at Hot Dog on a Stick, which was housed in a small shack that sold exactly what its name advertised. As she pulled up behind the shack, her boss, Craig, was opening up the shop. She knew Craig was twenty-two years old because he’d felt compelled to mention it at least three times that she could recall in the past week. Seeing Charlie, he tapped his watch and said, “You’re seven minutes late.”

“It’s nine in the morning, Craig. I don’t really think there’s a whole bunch of people craving wieners at this hour.”

But just then, an impatient man bellied up to the hot dog kiosk and said, “Hello? I’ve been waiting!”

Craig shot a stern look at Charlie. Charlie exhaled as if she were letting out steam. She couldn’t begin to imagine how managing a hot dog stand on the Boardwalk could give anyone such an incredible power trip.

She let Craig take care of the customer while she went into the shack and changed into her work uniform. As an employee and representative of Hot Dog on a Stick, she was required to wear a hideous multicolored shirt and hat with matching shorts. She didn’t need a mirror to know she looked like a clown from a third-rate circus. And she didn’t need a fortune-teller to know that her day probably wouldn’t get any better.

Of course, then her day got much worse.