San Francisco. Where Tom and I Pretend to Be Friends.
WE HEAD OUT THE DOOR first. Bronwyn gives us a five-minute head start. Traveling west, we hit Broderick Street and turn right. The sun is bright and the fog that devoured the city last night has receded. The bay glistens like it’s sprinkled with diamond dust. We walk a paved path alongside a marina, where gleaming white yachts sway and tug at their mooring lines. I take a deep inhale of the salty air.
“Have you ever been here?” Tom asks. “San Francisco?”
“Once,” I say, remembering.
It was one of Jennifer’s courier trips where she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and plopped us on an airplane to an unknown destination that turned out to be here. We met a man in Golden Gate Park by the Conservatory of Flowers, a building that looks like a glass wedding cake. I wanted to buy tickets and go inside because a giant banner over the entry promised a thrilling exhibit about man-eating plants. Jennifer said I had to wait until later.
“But I’m missing school!” I protested. “Shouldn’t I be doing something educational at least? Man-eating plants are educational!”
“Meat-eating plants,” she corrected. “We’re waiting for someone.”
“That’s not educational.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“Not one of mine,” I grumbled. I entertained myself by hanging upside down on the guardrail to the stairs, much to the horror of the many visitors tromping into the conservatory to see the carnivorous plants. Meanwhile, Jennifer scanned all their faces, back and forth, constantly and continuously. If she objected to my acting like a wild monkey, she didn’t mention it.
We waited a long time. The someone was an hour late, and this made Jennifer tense. I could tell because she gnawed on her cuticles, and she only did that when she was thinking really hard or freaking out about something. And if this person didn’t show up soon, she was in danger of running out of fingers to chew.
But he did finally arrive, and Jennifer handed him an envelope, which he took without a word and quickly left. The entire exchange took exactly ten seconds. My mother then flashed me a bright smile and said we could go see the plants.
Tom’s voice breaks the spell. “San Francisco’s the best city in the world,” he says with a grin. He’s cute but deluded.
“Have you even been to New York?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yeah.” He sniffs. “One time. It was hot and smelled bad.”
“You can’t make up your mind about a place after a single visit. There’s just no way.”
“Well, you’ve only been here once!” he protests.
“And I haven’t made any decisions about it one way or another!” I bark back.
We reach a stalemate and walk on in silence. Soon we arrive at a wide, sandy path separated from the bay by beach and scrub. The waves roll in smoothly, and I pause to enjoy them. I don’t get to the ocean much, but in this city it’s everywhere.
The walking path is crowded with people. Some are clearly tourists, puzzling over maps and freezing in the stiff cold wind. There are moms with strollers and joggers and more tourists on bikes, careening this way and that as if riding irritated broncos. It’s not the kind of walk where you can lose yourself in the scenery unless you want to get run over. Even the moms in their brightly colored workout wear are intensely focused—baby strolling as competitive sport. I keep to the edge of the path and put Tom between all the dangerous people and me.
Plus, I have the added paranoia of thinking each and every person we pass wants to kidnap me or kill me or, I don’t know, do something terrible. I avert my eyes to avoid showing my fear. Tom clears his throat. It sounds like an attempt to reboot our conversation.
“So I hear you’re new to this whole thing,” he says.
I laugh. I can’t help it. “‘New’ is probably the right word for it. Last week I was a normal Lower Middle, I mean seventh grader, and now, well, now here I am.”
“Jennifer Hunter’s a legend,” he says.
Oh no, not again. Not the Jennifer was a superhero until you came along and wrecked it soliloquy. I’m not sure I can take it. Unfortunately, Tom sees my clenched-jaw silence as a sign to go on talking about Jennifer.
“There was one time,” he continues, “when she actually ran the length of a moving train on the roof, chasing a guy. It was in Switzerland or something. Going up a mountain! I know you see that in the movies, but do you know how hard it is to do in real life and not die?”
“No,” I say with a grimace. “I don’t. Because I can honestly say I’ve never thought about it before right this minute.”
“Well, it’s impossible! Only Teflon could pull that off. And she got the guy, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, I’m not supposed to talk to you about her, but I can’t help it. She was cool back in the day.”
“Apparently.”
“So what’s she like now?” he asks. “What’s it like seeing her all the time?”
I want to scream, but I fear that in this wind the effect will be utterly wasted. “She’s fine,” I say. “Normal. She likes movies.” I hope this is enough. “Did you know that as soon as they finish painting the Golden Gate Bridge, they start all over again at the beginning?”
“What?”
“Trivia,” I say, “about your city.”
“They’re putting up a net to catch the jumpers too,” Tom says. “It’s going to ruin the bridge.” He goes on about San Francisco politics for a while, and I watch the waves as we walk along.
We stop fifteen minutes later at the Warming Hut, a small bay-side building selling sandwiches, coffee, and hot chocolate, plus postcards, books, and toys to frozen visitors. It’s crowded with bodies, and Tom takes my hand. I experience an unexpected tingle up my arm. Maybe I can forgive him for dissing New York.
We push up to the counter and order two hot chocolates with whipped cream. A little kid crashes into my legs and I flinch.
“Don’t worry,” Tom says. “You’re fine.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the kid.
We take the hot chocolate and walk out onto a wide pier that extends into the bay. A bunch of bored-looking fishermen cast lines into the water. At the far end, we sit on the pier’s edge, our legs dangling over the side. Sailboats and a dozen kite surfers cruise on the icy water. I’ve never seen a kite surfer before. They bounce off the surface as if untethered from gravity, holding on to a giant kite, feet strapped into a modified surfboard. They move much faster than the seagulls circling continuously overhead, zipping out of sight in an instant.
“Have you ever done that?” I ask, gesturing to one of the kite surfers.
“No,” Tom says with a shiver.
“Have you seen Bronwyn since we left?”
“No. But don’t worry. You’re not supposed to see her. Drink your hot chocolate.”
I take a sip. “Thanks.”
“I’m on an expense account,” Tom says with a grin.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“What do you know about all of this?”
“Your mom being gone, you mean?”
I nod, fearing my voice will crack.
“Well,” he says, “Suzie called me yesterday and asked if I could do this today. Usually, I have more lead time when they send me out, so I was kind of surprised.”
“Who?”
“Bronwyn, I mean,” he says quickly. He casts his eyes down, away from mine. My stomach tightens uncomfortably. He definitely said Suzie. I try to keep my face neutral as I race through possibilities. The obvious answer is the Ghost’s people have kidnapped me and intend to use me for the same purposes the Center did. But the Bronwyn at the airport had the flower! And the password! Sure, she forgot to give it to me right away, but she knew it. But then again, she wasn’t at baggage claim and hustled me out of the airport in an awful hurry. What if I’d checked a suitcase? Suddenly, I have a terrible thought. Somebody’s sold me out.
But before I can latch onto this idea and totally freak out, my eyes are drawn to one of the kite surfers that dot the bay. Most of the surfers are middle-aged men, soft around the middle, with wet suits squeezing them a bit too tightly. Sausages with helmets, tufts of wet gray hair sticking out every which way. But not this guy. This guy wears a neoprene mask and looks like something out of a horror movie. He executes an amazing one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, bouncing over the waves, leaving a wake of spray. He’s moving so fast, flying through the air, ten feet above the water now on a hydrofoil board and coming right at us.
And then he’s on me like a seagull on an ice-cream cone and I’m dragged away onto the bay, still clutching my hot chocolate, the remaining whipped cream flying into the wind.