1987

—

Back then, you could just pack up and leave, and nobody expected much from you after that. No emails lighting up your pocket. No phones buzzing every five minutes. Nobody keeping track of where you went once the sun went down or who you were with after everyone else had gone to sleep. If you walked out the door with a bag and didn’t come back, most people just assumed you’d landed somewhere else or died in a ditch.

You could disappear if you wanted to, you know?

People forget that now, but it happened all the time back then. You’d see their faces staring out from the side of a milk carton in the morning. Grainy little school photos under the word MISSING. Sometimes they were kids. Sometimes they were teenagers who’d gotten tired of small towns and worse homes. Sometimes they were grown adults who just kept driving.

Not everybody who vanished was lost.

Some of them just didn't want to be found.

I was running from a lot of things back then. Most people in the eighties were, if I’m being honest about it. Hell, half the movies coming out of Hollywood back then were about somebody grabbing their keys and hitting the highway like the world behind them was on fire. 

Back then it felt normal. Like if you drove far enough and fast enough, you could outrun whatever was chasing you. 

Turns out the world doesn’t work like that. 

I just didn’t know it yet.

Some of the things I was running from back then had names. Some of them didn’t. Mostly, I just knew I couldn’t stay where I was anymore, so I took off, left, and picked a spot on the map that looked like the kind of place that a twenty-something-year-old with nothing to his name could believe in. 

I’d never seen the Pacific before. Not up close, anyway. Back home, the closest thing we had to an ocean was a muddy lake that smelled like dead fish and motor oil when the heat rolled in. The rednecks used to drive their UTVs through the mud down there, drinking beer and fighting each other at all hours of the night. 

But the Pacific was something else. Something way older and way bigger than anything I’d ever stood in front of.

People said there were hundreds of shipwrecks out there beneath the waves. Old freighters with peeling paint, fishing boats whose nets were still tangled in rusted rigging, and ships that went down in storms nobody remembered anymore. Somewhere under all that dark water were the hollow hulls and splintered masts, the bones of young sailors who never made it back to shore.  Men who’d been crossing the ocean for money, or war, or love. Or maybe because they were running from something of their own. The ocean takes everything eventually, and it never forgets.

Down here, the residue of it hung in the air. Salt clung to the edges of buildings, to the rusted metal of dock chains, to the slick, cobbled streets that caught the neon from flickering signs. The harbor breathed it out all night, a cold exhale rolling in from the water. It crept into coats and hair, into lungs and the taste on teeth and tongue, and left the faint, briny memory of lives lost at sea.

The city leaned toward it. Streets sloped downhill past weathered bars and bait shops that smelled of fish and kerosene. In the quiet hours, when the fog rolled in and the moon hung low over the waves, you could hear it. The creak of wood, the slap of water against forgotten hulls, and the faint, impossible echo of voices carried up through the tide. 

I remember standing there the first night, looking out at all the rides on the pier, half-gone cigarette in my mouth as I leaned against the hood of my old Pontiac, engine still cooling. There were still an ungodly number of people out at this time of night, so I’d parked off to the side, hoping nobody would notice me. 

The water went on forever. Just black waves under the moon, rolling in slow like the ocean was breathing. People say the sea sounds peaceful at night or whatever, but they’re lying to you.

The ocean is loud after dark. Louder than traffic on the highway. Louder than the bars down on the boardwalk full of drunks puking up their guts. If you stand there long enough, it starts to feel less like noise and more like something talking. 

I was watching the waves, trying to decide on whether it was cold enough to sleep in my car or risk checking into a skeezy motel, when I saw them.

At first, I thought it was just another group of kids wandering the pier. Skinny silhouettes against the neon glare of the rides and the arcade. But there was something different about them. They moved together, leaning into each other, laughing in a way that cancelled out everything else.

But one of them, tall with dark hair slicked back, wearing a worn leather jacket, looked at me. Just for a second. And I felt a strange tug in my chest, the same one I got when I knew I had to leave everything behind.

I scowled, pulled the cigarette out of my mouth, and tried to look uninterested. Which didn’t matter much, because they weren’t talking to anyone else or looking at anyone else.

Except for that one guy with the hair.

The Hair. That’s what I called him back then. Still did years later, even after he told me his name and made it real clear he fucking hated being called The Hair. 

I stayed leaned against the hood of the car, arms loose, doing my best impression of someone who had absolutely nothing to worry about. I let my eyes drift toward two hot girls wandering past the arcade lights, pretending they were the only thing holding my attention.

But my gaze kept snapping back to them.

The group had drifted closer without really trying. A loose knot of leather jackets, ripped jeans, and loud voices gathered near the end of the pier like they owned the damn place. Someone cracked open a beer with a hiss. Another kid was hopping around like an idiot, waving a ragged blue teddy bear over his head and cackling about how he’d stolen it off some crying little kid down by the ticket booth.

His friends howled at that, shoving each other, sloshing beer on the boards. Neon from the arcade washed over them in jittery bursts of pink and blue, turning their faces into gleeful shadows.

The Hair didn’t laugh. Instead, he’d shifted his weight against the railing, one boot hooked over the lower bar, arms folded across his chest. The wind coming off the ocean tugged at his dark hair, pushing it across his eyes, but he didn’t bother brushing it away.

He just watched me. And I’m not talking casually, either. It felt like he was a dog watching another stray wander up to his territory. It looked like he was waiting to see if I was going to be stupid enough to start something.

Behind him, the others kept laughing and shoving each other around, their noise spilling across the pier.

But The Hair didn’t join in.

He just stood there in the flickering neon and salt wind, eyes fixed on me like he’d already decided I was the most entertaining thing that had happened to him all night.

“Nice car!” He called to me, though I couldn’t tell whether it was a compliment or an insult, which, of course, made me feel like the biggest idiot around. It was a Pontiac. That’s supposed to mean something; Pontiacs weren’t cheap, usually. Except mine, which was rusty and beat to hell and looked like it had been impounded in a couple of police lots for evidence. 

I opened my mouth to fire back something clever, but he was already smirking and turning away, hands in his pockets. 

“Pontiac,” he told his friends, heavy accent loud enough to carry across the boards. “Looks like it crawled out of junkyard and asked for cigarette.” 

A couple of them snorted. And a purple-haired girl barked out a laugh like a damn hyena. 

Definitely an insult.

"Asshole," I muttered, leaning a little harder on the hood. Guess I must have said it too loud, though. Because The Hair stepped off the railing, boots scraping against the pier boards, and pivoted to face me, eyes dark and sharp. 

"What the hell did you just say?" He demanded.