Hale shook his head. “Get a trim, asshole. Your crotch looks like Phil Spector.” He motioned to Beck’s dick. The latter laughed, his dong flipping like hair in a shampoo commercial. Hale turned back to me, and now the three of us were sitting like assholes, killing the waves. Peachy.

“This month’s my round, right?” The Round was what we called paying visits to the shops at the promenade, collecting protection money.

“Right.”

“Anything else I can do?” He plastered his abs to his stick. Hale had red hair, green eyes, and the soul of a self-destructive Holden Caulfield who’d been injected into the synthetic town of Todos Santos. Another thing he had that I didn’t: helicopter parents. He was getting close to finishing his master’s degree in philosophy and following his parents’ footsteps in becoming a professor. They wanted him to turn SoCal’s plastic souls into thinking individuals. But Hale didn’t want to be a professor, or even a teacher. He wanted to be a savage, like me.

“Be good and finish all your homework.” I laughed.

He splashed me like a five-year-old. “I want more responsibility. I want to be a part of SurfCity.”

Hale and I split the protection money fifty-fifty, which worked for me, because he did all the legwork. But he always pushed for more. SurfCity was my idea, my baby, my dream. I wasn’t going to share it with anyone.

“I’m serious,” he groaned.

“So am I.” I looked up and watched naked Beck paddling away, taking his hairy crotch with him. “I don’t need more help.”

“I have money. I can invest in SurfCity.”

“You can invest in getting the fuck out of my way and letting me surf.”

“Why not? You need the money, obviously. Did you find anyone yet?”

I wasn’t going to tell him about Darren and Jesse, because I wasn’t sure how shit was going to pan out, and anyway, I wouldn’t put it past Hale to try to fuck it up a little just for funsies. He was made out of the same cloth as the infamous HotHoles. Sometimes he liked to break shit for the simple reason of liking the sound of it cracking in his ears.

“None of your business.”

“It’s really hard to read you, Protsenko.”

“Or,” I tilted my chin down, smiling, “maybe you’re just illiterate at reading people, Hale.” His nostrils were comically wide. He took off on his surfboard, his own version of slamming the door in my face. I laughed. Beck appeared by my side a few minutes later, his chest rising and falling with adrenaline.

“What’s up with everyone? Gidget is acting like a chick, and Hale is acting like a pussy. It’s like you’re everyone’s abusive daddy.”

I smirked, staring at the disappearing figure of Hale, my mind on SurfCity.

“So. Same time tomorrow?” Beck pretended to punch my arm, but didn’t actually have the balls to do it.

“Yeah. Let’s make it early; I have a plan for the afternoon.”

My plan had a name, a description, and an end game.

My plan was a nineteen-year-old girl.

What I didn’t know was my plan was about to blow up in my face in a spectacular fashion, making the same breaking sound that made Hale’s balls tingle.

The first thing I did was learn Jesse Carter’s routine. I use the term “routine” loosely, because weirdo wasn’t hot on leaving her house, or room, or…bed. Her name gave me déjà vu, but I didn’t think much of it. It was a small town. I’d probably run into her at some point. Maybe I was even in her at some point.

That would be a whole other brand of awkward.

Darren told me Jesse’s dad had died when she was twelve and that had fucked her up even before those boys finished the job. He also said that meeting her seemingly spontaneously was going to be a task akin to teaching a pig how to waltz.

“You’re going to have to worm your path into her world, becauth she doethn’t leave here often,” he said on the phone. “She goeth to therapy every Thurthday, that’th in downtown Todoth Santoth, and runth the track around El Dorado every noon and every night at around three.”

Twice a fucking day? Still, none of my business.

“Interesting hours,” I commented, my eyes on the paper.

“Leth human traffic.” Of course.

I wrote everything down on a piece of paper, trying to figure out where in the fresh hell I fit in.

“What else?” I snapped my gum in his ear.

“She visith our neighbor, Mitheth Belforth, often. Eighty-thomething. Thufferth from Alzheimer’th.”

Jesse Carter sure led an interesting lifestyle. And I was the lucky bastard who was going to lure her back to the outside world.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’th it.” He sighed.

“No one else? Boyfriend? Best friend? Shopping sprees with Mommy at Balmain?” It left me very little room for action. I couldn’t exactly drop by her neighbor’s house unannounced and pretend to bump into her. Well, I could, if I was in the mood for getting arrested.