Wishing on the Dogstar – The Last Chapter and Afterword

Night had fallen as the red-orange orb of the sun had sunk into the Pacific Ocean, draining the colors from the air except where patches of artificial light from streetlamps and storefront displays illuminated their immediate surroundings. Weaving her way alone through the mid-August weekend crowd, thinner now with the onset of evening, Jess paused at an ice cream stand and bought a cherry vanilla ice cream cone from the tired looking vendor. She began working on it delicately with her tongue as she crossed the Venice boardwalk and made her way onto the cool sand, avoiding the little clusters of lingering families and recently arrived couples and teenaged revelers.

Once she reached the point where lapping waves gently washed the shoreline, she stopped and ate her ice cream while staring unseeingly toward the hidden horizon. After she the last of the cone had been devoured, she turned back and aimlessly wandered up the beach for a few dozen yards, her flip-flopped feet sometimes struggling to find purchase in the deep, loose sands.

When she was tired of zig-zagging around random people and ocean breeze-blown piles of trash, she returned to the low seawall that separated the beach proper from the boardwalk and sat down with her legs crossed and her elbows propped on her knees, just watching everything and at the same time seeing nothing. Then a familiar female voice called out to her from the boardwalk a few feet away:

"Hey Jess! What's up, girl?" It was Deb, looking tanned and strikingly pretty in a silk and crocheted cream-colored pantsuit and tall wedge espadrilles. She was holding the arm of a guy with wavy streaked blonde hair who looked vaguely familiar to Jess, but she couldn't quite place his face, which was of the classic handsome All-American variety. Deb let go of his arm and strode over to Jess' spot on the wall.

"Hey Deb, long time no see," she told her a bit abashedly after she hugged her older friend.

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!" Deb shot back, but with a warm smile to offset the sarky retort. "Where have ya been in the last few weeks? Not moping over your boyfriend, I hope," she guessed with a little laugh.

Jess laughed back. "No, I miss him like crazy, but I've been getting out, going to class, working…y'know, living my life…" her voice drifted off as she realized it probably didn't help her case to be seen sitting moodily alone on a seawall. Hey, at least I'm in public among people, though, Jess reflected privately.

"That's good to hear," Deb replied approvingly. "So do you hear much from Stacy? He'd better be keeping in touch like a good boy."

"Yeah, he writes from time to time. Of course not as much as he promised he would, but whadda ya expect? He's a boy after all," Jess quipped in a light tone.

Deb raised her eyebrows, frowning slightly in disappointment. "Oh well, something's better than nothing, I guess."

Nodding with agreement, Jess countered, "And to be honest I've written to him even less because he moves around the country so much. By the time he sends me a new address, he's already gone to the next city. But so far he seems to be having a great time. He did complain that all the pools are square over there, though." At that revelation both girls cracked up, trying to envision Stacy's disappointment when confronted with a lack of carveable bowls.

"Poor guy, he's probably going through roundwall withdrawal," Deb tittered, but with a sympathetic edge in her voice.

"Yeah, I think so. But he did say that they're treating him really well over there. He's been on TV several times and signs a ton of autographs after every demo. Guess he's a bona fide celebrity there," Jess said with a wistful expression.

Deb's eyebrows went up. "Really? Far out. He just better not come home with a head too big to fit through the airplane door."

Jess quickly shook her head negatively. "Nah, doubt it. He's definitely enjoying it, but he still seems to be somewhat in awe about it all, too. I think he's handling it pretty well overall, though."

Before Deb could answer, the blonde guy who was with her drifted over to them, a bored expression on his cute face. "Sorry, Steve, didn't mean to leave you out. This is my friend Jess," Deb told him. He stuck out his hand and Jess shook it quickly. "You look kinda familiar," he told her.

She squinted more closely at him. "Yeah, so do you. Do you live or work around here?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah, I'm the assistant manager at a surf shop two blocks north of here."

"That's it!" Jess exclaimed. "I went in there last Spring and looked at skateboards. You told me to try skating first and see if I liked it before putting money down on a new board."

At first he looked blank, then the memory seemed to seep back into his consciousness. "Oh yeah, I remember now. So did you ever try skating?"

Jess nodded. "Yep, once. It was going well until I fell and twisted my leg."

Steve made a wincing face of sympathy. "Well that's no way to get started, ur-hur!" Upon hearing the sound of his goofy, distinctive laugh again, Jess nearly cracked up herself. Even Deb had to grin, it was so infectious.

"Hey, we're going to Steve's for a minute and then heading to a party at the Zephyr shop, you wanna come? It's the last hurrah, you know. Skip and Jeff are closing up for good," Deb informed her.

"Wow, that's too bad. I'd heard they were in some financial trouble ever since the skate team broke apart, but had no idea it had come to that," she replied a bit sadly, remembering the impromptu pronouncement that Skip had delivered as everyone had stood on the sands watching POP burn: "This is the beginning of the end, guys. Beginning of the end. I just know it."

Steve's voice broke in to her reverie. "Yeah, the owner of my store is talking about buying the space, but he's hesitant since it's in kind of a bad area."

With a derisive snort Deb shot back: "Calling it 'kind of a bad area' is like saying Miki Dora is 'kind of a good surfer', man!" Jess didn't exactly get it, but Steve bent double with laughter.

"Well, thanks for the invite but I'll pass. Just not in the mood for partying tonight," Jess told them with a regretful little smile.

Deb looked let down, but gave her an understanding nod. "Yeah, especially partying at Zephyr. I have a feeling this one's going to be intense." She turned to Steve. "Hey babe, you can go on if you want to. I'll catch up in a sec." He got the hint and ambled away north on the sidewalk, whistling off-tune with his hands in his shorts pockets.

"He seems sweet," Jess said with an amused grin. "How long have you guys been dating?"

Deb threw her long tumbling locks back so they fell behind her shoulders. "Only a couple of weeks, but so far, so good. He might actually be a little too sweet, but I have to admit he makes a nice change from a lot of the guys you usually find around here." Then her expression turned serious. "Hey, did you get Allie's letter yet?" she asked in a low voice.

Jess nodded. "Yeah, it came a couple of days ago. I got the feeling that she had to write a formal apology to me as a part of her sentence, huh," she guessed aloud.

"Yeah, the judge told her to write it, but I think she would have made a similar gesture even if she hadn't been commanded to. She's really changed for the better, Jess. Even before the trial she improved herself a lot. She quit hanging out with Angel and Deb's crowd, went to summer school, studied hard, started helping out a lot more at our parents' house…yeah, strange to say it, but I think that incident was all it took to get her ass straightened out."

At the conclusion of Deb's speech Jess looked out toward the ocean and exhaled slowly. "I'm really glad to hear that. She seemed like a good person who just got mixed up with some real pieces of work," she stated, using the classic Jersey terminology to describe society's bad apples.

"Yeah, well I'm glad too. Nobody likes to see their kid sister screw up," Deb said in a faraway voice. "So did you think the outcome of the trial was fair? I mean, should Angel and Karen have done time instead of just getting probation?"

For a moment Jess didn't reply, just contemplated Deb's query. She licked her lips and pulled her wind-tossed hair away from her face, gestures which instantly summoned a mental image of Stacy, since he performed those actions all the time, especially when he was thinking. Then she pushed his smiling face out of her mind and answered Deb. "Well, I'm not in the legal business myself, but I guess it was fair. And to be honest, the last thing I want is for either of them to do jail time and then get out and seek revenge, ya know?"

"Oh yeah, understood." Deb said with a sage nod. "Well, if they screw up again they'll go to jail for sure, and then there'll be nobody for them to blame but their own stupid selves," she declared with conviction.

"You got that right," Jess readily agreed.

"Ok, I better catch up to Steve before he thinks I've been stolen by gypsies," Deb said with a quick glance up the boardwalk, but her date was nowhere in sight.

Jess laughed. "Yeah, or abducted by a rival hair salon. I heard about the big award you guys won, good going," she told Deb, who smiled faintly under her younger friend's praise.

"Thanks. We're trying to make Venice the happenin' place to go, ya know? Ok, outta here. Call me next week, ok? And take care of yourself, Jess." With those sentiments and a quick hug, Deb was strolling quickly up the boardwalk, her hair swinging and her undulating backside causing more than one head – both male and female – to turn admiringly. Jess smiled to herself, then slid off the wall and walked back out onto the sand, heading obliquely toward the Venice Pier, which was situated about fifty yards away.

The incoming sea breeze had picked up and the waves along with it. Jess could see the tops of the breakers as they crested and billowed toward the shore, glowing incandescently white in the glow of the gibbous moon and the nearer streetlights on the boardwalk and the pier. The White Horses of Manann, she thought, but couldn't remember where she'd heard the expression before, just reflected that it was a highly appropriate description as the waves looked for the world just like the manes of otherworldly horses plunging toward her.

After walking for a minute she found an empty spot on the beach where nobody was within earshot and sat down, shoveling the toes of her sandals an inch or two beneath the sand. Then she hunched forward and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking herself forward and backward for a minute, then tilted her head back to gaze up at the dark sky. Despite the fairly bright moon and the ambient ground light sources near by, she was able to make out a single star burning bright in the heavens above. Out of sheer habit and a touch of Old-World superstition, Jess closed her eyes and began to recite the classic "star light, star bright" formula in her head. Upon reaching the end she didn't know exactly what to wish for at first and her mind went blank for a moment. She opened her eyes and looked at the shining point of light again, focusing on it until her vision began to swim and the star seemed to divide itself into two separate parts, then melded back into one after she blinked to clear her eyesight. And then the thoughts began tumbling into her mind like the breakers on the beach just beyond:

I wish that Mom will find happiness with Sam.

I wish that Deb's career will keep doing well.

I wish that Allie will stay on her current path.

I wish that Angel and Karen will find good paths someday, too.

I wish that Skip and Jeff will have another shop and another team some day.

I wish that all the Z-Boys will get famous and surf and skate all their lives. Even Jay.

I wish that Stacy would come home soon.

I wish that he'll still love me and want me when he does get back.

I wish that life will be wonderful from here onward.

I wish.

Afterword

Whew, it's done! Although it's been said several times already, thank you again to everyone for reading, especially those of you who got through to the end. And double thanks and many hugs for those of you who posted reviews, regardless of how long they were or what they said. All authors say it, because we mean it: you are the lifeblood of our stories and without your support and interest there would be no point in posting our work.

In case anyone's wondering but hestitant to ask, I am neither a Dogtowner nor old enough to have taken meaningful part in the 1970s skating scene. All the research pertaining to names, dates, places and events in this story was done using online resources such as z-boys (dot) com as well as articles and interviews from SkateBoarder magazine, the amazing C.R. Stecyk and Glen E. Friedman hardcover book Dogtown – the Legend of the Z-Boys and various films such as the Dogtown & Z-Boys documentary (mandatory viewing for all Dogtown fans), Freewheelin' (a sweet little 1976 movie starring Stacy Peralta and featuring Kenny Means, Tom Sims and Bobby Piercy, three skaters mentioned in Chapter 36), Skateboard Madness, Skateboard Kings (a 1978 BBC documentary that has footage of the real Kathy Alva) and the Tony Alva/Stacy Peralta commentary on the LODT DVD. There is so much more to the Z-Boys/Zephyr story than the Lords of Dogtown 2005 theatrical film and I strongly encourage anyone who's interested in the DT&Z-Boys lore to check out the above references. Visiting Amazon and eBay should get you started nicely.

As mentioned in the disclaimer before Chapter 1, this is a work of fiction and all characters are merely based on real persons. However, the only major players who were made up entirely from whole cloth are Jess, Sandie, Angel and Karen. Everyone else is based at least in part on real Dogtowners who have told their stories either publicly via print/film or to me in personal conversations. I am highly indebted to them all.

Peace be with you all and catch ya on the flip-flop,
AM