Sally didn't sleep much that night.
Admittedly, it wasn't like she slept much at all anymore. Every time she closed her eyes, it was just a series of bad memories or strange visions— the spiderwebbing cracks of the car windshield. The blood on her mother's hand, bent back at an unnatural angle and wedged between the door and the seat. A bull with a man's body, bellowing in anger as lightning forked through the sky. A muscled body laying prone on the sand as the sun rose, glowing gold in the morning light. A teenage boy with bright gold eyes, a smirk growing across his face as he turned towards her before bursting into flames.
Sally had grown tired of waking with her throat sore from screaming or her cheeks damp from crying. So when she woke up the first time that night she just stayed awake, making herself a cup of tea with last year's stale teabags and hot water boiled on the stove.
"Groceries," she said to herself, taking stock of the empty cabinets in the dark kitchen, lit only by the flickering bursts of light from the raging storm outside. She'd go into town when the rain stopped, she decided.
Eventually, the storm slowed to a gentle rainfall, soaking Corinth Beach in a blanket of gray. Sally reached into the closet by the kitchen door but found only her old pink raincoat from four summers ago, the arms too short and the waist too small to be of any use. She reached instead for the thick yellow one with green plaid lining— her mother's, for as long as Sally could remember. She'd walked behind that shade of yellow to go to the library, a little duckling splashing around in puddles the whole way. Held onto the tails of it on the way to the fishmonger, as the boats brought in the net hauls of lobster, rain or shine.
Now, Sally wore it and tried to feel comforted instead of haunted as she splashed her way down the beach. The fastest way into town was to walk along the beach until she reached the catwalk and old bridge by the Corinth Beach Inn, and then to walk past the tables where fresh seafood was sold by the pound, past the tetherball court and the playground built out of splintery wood, until she reached the main stretch of town, where the same shops lined the road as had always been there. As long as Sally could remember, Corinth Beach had been exactly the same— the pizza place with an arcade in the back, Castellan's Bakery, Nightshade Trinkets and Herbs, and Emmie's Record Store, which always had music that had been popular five or ten years ago pouring out through its cracked-open doors.
The grocery store was just down the lane— more of a general store than anything else. It too was just as she remembered— bins laden with end-of-summer produce bounty, spilling over the edges like a cornucopia filled with a bed of butter beans and corn still in its husks, the small refrigerated section that held pudding pops and deli meats and milk and not much else, the checkout lines with chalky candy cigarettes and bubble gum ready to be purchased for just a few cents.
Sonny Hedge, freshly sixteen and already dressed in a T-shirt with the logo of the Corinth Beach High Football Team and a green baseball cap, was sitting by the checkout counter reading The Catcher in the Rye. He waved as she walked in. "Hey, Sally. Didn't think you were coming back this year."
"Just two months later than usual, that's all." Sally ducked her head before she could meet his eyes— she already knew the expression that would be on his face, and she didn't want to deal with it. She thought about adding and with dead parents just for the shock value but decided it wasn't worth it.
She did her shopping as quickly as she could— milk, butter, eggs, bread, pasta, enough produce to cobble together a sauce, enough meat to put in a sandwich and butter to layer it with, the good mustard that came with a little ribbon tied around its neck, a tub of instant coffee, a sack of sugar. It would put a dent in her already miserable finances, but the dull ache just below her ribs reminded Sally that she'd barely eaten a thing aside from May's brownie and a cup of tea in at least two days. Impulsively, she grabbed a wedge of soft cheese studded with chives and an apple, balancing them carefully atop the rest of her haul as she headed for the checkout line.
She ate the apple and cheese outside in the rain, groceries carefully stowed away under her mother's yellow raincoat while Sally slowly became soggier and soggier in the drizzle falling from the sky and the humidity that filled the air. Her hair began to curl in the damp, first lifting up nearly to her shoulders as it scrunched itself into ringlets, and then falling back down, sticking to her neck in slick, damp strands. The air smelled like salt and brine and petrichor— like life, which of course had to go on, dead parents or no.
Sally hadn't made up her mind about whether or not to stop in at Castellan's before heading home, and certainly she hadn't decided to take the job that May had offered, but a sudden gust of warm, end-of-summer wind practically blew her inside as she walked by.
John Castellan, all salt-and-pepper hair and mustache dusted with flour and enormous baker's arms from lifting grain sacks and kneading dough, was standing behind the tall bakery counter behind a stack of bread loaves, poring over a series of lists. He peered over the edge of his notepad, barely even lifting an eyebrow as he registered Sally's disheveled state.
"Bit rainy out, hm," was all he said as she shivered in the doorway, clutching her slowly disintegrating bag of groceries.
"Hi, Mr. Castellan." Sally reshuffled her grip, trying not to let the mustard go crashing to the ground. "I saw May yesterday. She brought the brownies. Thank you."
John set his notepad down and brushed his hands off on his apron. "She mentioned you didn't know how long you'd be staying. Said maybe you could use a job to do with your hands."
"Oh, are we finally getting some extra help?" someone called from around the corner.
Sally's brow furrowed. "Who's back there?"
"It's just Kai. He's restocking." John waved a hand at the door of the back storeroom, and then turned and bellowed, "I'M TRYING."
"What would the job include, anyway?" Sally asked, eyeing a fifty-pound flour sack in the corner that she definitely did not have the leg strength (or arm strength, or back or any other kind of strength) to lift.
"Cash register, mostly," John said. "Helping with the baking some. May tries, bless her, but she's busy with little Luke by the time the clock hits one most days, and we could use the extra hands."
"Kind of you to make it seem like you're the one in need of a favor," Sally noted.
"Anything for a girl alone in this world, to make her feel a little less alone," John said roughly. "I like to think if my May was in a pinch that someone would offer her a quiet little harbor and a bit of honest work."
"I appreciate it, Mr. Castellan. I really do." Sally shifted her grip on her groceries again. "I have to get these home before the milk turns or the storm picks up. But can I come back in the morning?"
John crossed his massive arms. "Does that mean you're taking the job?"
Sally surprised herself by nodding. "I guess so. Busy hands and honest work, right?"
And maybe, she thought, if I work hard enough I'll fall asleep without waking in a cold sweat dreaming of impossible horrors.
She made her way back past the tetherball pole and the splintery, sodden playground, back down the planks of the bridge to the beach. But she'd miscalculated the surge the storm would cause in the tide, or maybe she'd just been away too long and had forgotten how high up the beach the waves could surge. The water came nearly to her knees, and her shoes nearly came off her feet more than once as she struggled to pick out patches of ground to walk on where she didn't sink straight into the sand.
At one point she glanced down and saw what she could swear was a manatee, except manatees didn't swim as far north as Montauk, and besides, manatees didn't bear even remotely that close a resemblance to horses, let alone horses with fish tails. Clearly, she must have been hallucinating— too much walking and not enough food for the day. By the time she made it to her family's cottage— her cottage now, she supposed— there was a starfish clinging to the side of her grocery bag, a large clump of seaweed stuck to her hand, and she'd nearly stepped on several crabs. But she had groceries and she'd made it back and there was the promise of a job in the morning, so at least there was that.
The sun finally broke through the clouds around three o'clock. It wasn't long after that Sally opened up the windows to air out the cottage, letting a bit heavy, storm-debris air blow through the kitchen and front room. The storms weren't done yet— dark clouds gathered on the horizon and the waves were waist-high at the shore, curling white at their apexes.
And there— in the middle of the waves, soaring through water like an eagle winging through the sky— a surfer. Sally had to blink at first to make sure he was real, and not just yet another one of the strange visions she'd been having all summer. But no, there he was— tall, that much was clear even from a distance. His body gleamed golden in the mid-afternoon light, his board a soft foamy sea-green that sparkled when it arced through the water. He moved like he was carved from a supple clay, rippling through his smooth movements as he crouched and stood and trailed an arm along the side of a twenty-foot wave.
Sally could have watched him for hours. Maybe she did— the clock was in the other room and nowhere near her line of sight.
By the time the heavy clouds rolled in and electricity began to spark across the sky again, he was gone. Long after Sally had sealed the windows back up and closed the shutters, she found her gaze turning towards the windows— wondering who he was, where he'd come from, if perhaps he was local and she just hadn't seen him before, which would be odd but stranger things had happened. Or maybe he wasn't real at all— maybe he'd just fade into the soft edges of her vision, like the fish-tailed horses in the water or the man with the head of a bull in her dreams.
But maybe, just maybe, this mystery surfer might be inclined to stop into Castellan's and pick up a pastry— maybe then she'd get his name.
Slowly but surely setting the scene- fair warning to all, this may be a bit of a slow burn, especially since this fic is as much a character study and a thought experiment as it is a proper love story. That said- if you like what you're seeing, please don't hesitate to leave a review/comment- I always love to see responses to what I'm putting down on the page. ~GT