Dawn by McKayla Box
Chapter 36
Sunny slides into the passenger seat of my car. She’s wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. “I thought you might ditch me.”
“The thought occurred to me.”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I would’ve been so pissed.”
“That thought occurred to me, too.”
It’s been half an hour since I got off the phone with Bridget. I paced the living room for as long as I could, then texted Sunny and told her I was on my way.
I haven’t heard from Trevor yet, which is good because it means there should be no chance of us running into him anywhere.
“You have the address?” Sunny asks.
I point to the computer screen on the dash. “Plugged it in. This is your last chance to bail.”
She shakes her head. “Not a chance.”
“Bridget made me share my location with her,” I tell her as I pull away. “But she didn’t try to talk me out of it.”
“That’s good,” she says. “About both things.”
The GPS routes us away from the beach and onto the freeway. The traffic is thankfully light and the computer-generated voice tells us that we’ll be at our destination in 31 minutes.
Great.
“Are you registered for school yet?” I ask, trying to avoid the silence so that I don’t get too far into my own head.
“Yeah,” she says. “My dad took care of it before I moved in with Uncle Frank and Trevor. So I guess I’m doing this.”
“You had another choice?”
She shrugs. “There’s always another choice. I could’ve stayed and dealt with my parents’ bullshit, but it was just really starting to get to me. Finishing my senior year at a new school seemed like the better option, if that tells you anything.”
I nod. “I get it.”
“And I’m not missing anything at my old school,” she says. “Not many friends. No boyfriend anymore.”
“You sound like me about a year and a half ago,” I tell her. “We moved here from Virginia and I sort of felt the same way.”
“So you get it,” she says. “Doesn’t really matter where I go to school at this point.”
“You said no boyfriend anymore. Recent breakup?”
She snorts. “Right after school started and the week before Homecoming. Football player. We’d been together for almost a year. Thought we were good. He thought it’d be fun to fuck the captain of the volleyball team.”
“Yikes.”
“At my house,” she adds. “During a party.” She shakes her head, and I can feel the disgust radiating off of her. “Pretty much ended my interest in guys for awhile.”
“Can’t blame you for that,” I say. “I thought I was done with guys until your cousin sort of bullied his way into my life.”
She laughs. “He’s kind of like that. I honestly can’t believe he has a serious girlfriend.” She looks at me, her expression immediately contrite. “Sorry. That just sort of came out.”
“I know all about his sordid history,” I say, smiling. “I know what he was like before I got to Sunset. It’s fine. He’s with me now. What’s in the past is in the past.”
“If it matters, he’s fucking nuts about you.”
I glance at her. “Nuts?”
She nods. “Yes. He and I have always been kinda close, at least close enough that we’ve always talked pretty regularly. Text and stuff. He’s been talking about you for a long time. And not much else.”
“That’s nice to hear,” I say as I change lanes to avoid a slow-moving semi. “Thank you for saying it.”
“It’s the truth,” she says. “And it’s pretty clear you’re fucking nuts about him, too.” She laughs. “I mean, look at what we’re doing tonight.”
She’s not wrong. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Maybe some day.”
“Some day what?”
“Maybe some day I’ll have what you guys have,” she says. “But I’m not looking for it right now.”
“Guys are gonna be all over you at Sunset,” I tell her. “Just be forewarned. You’re gorgeous and you’re new. It’s like there will be a sign around your neck, telling them to hit on you.”
She groans. “Great. And thanks for saying that. I’ll be alright. I can handle it.”
I think about what I know about Sunny, especially how she dealt with Shanna. She’s right. She probably can handle whatever Sunset throws her way.
We drive in silence for awhile, heading south on the highway, passing the downtown area, the bridge that crosses the harbor, and then into the cities just north of the border. I realize that even though I’ve lived here for over a year, I’ve never been this far south of Sunset Beach. It always sounded like another world from the way people talked about it. More diversity among the residents. Normal-sized homes rather than the McMansions of Sunset. And lots of stories about the rough neighborhoods close to the U.S.-Mexican border. I was fairly sure a lot of those stories involved San Rivero.
The GPS routes us off the highway and then back under it. Strip malls line the road with liquor stores, Laundromats, small groceries, and payday lenders. The cars are older here, not like the bright, shiny foreign cars that are everywhere in Sunset Beach.
Including my own driveway.
We follow the directions from the computer and turn right, heading south again, then right again. It points us back to the west and pretty soon we’re on the road right next to a narrow strip of beach.
Sunny leans forward and points at the lights in the distance. “That has to be Mexico, right?”
“I think so?” I say, looking at the land jutting out into the ocean. “But I’ve never been.”
“Crazy that we can see it from here. And that it’s so close.”
I’d never given it much thought, but it was a little surreal to know that a foreign country was within viewing distance. Growing up in Virginia, the closest country was Canada well to the north.
“Yeah.”
We pass a parking lot next to the beach and it’s half full with cars and boat trailers, some empty and some loaded up. Just beyond the lot are two small docks with a sailboat and a small fishing boat moored to one of them. It would be super easy for Trevor and Brett to have docked their boat right there.
“Turn left in 200 feet.” The voice from the dashboard startles me.
My stomach tightens.
Sunny sits up straighter in her seat.
I make the left and slow down.
“The destination is on your right,” the computer says. “Arrived.”
We’ve arrived.