sides reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water's edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but close up were every shade a stone could be: terracotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, purple gray, brown gray, dull gold, gold gray, dull lavender, lavender gray, gold gold, and sea gray. It was like looking into an infinite kaleidoscope. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves' waving fingers.
There was a brisk wind coming off the waves, cool, and briny. Pelicans floated on the swells like seagulls and a lone eagle wheeled above them. There were so many birds, I almost couldn't watch them all at the same time, although I did. The clouds circled the sky like birds.
We picked our way down to the beach, Mike leading the way to a ring of driftwood logs that had obviously been used for parties like ours before. There was a fire circle already in place, filled with black ashes. Eric and his Chinese friends gathered broken branches of driftwood, tiny little logs, and soon had a teepee-shaped construction built atop the old cinders.
"Have you ever seen a driftwood fire?" Mike asked me. I was sitting on one of the bone-colored benches; the other girls clustered, gossiping excitedly on either side of me. Mike kneeled by the fire, lighting one of the smaller sticks with a cigarette lighter.
"No," I said as he placed the blazing twig carefully against the teepee.
"I could light your fire," he whispered, almost inaudibly. Things were getting weird. I hoped Jessica couldn't hear him.
A seagull hovered above us and took a fat shit on Mike's horseface. I pretended that nothing had happened and

116

Chapter 6

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