On the way home from Jonah’s house last night, I passed a white mailbox with metal numbers attached: sixty-six. No way, I thought, staring down at the numbers I’d written down in my bedroom hours before. I was cutting out various and sundry fashion photos from magazines because I was going to do something with them, I actually don’t remember, but my eyes landed on page sixty-six.
Sixty-six is a nice number—not a mirror image or anything, but it’s round and curly and full. But, more important, my name in capital letters makes a Roman numeral: VIVI. Okay, technically, that’s not the actual Roman numeral for sixty-six, but I think we can agree it is very close. It seemed like the magazine page was calling out to me—why, of all pages, did my eyes land on this one? So I scribbled it down on my hand and did some important work around my room. Eventually I went to see Jonah because I was craving someone’s mouth on mine the way you crave cold lemonade on a summer day, like it’s the only thing that sounds good in the world, like you’ll ache until you get it.
I’m onto something; I can feel it in my very bones. My senses tickled my arms and the back of my neck. It’s kind of like how elephants can sense an oncoming earthquake because of their hearing or vibrations or something. Only I sensed numbers. I stared between the digits on the mailbox and the ones in permanent marker on my hand. The universe, it was trying to communicate with me. What are the odds of me writing down a random number on my hand for the first time ever and then coming across that exact number? It must not have been a random number at all, but what did it mean?! The red flag was up on the mailbox, so I opened it and looked inside to find one envelope—pink, with a girl’s name and a Virginia address on it. I squeezed my eyes shut and spun the envelope around in my hand, and when I popped my eyes open, they landed on 1011, the street address written on the envelope. One-oh-one-one, I chanted to myself until I found a pen in my purse and wrote it below the 66 on my hand.
So I’m wandering through town, waiting for my arms to get goose bumps, waiting to see the next instance of 1011 that I’m sure wants me to find it. There are ghosts dancing down Main Street in the darkness of night. Everything is so quiet, oh beautiful Verona Cove, with streetlights like glowing planets, and I can almost see the town’s history—from way back when women were only allowed to wear dresses. The town swallows me up, and I hunt in every direction—the outskirts of town and the sleeping neighborhoods and the beach, because you never know. I’m everywhere, for seconds, for hours, for eternities, on the prowl. I see everything there is to see.
The sun is up when I find myself back in the center of town. Hmm. No clues. Maybe I got the last one wrong. There has to be a 1011 somewhere. I walk the length of Betty’s Diner, reading the white letters on the window. They list the hours for every day of the week, and oh my God, OH MY GOD.
Thursday: 5:00 AM–10:00 PM
Friday: 5:00 AM–11:00 PM
Sandwiched right there—1011—vertically, in the middle. I knew it; I knew the numbers would lead me forward, and I skip through the diner doors with the knowledge that the universe sees me and has something spectacular planned.
“Morning, baby doll,” Betty says as I slide myself into a booth. “You look like a gumshoe. Better button up, though.”
I glance down at my own lap, and my nightgown is visible between the open flaps of my trench coat—which, you know, I couldn’t care less about, but I fasten the coat just because Betty is my friend, and I have too much on my mind to disagree at the moment. I guess I’m still wearing the fedora I wore over to Jonah’s house last night because I was trying to sneak over there and the number sixty-six was beating around my head.
“Officer Hayashi asked about you.”
“Why?” My eyes dart to her as panic floods me. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, of course not. He just expected you for breakfast like usual, I think,” Betty says. “You okay, honey?”
“Of course! I’m really top-notch, like sashaying around town on a mission, and I’m not a hundred percent sure where it’s leading me, but it’s going to be good, Betty, you’ll see.”
“So what’ll it be this morning? Pancakes? Veggie omelet?”
I tried to work my way down the menu at the beginning of the summer, but then I couldn’t anymore because I had to go where my feelings took me. Now I have no idea what to do. None of the meals are $10.11. The pancakes cost $4.99 and the veggie omelet is $5.49 unless I add extra veggies and then it’s . . . more, my mind is working too fast to add, I need to write it down.
“Need a minute?” Betty prompts me. I had forgotten she was standing there; God, this is impossible. How am I supposed to know? My breathing is loud in my nose.
Sixty-six brought me from the magazine to the mailbox, and then 1011 brought me here, but now what? I’m drowning in all the options because everything is too much. Nothing adds up . . . but I need a new number anyway, like I originally got 1011 from the mailbox. But what’s next? Fate! I’ll leave it up to fate.
“Betty, can you decide for me? I mean, surprise me, you know? I like everything so it’ll be swell no matter what, okay?” I exhale deeply. Whew. This is the right plan. I’ll get my next number from my bill, once it comes. ’Tis meant to be!
“All right, sugar. Wheel of fortune it is.”
I sip the coffee that I do not need because it’s something to do while I think, while I doodle all over my napkin, and I rearrange all the condiments and sweetener packets. Betty brings me a stack of waffles, and I’m not really hungry, but I eat them just so she’ll bring me my bill sooner. When she does, I scan over the numbers. My total is $7.60. Seven-sixty. My next clue. Here I come, world!
I don’t know how long I’ve been searching exactly, but it’s night again, and I am empty-handed, magic-numbers-wise. So I stop at home to look around my house for 760.
My mom is in the kitchen with a local painter friend, drinking wine and looking kind of dressed up.
“Hey,” she says. “I was just starting to wonder where you’ve been.”
“Oh, you know, just playing around with the kids and Jonah,” I say, hurrying past. Jonah. The magic word—one quick mention and whatever I’m doing is wholesome and innocent and inherently good.
She laughs and rolls her eyes at her friend. Once I’m halfway up the stairs, I hear her say stuff like how I’m almost never home, always with my cute boyfriend, ya know, teenagers in the summertime, gotta love it.
There’s some dirt on my trench coat, though I have no idea how it got there, so I pull a new outfit from my closet—a colorful skirt that sits low on my hip but flows all the way to my ankles. It covers a lot of skin, so I choose a black tube top that shows some of my stomach. I toss the fedora onto the bed and pile bracelets up my arms. I’m a jangly, brightly hued vision. A vision! Sylvia dances around my room in hyper approval.
My laptop catches my eye, and I figure, you know, why not? I search 760.
Oh Holy Mother of the Infinite Stars. It’s one of the area codes for San Diego.
That’s it!
And in the very same moment, I start to wonder what this number trail is leading me toward. It could be anything. It could be something the rest of the world doesn’t even realize exists. It could be the secret to time travel. Maybe the universe has chosen to reveal this secret only to me, and if I just keep following the numbers, I’ll be the first human to achieve it. Oh, where will I travel to first? Maybe the universe will give me a number sign for that, too! Back to the 1920s, to my ballet days, into suffrage and jazz? I dearly hope so. I’m delighted to be the chosen one, and I’ll do the universe proud, too. All my life has been building to this. My hands tremble with the knowledge that I’m heading toward something so remarkable. Maybe I’ll find it in San Diego, maybe San Diego will just give me numbers to lead me farther, but no matter: I’ll follow the clues anywhere.
My Vespa keys jangle in my hand, and I call to my mom that I’ll be back later, and she barely looks up, laughing to her friend about who knows what.
I walk smack into Jonah on my front porch.
“Hey,” I say, breezing past him. I’m a girl on a mission.
“Hey.” He trots beside me until he’s in my peripheral vision. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is magnificent, lover, but I’ve gotta bolt. Got a date with history.”
He keeps following alongside me. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Neither do I, really, but I’ll find out, won’t I?”
I feel him grasp my arm. His eyes trace down my whole body. “What are you wearing?”
“Um, clothes, what does it look like?”
He frowns—what a buzzkill, honestly—and whispers, “Viv, that bra thing is, like, completely see-through.”
“It’s a tube top, and I don’t care. Nothin’ you haven’t seen before!” Then I laugh and pull my tube top down for a second just because I can. Jonah looks horrified and tugs it back up, glancing around to see if the neighbors have noticed my bare breasts in the one split second I set them free. Prude. “Relax, my love, everything is wonderful, and there’s nothing to worry about.”
Jonah frowns, and at this point, he’s seriously cramping my style and pissing me off. “Are we okay?”
Ugh. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we be? I mean, I’m fabulous; I don’t know how you are.”
He circles his arms around my waist, and the heat of his bare skin feels good on my stomach—soothing. “I haven’t heard from you all day. You didn’t answer my texts. I don’t know. We fought and then . . . you came over last night, and . . . I don’t know.”
My mind can barely make out his words because I’m looking at his lips and my body is like a hmmmmmmmm sound from the tips of my ears to my toes. I pull him into me, closer, and I kiss him with all the ferocity that I feel. It’s like heat blooming all over my body, and I can’t think of any reason not to get naked with him right here in front of God and any of the neighbors because I really don’t care. Sex is a natural thing, you know, like, big freaking deal.
He wrenches back from me and says, “Hey. Can we just talk?”
Jesus. Like, honestly. Way to slam the brakes on what could have been a lovely naked roller-coaster ride, but WHATEVER.
“Can’t. On a mission. Gotta fly because there are big things in store for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“It’s a surprise.” I mount my Vespa, my noble steed.
“Can I go with you?”
Nope! Wait. He could be useful for directions. I don’t have a plan for that, and it would be easy enough to drive south and wait to see signs for San Diego—or more numbers before I even get there; who knows?! But he might as well come, I guess.
“Okay. Sure. Climb aboard, second matey.”
His face disappears under the extra helmet, and he hands me my new helmet.
“Um, no. I cannot be caged inside that thing; I can’t breathe.”
“It’s literally illegal for you to not wear it. You got pulled over for not wearing it.”
He is dragging down this entire adventure already, and I think about breezing off and just plain old leaving him here. But I’m in a freaking hurry, so I smash the stupid helmet onto my head and rev the engine like a purring cat—no, a jaguar!—ready to prrrowwwwl.
We whizz through Verona Cove and I relish the Vespa’s rhythm beneath me, the way a rider feels the horse’s steady heartbeat beneath him, and they are one. That’s a lost dream of mine, to be a jockey in a tall velvet cap and high leather boots, and I would have been a fantastic jockey, too, because I love horses; I love their proud features, their spirit, their loyalty, even the names of their coloring—bay, palomino, pinto—and I always thought equestrians looked attached to their horses, both being operated by the same control system, like trunk and branch, except you can’t tell which is which because they move together. The Vespa and I breathe in sync and it gallops beneath me and I grip the reins tighter, tighter.
The road transitions into Highway 1, or maybe it’s not even called that—like, I only think it’s called that because it’s the number one highway in the world, if you ask me. On the left side we pass trees and trees and little houses, and the right side drops off into the ocean.
“Viv, pull over! Pull over!” Jonah is screaming, blah-blah-blah, overreacting, holding on way too tight to my waist, blah-blah. “I swear to God, Vivi!”
I don’t really hear him until he digs his fingernails into my ribs, and I feel that, yipping.
When I finally veer off to the side of the road, I feel him leap from the bike. He whirls back at me, pulling his helmet off his head. “WHAT is your PROBLEM?”
I push the plastic screen on my helmet up. “Shhhhhhh, stop yelling, I can’t hear my own thoughts, Jonah!”
“You’re speeding like you’re on coke! And did you not see the stop sign back there?”
“Oh, Jonah. Stop signs are just red octagons that people assign power to.”
“Let me drive. Give me your keys.” He’s standing in the grass, a bend in the road, and he has become a bend in my road. I just can’t have him keeping me from my destiny. “I’m driving you home because you’re obviously drunk or high or both.”
“I am NOT, and you will do NO SUCH THING.”
“Viv, you’re scaring the hell out of me right now, okay? Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” That’s what I hear anyway, so I toddle my head back and forth, la-la-don’t-care-not-listening. I tune in only for the end of his red-in-the-face rampage of blah-blah glory. “. . . then I’d rather walk home.”
“THEN WALK HOME FOR ALL I CARE, BYE!” I call, and I wish I wasn’t already on the scooter so I could traipse away from him, so I could flounce without a care in the world. Gotta go! Got a whole big world to see, and a whole big world that needs to see me, too, and I can’t be held back by a boy who is naysaying my journey, no matter how beautiful he is, because I’m going to thrash down the coast, scouring through between sea and sky, and I CANNOT BE HELD BACK.
The engine growls, and I stand up on the bike as it lurches forward and the wind grabs my skirt, and I yell “AYE-YI-YI!” because I am made of moondust and twinkle lights, because I’m impervious to the shortsighted mortality of my peers, to their finite days on this planet that they spend being closed-off and insecure and inert. No, no, no, I am more than this world, as wide as the trees all around me. Huzzah!
My grip loosens and my legs compress for a moment, like springs of a coil pressed down. When they release, the tension pushes me up, and I’ve done it. I’m airborne and weightless and soaring and free.