Different Circles

She had her very own room in the house! It was a room that was twice the size of the room she and Gracie shared at home, with a bed that was also twice the size of hers, a walk-in closet, her very own bathroom (complete with a bathtub with little jets that shot water out), and a window that looked out over the ocean! The house had a pool table, a pinball machine, something called a shuffleboard table, refrigerators that were endlessly stocked with Pepsi, a bitchin’ stereo system with a huge collection of CDs, and a big screen TV with a huge collection of recorded movies. There was a radical housekeeper named Elsa, who talked with a British accent, called her “Miss Chastity”, did her laundry for her (as long as she emptied her pockets and put it in the hamper), fixed snacks for them throughout the day, made awesome breakfasts and dinners, and then cleaned everything up afterward herself (as long as they finished what was placed on their plates and as long as they put everything else in the places she had designated they be put). And there was a hot tub out on the edge of the cliff the house sat on; a hot tub that she was allowed to use as much as she wanted. And she used it quite frequently, sitting out there for hours at a time, staring out at that amazing expanse of blue water that was the Pacific Ocean until her skin became wrinkled like a prune.

Their first full day in Oceano they had spent mostly in the huge sand dunes along the beach, riding four-wheel ATVs with big flags sticking up from the rear. She and Gracie had been allowed to each have their own ATV to themselves! And after the day of riding, they had come back to the home, taken showers in their private bathrooms, and been served a meal of homemade chicken tacos, refried beans, and Spanish rice.

Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura had the friggin’ life! And all because he knew how to play his guitar and sing a little! Friggin’ amazing!

But none of that could even come close to comparing to what was going to happen today. Celia friggin’ Valdez! she thought with a near religious awe. I’m actually going to meet her in a about an hour! Oh my God! What will I say to her? What will she be like? Will she like me? Why would she like a kid like me? Will she even talk to me?

“Relax, Chase,” Uncle Jake said with a smile, obviously picking up on her thoughts to some degree. Uncle Jake was a very perceptive guy (and, she could not help but think, pretty friggin’ hot in a bad-boy sort of way—after all, he wasn’t a blood uncle, right?) “Celia is just an ordinary person like you and me. She likes spunk, and you’ve got a lot of that.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” he assured her. He seemed about to say something else, but then his attention was suddenly distracted. “Ohh, here it is,” he said reaching for the volume button on the car’s radio screen.

“That song you were talking about?” Chase asked.

“That song I was talking about,” he said. “It’s debuting this morning. Let’s listen. Tell me what you think about it.”

“Okay,” she said, sensing that he was not just trying to shut her up so that he could listen, but was genuinely interested in what her opinion of the song might be. That made her feel very adult.

The DJ on the local alternative rock station was introducing the new tune to the listening audience—a large portion of which were college students from Cal Poly. “ ... from a band called V-tach, whatever that means,” he was saying. “Their debut album will be coming out in a few more weeks and is produced by none other than Jake Kingsley, our local cliff-dwelling, noisy-airplane-flying celebrity who used to front Intemperance. I’m told that the members of V-tach are all members of the band that backed Kingsley last year at the Tsunami Sound Festival in Indian Springs, Nevada, where all the reviewers report they stole the show from the headliner Matt Tisdale, former guitar player for Intemp. Bigg G, the piano playing rapper who was part of Kingsley’s band for the TSF is, alas, not one of the members of V-tach, but nevertheless, this is some good, solid alt-rock music. Give it a listen. It’s called When I’m Not Home.”