No one's P.O.V

Santa Carla sat right out on the cusp of the Pacific. If you stood on the beach at night, watching the waves break on the sand brushed silver by moonlight, it was one of the most magnificent places ever to be seen. Warm summer nights brought about bands of roving teenagers, with alcohol in their blood and dreams in their eyes, to the waters edge, where bonfires would be lit in tribal quarters. A strip of leaping amber light stretching beyond the coast, as far as the naked eye could see.

That was Santa Carla.

A place where fire clashed with water, and day melted to night, and time didn't mean much at all.

Nevertheless, Santa Carla was not a quiet town. Nor was it peaceful and calm. It beat in the land like an open chest, the banks of the cliffs cracking like split ribs, thrumming with life, and, if you turned from that glittering sea, that silver beach and swollen moon, you'd find the heart.

The Boardwalk.

Music and rides, chatter and singing, the heartbeat of the small coastal city sang. When you walked the trail, past the three-tries-for-a-dollar booths, piercers and tattoo artists haggling for better spots than the clothes venders, past the food stands selling hot-dogs and cotton candy, past the Tilt-a-whirl, teacups and Ferris wheel, so brightly lit it stole the place of the stars on the skyline come night, then you came to the core.

The carousel.

The locals said you've never really been to Santa Carla unless you rode the merry-go-round and got the chip to prove it.

It was an old beast of a machine, made in the fifties, carved with real wooden horses of notched paint and splintered timber, and the ditty it sang from the loudspeakers hidden in the beams of the tented roof was Waltzing Matilda.

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong, you'll never catch me alive, said he. And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. His ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. Oh, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me.

That would be the last song Big Ed, the security guard, would ever hear, and his ghost was never heard as anyone passed the old merry-go-round.

That particular night, the last night of his life for poor Big Ed, a group of kids flooded the carousal. They were easily recognizable by their Mohawks and shaved heads, the tattoos littering their arms, the garish colours they were in board shorts, and the 'My Beach, My Wave' logo shirts they preened in.

Big Ed had dealt with them before.

They weren't the problem.

Not really.

A small gang who had taken to calling themselves Surf Nazis.

Children playing at cops and robbers, more like.

Charming name, Big Ed thought.

They stormed the carousel like a flock of flamingos, jostling the other riders, shooing off those they didn't like, harassing the odd girl that caught their eye before she tucked tail and ran. Their leader, a man called Greg, leaned back into one of the chariots, watching it all, a half smile crooking at his chapped lips, his sun-kissed arm slung around the petite shoulders of Shelly, his current squeeze.

The merry-go-round groaned as it began, the calliope whirring to Waltzing Matilda.

That's when they came. They had no name, unlike Greg and his gaggle of geese. Only what other venders and security guards had taken to calling them in passing, between hushed whispers and darting glances.

The Lost Boys.

So called, Big Ed thought, because everyone who ever gravitated towards them, though no proof could ever be found, got lost, fast.

Peter Pan collecting souls for Neverland.

For how else was immortality gained if not in a bargain?

Life gives life.

Their spearhead, a tall, blonde and black shadow by the name of David, slunk up and slipped into the twirling carousel, just as the song was winding to its last chorus. The others trailed the path he blazed.

Shelly's eye wandered.

Shelly's eye caught.

And Shelly smiled.

His face flickered in the lights, as David smiled back, grin slick and keen, pulsing in shades of blinking red. Greg-with-his-greasy-hair didn't like that smile, he didn't like it one bit. He shot a scowl to his girlfriend and jumped from his seat, lurching towards David's direction.

They moved to walk passed him, as if Greg wasn't even there, and that, being so invisible, with all his bright clothing and loudmouth and spiked, bleached hair, was something his fragile ego couldn't take. His hand shout out as David strolled passed, knocked into shoulder, though the blonde held true.

Waltzing Matilda carried on Waltzing.

David's lip curled, Greg's men homed into the action, hyenas sniffing a fight wafting in the air, and behind him, the three boys closed ranks behind the platinum blond.

Won't you go a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.

Big Ed should have left it very well alone. Let the two duke it out. It wasn't really his problem. Who knew? One or the other might solve the problem of the next for him. Yet, Big Ed didn't. David took a half step, as measured as he was, as cold as his gaze, and he promptly found a nightstick pressed against his Adam's apple.

Big Ed would remember, for the short time he was alive after this, how those wintry sapphire eyes drew up the nightstick, slowly, so slowly, so sure of himself, down to the beefy hand clutching the handle, attached to the body of Big Ed. All three hundred pounds of him.

A security guard who had made it difficult, one too many times, for either the Surf Nazis or the Lost Boys to have their fun.

The carousel ground to a halt.

Matilda waltzed no more.

The ride was over.

Big Ed's fate was sealed long before he spoke.

"I told you to stay off the Boardwalk."

The blue-eyed boy, for he was a boy to Big Ed, stared at him, not moving for a long while. Though his own eyes were small, beady, the bullies in class so long ago used to taunt him with, what they lacked in size they tripled for anger.

David smiled, softly. A twist to the lips like a snake coiling around an already dead mouse. He tilted his head over his shoulder, slanting chin towards his boys, but never let his gaze drift from Big Ed's.

"Come on, let's dip."

He walked away. They all walked away, snickering. Big Ed, as so many others would, thought it was over.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

With night so heavy around him, Big Ed turned to the brats at his back.

"You too. Off the Boardwalk. And don't come back!"

Greg stared at him, looking as if he might spit in Big Ed's face, before, wisely, choosing to leave with his flock.

It was getting late. Time to shut down the hot dog booths, the three-for-a-dollar come-ons, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Ferris wheel, and the teacups. Big Ed watched the banks of lights go out one by one as the amusement park closed down for the night.

He was tired by the time he shirked his locker open in the back of his tiny office and retrieved his lunch pail. In his head, he knew a swift way to deal with those kids. A gun and a clip. However, he would never get a gun, as he would never get to pass the police exam, as he would never make it home.

Three am, and for the only time on the twenty-four-hour clock, Santa Carla was silent. The only sound to be found was Big Ed's boots crunching on the gravel as he trekked across the empty parking lot, out of breath, cursing the kids who parked so close and forced him into the back lot. He made it to his car, rummaging in his pocket for his keys.

That's when the noise came. At first he thought it was the wind, a rush of air gusting abruptly off the beach. But… There was something else. Something lurking in the low notes like perfume. A high screeching sound, like chalk skittering across blackboard, a knife scraping plate, a whispering-

A hundred voices murmuring his name.

Big Ed looked up for the final time. His eyes widened in surprised. His mouth opened, scream building in his lungs. He didn't get that far. He was gone before he could so much as exhale. His lunch pail clattered to the warm, worn pavement, the only sign he had ever been there to begin with.

Questions came easy. Where did he go? A man that size couldn't just vanish. One breath in, a blink, and gone. The boardwalk was barren, the only faces were those of the screaming masks on the front of the fun house, the beach deserted, bonfires nothing but damp logs. The only sound left was the lapping of the waves.

A rush of wind. Screeching. A whisper, soft like a lovers caress. Something fell with a thud to the wet sand lining the cliffs. By daybreak, the tide would wash it away. If it wasn't for the uniform, the body had nothing in common with Big Ed.

What had once been a burly security guard was nothing but a rag doll now. Nothing left beneath his clothes but bones and skin. A large cavity tore his neck asunder, the flesh ripped clean away, only a few tattered bits of sinew and meat dangling from stark white bone.

It wasn't a messy corpse. It was all withered out, like an apricot left to rot in the sun. Blood gone. Every drop. Big Ed's listless eyes gaped into the sky as the wind and whispering faded with the waning moon.

Laughter danced in the breeze of a cave.

Michael Emerson's P.O.V

The night was alive. There was no other way to describe it, at least to Michael, who, seventeen years old, had never seen anything remotely like Santa Carla at night. The beach was crammed, a writhing throng, part swarm, undulating under music. Bonfires lit their way like roads to Rome, creeping almost to the very edge of the boardwalk. Each bonfire seemed to attract a thousand kids who bounced between the fire, fluttering like moths in the dark.

And in his head, all Michael could think about was the precise phrasing he was going to use to tell his mother that he wanted to drop out of school. Get a job. Anything but… But this. Perhaps he could work on the boardwalk. Toss sausages in buns, or spin sugar, or, perhaps, load the kids onto the rides. He didn't care much what it was he did, but it had to be something.

Michael had to do something.

He thirsted for change like a babe wailed for their mother.

After the ugly divorce, after Bella's accident… He couldn't go back to pretending everything had been as it was. He was changed. His family was changed.

His mother wouldn't understand. In fact, she was ostensibly swimming in the opposite direction as him, breaststrokes back to the past, trying so hard to turn things around, turn them back to what they were. It was hopeless, Michael knew. Once the butterfly was out the chrysalis, there was no stuffing its wings back in. You only tore them off, otherwise. As bleak as their dwindling funds. Another reason he needed a job, rather than early morning lectures.

He just had to convince his mother.

It wouldn't be that much of a struggle, would it? After all, Bella was already off, Lucy having hired a home tutor who was due next week, the amnesia having stolen her ability to write much more than her name before her brain went haywire and short circuited. And if Michael was home more, if he got a night job, he could be there to help. Help around the house. Help his mother with money. Help Bella scramble back to… However far she could scramble back after having her head caved in from a bike ride gone wrong, skull smashed with a metal plate holding what little remained together.

She had nearly died. His twin had nearly died. Alone, smeared across tarmac like a bug on a windshield. Michael hadn't been there. Michael had been in school, playing a basketball game, the last of the season, the same game Bella had been riding to come and watch. It was his fault she was out on the road that night, exactly where an eight-by truck could clip her tail, and-

Not again.

Michael would talk to his mother, make her see the light, and that would be the end of that.

He wasn't going back.

Until then, he would enjoy all Santa Carla had to offer a desperate youth hunting for a distraction.

Rock music whirred in the air, pounding around them. A band played up ahead, swinging on a makeshift stage, their own music mixing with the humming of the dozen boomboxes littering the bonfires of the beach. Michael's feet hit the cloying sand in time with the beat. A thud, thud, thudding that eased his frayed nerves and dark thoughts.

It felt good to be outside. To breathe fresh air tainted with the sweat of a thousand bodies dancing. Sweet from the beach and rotting seaweed, sour from the people and smoke. There was something… Tantalizing in that scent. A balance between death and life and all the small victories in between.

Bella appeared to appreciate it too, lingering, unhurried, wide-eyed wonder as she glanced all about her, darting this way and that, caught by the lights and the music.

Sam… Not so much, by the curl of his nose.

The trio of siblings had split from their mother as soon as the car had rolled to a stop in the parking lot, as Lucy went job searching and the siblings went to sniff out trouble. They found said trouble, or as close to it as any of them dared, in the mosh pit of the beach stage. A veritable sea of drifters, drugs and daring deeds.

A young blond girl, with dirt smudged over her chin, ran past them, laughing as she weaved and leapt over a prone couple by a drift log. A couple who appeared entirely too caught up with shoving their tongues as far down each other's throats to notice the little imp of a girl had nabbed the guys wallet from where he left it sitting in the sand.

Michael moved his own to his front jeans pocket.

Whether or not Santa Carla was the murder capital of the world, it sure as hell a lot wilder than Phoenix. Michael liked it. He liked it a lot. He wanted to look everywhere, be everywhere, see and hear it all at once until his thoughts were drowned out his own head.

For just once, he didn't want to think.

Just… Be.

Bella was the first to stop by the stage, reaching out to silently tug on Michael's shirt to get him, too, to stop, knowing there was no way he would hear her raspy voice over the din of the music. Sam caught up moments later, scuffing his shoes in the sand. His face was like thunder. Overcast.

The wind from the sea was ruffling his hair, the hair Sam spent twenty minutes perfecting in homage to that reckless care of James Dean, before he left the house, after another twenty minutes of making sure his clothes were just the right combination of Matthew Broderick and Rob Lowe.

It was funny, Michael thought. Back in Phoenix, Sam would have blended in with the crowd. Yet, here, in a place like Santa Carla, lost in the horde of jumping teenagers, dressed for summer and the beach, wearing everything from skimpy bikinis to sweatshirts and torn jeans in leopard print, he stuck out like a swore thumb.

He wasn't too impressed by it all, with the scowl marring his face.

"I want to go home and change."

Michael laughed, as Bella jostled Sam's shoulder.

"Will you stop worrying about your clothes? They're fine."

Sam batted back at Bella, who only chuckled at the half-hearted swipe at her arm.

"Just because you look like you go dumpster diving in goodwill, doesn't mean we all want to look like that. There is more than plaid and denim to fashion, Bella. You do realise that, right?"

Bella pulled on her shirt underneath her denim patched jacket, wearily eyeing the plaid.

"I thought you said I looked good in this?"

Sam scoffed.

"Good for a lumberjack. Yeah. You look like John Bender from Breakfast club, and he was never the hot one. Lose the beanie and then we'll talk."

Michael clapped a hand up the back of his head. Sam yelped and scowled up to his oldest brother, rubbing the back of his head, cheeks flushing.

"Knock it off, squirt."

The beanie was a sore spot. As Sam should know, by the way Bella, every now and again like the tick of a clock, readjusted the old hat. Making sure it covered the side of her shaved head, where the scar, still hot and pink with knotted stitches, poked out from under a lock of hair, slicing down beneath her eye. However, Bella seemed to hesitate, squinting to the crowd of mismatched people around her. Gently, she reached up and swiped the hat off, brushing a hand through her auburn hair, scar free to the breeze, and resolutely dumped the hat in the sand at her feet.

It was the first time she'd dared going out without covering it up as best as she could.

"Better?"

Sam beamed, nodding warmly.

"Better."

Maybe Sam knew what he was doing in the end. More than Michael. If only he could-

No thinking, only music.

Looping an arm around his brother's shoulder, and one around his sisters arm, Michael dragged them into the heart of the mosh pit. The centre of action is where he needed to be right then, and he clambered for it. The music grew, rising, throbbing, washing away all his worries like communion washed away a sinners evil.

The music surrounded him, embraced, and he could feel the drums hammer through the sand, the howling of a rifting guitar pressing against his bare face and arms. He closed his eyes, and could feel the singer's voice behind his eyelids.

This was it.

This was life.

He opened his eyes and looked over the crowd. Everybody was moving, smiling, breathing in one giant breath, until the wind no longer belonged to the sea, but to them.

What could be better than this?

That's when he saw her.

It was her hair that caught his attention at first, a dark cascade of whorls billowing about pale, petite shoulder. A smear of coal in the ocean of sun streaked blondes. She was dressed all in lace, like a gypsy or a bride, or a girl from a fairy tale. Her clothes would look absurd on someone else, as if they had cut up their grandmother's curtains. Yet, on her, well…

Michael had to remember to breathe.

He had never seen anyone like her before, and he felt a little like Goldilocks. Everything about her, from her moonlit face to the soft swaying of her hips, was just right.

She was in the middle of the crowd, up on the ledge behind him, but Michael could see only her. It was as if they were the only two people truly alive, really listening to the music, as if the thousand others around them had just been put there for show. Plastic mannequins in a shop window. Convincing, but missing soul.

When she danced, she was dancing just for him. When she smiled that sweet, sad smile, Michael knew just what she felt. Sweet and sour, like the air all around them. Tragically decayed. The right side of wrong.

Sam said something, something that made Bella chuckle, but he couldn't hear. Not over the battering of his own heart beating in time to the drums in his ears, deafening him. There was a tightness in his chest, a wonderful tightness of nerves firing in all directions, bursting.

And then she looked at him.

Looked at him straight.

Eye to eye.

Sad smile to sad smile.

Maybe she saw something in him too, a reflection of tension, it glittered in her dark gaze, in the crease of her frown, the way her mouth opened just so.

Michael smiled, teeth flashing in the light of the stage, and her gaze darted away, only to flutter back moments later, bashful but thrillingly bold. The next time she looked away, she grabbed the hand of a sandy-haired boy, younger than even Sam, around ten or eleven Michael would guess.

He had the same sad, sweet face as the girl.

Brother and sister, most likely.

She turned and pulled the youngster into the roving mob.

Michael's feet were moving before he ever really decided he wanted to follow. A fish caught on a hook.

"Sam! Come on!"

Sam dipped and dived after his marching brother.

"Huh? Where are we going? What-"

His complaints were lost on Michael. As lost as the music and everything else.

As lost as Bella standing on a crest of a rock, watching the band, entranced by the bright lights, who, after finally glancing behind her, saw who two brothers cutting through the edges already.

"Hey! Where are you going? Wait for me!"

Michael didn't hear her. By the time she clambered down the rock she had climbed to get a good look at the stage, both her brothers were gone. She swore thickly under her breath.

"Bastards."

And no one, least of all the siblings, saw a pale, nimble hand sink into the sand, lifting a woolen hat up to a crookedly grinning face. A soft sniff. The rumble of a barely restrained growl was lost in the music, but the grin grew wide. Toothy. Sharp. A devils smirk on an angelic visage.

The head of golden curls zipped away.

Lucy Emerson's P.O.V

It was undoubtedly cheerful here, at the boardwalk. Dazzling lights, bars, and all the glitzy entertainments anybody could hope for. It was definitely a change to the life Lucy had built in Phoenix.

The right kind of change, she prayed.

Not just for herself, but for her children too. For Sam, who, she knew, fought with his sexuality, to fit into a bigoted world. For Michael, who always shouldered more than he should have, who soaked in blame like a sponge, older than his years. For Bella, who not only battled her injuries, but was fighting to regain all she had lost, all seventeen years' worth, all the things missing to her, and, most importantly, wrestled to discover, all over again, who she was.

That's why she had let the trio go down to the Boardwalk so soon, alone, out from under her cautious eye. They needed to stretch their wings, gain a sense of their new home, and maybe unwind from those strains tying them into tangled knots of fidgety anger.

Hopefully it would stop them bickering so much.

Besides, they had promised to stay together. Gave their word in a chirping chorus. What could go wrong? It was safe, she reasoned with herself, against her bubbling anxiety. Even at the worst of times, they had enough common sense between them, though, Bella had always been… Spirited.

Spending her sixteenth birthday in that jail cell for starting that bar fight had proven that enough for Lucy's tastes, even if she, herself, couldn't remember.

God knew where she had gotten that fake ID.

Only the devil had the sense to figure out why she bottled that man over the head.

And, Lucy thought, neither deity or Satan knew when the box of matches had came into play

Maybe Lucy should go and find them, just to make sure, and-

They were safe.

She shouldn't nag or pester.

Lucy refused to be one of those mothers.

The sound of rock and roll power chords wafted from the distant beach. A rock band was playing out there that night, on the edge of the Boardwalk, with an ocean of kids watching them, including, she imagined, her children.

That was nice.

They could enjoy themselves.

Whittle away the night with music and dancing.

Far away from Michael's worries, Sam's fears, and Bella's uncertainties.

And hopefully any beer bottles or lighters the latter could find.

Plus, Lucy was merely grateful she wasn't down there herself. Once, long ago it felt like, she would have loved being in the bottom of all that noise and action. Now, it only made her ears ache. The first sign of old age, Lucy chuckled, was an aversion to rock bands.

No. The pier, an offshoot of the Boardwalk, was far more her speed these days. A boulevard of stores and diners built on broad stilted platforms over the water. Lucy was surprised by the variety here now. When she was a young girl, there had been nothing but dank bars, shrouded in smoke, and the odd shop selling souvenirs of Santa Carla that were actually made in Hong Kong.

Since then, which must have been… Twenty years now, gosh, that made her feel old, the pier had gone chic from the tourist profits. Oh, don't get Lucy wrong. These were still tourist traps, but pretty tourist traps now. Overpriced, but overflowing with interesting crafts, gadgets and knickknacks.

Lucy would have to come back when she had more money rolling in the bottom of her purse.

If she ever had more money.

Lucy groaned. It was only her first night back in Santa Carla. She needed time to settle. Not worry about jobs, money, and that horrid thing called real life that slumped all adult shoulders.

Not tonight.

Lucy would leave all that dreadfulness to tomorrow and the blinding light of day, where there was no hiding from the cracks of her life.

Idly, she ambled into a tiny circle gathered around the steps of a shut shop, portable loudspeaker bleating with buzzing zeal.

"You will be saved!''

Lucy paused at the edge, peering through the crowd. A scrawny man, standing tall on the end rung, ranted to those who bothered to listen. It was like gazing through time itself, for Lucy. He was clad in threadbare bell-bottoms, ragged at the flared end, and a dulled, flowered shirt, as if he hadn't changed his clothes in twenty years. His long, flaxen hair fell into his face in stringy ribbons as he hollered.

"All of you! Saved!"

He staggered down from the step, his right-hand waving aloft, reaching for the dark skies above.

"From the sin of Santa Carla! Saved! All of you!"

The former hippie lingered, doubtful, as if his well-memorized speech had momentarily bolted from what bit of his mind remained from the years of acid trips and mushroom jaunts. Lucy watched him, mind drifting.

They all used to look like that once, she thought. Herself included. Now… Now he looked out of place, unwashed, crazed. Everything… Everything had changed. For better or for worse, it was all so different. Most had moved on from the sixties, left the drugs behind, abandoned the thought of free love and protest marches to where they belonged. In a time long past.

Life wasn't any the worse for it.

Only changed.

As they, unlike this man, had shifted with the winds.

The scrawny man paced back and forth in his little arena, like a caged tiger prowling, mumbling to himself as if it could jog his memory. Lucy felt… Lucy felt sorry for him. To be so… Entombed. Lost. He was as lost as the rest of them, only, he looked backward, not forward.

"Confront your sins!"

The man grinned to the crowd, only three of his teeth left.

"That's it! That is what you must do! Confront your sins! Santa Carla, you can still be saved!"

The couple standing next to her glanced her way, as if asking if she bought any of this either. Lucy shrugged; timid smile etched onto her welcoming face.

"I think I used to date that guy."

The pair laughed as they walked away. Lucy, ultimately, couldn't help herself, as she ambled away, gravitating towards a kiosk covered with tear-away letters and leaflets. Apartments for rent, boats for hire, self-realization seminars, and a sprawl of missing person posters stared back. There wasn't a single Help Wanted sign.

Brilliant.

Fantastic.

Perhaps she should try feeding her children grass.

Turn them out to pasture like cows.

"Excuse me."

A feathery voice called past Lucy's shoulder. She stepped out of the way on instinct, and watch a thin woman, red ringed around her bloodshot eyes, tape a new handout over the others yellowed with age.

A picture of a large man bleached out most of the paper, smiling underneath the bold MISSING pronouncement. Beneath, as if on after thought, was a biro'd chicken scratch. Security Guard. Edward Winowski, known as Big Ed. Forty-Six. Last saw three weeks ago. Fifty Dollar reward for any information.

Lucy didn't read any further. The slender woman had two small children with her, clutching at her skirts, the boy as big as his father was. The willowy lady looked up at Lucy as she strode away. Her eyes were poignant. Shot red with tears sobbed, mouth reedy with fear. Maybe, just maybe, Lucy thought, there were worse things than being jobless, after getting a messy divorce and moving away from everything you've known for the last twenty-five years.

She still had her children, and that was something to hold close.

Lucy carried on, for how long, she could not say, until she reached a restaurant. It wasn't the restaurant itself that caught her attention, but the small child weeping near the door. A young boy, maybe three or four, clasping a teddy, looking lost.

Who wasn't lost around Santa Carla?

Lucy squatted down beside him, asked the boy what his name was. He only cried harder. She asked him if his parents were around, and still, no response, only tears. Lucy glanced about. He couldn't have wandered far, not with his short legs. The parents must have been somewhere nearby.

God knew Lucy had been in their shoes before, with how Bella used to disappear in the blink of an eye if you so much as glanced away.

They must have been so worried.

A glowing store right next to the Chinese takeout, a place with a bright neon sign that read MAX'S VIDEO, was the contender Lucy found for the little boys excursion. Maybe the parents were still in there.

She bundled the boy into her arms, smiling gently as he grabbed at her, strolling for the shop front. Three teenagers entered the shop in front of her, snaking in a string. Their jackets were… New. Odd. One of them wore an old tux bestrew with safety pins, another embroidered leather. Each one of their jackets was different from anything she'd seen teenagers around here wearing. Probably some sort of teenage fashion statement she was too old to understand anymore. Maybe even bought from one of the clothes venders.

Bella would love a jacket like that.

Maybe Lucy could find the shop and-

First, the boy.

"C'mon."

She whispered to her small charge.

"We're going to get you home."

She followed the youths into the video store.

The door buzzed as she opened it.

A towering man, hair curly and dark, glasses thick rimmed, veered from where he had been watching the teens as Lucy and the small boy entered. She watched as his scowl bowed to a smile. It was a nice smile, a little voice whispered in her head. Open and friendly and warm.

The door hissed again, and Lucy had to dodge the body darting into the shop to stop herself from being barrelled over.

The stranger ignored her, a vivid youthful fellow with a mop of golden curls, another embellished jacket thrown about his shoulders. He was beaming ear from ear, a-

A hat clutched in his hand as he darted for the group of boys meandering around the rental desk.

A hat, Lucy, strangely, thought she knew.

A hat she had seen before.

She could have sworn, with the grey wool, and the little nick in the left of a stitch picked free, that that hat was her daughters hat. The very one she had left the house in. But how would-

"Look what I found."

The smallest of the quartet made it to his friends, practically crooning, slapping the hat into the, what Lucy could only assume, leader's chest.

"She was with some other kids. Got Star to distract them. They split. She can't have strayed far from the mosh pit on the beach."

The platinum blond mullet dipped, frowning, as-

Well, Lucy thought he might have sniffed the hat, but surely she had been mistaken. Who sniffed hats?

He came back up, smirking, rumbling something Lucy couldn't quite hear as he passed the hat to the two remaining boys. Lucy took a step forward, going to-

Well, she didn't know what she was going to do, but she was sure that was her daughters hat, and-

A dog behind the counter barked. Lucy jumped, eyes wide, as she scurried a peek over. The dog growled in warning.

The door behind her buzzed.

The boys were gone.

Somewhere in the distance, motorbike engines revved. A roar of thunder.

She went to follow, but the towering man in the glasses strode in front of her, smiling, laugh lines deep in his cheeks.

"Wild kids."

He jerked his chin in their direction.

"Came in looking for their sister who got separated earlier. Looks like they found her. Good thing, really. It's getting very late, and its not safe to be outside alone."

Of course. What had she been thinking? The hat was ordinary enough, beanies always were, and the poor boys were likely smelling their sisters perfume and-

She was so silly.

What else could it have been?

Michael wouldn't leave Bella. Bella who absolutely, though she had visited this place as a child, would not remember this way or that and-

Silly.

Utterly silly.

Blushing, Lucy tried to sidestep her hiccup, bumping her hip to wiggle the boy, who in turn, laughed.

"This boy seems to be lost too."

She began, glancing around the store. With the boys gone, there were only four other customers. None looked her way, as a frantic, currently childless, parent would.

"I thought maybe his parents might be in here?"

The man, a man who Lucy thought might be called Max, pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Well, let's see.''

He had a pleasant voice, Lucy thought. Cosy and rich, like logs on a hearth fire. The kind of voice you immediately trusted.

Anew, the door buzzed. A woman in her early twenties rushed in, gasping, frantic, desperate. Her gaze instantly landed on Lucy and the boy, relief flooding her face slack.

"Terry!"

She called to the child, and the boy wiggled to get down.

"Oh, thank God! I was so worried!"

Terry held out his arms to his mother, fingers flexing in a 'give me, give me' motion, and Lucy dutifully handed the boy over, now no longer crying, to the other woman.

"I don't know how to thank you."

Lucy shook her head fiercely.

"No thanks needed. My own daughter was a nuisance when she began to walk."

The maybe-Max-man plunged a hand into a jar on his counter and handed Terry a lollipop before the mother, grasping tightly at her son, left with one last string of thank you's.

"How about you?"

Lucy glanced up and saw him holding out a lollipop to her.

This one was different to the blues and yellows in the fishbowl.

This one was red.

Bright red.

Juicy like an apple.

The apple Eve bit.

"No thanks."

Lucy said as she smiled and shook her head.

Sluggishly, he pocketed the lollipop, the grin, however, never falling from his face.

"That was awfully kind of you. What you did for that little boy. A generous nature. I like that in a person. My name is Max."

He gestured down to the dog, once again sleeping, at his feet.

"This is Thorn. He's a bit grumpy, but means well. Protective of his family."

"Lucy."

She countered simply.

Max swept an arm about around him.

"So what can I help you find tonight, Lucy? We've got it all. The best selection in Santa Curia."

Lucy peered around at the store, really taking it all. There were a dozen TV screens behind Max, all airing miscellaneous programs: rock singers in tight pants, Bugs Bunny outwitting Yosemite Sam, John Wayne with a six-gun in hand, an old black-and-white film with an overweight corpse rising from a grave. Rock music shrieked from speakers overhead; as far as Lucy could figure out, it didn't go with any of the programs on the screens.

It was all a bit overwhelming.

She glanced back to Max. He was smiling, waiting. Lucy paused, then, doing something she never really did before, she went with her gut and thought, why not? What was the worst that could happen? A swift 'please leave'? she had nothing to lose, and she doubted she would find anyone friendlier around here at this time of night.

"I'm not looking for a tape. What I really need is-"

"A job."

Max finished the sentence for her.

Lucy nervously laughed, scratching at the back of her neck with blunt, chewed nails.

"Do I look that needy?"

Max shook his head, laughing. A hoot that reminded Lucy of sunbeams.

"I just have ways of knowing these things. It comes from living in a resort town for too long."

He strolled down to the end of the counter and pulled out a couple of straight-backed chairs, sitting down and gesturing to the other for Lucy to take.

"Why don't we talk about it?"

There were worst things to do on a summer night than talking with a handsome man about the prospects of a wage.

Yet, it was more than that.

There was something about him. It showed in the way he moved and talked. Something that said, in the way he carried himself, he had been through it all.

Just like Lucy.

Somehow, someway, he had come through, and found himself happy and alive, on the other side.

Lucy could too.

She took the seat opposite him.

Bella Emmerson's P.O.V

There was no escaping it. Bella was lost. Regrettably, in more ways than one. Lost without her memories, lost in life, and lost within herself. However, being lost on the Boardwalk, as she currently was, trudging this way and that to find something that remotely looked familiar to anything else she had walked by when coming in with her siblings, was something she could completely blame on her brothers. Which she whole heartedly did.

One moment she had been relishing the music, happy for the first time in months, bantering with Sam, and then next-

Gone.

The Great Fucker, the name she was mentally calling her twin in the last hour, had been skirt chasing. Trailing after a girl, the last she had seen through the crowd, before she turned a corner and got lost. In his favour, Michael had likely forgot that… Well, Bella had forgotten everything, and unlike him and Sam, who knew their way around the place from visiting as kids, Bella had no such luxury.

It was amazing what a pair of tits could do to a teenage boys brain.

Worse than the sixty feet of asphalt Bella's had gone skating across before it popped under a wheel.

Sometimes, when she tapped her head, she was sure she could hear the alumina plate clinking. Perhaps she would start decorating the side of her head with fridge magnets. Really go the nine yards.

Fridge magnets she could chuck at Michaels head.

Most awful still, she had gone and lost her hat. In a flash of bravery, one ushered in by having her brother's close, Bella had dashed it in the sand. It had been a… Moment, for her. Dramatic in a way Bella could be but would never admit she was. A breaking of chains she didn't know were binding her. In the sea of such strangeness that was Santa Carla, her scars didn't seem such a big deal.

But then her brothers had moseyed off, and her hat was missing when she went back to grab it, and without something to pin her curls down, her hair flipped over and bared the gnarly gash for all to see, and it burned with all the glances shot her way, and Lucy was nowhere to be found, and she was sure she'd passed this pizza place seven times now, and-

And.

Fuck.

Shit.

This was all Michael's fault.

Huffing, Bella kicked a crushed can, and plonked down on the steps of the pizzeria, slumping over, bent elbow on knee, running a tired hand down her face. It dragged tightly on the scar beneath her eye, tender and throbbing.

Throbbing like the headache slowly making itself known in her temple.

Throbbing like the sound of a motorbike engine skimming down the pier, spluttering to a gargling stop somewhere to her right. She paid no mind to it, as she kept her gaze trained on the boards of the wharf. Perhaps if she stayed still, right here, someone, anyone, would find her and she may, if luck was on her side, make it home tonight.

God knew she wasn't going to do it herself with the circles she was pacing.

A thudding sounded off close by.

A step.

Another.

Two boots cut into her vision. Black, men's suede, scuffed at the toes as if the person wearing them was used to kicking.

A scrap of fabric came flying between her own feet, thrown down.

Grey wool.

Her hat.

"Hello, little lost girl."

Thoughts?

A.N: I know it's been super long since I last updated this fic, but at least I updated! Please keep the booing to a minimal, lol. Seriously though, because it's been so long, I won't be surprised if a lot of you have bowed out, and to make up to the ones who have stayed, instead of posting this in four chapters as I originally planned, I melted them all together and hope it's at least made up for some of the time. Good news too, I have most of the next chapter written, and I only have to tighten some stuff up before the next post!

Really, Thank you all for your patience with this fic, I really am sorry for the monstrous wait, and I do sincerely wish you enjoyed this chapter.

If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review! And I will hopefully see you all soon. Until then, stay safe!