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〮CHAPTER TWENTY 〮
On the way to our next destination, I used a pencil Gavin got from some bank in Portland to write my postcards. It didn't take much for me to finish the cards, because there wasn't much to say in writing. I wound up sending one to Mom and Dad, and another to Charlie.
Dear Mom and Dad,
Well, I'm still kicking at the time I'm writing this postcard. Last night we arrived in San Francisco, and suffice to say the Golden Gate is ten-times better in person. We just spent the morning in Chinatown, and that was pretty cool.
Love, Emma
Dear Charlie,
Yo, I figured you might appreciate this hunk-a-licious postcard, but it doesn't really explain where I'm at. In San Fran with Gavin, and we just stopped by Chinatown. I'll be sending postcards along the way 'cause, I mean, knowing you, you'll probs wanna know.
Peace, Emma
My handwriting was all choppy since we were on the road, but I mailed them anyway. We stopped at a postoffice in town, bought stamps, and sent them that same day, so I wouldn't have to worry about them later. Eventually we wound up parking by a meter on a road closest to the bay. We could feel the ocean mist on our skin as we stepped out of the van to pay for the meter. He put an hour in it.
"I don't usually spend much time here, but you might enjoy it," he explained. My instincts told me that anything that happened on the bay would be exciting, so I just rolled with it and followed him down the sidewalk as the clock ticked ten and the shops opened.
The Fishermen's Wharf was a tourist attraction meant to ensnare parents into buying trinkets and toys for their children—basically Disney World. It was all stationed on a boardwalk that created a short peninsula out into the bay, so we decided to walk the length of it and back, just to see what was up.
It was chillier out by the water, so Gavin pulled on his hat and stuck his hands in the pockets of his winter jacket. I didn't feel the nippy weather as much, so I ran around from store to store and underneath the Christmas lights overhead near the middle of the Wharf. "They light 'em up at night," Gavin explained to me.
It wasn't until the Wharf that I recognized all the holiday decorations, and the stores laced with red and green in their display windows—white fluff for fake snow. At the end of the boardwalk, we stopped by the railing, which was patterned with unlit Christmas lights, and red bows strategically placed in even bundles. The bay was partially clouded with fog cover, but Gavin pointed to a mass of dark land on the horizon.
"That's Alcatraz—here, put this quarter in the binoculars," he insisted, tossing me the coin. I just barely caught it in time, and meandered over to the binoculars. I slipped the coin in and peered through the eyepiece. It took a second before the blackness flickered out and gave me a distant view of the water, and the land on the other side. In between us and that, though, I discovered Alcatraz, and the towers that rose up from that isolated island.
"You know, at one point, when the prison wasn't a prison anymore, Native Americans lived there. But then the government kicked 'em off—ridiculous, right?" he commented, meandering over to a plaque mounted on the railing. "People should get to do what they want—it wasn't like they were interfering with anything."
"Yeah," I mused aloud. The timer clicked and my vision went black again. I pulled away and leant a hand on the rubber handle of the binoculars. Gavin's nose was pink, as were his cheeks, and he seemed happy.
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The Wilde Expedition
Werewolf[Previously "The Anomaly of Gavin Wilde"] Emma Austen, daughter of the infamous Alpha Lillian, is outcast for her peculiar disposition: her ability to shift and take on bizarre Alpha qualities even her mother hasn't seen before. In the world Emma li...
