Chapter 9: Salinas Bend

Salinas Bend by day was all river access and barbecue grills — the kind of park that looked great on city brochures. But after dark? It turned into teenage anarchy on tap.

Come Friday or Saturday night, every stoner, burnout, jock, and wannabe rebel from three different high schools descended on that place like it was Woodstock. The boat trailer lot became a jungle of cars. Kegs were tapped, joints lit, stereos blared. For two bucks a head, you could drink until you forgot your GPA. The "entrepreneurs" who bought the booze charged flat-rate wristbands: no limits, just keep filling your red Solo cup until the foam ran out. Eight or ten beers for two bucks? Not a bad return. Not a bad night.

The Heritage PD occasionally rolled through, lights off, just to show they were still technically cops. But truth be told, they liked this setup. Keep the degenerates all in one corral, far from suburbia, and call it a win. Nobody was crashing PTA meetings or breaking into liquor stores — they were just drunk in a tomato field.

Jake had become a regular fixture at these keggers his junior year. Part of the stoner clique. The guy who didn't say much, just smoked quietly, sipped beer, and watched the chaos unfold like he was studying it for a term paper. Most of the time he kept to the shadows with his usual handful of burnout friends. He didn't crack jokes, didn't try to hook up, didn't start shit. Just existed. Sometimes someone would pass him a joint. That was about the highlight of most nights.

This particular night, he was sixteen and still painfully, officially a virgin. Not that it hadn't crossed his mind. He'd had a few awkward make-out sessions with girls who were either too drunk to remember his name or just bored enough to kiss someone. Since getting his license two months ago, he'd been borrowing his parents' wood-paneled '72 Buick station wagon under the laughable theory that showing up in his own ride might help his odds. But Jake's idea of flirting was making eye contact and hoping something cosmic would happen.

So, like always, he was standing in the shadows, sipping warm keg beer, waiting for something — anything — interesting to happen. That's when he heard it.

A guitar.

His head snapped toward the sound like a moth to flame. Real music — or at least the attempt — carried through the smoke and slurred conversations. It was coming from across the parking lot. Someone was strumming near the bonfire.

Jake drifted toward it.

Over there, circled around a picnic table, sat about twenty people — the upper crust of the stoner hierarchy. The ones with clout. The ones who could score an eighth and not pay for it. The cool ones.

At the center of it all: Eric Castro.

Castro was everything Jake wasn't — loud, overconfident, the kind of guy who thought owning a guitar made you a musician. And not even a good guitar. The acoustic he held looked like it had been rescued from a garage sale fire. The strings were garbage. The tuning was nonexistent. Still, there he sat, high on his own mediocrity, playing wide-open chords with all the finesse of a guy who'd learned three songs and never gotten past them.

Jake winced. Even from here, he could tell the damn thing was out of tune. But nobody else seemed to notice. Castro was picking his way through the intro to Simple Man, butchered though it was, and the crowd was eating it up like it was Hendrix.

"That's, like, so cool," crooned Mandy Walker, practically bouncing with excitement beside him.

"Yeah," added Cindy Stinson, nodding like a dashboard bobblehead. "My brother can play, but nowhere near as good as you."

Castro gave a humble shrug that was anything but. "It takes practice," he said sagely, like a monk offering enlightenment. "You gotta stay dedicated." He stopped playing to talk, because apparently multitasking was beyond him.

"I picked this acoustic up just to screw around with. You should hear me on electric."

Mandy nearly swooned. "You'll have to play for me sometime."

"One of these days," Castro replied, in that vague, stoner-cool tone that meant "only if I want to get laid."

He strummed again, this time trying to coax out the opening to Love Hurts by Nazareth. Fewer fumbles this time, but he still looped the first few bars over and over like a broken record that didn't know the rest of the song.