In the parking lot on West Cliff Drive her dad sat on the back bumper of their chartreuse station wagon and rubbed a puck of wax in small, methodic circles across the surfboard on his lap. She finger-crocheted in the back seat where he had tossed the wax’s packaging. Sex Wax is what it said. She wound her yellow yarn tight around her fingertip and felt it turn hot.
Before throwing his board into the water and plummeting in himself, her dad stationed her on the bench on the cliff. She watched the swells roll in, watched men like seals in their black suits straddling their boards. A handful at a time, belly down on their wax, paddled to catch what they hoped would spill into a ride. Her dad waved to her every so often. It was better than leaving her home alone.
What she remembers now: that first day turning into many, turning into time served. The smell of sewage. Seal-men lobbing punches when they kerned too closely. The company of her mother’s letters. The ball of wax she would mold into a perfect heart, then smash flat with the side of her fist.
Kara Vernor’s fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and many others. She is currently an Elizabeth George Foundation scholar at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and her flash fiction chapbook, Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song, will be available from Split Lit Press in June. More at karavernor.wordpress.com
