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    No Name Sunset
    No Name Sunset
    No Name Sunset
    Ebook233 pages3 hours

    No Name Sunset

    By Cameron Glenn

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Best friend High School seniors April, a party girl, and Natalie, a smart girl, deal with growing up in the year 2000.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCameron Glenn
    Release dateDec 29, 2015
    ISBN9781311427281
    No Name Sunset
    Author

    Cameron Glenn

    Cameron Glenn grew up the third of seven children in Oregon. As a child he dedicated hours to the pursuits of basketball and cartooning, as well as waking up way too early for his paper route in order to earn money to buy toys, candy and comic books. He also loved to read and write, which he continues to do voraciously. He currently lives in Salt Lake City after having earned a BA in literature from Boise State.

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      Book preview

      No Name Sunset - Cameron Glenn

      Prologue

      April likes to look at fashion pictures in magazines and make up stories.  Narrative photography is in right now.  The other day she thumbed through Vogue and found a ten page ad campaign for a European designer she hadn’t heard of.  It featured three models: two blondes and a brunette.  The brunette April recognized as Lea, the model from Victoria Secret and Guess jeans.  Lea was the star.  Five pages featured her alone, out in open grassy hill landscape: blues and greens.  She wore contemplative expressions, some sadness in her.  One picture showed her standing by an open wood door, her left side aglow with orange light from inside the cabin room, her right side awash in the cold blues and greens of twilight.  She wore a red sweater with a teddy bear pattern sewed on the front.  Her eyes were wide yet placid; she was agitated yet relaxed, she was a child and an adolescent, she was beautiful.  The other five pages featured Lea out in a quaint European mountain town, with cobblestone roads.  The two taller blondes were with her.  They wore black suites with pin stripes and plunging necklines: very stylish, very sexy.  They looked like three spell binders with magical beauty, come to raise havoc ruckus for a night.  These five pictures had a yellowish gray tinge to them, as if they were old, yet they looked contemporary; bars and lamp posts provided backdrops.

      Lea looked natural and instant in every photograph, aware of the camera to look directly into it, yet seemingly oblivious she’s being looked at.  April decided she wanted to be Lea.

      April’s hair is blonde, but she prefers to call it gold.  She likes to say it’s as a river of melted gold, flowing quickly.  She loves to spin her hair in front of mirrors to see light shimmer and slide off its slippery surface.  She loves tying her hair in braids to look like the Swiss Miss.  Her eyes are crystal and her skin is as the glimmer of snow touched by the sun.  She made that line up herself.  She’s gorgeous: good bones.

      Her house is a castle for a princess.  Maids come three times a week to polish wood floors, vacuum the stairs, dust the high ceiling fans, wipe the sixteen foot high windows.  Her mother complains: with the money April’s father gets, off springing everywhere but where he should, gone from them, they should have a bigger house, three or four of them, and boats and maybe an airplane.

      April, a senior at Central High School in Centerville Ohio, has a sister, age six, named May, who will inherit her kingdom when she leaves.  April feels like she has to leave soon.  Her town is as gray as cracked concrete; nothing happens.  April likes it here fine, for the moment, it served her well enough, but she knows there’s so much more out there, waiting for her.  Or she’s the one waiting, and what’s out there is moving.

      Natalie helped her survive her eighteen years in Centerville.  Natalie is April’s best friend, who’s as smart as God it seems, and pretty too, but in a different way than April.  Natalie has brown hair, brown eyes, tan complexion.  April thought it strange that two such vibrant and interesting girls would live in such a small, dull odd place as Centerville.  But life is strange.  Zack, a popular, wild Jock, likes to talk about two professional athletes who grew up together in a small hick Virginia town and became prolific electric upstarts.  April and Natalie were like them, April thought, both prone, destined for greatness.  April liked to dream.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Rocks are as light as balloons April wrote.  It all seemed blank; the bright cloudless sky, the relative silence.       April skipped class, wearing a Hello Kitty sticker on her cheek sitting by a tree.  Geology will always be dull despite the rock cycle, plate tectonics, Mr. Blaire licking salt rock. Natalie won’t skip classes so April sat alone.  She thought about how adorable she looked learning against this tree trunk, secluded under the bright cloudless sky.  This would be a good location for a model shoot, she thought.  She opened her kiwi colored notebook and wrote rocks are as light as balloons.  Appearance is both internal and external.  Style is confidence manifest.  Fashion is style with money.  Beauty is inner confidence.  I own all this and more.  She doodled daises.  Dreams are as real as reality.  April would rather daydream than classify rocks; rocks aren’t meant to have names.  She pulled out her disk-man (the iPod would come out a year later) from her backpack, put earphones over her ears and pressed play.  Techno trance pop rock music from her favorite band paJAMus entered her head.  She closed her eyes, hummed along and smiled rocking her head back and forth to the beats, thinking of how cute she looked, worthy to be on a glossy page in a fashion magazine.  She picked up a rock and threw it at her school half expecting it to skip as if across water. 

      The hot model at the moment is Lea Costa from France.  She’s stunning, playful, voluptuous, powerfully impossibly radiant, sexy.  She describes her modeling gifts as a power.  She can tell stories with her eyes and expressions and poses. Her job is to create illusions of beauty, to make one dimensional images of her other dimensional.  She laughs openly often and freely, she sees and loves beauty around her, she enjoys what is. 

      What do you think about his obsession with models?  She was recently asked.

      From my perspective it gives me work but all this fuss just over some pictures?  Why?  They don’t see the other side Lea had answered.

      Lea came from a quaint Island in the Mediterranean owned by France.  A girl named D who had grown up with Lea and watched as Lea skyrocketed to glamour, praise, fame and worship because of her beauty and light welcoming personality had stayed on the island and she resented Lea and wished she could be as beautiful.  D tried to sleep in her room but couldn’t.  She thought of Lea and her unimpressive boyfriend Philip.  Women deserve men who will take them places and Philip was going nowhere and taking her nowhere.  D finally fell asleep and dreamed of trees thickening into blackness only leaving the shines of eyes and teeth of the pursuing wolves.  She woke up.  The moon peered in her window like the eye of a peeping tom if she were anything to look at.  It pulled her from her bed, tugging with the same force it exerts on tides.  The moonshine filtered through branches and leafs leaving art on her wall.  She walked to the beach and sand tickled the bottoms of her toes as grains washed away and her feet sunk in the surf.  One should always be happy when bare footed, she thought, but she wasn’t happy.  She felt nowhere.  Lea’s up there like a full moon, D thought, satisfied, wide eyed, wonderful, wolves never gnawed on her dreams.  Lea would love this spot, the weather, the early morning before sunrise, all manifestations of the world as her palace, her playground, her kingdom.  Philip loves Lea, all of France loves her, she is lady France; she had been born in this quaint village same as me but look at where she is now, and where I am now, she’s the moon and I’m just a grain of sand.  She’s like a sunset and a sunset knows nothing of itself, of its own beauty.  I’m dumb and Lea is distant and remains stupid oblivious, too happy, just as she was as a child, as if she never grew up, as if she never had to, despite developing her woman’s body. 

      D auditioned to be a model but was rejected.  Another step pulled D into the calming wet.  Lea rode jets first class to nameless islands and trendy metropolises, charming people who decide what is.  She once lost a shoe in a taxi cab—her life became such a whirlwind, slick and glossy.  She was as if she lost nothing since her birth, only gained.  Money came to people who made her life easy and glamorous—a fantasy for all she contacted, celebrating the wonder her birth brought the world.  Her presence cascaded over the Atlantic.

      *

      April’s old boyfriend Todd lived off two litter Coke jugs and a stash of Hostess treats he hid like an alcoholic hiding booze for the last two days.  April’s lips were the color of a Coke can when she sucked from her straw and then told him she’s no longer going out with him because he’s a loser, and that was the only reason she would offer him for the dumping.  He loved her still.  How could he not love someone as beautiful as her.

      There’s only two weeks of school left for Natalie and April.  Then they’ll be through with high school forever.  April looked at herself in her full length mirror in her room, making poses.  She bunched her hair in fists above her head.  She let her hair go and twirled.  Her hip thrust out, the curve of her chin nestled behind the curve of her shoulder.  She pouted her lips and bent her eyebrows to try and look cute, sad and innocent.  She named the look puppy dog.  She imagined the sounds of flashing bulbs and praise humming in her ear, along with the blazing pop music from her stereo.  Her shirt dropped over the fashion magazine opened to the Guess ad laying on top of her notebook.  She held her breath and rubbed her rib cage with her hands.  She imagined a French photographer on the other side of her mirror yelling, yes baby yes you are so sexy, to her.  She imagined herself at a party with Calvin Cline male models, the men in the underwear ads with chiseled features, skin like shallow water over stony brooks, dark eyes and dimples she could get lost in.  Logged in the silver seams of her mirror was a picture of Niki Taylor, Take the Challenge written under her smile and finger pointing out.  Under a picture of Christi Turlington words read Maybe she’s born with it.  April also had pictures of her favorite model, Lea Costa taped to her walls, as well as pictures of her as beautiful as a model best friend, the super smart Natalie.

      April giggled.  Then she went on the internet and checked her e-mails.  More e-mails from her ex Todd.  How annoying.  She replied to him and told him to meet her at Zucka Juice in an hour.  She decided to call Zack, a popular jock who she sometimes hung out with.  He had a crush on her, as did many, and she liked to tease him, as she liked to tease many.  After flirting with him over the phone she told him she needs to beat up one of her stalkers and to meet her at Zucka Juice in an hour or so. 

      *

      The sunrise on the French island where D stood came gradually yet it still somehow managed to surprise her; she hadn’t really paid attention to it until after it came.  Still it was beautiful, like always, the colors simple yet complex.  How so right yet so wrong, she thought of Lea and the sun came reflecting off the ocean, looking like a postcard of the village, the place she hates, where there’s nothing, the place Lea claimed to love the most despite her conquering the world.  To D the ocean is a prison wall.  She had never been on an airplane.  She tried to laugh but her laugh wanted to be buried in the bedrock below, not a laugh like Lea’s which diffuses like a light quick gas.

      D walked to her bedroom, wet up to her waist, burrowed in her once dry thin mattress and slept.  Her bedroom is boring.  She had thought of suicide while on that beach.  How easy it would be to walk into the waves and let them take her, to die in a dream, vanish into that abyss under the choppy horizontal wall which is the ocean surface.  She realized Lea would never think such horrible thoughts, no not little sunshine, sucking on life as if it were her lollipop.  Lea would never desecrate such a beautiful spot with unnatural thoughts; no she makes locations look better just with her presence, that’s her job, she calls it giving.  D slept and dreamed then Philip her boyfriend who had the crush on Lea woke her up.  His bushy black hair seemed as if on fire, like the sun became trapped in it, his face looked blurry as if he had wiped Vaseline over her eyes.  Philip fished all day, just like his father, and like his father he would die in the same room he was born in, with a son to follow in the family tradition.

      D and Philip went to her Uncle’s bistro, the same one they went to everyday, with the painted red letters fading.

      *

      Todd read April’s e-mail to him almost immediately after she had sent it. He knew they had shared something more deep and special then just a high school fling.  He understood her beyond her snob and heart killer reputation.  He felt eager.  He had gained some pounds since she last saw him.  He put on a sweater—no too hot for itchy wool.  He thought about a tie, but no that would look too desperate.  Desperation is a weakness he didn’t want to reveal to her, he wanted to make her love him again. He sang along with Bono about two hearts beating as one.  He showered for too long.  He thought up poetic descriptions of her while in the shower; her hair is like melted gold, her lips are red like a Coke can, her kisses are like caffeine soda pop fizzes, April is the month for rebirth and second chances.  He accidently swallowed some Listerine. 

      April drove her 98 BMW convertible to Natalie’s house and Natalie got in the car and April then headed towards Zucka Juice.  April sped through yellow lights.  She hated red lights.  April turned up the radio and sang along with the lyrics about what a girl wants.  She made her car dance by swerving it.  She tried not to think about how Natalie would be going away to Stanford after summer.  April still didn’t have concrete plans.  She wished she could be as smart as Natalie was. 

      *

      D and Philip talked while at her Uncle’s bistro on the French Island. 

      You still think about her don’t you?

      Philip looked back at her.  She looked bad yet he loved her anyway.  He loved her because she was there and Lea wasn’t.  Maybe he didn’t really love her.  Of course, he said.  How can I not?

      D took another nibble from her croissant.  It smells like fish.

      Of course.  It always does, Philip said.

      People say fish stink.

      Of course they do, but we get used to it, he said. 

      Suppose Lea had never been, D said

      Don’t say it.  You’ll go to hell.  It’s like saying what if Mary never was.

      Nonsense! D said. 

      Of course, Philip said.  Such is the way of love.

      D rubbed the back of her neck.  What if I never was?

      I don’t know, he answered and they both looked at the white seabirds circling above them.  After silence he said, Not everyone can own the world.

      I don’t want to see you anymore, D said.

      Why not? he said, dropping his bread in his bowl.

      Because you stink like fish.

      *

      April, Natalie and Zach sat on stools in Zucka Juice together.  Zach mashed blackberry Zucka on his face and told Natalie to lick it off and she told him to go lick himself.  Zach had always had a crush on Natalie but thought her to be out of his league, but now this would be their last summer together.  Natalie sucked her raspberry Zucka drink while Zach tried to make her jealous by flirting with April, who had took his dare and licked the drink off his face. 

      A truck without a muffler pulled up and April bit her lip because she knew it to be Todd.  Todd walked through the door.  He wore his soccer jersey (April had first seen him at his soccer game), and a gray vest trying to cover the new unflattering tightness of his jersey.  April shrieked when she saw him, surprised at his unflattering transformation in such a short time.  She saw him staring at her so she grabbed Zack’s ear and wiped her tongue over his face from chin to widow’s peak, her tongue brushing hip lip.  She then looked at Natalie and crossed her eyes and bit her tongue.  Natalie rolled her eyes and flipped the magazine page, thinking about the new people she’d meet at Stanford in just a few months. 

      A-a-april, Todd said, stuttering in his nervousness at seeing the object of his pain and love and obsession before him. 

      You dated that lard? Zack asked. 

      April sucked in some drink and twirled in her stool.  She had a talent of ignoring people while acknowledging them, letting them know she were ignoring them. 

      April this isn’t going to be a thing is it? Natalie asked.  

      April shrugged her shoulders. 

      Is that why you invited him?

      April sucked in her drink and spun around again. 

      Y-y-you wanted to see me April?

      Zach stood up and forcibly walked in front of Todd blocking his path.  No she doesn’t want to see you anymore, get it through your fat skull. 

      Oh my gawd, I’m sorry about this, Natalie said to the teen working behind the counter. 

       A-April can we talk?

      She doesn’t want to talk, so stop stalking her okay, Zach said, then shoved Todd.

      The teen Zucka Juice employee and Natalie exchanged worried glances. 

       If you don’t leave now I’m going to beat you up, Zach declared.

       He’s an idiot but not stupid, I don’t think he really would, Natalie said to the employee who then shook his head. 

      A-a-April?

      "S-s-s sorry

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