To the Coast
Casey’s skated the tunnels before, but not all the way through. Her brother said they run from Angel Park to Suncoast casino, though neither he nor Casey have tracked how far the tunnels run; phone signal becomes spotty ten minutes inside. The first time Casey went alone, she’d turned back. She told Valencia and Roi about it during algebra the next day, waving her hands and scratching her wide, round nose. She said, “If you want to torture someone, put them on acid, then dump them here.” Naturally, Valencia and Roi exchanged stares, their teacher’s lesson on polynomials long forgotten.
All it took was one week, Casey’s Jeep, and ski masks to heighten the drama. They were in. They had a mission. Casey got lights they could wear on their heads; it was real; it was happening, and Valencia was combing through her wavy, frizzy hair at 4:03 p.m. on Tuesday, waiting for Casey to roll up to her house.
Casey’s ginger ringlets are windblown when she arrives, drawing Valencia from her house with a text proclaiming, we out herefollowed by several emojis. Valencia hops in the passenger seat—her usual spot—and they collect Roi from the neighborhood down the street. He crawls into the backseat, lays skateboard at his feet, and proudly unfurls his ski mask, which had been folded like a beanie.
“Take that off,” Casey insists. “I’m not getting pulled over on the expressway because you look like a wannabe robber.”
Roi rolls his eyes. “Killjoy,” he mutters, removing the mask and itching his head.
Casey sneers at him in the rearview mirror and turns up the volume on a playlist named “Skate or Die or Maybe Both.”
Angel Park is north—past the Strip—and Roi takes the chance to Snapchat the rows of Vegas hotels as they drive past, pulling down his ski mask and sticking his tongue out at the camera.
After the Strip, it becomes infinite expressways and traffic. It’s 4:51 p.m. when they get off at exit 37—Durango—and get a new view. Past the right side of the street, short grass goes for miles. It’s getting that sickly-yellow color, slowly, because it’s October and this much grass was probably never meant to be in the desert. But Valencia’s heard that it sometimes snows up here—not snow-snows, but desert snows: little snowflakes that disappear upon contact and never stick.
Casey swerves the Jeep into a parking spot near past the grass and everyone piles out. She locks the car as Valencia and Roi throw down their boards, heading for the red, metal bridge that connects the two halves of the park. The shadows outgrow the skinny trees that cast them. Valencia is still grateful for the snippets of shade they offer but the clock is ticking.
Like all good hideaways, the tunnel is in plain sight. Roi gets over the bridge first, stopping at a steep, rocky hill. “I’m guessing it’s this one?” He yells, peering down into the arroyo. Valencia joins him. Below, two tunnels stand without a soul in sight. Their mouths stretch roughly ten feet high, a cut of sunlight on one’s tongue as golden hour peaks.
“Yeah,” Casey answers, skating to a stop. “We want the one on the right.” She points and moves Roi aside, beginning to climb down the rocks, legs steady as she tries to dodge around the creosote bushes. Valencia loves the bushes because they have white, pea-size puffballs all over and smell like rain. Roi likes them, too, but not now as he makes his way through a bush and comes out covered in fuzz.
There’s graffiti all over the tunnel walls, though Valencia can hardly read the bubble-font as it tapers into black. She’ll have Casey—who’s donned a white ski mask—decode what it says.
The goal is Suncoast by sundown. Or, maybe, shortly after; the mission’s end-time is flexible. Valencia’s not sure how far it is to the gaudy, glowing casino, but it’s probably under two-and-a-half miles. And honestly, she likes it like that—not knowing—and so do her friends. She doesn’t need to see under their masks to know they’re revved up, high off this new, little thrill they can juice from Vegas. There’s a lot they miss out on in Vegas as minors; this is theirs; no one can stop them.
Minors or not, Casey’s swiped a variety of beers and hard seltzer from her brother’s stash, and Valencia selects a can of lime Bud Light from Casey’s worn-out backpack. She passes a requested can of PBR to Roi. Casey raises another PBR, and they toast to victory, to quiet chaos—to not going stir crazy at home.
The cans glint in the sun and Valencia scans the houses in the background, letting her beer can fuzz out of focus. The homes perched around the arroyo look nineties-made, copy-and-paste stucco with ruddy shingles. They feel like spectators, and Valencia wonders if she’s the only one who feels watched. But this might as well be suburbia—there are no bars on windows—and everyone is probably watching Netflix or at work. They’ve got the arroyo to themselves.
“Are you ready?” Casey asks. She crushes the beer, tosses the can into the rocks, and yanks down her ski mask: a pristine, white mask she took from her brother’s dresser. He’d worn it in a music video, once, having filmed it along Fremont Street; Valencia recognizes the little dollar sign embroidered under the left eye—a truly American beauty mark.
“Are we ready?” Roi repeats, popping up his skateboard with the toe of his dirty, doodled-on sneakers. “If we don’t do it now, it’ll be too cold next month. There’ll probably be homeless people sleeping there or something.” He lets his board down onto all four wheels, steps on it, and nods toward the tunnel. He hooks his middle and index fingers around the rim of his “beanie” and pulls down. The cuff unfolds to a multicolor, camouflage mask that makes his coal eyes pierce. They’re just a shade darker than Valencia’s. Roi’s pupils blend with his irises, a sharp contrast to his honey-glow skin. A strand of black hair peeks out from one of the mask’s eyeholes. He’s got bags under his eyes, but it’s the most awake Valencia has seen him all week.
“Speak for yourself,” Valencia says, a hand fluttering to her chest as if in a pledge. “Iwas born ready.” She takes to her board, feeling the way the pavement—smooth aside from the tiny pebbles littering it—dips toward the tunnels. They call, and answering is only polite.
Casey smiles, rummaging through her backpack while jogging aside Valencia. “Val-gal,” she says, withdrawing a light with various straps attached to it. “Catch.” She tosses the light, and Valencia barely catches it without falling off her skateboard. She gives Casey a quizzical look.
“It’s a headlamp. I’m assuming I don’t gotta tell you where to put it.” Casey explains, tossing another light to Roi before grabbing her own. Roi fumbles for a moment, fixing his headlamp after putting it on upside down.
“Alright, people, let’s go!” Casey claps, then pumps her skateboard up into her hand, jogging again. She slides the board out of her hand, its velocity matching her stride as she hops on. Casey kicks, spraying up a few pebbles as she blows past Valencia. She carves around a large rock, leaning with her heels off the board. Valencia watches her disappear into the cement maw of the tunnel; an angel descending: white mask, white hoodie, copper skin. Casey’s voice drifts, “Catch up, bitches!” She laughs and it resounds.
Roi glances at Valencia. He shrugs, clicking his headlamp on and as he takes off. Cans of spray paint clatter around in his backpack as he chases Casey, moving in a clean line, unlike Casey’s smooth carve.
The sky is hot, hot, orange—golden hour near-death—when Valencia pulls down her mask. Camouflage, like Roi’s, but with what’s considered “girl” colors—whatever that means. According to marketers, it means pink, purple, aqua, and green, topped with knit cat ears, and double the price of Roi’s mask.
Her hair’s fried from the last time she dyed it violet, but it’s long enough that it doesn’t fully fit in the mask, so Val flips to the side. It falls past the alien on her t-shirt and half-covers her black jean-jacket. The late-October wind gives her a goodbye kiss as she kicks off—she will not be left behind.
The tunnel takes her, the slope of water-worn cement guiding her into the void. The sound of skateboard wheels clicking on the ground and Casey’s laugh make Val’s heart giddy. She can see Roi and Casey up ahead, the lights on their foreheads flickering over the walls as they half-heartedly race, eager to get in deep.
Perhaps, Valencia considers, they want to see each other crack. Not out of malice, but out of curiosity. Elementary schoolers are like that on the playground, want to be entertained with the girl who can walk in a handstand, want to see a boy drink the mystery sludge they concocted during lunch. Who dares, who dares?
The Bud Light is warm in her belly, and she can feel it slosh when they all lean into a turn. All around is art. Maybe the art teacher at school would disagree, but there’s care in some graffiti. The lines are too opaque, too clean on the mural of a cartoony robber making off with a bag of money. On the right, some sexy legs in heels are painted with pale pink, sticking out of the letter H. Valencia still can’t read what it says, but she’s going too fast to care, anyway. There’s graffiti with less patience, drippy lines scribing out swear words and dicks. Classic.
“See any blank spots?” Casey calls. She hardly has to raise her voice; there’s no wind aside from their self-made breeze, and the tunnels carry her voice back to Roi and Val. Roi’s light scans from left to right, and he replies, “Negatory, captain. But there’s some random crap we can paint over.”
Valencia can tell Casey’s shaking her head. Her lamp moves back and forth in quick, short strokes, swiping the ground with light. “Nuh-uh, we’re claiming our own spot.” Casey claps, and it smacks around the tunnel. “Forward!”
They go for a while and the graffiti begins to dwindle. There’s the unspoken rule: keep up with Casey. But Valencia likes her spot in the back. She can take it all in, has a few more seconds to react, and knows if the path in front of her is clear. No one’s flown off their board yet—miraculous, given the number of broken bottles and rocks scattered around the tunnel. The ground is uneven at times, and sour water pools in the dips and cracks. Without checking her phone, Valencia guesses ten minutes have passed. They’ve got a rhythm down. Casey steers them straight, Roi looks to the right, Valencia checks the left. There are holes in the wall that connect to the tunnel next door. Sometimes, Valencia catches the glare of something there, but so far only metal rungs leading to pipes.
When they pass an array of neon green scribbles, Casey yells for a halt, proclaiming, “This is it.”
It’s not blank, but there’s room to breathe. The cement is mostly clean, spare a few random phrases or messy doodles. A neat, crisp image of an eye bores into Valencia as she joins Roi, whose lamp spotlights its pupil.
“What color do you want?” Roi asks, unmoving. “I’ve got blue, black, gold, and pink. Just grab it, the caps should match unless I mixed them up while high or something.” He continues to stare, taking his headlamp in hand as he squints at the eye, leaning in. Valencia watches him as she picks the gold can from his bag.
Roi removes his mask. “I’m gonna draw a pyramid around this guy,” he pats the eye’s sharp pupil.
Valencia scoffs, and Casey nudges her arm with a grin, taking the blue and black from Roi’s bag, sliding it off his arms partway. “Thank ya, thank ya,” Casey sings in a playful voice. “And for Roi-boy.” She hands the pink can over his shoulder, and Roi lets his empty backpack slip to the ground.
Casey maxes out the volume on her phone, and hits shuffle. Right away, Val knows the song: “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult.
“Ooh, throwback. Okay, okay,” Roi says, shaking the can of spray paint, “I see you, Miss Love.” He shimmies a bit as he rattles the can, treating it as a strange maraca.
Casey cringes, uncapping her spray paint with a pop. She lets the cap clatter to the floor. “Don’t. People call my mom that. Please, Roi.”
He begins, exaggerating his enunciation as he sizes up the eye, “Miss—”
“I’ll spray your eye out,” Casey threatens, and though she sprays the tunnel wall with her can of black, gold comes out. She quirks an eyebrow and shakes her head. Her light flashes over the shimmering streak. “Well, that’s not right.” She tilts her chin up, and for a moment, her headlamp blinds Valencia. “Val. Trade me.”
They swap cans. Roi sprays a streak as soft singing and cowbell fill the tunnel.
Valencia, as she begins to work on her gold U.F.O, hears Roi sigh. She turns, noting the blue, not pink, on his wall. His shoulders slump, then go still: “A trade for your can of ‘blue’, Miss Love. . . .”
Roi doesn’t get sprayed in the eye and Valencia is slightly disappointed about it. Casey only wrecks his pyramid, striking its eye with an X while Roi gives over-dramatic screams, “No, no, my baby! You’re killing him!”
Valencia wishes she had phone signal to Snapchat it. But some things are best left in the moment. Valencia finishes her aliens with pink. Casey’s painted a large storm cloud in black, with the rain in typical blue. She poses under, arms crossed and straight-faced as she has Ro crouch down to snap pictures of her. Valencia kneels below her U.F.O., raising her arms and pretending to scream. Roi declines all photos with his dead “baby.” They wrap up, pack the paint cans into Roi’s bag—caps matched right—and Casey claps, rallying the trio.
“C’mon,” Casey waves, hand flashing before her headlamp, “I wanna see if Suncoast’s movie theater does $5 Tuesdays.” They shove out. The tunnel is freezing. They’ve been in the black for about thirty-ish minutes, and Valencia is fighting off shivers. She wonders if it’s dark outside yet.
They skate in their usual formation and Valencia watches Casey give a long, smooth turn as the tunnel goes left. Casey’s close to the walls and sticks out a hand like she wants to run it along the concrete. Roi kicks after her, and Valencia hears him swear as he gives a sharp twist.
He huffs, “Fuck rocks.”
Casey laughs, apologizing for not warning him. “Didn’t see it,” she reasons, slowing so she’s beside Roi. “Figured if there’s nothing on the walls, there’s not much on the ground, either.”
Roi mumbles, and Valencia’s sure he’s making a face under his ski mask.
Casey tilts her head down, trying to look Roi dead-on and watch the path. She’s doing that thing where her eyes go dark, a trick of light and shadow. Valencia’s not sure how well it functions with the ski mask and headlamp.
“Race you!” Casey shouts, and then she’s already shooting away, jeans tight around her calf as her leg propels her forward.
Roi swears again and yells out for Casey to wait. Without turning around, he adds, “What about Val?”
Yeah, what about Val?Valencia thinks, hurrying after their ruckus. She can hear Casey teasing, Roi spitting out half-baked comebacks. Their skateboards click over the pavement, steady but quick, like a rollercoaster pulse. Val can manage—she always does—slow or not. She can feel her ski mask sticking to her cheeks, courtesy of sweat as she pursues her friends. She spots Roi up ahead, Casey a flash ahead of him as she gives a sudden lean to the right, vanishing. A sharp curve. Roi puts his weight on the tail of his skateboard, popping it up as he pivots out of sight.
Valencia bends her knees, adjusting her footing so her heels are almost off the board, then—air. She doesn’t shout, doesn’t swear. Her gut drops as her body pitches forward, faster than her arms can react, and for a moment, she flies. She hits the ground face-first—nose-first—with ears ringing. It’s like the nightmares where there’s an alarm sounding in the distance and she can’t wake up.
She can’t hear. Roi, Casey—they’re gone. Valencia, sits up, deciding her body’s lack of pain is a result of adrenaline high. She should hurt. She should be crying. Perhaps falling on her face kept the wind from getting knocked out of her. She tries to catalog the injuries she’s likely sustained: broken nose, bruised knees, and maybe a twisted ankle. And like that, the pain appears. Brilliant.
It takes a moment to realize the blackness in her vision isn’t from the fall; her headlamp is shattered on the ground. She doesn’t bother to salvage the straps, opting to pick herself up and try to find her board. The ankle she’s certainly twisted gives her a limp, so she crouches down and stretches her arms, searching for her skateboard. Her groping hands find it a yard or so back, propelled by her sudden ejection. She lays it across her lap. Casey will come back for her. Roi had to have heard her fall.
But you didn’t scream, says her brain, so maybe you’re on your own. Can you even walk? As brains do, it offers up the handy thought: what if you die here?
Valencia knows it’s silly, that it’s the reptile-brain response to injury and being left behind by the pack. But it’s a tunnel. She’s halfway there. Dead or not, they’d probably find her on the way back. She waits to hear her name reverberate. She imagines Roi turning around, adjusting the eyeholes of his mask and asking, “Where’s Val?”
She withdraws her phone and checks the battery. Because she’s here, and because Apple is evil and likes to make phone life drain faster and faster as they age, she’s stuck at 2%. It’ll stay at 2% for a good while, she knows, but the camera and flashlight refuse to turn on due to “conserving battery.” Dark it is.
Walking is the only option—limping, if she’s being honest. The direction is up to her. She considers Suncoast, glittering and golden with an American flag flapping over it’s burning, white-light name. She could scare her friends really good, she thinks, if she goes back and waits for them at the Jeep. She could text them to head back. That way she won’t have to make two trips—to the Coast and back—either.
But they got masks and Roi packed a victory joint. Valencia knows there’s only one choice. She grunts as she gets up, tucks her board under her arm, and continues.
Casey’s brother once said, that when you die, you go to Hell with whatever you’ve got on your person. It can be clothes, keys, or a hogee sandwich. If you get stabbed, the bloodstains go, too. Valencia wonders how his theory works. Does she keep her skateboard? Do her injuries heal even if the bloodstains stay?
Focusing on her possible Hell-equipment keeps her busy. The blackness forces her to hone in on the drippy, ploppy, sound of rain drainage, and the strange, muffled groans from what seems like a road overhead. There are cars above and they don’t know she exists. She thinks it’s kinda like being a spy, but then she walks into a puddle and decides that if this is spy-work, being a spy must suck. The puddle is deep enough to soak the canvas of her sneakers, and Valencia groans, waiting for her socks to dampen, wiggling her toes in a futile attempt to avoid the sour water. Her injured ankle feels fine, strangely—shouldn’t there be pain? Of course, as she thinks it, her ankle throbs in response as if waking up. She debates trying to skate despite it, but peroneal tendonitis isn’t worth it.
Despite the creeping cold and wet socks, Valencia feels comfortable. She doesn’t question it further; grateful she can focus on avoiding a potential encounter with one of the meth-heads who are rumored to squat in tunnels during colder months. On the way to Angel Park, Roi’d asked if anyone ever found homeless people in the tunnel. He explained that shanty towns in Chicago were common beneath underpasses. Casey answered no; however, there had been a news story about someone being set on fire in a tunnel. She gave no further context.
Death by fire or freezing, Valencia’s not sure what she prefers. Living is a better option. She limps her way through the tunnel, the grip tape on her skateboard rubbing her side and upper thigh, sanding her jeans. She’s got her free hand feeling along the wall, making sure she doesn’t bump into anything. Suncoast can’t be much further. She’ll find it. She has to. There’s only one exit. There’ll be the light, and she’ll have made it.
When she was a kid, she locked herself in her bedroom and shut off all the lights as “emergency training.” The world could end and take the power out with it. She wanted to be ready. Everyone always imagines themselves alive during the apocalypse, for some reason, and Valencia thinks it’s because people are narcissists or maybe it’s some ancient survival instinct that saved early humans from doom. Foresight: what if I lived? You have to be prepared.
Survival is sexy. That’s what biology teaches. Those who survive get to go on, and so do their genes, but all Valencia wants right now is to survive the tunnel, change out of her jeans, and curl up in bed. Her dad will give her shit about her ankle. Casey will, too, but she’ll probably buy her ice-cream from Suncoast. Roi will shrug or clap her on the back, and try to doodle on her ankle brace, should she choose to wear one. Maybe he’ll give the eye-pyramid another go.
She is not sure how long it takes, but after a straight stretch of tunnel, there’s light. It’s the kind of light you only get in Vegas, the kind of fake gold that bounces off bodies of casinos plated with shimmer, like dragon scales reflecting fire. Suncoast is there. It’s night, crickets chirping because they have yet to freeze to the ground. They’ll freeze soon enough, perfectly preserved because it’s rarely cold enough for things to ice-over for more than a couple hours. Valencia imagines them frozen to the bumpy, stone wall of the high school quad, their bodies so light a sneeze could send them flying. She smiles; come November, she’ll arrive at school early to meet Casey before homeroom; Valencia makes note to put some of the crickets in her pocket to throw at Casey as a joke––revenge for the mocking she’ll receive for her ankle injury. Foresight.
When she sees the light, she runs. Her ankle doesn’t hurt, not right now, but she’s not thinking about why or how it should be twisted and making her wince. Her eyes adjust to the white, blinking title of Suncoastthat’s bordered by a burst of red light. It’s small and distant, at the top of the building, but what’s not small are her friends, sitting on their skateboards smoking a joint, gazing up at the casino.
A plan pops into her mind: sneak up, scream, snatch the weed, and say, “Surprise, bitches.” Valencia slinks, her steps intentional and soft as she suppresses a grin. She pushes closer, and she can smell the sweat coming off of Roi—she knows it’s him because it smells like Old Spice—and Casey smells like the five-dollar vanilla perfume from Bath and Body Works. Valencia pauses as Casey passes the joint to Roi, and, inclining her head toward him, she freezes. Valencia knows she’s been caught.
“Val’s been gone a while,” Casey says. “I think we should go back.”
Roi takes the joint, and Valencia deflates, wondering if Casey needs glasses. “Val’s probably just lagging. It’s not like she could get lost.” Roi shrugs. “But we should make sure a meth-head didn’t get her.” He gets up, his skateboard rolling a bit as his weight no longer pins it to the ground of the arroyo. He stretches his arms, leaning side to side as he cracks his neck, and turns around. His ski mask hides whatever concerns are on his face, but his eyes look to Casey with a strange nervousness. He gets on his board and skates past Valencia. “You don’t think a meth-head got her right?”
Casey’s face is bare, but she pulls her mask from the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, yanking it over her ginger curls. “Val-gal? Not a chance. She’d beat someone’s ass with her board.” Casey gestures for the joint. “Put that out. Leave some for Val. She’ll be mad if we smoke it without her.”
Roi nods, wetting his fingers with spit as he pinches out the cherry. “Fair. I thought she’d be here by now.”
The light from Suncoast paints their backs as they begin to skate toward the tunnel. Valencia, her body suddenly weightless, walks after them, waving. She insists they’re great actors, haha, very funny. They’d once played a similar joke on a teacher during April Fool’s day, getting the class to pretend the teacher wasn’t there for the first ten minutes of class.
Roi asks again, “You sure a meth-head didn’t get her? Maybe we should’ve taken your brother’s bat before we left.”
“Nuh-uh,” Casey shakes her head, “I’ve gone through the tunnels alone, I don’t think they hang here.” She and Roi skate beside each other, growing more distant as they return to the tunnel. “And even if they did, Val’d give ‘em hell. She’s a survivor. Maybe she just fucked up a knee. Maybe she hit her head.”
Casey waves Roi off, carving a smooth turn into the mouth of the tunnel, leaving Valencia alone in the light.
Gabriela Everett is a creative writing undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago and presently lives in the South Loop. Everett’s previous publications include prose and poetry in Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s lit mag, Glyph, and Columbia’s Hair Trigger 2.0.