12
Pride
Jake and Mort drove up the coast of California on Highway 1. The sun glinted off the blue Pacific to their left. They wound around cliff edges and reveled in the look of the beach sand when the road took them down to sea level. The sand was white and smooth and the wind shaped much of it into curved dunes.
“I’ve never seen the ocean before,” said Jake.
“Me neither,” said Mort, although he had the vague feeling that he was not exactly telling the truth. Not that he was lying, just that somewhere in the back of his mind he had some dim memory of salt water touching him, like he had waded into some waves. He supposed that was possible. Louisa had told him his father had come from the north, somewhere around Portland.
After Mort had stolen a car, they purposely waited until the s
