Toni, Coltor, and the Comet: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Super Positions: Toni

Age recommended to read: 13+ (strong language, mature themes)

“What do you mean your flight’s canceled?” Toni Leglise aggressively presses the speaker icon on her cellphone and opens the American Airlines app.

“What’s your boarding pass number,” she asks Brittany, her younger sister.

“Toni,” small pulses of breath puff out of the speaker, “I’m not coming.”

“What do you mean you’re not coming?” Toni asks.

El Puerto de Azucar, Costa Rica’s evening skies reflect the cool navy blue ocean, while the waves ripple around the steel legs of the concrete pier in front of the Sugar factory where Toni stands.

In the early evening, two green iguanas lie dead on their backs, while their small pale tongues hang out the side of their mouths. The black ants in their diligence cut away at the flesh of the iguanas, and carry them in neat little rows off the corner of the pier. Toni watches the ants dutifully as she rolls her ankle in small circles, and waits silently for Brittany’s reply.

“So what is it?” Toni asks.

“I didn’t book a ticket,” Brittany says in a partial mumble.

Toni feels her stomach drop, then swallows quickly. She scans her surroundings and begins to download the view to her photographic memory. She starts at the base of the cement pier where she stands and looks at her worn-out black Converse, then up her thin, long, and toned legs cultivated from hours of hiking to observatories and meteor shower watch spots. She sees her denim shorts that cut off six inches from her small yet toned butt, and her white tank top pulling at the sides from the heaviness of her oversized gray camping backpack. The glow of sunset illuminates her olive-toned skin and highlights the natural streaks of brown in her raven-colored curly pixie cut.

All here. Toni blinks twice to center herself, then refocuses her attention back to Brittany. In a calm yet emotionally distant tone, she says, “So you wait to tell me this once I’m already here?”

The line remains silent.

“Why couldn’t you just tell me you didn’t want to go?” Toni asks

“Because you wouldn’t have listened to me anyway,” Brittany says.

“Brittany, that’s not the point,” Toni leans against the rusted handrail and takes a deep breath to center herself, “You do realize that you literally abandoned me in Costa Rica, right?”

“Well, I-”, Brittany’s line begins to falter, “Of that,”

“What did you say, the line keeps cutting,” Toni says, pushing herself off the railing.

“I…..when….if… Mom said,”

“Hey Britt, once I get to the Inn, I’ll call you back,” Toni says. She drops the phone down to her side, causing the warm metal to lightly graze the bare skin on her upper thigh. She turns, faces El Puerto’s ocean, and examines her surroundings on the abandoned pier

The curly bangs of Toni’s pixie cut blow away from her forehead with the evening ocean breeze as she weighs her sister’s words. Sunset causes a dull shimmer to gleam, across the sea and bounce off the surface of the water.

In this lone section of the formerly famous sugar production port town of El Puerto de Azucar, Costa Rica, sits the Acosta Azucar Sugar Factory. The once bustling factory known for producing millions of tons of sugar in the early 1900s has been reduced to an abandoned lot in a part of town that only ghost hunters, aspiring astronomers, and amateur meteorological society members dare to visit. Toni isn't a part of any club or society, but she is the sole author of El Cometa, an online blog dedicated to finding the world’s rarest comets; and she has her eyes on the “Big One”.

She pushes her growing tension to the back of her mind and focuses on locating a spot on the open field to set up her telescope for star mapping. She tucks her thumbs under the straps of her backpack and begins walking towards the enlarged patch of dry grassland where Acosta Azucar sits. Four men presumably in their forties, were carrying around vlog cameras for ghost hunting, and two males in their early twenties set up telescopes for stargazing. Toni feels uneasiness start to settle in her chest from being the only woman on the lot, but tries to push the thought away by focusing her mind on her surroundings.

She reluctantly breathes in the acrid yet salty smell of the North Pacific Ocean and shakes her head. I should have brought a mask. She covers her nose with her thin hand as she approaches the factory, but the smell of rotten garbage and decomposed sugar still breaks through her fingers.

White lead paint chips away from the building in large flakes and collects in dejected piles, next to tall mounds of molten sugar. Several vines of deep green ivy creep up the building and wrap around the oxidized reddish-brown corners of the roof. Toni pulls out her cell phone and takes pictures of the dilapidated sight. They’re going to freak out when they see this! She turns to her right and snaps a picture of two large smoke towers covered in smoke stains, one six meters taller than the other.

While her back is turned, the sound of shuffling across concrete swiftly passes behind her, followed by a shrieking call from a macaw. Toni whips her head around, heart racing, and looks at her feet for what she thinks is a stray island dog— only to see a man running full speed towards the edge of the pier.

The man looks to be in his late sixties, with a swollen belly from years of beer consumption, and a shiny bald head. The dwindling sun reflects off his bronze skin and spotlights the thin coat of hair covering his back. Toni smells beer and cigarettes on his breath as he screams while running toward the ocean. Without an ounce of a second thought, the elderly man jumps head-first into the ocean. Little sputters of water fly into the air, as his body breaks the surface with a clean smack.

Toni looks at the cement pier where she is standing, then back to her phone. She couldn’t hide the scowl forming on her face from the old man’s unnerving actions. She wonders why he would even choose to swim in the most polluted section of the ocean on the island, naked. She clears her throat, then continues to walk down the pier and onto the grass near the trash-filled shoreline.

To avoid any unnecessary small talk, Toni chooses to sit as far as possible from the other men on the beach. She pulls off her backpack and slings it onto the uneven grass, while the ocean’s acrid smell plays across her senses. Thoughts of Brittany start to linger in her mind, causing her stomach to heat up with anger. When have I ever forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do? She thought back to when they were children, and how she would order Brittany and the neighbor’s daughter to find smooth white rocks for her “super secret project”--- which was really just a rock tower.

But that doesn’t count, we were just kids. “Whatever, I’m not thinking about this,” She mumbles as she pulls out her telescope and begins assembling it as the sun sets on the beach. She slowly extends each leg of the tripod for her setup but notices that one of the legs is crushed at the middle hinge. “No, No No,” she says, while trying to bend the leg in any way she can to prop it up. She faces her open backpack and digs through her rolled-up clothes, toiletries, camera, and empty journals for anything stable to support her telescope. But all she manages to find with a flat surface is her passport and two journals, which would only prop the telescope six or seven centimeters at most.

Toni sighs, then looks out to the ocean. Nothing about this trip is going right. She runs her fingers through her bangs and closes her eyes while inhaling slowly through her nostrils. A faint rotten egg smell slides down her nose and touches her throat, but she doesn't mind. The act of breathing is enough to comfort her and temporarily push her growing doubts away.

She shifts her focus to the gentle swell of the ocean. The faint outline of the moon grows more robust as the sun fades and casts its rays across the disheveled pier, somehow making it look romantic in the process. The palm trees lining the perimeter of the abandoned factory sway in unison with the ocean, their leaves chattering softly.

While Toni watches the waves, she suddenly remembers the naked old man. She looks around at the pier, but only sees the same people refocusing their cameras on the newly forming night sky—the old man nowhere to be found.

She pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. 7:45 pm, January 22nd, 2024.

Can he swim? Toni looks back at the abandoned sugar factory and scans the area. Another five minutes pass without sight of the old man, causing Toni’s growing unease to collect in her chest She faces her attention back to her awkwardly leaning tripod, but now her hands are trembling. She stops adjusting the tripod and rubs her hands together, shaking them once.

“Crap,” she whispers, while grabbing at her curly pixie cut, “How did this even break?” She blows a raspberry between her lips and looks at the ocean again.

The old man finally breaks the surface of the ocean and sucks in a large amount of air— laughing maniacally while wading in the water. An odd sense of relief washes over Toni’s body at seeing the man’s dripping wet face, which she quickly shakes away out of embarrassment.

The man swims in full lazy strokes towards the shoreline, swiveling to his back like a river otter carrying its young on its stomach. His bald head grazes soda bottles and plastic containers on the shoreline, yet he doesn’t seem to mind the sensation. He rolls back to his large stomach and then pushes himself out of the water. As the man clumsily bounds towards the grass fields, he pauses, full water-shrunk penis out on display. The male vloggers on the grass start whistling and hollering at the old man, but he just waves them off as he scans the area.

Oh no. Toni feels her stomach drop. The horridly familiar sensation of trying to hide from a teacher looking for someone to call on in class comes to her. She tries to shrink her Five-foot ten frame into a ball, but she already knows this technique is just as futile as it was back in high school. If anything, her hunchback always draws more attention. Still, she folds her torso, scrunches her face, and covers her eyes to avoid eye contact.