"505"

We met 18-year-old Angel Marquez at SeaQuake Brewing in Crescent City, California, when we stopped in for a delicious dinner. It was his very first shift as a waiter, though the place already felt like home—his older sibling worked there before him, and his dad still bakes the bread for the menu.

When we asked Angel what song reminded him of growing up, he smiled and said, "505" by Arctic Monkeys. He first heard it in 8th grade during quarantine—a time that, in his words, felt like life just skipped a year. A girl he liked back then, Presley, had introduced him to the track. Though he says she "brutally rejected" him, Angel's love for the song stuck.

Now a high school senior, Angel plans to attend community college and dreams of transferring to a university in San Diego. As we devoured some of SeaQuake's crispy Brussels by the Bay (a SeaQuake favorite), Angel shared his hope of becoming a math teacher. "505" lingers in his memory as a song from a strange, in-between time—bittersweet, full of feeling, and still part of the soundtrack to where he's headed next.