Lomita Heights is the Santa Rosa neighborhood where Jessica’s family lives in a vivid yellow Victorian house. The setting anchors an everyday route between home and a nearby skate park, a place where Jessica spends time alone among older children who do not speak to her.

Setting and Background

After Jessica’s family moves from San Jose to Santa Rosa, they make their home in Lomita Heights. The house is described as Victorian and bright yellow, giving the neighborhood a specific, memorable presence in Jessica’s routine without further details about its streets or surroundings.

Jessica’s Daily Route

After field-hockey practice, Jessica returns home, empties her backpack onto her bed, and repacks it with a CD player, a black CD case, library books, an apple, and three slices of cheese for a snack. She then runs about 300 meters to the skate park. The house is thus the starting point for a short, repeated journey toward a place where she can choose her own music and reading.

At the park, Jessica sits at the bottom of a spiral slide, listens to music, and pretends to read while watching skaters aged thirteen or fourteen. They shout to one another and ride their skateboards along a concrete rail; none speaks to her. After about an hour, she returns home. Lomita Heights matters in this passage less as a broadly described neighborhood than as the domestic anchor of a solitary routine, one that places Jessica close to other young people while leaving her apart from them.