Juniors

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  I wheel my suitcase into the doorway of the small room that sits away from the driveway. I could have both rooms if I wanted. Or one could be my art room or yoga room or ballet studio or meditation room! I do none of these things, but suddenly want to. It’s like getting something for free, for a limited time, and you feel a certain pressure to wring out every last drop. A ukulele room!

  My mom walks into the room I’ve decided to take with another one of my suitcases.

  “This one yours?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, as if not really sure.

  “Nice,” she says. “Everything is so lovely.”

  “Did you see yours?” I ask.

  She puts her arm around me. “I did. The bed is like a hotel bed.”

  “Your favorite,” I say.

  The room has the same dark wood floors as the rest of the house. There’s a high bed with a puffy white comforter and big, full pillows. I throw myself onto it, and it does feel like a hotel bed. My mom explores, opening the doors to the armoire where a big television is stored.

  “Awesome!” I say.

  “Told you this would be fun.”

  “I guess,” I say. It’s still confusing, unreal, though I put my questions/complaints/reservations aside for now, remembering the bedroom I just came from. Green carpets, brown wood walls, low ceilings, heat.

  This looks like a room that belongs to me. This one offers me something. Like the living room, nothing matches, yet everything seems to be getting along. I walk up to the window and look at the main house.

  “We should probably go over, let Melanie know we’re here,” my mom says.

  “You can,” I say, not turning around. The house looks like a hotel.

  “It would be nice if you came along. She hasn’t seen you since you were a little kid.”

  “It would be nice,” I say and glance quickly at my mom to show her I’m not moving.

  I know that she wants me to do these things to learn manners or something, but sometimes it feels like she just wants company, or that I’m a kind of shield for her. She doesn’t have a husband, so I’m the one she brings along, and I’m the excuse she has when she wants to leave.

  “Lea, they’re doing a big thing here.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And I didn’t ask them to.”

  “Please have some gratitude,” she says.

  “I will when I see them.” I hate when she makes me feel this way. I’m shy and embarrassed, and so I show her anger instead. I start unpacking my suitcase for something to do.

  “Just come with me to say hello. I don’t even know if anyone’s here. You can meet Whitney.”

  I don’t answer. I refold my clothes like a maniac, as if this were the most important task in the world. I don’t want to be shoved to their front door like a shy child forced to say “trick or treat.”

  “Not now, okay?” I say. “We just got here.”

  “I hope you’re not going to have an attitude.”

  I throw the clothes down on the bed. “I don’t have an attitude! I’m just getting adjusted—trying to enjoy myself a little. Explore the surroundings, relax.”

  She shakes her head, disappointed, giving me that wounded look. “I just thought some basic, decent manners wouldn’t hurt.” She takes her exit. And scene.

  Decent manners wouldn’t hurt. But it does hurt. And it hurts me to think that she has to be nice, that they’re doing a “big thing here” and we have to pay them back. How? What will we owe them, exactly? Their part will always look bigger: free house, parking, grounds, water. Flowers in a vase, Flowers in a bottle, apples, oranges, bananas, oh my! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  I just want to stay put. For a second, I had a feeling of excitement to be home, but by going to say thank you, she’s reminded me that we’re just houseguests. None of this is ours.

  5

  I OPEN BOXES IN MY NEW ROOM, LOOKING AT MY things as if they’re old friends. The built-in bookshelves are empty, and the first thing I do is arrange my books. I put the kid books I can’t bear to get rid of into the closet—Ping, Eloise, Ferdinand, Beatrix Potters, Roald Dahls—and arrange the others on the shelf—Dickens, Austen, my young adults I get from the library whose titles I can never remember. The Wonderful Awful. No Time Like Forever. I line them up neatly, starting anew.

  I like the comforter that’s on the bed already, so I keep mine in its bag and put it in the pile of things to take downstairs, which is becoming huge. I don’t need my old pillows, hangers, linens, towels. Everything here is better.

  “Lea?” my mom calls from the living room. She’s playing music. After I discovered Sonos and the home-filling speaker system, we can’t stop playing music.

  “Yeah!” I yell.

  She walks to my doorway and whispers, “Whitney’s here.” She looks giddy, like some celebrity is right behind her, but she’s trying to play it cool.

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

  “I went over to see if Melanie was home, and Whitney was there. She wanted to say hi.”

  “Okay,” I say, shooing her away, knowing she’s covering for whatever she’s done—probably told Whitney I was dying to say hello and that I have no friends. My mom moves away to make room for Whitney, giving me a supportive look like I’m about to sing a song or jump hurdles or something.

  “Hey,” Whitney says, from the doorway. She’s barefoot, and her hair is wet, which tells me something about her—most girls don’t like to get their hair wet. They just cook poolside like rotisserie chickens, taking intermittent dips up to their chins if they need to cool off. Her legs are muscled and long, even though she’s not very tall.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Her two front teeth are notably big, but in this weird way that makes you want your front teeth to be notably big too. She has a dark mole perched on top of her right cheekbone that I keep focusing on, so with that and the teeth, it takes me a while to register her entire face, but when I do, I see cruelty. It’s not that she’s scowling or smirking or anything. She just has that teen-movie-girl face, the popular one who gets one-upped at the end by the less pretty girl with the big, big heart. Maybe that’s not fair, though. Maybe she’s not cruel at all—maybe she’s just pretty. Her eyes are large and a bit slanted, with thick lashes.

  “My mom told me you were here,” she says.

  Yes, she clearly wanted to drop in and say hi. I want to tell her it’s okay to go.

  “I’m going to finish up out there,” my mom says. “Can I get you guys a snack?”

  Oh God. A snack. I imagine saying to Whitney, “Can I offer you some fruit your mom brought?” and serving it to her on one of her plates.

  “No,” I say.

  “I’m good, thank you,” Whitney says.

  “Okay, I’ll let you girls chat.”

  Whitney smiles at my mom, I don’t, and then we’re by ourselves. What are we supposed to chat about? She walks in, then takes slow steps around the room. I wonder if I should resume my task or follow her around like a realtor. She wears just a large T-shirt that has wet spots where her breasts are.

  “Getting settled?” she asks, looking at the mess on the floor, my boxes and clothes.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Unpacking some things.” Obviously.

  She walks toward the window that faces the sea and her house.

  “I’ve never been in here,” she says. I look at the backs of her thin and strong legs.

  “Really?” That seems weird to me. I’m someone who leaves no drawer unopened. I can’t imagine not going into a house I owned.

  “I mean, when it was finished, I peeked in,” she says, “but I never looked at the bedrooms.”

  I guess not. Why would she? It would be like checking out the maid’s quarters or the handyman’s tool shed.

  She looks at my books, and I remain quiet, as if someone’s l
ooking at my art right in front of me. I wish I had some of my pictures up—ones of my friends or of my mom and me in LA, dressed up for a premiere. She hops over a pile of my hats, then peeks into the bathroom. I hold myself back from saying anything, not because it would be something rude, but because it would be something nice. Apologetic, careful, false. Or it would just be plain lame, like “how’s school?”

  “You should come swim or lay out sometime,” she says. She walks back to the window and sits down on the built-in bench with the beachy, blue cushion. “I have magazines. I’m done with them. So and so did this. So and so wore that. Those kind.”

  I laugh, needlessly, then stand up because I can’t just stay crouched down by my boxes, but when I stand, I have nowhere to go. I feel my stupid clothes, my ratty nondesigner jeans, my sweatshirt with the stain that runs along the zipper like a sewage canal. I suck in my stomach and hold my hands together, cross my arms, then uncross them and say, “We were in the same ethics group, right?” as if I don’t know.

  “Oh yeah,” she says.

  She has no problem with the silence. She stays still. I walk over to the bed and sit down.

  I think back to the peer-counselor-led session, the things we had done, and more important for me, the things we’ve never done and always wanted to do. I remember noticing she wasn’t too far ahead of me and thinking she must be lying.

  “That was a weird exercise,” I say. “Walking across the room.”

  She looks like she’s remembering something that happened ages ago. “Yeah. I kind of liked it. Made you think.”

  “Totally,” I say.

  “Did you see Laura Fujimoto?” She laughs. “Oh my God, she got, like, all the way across. I always thought she was some goody-goody.”

  I laugh, or make a sound that approximates laughter.

  “But who knows why she walked,” Whitney says. “Hopefully ’cause she did bad shit and not because bad shit happened to her. Like what if she took her steps ’cause she was molested or something? And by the way, how the fuck is walking across the gym supposed to help her with that—or with any of our problems?”

  “Yeah,” I say again, ineptly. Where is my funny self? Where does it go when I’m intimidated? I fold shirts that I’ve already folded.

  “Why’d you walk?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t really remember.”

  She looks at me like I’m hiding something scandalous. Black-soled shoes in the gym. That’s why I walked. Thug life.

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “I don’t really remember,” she says, and now she looks like she’s the one hiding something scandalous.

  Water drips from her hair onto my hardwood floor. Her hardwood floor. This is all hers. While it’s easy to adapt to better things, it’s probably hard to come back down.

  “So do you like it?” she asks, and looks up at the ceiling.

  I look around, as if considering. “Yeah, it works. My mom’s going to be shooting more in town now, so . . .” I usually find that when I mention my mom, the attention turns immediately to her and sheds a more attractive light on me as well, but Whitney doesn’t seem to care.

  “Yeah, my mom’s all amped on your mom’s show.” She gets up and walks by me. Her hair smells like expensive perfume. She picks up the few things on my shelves—an old pencil box, a glass vase I made—then puts them down again. She’s in charge, and I feel like I’m losing an invisible race. Even my posture is pathetic. It’s like I’ve become suddenly infected with clumsiness and I’m afraid to move and spill my dignity.

  “You going out tonight?” she asks.

  “Not sure yet,” I lie.

  “You’re friends with Danny, right?” Her smile is coy.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “He’s kind of a dreamboat,” she says.

  I laugh, and a little spit darts out. I think she cringes.

  She taps her nails against my ukulele on the shelf, and now she looks bored, like she’s enduring a class in school. I wonder if she feels forced to stay and hang out with me. I don’t know what to say to her and hate that I’m nervously trying to think of something.

  I’m about to say something about the cottage, how it’s nice, how everything’s so great, so much better than our last place, thereby firmly establishing my rank notches below her, like I’m some kind of lady-in-waiting, but then a clear little bubble of snot comes out of Whitney’s nostril, and I stop and stare at it. It’s perfectly developed, a round and jolly little thing. She stands there, ignorant, and I can’t help myself.

  “Oh my God.” I laugh.

  “What?” she says, and I tell her to look in the mirror. She walks to the chest of drawers and looks into the large rectangular mirror that hangs above it.

  “Whoa,” she says. She tilts her head to the right, then left. She doesn’t sniffle or wipe it away. I watch her looking at herself.

  “You may have set a record,” I say.

  “Now that is g money right there.” She turns slowly and strikes a funny pose with her hands on her hips, her face in profile, proud like a conqueror. Then she breaks the pose and looks around, maybe for something to wipe her nose with. She ends up using her T-shirt. “Well, that was awesome. A nice welcoming. I’m such a spaz,” she says, in a way that’s the opposite of spazziness. Her way of speaking is languid, like her words have been out in the sun for too long.

  We talk a little more, small talk, miniature talk, but it’s comfortable now. It’s because of the snot. If that hadn’t happened I would have been nervous and resentful, and she would have forgotten me or treated me like some kind of ghetto foster child.

  “I’m heading back out before the sun goes down,” she says.

  “Just going to finish unpacking,” I say. I refrain from saying thank you—Thank you for the house.

  Before she leaves, she returns with some paper towels and cleans up the water she dripped on the floor.

  6

  MY MOM AND I HAVE DINNER TOGETHER IN OUR NEW house, at our new table. She has given me a section of the shooting script for tomorrow.

  EXT. HUT—DAY

  EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON Samantha, deep in concentration. A mosquito lands on her cheek. She flinches, tries to peer down at it, then slaps her face.

  RICK

  If I could be a bug on that face.

  SAMANTHA

  Then you’d be dead, idiot.

  RICK

  Oh. Right.

  PAN OUT to the arid land. A Jeep is seen in the distance, driving closer to them, and very recklessly.

  RICK

  Are we supposed to get in that thing?

  SAMANTHA

  If you’re afraid of a Jeep, then we’re in for a long ride.

  RICK looks her over, unabashedly. She’s wearing a loose, white tank top, damp with sweat. Her legs are golden and glistening.

  SAMANTHA

  Can I help you with something?

  RICK

  Actually, I was going to offer to help you with something.

  Her eyebrows arch, intrigued.

  RICK

  Your breasts.

  SAMANTHA

  Excuse me?

  RICK

  I’m the breast in the west. I can give you a discount when we get back to the States.

  She is disgusted, but he doesn’t notice. He’s serious, and really looking at them now, as if presented with a medical problem.

  SAMANTHA

  (mumbles)

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  RICK

  (using hand gestures)

  A strong C would suit your frame. I like ’em a little spaced apart, not so uptight, you know, and with the nipples

  (more hand gestures to illustrate his thoughts)

  pointed diagonally.

  SAMANTHA

  Just shut up
right now.

  The Jeep is almost to them.

  RICK

  What?

  SAMANTHA

  Just be a bug on my face.

  The Jeep pulls up in front of them. They stand and dust themselves off. They are stunned when they see their driver, a GIRL who looks to be about twelve. She is sitting on pillows.

  GIRL

  Howzit! Welcome to Molokana.

  She smiles, revealing a few gold teeth.

  GIRL (CONT’D)

  Come on already, slowpokes. I got work to do, people to see, eel to eat.

  RICK

  Did she just say eel?

  SAMANTHA

  She just said eel.

  • • •

  I give the script back to my mom. “Can you say ‘nipples’ on TV?”

  “I guess we’ll see,” she says. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” She takes a sip of wine. A soft light descends through the trees.

  I eat the zucchini that’s fallen out of my burrito. “It’s fun. I like Samantha, and Rick is so awful that he’s kind of awesome. And your legs are golden and glistening.”

  “Remember my friend on Lost?” she says.

  “Of course. Can you pass the sour cream?”

  She passes me the little white bowl. Even when it’s just us, she always plates things in serving dishes.

  “She got twenty thousand an episode when it first aired, and then when it became a hit, two hundred and fifty an episode.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “This isn’t Lost,” she says, tapping the script. “But here’s to hoping for a back nine for twenty-two episodes!” She raises her glass, then leans in for a messy bite. Back nine is an order from the studios if they like the series, bringing it from thirteen episodes to twenty-two. I raise my glass of water. Here’s to hoping. I look down at the script.