Before anyone even throws me a lighter, Andrew takes the cigarette out of my mouth and says, “Don’t smoke tonight.”
I’m totally confused. All the girls are smoking so I know it’s the cool thing to do. None of the guys smoke though, except for Matt, so maybe they don’t think it’s cool.
Andrew says, “Don’t look so worried, Senator,” and a whiff of his breath hits me and I think in a blinding flash, What if he’s planning on kissing me?
I’m burning with red, so I quickly drop my eyes and act like I have something under my nail. He clears his throat and I know he’s still looking at me. I panic and drop my hand since he probably thinks I’m gross, like what do I do, pick my nails all day?
Annie stamps out her cigarette and says, “Bump Around, anyone?”
The girls giggle. The guys hit each other. Andrew looks at me and says, “Why not.”
Eva catches his look and glares at me while Annie announces, “John and I broke up, I just want everyone to know.”
The guys don’t act all sorry or ask what happened. Matt looks straight at Annie like maybe now he’ll have a shot. I’m glad nobody has a crush on Matt because they would be hurt by the way his eyes suck up Annie’s hair and boobs and legs.
Eva stares at me like I’m that frog in biology again, and then says, as if she’s not staring right at me, “Annie, does your cousin know how to play?”
I kind of shake my head slightly, flickers of terror striking across my chest. I’m glad the night hides my face.
Annie sees my head shake and says, “No.”
“Perfect,” Eva says. “Then she can go first.”
The girls giggle again. The guys shove and push each other and form a loose ring. The night heaves around me in thick puffs of black broken by patches of colored clothing where someone’s careless hand glides a flashlight across the different bodies. I don’t know what to expect. My heart thunders. I know something sexual is about to happen. I want to beg not to go first, but I want so badly to belong to this group that thinks I’m going to be a senator and doesn’t know of my mother’s whiskey breath and bloodshot eyes.
Eva steps into the middle of the circle of guys, ties a bandanna around my eyes and starts to spin me. Her hands are bony on my shoulders, and I think of a strange bird that’s half witch. I’m getting dizzier and dizzier as my tennis shoes stumble around in the dirt.
“Okay,” she says in a whisper, then takes her hands off my shoulders. I feel her leave my side as if the air opened up and took her thin, vibrating presence to a dark canyon beneath the earth. “Walk,” her voice says from far away. “Walk.”
I take a step and lurch to the right. Big hands hold me up. Guy hands.
“Take her blindfold off. Take it off.”
I think the voice is Leslie’s, but I’m so paralyzed with fear that I can’t be sure. Hands push the blindfold up rather than untying it. I’m staring straight at a chest in a white T-shirt. My head is still spinning and I lose my balance for a second and fall forward. The voice above the shirt goes, “Whoa.”
I look up. Shadows dance across a face broken by the glint of metal on teeth. Braces. It’s Carl. He hunches his shoulders and reaches his face in toward me. Before I can analyze what’s happening, he’s pressing his lips on mine. I realize I’m in a kiss and I can smell suntan lotion and taste salt at the same time. I wonder if this is all there is to it and how long it will go on when he pushes back from me and I realize it’s over.
Annie goes next, then Emily and Leslie. No one’s fallen into Andrew yet, and when it’s Eva’s turn, she giggles like she’s one of the other girls and not a winner of a science and math award. Annie spins Eva and then lets her go. Eva takes two steps to the right, then acts like she’s falling to the left and lands right into Andrew. She must have been peeking. He pushes up her blindfold and leans his head forward to press his lips onto hers.
I feel like someone just hit me in the stomach with a huge tree branch, and the same tears that never got to fall on the patio with Annie’s dad brim up again. I shove them into the capsule in my spine and hope they’ll stay until I can get out of here.
Finally, we’re on our bikes and I’m grateful for the night on the way home, the way the darkness hugs my sides and hides my face. My legs pedal hard, blurs of pale yellow pants gleaming like stolen bits of moonlight. My bike floats. To my right, thousands of lights shimmer in the valley. There’s a richness around me, a thick, mysterious fragrance of longing.
Sweat slips out of my hair and cools on my face. Annie yells, “Hey, wait up,” but I don’t slow down. The wind is my only friend, drying the tears that crept up from my spine and into my eyes before they have a chance to fall.
I arrive at the tall, arched walls of Annie’s house. I think of flying past it, riding down the hill to Ventura Boulevard and then out to the shadowy parts of the Valley, where I would run into a down-and-out private investigator who would look me over, pull his cigar out of his mouth and say, “Okay, kid, you’re hired. One week for starters.” Then he’d slap a huge file into my hand and I’d be off, tracking down a woman hidden in a nursing home, concealing her true identity by acting like she has amnesia.
Instead, I turn up Annie’s long driveway and a minute later she pulls up out of breath. “Hel-lo,” she says irritably. “It wasn’t a race.”
I look at her like I don’t get that she’s pissed. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were right next to me.”
We go into the garage and park our bikes against the wall. Even in her sweat she is stunningly beautiful. She pulls the barrette out of her hair and says, “Could you believe Eva? There’s no way she wasn’t peeking. She’s had a crush on Andrew for, like, ages.”
“Huh.” I shrug as if I hadn’t even noticed and keep walking into the house.
She tries again. “What was with Matt? I thought he was going to suck out Leslie’s tonsils. I think he definitely got some tongue action in, don’t you?”
I’m suddenly too tired for her world that’s too old, too beautiful, and too unattainable for me. I only want to huddle under my blankets, push her and all her friends out of my brain, and be bathed by my words.
We walk up the stairs. I blink away the hot tears that pulse up again. In the darkness I see my mother walking into the rain, not even turning to say good-bye. I suddenly ache to see her, to tell her about my night.
“Well, good night,” Annie says when we get to her bedroom door, in a voice cold with disappointment.
I want to scream into her face, What do you want from me? What? I go into my room and slip on the pajamas that already went through two cousins and are a faded pink and totally ugly, but soft as air.
I turn to the bed, ready to bury myself in its layers, and let my words flutter around me, over and over, until they whirl me into sleep. I’m just about to pull the covers back when I see a note on my pillow that my dad left a message on the kitchen answering machine. A tingling starts in my spine that goes straight to the backs of my eyes with a pulsing of unshed tears.
I run downstairs, into the kitchen, and freeze. Annie and her mom stand at the granite island. Annie is scooping ice cream into two bowls and her mother is saying, “Just a smidge,” clearly digressing from her mounds of vegetation eating. They both look at me at the same time and I see my ancient, shapeless pajamas mirrored in their eyes before they both quickly blink. Obviously, my story about old East Coast families not buying trendy clothes can only go so far. No one would wear these pajamas if they had another choice. Maybe now Annie is going to start wondering what’s really the story with me.
All of it further exhausts me.
Annie stays cool, focusing on the ice cream and still irritated with me while her mom summons a friendly smile and says, “Oh, did you come down to hear your dad’s message?”
Annie’s eyebrows shoot up. Obviously, she’s remembering what I told her about being a Facebook rebel. I can tell by her face that she’s torn between acting friendly with me again and staying mad be
cause I didn’t give her enough attention on the way home.
While I’m thinking about whether I should say something friendly to her to make up for the way home, Aunt Sarah walks over to the answering machine on the kitchen counter and presses a button, explaining as she goes. “It’s really simple. Probably like one you have at home. Just hit ‘play’ when the light is blinking.” I’m horrified that she would press the button publicly instead of letting me do it in private when she and Annie have left.
I don’t even have time to prepare before my dad’s voice floats into the spacious kitchen, leaky and unsure. “Hey, kiddo. Just hoping to catch you, but I guess it’s hard with the time change and all. Okay, well, be good. I guess I have to catch you later.”
Aunt Sarah hits “erase” and all traces of him are gone.
I’m left standing in the kitchen with the capsule of rage no longer held in my spine but racing up into my heart and exploding.
That’s it? That’s it?
That’s all?
My breath is coming out in short puffs and I know I have to get out of this kitchen. NOW.
I turn to leave, but Aunt Sarah and Annie with their mother-daughter bowls of ice cream stand between me and my escape up the stairs.
Aunt Sarah looks at me with concern. My lower lip quivers and I pray with everything I’ve got: God, please don’t let her speak. If she says one nice thing to me, I won’t be able to keep pretending that everything’s fine. I’ll burst into tears and then Annie will know I’m just a mutt. A mutt with matted fur, dumped on her doorstep with nobody who cares about it, no one who’s out scouring the neighborhood to bring it home and back into the hearth of the family who loves it.
With a push of strength from somewhere deep down inside me, I choke out a quick and carefree “Night,” then run with splinters of rage, erupting like fireworks, into my soft and tastefully decorated bedroom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I lie in bed in a ball, finally alone, letting the storm of tears fall. I cry in great, heaving blasts. There are no Warrior Words that can help me now. They’re all just struggling and looking at me angrily, like I should have known they could only do so much. That they could protect me only from things outside me, not things inside.
Thoughts of my dad merge into thoughts of my mom, rising up like tiny spikes to stab the few good memories in my brain. The memories bleed in great, red waterfalls, turning into salty oceans as they pour out of my eyes as tears.
After my last shuddering breath is the part I hate even more. The wide, open emptiness, when I’m spent and hollow.
I hold my hand up to my hair on my head and think coldly, Why brush it anyway? I picture my mom for one moment more, her dark hands soft on my hair, her face reflected above mine in my bedroom mirror, where her eyes smiled into mine.
It hurts more to think about her than about my dad, so I focus on him. How weak he is and how disgusted I am with him. Then it hurts just as much to think of him, so I start thinking about Annie’s dad and longing throbs at my temples like a steady drum. I let myself slip back into the moment on the porch when Uncle Michael told me about how he decided to become a lawyer and how he didn’t laugh when I asked him if I could work for him and he said he’d give it some thought.
I remember his briefcase with growing excitement, and I think now is my chance. I can impress him beyond his wildest dreams. I can become a mini junior partner at his firm and Annie won’t even be jealous because all she cares about is clothes and boys so I can still have her as a friend and a cousin.
I creep to my door and open it. Darkness heaves, making the hall seem narrower.
I walk as straight and steady as an ant. When I get to the top of the stairs I almost turn back, but instead bite on my lip and descend. In the foyer I pause and listen for noise, but there’s nothing. I press my arms to my chest to hold in a shiver and then step, quiet as dust, into the family room.
Pale light from around the pool floats onto the floor, showing shadowy crisscrosses from the lattice outside on the patio. My bare feet rise and fall on the cold tiles, and then I’m in the laundry room. I sneak ahead until I bump into the smooth leather of Uncle Michael’s briefcase.
I’m afraid to turn on any light, but I won’t be able to do what I have to do if I can’t see. There’s a refrigerator in the laundry room and I figure that if I slide the door to the room closed, the light from the opened refrigerator door won’t be too obvious.
While I have the refrigerator open, I realize I’m thirsty and pretty tired so I open a can of Coke for the caffeine. I slurp down a little and then focus on the briefcase. It’s deep brown leather with gold clasps. I don’t think they’re locked because I’ve seen Uncle Michael go in and out of it and have never seen him use a little key.
I press the gold buttons out to the side and hear a faint click. Excitement beats in my chest and I cross my fingers before I open the top. The case he’s working on is all in folders. I’m not sure which document to start with so I just take the one off the top. It says “Interrogatories.” I start reading, waiting to hear the story of who wants what. I’d rather look for a person than an heirloom or something, but I’ll take what I can get.
What I’m reading must not be connected to the case because it just has numbers that keep asking for things I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just some kind of legal bill. I take a long sip of my Coke. The next document is something I don’t understand either. I dig down farther to find pictures of the missing person or the lost jewels.
I’ve gotten to the bottom of the briefcase. Things are not working out. There are no pictures here at all. I grab another manila envelope to look through and my Coke falls right onto the “Interrogatories.” Soda gushes out.
I’m in so much shock that it takes me a minute to move. Then I pick up the can and hurry out toward the kitchen to get some paper towels. I think I hear a noise from upstairs so I immediately stop my mouth breath and just suck in tiny bits of air through my nose. I try to make my nostrils tiny slits like this old woman’s I saw in church. I wait with my knife-cut nostrils until I’m sure no one is coming down from upstairs.
I start moving again and steal into the kitchen. I have a little light from the moon outside so I fumble around until I finally hit a shadowy roll of paper towels. I grab a bunch of them and then hurry back into the laundry room.
I hear a toilet flush from upstairs so I’m afraid to open the refrigerator door in case the person upstairs will notice a sliver of light. I just wipe frantically in the dark, my heart pounding with fear. The pages are soaked and have already started to get bumps in them. I wipe harder and harder, hoping that somehow I’m getting it all. When it feels dry, I close the briefcase and put it back exactly where it was. I stuff the wet paper towels in the trash under the sink and creep out of the laundry room and up the stairs.
I crawl back into bed and lie there with my hand on my chest, pushing down on my skin, trying to get my heart to stop pounding. I try to sleep but just seem to twist and turn for hours, dread keeping me awake, hearing, just as I start to drift, the small click of the briefcase as the golden latches click open.
CHAPTER NINE
I have no idea what time it is, but I can tell it’s late because I can hear Annie screaming, “Eeeww, these blueberries are moldy.” She never gets up before ten so it must be after that. I had thought maybe I would get up early and confess about the briefcase, but by now Uncle Michael will be long gone. I push away pictures of him in a nice wood-paneled office with all his diplomas behind him on the wall, opening up his briefcase to find those sticky papers. I’m starting to hope that maybe he won’t need to go in it all day, or maybe, since I wiped up all the Coke, they really won’t be sticky, just a little wrinkled and he won’t even notice.
I throw on some shorts and a shirt and go downstairs. Annie stares out at the patio while she spears watermelon from a glass bowl like she hates each piece. I try to think of a girl comment, like something Leslie would say. Nothing comes to
mind until I remember Annie’s broken up with JKIII so I say, “You still bummed about John?”
She brightens just a spot as if she’d given up on me as a girlfriend last night but now thinks maybe I was just tired. Daniel and Patrick lumber by with surfboards and faded sweatshirts, and Annie leans forward to keep our conversation exclusive. I feel a thrill whipping out through the end of my fingertips. I am, for a moment, at the epicenter of belonging. I am the queen’s confidant.
“He left a message on my cell last night. I would have played it for you, but you, like, ran up the stairs when my mom and I were getting ice cream.” She flips her hair over her shoulder and purses her lips into a slight pout so I can be reminded of how I failed her.
I lower my head slightly, remorseful for ignoring the queen’s needs.
“Anyway,” she continues, “he said he was really sorry, and was I mad at him for making that bonehead comment about this new girl being so hot and did I want to play tennis today.”
I help myself to a bowl of watermelon Carmen has silently put before me. I’m glad Annie hasn’t declared it a diet day. I also take a cinnamon bun from the tray Carmen has left for us. “So, are you going to play tennis with him?”
She tosses her head back and smirks. “That’s for me to know and him to keep guessing.”
I take my first bite of the cinnamon bun. I’ve never tasted anything like this. For a second I’m almost dizzy with the succulence of the hot icing hitting the roof of my mouth, and I close my eyes and take another bite. When I open them, Annie is staring at me.
“In love with the cinnamon bun,” she says rudely, and I’m horribly ashamed, as if it’s obvious to her I’ve never sampled the likes of which rise so easily and plentifully on her table.
“They’re just a little different here than at home,” I say, dropping my bun as if it’s poison. “Our housekeeper always uses a thicker frosting, like it has some kind of cheese in it.”
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