Copyright 2017 by Leila Howland
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
Designed by Torborg Davern
Cover design by Marc Senders
Cover photograph © 2017 by Jill Wachter
ISBN 978-1-4847-2903-8
Visit www.hyperionteens.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Acknowledgments
Also by Leila Howland
About the Author
For my mother, Phebe Jane,
who gave me roots and wings.
“OH MY GOD, we’re almost there!”
Alex smirks at my enthusiasm as we see a sign for the exit we’ve been headed toward for two weeks. We’ve driven all the way from Boston in this rickety old Volvo, and the passenger seat has kind of started to feel like home. I can’t believe our trip is almost over. My breath gets shallow and my heart accelerates. The dream that’s been in the future since April—since I was a little kid, actually—is about to be the present.
I’m totally psyched, but as a clammy sweat breaks out on my forehead, I also feel queasy. It doesn’t help that it’s a hundred and twelve degrees outside, and this car’s old air-conditioning system only gets the temperature down to the low nineties. I switch to a more upbeat playlist on the iPhone, unroll the passenger-side window of Alex’s car, and let the hot, dry wind wash over me.
“Look out, LA! Here I come!” I shout out the window.
A guy in an old BMW makes a nasty gesture with his tongue.
“Ew!” I say, and I duck back inside the car and roll up the window. “Ew! Alex, that guy just went like this.” I show him the tongue move and Alex laughs, waving it off.
“Forget about him, Becca,” Alex says. “Stay focused. What’s your number-one goal again?”
“Get an agent. I will not rest until I have one. If Brooke can do it, so can I.”
“Bet your ass,” Alex says, and switches lanes.
Brooke was my main acting competition in high school, and she got into Tisch, NYU’s theater school. When I didn’t get accepted anywhere she was such a dick about it. Everyone felt bad for me—Carter Academy has a 99.9 percent matriculation rate, after all—but Brooke took her pity to a new level. I almost barfed on the spot when I learned that she’d found an agent literally the day after she moved to New York for a summer Shakespeare seminar. She’d been discovered at a café near Washington Square Park, wherever that is. Within a week, she’d booked an in-flight safety video for Delta.
“Oh, I love this song.” I turn up the volume to get Brooke and her perfect skin out of my mind. The latest girl-power song from my favorite pop princess blasts from the speakers. “I know you hate this jam, but I really need to sing it right now. Okay?”
“Go for it,” Alex says, and turns up the volume even higher. He grins at me as I belt out the song off-key. When he smiles, lines from his eyes frame his cheeks—the result of a relentlessly happy childhood. He’s had everything that money can buy and everything it can’t, too. It was really no surprise when he got into Stanford early.
The car does that shaky thing it’s been doing since Utah whenever we get up to seventy miles an hour. “Come on, Ruby, don’t fail us now,” Alex says.
I thought of the name Ruby when he bought the car from his next-door neighbor last year.
“What do you think, is Ruby actually going to make it all the way to Palo Alto?” Alex asked. After he drops me at my cousin’s place, he’ll be taking the scenic route up the coast.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “She’s a trouper.”
“Easy, baby,” Alex says to Ruby, who is rattling more than usual. Alex’s jaw flexes as he signals and heads toward the exit. Even after two years of dating he can still make me melt. He has a strong jaw and the nose of a future leader. His eyes are the color of a lake on an overcast day, and his blond hair smells woodsy close to his neck. And don’t even get me started on his body. He’s a champion skier and has the legs and ass to show for it. Last night we had the most amazing time at a motel in Palm Springs. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We barely slept. The people in the next room actually complained to the front desk, which we laughed about for the next hour, as quietly as possible, of course.
Alex turns on his indicator and takes the exit for Orange Grove Boulevard. Vivian’s exit. We’re almost there. Oh my God. We’re almost there.
“How hard can getting an agent actually be?” I ask. Alex opens his mouth to answer, but I stop him. “Famous last words, I know. I should probably learn how to wear eye makeup for on-camera auditions. I’m going to need some new looking-for-agent clothes, because everything I have feels a little too…I don’t know…Boston.” Alex seems nervous as the car slows, and we turn onto a wide boulevard lined with tall, evenly spaced palm trees. I know how he feels. I’m so nervous I can’t seem to stop talking. “Can you believe how perfect last night was? That was the best night ever. We have to go back to Palm Springs!”
“Becca,” Alex says. He bites his lip as he makes a left on to Bradford Street, Vivian’s street.
“I don’t want to say good-bye. I really, really don’t want to,” I say. I feel carsick actually, and a little untethered. We slow down in front of Vivian’s complex.
Alex looks pale as he parallel parks, and yet, even with his pallid complexion, the sight of him nearly takes my breath away. I snap a picture, the last of the roll of film. Before we left, my mom gave me her old camera so that I could take pictures with actual film. It’s nothing fancy, just a vintage-y point-and-shoot from when she was my age. I’ve spaced the twenty-four shots out over the course of our road trip.
“Why’d you do that?” he asks.
“You just look so cute when you parallel park, and I’m not going to get to see you do it again for a while,” I say, and inhale sharply. I have a cramp, like I get when we do the mile run for gym class. I clutch my side.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m just freaking out a little. I can do this, right?”
“Of course you can,” he says. He turns the engine off and faces me. I put my hand on his leg. “But…we need to say good-bye now.”
“I know. Your orientation is tomorrow. At least we have the Jones concert in six weeks. How many days? I think it’ll be easier if I think in terms of days—”
“Actually,” he says, his face rearranging
in an unfamiliar way, “I think we should take a beat.”
“A what?” At first his words don’t register. But then he tilts his head, looks me in the eye, and squeezes my hand. My heart drops straight through the floor of the car and lands with a sizzle on the hot tar. “Wait. You’re breaking up with me?”
He inhales a definitive breath.
“Why?” I ask. My stomach turns over. For a second I think I might throw up.
“Everyone knows long distance doesn’t work,” he says.
“But we won’t be that far apart. It’s only an hour by plane. There are airfare deals all the time!”
“It’s not just that. I want to make a fresh start, you know? It’s a new chapter of my life, and I want to be able to throw myself into it. And so should you.”
“Are you telling me this is for my own good or something?” I ask.
“We’re going to be doing such different things. I think it’ll be hard for us to relate. We’re in different phases of our lives.”
“I wouldn’t call it a different life phase. Didn’t we just graduate from the same high school?”
“Look,” Alex says as he wipes sweat from his upper lip. “A part of me wishes that I could stay with you and cheer you on….”
“You can!”
“But I’m going to be so involved in my own life at Stanford. And I deserve to be able to enjoy myself.”
“You deserve it?” It sounds like a sentence he’s been practicing. I feel a sharp stab in my chest as I wonder how long he’s known he was going to do this. “How long have you been planning this? The whole trip?”
“I guess I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Hey, you deserve your freedom, too.”
“I don’t want any more freedom,” I say. “I’m scared of all the freedom I have.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he says.
“You don’t really think I’m going to make it, do you?” I ask. I’m in so much pain that I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. My ears are buzzing.
“That’s not true,” he says without looking me in the eye. He pops the trunk and gets out of the car.
Vivian emerges from her condo wearing a preppy tunic, white jeans, and a huge grin. She waves from her door. I try to signal for her to go back inside until Alex and I can talk more—this is all happening so suddenly, can it even be real?—but she doesn’t get it. I step out of the car, heart pounding even as my blood seems to slow. Alex hands me my suitcase and purse as Vivian walks toward us across an impossibly green lawn.
“Hey, girl!” Vivian calls.
“Hi,” I say through a broken smile, and then I turn back to Alex and ask quietly, “What about last night?”
“It was great,” he says as though this has nothing to do with anything.
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t think of what to say to this boy who I’ve loved for two years, who I thought loved me.
“Take care,” he says.
Take care? What does that even mean?
Seconds before Vivian reaches us, he gives me a stiff hug and hops in the still-running car. I wait for Ruby to be out of sight, and then I turn to Vivian and burst into tears.
“REFRIGERATOR, what are you trying to tell me?” I ask. It’s five days later. It’s also 4 a.m. I’ve been listening to the refrigerator’s cycle of whines and moans for hours now. Since other methods of quieting it have failed, I talk to it. My hand grazes the white door. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong.” It sputters. “Fine, be that way.” I turn over, curling into a question mark on my sleeping bag. I’m lying on the kitchen floor in my Carter Academy T-shirt and granny panties I’ve had since eighth grade. I thought they’d be comforting, but they aren’t.
I’ve been trying to fall asleep for five hours. I’ve breathed according to a pocket-size book about meditation, read the People magazine I bought near the bus stop in Pasadena, memorized half of a Shakespearean sonnet, and flipped the pillow to the cool side, but nothing has worked. I’d hoped that tonight’s sleep would be long and deep and give me a new perspective in the morning, because right now the challenges ahead seem to await me like the pack of wolves that I imagine are prowling outside the door of this Hollywood apartment building. The building is named the Chateau Bronson. The only castle-y things about it are the majestic font on the building’s sign and the odd drawbridge-inspired door.
At 4:17, I decide to get up and finish cleaning my new apartment. Maybe scrubbing this place until it gleams will get my spirits up. A single bird chirps somewhere outside. I kick myself out of the sleeping bag that still smells vaguely like a camping trip I took as part of the junior year science program, the one where Alex and I first kissed. Why does everything have to remind me of him? And why does it take five whole business days for 1-800-GET-A-BED to deliver a twin bed to a major US city?
I turn on the halogen lamp that I found on the sidewalk yesterday. It leans a little to the left, but it works. I almost took the mattress that was next to it—it looked brand-new, but in a flash I could see my mom’s face grimacing in disgust, and I didn’t touch it. I blink for a second against the light and look around at my new place. I’d shut the curtains, but I don’t have any. I pull on my pajama bottoms, tie up my hair in a ponytail, and get to work.
The apartment is one room, about the size of my bedroom back home, with a wooden floor that’s covered in a thick layer of brown paint. The kitchenette is off to the right. There’s my friend the fridge, whining and pitched slightly forward, a mustard-yellow 1970s oven, and a small sink. It could be depressing, but the nook by the window has potential. I narrow my eyes and picture curtains, a bunch of wildflowers in a mason jar, a steaming cup of tea. I can fix this up, I think, instagramming it in my mind.
I open a kitchen cabinet that has a strange metal interior. I don’t know what it’s for, but I feel like Alex would, because he just knows stuff—like that the raised stones on the cobblestone streets in Beacon Hill were used by ladies to step into their horse-drawn carriages. Or that when people say something is “neither here nor there” they’re quoting Shakespeare without knowing it.
My heart lurches at the thought of him up at Stanford, where he’s probably started his classes. Did we really break up? How is it possible that just a week ago we were in Texas, dancing in a country bar, laughing and getting stepped on because we were the only ones who didn’t know the moves? How have we not spoken since he dropped me at Vivian’s? I feel a sharp pain in my gut, like a thumbtack is being stuck into a vital organ. What the hell happened?
I’ve gone over our conversation a hundred times at least, trying to remember every detail in order to make sense of it, and it doesn’t add up. How does a person just cut another person off like that with no warning? Was he just having a pre-college freak-out? That’s got to be it. He had a similar freak-out the summer after junior year, before he headed to Maine. He broke up with me saying that he wanted space, but called me the next day practically in tears and invited me up for the Fourth of July. This is probably just a more exaggerated version of that.
And anyway, he didn’t actually say he wanted to break up. He said he wanted to “take a beat,” which is a totally different thing. I was the one who said the words break up. He’s obviously in denial. It’s not possible that I can just be erased. Right? I’m not calling him first, though; there’s no way. He’s the one who messed up. I have to let him figure that out on his own.
Be present, I think, fishing up a bit of wisdom from the mini meditation book. Be where you are. I grab the cleaning spray and paper towels from the weird metal cabinet and open up all the windows. I lean out of one and inhale the predawn air, looking for the bird with the continuous, high-pitched chirp. The streetlights illuminate the treetops, telephone wires, other apartment buildings, and the sidewalk below. A subtle breeze washes over me. There is the faint smell of jasmine, which I only recognize because of the tea my mom drinks by the gallon back home.
A few streets over there’
s some kind of palace. The grand, gold-tipped turrets stand high above the dingy rooftops crawling with satellite dishes. What is that place? A temple? An embassy? A movie star’s home?
I hold the windowsill and feel the grime like soft sand on my fingertips. I pull my hand away—it’s gray. This place is so dirty. I’d better tackle the bathroom before I lose all my courage. It’s like Mom always said: do the hardest homework first while you have the energy. I take in one more lungful of morning air and get down to business.
The bathroom looks like it hasn’t been updated…ever. There’s black mold in the corners of the shower, mysterious yellowy-brown spots on the ceiling, and an all-over film of filth. I admit it: for a moment I think about going back to Boston, but there’s no chance in hell. I’m not going back east until I prove that everyone is wrong to feel sorry for me for not getting accepted into college. It was all so unfair. I was suspended for skipping school to go to a secret daytime concert at Cambridge Comics. A bunch of us did it, but I was the only one who got caught, and I wouldn’t name names. It turns out that one black mark on my school record was enough for college admissions people to put me in the reject pile. It makes me so mad to think about it. I’m not leaving this place without a victory.
I can do this, I tell myself as I spray the bathroom mirror and wipe it down. I already am doing this. I smile at my reflection. Even though Mom didn’t want me to go, even though she wants me to do something practical and résumé-building, or as she puts it “creative and practical,” I can’t help but think that on some level, if she could see me right now with this adventurous spirit flickering behind my tired eyes, she’d be proud.
“So can I ask your advice about something?” I ask Mom a few minutes later on FaceTime. I’m still in the bathroom cleaning, but I hold the phone close to my face so that she can’t get a good look at my surroundings until I’ve had some time to explain. She’s going to be pissed. I was thinking I would wait until the just-right moment to tell her, but the state of this bathroom is an emergency. I’ve doused the tub with several blasts of All-Natural Multipurpose Cleaner but can’t make any headway with the stains.
Hello, Sunshine Page 1
