by Melody Mayer
“I keep hoping she'll change her mind about dropping out of school.”
“Me too.”
They followed the hordes of other arriving seniors down the wooden steps to the beach. It was ablaze with tiki lights. A wooden dance floor had been set up in the sand; a DJ in a white tux minus a shirt was blasting the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Waiters in surfer Jams, the buff-male version of the girls who worked for the valet service, were wandering among the party guests with drinks and food.
Lydia and Kiley grabbed drinks—coconuts with some fruity concoction in them—from a passing waiter. Lydia could tell as soon as she took a sip that it was heavily laced with rum. She made a mental note not to drink too much. If she did meet somebody, she was going to know what the hell she was doing, and who the hell she was doing it with. No more drunk sex. Ever.
“Let's see what's going on over there.” Lydia cocked her head toward a throng of people sitting on the beach farther down. Salty sea air whipped Lydia's hair into her face as they padded through the sand. When they got closer to the crowd, they saw that someone had placed a surfboard on the sand, and the people gathered around it were playing a drinking game.
“Ugh,” Kiley whispered to Lydia.
“Well, if it isn't the bitch and her fat cheese-fried friend,” Staci sneered, coming up next to Lydia and Kiley. She wore a white bikini and had clearly indulged in a serious spray-on tan.
“Now see, that is just a mean ol' thing to say,” Lydia said. “I'm not a bitch and my friend here isn't fat. You, however, are really boring. Which is why I dumped your ass the other night. Also, you might want to find a new place to spray on your tan, because you're going kind of orange sunset on us.”
Some kids who overheard snickered.
“Oh, like I'm hurt,” Staci retorted. “Hey, do you know why these two are going to our school?” She raised her voice to the drinkers. “Because they're nannies! Isn't that a hoot?”
“You're an asshole, Staci,” a cute guy with spiky black hair, intense blue eyes, and a perfect V-cut body called back. He scrambled up from the group just as the bottle was passed to a girl with pink streaks in her honey blond hair. She pointed to a guy with a blond crew cut and they started to make out in the center of the circle while the others cheered them on.
“Screw you,” Staci spit at him.
“You're drunk,” he told her. “Go puke.”
Staci stormed away, giving them all the finger.
“Hey,” the guy said, holding out a hand to Lydia. “I'm Flipper. And yeah, I know it's a stupid nickname,” he added with a dimpled grin. “It's a swim-team thing.”
Well, well. Things were looking up already.
“I'm Lydia.” She shook his outstretched hand. “And this is my friend Kiley.”
“There are only a handful of new seniors,” Flipper explained.
“Most of us have known each other forever. It's great to see some new faces.” Flipper shook Lydia's hand, and then Kiley's. “So you guys are really nannies?”
“You probably recognize Kiley. She's Platinum's nanny—”
“I knew you looked familiar!” Flipper exclaimed.
This got the attention of others in the group, who turned to assess Kiley anew. Pretty soon a small group surrounded her, asking all kinds of questions about Platinum and the trial.
“Platinum's a total drug addict, right?” a pixieish girl asked Kiley eagerly.
“I … don't really like to talk about my employer,” Kiley said carefully.
“Oh wait, I saw that article about you in the Universe,” a pretty girl with perfect skin and blue eyes exclaimed.
Some other kids started saying they had seen it too.
If they started ragging on Kiley because she came from a working-class family, or because her dad was an alcoholic or for anything else they read in that gossip rag, Lydia was fully prepared to put a blow dart into the butt of the nearest ass.
However, instead of making fun of Kiley, kids were fascinated. They kept asking her questions about Platinum and what it was like for Kiley to live with her.
That was when Lydia had the ironic realization that no matter how rich people were, they were all still obsessed with anything having to do with fame. By virtue of the article in the Universe, Kiley had been rendered cool to the cool kids of Bel Air High.
Flipper playfully bumped into Lydia. “Hey.” He offered a winning smile. “Do you swim?”
“I'm not real big on the water, frankly,” Lydia admitted. “But I can swing from a vine like Tarzan and cook monkey over an open pit.”
Flipper's jaw fell open.
“She's a very interesting girl,” Kiley put in on her behalf.
“So I see.” Flipper offered his killer grin again. “You want to join the game?” He cocked his head toward the group, which had set down a bottle of Cuervo Gold to play spin the bottle.
“No!” Kiley said at the same time that Lydia said, “Love to!”
“If you don't want to, I won't either,” Lydia insisted. “We can go get something to eat. Or do something else that would be a lot more boring than playing a kissing game with Flipper here.”
Flipper laughed. “I like your style.”
“See, the thing is, Kiley here just had sex with her boyfriend for the first time,” Lydia confided. “So she's not in the mood to swap spit with anyone else.”
“Lydia!” Kiley gasped as Flipper cracked up. “Fine. I'll play. Just don't … talk about my personal life!”
“Deal,” Lydia said sweetly. She put her hand in Flipper's. “Count us in,” she said.
An hour later, Lydia was making out with Flipper. Kiley edged away from the spin the bottle game—fortunately, she hadn't gotten a turn because the public make-out sessions on the surfboard tended to go on for a long time while the crowd egged them on. When one girl picked another girl to kiss—it was clear to Kiley by the way they kept eyeing the guys watching them that they were doing it for attention and not because they were actually gay— she scrambled up and left to get something to eat. The food was amazing: a dozen varieties of miniburgers no bigger than the palm of her hand, twenty different kinds of sushi, and cold poached lobster served on avocado.
After that, she took a walk by herself down the beach, feeling oddly content. She had been so worried about that horrible article in the Universe. And yes, it had hurt her parents, but they'd get over it. As far as her own life went, because of all the media attention surrounding Platinum's life—the article on Kiley included—she was now being treated like a reality-TV star.
And because of that, suddenly, she was cool.
Kiley was far enough away so that she could only faintly hear the tunes the DJ was spinning. She let her shoes dangle from two fingers and padded along in her bare feet. The briny air bit at her; she inhaled deeply, loving the smell, the salty feel of it. She knelt and picked up a shell and threw it into a breaking wave.
Her cell rang. She reached into her back pocket and took it out, checking caller ID. And smiled.
“Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” came Tom's deep, sexy voice. It made her think of what had happened the night before. She had finally taken the plunge; it had been incredible, fantastic. He was incredible, fantastic.
“Whatcha doing?” Tom asked. His voice was low, teasing.
“Watching the ocean.”
“How's the Up All Night party?”
Late the night before, when she'd lain in his arms, she'd told him about the unofficial start-of-senior-year party, how she planned to go with Lydia. Tom said it sounded like fun.
But now? Now she knew better.
“The party's okay,” she replied, curling her toes into the sand. “Lydia found a guy.”
Tom laughed. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Me either,” Kiley admitted.
“You staying late?”
“Hey, up all night as advertised,” Kiley said.
“I could keep you up all night,” he offered. “Well, let me amend that. You could
keep me up all night.”
If he'd been able to see her at that moment, he would have seen the happy blush on her face. It had been amazing how, once she decided she really, truly wanted to make love with him, for all the right reasons, she hadn't felt self-conscious at all.
“Hey, I got some great news today,” he said. “Well, it's not for sure yet.…”
She smiled at the boyish enthusiasm in his voice. “What? I love great news.”
“I've been up for a part in this high-profile indie film—a college student gets framed for murder—my agent says he thinks I got it.”
“The lead?” Kiley exclaimed. “That is so fantastic!”
“Second lead,” Tom said. “I'd play his best friend, who turns out to be a bad guy. I don't feel like I even know how to act yet—”
“But you were so good in The Ten,” Kiley insisted. “And the director must feel confident or he wouldn't cast you.”
“She,” Tom corrected.
“She, then. And I'm ticked at myself for just assuming it's a guy.”
“I should get the actual offer, like, tomorrow or the next day,” Tom went on. “So cross your fingers and toes for me.”
“All appendages are now officially crossed,” Kiley said. “When would it start shooting?”
“In two weeks. They're fast-tracking it to get the female lead they want. They're shooting in Moscow.”
Wait. She couldn't possibly have heard that correctly. “Did you say … Moscow? Like in Russia, Moscow?”
“That's the one,” Tom said.
“How long would you be in Moscow?”
“Three months, maybe a little more to rehearse,” Tom replied. No. This couldn't be happening. He was giving her this information as if he was telling her he was shooting a movie in, say, Santa Barbara, and she'd be able to come see him or he could come see her all the time.
Not a word about how far away it was.
Not a word about how much he'd miss her.
Hey! I gave you my virginity last night and now you're going to freaking Moscow? Kiley felt like screaming. But he already knew that.
And at the moment, it didn't seem to matter to him at all.
“What would you like, Esme?”
Esme knew the waitress at La Verdad. Her name was Marlene and she'd been a classmate of Esme's at Echo Park High School. They hadn't been friends there, but they hadn't been enemies either. She was very tall for a Latina girl—easily five foot ten, and willow-thin. If she'd grown up in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, she could have been a model. Instead, she was helping her parents make ends meet by waitressing here at the biggest neighborhood hang in the Echo.
“Bring me a horchata, Marlene. A really big horchata. If you got some.” Esme named the famous summertime rice-based drink that quenched a thirst better than any soda or even beer. Esme knew that every morning, the owner of La Verdad—the truth, in Spanish—mixed a ten-gallon batch of horchata in his kitchen, and it rarely lasted the day.
“I think there's a little left. If there is, it's got your name on it.” Marlene made to move off, then hesitated. “Esme, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“That time you were over in Bel Air?”
“Yeah?”
Marlene frowned. “Did you lose your mind, or what? Because down here, we all thought you went out of your mind.”
Esme was about to explain. But how could she? To start at the beginning would take all night.
“I'll tell you another time, Marlene. Can you check on that horchata for me?”
“Sure thing.”
The waitress moved off, and Esme was alone again. Back when she used to live in the Echo, she'd come to La Verdad all the time. This was the place where Jorge's group, the Latin Kings, loved to perform the most. It was the Echo equivalent of Starbucks, but with so much more character. If Starbucks was liberal, La Verdad was communist. There were posters of Che Guevara, César Chávez, and Fidel Castro on the walls, along with bellicose anticapitalist graffiti. During the pro-immigration marches, when hundreds of thousands of Latinos marched through downtown Los Angeles calling for a sane American immigration policy that would take undocumented workers out of the shadows, La Verdad had been an impromptu organizational center. Esme could still remember the huge crowds of demonstrators that gathered in front of La Verdad, listening to Spanish-radio DJs like El Piolin psych them up for the long walk into downtown.
It was already ten o'clock, and the place was crowded with its usual assortment of neighborhood types on a night when there was no entertainment. One of the local Spanish-language radio stations played over the sound system; there were gatherings of middle-aged men in jeans and work shirts playing dominos in clusters around the room; plus a few couples, groups of younger teenagers, and even a few abuelas chattering happily in Spanish. That was nice. But it wasn't surprising. Jorge loved to remind Esme that Los Angeles was now more than fifty percent Latino and—
Esme froze. Because a very non-Latino young guy had just walked in the door. He stopped at the entrance and looked around uncertainly. No one paid him any mind at all, though a lone white guy in La Verdad was a rarity. Still, since he was alone, he wouldn't cause any trouble. Probably just a motorist who'd gotten lost.
But Esme knew better. This was no handsome lost motorist. It was Jonathan Goldhagen. There could be only one reason that he was here at La Verdad, and it wasn't the delicious horchata.
“Esme? Here's your horchata.” Marlene set the frothy white glass topped with flecks of hand-chopped cinnamon—they didn't mess around in the La Verdad kitchen—in front of her.
“Thanks.”
Jonathan still stood there, his eyes sweeping the room. As he did, Esme made a decision.
“Marlene? Can you do me a favor? You see that gringo standing in the doorway looking like he doesn't belong here, because he doesn't?”
Marlene peered across the room. “The fine guy?”
“I think I know him. Can you go over there and point out where I'm sitting? I got a feeling he's looking for me.”
“You sure?” Marlene looked dubious.
“Of course I'm sure. I wouldn't be asking otherwise.”
That was enough to get Marlene headed across the floor of the coffeehouse. Esme saw her have a brief conversation with Jonathan, put her hand on his arm, and point right at her.
She expected Jonathan's face to light up when he saw her. It didn't. Instead, it was a mask of grim determination. Meanwhile, she had so many conflicting feelings, and conflicting questions. Should she have told Marlene to tell him to go to hell? How did Jonathan even find her? She'd put every number from the Goldhagens' mansion on block, including every cell phone she could remember. Including Jonthan's cell. So in the days since she had resigned from her job at the Goldhagens'— they'd accepted her resignation immediately, and transmitted the news via her parents—she had no idea whether Jonathan had even called her. Part of her hoped he had. Part of her wished he hadn't.
Now, here he was. Dressed in jeans and a blue tennis shirt, he'd trimmed his hair to short and spiky. But his tan was darker, as if he'd been spending a lot of time in the sun or on the beach. Why shouldn't he? He had that great apartment in Santa Monica.
His first words were a brief question. “May I?”
Her answer was a sweep of her hand toward the battered wooden upright chair across from her. His answer to that was to sit and put his elbows on the equally battered wooden table. “I'm glad you'll talk to me. You look great.”
“Bullshit. I look like a girl in the Echo.” This was true. Esme had worn nothing special to come to La Verdad. Just a pair of jeans and a black tank top.
“That's great.”
“Forget it, Jonathan. I don't want compliments from you. How'd you find me?”
He shrugged. “I called your mom. She said you weren't home but might be at this place. I took a chance. I'm glad I did. I remember this place from the time we came to hear your friend Jorge and his group. The fire dep
artment closed it down because there were too many people.”
Esme took a sip of the horchata, and wiped the white line she was sure it made away from her upper lip. She remembered that time, too. That was when she and Jonathan were an actual couple.
“She shouldn't have.”
“You'll have to take that up with her. What are you drinking?”
She deliberately hit herself in the forehead three or four times before she answered. “Come on, Jonathan. You didn't drive out here to the Echo— or did you have one of the drivers bring you?—just to find out what I'm drinking.”
He put his palms up. “Guilty as charged.”
“Anyway, it's horchata. A rice drink. If you want, get my friend Marlene to bring you some.”
“Not thirsty. I came to see you.”
She shrugged. “Cool. Here I am. Talk. I think you probably have something you've planned to say. Say it. I promise I won't move until you're done.”
“What about after that?”
“Jonathan. Don't push your luck.”
The radio station music changed to something by Santana— and Esme had a brief flash to that day not long ago when she'd come back to the mansion to find Tarshea making genuine Jamaican jerk chicken, and her feeling like a genuine jerk. Then there was the water volleyball game afterward, when Santana had been in the pool along with Jonathan and Tarshea, and all she could do was stand on the sideline and watch. That had been close to humiliating.
Maybe Jonathan had the same memory. His eyes clouded over.
“What are you thinking about?” she demanded.
“You don't really want to know.”
“If I didn't want to know, I'd change my mind and leave. Which is what maybe I should do if I had any sense.” She was getting aggravated. Maybe the best thing to do was to go home and tell her mother never, ever to tell this guy where she was.
“Fine. I was thinking about when you showed up at my door. And Tarshea was inside.”
“Oh,” Esme mocked. “What a nice memory.”
“I want to tell you something about that night. It wasn't what it looked like.”
Esme laughed in a way that wasn't funny. “Do you realize that's the oldest line in the book? What do you take me for? A dumb girl FOB? Fresh off the boat?”
