I lean my back against the side of the truck, the metal warmed by the sun. The marine layer’s not so thick today, the sheets of mist already lifting up and away from the ocean.
A hundred yards out, beyond Hank and his waiting board, a couple of dolphins wheel by. I point them out and Eppie grins. “My sisters,” she says. “We play sometimes.”
I think about my sister. Maggie. The only one there ever was.
Eppie hops up into the back of the truck. “You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
She tosses me a can of orange soda from a cooler. “Sorry, out of caffeine.”
“No problem,” I say, and wipe the rim with the hem of my suit.
A moment later, Eppie emerges. “You don’t usually take us up on the surf, girlie. So, what brings you to Mother Ocean this fine day?” She plops down on the back bumper. I join her. Eppie tucks her legs up to her chest, resting her arm on one knee. She drags a clove cigarette out of a pack on the floor of the truck.
“Want one?” she asks. I shake my head. “Yeah, me either. I quit months ago, but what can I say? I love the smell. They’re not as strong if you don’t light ’em, but still. Gives a girl something to do.” She alternates between holding the cigarette between her lips and swigging her soda. We perch there, watching Hank beat the ocean into submission one wave at a time, punctuated by the occasional laugh from Eppie, who keeps an eye on her man.
“What brings me here is the same thing that brought me home. Maggie Kim,” I say. My Maggie.
Eppie gives me a glance and shakes her head. “Man, I knew you were close, but you weren’t, like, in love with her or anything, were you?”
I smirk. Me in love with Maggie. The idea. “I loved her, sure,” I admit. “But I wasn’t in love. Last I looked, you didn’t have to be a lesbian to want justice for a dead friend. And you don’t need to be screwing someone to want to understand why they died.”
Eppie holds her hands up in a mea culpa, cigarette and soda dangerously clasped in the same hand. “Hey, hey, no offense. It’s just, you came on kind of strong last night and had old Tallulah’s panties in a bunch in nothing flat. And I see the way you and Edina give each other the stink eye. Maybe you didn’t want to bonk Maggie, but I’m not so sure about that one.”
She takes a fake drag off her cigarette. “She was stealing Maggie’s clothes, you know. One piece at a time. I recognized them. Maybe it wasn’t a sex thing, though. Maybe she just wanted to be a Maggie Kim impersonator.”
For an instant, I can see it, a stage full of drag queens dressed in Hepburn black and Onassis veils, all smoking filterless cigarettes. Edina Rodriguez is at the end of the row, failing to be statuesque or convincing.
I laugh out loud and Eppie grins. “Jeez, I was wondering how far I’d have to go to get a rise out of you. There were midgets in the next scenario.”
I bump her with my arm. “I remember why we’re friends now,” I say, and she grins even wider.
“Cool. Say, I know Maggie being gone is, like, crazy and all of a sudden. That same kind of ‘I just saw her yesterday’ bullshit people always say. It don’t seem right.” Eppie shakes her head. “But Maggie had kind of a death wish about her, you know? She could party hard, and she could be a princess. She . . . I don’t know. She could seem like she didn’t give a damn. I’m not saying that’s a reason for suicide, but maybe the drugs and an accidental bath in the family pool isn’t such a surprise.”
My laughter is gone, all dried up in that instant. “I never said it was a surprise. Maggie could have died a million ways to Sunday since I’ve known her. Just not like that.”
Eppie is silent for a moment. I let the silence stretch, waiting to see if she’s got something to fill it.
Eventually, she does. “Let’s surf.”
• • •
The ocean is cold, especially this early in the morning with the sun not quite hot enough to warm us, but we paddle out anyway, Eppie on her longboard, me on the shortie she and Hank keep in the truck.
I haven’t surfed in ages, but it’s like riding a bike. I know what to do. Paddling out past the break on my stomach, my arms are tired before long. It feels good, though. Being in my body instead of my head.
My lips are salty when I lick them. I sit up, straddling the board, and turn to face the shore. Nothing worth catching is rolling our way. Eppie sits a dozen yards to my right, bobbing like a rubber ducky. She’s half water elemental, Eppie is. The ocean sings to her and she dances to the music, waiting for the crescendo. She waves at me. I smile back.
Up ahead, the small swells roll in, barely cresting white and washing up the pebbled sand. Hank is up shore from us and way out. We wait and I start to doze again, little waves rocking beneath me, lulling me to sleep. The sun comes out from behind a cloud and I close my eyes. Waiting.
“Sleeping pills,” Maggie said.
“Running car in a locked garage,” I countered. “You can’t smell carbon monoxide and it puts you right to sleep. Pills you can always barf up.”
We were sitting on the hill behind school again, at the start of junior year. There’d just been an assembly for some freshman who offed himself by hanging. Popular rumor said it was some kinky sex thing gone wrong, but students that knew the kid said it was only a matter of time. Maggie and I didn’t know him, but it had sparked an interesting conversation: If you were going to do it, what was the best way to die?
“Old age,” she said, and we both laughed. “Although, I guess that’s not suicide. That’s just life.”
“Oh, I know. Death by chocolate,” I said. “Definitely.”
“The cake kind or the ice cream kind?”
I thought about it. “Both. I mean, you want to be sure.”
Maggie snorted and we fell silent, suddenly feeling guilty that a skinny little fifteen-year-old was dead by his own hand, and we were celebrating life on his grave. We both sighed and watched the kids below us head for the buses or their cars, scattering across the parking lot like marbles dropped on a sidewalk.
“I’d want to be asleep for it,” Maggie said finally. Like death really was the Grim Reaper and she’d rather keep her eyes closed than see him coming.
“Make it relaxing? Like lying on a mattress on a pool in the sun,” I said.
“Like that,” she agreed. The best way to die, when old age and chocolate just wouldn’t do.
“Jude!”
Eppie’s voice pierces my ears like the scream of a seagull. I’m in the water, floating, the surfboard tethered to my ankle slaps the surface beside me. I open my eyes. Eppie is there, suddenly, reaching, pulling me up from the sun-warmed water.
“There wasn’t a mattress,” I say out loud, and seawater fills my mouth. I sputter and try to help as Eppie pulls me back onto my board and frog-kicks us back to shore.
“I’m sorry,” I say when we hit the coastline.
“Sorry? One minute I’m catching a wave, next thing I look back and you’ve rolled under. Jesus, I thought you’d whacked your head on the board and gone down,” Eppie gasps.
We hit the strand and stumble, collapsing onto the sand. I feel half asleep. Like the song says, “life is but a dream.”
We climb up the beach in slow motion, dropping our boards by the truck. Eppie reaches into the cabin for some towels and tosses one to me. I wrap up in it and watch her fish around for another clove cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I was just thinking.” About Maggie. But that much is obvious.
“Listen,” Eppie finally says when she catches her breath. “I know you guys were friends and you spent a lot of time together, but I think one of the reasons Maggie had such an odd lot of us was because she used us differently. I mean, there were things she could talk to you about that I would have been clueless on, and vice versa. So maybe you don’t have the whole picture.”
“And you do?” I ask.
“Why did she want to know?”
Eppie flicks imaginary ash from her unlit cigarette, both eyes on the ocean now, watching Hank as he comes in to shore and starts walking down the beach, board under his arm.
“She wanted to know if it hurt. God, I want to light this. I’d better . . .” She puts the clove in her pocket and tosses the pack away from her, into the depths of the Six-Pac. “She wanted to know what it would feel like to drown.”
I nod. “Sleeping pills, a swimming pool, and an inflatable mattress with a slow leak. We used to talk about the best way to die. If the pills didn’t kill you, the water would. And you’d sink down nice and easy.”
Eppie laughs. “You don’t know a lot about drowning. Not a pill in the world gonna keep the water from hurting when it gets into you.”
I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. We weren’t going to do it.”
Eppie doesn’t look at me. “Yeah,” she says, “right.”
Maggie in the pool. Me in the ocean. I guess she’s not convinced.
Eppie finishes her soda, belches loudly, and tosses the can toward a nearby trash drum. She makes the shot. Orange soda sprays around the inside of the garbage bag, rattling against the metal drum.
“So, it’s just a coincidence, then?” She says it like she’s asking a question. Or maybe making an accusation.
Eppie jumps down from the truck. Hank is almost here. She makes a show of helping him with his board.
“Hey, sleepyhead!” Hank calls out to me. He peels his wet suit down to his waist in that unselfconscious way guys who already have girlfriends do. It must be true love.
“Hey, Hank,” I say back, and slide down so he can gain access to the back of the truck. He disappears inside and Eppie and I are alone once again.
Eppie looks at me while I finish my soda. Then she takes the can from me and drops it into the trash with hers. “Joey’s worried about you.”
I shrug. “Everybody’s worried about something.”
“He really cares about you, you know. I thought you guys had something going there before school ended.”
I feel my stomach tense. That’s the problem with the past. No matter how much you might want to forget it, there’s always someone there to remind you.
“Like what?” I say.
“Like feelings, maybe. We were rooting for you.” She gives me a little smile.
“We?”
“Yeah. Me and Hank, even Maggie. You two deserve a little happiness. He’s such a good guy, and you . . . used to seem kind of sad, when you first got here. But then you lightened up. You seriously think Joey had nothing to do with that?”
I don’t know what to say. Maggie changed me. Maybe Joey did too, but Roy single-handedly changed me right back.
I don’t want to think about this. I bite my lip to keep from answering.
“Anyway,” Eppie says, giving up. “He likes you.”
“Enough to come pick me up from Malibu?” I ask, ignoring the implication.
“No doubt.” She shakes her head and finally lights her cigarette. Hank climbs back out of the truck, a granola bar in one hand.
“Break time’s over, ladies,” he says. “Let’s hit it again.”
“Not for me,” I say. “I’m tapped out.”
Hank looks at Eppie and shrugs. “To each his own. Blue House tomorrow night?”
“Definitely,” I say.
He grins and winks at Eppie. “See you out there, babe.” He kisses her on the lips and jogs back down to the water. I go inside and change back into my shorts. Then I text Joey. He can’t stay mad forever.
He’ll know if there was a mattress in the pool.
I sit down beside Eppie on the bumper when I come out. My phone buzzes with an incoming message: No mattress. On my way.
“What’d ya do, text him?” Eppie laughs. “God, he’s whipped,” she says.
“Maybe he just wants answers, like me.”
“Well, I think it was suicide,” Eppie tells me. “Maggie wasn’t exactly happy, you know.”
“I know,” I say. “Still. You ever do a sleepover at her place?”
Eppie shakes her head. “No. Why?”
I smile. “Her suicides always ended with popcorn and a movie.”
6
You owe Tallulah an apology.”
Those are the first words Joey says to me when I climb into his car at the beach. The top is down so we can wave good-bye to Hank and Eppie out on the water. They’ll stay out here until the party tomorrow, then come back again after the funeral until school starts. I envy the simplicity of it all. The feeling they both have that this is home. But life is not that easy for the rest of us.
We pull out into traffic on PCH and wend our way back to Pasadena. The cars are moving a little faster headed inland, but this is still going to take a while. We soak in the sun and the gasoline fumes, and I think about what Eppie said. Joey must really love me to sit in this crap both ways.
“Did you hear me?” he asks insistently.
But I don’t give. “Tally owes the world an apology. She’s a holier-than-thou colossal bitch.”
“She’s your friend,” he reminds me.
“No. She’s not. She’s my classmate and my acquaintance. You are my friend. Maggie was my friend. Eppie is my friend. And Hank, and, hell, maybe even Lukey Loo, but not Tallulah.”
Joey’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. “We’ve known each other for a long time. All of us.”
I sit back and put my bare feet on the dashboard. “Look at you, the peacemaker. Think about it, Joe. We all knew Maggie better than we know each other. She’s gone now. ‘Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.’”
Joey laughs sardonically. “Really, throwing first-year Yeats at me instead of admitting you’re being petty? Tally’s talking about skipping the funeral because of you.”
“Oh?” I say, combing my fingers through my hair. “Who’s being petty now?”
“Still you,” Joey says.
“Hey, ‘to thine own self be true.’”
My phone rings. I swipe it open. “Hello?”
“Jude, it’s Dr. Bilanjian. How are you?”
The voice is female, neutral, calm, and oh-so-familiar. It sends a jolt of adrenaline down my spine. “Dr. B,” I say. “Long time no chat.”
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
I look around at the traffic walling Joey’s car in on four sides, the crowded beach to our right, the haze pressing down on us from the water. “I’m afraid not. I’m in the middle of something. What’s up?”
Dr. B pauses for a long moment, lining up the words like golf balls on a practice range. Once she starts swinging, there’ll be no need to stop. “Your mother called me. She told me she’s worried about you and wanted to know if we could have a few sessions. Would you like that, Jude?”
Dr. Theresa Bilanjian is my psychiatrist. Not therapist, not counselor, my psych doctor. I am not on meds, nor am I in therapy anymore. But there was a time, right after we moved to Pasadena, when my mother thought a few months of talking to a professional would be a good idea. “To help you adjust,” she’d said.
I’d gone to Dr. B for most of my freshman and sophomore years. By then, I’d made friends—namely Maggie—and I hadn’t slit my wrists, so I was allowed to have my Wednesday afternoons back.
“Well, if you decide to,” she says, plowing through my silence, “I have some time Wednesday afternoon. Why don’t you swing
by the office? It sounds like we’ll have some things to talk about.”
I hang there, mouth open, a thousand responses coming to mind, all of them negative.
“Okay,” I say. The path of least resistance. If I refuse, my mother won’t leave me alone. Dr. B is less cloying than my mom. “See you then.”
“Who was that?” Joey asks when I hang up.
“Nothing. Friend of my mother’s. Where were we?”
“Sitting in traffic, arguing,” he says. We sit in silence and crawl forward a few more yards. I shove the phone call to the back of my mind. Dr. B can wait.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Joey asks, changing the subject. Good boy. Even I can use a halftime every now and then.
“Luke’s. He’s got something I need to see.” Photos, I’m hoping. Scads of them.
But what would they tell me?
Maggie Kim was the sun in our universe. We all circled her. Never the other way around. And now that she’s gone, we’re shifting orbits. Colliding, like me and Tally, or drifting apart. It makes me wonder what Maggie saw in everybody else, these people she called her friends. Edina, Tallulah, Dane. What were they to her when they mean so little to me? And who meant so much to Maggie that she would share her bed with him, but not his name with the rest of us?
Or maybe he meant so little. And that’s why Maggie’s dead.
• • •
By the time we get back to Pasadena, it’s nearly three o’clock, and later still by the time we get to Luke’s house. Luke lives south of my place, in Alhambra. Craftsman bungalows and stucco apartment buildings swap blocks with each other, leapfrogging toward the boundaries of crisscrossing freeways. Luke’s parents have money from a dry-cleaning chain they started when Luke was still in diapers. It keeps him in camera equipment and photography lessons. Soon it’ll pay for a college education and maybe a portrait studio of his own one day.
The house is a stucco ranch affair, newer than the bungalows across the street.
Luke’s father opens the door. “May I help you?” He’s polite and looks like a professor, with his rolled-up shirtsleeves and rimless glasses. He speaks with a careful Mandarin accent. I wonder if he knows his son is a Class-A stalker.
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