The ceiling stared back down at them with a dozen glowing LED eyes and a wicker-fan-blade nose.
“I’d read your fourth-grade diary, Jo,” Bianca confessed to the ceiling face.
“Page one,” Jo intoned. “Today they announced the honor roll. I got an award, but Bianca Boria got ten. How has Bianca Boria gotten ten? Got ten?”
“Bianca Boria-Birdy,” Bee corrected. “Three Bs. I would have sobbed if I got three Bs in school.”
“We did it,” Autumn cheered. “We’re stoned.”
“Quick, someone go get Jo’s camera and take a picture of her for the internet.”
“Noooo!” Jo howled, hiding her face behind a nearby throw pillow that had Beach Life embroidered across the front.
“Shh!” Autumn demanded. She found her legs propped up on a nearby couch arm. “Listen to the ocean. It sounds like your heartbeat.”
“Weed makes the world feel knowable,” Bianca said with a pleased sigh.
“Guys,” Jo said, over the heartbeat of the ocean.
“What?” Bee said. “I was listening to the ocean.”
“We are stoned! I want to go check it off the list.” Jo peeled her body upward in a gradual crunch. “I should celebrate more when I finish something, not when I post something.”
“I told you that,” Bee said.
“You were right,” Jo conceded, tiptoeing over to the pile of purses on the window seat overlooking the ocean. Her hair hadn’t recovered from the tiara. Wisps of it had frizzed up like antennae, making her look a little bit more like the girl Autumn remembered. She took a journal out of her tote and started scribbling.
“Jo, stop doing work!” Bee declared. “It’s time to upgrade this sleepover to full snuggle.”
“Yes!” Autumn cheered, pouncing on Bee’s feet. “We can be a human centipede of friendship!”
“Okay,” Jo said, reluctantly putting her journal away. “But I’m keeping my blanket. My toes are freezing.”
Lying on the floor in front of the couch, they pulled the pillows and throw blankets into a loosely assembled nest and puppy-piled together. Autumn made a show of snuggling up to Jo’s surprisingly uncomfortable clavicle.
“‘There were three in the bed and the little one said,’” she sang.
Bee grumbled somewhere near her knees, “‘Roll over!’”
The girls rolled in a wave in the other direction. Feet up, head resting on the hip of the girl ahead. On the TV, the ponies planned a Galloping Gala. Outside, the ocean sang them to sleep.
Autumn felt her eyelids starting to close.
I can’t fall asleep yet, she begged her brain. Not when we’re finally in harmony.
“What if?” Jo’s voice was sudden and clear. “What if I turn the sales job down and I never get another one? What if I end up stuck working for my parents again?”
“Oh no,” Bee said drolly. “Not that. Anything but the family business.”
“I don’t like tea,” Jo said. “I do not drink hot anything. I drink to be refreshed or inebriated but never warmed. I think it’s gross. Like drinking bathwater.”
“What an odd duck you are,” Bianca said, craning her head to look past Autumn at Jo. “How do you live without coffee?”
“It comes iced as long as I go to the Starbucks inside Safeway,” Jo said. “My parents have never sold anything I liked, though. Not used clothes or dead people’s dishes or ocean-themed paintings. I spent so much of high school trying to convince tourists to buy bad paintings of the ocean in a gallery without one abstract! I like my art to make me work a little harder.” She wrapped herself tighter inside the chunky knit blanket she’d claimed. “I don’t fit in with my family. I love them and I appreciate them, but it’s like I got every recessive personality gene. It was easier to be somewhere else than not fit in where I’m supposed to.”
Autumn gripped Jo’s wrist. “You fit in here.”
“I fit in here, in the friendship centipede,” Jo said, motioning up the line of them. “But eventually I’ll have to get up. Sleep in a bed. Pay rent. You know, regular grown-up stuff.”
Autumn sighed. “I wish we could have had this sleepover at the Main Street house. Like the old days. On the floor in the living room.”
Jo smiled. “Flo trying to ignore us on his way to the kitchen—”
“But ending up talking to us, like, twenty minutes anyway like a dork—”
“Was the living room green?” Bee asked in a sleepy voice. “I never got to see the Main Street house.”
“Nothing was green until you hit the dining room,” Jo explained. “Then it was just an explosion of green from floor to ceiling. And the kitchen! The fridge, the stove, the tile, the walls, the cupboards! It was buck wild. You’ve never seen anyone commit to decorating so hard. No wonder Flo tried to marry an interior designer.”
Autumn loved hearing Jo’s description of her childhood home. Her memories felt like well-loved quilt squares. Knowing that Jo hadn’t forgotten, even when she’d distanced herself, was salve on a long, deep wound Autumn had been carrying. She nuzzled her head into her friend’s arm.
“Thank you for still being you,” she said.
Jo gave her a pat on the top of the head that also could have been a tap-out. “Couldn’t stop if I tried.”
Bee yawned. “Someone put another log on the fire. It’s getting cold, but I’m cozy.”
“Then we should get all the blankets,” Jo said.
The doorbell rang, cheery chimes that seemed deafening in the midnight hush. All three girls craned their necks toward the shadowy foyer.
“No fucking way,” Jo said. “That’s the beginning of a horror movie.”
“Or a romantic comedy,” Autumn said, springing to her feet. “I’m prepared to be meet-cuted, universe!”
“As long as it’s not with a hatchet!” Jo called after her.
But when Autumn opened the door, it wasn’t a meet-cute. Just her bad luck, it was her brother. Once again, she was stuck in someone else’s movie.
“Florencio!” she cried. “How did you even find us?”
“Why aren’t any of you answering your phones? I need Bianca,” he growled. Wild-eyed, he pushed past Autumn, into the house.
“Bee?” Autumn half asked, half called to the next room.
Trailing behind him, she noticed that he was dressed in his Days uniform. A haze of fry oil seemed to follow him. Autumn caught a whiff as he hit the lighted hallway.
“Did you drive up and down the street looking for our cars?”
“I called Ginger on my way here,” he said tightly.
“You called—”
Flo strode into the living room and raised his voice. “Bianca!”
“What’s wrong?” Bee was rushing forward, the ears of her pajamas flopping.
“We couldn’t reach any of you! I need to take you to the hospital.”
Bee skittered behind him. “What happened, Flo? Is it Lita’s heart? Is she going to be okay?”
“Lita’s fine. She’s with your mom.” Pausing halfway out the front door, he explained. “It’s Birdy.”
BIRDY: Hate to bug you guys, but I’m on my way to Tillamook County Hospital. Someone tell Bianca to check her voicemail?
Bianca raced ahead of Florencio. Distantly, she heard her friends’ voices. Autumn calling after her. Jo racing behind with an armful of her possessions.
Bianca was buckled into the front seat of Flo’s car before he made it to his door. Birdy was hurt. Birdy had never been hurt before. Not here. Back in Ohio there were stories of trees he fell out of as a child, cars crashed, the ridiculous game he and his brothers used to play where they threw an aluminum baseball bat at each other.
He’d never been hurt since he’d become Bianca’s.
“He called me himself to come get you,” Florencio said, sticking the key into the ignition ten times slower than Bianca would have if she could have driven, if she were sober, if her thoughts weren’t floating out of reach. “Since none of you w
ere answering your phones. Are you okay?”
“No, Florencio,” she said, staring out of the windshield as they left well-lit Waterfront Cove for the shadowy sleepiness of old town Sandy Point. She was surprised to find her lap laden with the shoes and jacket she’d left next to the door in the vacation house. “My husband is in the hospital and I am dressed like Stitch the alien and I’m on drugs.”
“Oh, right,” Flo said. “You guys were eating edibles tonight. It’s not working if it isn’t keeping you calm.”
“It is keeping me calm,” Bee said. She put the shoes on her feet. Tied the laces. “That’s what is freaking me out. I’m not a naturally calm person, Flo. I want to access the depth of my emotions right now.”
“If you were going to the ER with a panic attack, what would they give you?”
“I don’t know,” she huffed. “A tranquilizer?”
“Well, you tranq’d yourself, Bee.”
She reached up and held on to the ears on her hood. It was soothing, the way she used to rub the ears smooth on her childhood stuffed rabbit. “I don’t think I would buy that sober, but thank you.”
“Do you really think I would leave the house in this if it weren’t an emergency?” Bianca snapped at the nurse inside the hospital who told her how adorable her pajamas were. She hugged her coat closed—or as close to closed as it could be over the onesie. “Please just tell me where my husband is.”
When she got to Birdy’s room, she found him with his leg up in a splint, one leg of his jeans cut away. His skin was ashy gray.
“Honeybee,” Birdy said, wincing as he tried to rise to greet her. He fell back. “Ow, shit. The painkillers aren’t strong enough for that.” Interlacing their fingers instead, he gave her a brave little soldier smile. “I’m sorry I ruined your girls’ night. It’s really nice to see you. I FaceTimed my mom in the ambulance, and she said not to bug you—”
“Baby, what happened?” Bee asked, pushing the hair away from his face.
He squinted at her. “See, when I tell you, you’re going to overreact—”
“Robert Birdy.”
“Please, Robert Birdy is my father. Call me Dr. Robert Birdy.” He grinned at her as best he could. Pain made him hiss as he leaned forward. “I fell down the stairs.”
“You what?!”
“Inside voice, honey. You’re at Autumn levels.”
Bee struggled to regain control of her volume. “What do you mean you fell down the stairs? How? Why? Just to make me the most scared you could?”
“I stepped down wrong. Wasn’t paying attention and had an armful of laundry.”
“You were doing the laundry?” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Your mom told Lita she could wear a particular shirt in the morning without realizing it wasn’t clean. I had time to wash it. It wasn’t a huge deal. But since I was doing a load anyway, I brought our hamper down, too. My sciatic nerve pinched and my knee pitched forward and, uh, turns out that I go wherever the knee goes. Landed on my shin and broke it.”
“It’s broken?” Bee reached out as though to touch the splint and thought better of it. She reached up and ran her nails through Birdy’s hair. He tipped his head toward her touch.
“Oh, it is very broken,” he said, eyes closed. “Learned that the hard way when I tried to stand up to let in the EMTs. The doctor says it’ll be healed in time for swimsuit season. In the meantime, rest and pain management. I’ll stay home with Lita for at least two weeks. It’ll give me a chance to catch up on all those Santana concerts I’ve seen thirty seconds of.”
Bee pressed her forehead against his temple. If she could, she would put on a stethoscope and listen to his heartbeat until it lulled her to sleep, promising signs of life. “I should have been home with you. I shouldn’t have left you home alone with Lita.”
“Lita’s fine. Your mom pulled up at the same time as the ambulance.”
“The sleepover was a mistake. What if it’d been more serious? What if you’d hit your head?”
“Bee, take a deep breath. We’re okay. Where’s your watch?”
“I—I must have left it in the vacation house.”
“It’s okay,” Birdy said soothingly. “Jo can bring it by tomorrow. Any chance you brought the car?”
“Florencio dropped me off. He couldn’t get ahold of us, and then I was too stoned to drive myself. My car is back at the beach house. I told Flo to go back to sleep.”
Birdy steepled his fingers and winced. “This is awkward. I also got a ride here. Expensive taxi, many sirens.”
Bee held out her hand. “I’ll call my mom with your phone.”
How could we be the parents? she thought, stroking his hair. We’re the kids.
It was excruciating getting Birdy in and out of Bonnie’s car without the help of his right leg or anyone close to his height. Twice Bonnie offered to call and wake up her skinny fiancé before Birdy literally put his belt between his teeth and sat down in a hurry.
Bianca had barely come through the front door when Lita was flying at them, worried hands flapping as fast as her words.
“Mano, mano,” Lita said, hovering around Birdy as he limped toward the couch. “My friend, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, Lita,” Birdy said. He wagged a finger at her. “But you should be asleep, young lady.”
“How could I sleep? I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. ¡No sé nada! Nobody called me!”
“I don’t have my phone, Lita,” Bee said, gesturing to her jammies. “I left everything at the sleepover. I have shoes and a coat.”
“Birdy has his phone,” Lita snapped. “He called your mother! You couldn’t call me?”
“I didn’t think of it, Lita,” Bianca confessed guiltily. She took Lita gently by the elbow, steering her toward the hallway. “I’m sorry. Let’s go back to your room. Birdy’s right. You should be sleeping.”
She threw an apologetic look at Birdy, who didn’t notice. His eyes were closed, one leg awkwardly propped on the couch cushions.
Lita shuffled furiously down the long hall toward her bedroom, talking so fast her tongue tangled like tape ribbon.
“I couldn’t help my friend, Bianca. He was laying there, just like me, just like when I fell and Cruz came and found me. But I couldn’t pick him up. I couldn’t move him. I had to stand and watch.”
“You did the right thing,” Bee assured her. “You called Mom. And Birdy sent Florencio to come get me, so everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine,” Lita said, stopping defiantly in the doorway of her bedroom. “What happens if he is hurt again? What if you aren’t here? Where were you?”
“I was with Autumn, remember? I told you that I was going—”
Lita interrupted with a stamp of her foot. “You should have been here. You should have been helping. You should have seen—You can’t know how it felt, muñeca. It was so scary and then everyone left and I didn’t know…I had a right to know if he was okay!”
“I’m sorry, Lita,” Bee whispered. “You did have the right. We really messed up.”
“Yes. You did.”
Bee crawled into bed behind her grandmother, holding her shoulders until her agitated breathing turned to sure snores. Then she climbed out of bed, cried in a bathroom, and got to work.
During the single-digit hours, rather than collapsing into an exhausted puddle in fuzzy pajamas, Bianca rearranged the downstairs for Birdy to live in. The dining room table into the TV-less living room. The couch went in front of the TV with space for Lita’s rollator. Most—but not all—of Birdy’s man-cave paraphernalia came downstairs. A broken leg didn’t require anyone else looking at that Warcraft tapestry.
Around dawn, before Lita’s first wake-up alarm but not long after Birdy had fallen asleep with an Xbox controller in his hands, Bee took a shower. Changed out of frivolous pajamas into efficient clothes with many pockets. Hair up in a clip. Brows on in a rush.
She emailed the shop to tell them she
wasn’t coming in.
At nearly noon, after a knock on the door that startled everyone, she spotted Jo in the peephole. To Bianca’s sleep-starved brain, it might as well have been weeks since the sleepover. Since midnight, she had sweated and cried and in general lost so much saline that her body might have accepted a mug of seawater easier than it choked down a fifth cup of coffee. Her eyes felt like hot golf balls shoved inside an old paper bag.
From her lateness, Jo must have hung out at the vacation-rental house until the bitter end of their rental period. Bianca was too tired to feel jealous, but she recognized that later she would file this information away under the headline Things Autumn and Jo Did Without Me.
“It’s Jo,” she told Birdy and Lita.
“Hi, Jo!” Birdy called from the couch now residing in their dining room.
“Who?” Lita asked so bluntly that it made Bee cringe. She couldn’t even blame it on the brain injury. Lita had never been great with names.
“It’s Jo from next door,” Bee told her patiently. “Phil and Deb’s daughter.”
“Oh,” Lita said, showing zero signs of recognition even as she waved politely.
“Hi, Mrs. Boria,” Jo called back. She lifted the luggage off the porch and passed it to Bee. “Here, Bee. Your makeup case had a very restful night on a mermaid bed. And I didn’t even consider stealing that cool ergonomic eyeliner you brought to the pinup shoot.”
Bee hoped her mouth was smiling because her eyes were too tired. “It’s from Fred Meyer. Don’t rob my makeup case.”
“From the many, many phone calls and texts we missed last night, Autumn and I put together what happened. Is Birdy’s leg okay?”
“Snapped clean in half!” Birdy answered loudly from the dining room.
The noise made Bee’s temples throb. She strapped her watch back on. It needed charging, but it didn’t matter. “He’ll be home for a few weeks. He’s devastated, as you can see.”
The Throwback List Page 22