by Nicola Yoon
X: Hey, just saying hey
X: Was your day good?
It takes me ten minutes to come up with something that answers his question without encouraging any follow-up questions.
Me: Yup. Getting into bed now though
Me: Have a good night
X: OK
X: Good night
I stay awake for a long time, thinking. People are always saying stuff like “Take a chance on love.” “Love is worth the risk.” Etc.
But the visions have taught me differently. Dad getting engaged to the woman he cheated on Mom with taught me differently. Yes, falling in love requires a leap of faith. But people only jump because they don’t know what the ground looks like. They believe their landing will be soft. That the ground is covered in soft stuff—feathers, down pillows, fluffy baby blankets, the shaggiest shag carpeting. But I’ve seen the ground. It is covered in lethal spikes fashioned from the bones of other jumpers.
The fall is not at all survivable.
CHAPTER 29
The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 3
THE NEXT DAY, I manage to avoid Sophie and Cassidy while also pretending not to avoid them. In the morning, I go to my locker ten minutes earlier than usual. At lunchtime, when they text me from the cafeteria, I tell them I’m catching up on homework in the library. After school, I say I have to run errands for Mom.
But they suspect something’s wrong.
Later that evening, Mom knocks on my door. “Your girls are here,” she says. “I didn’t know they were coming over.”
I didn’t either.
When I get downstairs, Sophie and Cassidy are both eating lemon-blueberry cookies from Mom’s latest recipe experiments. Sophie’s even drinking a glass of milk. Mom hangs out with us for a few minutes, asking the usual parent questions: How are your folks? How’s senior year? Ready for college? She’s done with her questions and they’re done with their cookies faster than I want them to be. Mom goes back to watching Sugared Up! on TV.
“Let’s go up to your room,” says Cassidy.
She starts in as soon as I close my door. “Why are you avoiding us?”
“I’m not,” I say, without meeting her eyes. We both know I’m lying. I try again. “I’m just really—”
“Busy. Yeah, we heard,” says Cassidy.
Sophie walks to my bed and sits down. “We were wondering if seeing us together is weird for you.”
“Why would it be weird?”
Cassidy sighs an impatient sigh, but Sophie keeps going. “Because Cassidy and I are a couple now and it makes things different for the four of us.”
“Martin’s fine with it,” Cassidy interjects.
Sophie gives Cassidy a please be quiet look.
Cassidy mimes zipping her lips.
“What’s going on with you?” asks Sophie.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” Cassidy says. She pushes herself off the door and sits down next to Sophie on my bed. “You’re cynical and a pain in the—”
Even though she’s right, I feel defensive, like I’m the focus of some kind of intervention. But I’m not the one who needs saving.
“I don’t think you guys should date,” I blurt out.
“See?” Cassidy says turning to Sophie. “I knew it!”
Sophie looks down at her hands. “But why?”
“I’m worried about what’ll happen to our friendship when you guys break up,” I say as gently as I can. But there’s no way to say a thing like that gently.
Sophie folds her arms tight across her chest and taps her foot. “Who says we’re going to break up?”
“I mean…most couples break up eventually, right?”
Weirdly, it’s Cassidy who tries to save me from myself. “Eves, come on. We’re in love. Just be happy for us.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, shaking my head. “I can’t pretend to be happy about the end of our friendship.”
It’s funny how many different kinds of silences there are. This one is shocked and disappointed and final.
I could tell them about Dad getting engaged to Shirley. Cassidy would get angry on my behalf and Sophie would be sympathetic. They’d both forgive me for the awful things I just said, but I don’t. I’m just trying to stop them from hurting each other. From hurting all of us.
They stand at the same time. I feel their eyes on me, but I stare down at my feet. I don’t look up as I hear my bedroom door open or as I hear their footsteps heavy on the stairs or as I hear the slam of the front door.
I know our friendship was going to change anyway. We’re all going to separate colleges in the fall. But I thought we still had the rest of the summer for our epic road trip, for things to be the way they’ve always been. Now it turns out we don’t have any time left.
CHAPTER 30
Off the Cliff
WHEN I GET home from school the next day, Mom and Danica are at the kitchen table peering at Danica’s laptop screen.
Mom says a quick hello before she goes back to typing something.
Danica sighs and takes the laptop away from her. “No, Mom, you have to say something interesting about yourself,” she whines. “Don’t make it about being a mother. Make it about you.”
I don’t have to see Mom’s face to know she’s smiling her look how much you don’t know yet smile. “Those are the same thing, D!”
“But being a mom is not sexy.”
“I’ll remind you that you said that in about twenty years,” Mom says.
I can’t believe Danica is trying to talk Mom into dating. First Sophie and Cassidy, then Dad getting engaged and now this?
When Martin texts me five minutes later to meet him at La Brea Tar Pits, I get on my bike right away. Anything to get me out of my own head.
La Brea Tar Pits is called La Brea Tar Pits because it’s on La Brea Avenue and has quite a few…tar pits. The largest one, Lake Pit, is just off the main entrance. The tar is greenish-black, thick and always oozing. Occasionally a bubble of stinky air burps to the surface.
Lake Pit is my favorite of the pits because it has one of the most macabre sculptures I’ve ever seen. It’s of three enormous woolly mammoths—two adults and a baby. One of the adults is trapped waist-deep in tar. The other adult and the baby mammoth are safe on land, but the baby is clearly trumpeting in distress. Its mouth is frozen wide-open in a scream. Its trunk is rigid and pointed straight at the trapped mammoth. The other adult mammoth looks resigned.
The thing about the sculpture is that it captures a moment in time. You can read it two ways. Either the mammoth in the pit is done for and we’re seeing its last seconds on earth. Or we’re actually seeing the start of a miraculous escape.
How I read it changes depending on my mood.
Today, I decide that the mammoth in the pit is doomed.
I leave the mammoth family to their never-ending tragedy and climb to the top of the main hill and sit down on the grass. It’s three o’clock. At this time of day the park population is mostly families with young children. I watch the little kids run up the hill and roll down it over and over again. I watch their anxious parents watch them anxiously.
Ten minutes later, Martin comes ambling up the hill. He’s wearing a khaki shirt with khaki shorts and khaki hat. There’s a red handkerchief tied around his neck.
“You look like a park ranger,” I say.
“Thanks,” he says. He sits down and wipes his forehead. With the handkerchief.
Before I can make fun of his outfit some more, I notice a little boy staring at the mammoth sculpture. His mom is with him. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s obvious that the boy is upset and his mom is trying to comfort him.
“That thing is such a bummer of truth,” I say.
“I guess I don’t need to ask what ki
nd of mood you’re in,” Martin says.
I shrug and then sigh.
“Sophie and Cassidy told me about the fight,” he says.
“Yeah, I figured,” I say. I rest my head on his shoulder and look out over the park.
“Tell me what you see,” he says, putting see in air quotes.
“You want me to tell you how people end up?” I ask, and he nods.
I look around, trying to find a couple on the verge of kissing. I find one, a guy and a girl, picnicking next to a big sycamore tree. I point them out to Martin. Once their vision ends, I tell him the outcoMe: “Semester-abroad trip to Japan. She falls in love with a Japanese girl.”
“Huh,” he says.
I find another couple holding hands. Again, I point them out to Martin. I don’t have to wait too long for the inevitable kiss. “He proposes to her and she turns him down. She doesn’t love him enough.”
Another couple on a blanket are already kissing. He moves to New York.
We spend the next hour like this. I see all the things I expect to. A lot of sweet beginnings. A lot of bitter endings. Affairs, deaths, illnesses, disenchantment and boredom.
After a while I can’t take any more, and stop us.
People have certain tells when they’re about to kiss: a light hand on a shoulder, or a touch to a waist, or a subtle closing down of the distance between bodies. The only way to live with this curse is to avoid seeing kisses in the first place. I need to learn to look away in time.
“Maybe you could tell them about the visions and what’s going to happen,” Martin says. He’s talking about Sophie and Cassidy, but I know he doesn’t really mean it. He’s just as confused and frustrated as I am. It would be cruel to tell them what’s going to happen to them. I’d be taking away their happiness.
I shake my head. “They’d never believe me.” Couples in love believe they’ll always be in love. It’s one of the ways you know you’re in love in the first place.
“Can’t you just pretend you don’t know?”
“Martin, you didn’t see what I saw. It’s awful. They’re going to make each other so sad. Also, the biggest problem isn’t that they break up. The problem is that they’re going to break us all up. The four of us are not going to be friends anymore. No more epic road trip. No more group chats. No college spring breaks. No more anything.”
“Yeah, I get it,” he says. He looks back out at the couples in the park. “Don’t they all seem so happy?”
I know what he means. After every vision, I study each couple to see if I can catch a glimpse of what’s to come for them, but I can’t find any evidence. Right now, in the same park as the doomed mammoths, they’re happy.
My phone buzzes. It’s X. I show Martin the phone and he makes a swoony face at me. I jab him with my elbow.
X: Hey
Me: Hi
X: You busy?
Me: Not really
X: Want to go out?
Me: When?
X: now
I tilt the phone so Martin can read my screen. “You should go,” he says.
“It’s probably a bad idea.” I gesture out to the park, to all the couples whose visions I just watched and explained.
“Eves,” he says. “Don’t you think it counts for something that they’re happy now?”
I don’t know.
Maybe?
My phone buzzes again.
X: Or we can go some other time
I show Martin my phone again. “You gave him infinity on a one-to-ten kissing scale. How’s this even a question?” he asks. “Text him back.”
Me: We can go now
Me: Now’s good
X: Great
X: Where should we go? Your turn to choose
Me: Why’s it my turn?
X: I chose the lalaland tour and my show
X: You only chose the bonfire
X: So…two dates to one…your turn
Me: Those weren’t dates
Me: They were hangouts
Me: Because of Fifi
X: Ahh I see
What does he see? I wonder.
X: So want to “hang out” again in an hour?
X: Text me where you want to go and I’ll meet you there
Me: Ok
“You’ve got it bad,” Martin says.
“It’s not a rash,” I tell him.
I bike home, change and then head back out. My stomach does somersaults of increasing complexity as I ride to meet X. What am I even doing? I wonder. Two nights ago I told Dad I wouldn’t come to his wedding. I compared falling in love to jumping off a cliff. And just last night I told Sophie and Cassidy that all relationships end.
Hypocrite, thy name is Evie.
I press my fingers to my lips and hope I’m wrong about just how deadly the fall is.
CHAPTER 31
Definitely a Date
“WE’RE PLAYING POOL?” X asks as he walks up to where I’m standing underneath the sign for Wilshire Billiards.
“You don’t want to?” I wasn’t sure where to choose for our first official hangout/date/whatever we’re calling it. Now I’m nervous he won’t like it.
He stops a couple of feet away from me. “No, I’m just surprised, is all,” he says.
We stare at each other. It’s awkward and weirdly thrilling at the same time. The last time we saw each other there was kissing, but since we haven’t decided what the kissing meant, neither of us knows what to do with our hands. Or lips.
I wave at him. He waves back at me. From two feet away.
Finally, he starts laughing, and then I do too.
“I’m really happy to see you,” he says.
“Me too,” I say. I feel like we should hug or something, but neither of us makes a move to do it.
He holds the door open for me. “So, pool, huh?”
“Well, I figured you’d be good at it. What else is there to do in Lake Elizabeth?”
“Wow,” he says with pretend outrage. “Big-city snob.”
I grin at him. But it’s true that I can’t imagine living anywhere but a big, diverse city.
Once we’re inside, I head straight for the check-in counter. Julio, the sixtyish manager, spots me right away. “Señorita Evie,” he sings out. “Long time no see.” He leans over the bar counter for a double-cheek kiss and then looks out over my shoulder. “But where is your papa?”
“No dad today,” I say, tugging on my backpack straps. “Just me and my friend X.”
He and X exchange “hey, mans” and shake hands.
Julio looks back and forth between us, like he’s trying to figure out if we’re friends or friends. I can’t tell what he decides. “Careful with this one,” he tells X. “She’s a shark.”
“I’m getting that feeling,” X says, tapping my pool-cue case where it sticks out of my backpack.
“Table seventeen,” Julio says. He hands me the tray of balls and chalk. Table seventeen is the one Dad and I used to play on. It’s out of the way, in the back right corner next to the dartboards that no one ever uses.
But I don’t need more Dad reminders right now. Since I told him I’m not going to his wedding, he’s texted me three separate times. The first was a photo of a Taco Night banner hanging from a lamppost on Wilshire Ave. The next was a list of all the food trucks that are going to be there. The third was a picture of us at Taco Night two years ago. We’re both biting into chicken chimichangas (a deep-fried burrito made with rice, cheese, beans, shredded chicken and joy). Our eyes are closed and we are blissed out. I suppose I could always go with Mom or Martin or any of my other friends, but I know I won’t. No one else is a connoisseur like Dad. No one else will appreciate all the different types of salsa and what makes one better than the other.
I ask Julio
for one of the tables on the left-hand side near the pinball machines instead.
Wilshire Billiards is not one of those dark, dingy pool halls you always see in movies. It’s a big, clean space with pristine tables, polished cues and dark-wood mounted racks. The main lights are kept low, but every table has its own overhead light. I’ve always liked the way it looks—large areas of cool dark splashed by pools of yellow light.
It’s late afternoon on Wednesday, so most of the tables are empty, except for the few up front that the old-timers use. They’re mostly grizzled, grumpy old white guys, but they’re excellent pool players. A couple of them recognize me and nod hello.
We get to our table and I take my cue from my backpack. Nice pool cues come in two pieces. I feel X’s eyes on me as I unzip my case and screw the pieces together.
“What?” I ask.
“Is Julio right about you being a pool shark?”
“I’m okay,” I say, downplaying my skills.
“Nah, you’re a shark,” he says, laughing. He picks a cue from the rack. “All right, teach me your ways, big-city snob,” he says.
So I do.
I show him how to make sure a cue is straight by laying it flat on the table and rolling it. If it doesn’t wobble, then it’s straight. I show him how to rack the balls and how to apply chalk to the stick and powder to the area just between your thumb and forefinger, where the cue slides. Finally, I explain the rules: One person sinks the solid balls (solids), except the eight ball, and the other person sinks the striped balls (stripes). Whoever sinks all their balls first has to sink the eight ball.
“Let me show you how to break.” I line up to the table and hit the white cue ball into the rack. The balls scatter across the table.
I reset the rack for him. “Now your turn,” I say.
He lines up to the table. And it’s hard to imagine him doing more things wrong than he does. He holds the cue way too far up, rests it on the wrong two fingers and doesn’t line his head up with the shot. When he breaks, his stick glances off the cue ball so it only travels a few inches before stopping.