I nod.
“If your sister were sitting here right now, what would she tell your family to do?”
I sigh, and my nose prickles as tears tease the back of my eyes. I tell Dylan she’d want me to get the hell out of here. She’d tell my mom to stop using work as an escape. She’d tell my dad to stop scheduling so many business trips as an excuse to avoid the house.
“You know what I admire about you?” Dylan says. “You’re a survivor. And you’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. You just don’t see it.”
I shake my head and tell her she only sees the best in people. I’m not that strong.
“My dad walked out on my mom when I was little,” Dylan says.
“What?” I say. I stare at Dylan. How, in all this time, has she never mentioned this? She tells me she can barely remember him. He left when she was four years old and he met her a few years ago and said he was sorry and he was sober now and he wanted to reconnect, to be there for her and her sister. But then he never called again. And it’s okay, she says. Her mom remarried this wonderful man who’s always been a father to her.
Dylan tells me she’s only bringing it up because she’s so amazed at how her mom dealt with being abandoned. Her mom showed her that when life hands you tragedy, you can do two things with it. You can let it kick you down and make you weak and turn you into a victim. Or you can have hope that you’ll get through it and there’s still something amazing to live for.
“That’s what my mom did,” Dylan says. “She survived. She was angry and regretted marrying him, but she didn’t dwell on it. She let it go and focused on the future. She could have been bitter and turned me off to love and family because it can be just misery and heartache. But she didn’t.”
Dylan tells me victims don’t make it very far in life.
“But I know that’s not you,” she says.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Because you let me in.”
I nod and wrap my fingers around hers. Dylan rests her head on my shoulder and we watch the sunlight creep over the horizon and run out above us in the sky. I’m finally beginning to understand why this misguided angel has stumbled into my life, and for the first time, I’m starting to believe I deserve her.
First Confront
Gray
My mom and dad are in the family room at the same time. I haven’t seen them together in months. It’s now or never. I walk in the room and stand between them. My dad’s sitting in a recliner, hiding behind the newspaper, and my mom’s grading papers on the love seat. The news is on. Someone was kidnapped in Tempe. A girl from ASU is missing. Five more local businesses closed. Fun, uplifting stories.
Dylan and I played out the scenario several times. She played my parents and acted out different reactions. She was hurt, she was angry, she was suspicious, she was hysterical. She made me rehearse for hours.
I sit down on the couch opposite my mom, across from my dad, and we form an asymmetrical triangle. I wait for them to notice to me. And they don’t. I observe my dad’s face over the newspaper. He’s gained weight since Amanda died. More business trips. More fast food. And he’s aged. His hair is thinner, lighter, with streaks of gray. My mom’s lost weight. Her face is tight and gaunt. Her skin is pale. I realize we’ve all been slowly dying.
Then I think, Why am I here? Why am I neglecting my life when they don’t even notice me? Dylan was right. This isn’t doing any of us any good. A pulse of courage jumps through my veins and pushes against my heart.
I clear my throat, and when I have their attention the words pour out. I tell them everything. I tell them I want all of us to meet with a counselor. I’m tired of living in the shadow of Amanda’s death and letting her memory pull a curtain between us and the rest of the world. I tell them we aren’t doing Amanda any honor by giving up, by dying ourselves. We are the ones that are living. So it’s about time we got around to doing it.
They both stare at me as if I’m a stranger in their son’s body. I’ve never stood up to them before. Confrontation isn’t common in my family. Respect is obedience. Don’t question authority. Accept it. But back then I always had Amanda. I had her to vent to when I needed to disagree. She was my family. She pumped life into us, around us. It was her love that made us all connect. We’re withering away without her, like plants without roots.
My dad sets down his paper. He crosses his arms and asks me what this is all about.
“I want to play baseball again,” I say. I repeat my entire conversation with Coach Clark and I list all the reasons I should accept the offer. I tell him I’d regret passing it up this time.
My dad’s silent. My mom’s skeptical. A minute crawls by before anyone speaks up.
“You’ve been out of baseball a long time, Gray,” Mom says.
I tell her it’s more than baseball. I want my life back. I want to go to school and start over. I want to have a future.
“It’s that girl you met, isn’t it?” my dad asks. “You want to follow that girl.”
I throw my hands up in the air and tell them I have a full-ride scholarship. What part of this don’t they get? I neglect to mention that I plan on asking Dylan to move out to New Mexico with me. And I’m pretty confident she’ll do it.
My mom tells me it isn’t as easy as it sounds. That escaping to Albuquerque won’t instantly fix all my problems. I tighten my lips and thank God Dylan brought up this same point a few days ago. She predicted my mom might cave in, that she’d reach for the excuse that I’m running away because she’d rather have me here, miserable, than lose me. It’s true what they say, that misery loves company. When Dylan tested this response, I reacted by punching the wall of my bedroom. Now I can handle it with a little more maturity.
I tell them I know it won’t be easy, and I’m not trying to escape. I take a deep breath and stand up.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” I say. “I am doing this.” They both stare at me and my dad’s frowning and my mom’s eyes are filling with tears.
“But your support would mean everything to me,” I add. “And I know Amanda would want me to do this.”
They’re both silent. I ask for one more thing.
“I want all of us to meet with a counselor before I leave,” I say. I slap a piece of paper down on the table. It lists three counselors Dylan and I narrowed down from our research. I stand my ground and wait. I remind myself that this is heading in the right direction. I need to be the brave one.
My mom just stares at the piece of paper as if it’s a hornet she wants to crush. I would have done the same thing a few days ago. My dad’s face is deadpan and his eyes are frozen, staring down at the ground. At least no one’s screaming. I leave the room because I understand what they need. It’s what I needed after Dylan confronted me about all this. Time.
***
We’re sitting out on the concrete foundation we discovered on Camelback Mountain. We’ve come out here a few times. We need to make the most of the view from our dining room before it becomes a workout gym for one of the Diamondback baseball players or Arizona Cardinals (our prediction of who owns this spot). Tonight we brought a blanket and spread it out underneath us. I’m trying not to think about the dwindling days we have left together. I’d rather focus my energy on more productive thoughts—like how to keep Dylan from leaving.
I ask her where she sees herself in five years.
“I have no idea,” she says, and confesses she has trouble planning a week ahead, let alone five years.
I tap my foot on the ground. “But don’t you want to plant roots eventually?” I’m hopeful. I want her roots to have the same city limits as mine. At least the same area code. Preferably a New Mexico area code.
“Not any time soon,” she says.
I try a different angle. “What about a job? You have to make money.”
Dylan leans back on her elbows and thinks about this.
“Money’s okay, but it’s not the most imp
ortant thing on my list. Cars are great, and nice clothes, and five-star restaurants. But I’ve always been more impressed with the sky. With canyons and trees and mountains. I’d rather invest my time collecting memories and friends and love and all the things money can’t buy.”
I can’t help but smile. So much for having a practical conversation with this girl. I’m consciously savoring the time I have left with her because I know it’s drawing to a close. She has no idea how intriguing she is to me. How smart and fascinating and unpredictable and magnetic. And she’s singled me out as her lucky audience.
I ask Dylan what she thinks about when she’s alone.
“You want to know what I mostly think about?” she asks, and her eyes meet mine.
“I think about you,” she says. She leans closer to me and holds one of my hands inside her smaller ones and examines it like it’s a map to some mysterious world. She tells me she thinks about my lips and my eyes and my skinny long legs.
I inform her that she’s the one with skinny long legs. Mine are toned.
She smiles and says she loves my big hands and long fingers with veins wrapping around the knuckles like a vine. She slowly traces each vein with her index finger and it makes my heart race. She tells me she loves my long eyelashes and my toes and the patch of hair on my chest.
“Is there anything you don’t like about me?” I ask, because I want to know how to be better. How to be half the person she is. Then she looks at me like I’m crazy and tells me she loves everything about me. I wonder how that can be possible, but then I think maybe when it’s right, this is exactly how it should feel.
“What random thing did you do today?” I ask. It’s my favorite question.
“Today it was more of a random thought.”
I wait for her to continue.
“I thought about the best way to be born,” she says simply, as if this is a normal thing to contemplate. “If you could choose how you come into the world, how would you want to be born? It’s your most important entrance; you want to make it count. Imagine if you could be hatched from an egg—wouldn’t that be cool? To crack out, to stretch your arms and legs and break through walls? That would be a memorable entrance, not the crying, screaming, terrified way humans are squeezed out into the world.”
“I guess it’s not ideal,” I say.
“If I could be born any way, I’d be a raindrop,” she says. “I’d begin in a cloud and start with a peaceful descent and then gain speed on the way down to earth. Then I’d land in a forest and I’d grow like a cabbage patch kid.”
I don’t interrupt, because she’s in some crazy trance now.
“Then a stork would pick me up when I’m just this tiny baby and he’d wrap me in flannel sheets and fly me home. He’d tell me stories on the way, about oceans and carnivals and love and family and I’d fall asleep to the rhythmic flapping of his giant wings. When I woke up, my parents would be holding me. Amazed at this miracle breathing in their arms.”
Then, as if this isn’t enough, she says her other random thought for the day is what animal she’d like to be.
“But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I love being human,” she says.
This surprises me. I figured she’d want to be a bird. Something with wings. “Why?”
“We have it the best,” she says. “Think about it. First, we’re bipedal. And I like being tall. Imagine being quadrupedal. You wouldn’t be able to walk hand in hand. Or have your hands free to take pictures. How boring would that be?”
I admit I’ve never thought about it.
“And being a mammal is crucial. I’d hate to live in the water. No hiking in the sun. No road trips. No running and Rollerblading and feeling the wind in your hair. And I can’t swim very well,” she adds.
“And imagine being nocturnal. No more sitting back and enjoying sunsets or feeling the sun on your skin or studying the clouds in the sky. And humans have the largest brains. Think if we had a tiny cat brain? No analyzing, philosophizing, writing, reading, dreaming. I can’t imagine that.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” I point out. “What a loss that would be.” She catches me roll my eyes and she lifts her hand up to slap me but I grab it in mine and squeeze and press my lips to hers before she can argue.
First Inspire
Dylan
Friday night I’m over at Gray’s and we’re watching TV. But I have a problem watching television—I prefer to make it interactive. So, during the commercials we turn the volume down and do our own voice-overs for the actors. We turn a shampoo commercial into an ad for killing head lice. We transform a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial into a public service announcement about diabetes.
I wander into Gray’s room and he follows as if we’re attached by an invisible cord. Lately, it feels like we are. I turn on his stereo and tell him I want to listen to music.
He plays me his favorite. Acoustic. The guitar, he argues, is the best instrument. He says you can go without any other instrument and write any song imaginable. A guitar can wail, it can cry. It can drum, it can laugh. It has every range of emotions, like it’s part human.
He plays Ryan Adams’s album Heartbreaker and we turn the lights off and lie on the floor next to the speakers. We spend hours listening, just listening. We hear every beat, every clever layering of instruments. The carpeting absorbs the bass and howl of the harmonica and the heartbeat of the drums. Gray’s fingers dance against mine and I memorize his hands. I’m relaxed, but I’m too high to fall asleep. The music falls around us like rain and it melts over our skin and into our bones. We imagine what he was thinking when he wrote each song. We dissect the meaning of the lyrics. We listen to what the music is saying.
It’s the best date I’ve ever had.
I get up and turn on Gray’s desk lamp and study a corkboard hung on the wall. He uses it to tack up ticket stubs from all the concerts he’s been to. I read the concerts out loud.
“Black Crowes, the Killers, the Roots, Atmosphere, U2, Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams, Tom Petty, Paul Simon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Counting Crows, the Flaming Lips . . .
“Where did you see all these shows?” I ask. He tells me mostly in Phoenix, a few in Vegas. Some in Los Angeles. My eyes perk up at this.
“I’ve always wanted to see L.A.,” I tell him. He says it’s only a six-hour drive. I look down at him and he’s lying on the floor, his arms folded behind his head. He doesn’t have to see my plotting smile—he can sense the question. His summer school classes are over and we both know he has the weekend off from work.
“When do you want to go?” he asks, his eyes on the ceiling.
“Can we leave in the morning?” I ask.
“You’re crazy,” he says.
I nod in agreement and crawl back down on the carpet to join him. Tell me something I don’t know, I’m about to say, but his hands tug me on top of him and his warm lips are on mine too fast for the words to slip out.
***
We head out at an ungodly hour (according to Gray), but I can’t sleep when L.A. is waiting to be discovered. We stop for gas and slam coffee to keep us awake for the long drive, then head west, through the Mojave Desert.
We’re in L.A. by the afternoon and we drive straight into Santa Monica, where we check in to a hotel on the coast. Between the two of us we have enough money to splurge on a small ocean view room. We stand out on our narrow balcony and stare at the crashing waves like they’re part of a foreign world. When you spend your summer in a landlocked city like Phoenix, the ocean has a strange effect. On the hottest summer days it’s easy to think the world has dried up, that the relief of rain is a myth. Seeing an endless body of water spread out against the horizon instead of a cracked desert plain is like turning your world upside down.
I change in the bathroom, and when I come out, Gray blinks as if he doesn’t recognize me. His mouth slowly falls open as his eyes trace my outfit.
I run my hands over my silky hips. �
�It’s just a dress,” I say. But I know what he’s thinking—it’s short and black and hugs me in all the right places. My mom and sister forced the dress on me last year, claiming that clothes are like bait. This is my first time wearing it, and it proves their theory right. From Gray’s expression, I’d guess he wants to do one thing: Rip it off. I even combed my hair straight and put on some mascara and eyeliner and lip-gloss. For me, it’s a monumental transformation.
“You own a dress?” he says, and I stare at him like it’s a stupid question.
“Every girl needs to own a little black dress,” I tell him, as if it’s a law. I pull him out of the room before he gets the chance to molest me. We’ll save that for later.
We cross Ocean Drive and pass restaurants and souvenir shops. We walk past a bike lane busy with skaters and runners, and finally we reach the warm, sandy beach. We watch seagulls ride the wind as if they’re floating on an invisible wave in the sky and we wade into the cold, curling water. We walk down Santa Monica Pier and people watch and look at amateur artwork. We ask strangers to take our picture while we do awkward prom poses, with Gray standing behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist as we both force tense smiles.
We hop into Gray’s car and drive downtown so he can introduce me to the most famous street in Los Angeles—Sunset Boulevard. We eat sushi at Miyagi’s and sit outside to watch the constant stream of traffic crawl down the strip. He points out the Viper Room, the Roxy Theatre, and the Whiskey Bar, and talks about the bands that made them famous.
We walk past Armani and Prada boutiques. We walk into Book Soup and browse the ceiling-high shelves stacked with screenplays. We sit down in the corner and read out loud the opening scene from Pulp Fiction. We head outside and see the Sky Bar and the Comedy Store and the House of Blues and point out the Porches, Ferraris, and endless limos that speed by. We pretend to see celebrities.
We drive down to Hollywood Boulevard to see the Mann Chinese Theater. We get Vanilla Ice Blendeds at the Coffee Bean on the corner of Hollywood and Orange. We take pictures on the Walk of Stars and buy CDs from artists promoting their albums on the street. We buy each other fake Oscars at a souvenir shop. Gray picks out “Best Director” for me and I buy him “Best Vocal Performer.”
First Comes Love Page 11