by M. G. Reyes
Shortly after Leo Carrillo Park, they stopped at a diner and ate cheeseburgers.
“Now,” Darius said with a warning grin. “What happens next is for your own protection. Unless you want someone to recognize you, that is.” He led Paolo to the diner’s bathroom, where Darius cut Paolo’s hair short with a buzz-cut razor. Then he applied peroxide.
“Gotta love being blond. White hair. Chicks dig it,” Darius told him smoothly.
Paolo kept his lips pressed tightly shut, fuming. But when they’d finished, he couldn’t stop looking at himself in the mirror. Such a small change, yet such a transformation. He looked like Eminem. Not his best look.
They reached Montecito shortly after lunch—a little town just south of Santa Barbara. Paolo had only ever heard of rich people living there: movie stars and the like. The type that felt that Beverly Hills was too much of a zoo. Darius drove the Boxster down streets with their neatly manicured borders into a residential area. He stopped at the security gate before a complex of white, red-roofed buildings. There was no one around. Just a two-way speaker in the wall.
“It’s Darius, yo, give my boy Jimmy a shout, okay?”
After a moment, the metal doors gave way. Darius drove through. He parked next to a red Corvette, sleek and beautiful. For a second, Paolo itched to reach out and touch it. “Nice wheels,” he said.
Darius smiled. “That, my friend, is a 2012 Corvette convertible.”
A young man approached. He didn’t look much older than Paolo. He was very tan with shoulder-length, straggly blond hair. He wore nothing but yellow cotton espadrilles and a pair of white Billabong board shorts. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the guy, Paolo noticed. Plenty of lean muscle definition. This kid lived for sun and body worship, or else he was an athlete. And to judge by his house, very rich.
Paolo watched as the two other guys bumped shoulders lightly. Jimmy strode over to Paolo. “This the guy?”
“I picked him up playing on Venice Beach. He’s the real deal, man. Closest I’ve come to losing for a year.”
“A’ight, well it’s gonna happen today, D. Because I got me a tennis pro. From Spain. He’s buddies with Rafa.”
Paolo interjected, “Nadal?!”
Darius winked at him. To Jimmy he said, “That’s why I’m insisting on odds, bro. You put up your Corvette, I put up my Boxster.”
Paolo took a sweeping look at the grounds. Two cottages, a large two-story house, gardens. Between the pink and white bougainvillea, he could see the blue chink of a swimming pool. As they stood there a tall, slender, deeply tanned woman with shoulder-length, straw-and-sand colored hair approached along the path toward the pool. She wore only a turquoise sarong, dyed Balinese-style with a seashell pattern and wrapped tightly around her body, revealing her shapely collarbone and calves. The woman tilted her horn-rimmed Ray-Bans and flashed a smile at the tennis players.
“Hello, Jimmy’s friends. You be sure and put on a good performance for me today. I’ll be coming out to watch you once I’ve taken a swim.”
Jimmy scowled. “Mom, don’t.”
Jimmy’s mom pouted. Then she surveyed the rest of the group. Her eyes stopped on Paolo. He could sense her gaze sweeping over him, slowly taking in his entire frame.
“I may watch,” she conceded, spinning on one foot. “And I may not. We’ll see.”
Paolo watched her go. He leaned into the back of the Boxster, picked up the rackets and handed one to Darius. “Where’s the court?”
As they made their way around the back of the house, Darius whispered into Paolo’s ear, “You know the Spanish guy?”
Paolo peered at the tall, well-muscled athlete who stood on the court, bouncing a tennis ball. “Oscar Cortada. He’s number twenty in the world!”
“Good thing we fixed your hair.”
But Paolo strongly doubted that the other player would recognize him. Cortada played on the international circuit. Paolo would be a huge nobody to him. Now he looked like a jerk and all for nothing.
The match turned into a tense, exhausting battle. The third set went to a tiebreaker. In the final set, Paolo finally understood why Darius had sought him out. While Darius and Jimmy were both flashy players with moments of brilliance, when it came to stamina, they just didn’t have game. Paolo and Oscar dominated.
In the end, though, Darius’s flashes of genius in combination with Paolo’s power and technique eventually gave them the edge. And to Paolo’s immense, exhausted relief, he and Darius won. And Jimmy’s mom never showed up.
The two of them walked back to the cars. Fear had won it for them, Paolo realized. Darius had hurled murderous looks in his direction every time they lost a point.
In victory, Darius was surprisingly subdued. He handed Paolo the keys to the Boxster. Paolo closed his fist around them. “You want me to follow you home?”
“Hell no.”
“Where should I leave the car?”
“I could give a shit.”
Darius opened the door to the red Corvette, turned the key, and put down the top. Slowly, it dawned on Paolo what had happened.
“The Boxster isn’t yours. You stole it for the stake.”
Darius peered at him for a second. “I ever hear word from you, you’re a dead man.”
“Tough talk for a tennis player,” Paolo responded softly.
For a second, thunder flared in Darius’s eyes. Paolo tensed, ready to spring back if the man attacked. Then, abruptly, Darius relaxed. He took a breath. “You’ll wise up, eventually. I was just like you once.”
“In what way?” Paolo asked. “Honest? Or a tennis pro?”
“You just hustled a rich kid out of a forty-thousand-dollar car, homeboy,” Darius pointed out. “So no, I don’t think you’re honest anymore.”
The words sunk into Paolo like needles. Unsteadily, he backed away. Darius started the engine. As he reversed, Darius leaned out through the open window. A laconic grin was on his face.
“Get the Boxster off Jimmy’s dad’s driveway before they figure out it’s hot. Don’t let the cops catch you in that thing. And Paolo, before you go back to that country club, do something about your hair.”
The keys to the Boxster felt strange and unwieldy in his hand. Paolo’s fingers fumbled as he tried to find the ignition. In his mind, he was already being pulled over by some traffic cop, asked for his license and registration papers.
His future was looking precarious. Convicted felons didn’t get licenses to practice law.
LUCY
OUR LADY OF MERCY CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, TUESDAY, MARCH 10
“Miss Long, I’m going to pretend I didn’t find you here.”
Lucy glanced up, dropped her cigarette, and quickly stubbed it under her regulation black Mary Jane shoe. She tried to exude impassivity as she watched the young teacher stroll over to the water’s edge and pick up the discarded cigarette butt.
“I’m not, however, going to pretend I didn’t find this.”
“Aww, shoot, Miss Ashcroft. That’s not gonna help me. . . .”
The teacher silenced Lucy with a slicing motion across her own mouth. “Zip it. It’s the third time I’ve found you in the water gardens. You know the water gardens are just for faculty and visitors. And smoking on top of that!” She paused. “It’s almost as though you want to be expelled.”
Lucy risked a pout. She was black, a punk, and she wasn’t afraid of teachers—it was an unexpected combination that seemed to put most teachers on their guard. It was good to mix up the tough-girl act they expected with a bit of vulnerability.
She cast her eyes down and then glanced up from beneath her eyelashes. Normally, she would reserve the maneuver for a male teacher. But it seemed worth risking now. Ashcroft was one of those teachers who yearn to be liked by the cool kids. Lucy was fairly indifferent to her, but she’d made friends with teachers like her throughout her entire life. Without their protection, she’d have been expelled at least twice.
Miss Ashcroft was visibly su
rprised. Lucy watched the history teacher ponder the possible motives for the gesture. After a second or two, she clearly came down on the side of manipulation.
“I can believe that actually worked for you in Claremont, Lucy. But believe me, at Our Lady we get our share of princesses trying to give us the runaround.”
“I’m no princess. Not here, not in Claremont.”
Miss Ashcroft smirked. “Is that so? Well then, kindly report to the assistant principal’s office. Do you remember where that is? You should, you were there only last week.”
Lucy bristled. Time to drop the friendly act. She was fine with teachers being strict and bossy—that’s what they were paid for. But when a teacher turned on the hostile sarcasm, it was time to check out of that relationship. She and Miss Ashcroft were not destined to be friends.
She could still feel Miss Ashcroft’s eyes on her as she dawdled up the long rectangular pond and onto the sandstone staircase, toward the Spanish-colonial-style mansion that dominated Our Lady of Mercy Catholic High School for Girls. She climbed the stairs in the full glare of the midday sun. Reluctantly, Lucy pulled on her regulation blue blazer and straightened the collar of her white cotton blouse.
The assistant principal, Veronica Guzman, waved Lucy toward the chair in the middle of the room.
“I’m going to get directly to the point.”
Her hair, Lucy observed, was solid, like a helmet—a monochrome block of glossy amber. Under a center parting and neat, narrow eyebrows, her eyes were large and solemn.
“There have been disciplinary issues with you since the day you arrived, Miss Long. Notwithstanding the minor issues of cigarette smoking on the premises, inappropriate use of the staff parking lot, and general backtalk to members of staff, all of which might conceivably be overlooked, there’s the somewhat intractable matter of your attitude toward your academic studies.”
Lucy smoldered in silence. The last grade she’d been given, which had been for music, was an A. In that subject— the only one that mattered to Lucy—she had never scored less than an A-minus. From school she planned to go on to a career in music: playing shows, recording. Maybe a college course or two in music technology. As far as Lucy was concerned, everything was on track. All in spite of her parents having thrown her out and robbed her of all her local friends and fellow musicians. In Venice, she was already managing to reconstruct something that might even be better. What had seemed edgy in Claremont was commonplace on the Venice boardwalk.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Miss Guzman,” Lucy said in her most carefully enunciated voice. It wasn’t difficult to turn that on either—she simply imitated her mother. “I’m excelling in music. Isn’t that the case?”
“Music, yes. No problems there, Lucy, I will give you that. I’m talking about English literature, chemistry, and Spanish. According to your teachers you are now overdue with papers in all three.”
“I asked for extensions. I recently moved, and we had—”
“You moved at the beginning of January,” interrupted Guzman. “Adequate time for any adjustments.” She gave Lucy a hard stare. “I’d have expected more from you, Miss Long.”
Here it came. The speech Lucy had grown tired of hearing—the one that simultaneously praised her for being smart enough to have been born to Robert and Anne-Marie Jordan, whilst bemoaning the poor efforts she’d made in upholding their undoubtedly stellar genetic standards.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Lucy, but our principal, Dr. Keener, got her master’s at your mother’s college.”
“I didn’t know that.” But it figured. How else could her parents have finagled a highly sought-after place in a snooty prep school like Our Lady with less than two weeks’ notice?
“Dr. Keener is a tremendous admirer of your mother’s. It’s no mean achievement for a woman to be president of a private college. Especially a woman of color.”
“Thanks, and yeah, I know.”
“Dr. Keener would dearly like to be able to feel the same way about you.”
Lucy wondered why Keener hadn’t bothered to see her herself if that was really true.
“We’d like to see a marked improvement in your attitude toward your work. Please.”
A nod. “Guess I’ll try.”
“It’s easily within your ability to impress us. Mr. Steiner read me parts of your essay about Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It was quite insightful, and very well written. I liked the section comparing it to West Side Story.”
Lucy swallowed. Her voice became very quiet. “Thank you.”
“There’s another thing, Lucy.” Guzman turned over her hand. In her palm was a half-smoked, hand-rolled cigarette. “I gather you sometimes smoke, out in the water gardens.”
“That isn’t mine.”
Guzman managed a thin smile. “The trustees require that we keep that part of the school immaculate, for conferences and other events.”
She dismissed Lucy then, with the firm suggestion that she head to the library. Since the library was housed directly opposite Guzman’s office, albeit down a hallway, the request was difficult to ignore. Within a few minutes Lucy found herself in a part of the school she’d visited only once before, during orientation.
At the reception desk was a slim woman in her midforties, with long, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked up from the book she was reading, replaced the glasses that had been hanging around her neck, and signaled to Lucy to come over.
“I haven’t seen you before, missy. You wanna tell me what kind of books you like? Or are you looking for something specific for your homework?”
Lucy was a little flustered to be put on the spot. The librarian was eyeing her with a kindly yet knowing air.
“Can I just use the computer?”
The librarian rolled her eyes melodramatically. “God help us, not you, too. Tell me you want some help with references at least.”
Lucy began to smile. The librarian was having a bit of fun with her. “I just want to check the hits on my YouTube account.”
“Well, hey, give me your username and we’ll look you up.”
When the Lucy Long channel came up, Lucy felt a rush of excitement. Ten thousand views of the original video posted by Paolo. And already over a thousand for the latest, a Rancid cover that she’d recorded during the party.
The librarian made a murmur of approval. “Looking good! Can’t listen in here, obviously. I’ll catch up with it later.”
Ten thousand views.
ARIANA CALLS LUCY
SATURDAY, MARCH 21
“How’s life on Venice Beach?”
“It’s not like anywhere I’ve ever lived is for sure,” Lucy answered.
“But you like it?”
Ariana could hear the smile in Lucy’s voice. It was good to hear her so relaxed. When they’d spoken three weeks ago, she’d sounded impatient.
“I like it a lot,” Lucy admitted. “The ocean. The light— this close to the water, there’s so much sky. The air in the morning, how it tastes of salt. I can walk up to Santa Monica and get funnel cakes. I didn’t even know how much I like them.”
“Funnel cakes? Uh-uh. You’ll get fat.”
“Ha,” said Lucy. “Good point. I should maybe run all the way back.”
“How about the other kids? Are they how you expected?”
“How do you mean?” Lucy asked. “They’re pretty normal.”
“Are they like the people you worked with, back in the day?”
“Oh, not at all. Those guys were freaks. And me, too, now that I look back. TV is no place for a kid.”
“It’s okay for someone your age, though?” Ariana asked.
“Borderline. You mix with a lot of crazy people. You need to be pretty grounded.”
Ariana smiled. “But you are grounded now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Weirdly, I feel a lot better since coming here. The house is a good place for me. Nice mix of people.”
“Tell me about
them.”
“Uhhhh. That feels a bit gossipy.”
“It’s not like I’m ever gonna meet them,” Ariana pushed. “Besides, I want to hear about these people who make you so happy.”
Lucy sounded hopeful. “You might meet them. It’s only a few hours away.”
“You think I can afford to be going out to LA?”
“Get the bus. You could stay with us.”
Ariana gave a scornful laugh. “Sounds to me like your house is plenty crowded already. Aren’t you three to a room?”
“Only in one room. We have a futon in the living room.”
“Who’s your best friend in the house?”
“I get along with everyone.”
“Anyone you’re into?”
“Me? You know I never like anybody.”
Like always, Lucy said this as though it were a joke. And yet . . . Ariana smiled to herself. “Oh, sure, I forgot.”
“Trust you to bring things down low.”
“Honey, I’m just trying to stir up that rumor mill. I missed hearing all about your shenanigans.”
“Maybe we’ll just say that my folks might not be too happy.”
“You partying?”
“Once in a while. But I’m not using nearly as much as before.”
“Mm-hmm?” Ariana said a little dubiously.
“Sorta. There’s . . .”
And finally, Ariana caught the hesitation she’d been waiting for.
“There’s kind of something a little weird going on,” Lucy confessed. “Just with a couple of people.”
“Go on. . . .”
“This guy called Paolo. Cute guy, tennis player. Pretty sure I told you about him. He kinda flipped out, for, like, no reason. Got himself a radical haircut, the buzz-cut look. Started acting all nervous, working out a lot.”
“People reinvent themselves all the time.”
“I guess. What’s odd is that it happened pretty much over a weekend, just after the party.”