by Libba Bray
And he was gone. A rare bird in flight.
I stopped by Dee’s house on the way home. She was lying on a towel in her backyard, getting a base for her summer tan. She couldn’t believe Connor had gotten back together with Nan.
“Oh my God. Are you, like, hitting the Haagen Dazs yet? I would be.”
“I’m too depressed for ice cream,” I said with a sigh.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been too bummed for Vanilla Swiss Almond.” She opened and closed a butterfly clip a zillion times. I reached out and took it away from “Sorry. Hey, Kari, I need to talk to you about something.”
Oh no. Here it came. Pan over two friends talking. Tight shot of one friend, we’ll call her Kari, proving what a royal creep she is by breaking other friend’s heart. I rushed in. “Listen, I’ve been an A-l turd of a friend lately. I’m sorry. I have a lot to learn. About everything.”
Dee sat up fast. “It’s okay. Just don’t try to set me up with anybody again. I hope you’re not mad, but I am so over Jared.”
Mad? I wanted to hug her. I did. Then I started laughing hysterically in relief.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything.” I sighed again.
“So listen.” Dee’s eyes were bright with excitement. “Jared’s friend Mark is so babealicious. We really hit it off at your party. He called just before you showed up, and we talked for half an hour. He’s taking me out next Friday. So, see, something good did come from your party.” I smiled in spite of how I was feeling. Dee babbled on. “And do you know what his favorite movie is?”
“Titanic?” I offered meekly.
“No! The Breakfast Club, which is, like, my second-favorite movie of all time. Isn’t that positively Roswell?” Dee sketched back in the grass and reached her long, tapered fingers toward the sun, trying to pull it in with both hands.
“Totally,” I said. And I meant it.
After dinner Mom and I sat outside with her tarot cards under the tattered tent Ever’s Hardware made us buy. I had asked Mom for a reading. She chewed a fingernail and peered into my future, spread out on a card table. “These are wonderful cards, honey. Full of good things.”
“Really? Like what?” I said, noticing the card that showed lightning striking a very large tower. Call me wacky, but it didn’t seem to bode well.
Mom pointed to the tower card. “This is your recent past. Where you’ve been. Lots of…disruption.” That was putting it mildly. “But it can also be like a storm that cleans everything away. And look, over here is the sun, promising light and confidence and happiness. Very good fortune. What’s wrong?”
I had started crying. “I let everyone down. You. Lila. My friends.” The last part came out as a whisper. “Daddy.”
Mom led me by the hand. In the living room she pulled a dusty photo box from the middle of a pile of books and handed it to me. “Here,” she said. “Take a look at this.”
Inside were pictures that Fdnever seen were kind of screwy, frankly. Not all that artistic or well-ordered. I recognized Mom and Lila and the sproutlings, even though they were sometimes out of focus or cropped badly. But there was a freedom to the pictures. They made me feel happy. I kept wanting to look at them. “Who took these?” I asked.
“Your father,” Mom answered, picking up a photo of Lila looking at me with a look of love on her face. He’d managed to catch her at just the right second. Before she turned sour again. “Your dad took these a few months before he died. They’re my favorites. They’re so…imperfect. He was learning, Kar.”
I didn’t understand. “Learning what?”
“To capture people’s souls.”
And then I knew what she meant. I had turned on my camera and tried to pull off a magic trick, not real magic. I hadn’t seen into people’s hearts. I hadn’t even scratched the surface.
That night I took another look at my film school application. I scribbled the answer that came to mind. I know how not to make a movie. The rest you’ll have to teach me.
chapter 14
The last week of school passed painfully slowly. Each day I walked down the halls of Greenway High, I was greeted by accusing stares and whispers behind my back. A few brave souls nodded in the halls and gave me the thumbs-up sign. One guy even asked me if his band could play my next party. I was either total bad news or a major rebel, depending on who was telling the story.
I saw Connor once in the commons. I was picking at my yogurt when he came over to sign my yearbook. To Kari, a really cool chick. Remember me when you’re famous. Love, Connor. I had rated two lines and a signature. Still, it did say “love.” After obsessing over whether that meant capital “love” or just “thanks for the memories,” I finally decided to give it up and move on.
True to his word, Jared stayed out of sight, surfacing only for the last bell. As was our ritual, the two of us threw our papers up in the air, letting them drift down on the commons like out-of-season snow. But when I looked through the sheets of blankness, he was gone. I was really going to miss him.
When Lila got all her bats back from the animals control center, she was in the mood to celebrate. We piled into the Jesus mobile and made the long drive out to Tokyo Joe’s. I figured Joe would be upset about all his plates and cups getting trashed at my party. But he was full of good cheer when we arrived. He seated us at a big table near the karaoke stage and brought us a pitcher full of Tumbleweed Tea, which was actually plain Upton tea with a sprig of mint in each glass.
Joe offered Lila his hand like an old-fashioned cowboy. “Ola, I’ve got a new iguana, and he’s a beaut. Want to have a look?”
Lila sprang out of her seat. “Would I! Tell me, what did you name him?”
Joe beamed with pride. “I’m calling him Iguana Go West.” We all groaned in unison which seemed to make Joe very happy.
“We need some action around here,” Theo announced, heading for the stage. He plopped four quarters into the jukebox and watched as the lyrics to “The Streets of Laredo” scrolled up. Theo not only sang along, he acted out all the parts, down to the dying cowboy, at the end. I have to admit, it was pretty funny. Isis sure thought so. At first she fought the smile tugging at her lips, but by the end of the song she was onstage with Theo, singing and playacting through a repertoire of country songs so old, even cable TV wouldn’t run them in the dead of night.
Lila was stroking Iguana Go West, who seemed surprised to be so fawned over. I could swear he was purring, or whatever it is that reptiles do when they’re feeling the love. Lila caught my eye for a second. I thought she was going to make me come over and pet Air. Icky Green Thing. Instead she winked, reminding me of the grandma who smiled at me in a picture my dad took a hundred million years ago.
“Whatcha thinking?” Mom asked. She was chewing on a piece of raw ginger. The smell of it made my nose run.
“About Daddy,” I answered truthfully. “I think…Promise you won’t laugh?”
Mom smiled and kissed my cheek. “No.”
I grabbed a California roll off her plate and peeled the seaweed off in layers. “I want to make a short movie. About Daddy.” Mom’s brows furrowed, and her smile widened. “About his passion for taking pictures. You know, like, the building of an artist. What do you think?”
“Hey, Mom!”Theo yelled. “Next we’re gonna sing ’I Died in the Wool, but I Rose in the Garden,’ okay?”
Mom gave a little wave as Theo and Isis prepared their next floor show. “I think,” she said without looking at me, “that strength should be your tarot carrd.” It was a totally Mom answer, mysterious but somehow just right. And it would have to do.
Our waiter brought us barbecued tuna served up on plates shaped like saddles. “Two orders of Laguna Tuna. Can I get you anything else?” My head shot up, and I was face-to-face with some familiar brown, soulful eyes. I was staring like a love-starved freak. Which I pretty much was when you got down to it.
“Hey, Kari,” our hottie of a waiter said sheepishly. It was John, the deb
ater from my party.
“Hi,” I said. “I didn’t know you worked here.” No duh.
John shrugged self-consciously. “My dad owns this place.”
Now it made sense. John had come to my party to set up the food. I was glad to know that the erudite arranging in the kitchen wasn’t an obsessive-compulsive thing because he really was cute.
Tokyo Joe came over and slapped an arm around his son. “Dobbins family, this is my son, John Wayne Hari, the fastest sushi server in the East. Just moved here from the West.” Joe beamed with pride. John grimaced and practically hid behind his tray.
John Wayne Hari? It was too bad to be believed. Had I actually met a guy whose family was just as Whacked as mine? Open on establishing shot of hero and heroine commiserating over normal Tater Tots in neat silver Hondd at Sonic drive-in. Cut. Take two. Open on hero and heroine in quirky Western sushi restaurant. He is mortified. She is…amused.
Not a bad opening. I’d have to see how the script developed. John refilled my tea. “So. What are you doing this summer?” he asked.
Signing a deal with Disney? Starting my own fashion line? inventing a bubble gum that never loses its flavor? “Nothing much,” I said. “How about you?”
“Working here,” John said with a roll of his eyes. “By the way, I really thought your party was a good time.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That makes one.”
“Seriously,” John said, all wide-eyed. He didn’t have anything else on the tray to give us, but he hung around, anyway. “So. Do you ever, like, hang out at that place everyone likes…Café Vortex?”
I thought about it for a minute. “No,” I said.
“Me neither. Well, maybe I’ll see you around this summer.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I was starting to like this idea.
“Hey, pardner!” Tokyo Joe called to his son over Theo’s awful warbling. “I think Miss Lila here needs a refill. Care to load up that pony express with something to wet the whistle?”
John sighed and leaned in close. “Please kill me.”
I smiled, and he loped off into the sunset, or at least the smoke of the hibachi grill. On the way he turned and shook his head, sharing a private see-what-we-have-to-put-up-with moment. It made me want to doodle his name on my napkin. My summer started taking shape in my head. Something about John and me at the movies, holding hands, sharing freaky family stories.
John Wayne Hari. Hari and Kari. Hari Kari? It was just too perfect. I leaned back in my chair and let the laugh soar out of me like a balloon, bouncing high and free into the blue, blue sky.
About the Author
Libba Bray has written several plays, comedy sketches, and lots of advertising copy for products people absolutely do not need. Her most hellish memory of being sixteen was the time she had to wear a trash bag for a yearbook picture. (Don’t ask.) A native Texan, she now lives in Brooklyn.
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Copyright
SWEET 16 #3: KARI. Copyright © by 17th Street Productions, Inc., and Libba Bray. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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