Pretty Reckless (All Saints High)

by L.J. Shen

  What if I had to migrate to London to watch both girls make it big while I swam in my pool of mediocrity?

  Bailey and Via would become BFFs.

  I’d have to live somewhere rainy and gray.

  We’d leave Vaughn and Knight and even Luna behind. All my childhood friends.

  Via would officially take my place in Mom’s heart.

  Hmm, no thanks.

  Not today, Satan.

  When I don’t answer, the boy takes a step toward me. I’m not scared although…maybe I should be? He’s wearing dirty jeans—I’m talking mud and dust, not, like, purposely haphazard—and a worn blue shirt that looks two sizes too big with a hole the size of a small fist where his heart is. Someone wrote around it in a black Sharpie and girlie handwriting, Is it a sign?—Adriana, xoxo and I want to know if Adriana is prettier than me.

  “Why are you calling me Skull Eyes?” I clench the letter in my fist.

  “Because.” He slopes his head so low all I can see are his lips, and they look petal-soft and pink. Feminine, almost. His voice is smooth to a point it hurts a little in my chest. I don’t know why. Guys my age are revolting to me. They smell like pizza that has sat in the sun for days. “You have skulls in your eyes, Silly Billy. Know what you need?”

  For Mom to stop telling me that I suck?

  For Via to disappear?

  Take your pick, dude.

  I shove my free hand into my mom’s wallet and pluck out a ten-dollar bill. He looks as if he could use a meal. I pray he’ll take it before Mom comes down and starts asking questions. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, much less strangers who look like they are dumpster diving for their next meal.

  “Sea glass.” He thrusts his hand in my direction, ignoring the money and the drink.

  “Like the stuff you get on Etsy?” I huff.

  Great. You’re a weirdo, too.

  “Huh? Nah, that shit’s trash. Orange sea glass. The real stuff. Found it on the beach last week and Googled it. It’s the rarest thing in the world, you know?”

  “Why would you give a total stranger something so precious?” I roll my eyes.

  “Why not?”

  “Um, hello, attention span much? Weren’t you the one who just said nothing in this world is free?”

  “Who said it’s free? Did you get all your annual periods today at once or something?”

  “Don’t talk about my period!”

  “Fine. No period talk. But you need a real friend right now, and I’m officially applying for the position. I even dressed the part. Look.” He motions to his hobo clothes with an apologetic smile.

  And just like that, heat pours into my chest like hot wax. Anger, I find, has the tendency to be crisp. I really want to throat punch him. He pities me? Pities. The guy with the hole in his shirt.

  “You want to be my friend?” I bark out a laugh. “Pathetic much? Like, who even says that?”

  “Me. I say that. And I never claimed not to be pathetic.” He tugs at his ripped shirt and raises his head slowly, unveiling more of his face. A nose my mom would call Roman and a jaw that’s too square for someone my age. He’s all sharp angles, and maybe one day he will be handsome, but right now, he looks like an anime cartoon character. Mighty Max.

  “Look, do you want the lemonade and money or not? My mom should be here any minute.”

  “And?”

  “And she can’t see us together.”

  “Because of how I look?”

  Duh.

  “No, because you’re a boy.” I don’t want to be mean to him even though, usually, I am. Especially to boys. Especially to boys with beautiful faces and honey voices.

  Boys can smell heartbreak from across a continent. Even at fourteen. Even in the middle of an innocent summer afternoon. We girls have an invisible string behind our belly button, and only certain guys can tug at it.

  This boy…he will snap it if I let him.

  “Take the sea glass. Owe me something.” He motions to me with an open palm. I stare at the ugly little rock. My fist clenches around the letter. The paper hisses.

  The boy lifts his head completely, and our eyes meet. He studies me with quiet interest as though I’m a painting, not a person. My heart is rioting all over, and the dumbest thought crosses my mind. Ever notice how the heart is literally caged by the ribs? That’s insane. As if our body knows it can break so easily, it needs to be protected. White dots fill my vision, and he’s swimming somewhere behind them, against the stream.

  “What’s in the letter?” he asks.

  “My worst nightmare.”

  “Give it to me,” he orders, so I do. I don’t know why. Most likely because I want to get rid of it. Because I want Via to hurt as much as I do. Because I want Mom to be upset. Marx, what’s wrong with me? I’m a horrible person.

  His eyes are still on mine as he tears the letter to shreds and lets the pieces float like confetti into the trash can between us. His eyes are dark green and bottomless like a thickly fogged forest. I want to step inside and run until I’m in the depth of the woods. Something occurs to me just then.

  “You’re not from here,” I say. He is too pure. Too good. Too real.

  He shakes his head slowly. “Mississippi. Well, my dad’s family. Anyway. Owe me something,” he repeats, almost begging.

  Why does he want me to owe him something?

  So he could ask for something back.

  I don’t relent, frozen to my spot. Instead, I hand him the lemonade. He takes it, closes the distance between us, pops the lid open, and pours the contents all over the ruined letter. His body brushes against mine. We’re stomach to stomach. Legs to legs. Heart to heart.

  “Close your eyes.”

  His voice is gruff and thick and different. This time, I surrender.

  I know what’s about to happen, and I’m letting it happen anyway.

  My first kiss.

  I always thought it would happen with a football player or a pop star or a European exchange student. Someone outside of the small borders of my sheltered, Instagram-filtered world. Not with a kid who has a hole in his shirt. But I need this. Need to feel desired and pretty and wanted.

  His lips flutter over mine, and it tickles, so I snort. I can feel his warm breath skating across my lips, his baseball cap grazing my forehead and the way his mouth slides against mine, lips locking with uncertainty. I forget to breathe for a second, my hands on his shoulders, but then something inside me begs me to dart my tongue out and really taste him. We’re sucking air from each other’s mouths. We’re doing it all wrong. My lips open for him. His open, too. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel the blood whooshing in my veins when he says, “Not yet. I’ll take that, too, but not yet.”

  A groan escapes my lips.

  “What would you have asked of me if I took the sea glass?”

  “To save me all your firsts,” he whispers somewhere between my ear and mouth as his body brushes away from mine.

  I don’t want to open my eyes and let the moment end. But he makes the choice for both of us. The warmth of his body leaves mine as he takes a step back.

  I still don’t have the guts to open my mouth and ask for his name.

  Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds pass.

  My eyelids flutter open on their own accord as my body begins to sway.

  He’s gone.

  Disoriented, I lean against the trash can, fiddling with the strap of my mother’s bag. Five seconds pass before Mom loops her arm around mine out of nowhere and leads me to the Range Rover. My legs fly across the pavement. My head twists back.

  Blue shirt? Ball cap? Petal lips? Did I imagine the whole thing?

  “There you are. Thanks for the coffee. What, no iced tea lemonade today?”

  After I fail to answer, we climb into her vehicle and buckle up. Mom sifts through her Prada bag resting on the center console.

  “Huh. I swear I took four letters from the mailbox today, not three.”

  And that’s when it hits
me—she doesn’t know. Via got in, and she has no idea the letter came today. Then this guy tore it apart because it upset me…

  Kismet. Kiss-met. Fate.

  Dad decided two years ago that he was tired of hearing all three girls in the household moaning, “Oh, my God,” so now we have to replace the word God with the word Marx, after Karl Marx, a dude who was apparently into atheism or whatever. I feel like God or Marx—someone—sent this boy to help me. If he were even real. Maybe I made him up in my head to come to terms with what I did.

  I open a compact mirror and apply some lip gloss, my heart racing.

  “You’re always distracted, Mom. If you dropped a letter, you’d have seen it.”

  Mom pouts, then nods. In the minute it takes her to start the engine, I realize two things:

  One—she was expecting this letter like her next breath.

  Two—she is devastated.

  “Before I forget, Lovebug, I bought you the diary you wanted.” Mom produces a thick black-cased leather notebook from her Prada bag and hands it to me. I noticed it before, but I never assume things are for me anymore. She’s always distracted, buying Via all types of gifts.

  As we ride in silence, I have an epiphany.

  This is where I’ll write my sins.

  This is where I’ll bury my tragedies.

  I snap the mirror shut and tuck my hands into the pockets of my white hoodie, where I find something small and hard. I take it out and stare at it, amazed.

  The orange sea glass.

  He gave me the sea glass even though I never accepted it.

  Save me all your firsts.

  I close my eyes and let a fat tear roll down my cheek.

  He was real.

  Question: Who gives their most precious belonging to a girl they don’t know?

  Answer: This motherfucker right here. Print me an “I’m with stupid” shirt with an arrow pointing straight to my dick.

  Could’ve sold the damn thing and topped off Via’s cell phone credit. Now that ship’s sailed. I can spot it in the distance, sinking quickly.

  The worst part is that I knew nothing would come out of it. At fourteen, I’ve only kissed two girls. They both had enormous tongues and too much saliva. This girl looked like her tongue would be small, so I couldn’t pass up trying.

  But the minute my lips touched hers, I just couldn’t do it. She looked kind of manic. Sad. Clingy? I don’t fucking know. Maybe I just didn’t have the balls. Maybe watching her three times a week from afar paralyzed me.

  Hey, how do you turn off your own mind? It needs to shut up. Now.

  My friend Kannon passes me the joint on my front porch. That’s the one perk of having your mom live with her drug-dealing boyfriend. Free pot. And since food is scarce these days, I’ll take whatever is on the table.

  A bunch of wannabe gangsters in red bandanas cross our side of the street with their pit bulls and a boom box playing angry Spanish rap. The dogs bark, yanking on their chains. Kannon barks right back at them. He’s so high his head might hit a fucking plane. I take a hit, then hand Camilo the joint.

  “I’ll lend you fifty so you can make the call.” Camilo coughs. He is huge and tan and already has impressive facial hair. He looks like someone’s Mexican dad.

  “We don’t need to call anyone!” my twin sister yells from the grass next to us. She is lying face down, sobbing into the yellow lawn. I think she is hoping the sun will burn her into the ground.

  “Are y’all deaf or something?! I didn’t get in!”

  “We’ll take the money.” I ignore her. We have to call the ballet place. Via can’t stay here. It ain’t safe.

  “I love you, Penn, but you’re a pain in the ass.” She hiccups, plucking blades of grass and throwing them in our direction without lifting her head. She’ll thank me later. When she is famous and rich—do ballerinas get rich?—and I’m still sitting here with my dumb friends smoking pot and salivating over lemon-haired Todos Santos girls. Maybe I won’t have to stand on street corners and deal. I’m good at shit. Sports and fighting mainly. Coach says I need to eat more protein for muscle and more carbs to get some body fat, but that’s not happening anytime soon because most of my money is spent buying Via’s bus tickets to her ballet classes.

  I tag along because I’m hella worried about her riding on that bus alone. Especially in winter when it gets dark early.

  “I thought you said your sister’s good? How come she didn’t get in?” Kannon yawns, moving his hand over his long dreads. The sides of his head are shaved, creating a black man-bun. I punch his arm so hard he collapses back on the rocking chair with a silent scream, clutching his bicep, still hardy-har-harring.

  “I think a demonstration is in order. Chop-chop, Via. Show us your moves.” Cam puts “Milkshake” by Kelis on his phone, balling a gum wrapper in his hand and throwing it at the back of her head.

  Her sobs stop, replaced with catatonic silence. I turn around, scrubbing my chin before twisting back to Camilo and swinging a fist at his jaw. I hear it unlock from its usual place and him harrumphing.

  Darting up from the grass, Via runs into the house and slams the door behind her. I’m not sure what business she has sitting in the living room when Rhett is home, griping about being tired and hungry. She will probably get into a screaming match with him and return to the porch with her tail between her legs. My mom is too high to interfere, but even when she does, she chooses her boyfriend’s side. Even when he uses Via’s leotards, which her teacher buys for her, to shine his shoes. He does that often to get a rise out of her. On days she shows up to class in her torn leggings and hand-me-down shirts, she spends the bus ride sobbing. Those are usually the days when I rub his briefs on the public toilet seats in Liberty Park.

  It’s incredibly therapeutic.

  “Hand me the fifty.” I open my palm and turn to Cam, who slaps the bill into my hand obediently. I’m going to buy myself and Via burgers the size of my face, then top the credit on her phone so she can call Mrs. Followhill.

  I charge down my street to In-N-Out, Camilo and Kannon trailing me like the wind. Cracked concrete and murals of dead teenagers wearing halos line the street. Our palm trees seem to hunch down from the burden of poverty, leaning over buildings that are short and yellow like bad teeth.

  But twenty minutes later, the satisfaction of clutching a paper bag filled with greasy burgers and fries is overwhelming. Via’s gonna forget all about her meltdown when she sees it. I push the door to my house open, and the first thing I see makes me drop the food to the floor.

  My mother’s boyfriend is straddling my sister on the couch, his jiggling belly pouring out on her chest. He pummels her face, his sweaty, hairy chest glistening and his arm flexing every time he does. His ripped jeans are unbuttoned, and his zipper is all the way down. She is wheezing and coughing, trying to breathe. Without thinking, I dash toward them and unplaster him from her. Her face is bloody, and she’s croaking out weak protests, telling him that he’s a cheap bastard, and he keeps yelling that she is a thieving whore. I grab Rhett by the collar of his shirt and pull him from her. He swings with the momentum, falling on the floor. I punch his face so hard, the sound of his jaw cracking echoes around the room. He whips his head back, hitting the floor. I spin back to Via, and all I see is her back as she slides through her own blood, tripping to the door. I grab her wrist, but she wiggles free. Something falls between us with a soft click. I pick it up, and it looks like a tooth. Jesus fucking Christ. He knocked her tooth out.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice muffled from the blood in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I can’t, Penn.”

  “Via!” I cry out.

  “Please,” she yells. “Let me go.”

  I try to chase her, slipping in the trail of blood she leaves behind. My hands are covered in it now. I stand and start for the still-open door. A hand snatches me back and throws me on the couch.

  “Not so quick, little asshole. Now’s your turn.”

  I close my
eyes and let it happen, knowing why Via has to run.

  Geography is destiny.

  It’s been three days since Via ran away.

  Two and a half since I’ve last managed to stomach anything without throwing it up (Pabst counts, right?).

  After Rhett beat her up for stealing his phone and trying to call London, I’m not surprised she ain’t back. I know better than to fuck with Rhett. Via is usually even more cautious with him because she’s a girl. It was a moment of weakness on her part, and it cost her more than she was willing to pay.

  On Friday afternoon, I find myself loitering outside her ballet class, hoping she’ll appear. Maybe she’s crashing at her teacher’s house. They seem close, but it’s hard to tell since Via puts on a mask every time the bus we board slides into the city limits of Todos Santos. The fact she hasn’t touched base yet makes me heave when I think about it. I’m telling myself she has her reasons.

  At six, pink-wearing girls start pouring out of the building. I dawdle by the shiny black Range Rover with my hands in my pockets, waiting for the teacher. She comes out last, waving and laughing with a bunch of students. Another girl walks beside her. The girl I kissed, to be exact. The girl I’ve been obsessing over for a year, to be super-exact. She is beautiful like the shit hanging in the museums. In a really sad, distant, look-but-don’t-touch way. I trek toward them, and they meet me halfway. The girl’s eyes widen, and she looks sideways to see if anyone else is here to witness us talking. She thinks I’m here for her.

  “Hi.” She tucks hair behind her ears, her gaze traveling to Mrs. Followhill in a silent I-swear-I-don’t-know-this-guy plea.

  “Hey.” I kill the butterflies in my stomach because now’s not the place and definitely not the time, then turn to the teacher. “Ma’am, my sister, Via, is in your class. I haven’t seen her in three days.”

  The teacher’s eyebrows pinch together as though I just announced I’ll be taking a shit on the hood of her vehicle. She tells the blonde to wait inside the giant Range Rover, then tugs at my arm, heading toward an alleyway. Sandwiched between two buildings, she sort of forces me to sit down on a tall step (dafuq?) and starts talking.