by Deb Caletti
Torment—I had no real idea about any of that, honestly. I wasn’t sure I even liked Samuel Crane the way I should. He liked me, and it seemed like reason enough to kiss back. Obviously, there was some hidden door to the bigger world that I hadn’t walked through yet. I heard about that world in songs and saw it in movies, but it wasn’t mine. It was an intriguing mystery, or maybe an outright lie.
I could feel it stirring around in there, though. Desire. Or desire for desire. I wanted to feel deep, aching want, but I wanted to make someone else feel it too. That was maybe even more appealing—the power to make a guy want me, badly. I would never have admitted this. It seemed wrong, especially since my own mother had made a career out of being a sex object. It was a truth I kept buried, like a secret from myself.
“Syd-Syd!” Meredith called from her seat behind me in the boat. I looked over my shoulder. Meredith made a face, and I made one back.
“Sit ready!” the coxswain called. My hands gripped the oar and I buried the blade in the water. This was the moment we steadied the boat before we rowed like crazy, deep in the intensity and the speed and the high of the race. And these were the moments before I found the hidden door. Right then, I didn’t have a clue where it was.
I would find it, though, as you know. Along with everything that lay behind it. And sixth grade was like two seconds ago, and my hands still had pastel dust on them, and Samuel Crane couldn’t even drive yet.
* * *
One last thing. I should also tell you this:
We won the Mayor’s Cup Regatta. And afterward, we squirted juice packs at each other and ran around screaming. We were excited to win, but even more, school was almost out, and that’s the best feeling there is.
I was so tired that night that I conked right off. That dark sense of being haunted, the ghost—there was no way she was going to keep me awake. So of course I had a horrible dream instead. Warnings are persistent, until they just plain give up on you.
I realize this sounds like something out of one of Lila’s films, one of the scenes where a woman walks into a couple’s shadowy bedroom and you see the glint of silver in the moonlight. But this is the truth: I had a dream about a knife. I woke up and my heart was pounding. It was the kind of terrifying dream that feels so real your hands shake. When I tried to explain it in the morning, though, it seemed silly.
“A horrible person got stabbed in the chest. It was you but it wasn’t you,” Cora repeated in the dining hall, as she chased some Cheerios with her spoon.
“It was so real,” I said, but I could see the little smile at the corner of Cora’s mouth.
CHAPTER FOUR
Exhibit 6: Set of Miyabi Birchwood kitchen knives on magnetic stand
Meredith and her mom, Ellen, drove me to the airport. They always drove me to the airport on school breaks, and picked me up, too. Now that I was finally underway, the ghost had gotten quiet. Then again, maybe I just couldn’t hear her because Ellen had the music up loud, the way we liked it.
“Mer, Mer, Mer! Eight weeks until you come to visit!” I was bouncing all over the place. I was nervous, and the music was on, and back when I was packing my stuff, I convinced myself to get excited. IT could find me anywhere, and maybe my chances were even better away from home, where I could be anyone, not just the person my friends knew.
“I believe we’ve covered that,” Meredith said. She was using her You require a great deal of patience tone, because I’d said the same thing about ten times already. She’d never visited me and Lila before, and eight weeks just seemed like forever. Man, I was going to miss her.
“We got you something.” Ellen reached over the seat, and the car did a frightening little swerve.
“Mom, Jesus! Watch where you’re going!”
“Don’t say ‘Jesus,’ Mer. It sounds bad.” Ellen tossed a plastic bag into my lap. It was probably one of the last plastic bags in existence in the entire Northwest. It maybe should have gone into a plastic bag museum.
“What’s this?”
“Just a few things for the plane.”
Ellen was always giving me stuff. They lived in a medium-size Craftsman in Capitol Hill, and Ellen sometimes spoke of the sacrifices we make for a private school education, meaning the day school rate at Academy. My mother rented a sixteen-million-dollar house and paid the full year of tuition and boarding in advance. Still, Ellen didn’t seem to think I had what I needed.
I peeked in the bag. “You are so nice! Thank you! Oh, wow, jackpot!” Milk Duds, Reese’s, Red Vines. A candy extravaganza. Plus that week’s copy of Inside Entertainment. Also, a few mom-related things, like a package of Kleenex and hand sanitizer. Ellen was always on the front lines in the fight against germs. Hey, it was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.
“And I’m giving you this.” Meredith handed me her copy of The Deepest Dark, by R. W. Wright.
“You finished!”
“God. It’s soooo good.”
“Look what I have for you,” I said, and tossed her The Night Dweller.
We squealed. R. W. Wright was our favorite scary-book writer. We used to eat those up, even if all his books were the same. Vulnerable female and her friends stalked by a psycho. Saved by her last plunge of the knife. I’ll never read him again.
“I brought She’s So Cold, too.” I rubbed my hands together in book glee.
“How do you girls even read those? Brrr.” Ellen gave a fake shiver.
I reached over the seat and grabbed Ellen with monster hands and she shrieked. We rolled the windows down and the music blasted. My hair got all messy in the back seat. I didn’t even care, because I was busy loving the song and thinking about how summer really did smell like sun and just-mowed grass. I was thinking about how much I’d miss home when I was gone. Home—there. Seattle.
These were the things we did. Ellen and Meredith, all of my friends. Regular things. Ellen driving us somewhere and dropping us off. Hanging out after Ms. Fiori’s art class because she was the coolest and she spoke Italian and had a photo of her wife on her desk. Going on our Best Meatball in Seattle hunt, led by Hoodean. Cracking up over private jokes like “Tree Hugger” (don’t ask). They all mostly forgot I had this other life, so I did too. I loved forgetting. I mean, I’d met some of those people in that magazine. But I loved being the me I really was. Not the me I was in relation to someone else.
“You have everything?” Ellen asked as we pulled up to the departures curb. I could hear the roar of planes taking off. Cars zipped in and out of the lanes. Taxis, too. People hugged each other good-bye.
“Phone. Charger. Candy bag. Pastels. Books.” All the important stuff. “Check!”
“If you need anything, or if your flight gets delayed, you call me,” Ellen said.
“Will do, chickadee.” I loved Meredith’s mom.
“Mrs. Chickadee to you. And if you use the airport bathroom, turn the faucets off with a paper towel. And the first stall is generally the cleanest.”
“Is that true?”
Ellen shrugged. “I read it on the Internet.”
I leaned over the seat and hugged Ellen, and then I hugged Mer. We’d done this lots of times. We’d done it since my first year at Lower Academy when I was ten when Meredith instantly became my best friend.
“Wait! Mom! We almost forgot.” Meredith bent down, searched around for something.
“It’s right there by your foot, Mer,” Ellen said, and then Meredith popped up with a small wrapped box.
“For you. For tomorrow. Pretend it comes with a cake and candles.”
“Aw! Thanks, guys.”
“May sixteen be amazing,” Ellen said. “And safe. Amazing but safe.”
I smooched each of them hard and loud on the cheek. Big love. I zipped the box into my pack. And when I got out of the car, I felt hopeful. The slamming of trunks, and people hauling luggage onto the curb, and the planes rising in the sky—big things were happening, all around me.
“See you in eight weeks,” I said to Me
redith.
“San Francisco, here I come,” she said.
I think a lot about that moment in the car, when we were driving and the music was on loud. How the wind rushed in. How Meredith’s brown hair blew out the window, how she had one foot tucked up underneath her as she sat there in her shorts and her orange polo shirt. How the guy on the radio sang, Hey, it’s a summertime thing. Summertime thing…
How I felt so light. How I felt so lucky. How the future was right there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Exhibit 7: Photo of Giacomo (Jake) Antonetti’s yellow Lamborghini
Exhibit 8: License plate of Giacomo (Jake) Antonetti’s yellow Lamborghini
The flight attendant did the safety dance, and I followed along on the plastic card because I wanted her to know that I was on her side in the event of a water landing. We took off.
Right afterward, in first class, we were offered orange juice and breakfast. Of course you know this, but if you’re seated up there, they give you actual food and a cloth napkin and a real knife. They assume that people with money won’t get violent, given the chance and the right cutlery. Well. God.
In the window seat next to me, there was a woman traveling for business. At least, I guessed she was, because she was wearing navy slacks and a silky shirt and had an efficient air, as if she were equipped to handle anything with calm certainty, even severe turbulence or a drop in oxygen levels. Her napkin was neatly placed on her lap, and she was making tidy cuts into her omelet, her fork in the superior upside-down position.
I felt her eyes on me. I felt the question. She was wondering what I was doing up here. Me, in my shorts and my Bazooka Joe T-shirt, my sandals. Chipped toe polish I painted on myself, which was pretty obvious. Breakfast already finished because I liked to eat on airplanes even if the food was gross.
Our empty trays were taken. The businesswoman tip-tapped on her laptop. I opened my magazine. I flipped the pages casually. And when I did, I saw Charles Falcon, at an event celebrating season four of Gold Light Avenue. I’d gone to his house a few times and swum in his pool before he got so huge, when he’d just been in Nefarious and a couple of beer commercials. I think he wanted to date Lila, but he was probably too nice for her. Naomi Meadows was also in there—a photo of her playing Tinker Bell on Broadway. She was in that failed TV pilot with Lila about the young dancer trying to make it in New York, where Lila was the sexy neighbor in the apartment next door. They were still friends. She’d come over and they’d drink gin and tonics and she’d call my mother Miss Lila.
I could forget about all this stuff when I was studying for finals or swimming with my friends at Matthews Beach or working the register at Jitters those Saturdays during the school year. (Edwina said a job would keep me from becoming an asshole.) Growing up, none of it had been all that important compared to which girl was being mean to me, or my spelling words, or losing my lunch box.
And then I turned the page. The image startled me. I did that confused Hey, that person looks familiar double take, like when you suddenly spot yourself in a department store mirror. It was Lila herself, in a Who Wore It Better? article. She was in a red gown with side cutouts, and her platinum hair had been crimped like a block of ramen. Her breasts (well, she was known for those, too) spilled over the top of her dress like… Okay, it’s hard to avoid fruit analogies. The photo was of her at the Reel-to-Reel Awards, the kind of invitation she rarely got anymore. It was set next to an image of Ursula Tarby. Ursula Tarby had a thumbs-up by her photo, and Lila had a thumbs-down.
The hair was not her best look, but really? Thumbs-up, thumbs-down? On a person? I know, I know, there are ratings—stars and thumbs and bar graphs—on everything, from restaurants to Q-tips, but on actual people?
Nefarious came out when I was two, so I don’t remember much about that time, when fans would mob her and photographers would aim their long lenses to get pictures of her sunbathing. But I knew about the clothes, the hair, the jewelry, the nails, the shoes. The teeth brightening, the wrinkle filling, all the stuff that supposedly made her beautiful enough to look at when she was already beautiful. I knew about the tension in the car before she’d appear in public, the nervous laughter, the vodka sipping, even though she was always careful not to be photographed with a drink in her hand.
I knew she’d hate the Who Wore It Better? piece. She’d feel humiliated, being judged like that. I felt bad for her. Beauty was her power, but what happened when your audience looked away? She’d feel like a failure for that thumbs-down. It would hurt her, but who cared? People forgot she was real. People forget that about each other a lot.
Still, there she was on that page. My very own mother. I left the magazine open on my lap. To send a message to the corporate woman. I ate my Milk Duds. I wiped my chocolate fingers on the real napkin that came with breakfast. I dared the corporate woman to notice the resemblance between Lila and me, though, honestly, I didn’t know if there was one. Her hair was straight-up platinum, and mine was more the brown yellow of honey in a plastic bear. I was her height, and we both had blue eyes, but I always thought I looked more like my father.
Were we similar? Were we different? How much did it matter? (Answers: yes, yes, a lot.) Either way, I left that page open like a bold fact. See? This is what I’m doing up here, I tried to say.
Those were the times I knew I had a little Lila in me. When a sneaky part of me wanted to be regular but not that regular. When I wanted to be seen, too.
Of course, being looked at and being seen are two entirely different things.
And when you are looked at but not seen, you are an object. An owned thing. A napkin. A magazine. A knife.
CHAPTER SIX
Exhibit 9: Sworn statement of Jeffrey Douglas Reilly, La Jolla, California
I expected Lila to be there outside the gate, beaming in a million directions like a lighthouse and wearing her huge sunglasses indoors. The sunglasses said: Don’t look at me, but look at me. I wondered what he’d be like, the new guy, Jake. There’d been so many already that I knew her type. She liked a man with a big ego, good looks, charisma, the kind of stuff that seems like confidence until you find out it’s actually controlling assholery.
Lila’s dad, Hal, was supposedly this charming guy too, a ladies’ man who was never around when things got hard or scary, when they were running out of money, or when Edwina lost her temper, or a tree blew down on the roof. But then he’d swoop in and lift Lila in his strong arms, and she’d feel like the light of his life. When he left for good, poof, the light blew out. Edwina’s father—same thing. Charming but gone.
And wow, it was easy, really easy, for Lila to find the big, confident daddy-protector she never had. Lots of guys loved that idea. Men wanted to rescue her from whatever they thought she needed rescuing from—money troubles, a bad meal in a restaurant, other men. They wanted to wrap her in their strong man arms. And give her stuff. Jobs, presents, adoration, advice. They got to feel all manly and important, so they were crazy about her. I used to see the same thing at school all the time. If a girl was beautiful and vulnerable and had issues, guys dripped all over her like syrup on pancakes.
As I stood there in the airport with my pack on my shoulder, I felt a swirl of apprehension rising. Because, well, history makes more history.
You know about all of the husbands, right? Rex Revel. Guitar player and singer in the band Slay. Lila’s first. They eloped on their first date. Stayed married for four stormy, cruel months. Moral of the story: Just because a guy looks good in leather pants and can scream the word “generation” eleven times in a row, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s good husband material.
Jeff Reilly. My father. Owner of the Mockingbird restaurant chain (endless fries, place mats you can color), plus the upscale Sparrow in La Jolla, where he lived. They knew each other for three weeks before he asked her to marry him, which was twenty days longer than Rex Revel but hardly enough time to get to know important stuff, like the fact that he was still married. It was on
ly after the ceremony, and after I was already a bundle of multiplying cells, that he told her. Way to be a player, Pops, you old dog, you! Gross. After he got divorced, he and Lila remarried to make me legal, but they stayed together only for another fourteen months. He appeared in my life about once a year, bearing gifts, same as Santa Claus. He was a ladies’ man, a charmer, who could make you feel like the light of his life until he ditched you. Meaning: History is the sneakiest and most relentless monster there is.
Chase Chesterton. I know. His name sounds like a rich boy in a romance novel, but don’t blame the messenger. He was rich, and romantic, but old. Really old. Do you know how old he was when they got married? Like, sixty-five, and she was twenty-eight. I knew him from age three to age six. They divorced after Papa Chesterton lost most of his money in a bad investment deal. He had long old-man ears and little fluid-filled moons of skin under his eyes.
I don’t remember much about that time. Being a flower girl in their elaborate wedding. Itchy dress. Also, my huge bedroom in his mansion, which had a shiny floor that was fun to slide on in my socks. Lacy bed, also itchy. Bah-Bah, a stuffed giraffe that was tall as me. The firm line of Edwina’s mouth when she came into my room to say good night.
My clearest memory is Chase Chesterton reclining by the pool, with his big white belly and old-man boobs, his stick legs in bedroom slippers that scuffed along the marble tiles. Something about this disturbed me even then. Maybe, you know, his old flesh and her not-old flesh. I didn’t have words for it. I just thought he was icky. He looked like a grandpa. I tried not to breathe when he hugged me, even though he didn’t smell bad. Bah-Bah vanished when they got divorced.