by Anne Pfeffer
“What about you, Ryan?” someone says. I’m not so sure I want to move to the East Coast, even for a few years. I’ve been to New York a lot. It’s okay, but I’ll take the beach, sun, and ocean any day over some dark concrete canyon.
“I guess I have to think about it,” I say. Once again, I feel like a wash-out, an aimless rich boy just floating along. Everyone I know has dreams, plans, accomplishments. Except for Michael, and look where that got him. I think suddenly, what am I good at? What have I done with my life up to now? Diddly squat, that’s what.
Chapter 34
“Way to go, Ryan!”
I’m at the tennis club. I lean over, my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. Sweat drips from my hair and forehead onto the surface of the tennis court. A hand pounds my back.
“Awesome match!”
I stand up, taking a towel someone hands me and wiping off my neck and face. I’ve just almost beaten Mason Ronson, the number twelve seeded player in my age group in California.
He beat me by one point in the last game. It was a fluke that I played him at all; his partner for the practice match called to say he had car trouble, and no one else was available.
A couple of dozen people are standing around, part of the crowd that began to gather at our court when people caught on to the fact that an unknown player was running neck and neck with Mason Ronson in a practice match.
He’s approaching me now, hand outstretched. I shake it, feeling the hard calluses on his palm and fingers, even worse than mine.
“Who are you?” he asks, as if he can’t quite believe such a nobody almost took the match away from him.
“Ryan Mills.”
“Who do you train with?”
“No one.”
His mouth shuts in a thin line. “Good match,” he says in a clipped voice, turns on his heel, and stalks off.
My old tennis coach, Ben Swanson, walks up. “Don’t get a swelled head,” he says. “You just played the match of your life, and Ronson’s coming off a torn hamstring.”
“No chance of my getting a swelled head with you around,” I tell Ben, grinning.
“You should come by the club more often. I can throw you some more practice matches, if you want.”
“Sounds good,” I tell him. “I will.”
• • •
I’m at Sal’s with Chrissie. Her eyes are red, and her curly hair looks dry and limp.
“You look beat,” I say.
“It’s just havin’ to take the bus everywhere—to work and for all my errands,” she says. She pulls out two quarters and puts them in the jukebox. “I shouldn’t be spendin’ money on this, but I can’t resist.”
“Here.” I pull out my wallet.
“Thanks, but I’m not your charity case.”
“This isn’t charity. It’s helping.”
“Whatever. I mean, thanks, Ryan, but I don’t need handouts. I need more money.”
“Explain the difference.”
“I need a better job,” she says. “One that pays more.”
“Like what?”
She shrugs. “Maybe there’s a role out there for a Great White Whale.”
“Have you had any auditions lately?”
She shakes her head. “Are you kiddin’? I look like Wife of Moby Dick.”
An idea pops into my head and out of my mouth, without any intervention from my brain.
“You want to come to a party this Saturday? It’s my dad’s fiftieth birthday, and we’re having a thing at my house.” Emily can’t come with me, but there’s no reason why I can’t take Chrissie.
Chrissie takes a huge bite of her sandwich. “I work Saturdays. Thanks, though.”
“Can you get out of it?”
She eyes me with suspicion. Her face is practically drooping with fatigue.
“You want me to change my schedule to go to some fifty year old birthday party? Honey, I just got this job. Some of us peons gotta work, you know.”
“I’d like you to meet my dad,” I insist. I give her my most persuasive smile. “Do it for me, Chrissie?”
Too late, a thought hits me like a splash of cold water. Emily’s not going to like this.
Chrissie is focused on her plate. “Who’s your dad? Friggin’ Elvis Presley?” Her mouth’s full.
“Doug Mills.” I wait for the reaction that’s sure to come. What am I going to do? Not tell Emily? She’ll find out and be even more pissed off.
Chrissie stops chewing. She puts down her fork. “You mean the Doug Mills? The filmmaker, Doug Mills?”
I nod, wondering if Chrissie’s going to get weird like some people do and never act normal around me again. A trickle of sadness runs down my back at the thought of it.
“Sweet Lordy, why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did. And trust me, I don’t do this very often.” My voice sounds cranky, even to me.
Chrissie looks down. “Well, thanks, Ryan.” When I don’t reply, she says again, “No, really, thanks. You’ve been great. I really appreciate your trying to help me like this.”
She rebounds from her initial awe. “So your dad’s Doug Mills? How come you’re not an asshole?”
“I’m a genetic mutant,” I tell her, hoping that our relationship stays normal. I’m also hoping that Emily never finds out I did this.
“I think I’ll wear my lime green chiffon, with the lime green sandals. That’ll have an impact.”
I don’t doubt that it will.
• • •
It’s a gray Thursday afternoon, and I’ve confirmed that Mom has back-to-back appointments with her nutritionist, trainer, and hair stylist, while Dad’s at the studio and Ro is taking the girls to ballet, gymnastics, and French.
Arriving home from school with Emily, I drive my car through the security gate, but instead of going up the driveway, I take an access road along the edge of the property back to the two-bedroom Mills family guest house. It’s hidden from the main house by a stand of trees.
“This is so much better than that back seat,” Emily says.
“No kidding,” I say. “Now I know the real reason kids go away to college. They need a place to have sex.”
Near the guest house door, I fish out the key from its hiding place. I hang a baseball cap on the door knob, which we tell all our visitors to use as a “Do Not Disturb” signal for the staff.
Once inside, we attack each other. This is the part in the movies where the kissing lovers fall hard against the door or the wall, then roll along the wall, still making out, and managing to remove all their clothes while never disentangling their lips.
But I can’t imagine falling against a hard door with Emily. No cinema sex for us, I decide. I unbutton her blouse. I take her hand and lead her into the bedroom, where we lie down on the bed.
“Show me what you like,” I tell her.
“I don’t know. I can’t. I’m too shy.” It’s true, I’ve realized. When it comes to sex, Emily’s this funny combination of shy and modest, yet ready and willing. I see a clear Opportunity for Leadership.
“I have a few ideas.” But I’m finding the harsh overhead light’s not to my liking. It’s messing with my mojo.
“Hold on.” I get up, find some matches, and light a couple of candles. I flip off the mood-busting light, then walk back to the bed where Emily’s lying, propped up on an elbow, watching me.
Emily and I are creating a film of our own where I, Ryan, play the role of Don Juan de Marco. She’s looking at me in a way that almost makes me turn around, to see the person behind me she’s really looking at. All that adoration, awe, and total lust cannot possibly be for me. But they are.
Very slowly, I lie down next to Emily. I smell lavender on her skin and feel her breath on my face as she turns toward me. I put one hand in her hair and very gently pull her head back. Her eyes close, while I kiss that incredible place where her neck meets her shoulder.
Chapter 35
“Lemme get this straight,” Jonathan says. “Y
ou asked Chrissie to your dad’s birthday party in Emily’s place?” We are sitting outside our classroom talking in low voices.
“She needs to get work. This way I can introduce her to people.”
“Did Emily gripe about this, too?”
“She sorta doesn’t know I asked Chrissie to go.”
“Just like she sorta doesn’t know you take Chrissie to Sal’s for dinner after doctor’s appointments?”
“Kinda.”
Suspicious, he says “You’re not hooking up with Chrissie, are you?”
“No! Jeez man!” I scowl at Jonathan.
“I get it. So you’re hooking up with Emily then!”
I don’t say anything.
“Hah!” Jonathan says. “I knew it!”
“Yeah, well, what about you? Are you hooking up with Samantha?”
Jonathan has been taking her out for a while now. He avoids my eyes.
“Hah!” I say. “I knew it!”
We sit there for a minute.
“It’s pretty awesome, huh?” Jonathan says.
We crack up, like a couple of twelve-year olds.
• • •
School has ended for the week, and I’m standing at Michael’s locker. I have a couple of big shopping bags under my arm and Michael’s locker combination in my hand. My stomach feels queasy and my mouth dry.
The hallways are quiet, as a lot of kids have finished and taken off for the weekend. Emily’s gone, too, since her mom picked her up early for a doctor’s appointment.
I look around. Nobody knows I’m here. I should have just told Yancy to do this herself.
When I swing the locker door open, something that I’d forgotten about Michael comes back to me—how tidy and organized he kept his things. You never expected that from the wild and crazy Michael. The sight of his textbooks, lined up from shortest to tallest, makes me want to bawl all of a sudden.
I pull out the heavy textbooks and put them in a double strength shopping bag. Given that Michael died after only the second week of school, it’s likely none of them were ever opened.
There’s a spiral bound notebook with dividers, for each class, where Michael took his class notes. My chest burns, and I try to breathe. Again, I’m about to become this big crybaby at the sight of his familiar handwriting. There isn’t a lot of it, as note-taking was not one of Michael’s strengths.
Michael has put in one of those locker dividers to create an extra shelf. On the shelf are a square box—a white gift box with a lid—and a big, lumpy manila envelope. I drop the envelope into the second shopping bag, then take out the box. Curious, I lift up the lid and look. Inside are wax paper baggies containing white powder.
My whole body goes hot.
Jamming the lid back on the box and stuffing it into my shopping bag, I whip shut and relock the now empty locker. As I turn to hightail it for my car, I expect any minute to hear police sirens and megaphone-amplified voices ordering me to give myself up.
A hand grips my arm.
I have that feeling you get on a roller coaster where the bottom drops out from under you, and you free fall, while your guts do a pop-and-lock in your abdominal cavity.
It’s Ballbuster Anderson. I never even heard her coming, but she’s famous for that. She wears special shoes designed for stealth and speed. She looks pissed as hell.
“What are you doing, Mr. Mills?”
I don’t know how she manages to be intimidating when she has to crank her head back at a right angle to look up at me, but she does. I’m quaking inside, thinking of the illegal contents of my shopping bags.
“Just emptying Michael Weston’s locker.” For one brief, horrible moment, I see Anderson sniffing my bags, like those dogs at the airport, then realize I am hallucinating.
She puts her hands on her hips. “I asked his parents to do this!”
“Oh. Well, they kinda passed the job on to me.”
“They had no business doing that. Are you all right?”
I nod. “I’m fine. Really. I haven’t even gone through this stuff. I’m just giving the bags to the Westons.”
“Okay then.” Miss Anderson is checking me out, probably looking for signs of impending violence. I can’t blame her, since I assaulted Chase and all.
“Mr. Mills,” she says. “I’ve been talking to some of your teachers.”
I comb through my memories of class but can’t think of anything I’ve done wrong.
“Your classwork and test scores have improved enormously this year. Excellent job!”
I’m averaging an A minus on my school work this semester. “Thank you.” I move to the right, hoping to better block her view of my drug stash.
“If you continue at this rate, you’ll qualify to do a Senior Honors Project next year.”
“Really?” Jeez. Alongside Emily and Jonathan. “I didn’t think my GPA was high enough.”
“Qualification is based on either total GPA or significant improvement during the junior year. You could potentially qualify based on improvement.”
“Really?” I say again, broken-record style. Me, qualify for the Senior Honors Project?
“But you’d need to get straight As for the rest of the term. You think you could pull it off?”
“I can try.” I’ll do it.
“That’s the spirit! All right, then, keep up the good work!”
She moves on.
I drive home, stopping at every stop sign and staying under the speed limit. A potential qualifier for the Senior Honors Project cannot get busted for drug possession.
I should have just flushed the white powder at school, I think, but I can’t make myself destroy anything from Michael’s locker. At least, not yet.
I avoid the kitchen as I enter the house and, thinking I’m in the clear, head for the stairs to my bedroom. The Senior Honors Project. The thought blows me away.
“Ryan!”
I jump about three feet into the air.
“Oh, hi Mom.”
She’s curled up on a sofa in the library with a magazine and a cup of tea.
I’d like to just wave and blow past her, but at the moment I feel like I should be on my best behavior. I stop to chat her up. I’m standing beside this special imported chair of hers that we’re not allowed to sit on. I slide the shopping bags down behind it.
“How’re you doing?” I ask.
“Fine.” She gives me an actual warm smile. “I’m giving myself a break after the Teen League Annual Dinner Gala. It was this past weekend.”
“Oh, yeah? Was it a big deal?”
She nods. “Fund raising is so stressful!”
I vaguely remember her talking about the Teen League one night when the Westons were over. “Are they the ones that do the drug and alcohol counseling? For teenagers?”
Speaking of which, I think, I just happen to have a whole shopping bag full of cocaine. Right here, hidden behind your Louis the Eighteenth Ming Dynasty chair.
“Yes, among other things.”
I have a community service requirement to fulfill before graduation. “Is that a place where I could volunteer? Maybe work with the kids with substance abuse problems?”
“They have a program for high school students,” Mom tells me. “I could get you in there for an interview, if you want.”
“I think I’ll check it out myself—thanks.” Should I tell her about what Miss Anderson said? Maybe I’ll wait until I’ve actually qualified.
“Okay, so, see you later!”
I take the stairs two steps at a time up to my room. Even though there’s nothing but trees outside my window, I lock my bedroom door and close the shutters. Opening the box again, I stare at the pile of baggies.
This is what killed Michael. I knew he had started doing blow again this summer with Chase. I should just flush it, but there’s so little left connecting me to him. Even something like this, I hate to get rid of.
I open up one of the bags and sniff. There’s a faint smell that I can’t place. I clos
e the bag up again.
I wonder what Michael saw in this stuff. I’ve smoked weed half a dozen times and, not seeing the point of it, never tried anything harder. But I never had a stash of drugs fall into my lap before, either.
I call the Westons’ house and get their machine. “Hi, it’s me, Ryan. I went to Michael’s locker. Nothing there except books and a notebook. I’ll give them to you next time I see you.” I hang up. I will never tell them, or anyone, about the cocaine. As for the big manila envelope, it’s mine now. Whatever’s in that envelope is a piece of Michael, and I’m not letting it go.
The envelope is unsealed, but closed with a metal prong. I undo the prong and stick my hand down inside. It closes on something that I pull out and see are photographs. I never saw Michael take any photos of his own, but here are twenty or so that people must have given him at different times. They go back as far as eight years, and I recognize many of them, or the people in them.
Here’s Michael at a birthday party, Michael on Halloween dressed as a pirate, Michael and me getting on the bus to go to camp. There’s a strip of four photos from one of those photo booths with Michael and Anna Ferguson—they are making faces, and in the last shot, he’s kissing her. Anna was the only girl Michael ever really fell for. Maybe she could have saved him, but her parents split up and she moved away in the middle of tenth grade.
Then I see a Polaroid of Michael and me coming out of Lake Evergreen together, arms raised in triumph, grinning widely. I remember someone taking the shot, but Michael nabbed it, so I haven’t seen this photo for six years. I turn it over and there, in Michael’s neat printing, are the words “Soldier Rock.”
I feel that pain again, that feeling that I am being torn down the middle. Can a sixteen year old have a heart attack?
I stuff all the photos back into the envelope. I will deal with this later. I stick both the envelope and the box way in the back of my ski clothes drawer. People don’t ski a lot in Los Angeles. I don’t think anyone will be looking in that drawer soon.
Chapter 36
Torches line the long driveway of our house, lighting up the grounds and gardens. Cars are arriving—Mercedes, Jaguars, Rolls Royces, sportscars, and limousines—while valets scurry to open doors for passengers and move the cars to a parking lot at the other end of our property.