Little Lies

by Cherie Bennett

  I didn’t mind. However, that I’d said yes to being a Wait/Great organizer made me want to roll the clock back. Why hadn’t I said the intelligent thing? “Cool idea, Mom. Let me think about it.” Then I could have found a suitable excuse not to do it. Like, maybe, I’d decided to try to find a job and didn’t want my volunteer work to conflict. Instead, I’d locked myself in. There was nothing my mom hated more than going back on a commitment. She wouldn’t do it with Kent Stevens, and it had cost her dearly. I wasn’t about to pull a one-eighty on her.

  Well, the thing to do was let the church girls like Sandra and Courtney take the lead, and maybe even that cool guy Fitz, whom I’d met when we did the volunteer project at the homeless shelter.

  I put down my guitar and called Sandra, who called Courtney. In a three-way conversation, I filled them in on my mom’s idea. They both thought it was fantastic, and we set our first organizational meeting for the following afternoon. They promised to round up a few more people.

  “Know what I really like about this?” Sandra offered at the end of our conversation. “The drinking? That doesn’t ruin you forever. Take your so-called friend Alex, Nat. She just got out of the hospital. That accident was her own punishment. The drugs, same thing. You can start, you can stop, and you’re not, like, wrecked. Sex? There’s no such thing as being a little bit virgin. If you do it before you’re ready? You are, like, ruined.”

  Great.

  We settled on four o’clock for the meet-up and I clicked off. It was a spectacular morning—cloudless and warm, no breeze. It seemed like every raptor in the hills was soaring overhead, riding the thermals. Armed with a cup of coffee, a bowl of pretzels dipped in chocolate, and my lyrics notebook, I went outside and decided to start a new song. I got the chorus right away.

  Starting over puts the past behind

  Starting over means there’s stuff you lack

  Starting over clears your humble mind

  Starting over, so please don’t look back.

  When I thought about it, I realized I was inspired by Alex’s failed efforts in rehab. You’d think it would be a ballad, but I set it to an upbeat melody. Knowing I was alone, I sang the chorus full out, pounding at my Takamine’s strings, sending the chords and the lyrics on a one-way journey to heaven.

  It turned out heaven wasn’t the only one listening. At the end, there was polite applause. Gemma stood just a few feet behind me, wearing a skimpy red bikini and carrying a beach towel. Clearly, she was destined for a morning of skin-cancer induction. Also known as tanning. Which is exactly what I told her as she spread out her towel on the deck.

  She shrugged, then stretched out facedown. “What else am I going to do? I have no friends, I have no life. Can you put sunscreen on my back? Please?”

  Figuring that my right hand was all that stood between her and malignant melanoma, I found the SPF 30 and did what she asked.

  “Thanks.” She was silent for a moment. “You realize that since Lisa Stevens decided she hated us all except for Chad, I’ve talked to exactly four people face to face. You. Mom. Dad. And Chad.”

  “Lisa really has that much power?”

  Gemma barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? She’s a goddess. No one at church wants to cross her. If she says ‘jump’? People are already airborne in anticipation.”

  I grinned. That was funny. “That bad, huh?”

  My sister nodded, her lustrous blond hair swishing against the beach towel. “Worse. I won’t be able to make new friends until school starts. At least.”

  I had a brainstorm. “You could sign up for summer school. That would help you meet people!”

  Gemma rolled faceup and scrunched up her forehead. “Go to school, voluntarily? With all those kids who aren’t there voluntarily? Thanks but no thanks.”

  Okay. Maybe summer school wasn’t such a great idea. I was about to tell her about Wait/Great but realized that if Lisa had as much power as she said, she could put the kibosh on any group member who dared to socialize with Gemma. That Lisa was hardly the epitome of the Wait/Great ethic didn’t matter. Like the old joke implies, where does the 103-pound fifteen-year-old Hollywood queen bee with the famous father and the giant pubescent gazungas sit?

  Anywhere she wants.

  “I wish I knew how to make things better,” I admitted, feeling helpless. The truth was I couldn’t even drive Gemma where she wanted to go, assuming she wanted to go anywhere. California law says that if you’re seventeen, no passengers in your vehicle.

  I plopped down on the deck near her head and sat cross-legged. Gemma wasn’t the easiest person to talk to these days, but I’d just taken on something for our mom. She kind of owed me one.

  “Look. I get it. It must feel incredibly unfair.”

  She didn’t roll over. “It does. I hate it here. I never thought I’d say this, but … I miss Mankato soooooo much.”

  I smoothed a little sunscreen onto a spot I’d missed on her back. “If you do your part—which is find a way to meet some new people—I’ll figure out a way to get you from here to there and back again.”

  “There? As in, Minnesota?” My sister was skeptical. “How do you plan to do that?”

  I thought for a moment. I couldn’t get her back to Mankato, but there was something I could do. At least, I could try.

  “Not Minnesota. Almost as good. You just do your part. I’ll do mine.”

  “It’ll be a guilt jerk,” Mia pronounced. “But under the circumstances, it’s justified.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “I met your sister at church. She seems like the kind of girl who wouldn’t mind having a car and driver at her disposal.”

  I thought back to that hot guy Xan, who’d picked up my family at Bob Hope Airport the day we had arrived from Minnesota. Yeppers. Gemma wouldn’t mind being shepherded around town by an alternative version of Xan. It was later that afternoon. My dad had come back from his fishing expedition with a cooler full of calico bass, sand dabs, and opal-eyed perch and a promise that we’d be eating well for the next two weeks. Mia had called to see if I wanted to go on a late-afternoon dog walk in Runyon Canyon, in the hills between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles proper. She had a pair of beagles from before her mother got sick, and Big Jam insisted that they not run around his estate, for fear of beagle poopage. Since Big Jam—like us—didn’t live on a street per se, but on top of a hill, a normal dog walk was out of the question.

  Mia said that Runyon Canyon was a beautiful overlook filled with beautiful people with beautiful dogs, and she was right. We found hundreds of Los Angelenos strolling, jogging, or running with their dogs on graded dirt paths wide enough for a Jeep.

  And she hadn’t exaggerated the view. As we walked together with the beagles off their leashes ahead of us, she pointed south to downtown, Century City, and Beverly Hills, and west to Santa Monica. It was a vista of several hundred square miles, even with the usual afternoon smog.

  As we followed a curve in the trail to the right, I told her about my conversation that morning with Gemma, and my idea for Gemma’s transportation requirements. “It actually makes sense. If we’d lived down where we were supposed to live, Gemma could walk to Santa Monica Boulevard. Up in the hills? She’s trapped. Kinda like your dogs.”

  “I agree. That’s why—whoa, doggies!” Mia shouted as the two beagles—named Sunset and Island after a teen book series from the early nineties that Mia had fallen in love with—saw a squirrel cross the path and instinctively gave chase. The squirrel bolted away, stupidly following the path instead of darting into the underbrush. The beagles howled and bayed as they followed.

  A slew of random dogs joined them in the chase.

  “Catch up to me!” Mia tore off, calling them back to her. Beagle instincts beat training, because Sunset and Island didn’t slow. I laughed as diminutive Mia charged ahead, dreadlocks flying as her running shoes kicked up dust.

  I was just starting to trot after them when my iPhone rang. I took i
t out, and gulped when I saw the caller ID. Sean. My head had decided that it would be a good thing for Sean to come out. It would allow me to see once and for all whether my suspicion that he wasn’t capable of the kind of emotional intimacy I found myself craving—and maybe finding with Brett—was justified.

  That was where my head was. My heart? After the previous day’s date with Brett? Take a guess.

  “Hello from L.A.!” I made my answer upbeat.

  “Hello from southern Minnesota, where men are men and sheep are scared!”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “What’s up?”

  “I’m on a break from work, I can’t talk long, they’re having some kind of kid pageant in the food court at the mall and I’m the cleanup guy,” Sean said. “I’ve got some news. About my trip.”

  “Oh, okay. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Let the record reflect that those words were my head talking, not my heart.

  His voice got quiet. “Then I hate to disappoint you. There’s a problem. I don’t think I’m going to be able to come.”

  “Really?”

  I hoped my voice was more head than heart, but I couldn’t tell for sure as I stepped to one side of the trail to let a couple of handsome gay guys—I know you can’t tell by looking, but these two were wearing matching rainbow running outfits—jog past me, followed by ten matching Dalmatians, followed by another cloud of dust.

  “Really,” Sean confirmed. “My uncle in North Dakota got sick on his church mission to Mexico—some kind of parasite—and my mom and dad are driving up to help out. Someone’s got to mind the store here.”

  Sean’s parents owned a lighting and lightbulb store called, imaginatively, Mankato Lighting.

  “Wow. I hope he feels better soon.”

  What else could I say? That I was both unhappy and psyched? You can’t have that kind of conversation over the phone. You can’t have that kind of conversation at all if the person on the other side of the call is Sean. It was the kind of emotional territory that Sean avoided.

  “Me too,” Sean agreed. “But that’s not what the doctors predict. He’s gonna be on intravenous home health care for three weeks. Then I’m supposed to visit my relatives in Canada. Then soccer practice starts.” He paused. “Natalie, I don’t think I’m going to be able to come to California at all. I hate to let you down like this. I’m really sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s not your fault.” I didn’t want him to feel bad.

  He turned hopeful. “Any chance you can come to Minnesota?”

  “Well …”

  “I know it’s a long shot, after you just moved. Your mom probably wants you in church every single Sun—hold a sec. My boss is calling me on the walkie-talkie.”

  I held and could hear snippets of conversation about refreshments and folding chairs. Here in Los Angeles, even for a beauty pageant for newborns, they’d have a caterer and a party planner and pay a few C-list celebrities ten thousand bucks apiece to be judges.

  “Nat?” Sean was back.

  “Yeah?”

  “I gotta go. They’re starting in ten minutes, and my boss is on the warpath. I just wanted to let you know what was happening. I could be tough to reach for a few weeks.”

  I nodded, though he couldn’t see my head. “Got it. Good luck. There’s a lot on your plate.”

  “I know. I love you. Gotta go. Bye.”

  He clicked off. I was glad of that. Because he’d ended the conversation so quickly, I didn’t have to tell him that I loved him, too.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Menchie’s,” Mia declared as we walked north on Laurel Canyon. The dogs had been transferred to Big Jam’s personal assistant; he had met us in the Gelson’s supermarket parking lot at Laurel Canyon and Riverside.

  “Whoosies?” I asked, baffled.

  “Menchie’s,” she repeated. “In Los Angeles, it’s better known than the Lord’s Prayer.”

  “Got it,” I responded. “But what is it?”

  “You’ll see, you’ll taste, you’ll return.”

  It was an hour and a half later; I’d caught up with Mia and the dogs about a half mile down the trail, and we’d strolled to a scenic overlook where an impromptu guitar jam was under way. We listened for a while before returning to the parking lot. Mia asked me if I was hungry—I was—and decreed that we needed to make a pit stop. At, apparently, Menchie’s.

  Menchie’s was on the west side of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and no great shakes from the outside, except for the throng of people standing around, eating something from paper cups. The interior was tiled and antiseptic-looking, with sixties rock playing on the sound system and a couple of young people minding a scale and cash register in the middle of the shop. On the far wall was a series of frozen yogurt dispensers. To the right was a double rack of toppings, both normal and unconventional, ranging from chocolate sauce to nuts to gummy bears and everything in between.

  Everything made sense. Except for one thing.

  “What’s with the scale by the register?” I asked.

  “Watch and learn,” Mia instructed.

  I watched. Mia took a paper cup and filled it with her favorite flavor of frozen yogurt—mango tart. Then she went to the toppings station and added coconut flakes, M&M’s, and strawberries. I did the same, but with vanilla frozen yogurt, whipped cream, and three maraschino cherries. Sue me. I’m a purist.

  We took our filled cups to the cashier, a hip girl with five visible tattoos, a piercing through her lip, and a gray shirt/gray cap Menchie’s outfit. She placed our cups on the scale and charged us not by the number of toppings we’d picked, but by the ounce. Way cool. If I’d wanted to put ten inches of whipped cream atop my frozen yogurt, I could have, and it would have cost me practically nothing.

  We paid and dropped our loose change into the tip jar. Mia saw a table for two on the sidewalk open up. She headed for it. I was about to follow when I saw a small box by the cashier.

  HELP WANTED: GRAB AN APPIE!

  In the box were blank job applications. I took one. This could be a cool place to work, if I didn’t eat myself into frozen yogurt oblivion.

  The alt-girl cashier saw me take the application. “Thank God. Fill it out quick. The girl who usually works with me just ran off to Vegas. I’m swamped.”

  “Do I give it to you?”

  She shook her head. I saw a yin/yang tattoo behind her right ear. “Best bring it back in the morning when we open. That’s when Bill—the manager—is here. Or apply online. Just go on the website and you’ll find the application.”

  “Thanks,” I told her.

  She motioned with her chin at the line of impatient customers that had formed. “No problem. Like I said, we could use the help. Tips are pretty good.”

  “Thanks for bringing me here,” I told Mia as I joined her outside. She was spooning a huge helping of yogurt into her mouth. I took a bite of mine. Delicious. No wonder the joint was so crowded.

  “Of course. If you’re going to be an Angeleno, you’re going to have to learn to eat like an Angeleno. It’s positive payback for the time we spend stuck in traffic.” Mia laughed. “I’d say this is better than sex, but I wouldn’t know.”

  I’d waited to talk to Mia about Wait/Great until we were someplace where we wouldn’t get interrupted. Runyon Canyon, with dogs running and barking, hadn’t seemed like the right environment. Now was as good a time as any.

  “My mom would be happy to hear that. She wants to start a group at church called To Wait Is Great. Wait/Great for short.”

  Mia smiled. “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  “How could you? She just told me about it last night.”

  Her smile grew wider. “You called Sandra and Courtney? Sandra called me right after you talked to her.”

  “The girl moves fast.” I swirled my spoon around, mixing the toppings together. I’d introduced Mia to Sandra only the past Sunday at church. “You barely know her.”

  “Well, she asked me to join the organizing commi
ttee.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What did you say?”

  “I said yes … as long as my friend Natalie wanted me. I mean, I’m still the new kid on the block. ”

  I was flattered. Mia and I were friends, but she didn’t owe me anything. It was a sign of respect for her to check in with me before she gave it the definitive okay.

  I squeezed her hand. Wait/Great would be so much easier with Mia involved. “I’d love to work on it with you.”

  She put her second hand atop our two. “Then Wait/Great has two volunteers. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a great idea.”

  Tell her, I urged myself. This was the perfect time to tell her about me and Sean. The door was open. Maybe I couldn’t tell my mother, but I could tell my church friend. She’d keep her mouth shut about it. I was sure she would.

  I didn’t tell her.

  What I said was “Yeah.”

  She withdrew her hands and went back to work on her half-eaten Menchie’s, her eyes on the late-afternoon traffic crawling by on Laurel Canyon.

  “I’ve been lucky,” she confided. “The drugs and the alcohol, they never really interested me. I mean, when I was fourteen, I drank way too many beers at a party, but I barfed so bad I never had it again. The drugs? Well, when you see kids at school not show up one day because they smoked crystal meth and put themselves on the psych ward? That kinda makes you want to stick to tea when you have a cold, and that’s it. Not that California makes it tough. Check it out.”

  She pointed across Laurel Canyon. All I saw was a series of storefronts. A chicken takeout place. A RadioShack. A tailor. A pharmacy with a green cross in front.

  I didn’t get it. “Check what out?”

  “The green cross.”

  “What about it?”