Hailey let out a long, whistle of breath. “I love you, Laura.”
Mom beamed at Hailey in the rearview mirror and I tried not to roll my eyes. She looked like she was ready to pull over on the PCH just to give Hailey a hug. I looked out the window. The sun had started to go down, and reddish, late afternoon light splintered across the surface of the water.
Maybe Mom noticed my silence, because she glanced suspiciously at me. “Are you still with us, Li?”
“Yeah, totally,” I said, and scanned my fingernails for a good one to bite.
chapter
sixteen
“We’re five minutes away from your house and we’re picking you up,” Meredith said over the phone that Friday night. “We’re going to get food.”
I was home alone watching reruns of House and eating popcorn in the living room. I was wearing my favorite fluffy bunny slippers and boxer shorts. The idea of getting dressed and getting on the freeway sounded unbearable, but Meredith was hard to deny. “You’re gonna drive me all the way back to Malibu afterward?”
“You can stay over at our house,” Meredith said. “We have lots of extra beds.”
I texted Mom to ask if I could go over to Meredith’s, but she and Dad were at the movies and they still hadn’t responded by the time the twins’ car pulled up in our driveway. For a moment, I contemplated telling Meredith I couldn’t go because I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to, but that would sound ridiculous. They had come all this way just to see me; it would be insane to make them leave now.
The Hayeses drove a big, noisy 1955 Chevy. It was painted black and upholstered with bright red vinyl. The lining of all the seats was splitting in multiple places, and yellow spongy stuffing was bursting out.
Next to me in the backseat was a girl named Lily who I recognized from school. Lily was round and baby-faced, like a doll, and she dressed like a pinup girl from the fifties. She curled her dyed black bangs into a perfect coil, as hard and shiny as a pole, and she wore tights, high-heel pumps, and orangey red lipstick to school every single day.
Now that I was so close to her, I noticed other things about Lily. She had skin as smooth and white as porcelain. Her arms were pale and almost hairless looking, as if she was covered in flour. She had a small Celtic pattern tattooed onto the inside of her left wrist.
In the front seat, a boy I didn’t recognize sat between Meredith and Walker. In old cars like the twins’, the front seat is like a bench.
“The famous Lima,” he said, craning his neck around to see me. “We’ve been hearing all about the wild party you had a few weeks ago. We heard y’all went skinny-dipping in the ocean.”
“Well—” I began to clarify, but stopped myself. Why ruin the glamorous image he had in his head by telling him it was my parents’ party and I didn’t even go in the ocean? Instead I said, “Who are you?”
Everybody laughed.
“I’m Henry,” he said.
“He’s my boyfriend,” Lily said. She stretched out her arm so she could just skim Henry’s cheek with her fingers. He turned to face her, made a kind of a barking sound, and then clamped down on her fingers with his teeth. She squealed with glee.
“So, Lima,” Henry continued. He had honey-colored skin and high cheekbones, and his voice was slow and sultry. “You’re named after the capital of Peru.”
I nodded. “Most people don’t know that. Where do you go to school?”
He smiled a little. “I’m not in school anymore.”
“Oh. How old are you?”
Everyone laughed again.
“I’m eighteen,” he said. “School just wasn’t my thing. I dropped out last year and moved to LA.”
“From where?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Lots of questions.”
I laughed. “Sorry.”
“From all over,” he said. “Last place I went to school was Indiana.”
“Wow.” What he said—dropping out of high school, living in lots of places, ending up in LA—it just implied so much more than I could imagine. I had a million questions, but didn’t even know where to start.
“We went down to the beach for a little fresh air,” Meredith said, twisting back to look at me. She must not have been wearing a seat belt because she curled around the back of Henry’s body to face me. She rested her bejeweled fingers on his shoulder and let her long hair tumble down into his face. He didn’t flinch. “And now we’re all starving. We’re going get some food on the way home.”
I’d never been to Canter’s Deli before. I had seen the big 1950s neon sign and wondered about it, but it wasn’t the kind of place Mom and Dad would ever go, with its retro, seedy-looking storefront. Inside, it was livelier and more crowded than its exterior promised. I scanned the enormous room, registering right away that we were the youngest people there.
The five of us squeezed into a big, red vinyl booth and Walker ordered a round of milk shakes while we perused enormous sticky menus. At the table next to us, a man with long hair and weathered, sunken cheeks was eating breakfast: eggs, bacon, even coffee.
“We’re going to the Rose Bowl Flea Market tomorrow, Lima,” Meredith said. “You have to come. It’s so fantastic.”
“I’m obsessed with flea markets,” said Lily. “They’re lame if you don’t know what you’re doing, but I go all the time so I know all the good vendors.”
“My buddy has a booth there. Old records and shit,” Henry added. His arm was draped around Lily’s shoulders, and his fingers hovered near her breast. He leaned in and bit her earlobe.
These people have touched each other everywhere, I thought. Contact wasn’t even a big deal to them anymore. Their hands and eyes had slipped all over one another’s bodies. It seemed impossible that I would ever, in a million years, feel that comfortable with another person’s body. For some reason, my mind flashed to Hailey and Nate.
“Remember that eight-track player we found last summer?” Lily asked Henry, ignoring his nibbling.
“What’s an A track?” I asked.
They all laughed.
“I get it,” Henry said to Meredith. “This girl is sweet.”
The Hayeses lived in Laurel Canyon, the hills above West Hollywood. The road wound up and up for what seemed like forever. The streets got narrower and steeper as we drove. Hidden houses lined one side and mountains the other.
“Does anyone else from school live around here?” I asked.
“Someone just moved in to a house at the bottom of our street,” Meredith said vaguely. “Brian? Or Ryan? He’s in your grade.”
“Ryan,” Walker corrected.
“Ryan Masterson?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Meredith replied. And then, after a minute, she pressed her forefinger to the window as if it were a screen. “There. His dad just bought that house. You can’t really see it.”
Finally we arrived at the twins’ house. It was enormous and modern, with walls of glass and strange concrete additions. It appeared to have innumerable stories and wings and balconies.
The furniture inside was dark and sleek except for one glittering white grand piano. The ceilings were high, which made the rooms feel cavernous, glamorous. Everything was immaculate. The whole place was a surprise. I guess I’d pictured the Hayeses living in a shack with tiki torches everywhere and Christmas lights hanging from the roof. I hadn’t realized they were so insanely rich.
“Where’s your dad?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Saint Barts,” Walker said.
Meredith told me I’d be sleeping in her bed with her, and for a second I was nervous. I’d only ever shared a bed with Hailey. But once I saw Meredith’s decadent, king-size canopy bed, I relaxed. We would both have plenty of space. Even Meredith’s bathroom was bigger than my bedroom at home.
Meredith had a TV mounted on the wall across from her bed. We climbed
under her satin sheets, watched Seinfeld, and played with her cat, Leonard Cohen. Meredith was surprisingly easy to be around. Sometimes she seemed all complex and mysterious, but she was really disarmingly normal.
I reached for a framed photograph that was resting on her bedside table. “Can I look at this?”
Her eyes drifted over to my hands, and she nodded slowly, pensively.
It was a photograph of a woman with the wind in her hair, standing on a big wooden deck. At first I thought it was a picture of Meredith—it looked just like her, with the long dark hair and heart-shaped face—but then I saw that there were two tiny children standing at her feet. Meredith and Walker.
“That’s my mother,” she said. “Anne.”
“She looks exactly like you.”
Meredith smiled vaguely. “She was pretty. She was a model.”
I grew quiet. It worried me to hear her referred to in the past tense.
Meredith laughed. “Oh, no, don’t worry. She’s alive. She just lives in Paris. We almost never see her.”
“Why?” I asked.
Meredith shrugged, “C’est la vie.”
It was just the kind of cryptic answer I was starting to expect from her. She seemed so at peace with everything. Not angsty. Not confused.
She stared off into a space for a moment, and then she said, in response to nothing in particular, “Paris.”
But this time she pronounced Paris like “puh-ree,” like a real French person would. After she said it, there was a strange pause. And then she giggled.
chapter
seventeen
The next morning we headed to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, which turned out to be loud and exhausting. The others seemed fascinated by everything they saw. They handled pots and old picture frames and dusty records. And the amazing thing was, it seemed like they were actually able to assess the quality of this stuff.
Meredith thumbed through a bin full of jewelry and produced a glittering necklace.
“That’s pretty!” I said, admiring the way it reflected daylight.
She looked at it thoughtfully. “No. Not special.”
And then she moved on. To me, it was all the same. Special because it was old and weird, but also just stuff that you wouldn’t actually wear.
I was getting pretty bored and cranky. It was hot in Pasadena, and the flea market was crowded and dirty. I wanted to go home and talk to Mom. I was feigning interest in some vintage posters when Meredith called my name.
“This. You.” She was holding up a leather jacket.
It didn’t look like much to me. It was smallish and black, with slightly beat-up leather that was starting to crack around the elbows and collar. It had two zipper breast pockets and another set of pockets lower down.
“Cute!” I lied. “But I’m too hot to try it on. And I have no money.”
“Don’t worry about that. Get over here,” she said affectionately.
I begrudgingly dropped my purse and let her put my arms into the sleeves. I knew right away that it was a perfect fit. The leather felt cool and mild on my skin.
Meredith turned me toward a mirror that the vendor had leaned up against the side of his van, and I looked at my reflection. I was stunned. There was a hardness to the jacket, a dark history you could sense from looking at it. It was the jacket of someone who had done bad things, who had taken risks, lived a dangerous life. Wearing it, I seemed to assume some of those qualities. I was transformed. Even I could see the magic.
“This is so cool,” I said, my eyes finding Meredith’s in the mirror. “But, still. I literally only have seven dollars with me.”
Meredith wrapped her arms around me from behind. I liked seeing the two of us together in the reflection. Even though we didn’t look alike, our faces seemed to match. Like people who belonged together.
“You have to have this jacket,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll get it for you.”
I looked at the handwritten price tag hanging off the sleeve. It was over a hundred dollars. My heart sank.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “It’s too much. I won’t be able to pay you back.”
Meredith slid out from behind me and cupped my face in her hands. Her eyes were smiling. “Shush. It’s a present. I seriously don’t care.”
• • •
The sun sparkled through the big trees of Laurel Canyon while I waited on the steps of the twins’ house for Mom and Dad to pick me up, and bits of yellow light swam around me like a million shimmering fish. It was so pretty here, and the last twenty-four hours had been an amazing adventure, but it felt incomplete without being able to share it with someone. I wished Hailey were here. We could analyze Henry and Lily and how foreign but cool Meredith’s world felt.
I picked up my phone and called her. After a few rings, it went to voice mail and the sound of her voice on the recording stung. Missing her felt physical, like an icy wind blowing through my rib cage.
Hailey hated voice mails so I sent her a text instead.
Tried calling you. I miss you! Love you! Call me! xoxox
What was Hailey doing right now? What had she done all weekend? I couldn’t remember a time when a weekend had passed and I’d had no idea what she’d done. A high breeze moved through the trees and the rustling leaves made a sound like the ocean.
“Where’d that jacket come from?” Mom asked when they arrived. Mom was sitting in the passenger seat and Dad was behind the wheel.
“I got it at the Rose Bowl this morning. Meredith bought it for me,” I said.
Instead of backing out of the driveway, Dad turned the engine off and turned to face me.
“Aren’t we leaving?” I asked.
“What you did last night was not okay,” Dad said.
“What did I do?” I asked, growing hot. Images of the night before flashed through my mind.
“You went out without asking if you could,” Mom said. “And you got in the car with a driver who we don’t know.”
“I asked!” I protested. “And you know Meredith and Walker. They came to your anniversary party.”
“Asking is not the same thing as getting permission,” Dad said. “You should have waited. You can’t just leave.”
“And to be honest, Li, I probably would have said no,” Mom added.
“Why? Why in the world would you say no?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I knew the answer. Meredith and Walker were just the kind of people parents were afraid of.
“Meredith seems very independent,” Mom replied.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “Isn’t it a good thing?”
“What Mommy means,” Dad said, “is that they’re fast.”
“Fast?” I repeated. “Really?”
“Look,” Dad said. “We’re here. Why don’t we go inside and talk to Howie Hayes. You know he’s a client and I haven’t seen him in a while. If you’re planning on sleeping over here again, we’d just like to know that you’ll be safe. That he’s a responsible parent.”
“You can’t,” I blurted, panicking. They would freak out if they knew there hadn’t been any adults here the night before. I would never be allowed to come over again. “He went out to lunch. He’s not here.”
I didn’t have a lot of practice lying to Mom and Dad, and I held my breath while I waited for them to see through me. Instead, Dad turned on the car and started down the driveway.
“Okay. But this conversation isn’t over,” he said. “You can’t just go out without permission.”
“I know,” I said. “I promise I won’t do that again. Ever.”
Dad turned onto the twisty street that led back to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and I started to relax. There were colorful, stucco houses tucked into the hills and big, gnarled trees that canopied the road.
“We haven’t seen Hailey lately,” Mo
m added, after a moment. “Is she friendly with Meredith Hayes?”
“Not really,” I said. I glanced at my phone and a hard pebble of sadness formed in my throat. She still hadn’t texted me back.
chapter
eighteen
I decided to meet Hailey outside of her second-period class Monday morning. The hollow feeling of missing her hadn’t gone away, and even though she never got back to me, I was dying to give her a hug and smell that familiar Hailey smell. I was wearing my new leather jacket, and it made me feel brave and optimistic. Hailey and I had started tenth grade on the wrong foot, but I was ready to right things. I could forgive her for ditching me at my parents’ anniversary party, and for not including me in her social life. We could get past that.
Hailey and Skyler stepped out of the classroom side by side, and I waved at them from across the hall. Even though I didn’t really want to talk to Skyler, I was glad she was seeing me in my new jacket. She always had to have the coolest things, and I was sure she’d be super impressed.
Skyler looked me up and down and then ignored me. She hooked her arm tight around Hailey’s neck and said, “I have to get something from my locker. Come with me?”
“I called you yesterday, Hailey,” I blurted out, a mix of hot emotions rising in my throat.
Hailey stopped. She was quiet for a second, and then she said simply, “My phone died.”
I stood there awkwardly, not sure what to say next. My face burned with shame and hurt. There was no way I could tell her I missed her. Not with Skyler hanging on to her like that.
Hailey looked at me for a moment longer, and then a concerned expression slowly transformed her face. She opened her mouth to say something but Skyler cut her off.
“C’mon, Hailey,” Skyler whined, toddler-like.
Hailey laughed and allowed Skyler to steer her down the hall away from me.
First There Was Forever Page 5