Jake steps forward while locking his car. “Easiest way to speed and not get caught. We didn’t want to keep you waiting for an hour.”
“It’s incredible,” I murmur, shaking my head as I stare up at the bold letters. I squint to avoid the sun. “Thanks for showing me it.”
All six of them laugh at once, including Tyler. I receive a few eye rolls too.
“We haven’t shown you it yet,” Rachael says. She’s holding a few bottles of water in her hands. “We’re taking you all the way up.”
“Up?” I glance up the mountain again, wondering how steep it is. It looks like hard work.
“Yeah, up,” Dean says. There are even more bottles of water in his hands. “We better get moving if you want to see it before the sun goes down. It takes about an hour to get up there. And it’s hot. So here.” He hands me a bottle, passes one to Meghan, and a third to Jake.
“Who remembers the route?” Rachael asks as she hands Tyler and Tiffani some water.
Tyler snorts, dropping his hand to Tiffani’s waist as he points to the trail behind us. “It’s not that damn hard, Rach. Sharp left and then right.”
I notice a sign for the Hollyridge Trail, and I figure this is the path we’ll be taking. Tyler and Tiffani stay at the front, with Jake, Dean, Meghan, Rachael, and me behind them, and we begin our ascent. The trail is wide and decorated with the wonderful blessing that is horseshit.
“That was the worst hour of my life,” I hiss quietly to Rachael as we tag along slightly behind the rest of the group. “Remind me never to go in a car with Tyler ever again.”
She laughs, her feet scuffing the dirt as we head upward. “What happened?”
“He almost killed us because I asked where his dad was,” I admit. My eyes find their way to him. He’s leading us up the trail with Tiffani behind him. “Is his dad, like…dead?”
Rachael almost chokes on her water as she takes a sip, and then she stops walking for a moment to fix me with a horrified look. “God, Eden, no. Mentioning his dad around him is like stepping in front of a loaded gun. You’re asking to be killed.”
We start walking again. “Why?”
“He’s in jail for car theft or something,” Rachael tells me, her voice lowered. She keeps constantly glancing up to check that no one can hear us. “Tyler’s super sensitive about it.”
My eyes drift back up to him. Somewhere deep inside me, I feel a little bad for him. Maybe he was close with his dad and now he’s no longer in the picture. That must be tough. And a divorce on top of that must be even harder.
It doesn’t take us long to reach the sharp left turn that he rudely reminded Rachael of. The trail also goes straight ahead, but we make an almost complete turn around to the left and keep going up. The horseshit disappears after this point.
Dean was right about it being hot, and I’m thankful for the water he gave me. But despite the heat, I don’t mind the hike. It’s good exercise, and the views of Los Angeles are totally worth it. We stop every so often for a breather, and to just stare out over the city, taking in the sheer size of it and how beautiful it looks from above. It’s so peaceful up here.
Eventually we come to a fork in the trail that opens up into two concrete roads, and we take the right.
“Shouldn’t we have gone left?” I ask, noticing how we’re walking away from the sign rather than toward it. It makes me wonder if they’re planning on playing a cruel joke on me.
“No,” Jake says. He slows down and matches his pace to mine, hovering by my side as everyone else ignores me. “Going left takes you back down. You go right and you walk around the back of the sign.”
I take a long swig of my water and then point my bottle to the road ahead. “Isn’t this illegal?”
“Drinking water?” Jake says. “Not that I know of.”
I roll my eyes, laughing a little as I watch Meghan pull Rachael up a steeper part of the road. “Is it or isn’t it?”
“It’s only illegal if you cross the fence,” he tells me. “You can get pretty close from behind it.” He tilts his head back to the sky for a few seconds, and when he glances back down, he meets my gaze. “Sorry about how lame I was on Saturday. I lose all conversation skills after a couple beers.”
I smile a little. I’m surprised he even remembers talking to me, and I’m blushing slightly that he’s apologizing for it. “You weren’t lame. Your questions were.”
“Let’s just start again,” he says, and then holds out his hand. “I’m Jake. You must be that cute girl who’s here for the summer. Eden, right?”
I feel my cheeks growing even hotter. I anxiously bite my lip and tilt my head so that he doesn’t notice. I still manage to shake his hand. His palms feel warm against mine. “Nice to meet you, Jake.”
“So,” he says, “how’s Los Angeles treating you?”
“It’s amazing.” I notice that either everyone else is speeding up or Jake and I are slowing down, because the gap between us and the rest of the group is increasing. I catch Tyler throwing a disapproving glance back at us. I scrunch up my nose and glare after him for a moment. What’s his problem? I try not to let it get to me. “I love it.”
Jake’s eyes smolder as a wide grin plays on his lips. “Is your boyfriend waiting for you back in Portland?”
“No,” I say, and I glance sideways at him. “If you’re trying to be subtle here, it’s really not working.”
“Damn it,” he mutters. He lets out a hearty laugh. “Subtlety and conversations aren’t really my strong points. But I do have some other strong points. Let me take you out some night and I’ll show you them.”
He looks confident as he quirks up an eyebrow and waits for a reply, but I’m not sure how to be as smooth as him. I’m not someone who gets asked out by guys a lot. The closest situation I can think of is the one time a guy from algebra class asked me if I would help him understand the basic foundation of quadratic equations back in freshman year. Even then I said no, because he was known for his excessive sneezing. His name was Scott. Behind his back, it was Snotty Scotty.
“Maybe,” is the cop-out answer I give Jake. Maybe I’d agree if we’d said more than a few sentences to each other, but right now he’s still a stranger to me. Maybe another time. Maybe later.
“I can deal with a maybe,” he says. “Hey, look, we’re almost there.”
My eyes move to the road ahead, and I notice how it winds to the left, where a tall wire fence begins. Tiffani skips ahead to the bend, grabbing Tyler’s hand and pulling him along behind her. “Eden, come see this!” she calls, and Jake nudges me forward.
Rachael reaches back for my elbow and hauls me up the final part of the route with her, half skipping, half jogging. We’ve made it to the sign in fifty minutes. The fence follows the path around, and when she pulls me around the corner, it hits me all at once that I am standing behind the Hollywood Sign above Los Angeles.
My breath catches in my throat, the silence around me allowing me to focus on the moment. I press my hands to the fence, my eyes wide, my pulse racing. From behind, the view is breathtaking. The letters are absolutely huge, standing above the city. They’re much bigger than you think they are.
“Worth the hike?” Dean asks beside me. It pulls me out of my trance. The only thing I can do is slowly nod, my eyes never leaving the view in front of me.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say quietly.
“We haven’t come up here in about a year,” Meghan muses as she runs her hands along the wires. “Feels longer.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Tyler reaching up to the top of the fence and gripping it firmly. I also notice the number of cameras around us. “What are you guys waiting for?” he asks, and then pulls himself up and over in one swift movement. He lands softly on the other side. “C’mon.”
I stare at the cameras for a while, and then the row of signs clearly stating that access to the sign is restricted, and then Tyler. He’s staring back at me, his smile lopsided and his eyes narrowed.
>
“We have, like, ten minutes before they send out the helicopter,” Tiffani says as she begins to climb. “Eden, touch the sign and then we’ll get out of here.”
I stare doubtfully at the two of them. Helicopter? “Really, it’s okay. I don’t need to touch the—”
“Just touch the fucking sign,” Tyler snaps, locking his eyes on me. Tiffani lands on the restricted side of the fence beside him. She places a hand on his chest and pushes him away from the rest of us.
“We won’t get caught,” Rachael reassures me quietly just before she climbs over with Meghan and Dean. “We do this all the time.”
“Don’t worry,” Jake adds. “If we get caught, we’ll all go down together.” He reaches for my hand and places it on the wire. “But we gotta be quick.”
Succumbing to the type of peer pressure that my fifth-grade teacher used to warn me about, I reach up to the top of the fence and somehow swing my body over it. I lose my balance slightly on the landing, and I only realize then just how steep the mountain truly is. The others have already started making their way down to the sign, but I wait for Jake and he shows me a way down that won’t break my neck.
“I love this place,” Dean says as he lingers by the first O. “I wonder how many people around the world would kill for the opportunity to do this. We’re lucky.”
“Dude, stop getting all sentimental. It’s just letters on a mountain,” Tyler mutters. “This city is stupid as hell and so is this sign.”
“You’re so negative,” Tiffani murmurs.
Ignoring them, I follow Jake up to the H. He steps back and nods, a warm smile on his lips. “You first.”
I feel nervous for some reason. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m about to do something that so many people dream of, or perhaps it’s because I could fall to my death any second. I take a deep breath and step forward, and then I touch the white-painted metal of the H of the famous Hollywood Sign.
And I feel the exact same way as I did two seconds ago. “Oh,” I say. It occurs to me then that we are all so infatuated by nothing more than pieces of metal on poles.
Jake places his hand next to mine. “How about that date then?”
I might have said yes at this point, simply because we’re literally standing underneath the Hollywood Sign and it’s the perfect place to accept a date, but Tyler is yelling, “What the hell, man?” before I even get the chance to open my mouth.
“What?” Jake pulls an irritated face, stepping back from the sign to meet Tyler’s eyes as he approaches us with his hands balled into fists.
“What the hell did you just say to her?” Tyler’s expression is hard, jaw clenched, eyes dark. He steps closely in front of Jake, his forehead tilted down as he narrows his eyes into tiny slits.
“Tension,” Rachael mouths when I glance at her for help. I do vaguely remember her saying something about there being this unspoken tension between the pair. Right now, it no longer seems unspoken.
“Bro, get outta my face,” Jake mutters. He retreats and shrugs, throwing up his hands and turning to the side.
“No,” Tyler objects, shaking his head as he takes a step around Jake, straightening up in front of him again and jabbing a finger into his chest. “You two are not happening. I’ll kick your ass if you even think about it.”
“Tyler, baby, chill,” Tiffani says, and she forces her body in between the two of them. With her hands on Tyler’s chest, she tries to push him back, but his eyes are still locked on Jake. “Don’t be an asshole. Stop trying to start a fight.”
Dean joins in, stepping in front of Jake and shaking his head in disapproval. “C’mon, guys. Quit it.”
Then my attention is torn away from the potential fight to the faint drill and the pumping of motors and the whirling of blades, and as the sound grows louder, I find myself glancing up to the sky.
And it is then that I find myself under the eye of an LAPD helicopter.
Chapter 9
Tilting my head back to the sky, I squint at the vehicle hovering above us. We all stop at once, our words tapering off and our expressions faltering.
“Shit!” Tyler yells, and then there’s a tremendous clang as he slams his palm against the metal of the H. He throws his hand back through his hair, shaking his head. “How the hell do they always get out here so fast?”
“Don’t trip!” Tiffani yells to us all. She reaches for Tyler’s hand and pulls him along with her, but instead of heading back for the fence, they make a beeline down the mountain.
“Let’s get outta here,” Jake calls from beside me, and he steals a good look at the helicopter before he decides to start moving. “Gotta race to the bottom before the cruiser gets here.”
“Those two aren’t waiting around, are they?” Dean jokes, laughing and nodding toward the shrinking figures of Tyler and Tiffani as they dart quickly between the dirt and the rocks and the shrubs. “Poor guy can’t afford to get arrested again.”
“Again?” I echo, but they all ignore me and make their move. Rachael and Meghan begin their descent while clinging to each other as though any misjudged footwork would cause them to fall to their deaths. It probably would.
“Be careful,” Dean calls over his shoulder to me as he, too, follows the vague outline of a trail and widely sidesteps—or slides—his way down.
With the sound of the helicopter still vibrating loudly around us, a wave of adrenaline rushes through my veins and my pulse beats painfully beneath my skin. Here’s when running every morning comes in handy. Despite the steepness of the terrain, I rush into action and follow Dean’s path. The ground is uneven and borderline painful to walk on at points, and soon I’m struggling to maintain my balance, praying that I don’t get arrested and hoping that I don’t die.
“Hanging in there, Eden?” Jake throws over his shoulder from beside me, hopping down from one rock to another, laughing. I don’t understand how he can possibly find this amusing.
“Trying to!” I call back. Just as I finish, my foot slips on a steeper part of the slope we’re carefully edging our way down, and I gasp.
A firm hand latches onto my elbow. “Careful,” Jake says firmly as he steadies me. He places his hands on my shoulders. “You alright?”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” I blurt, and then I glance up at the helicopter, panic written all over my face. When I look back down, I spot the rest of the group reaching solid ground again.
Jake laughs, but only as he slowly takes another step. “You’re not going to jail,” he says, and then he drops his hand to mine and pulls me along behind him. “The worst we’ll all get is a citation.”
Despite the reassurance, my stomach remains in knots as my body is hauled almost numbly down the rest of Mount Lee. Jake doesn’t trip, doesn’t slow us down, and doesn’t get us caught. I’m entirely thankful when we finally near the bottom after passing some houses and crossing over a trail. I spy the sign for the Sunset Ranch, and it suddenly becomes my favorite sign in the entire world.
“No cruiser,” I murmur, and I can almost feel my whole body breathe a sigh of relief. Dad would quite literally cremate me in my sleep and flush away my ashes if I returned home with a trespassing citation.
“Yet,” Jake finishes. He lets go of my hand as he jumps down onto the road, and I follow suit, trailing after him around the corner. “We’re not clear yet.”
When we find our way back to the small parking area where we left the cars, I notice Tyler’s is already gone. Jake leads me over to his—a red Ford of some sort. “Meghan and Rach must have gone with Dean,” he says as he unlocks the car and slides inside. Tiffani must be with Tyler.
“Where do you think everyone else is going?” I ask as I settle into the passenger seat, and I can only hope that he’s a better driver than my stepbrother.
Jake shrugs as he starts up the engine and reverses out onto the road. “Who cares?” I do, I think. “What do you wanna do? You hungry?”
For a long moment, my eyes settle on his features as
he drives, and I can’t help but wonder how our escape from the Hollywood Sign has ended up turning into a date. The others are gone and I’ve been paired off with Jake. But despite my doubts, I am a little hungry. “Is there any good food around here?”
“There’s a Chick-fil-A ten minutes away on Sunset Boulevard,” he suggests. “We could grab something quick.”
“Sure,” I say. “We don’t have Chick-fil-A in Oregon.”
His face falls. “What?”
“We’re not allowed to pump our own gas either,” I add, and I find myself getting distracted by the idea of home, wondering what Amelia is doing right now and if my mom is lonely by herself in our small house. “Oregon sucks.”
“So you must think LA is great,” he concludes. “We have signs on mountains and Chick-fil-A and we can pump our own gas without being arrested. Mythical.”
I laugh a little, as does he, and it’s nice to have some male company that isn’t my dad and isn’t Tyler. The two of them are far too obnoxious and grouchy.
I slump back into the passenger seat and rest my forehead against the window, glancing up to the sky to check on the position of the helicopter, but it seems to have disappeared. And so I can breathe freely again.
“So do you like the city then?” Jake asks a short while later. He increases the air-conditioning but lowers the music.
“Yeah,” I say. Admittedly, I haven’t seen much of it yet, but so far everything is pretty amazing. “More interesting than Portland, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve never been to Portland.”
“You don’t want to.” After I say this, I reconsider. “Actually, Portland isn’t that bad. We have a great indie scene, but it rains from fall until the end of spring, so that sucks, and there are a lot of strip clubs. The people are great though.” I smile only slightly as my eyes fall to my lap. “Well, most of them.”
Did I Mention I Love You? Page 9