“So that you can say you’ve been somewhere, a place of your own. And I thought you would like it. Out here nothing’s hidden. It’s kind of jolie laide.”
“What does that mean?” I had taken a year of Spanish for my foreign language requirement but didn’t speak a word of French.
“It literally means ugly-beautiful, but there isn’t really a proper English translation for it. It’s what this place is, though.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest as another chill ran through me. Was that what I was, too? Ugly-beautiful? Only I wasn’t sure what the beautiful part was.
“Beneath the palm trees, this is what L.A. is really like,” he continued. “A desert. The trees don’t just naturally grow there. Practically nothing does.” He gathered a handful of dirt and let it sift through his fingers. “This is what’s real, all around us. This is the way things are really supposed to be.”
I thought about my neighborhood and the lush green lawns that spread out before each house, block after block. The even rows of palm trees lining Vista Boulevard and the sprinkler systems that went off like clockwork every morning to keep the illusion in place.
We stared up at the open sky. It felt so much bigger than the pocket of night I was used to from my tiny patch of grass. I imagined looking down at Vista Valley from an airplane, where the view revealed that everything was divvied up into neat allotments. Our town was just one of hundreds like it. It was like discovering that there were so many more planets in the galaxy than the eye could see, that life encompassed so much more than the subdivision I was born into. I turned my head so my cheek was touching the cool, dry earth. Under the shroud of darkness, I stared at Nick. It wasn’t just his physical features that defined him. It was everything: from the way he moved to his battered car to his frayed jeans and his broken watch. He clearly didn’t care what anyone else thought of him, like he was used to being the only one around, the way we were in the vast open desert.
I reached into my bag and took out the camera. Like my copy of Mrs. Dalloway, I had been carrying it around every day, since the day I had taken it. But this was the first time I was inspired to use it.
“You’re a photographer?” Nick asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Hardly.” I was glad it was dark because I felt my cheeks start to burn again. “I just…borrowed this from someone.”
I got up and walked over to the tree looming precariously next to us. The branches were gnarled and twisted, but up close, intricate patterns, like interweaving veins, emerged beneath the charred top layer. I removed the lens cap, zoomed in, and adjusted the aperture. As more moonlight filled the small glass frame, I understood what Nick meant. And he was right. It was ugly-beautiful.
When I looked back, he was lying down and his eyes were closed. Without thinking, I aimed the camera toward his face, zoomed in as close as possible, and clicked.
He opened them a minute later, after I had already screwed the lens cap back on and the camera was dangling from the strap around my shoulder. But it still felt like I had been caught in the act, like I had stolen something from him.
CHAPTER 14
“OH NO,” I muttered as I made my way up the walkway. My father’s Buick was already in the driveway. He had beaten me home. The engine was even still crackling.
I fished my keys out of my bag and gently pushed open the front door. I held on to the doorknob to minimize the noise until it latched shut. I made my way inside, still clutching my phone. Nick had taken it from my lap and keyed his number into it when he dropped me off. I tiptoed down the dark hall and peered toward the kitchen. All the lights were off. Maybe he’s already asleep, I thought, relaxing my shoulders and continuing toward the kitchen.
“Olive?” my father’s voice called out.
I nearly tripped over myself as I flicked on the lights, revealing my father sitting at the table, in the dark, his right hand gripped around his nightly glass of scotch.
“Are you, like, waiting up for me or something?” I asked, standing by the door. Knowing that he regularly came home so late made me feel like I somehow had license to question him before he had the chance to question me.
“I must have dozed off.” He cleared his throat to get his voice back, then took a sip of his drink. His tie was loosened around his neck. His jacket hung from the back of his chair. He always wore a full suit, even on the hottest days of the year. How many times had he sat here like this, in the dark, after the lights went off? “You look like you’re in a good mood. Where were you?”
I didn’t realize I was still smiling, but relaxed my cheeks when I saw the numbers on the stove clock flash 1:57. It was much later than I thought. Had I really been out with Nick practically all night? “I fell asleep at Annie’s,” I said. “We were studying for midterms.” It surprised me how easily the lie rolled off my tongue.
My father’s face lit up. “I’m glad to hear that you’re getting back into your school work. You’re a smart girl. I have no doubt you’ll be caught up in no time.”
The truth was, I hadn’t actually opened a book in days. But it wasn’t like before, when I first came back and was too shell-shocked to do pretty much anything. Now I couldn’t concentrate for a different reason. Because of Nick. Every time I tried to read Mrs. Dalloway or do a math problem set, I’d find myself doodling his name across the page. It was as if the song was also conspiring against me, pulling me further and further out to sea, away from my regular life here and toward him.
“How about you?” I asked. I didn’t want to go any deeper into the topic of my homework. “Why are you still up?”
“I’m working on a closing and lost track of time.” He rattled the ice cubes around in his glass. “One second it was six o’clock and next time I looked up it was already one in the morning. I was just having a drink to wind down.” He said it so casually, like it didn’t happen almost every night. Maybe he had his own reasons for lying. Just like I did.
“So, how does it feel to almost be a high school graduate?”
He posed the question the way a distant relative might, in an effort to strike up conversation. Lately it felt like we were barely part of the same family. This was practically the first time we’d talked since the drive home from the hospital. He was never around but I wondered if that even made a difference. “Okay, I guess. Thankful it’s almost over.”
“Can’t wait to get out into the real world, huh? I remember that feeling.”
“I guess.” That wasn’t the way I meant it, but I didn’t bother correcting him. I hadn’t thought much about the future since the accident. I no longer knew what it looked like, no longer knew what I wanted it to look like. “Not that college really counts as the real world.”
“That all depends,” he said, gazing outside. With the kitchen lights on, the windowpane reflected his image, like he was staring into a mirror. “Sometimes it’s the other way around.”
“What do you mean?” I came into the room and pulled up a chair.
“I almost dropped out of college before I even started.” He got up and walked over to the counter to refill his glass. He was so relaxed, it seemed like he was almost about to whip out a glass for me, too. My dad was usually so lawyerly, when he wasn’t being all Father Knows Best. But tonight was different; tonight he was acting more like a friend. “I had this hippie English teacher in high school, Jerry Cooper. He insisted we call him by his first name, which, in those days, was considered countercultural.” It still was, at least in Vista Valley, I almost said, but I didn’t want to interrupt him. “At the end of senior year, he pulled me aside and gave me a copy of On the Road, you know, the classic by Kerouac.” I had no idea what he was talking about but nodded anyway, eager for him to get to the point. He sat back down with his refreshed scotch. “So Jerry told me to read it before making any decisions about my future. He knew my plan was to go to law school and become a lawyer, just like my father, but he thought I should explore becoming a writer.” He paused to take a
sip of his drink. “I thought he was crazy. I’d only written a story here and there, nothing that would make me give up everything, but I was also flattered, so I decided to read the book. I devoured it in one day. It was a Sunday. I remember because the banks weren’t open. I waited until the next morning to empty my account, buy the cheapest car I could find, and hit the road, just like Kerouac. I didn’t tell a soul. Not even your mother, and I skipped out just two days before high school graduation.”
“Are you serious?” I wondered if the alcohol was slurring his thoughts. He didn’t sound anything like the person standing right in front of me, also known as my father. I had no idea that he’d ever written anything, much less that he was apparently good at it. “How long were you gone?”
“Almost two months. I drove across the country, mainly through the South. I’d stop in towns along the way whenever I ran out of money, which was every couple of days. I picked up odd jobs here and there, bussing tables, milking cows. Whatever I could get to make ends meet and get me to the next town.” He sat back down and stared out the window again, like his mind was somewhere else, maybe back in one of those towns.
I couldn’t picture my dad pulling on a cow’s udder. Every time I tried, he was wearing a three-piece suit. “Why’d you come back?”
“My parents eventually tracked me down with the help of a private investigator. They threatened to cut me off if I wasn’t back in time to start college.” He paused to finish off his drink. “And your mother was waiting for me. We were married by the end of that year.”
“What if they never found you? What would have happened?” My breath stuck in my chest, like I had suddenly been plunged under water. I knew what would have happened. He wouldn’t have married my mother. I wouldn’t exist.
“I don’t ask myself those kinds of questions. It was too long ago.”
For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for my father. For being forced to come back, for believing that a book could really change his life forever. Even I knew that it took something much bigger than that.
“I like your hair like that.” He swept a stray piece out of my face. It reminded me of when he used to tuck me in at night back when I was little. He’d always make sure to pull my hair out from under me and fan it out on my pillow so it wouldn’t get tangled while I slept. “Is it the new style?”
“Not exactly.” I reached back and felt for the bald patch around the wound, but it was no longer bald. Wispy strands had grown in around the ridge of uneven skin. It was practically long enough to pull into a ponytail again. “Mom hates it.”
“Did she say that?”
“She doesn’t have to.”
He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. “I’m sure she’ll come around.”
I didn’t believe him. My mom had barely been able to look at me since the accident. At least not in the way she used to. With pride.
“And she means well,” he added after a long pause, like he was trying to convince himself more than me. His voice was heavy and he looked tired. The etchings of deep wrinkles settled across his forehead in a permanent state of concern. His hair had even started to whiten on the sides. “It’s probably best we keep this conversation between us.”
Yeah, obviously. “Okay.”
He stood up, the chair scraping loudly behind him. He headed for the door and turned around. “You coming?”
“Not yet.” I tightened my grip around my phone. Just thinking of Nick holding it a few minutes ago sent a tremor of excitement through my body. “I’m going to grab a snack.”
“All right, but don’t stay up too much later. You have to be up for school in a few hours.”
I let out a wry smile. Little did he know that I had been staying up long after him for weeks. After he left I turned out the lights, sat in his vacated seat, and stared out the window into the garden. I reached for the almost empty glass he had left on the table. It was wet from condensation and contained mostly melted ice. When I took a sip, it had the vague and acrid taste of poison. My dad’s confession had made me realize that my dad was really just a person, like me. That he also had a life he wanted to escape.
As I stood to leave, my father’s suit jacket slipped off the back of the chair. A piece of paper from the front pocket fell to the floor. There was just enough moonlight streaming in to make out what it was—a receipt for the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. From tonight, check-in at 7:13 P.M., check-out at 12:48 A.M. I waited for confusion or anger or even guilt for finding it to wash over me. But if anything, I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only one in this house keeping secrets. Even if his secret could destroy our family, or whatever was left of it.
I picked up the receipt, crumpled it in my hand, and went out to the garden.
My throat tightened as I passed the greenhouse.
Trailing my hand along the glass, I walked around to the south-facing side, where a string of plants sat perched on a shelf. All the orchids were headless, brown, and seemingly dead, except for the one on the end, which was in full bloom. As I examined the three small, delicate petals blossoming from its stem, the lecture my mother gave Derek the time she walked in on us in the greenhouse came rushing back to me. “Every flower has three sepals,” she had explained, pointing them each out. “And this one here is the labellum.” She had tickled the petal at the base of the flower, like it was a pet, adding, “It’s also sometimes called the lip.”
“I thought your mom was going to have an orgasm in there,” Derek had said later that night when I walked him to his car. “I can’t wait to touch your labellum.” I had stood motionless on the sidewalk, mortified by how humiliating my mother could be, as he patted my behind and pecked me on the cheek before driving off. But now, something angry bubbled up inside me. Without thinking, I picked up a pebble and whipped it against the window, nicking the corner. It was barely visible, but making a crack in the glass house somehow made me feel better.
I ran to the back of the garden, away from the greenhouse, and held my breath as I waited for a light to go on in the house. The stone had made such a loud pinging sound when it bounced off the glass that I was sure my dad, who was still awake, or my mom, who had supersonic hearing, would have noticed. But nothing happened.
Lying down on the ground, I inhaled the sweet smell of freshly cut grass. Spears of moonlight poked through the dangling leaves overhead. It was hard to believe I had been staring up at the same night sky with Nick just an hour earlier. I thought of him sprawled out on the cool, desert ground. Of how much further his legs stretched out than mine, the curve of his uneven nose in profile, the flash of his intense eyes, and the face of his broken watch. The images whirled and collided, as if I was viewing him through a kaleidoscope.
I swept my arm across the empty patch of grass to my right, half expecting Nick to still be there next to me. The song whistled back in like it was being carried by a distant wind. I closed my eyes and listened carefully when the notes took a sudden, unexpected turn. They sounded rushed, more urgent, lost even, until his voice broke through.
Your voice is like an angel
I can hear without sound.
They were new lyrics. I sat up and strained my ears to hear more, imagining they were Nick’s words, that he was the one singing to me.
My leaden heart starts floating
Whenever you’re around.
His voice rose above the roiling notes, reaching a breathy pitch that was simultaneously confident and vulnerable, like it encompassed the span of human experience.
I released my grip and smoothed out the wrinkled hotel receipt. A silent gust blew in and lifted the tissue-thin paper up into the sky. I lay back down and watched it recede into the blackness, like a kite without a string, when I felt my necklace snag on my hair. Lurching myself to my knees, I leaned forward and began to dig into the ground at the base of the tree, rustling free earthworms and stray stones caked in moist earth. I didn’t stop until I’
d carved out a perfect hole. The next thing I did was unclasp the chain, drop it into the ground, and fill it back up, burying the gold heart until there was no sign that it ever existed.
CHAPTER 15
“YOU HAVE TEN minutes left,” Miss Porter announced. She was observing us from her desk at the front of the class.
I stared down at my blue booklet, then back up at the question written out on the board.
Virginia Woolf created Septimus Warren Smith as a double for Clarissa Dalloway. In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?
I still hadn’t made it past page ten of Mrs. Dalloway, so I had no idea who Septimus was or what the question even meant.
I chewed on the end of my pen, watching everyone else busily writing away. Some people had even filled up the entire blue book and were almost through their second. I used to be like them. But now, my booklet was empty.
It was midterm week. I’d managed to scrape by the exams in my other classes, especially the ones that were mostly multiple choice, like American history and bio. But there was no faking an essay based on a book I’d never read.
Miss Porter’s chair scraped against the linoleum floor as she stood up. With her hands clasped behind her back, she walked up and down the aisles, peering at our progress.
“You should start wrapping it up now,” she said, glancing over students’ shoulders.
I looked down at the blank page then back up at Miss Porter. She was one row away. Without thinking, I turned my pen around and started writing. She stopped when she reached my desk. She was standing so close I could smell her perfume. It was a light floral bouquet that didn’t make me want to gag like the sickly sweet perfume my mother doused herself with five times daily. I hunched further over my blue book and tried to cover the page with my forearm. I didn’t want her to see what I was writing. Not now anyway. Not in front of the whole class. To my great relief, she resumed her stroll a few seconds later.
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