The Mythic Koda Rose

by Jennifer Nissley

  The girl repeats, “Fin whales?”

  “Current numbers, future estimates, I had a proposal all typed up, was going to use the data as part of my application for UC Santa Barbara’s marine biology program—it’s the best. Not just in California. The entire country. But then my mom’s job transferred her out here, so.” Assuming that’s enough of an introduction, I force my head up. Next question.

  Sunglasses Girl turns to her friend. “Of course Koda doesn’t know Sadie. Mack never even went and met her when she was a baby.”

  Now everybody’s gone quiet, the cafeteria a sea of blinking eyes. Her friend looks at me. She’s a redhead too. “Is that true?” she demands.

  I nod. This one’s easy. “I guess he was just too busy, or whatever.” Sandwich annihilated, I gather the scraps, then shove them into the baggie—Sunglasses Girl and her friend can sit with me if they want—but the hush around me has chilled. One by one, the faces slide away.

  A boy in the back mutters, “Weak.”

  CHAPTER 4

  DOORMAN SEAN ASKS HOW SCHOOL went while we wait for the elevator. I pull my hair over my mouth when I answer, even though Mom says that’s rude. “Good.”

  He smiles.

  The Magazine found us our apartment, too. In the lobby, a fully bedecked Christmas tree twinkles beside the world’s puniest menorah. Floor numbers tick off overhead as the elevator makes its slow plunge downward. 32, 31, 30… In Beverly Hills, we had a front door. Our own keys. Here Doorman Sean grants access to our floor, and rides the elevator with me, all the way up to the top. It opens onto the so-called great room, which has the most dizzying views of the skyline. Then he touches his hat—“You have a good evening, Miss Grady”—and the doors slurp shut. Instead of heading for the room that will never feel like mine, I slump at the breakfast bar, watching the city glitter. Eighty-five floors, and our building still isn’t the tallest, not by miles. Another reminder of how one-level California was.

  The school nurse wouldn’t let me hide in her office. Not for third period. Not even until the end of lunch. She tapped the COMPLAINT box on the clipboard, which I’d left blank while signing in. I see no reason you can’t go to class, she said. Like my stomach didn’t really hurt. Like I was just expected to write, I want my mom.

  The late pass she scribbled for me was Pepto pink. I waited until she turned away to crush it in my fist.

  The rest of school wasn’t any better. I returned to lunch, bracing for round two of the question barrage, only to discover my table empty. Sunglasses Girl and her friend were nearby, picking at sushi, and I felt like going up to them and explaining, My best friend, Lindsay, and I used to play her dad’s old Guitar Hero game all the time. Just to see if that counted.

  Fourth period was Latin. Like, one-sixteenth of what the teacher put on the board made sense. In AP bio, somebody made a whale noise.

  My nose prickles and I sit straighter, wiping it hard on my sleeve. If I texted Lindsay right now—if I weren’t a pathetic coward—she’d answer, Forget them. Those kids are just jealous bc their parents all do boring shit lol. Tomorrow, she’d make rounds of the cafeteria with me: Your dad—banker or lawyer? A ruthless, informal poll. But that’s Lindsay, who is confident, and blond, and everything else I’m not. I nibble my sweatshirt cuff.

  The last time I saw her was the night before we moved. We went to the beach, but it was too chilly to swim, even in our one-pieces, so we found a bench and talked for hours. Lindsay kept saying how much she was going to miss me, that without me school would be shit and home would be shit, her dad making her dance with him all weekend, blasting his old-ass bachata records. Don’t get me wrong, I love bachata. I love dancing. She elbowed my ribs, grinning. I love teasing you for not knowing how to dance. I should’ve elbowed her back, rolled my eyes, anything. We both knew she could barely keep up with her dad either. But all I could think about was our toes touching, snuggled up under the sand.

  Now I slide off my stool, leaving my phone facedown on the counter. Something must be seriously wrong with me. I can’t stay away from windows. The city’s glare whites me out. Undeterred, I roll my shoulders back, throw my arms out like my father’s in that one picture, only it doesn’t look right—either because I truly am this uncool, or just need some bandmates to back me up. Adjusting angles, I touch my fingertips to my lips like there’s a cigarette between them. If I showed up in different clothes tomorrow? Except I don’t own nearly enough black. “Fuck you,” I practice saying, my voice sharp and clear. “I bet half you idiots never met your dads either. I bet plenty of them are dead too.” But saying something over and over can’t make it true. I’m the dad-less anomaly here. The outlier.

  Usually Mom texts when she leaves the office, but when my phone pings at 7:23, it’s only a gossip alert.

  KR GRADY PREFERS WHALES TO MUSIC, DAD’S LEGACY, SOURCES CLAIM

  I wonder if he hated school too.

  * * *

  When Mom comes in, I don’t look up from the box I’m repacking. My new room is repulsive, so pink it gives me a toothache—I only picked it because it connects to hers.

  “Koda? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” I pop the last of my whale posters from its frame while she perches on my bed, legs knotted tight to avoid flashing me. Today’s skirt is suede. A sensible nude.

  Carefully, she says, “I’ve already called the principal.”

  “Yeah, I heard. You didn’t have to yell.” I mean, the effort’s appreciated, but shrieking voicemails won’t stop the school she so painstakingly picked out for me from crawling with Quixote-obsessed freaks. Before today, she almost had me convinced that this school would be a good place for me. Somewhere to finish high school in safety and solitude.

  Emphasis on solitude, apparently.

  Mom runs a hand through her hair. “In the long term, I think this might actually be a positive thing for us? Corroboration for the future. I admit I’m a little surprised by the intensity of your classmates’ interest, but… it seems that… I suppose we… honestly, I don’t know what I’m trying to say, Koda. It’s been an eventful day. Let’s work on choosing friends in New York wisely.”

  The whale posters are taller than I am, divided by toothed species and baleen. I grab the toothed—my favorites—and start rolling, my hair so infuriatingly long I have to stop every couple seconds to swipe it back. “Sure,” I mutter. “Will do.” She hasn’t been home long enough to slip out of her work persona. That takes time. And chamomile. Still, it’s hard not to feel let down when she turns that ruthless practicality on me. The most humiliating day of my life reduced to bullet points. Does she not realize I’ve got the solution right here? I sit back, giving her space to see the drastic lengths I will go to in order to prevent total degradation. I’m rolling up my whale posters, Mom. Whale posters.

  She yawns, fingertips pressed to her eyelids. “I think I’ll go take a bath, okay?”

  As the door shuts, I bite off a strip of tape and slap it on the rolled-up poster. A few days from now, she’ll wander into my room and comment on it looking bare. Didn’t we pack things to put on the walls? And then I’ll tell her. In the meantime, I need to practice, so that when I confront those kids tomorrow, my excuses won’t sound made up. “I was just kidding yesterday,” I say, mouth slack, letting it frame the words. “I really don’t want to be a marine biologist. I want to be a… a…” The tape pulls free, unfurling seventy-three toothed cetaceans across my carpet. The bottom inset is a close-up: more teeth. Porpoises’ are spade-shaped. Dolphins’, conical. Most people don’t realize.

  * * *

  Turns out taking a bath means calling my lawyer. On speakerphone, not that I hear everything through the door. Occasionally, voices rise—Mom’s first, then Mr. Todd’s, trying to calm her down. I stick tape to my fingertips, then rip it off piece by piece, like the esthetician with Mom’s waxing strips. When I can’t take eavesdropping anymore, I stand slowly, stick fresh tape to every finger.

  I enter
Mom’s bedroom just as the call ends, and it’s obvious despite her casual tapping on her phone that I’ve startled her. Her mouth opens. Closes. “I thought you were in bed. It’s almost midnight.”

  “Nope. Still redecorating.” I wiggle my tape fingers, playing dumb.

  Mom sets her phone on the nightstand. The master suite is the biggest room in our new apartment, white carpet as blinding as my room is intestinal. The mossiness tickles my toes as I help Mom with the temperamental curtain controls. Only when we manage to hit the magical combination of buttons do the curtains peel back slowly, like thick mechanical eyelids. She sets the remote down, adjusting her pale blue nightgown. “So it’s that button, Koda. The red one. We’ll have to put a note on it.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  We smile at each other, kind of thinly. I don’t move as she takes my face in her hands and kisses me good night.

  Once it’s clear I’m not going anywhere, she gestures at our view. The whole apartment is wrapped in windows, and at night the city sparkles around us in 360. “Isn’t this lovely?”

  “Lovely,” I echo, plucking off the tape. Mom’s efforts at selling me on New York are getting old. Can’t she just admit that our veranda back home was superior? I miss it almost as much as I miss staircases. Our pool. Central Park is kind of neat, though. Its own constellation. I connect the dots of lamplight, steadying myself, so what I want to say won’t fall out all at once. I hate it here, I imagine confessing. I don’t care anymore about The Magazine, all the money they’re paying you, and what this means for your career. I want to go home. But how can I say that when it’s been the two of us, rooting for each other, holding each other up, since… practically forever? Like, before I was born. I mean, if you want to get technical, I had no choice but to stick by her at first, busy gestating and all, but that’s just it. I was a fantastic copilot, Mom says. Rarely kicked or complained. It sealed something between us. I’ve always known that.

  I’ve stayed silent too long. Now Mom’s working herself up again, chafing at my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Koda. As first days go, this wasn’t ideal, but you’ll be old news to those kids before you know it. You’re going to make so many friends.”

  I can’t help myself. “They don’t want to be my friends.”

  “Honey—”

  “Those kids”—where to start—“they don’t like me.” My hands burrow into my sweatshirt cuffs. “I’m not worthy, Mom.”

  Instantly, my face is back in her hands. “Why would you say that?”

  No. I touch her wrists. Don’t be mad, Mom. Logically, I get that this sort of scrutiny is about to start happening more and more. It’s inevitable. A consequence, Mom has explained, of growing up, exposing myself to a world, a public, rife with expectations. Preconceived notions not necessarily of who I am, but what I should be. Take hold of your narrative, Koda, before it takes hold of you. Coming from her, that makes sense, but in practice…

  In practice, it fully sucks.

  I am just so awkward. Fundamentally, egregiously wrong. I always assumed he didn’t meet me because he was touring, doing music things, when I was born. But he was brilliant, right? Enough to make it happen, if he wanted?

  Enough to sense from across a country, a continent, that I was no good.

  The thought explodes across my brain, white-hot. I can’t answer Mom’s question. I can’t. She wasn’t there when Photographer said that to me. Even if she had been. Even if she’d seen the sneers on those kids’ faces, heard the things they said, she would’ve brushed them off. When people give you feedback, Koda, it’s because they want to help you improve. It’d be silly to take it personally. But I’m not being silly. This is personal.

  Mom lowers her hands, oblivious, and starts hunting for bobby pins on her dresser. “Ignore them,” she urges. “Mr. Todd will take care of the gossip leaks. Moving forward, I…” She nibbles a pin open, hesitant. “I mean what I said about choosing your friends wisely. I know you know this, but not everybody can be your Lindsay.”

  Yeah.

  Well.

  Not even Lindsay could be my Lindsay.

  I stare out at the city while Mom folds her hair into a chignon. A signature bedtime look. All it takes is seven bobby pins.

  “Did you have dinner?” she asks. “I mixed tuna with yogurt earlier. It’s low-fat.”

  I shrug. Like she ever lets us go full-fat. “I’m not hungry.”

  Mom flops back onto her California king. “It’s so late, honey. You have to eat something.”

  My stomachache says otherwise. Besides, I’m already wriggling next to her, frustration shelved. I can’t spoil our ritual. The only time that’s truly ours, now that she’s in overdrive. When she announced The Magazine was changing her role, I acted happy. Rigged my mouth into a big smile, because I knew how important it was to her that she be given this opportunity. Truth is, Mom’s worked most of my life. I should know what to expect, and it’s not like I’m going to sit here and cry about some missed swim meet or science fair. That’s how fantastic a copilot I am.

  But sometimes I wish The Magazine really would go under. I picture the two of us back in Los Angeles, no more money or meetings or midnight brainstorms pulverizing her nerves. We could move into a smaller house, far up in the hills, and hang out just like this. Foreheads touching. Legs hinged off the side of the bed. She put on my favorite lotion tonight. A random favorite, since the scent doesn’t remind me of anything in particular. Just the sheen on her arms when she’s finished rubbing it in. I take a big whiff.

  Mom covers my eyes, laughing, and when her hand slides away, I move my cheek onto her comforter, to see her better. Her mention of Lindsay has me thinking. “We’re three hours ahead of LA, right?” I ask. Like I haven’t been obsessively counting back since our plane hit the tarmac. I am eating lunch, but Lindsay is just now getting up. The sunset’s stinging my eyes, but Lindsay… Mom studies me, squinting a little in the track lighting.

  “You know you’ll never adjust if you keep thinking of it like that.”

  “I know,” I tell her, but that’s exactly my problem. I don’t want to adjust.

  Not everybody can be your Lindsay. Mom doesn’t know how right she is. She doesn’t know—because I never told her, because I deluded myself into believing it wasn’t happening, even as the changes unfolded right in front of me—that Lindsay is different now. It started over the summer. One day we’re at the beach, embarking on the same tide-pool expeditions we’d gone on since seventh grade, and the next she’s all about Peter.

  I’m still not sure how she met him. At a party, she told me, but we always went to parties together, and once she finally introduced us, I couldn’t imagine him hanging out with anybody we knew from school. He’s older, for one thing. Not by much, but—enough. And a musician. A guitarist who whams notes so hard you feel them in your molars, the sole reason Lindsay gave up her swim team sweatshirt for smeary eyeliner, and tattered black everything. She says Peter is super sensitive, and totally gets her. The notch in his chin? So00o0o0o0o0 hot omg!!!!!! I once listened to her describe, step by agonizing step, how he went down on her at a party.

  That I was not invited to. That she didn’t even tell me about, until then. What do you mean “What party?” My family’s Dominican, Koda. I hear about a party, I go.

  Mom sits up, and I swallow hard, breaking the tightness in my throat. “Let’s give New York some time,” she says, fingering a piece of hair that’s come loose from her chignon. “I lived here for a while when I was your age, remember? Downtown. I hated it here at first. I was living off nothing, with six or seven other girls, all models, crammed in a single room. It was so hard, but I got used to it. You can get used to practically anything, if you put your mind to it. By the end I’d absolutely fallen in love with the city.”

  “That’s Stockholm Syndrome,” I say. Then, anticipating a Be serious, Koda frown: “You know, when you accidentally start to identify with whatever’s holding you hostage? Otherwise, the o
ther models would’ve cannibalized you or something. You don’t need to love New York, Mom. I don’t either. The air hurts my face.”

  Sighing, she palms my cheek. “Be patient. That’s all I ask.”

  Patient? I can be that. I guess. As long as she’s right, and the kids at school will lose interest eventually. While she goes on and on, saying the things she often says about how lucky she is to have such a good kid, my attention wanders to our reflections. Her shimmery blue nightgown and miraculous legs. I’ve secretly always suspected I got mine from my father. They look so pitiful compared to hers. Spindly mozzarella.

  CHAPTER 5

  NURSE SIGHS WHEN I WALK into her office. Happy Tuesday, I almost say. My second day at this school, and she already can’t contain her joy at seeing me. “Miss Grady, you can’t come waltzing in here whenever you please. First period starts in ten minutes.”

  “I need the bathroom,” I say.

  She swivels away from her desk. Nurse uses a wheelchair. And I can tell, based on how her t’s come out d-shaped, that she’s probably from around the same area as Mom. Not North Dakota, but close. Wyoming? Montana?

  “And the regular bathrooms won’t do because…”

  Insufficient privacy: an insufficient excuse. Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with school nurses as a species to know they never, ever argue with diarrhea—all it takes is one anguished grab of my abdomen, and voilà: a personal escort. She unlocks the bathroom with a key around her wrist.

  “Wash your hands,” she says, and I swear I will, shutting the door quickly behind me.

  The bathroom smells like it looks. Gray tiles. Greasy pink soap suspended in the dispenser by the sink. I let my backpack slither from my shoulders, then sit on top of it, hugging myself. On the other side of the wall, kids laugh. Sneakers squeak. Nothing too scary. If I got up now, I could wash my hands and make it to my locker with time to spare. What vibes shall I beam down the school’s hallowed halls today? Please ignore Koda Rose Grady. Do not approach or make any sudden movements. Sounds menacing to me.