I watch him push the straw through the plastic wrapper. I watch him hand the juice box back all carefully, so nothing spills, and then I continue watching as they move off down the street. Maybe he’ll reach to take her hand as they enter the crosswalk, adjust her teddy bear hat to make sure it’s on just right. When she burps, he might tell her, Now what do you say?
Then they’re gone, and I can’t say why I’m imagining this at all. The world is perilously full of dads—I’ve known that, ignored it, since I was small. I just know that I’m aching. Sadie grinds the cigarette beneath her boot, smoke feathering up.
Stepping over it, I follow her inside.
* * *
Fazes stinks, the air woolly with body heat and the stench of scrambled eggs. Huddled in my jacket, I scroll through Instagram, reflexively hitting “like” whenever an LA friend’s post appears. Pancakes and sunsets and palm trees draped in Christmas lights. Lindsay’s latest is a selfie, her turtleneck pulled up so you see only slitted hazel eyes and bedhead curls. My thumb wavers. Liking is not sufficient. A puny heart can’t say, I want to wake up with this picture. The caption is in Spanish. Weird. Lindsay rarely posts in Spanish, unless… it could be for the sake of her aunts and cousins in the DR? But she has a separate account for them, strictly PG, so why post a picture like this, in a language Peter’s too stupid to understand? I copy the text into a translation app: Why can’t I be where you are? it says. Definitely for Peter. I swipe the window away.
Meanwhile, Sadie snakes to the front of the line.
It’s kind of amazing how nobody else seems to notice her. Even if she grew five inches, and ditched the sunglasses, she’d be conspicuous. It’s like… I’m not sure. Like the same energy that twanged her down Steinway won’t let her be. Her fingers alternate between twitching a beat out on her thigh to twitching at her jacket, adjusting pins and zipping zippers. She fidgets with her shirt cuffs. She fidgets with her rings, pulling them off and on. One pings to the floor, and she dives after it, almost brains herself on the counter. Then she notices a display of chocolate-covered espresso beans and fidgets with them. Once or twice her hand jitters to the pocket where she stashed her cigarettes. Her leg jiggles. Everybody else stands patiently.
The EDM makes my head hurt. I burrow deeper into my phone, wincing at every newcomer and gust of cold that comes through the door. Sorry, my smile says. Waiting. People sidestep. Ignore me.
Finally, it’s Sadie’s turn. She pushes her sunglasses up and my heart catapults into my throat. The Mack picture. I forgot about it, taped to the espresso maker. Her back is to me. I rush the line—as much as I can rush it without getting decked—for a glimpse of her reaction. Maybe an eyelash flicker. Another quirk of her lips, but I’m too slow. Can’t even hear her order over the simmering beat. She shoves her change into her pocket and moves to the pickup area. Seizing my chance, I sneak closer. Elbows help. “Hey,” somebody says. I catch more than a few dirty looks. “Sorry,” I hiss, only I’m not. At all. They just don’t get it.
Sadie’s already sidling away. Oblivious to my creeping, she stops at the cream-and-sugar counter and pops the lid off her cup, and now I’m right behind her. Towering. Literally. While she examines sugar options, I contemplate the pale seams of her scalp.
Okay. White-girl dreads are irrefutably trashy, appropriative, messed up, but her hair’s the same color it was in those old pictures, dark as mocha. Plus an unexpected spritz of gray. She chomps open a packet of Sugar in the Raw, and without thinking, I whip my hair across my mouth.
Now or never.
Say something.
Anything.
“Um,” I try.
No response.
“E-excuse me?” The Tums turned my tongue to cement. I inch slightly left. “Sadie?”
Warily, her eyebrows rise, but she doesn’t look at me, engrossed in opening more sugar. I try again, cheeks burning. Obviously, she deals with fans, random idiots, strutting up to her all the time, acting like she owes them. “Hi, Sadie, I, um. I know we haven’t met before, but…” If only I could’ve seen the way she looked at my father back there, I’d know what to say. But I press on, mumbling through my hair curtain. “I mean. We haven’t met, like, officially, only… I’m. I-I’m K—” It won’t come out. My own name, and it sticks. “I’m—”
She glances up.
The cup plunges from her hand. Coffee splatters as she staggers backward.
“Shit! Oh God, did I bump you?” I’m a disaster. The actual worst. I fling her soggy cup into the trash. “I’m sorry, I’ll get you a new one. I just… here, let me…” The napkins are 100 percent post-consumer, unabsorbant crap, but I’ve got nearly the whole mess sponged up before she pries her hands from her face. If other customers don’t hate me yet, they definitely do now. Sadie too. She stares up at me, eyes big and black as vinyl LPs.
“I’m so sorry,” I say miserably. Without my hair covering my mouth, I feel skinned. Exposed. “What did you order? I could get you another.” I look at the line. It’s endless. “Maybe, maybe somebody will let me cut—”
A man barks at us for blocking the creamer, and Sadie snaps to, grabbing my coat cuff. I flinch, even though as grabs go, it’s gentle. Well. Gentle enough. She tows me toward the door, doing her twisting, ducking thing. I stumble to keep up. Wind blasts us when we hit the sidewalk, whipping tears into my eyes. I want to ask where we’re going, if she can slow down, I don’t know these streets, but she doesn’t seem in the mood for explaining and I’ve already said so many wrong things. At last she veers onto a side street. Releases me. I touch the indentations her fingers left in the wool.
“Sadie?” I pant.
Pivoting from me, she squats low, arm hooked around a piece of that green sidewalk scaffolding that’s as endemic to New York as pigeons and seconds-long walk signals. It seems to belong to… a pizza place? All I smell is pepperoni. “Sadie, are you…?” Her shoulders buck, and—oh God—I jerk back. Is she going to throw up? “Please don’t!” I smack my hands over my ears. “Just, just breathe, okay? Through your nose first. Deep breaths.” I walk her through my method. “In five, out five through your mouth, until the feeling goes away.” My eyes are shut, so I can’t tell if she’s listening, but I really, really hope she pulls it together because I’m no hero in the bodily fluids department. Ironically.
Another minute or two, wind sawing my cheeks, until it feels safe to peek.
Sadie didn’t throw up. She’s gripping her mouth, trembling like she’s about to, but that’s okay. As long as she’s making the effort. Her shoulders heave. In five, out five.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I say.
Sometimes talking helps. Any distraction.
“I… I wanted to… I saw this video of you online? Leaving that café? And I thought—I mean, I’ve always known who you are, like, conceptually, but…” Wait. I still haven’t introduced myself. How could I forget? Stretching a bit of hair across my mouth, I say, “Is it okay if I start over?” which is a question for a teacher, not a rock star. Either way, I have massively fucked up this presentation. “I’m—”
“Koda Rose.” Sadie says my name in the same voice as her singing one, thin and sweet but still kind of a surprise. She pulls her hand from her mouth and spits. “You think I wouldn’t know that face?”
I blink. Sadie pushes herself up, back to twitching at her pockets. “My face?” Why would… but she doesn’t go online, right? So she must not bother with gossip blogs. And they only started publishing photos of me recently. “How do you know my face?”
Her lips part. This little fissure.
“Oh.” Instinctively, I touch my mouth, but my fingertips are numb. I can’t feel him pulsing there, or anywhere.
Sadie lights a cigarette. She doesn’t ask if I mind. Backing up, coughing anyway, I hear a crunch—my boot landing in unidentified frozen ooze. “Ugh,” I say, but if Sadie registers this, she doesn’t comment. Behind the sunglasses she put on, her own face is unreadable. Snapped shu
t.
“So,” I say. “We just moved here. The other week, actually?”
She sucks the cigarette. One pin on her jacket says, I’M HERE TO HELP. Another, FUCK YOU.
“I lived in California before,” I go on. She doesn’t seem especially interested in this story, but I’m slightly oxygen-deprived and way, way more out of practice talking to people than I realized. Deep breaths. I have to remember. Deep. Breathing prevents rambling. Instead, I stammer cities. “Los Angeles. Well, Beverly Hills, technically, but then—”
“I know,” she snaps.
“Oh.” Right.
She smokes two more cigarettes, one right off the other, while I count her ear piercings. On the left alone she has seven holes, including an industrial, which I’ve secretly always wanted. Before I can stop myself, I ask, “How long did that take to heal?” Incredibly, she seems to know what I mean. She fidgets with the bar, not quite meeting my eye.
“Never really did.”
“Wow,” I say, too quickly to suppress my awe.
A blue vein hops in her throat.
Maybe it’s the cold making me light-headed, the purplish stink of her smoke, but I’m not sure what else to say. She’s a recluse, sure, but even recluses must have lives. More so than me, anyway, and here I am, eating her valuable time up with my flailing. I gaze down at my boots, trying to think of something, anything, that might salvage this. So I saw this video of you making fun of me but I actually don’t mind I actually thought it was funny Sadie how you flipped that pazzo off and I guess I was hoping, I was just hoping you could… A snap picks my head up. Sadie’s lighting another cigarette. Her fourth? Her hand trembles.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask.
Freckles. That’s all I see when she pushes her sunglasses back. She’s so pale and sweaty they spark from her cheeks. Still, as she plucks the cigarette from her lips, I decide she still is the girl from those old pictures. Minus this more recent, regrettable hair. Those lines in the corners of her eyes that tighten as she peers up at me. My tongue tingles. An impulse to say, You can get those filled in, you know. Mom does.
Thinking of Mom only makes me wobblier. I back up, jumping when my elbows brush cold bricks. Sadie ignores this, too.
“Me? Fine.” She seems about to add something but reconsiders. “Fine.”
“Oh,” I repeat, not sure where to put this information. Fine, as in, actually fine? Or fine like me, and liable to spew at any moment? The peering continues. I stand still, trying not to feel too dumb as her giant eyes bounce all over me.
Then she turns away again. Ash from the cigarette drifts between us.
My mouth opens. Words assemble. Not the right ones, probably, but direct enough, so sudden in their clarity that they startle me: Tell me about my father. But then Sadie laughs. A throaty chuckle, at a joke apparently too good to share. I look back down so she won’t see me darken.
I’m so stupid.
Sadie Pasquale is important. Taught herself guitar and ditched school to tour the world, made two hit records. Why would she bother with me? She was my father’s girlfriend, the love of his life, and I thought she’d open up, just instantly spill her guts to me about this person I never met? Who never wanted to meet me? Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to Sadie at all right now. Instead I should track down that kid I saw outside Fazes, with her dad and teddy bear hat and juice box. I know exactly what I’d tell her. Hey—someday your dad might not be everything that he is to you in this moment. He might leave or be nasty to your mom or hurt your feelings. You might find out he’s done some stuff that you won’t like. But at least you’ll have that juice box. You’ll have this one moment, this single, precious speck of proof, that he loved you.
The tears come so swift and sharp I can’t look up in time to hide them. “Sorry. I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you. Please don’t tell anybody about this. If it gets out, my mom…”
Sadie doesn’t budge. In fact, she looks kind of stricken, the cigarette smoldering between her fingers. “Your mom?”
Would tell her, Put that cigarette out, it’s bad for your face. But I’m not Mom. I’m nobody.
And that’s why Sadie doesn’t call after me when I spin away from her, and run.
CHAPTER 9
I WAKE UP PANTING SUNDAY morning, soaked in more ways than one. Charlotte again. Or Megan. My dreams don’t exactly differentiate. I squeeze a hand between my legs, get off within seconds.
By the time I scrape myself up and go into Mom’s room, it’s after seven. She should be asleep, but her bed is empty, the covers mussed. Bundling myself in her comforter, I pad toward the en suite. White carpet gives way to icy marble and tub tiles. “Mom?” My voice sounds wispy. Not quite my own. “Mom? Where are you?” At the vanity, making faces. Serious. Somber. Sultry.
She squawks when I throw my arms around her. Too easy to sneak up on—even with a mirror.
“Koda!” She looks flustered. It’s been a while since I caught her checking for cracks. “What did I say about scaring me like that?”
“Good morning to you, too.” The joke scrapes out, not that Mom notices. She squashes her cheek briefly against mine, then scoots over, making room for me on the padded bench. I sit, and the mirror shows me a puffy down chrysalis. Two new zits. Mom wipes a thumb across her eyebrows.
“There’s nothing there, Mom.” The vanity lights even my pimply morning face to perfection.
“I was just—”
“No. You’d have to be like, Nana Blackwell’s age to get an eyebrow wrinkle.”
That makes her laugh. “Nana isn’t so old, you know.” But she drums her fingertips against her lips, thoughtful. My eyes wander.
One thing I wonder about Sadie, even though I shouldn’t wonder about her anymore: Does she have any Mack pictures I haven’t seen? On her nightstand maybe, or the walls? Because Mom’s vanity would be a good spot for one. She could put it next to our favorite of us, taken when I was still little enough to kiss her on the lips. Other photos stuck around the mirror are pretty random—she’s either supremely pregnant or riding a sleek palomino horse. Buster, his name was. From her rodeo queen days. I make myself point to him.
“Remember that trip we took to Zap, and you let me ride Buster all by myself?”
She smiles a little. “That was so long ago.”
“You taught me how to make him go backward.” My arms feel seaweedy, but I push them from the comforter, fists loose, like I’m holding reins. Mom turns them so my thumbs are on top. “I knew that,” I say.
Mom quit dragging me to North Dakota when I was five, for lots of reasons, I guess. Mostly the custody battle, which Mom never mentions but basically involved my grandparents deciding LA was a bad place for me. Too much smog, not enough Jesus. Anyway, we haven’t been to Zap since that. I still think about it sometimes, though. Not Nana or Grandpa Blackwell—I have only sketchy memories of them—but the sky at the ranch, and the grass stretching beneath it for miles and miles, like it’s a race to see which can go on the longest. Maybe Mom’s thinking about that too. She covers my hand.
“Honey.”
I really screwed up yesterday.
“Koda, look at me. You’re acting funny. You’ve been acting funny for days. Did something happen? Why are you wearing this?” She tugs the comforter, releasing a cloud of lotion scent, her warm, sleepy smell. I clutch it tighter. “Koda, please. Tell me.” She frowns. My jaw thumps with what I can’t say.
If Mom had been honest. If she’d told me she hated Sadie because she was impossible to read and kind of rude, I wouldn’t have looked her up in the first place. But she didn’t. So now we’re here, and where there should be excitement at having Mariah Black all to myself, there’s disappointment and guilt and the same parts on shuffle: twitchy fingers, cigarettes. My own name lodged in my throat.
You think I wouldn’t know that face?
“What can I do, Koda?” Mom rubs my shoulder. “You still haven’t made up with Lindsay? Is that it?”
/>
“No.” I fidget. How did she know we’re still not speaking? “That’s not it, Mom, I…” Helpless, I scan the vanity. Her makeup is arranged by function. More brushes and bottles, powders and serums, than I’ll ever know what to do with. A tube of fine-line eraser catches my eye. The shiny pink reminds me of something we might eat on her cheat days, full-fat and creamy. Mom watches me roll it between my palms. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell the truth about Lindsay. To go back to a time when she was my only problem. “It’s just”—where to begin?—“I feel like… I don’t know. Ever since she started dating Peter, she’s been—”
“Friends get boyfriends, Koda. That’s part of life.”
My eyes boil. Frustration tears. I try again. “I know that, Mom. I’m not stupid—”
“What did she think of your pictures?”
My…? It takes a second to realize what she means. The pictures. From the leak. “You said we’re reshooting them,” I remind her.
“Oh, absolutely. The velvet, that cigarette, it’s all wrong.” Mom says this all so succinctly. The matter settled, brushed quickly aside. “But the photos are still of you. So what did Lindsay think?”
“I don’t know.” Incredibly, I haven’t devoted a single byte of brain space to worrying about whether Lindsay saw them. Of course she did. Maybe she even texted me about them, texts that I instantaneously swiped away. “I—I’m sure she likes them. But that’s not the point. It wouldn’t change anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” More pressure behind my eyes. “If she liked my pictures, thought I looked beautiful or hot or whatever, it’s because we’re friends. Because she’s trying to be supportive. It’s not proof that she wants to date me.” A subtle shift in Mom’s expression; she’s searching for a way to refute this. But I know there’s not. I know because that night on the beach, my last night in LA, Lindsay touched her forehead to mine and whispered, You are going to meet so. many. girls. in New York.
The Mythic Koda Rose Page 6