The Mythic Koda Rose

by Jennifer Nissley

  “It is really warm down here,” I admit. Cue my ugly, bleating laugh. “Stupid warm.” The greatest city in the world, and it’s not even climate-controlled.

  When Sadie starts dozing, my mouth thwarts me again.

  “You can put your head on my shoulder. If you want.”

  The weight surprises me. I dimly recall learning that human heads weigh ten to eleven pounds, which I can now officially verify. I take a swim breath. Let it out nice and slow, like I have tons of practice having people fall asleep on me. Or at least wishing Lindsay would.

  The train gets held up for a while at some place called Brook Avenue, and when it resumes moving, the motion jars Sadie awake. “God,” she mumbles, thumbing her chin, “drooled a river on you. I’m sorry.” No prob, I tell her. I genuinely don’t care. She resumes picking at the pot sticker. I pick with her—coaxing a corner up until all that remains stuck is the “4” in “4/20.” Sadie squeezes my hand. “Enough.”

  I nod and she smiles, like maybe she thinks her voice came out too firm. But I understand completely. Disrespectful, downright sacrilegious, to destroy what he put there.

  And then—because we have a while until we need to get off, and the car is practically empty and I think both of us are wishing this ride would never end—our hands just stay together. For a second, I don’t move, afraid this is an accident. Afraid she doesn’t notice what we’re doing or worse, that she will at any moment, and take her hand away.

  CHAPTER 19

  LINDSAY DYED HER HAIR BACK to its natural black. When she dives into the backseat, I get a whole mouthful of it.

  “Surprise!” she screams. “You like?”

  I promise I do, and she pulls me into another hug. The car starts moving.

  “My dads helped me with it before we left for LAX this morning. It was like, beyond last minute.”

  We’re still hugging, my chin smashed against her shoulder, her hair teasing my nostrils, chemical-stiff. It smells vaguely like bathroom cleaner. Like dye streaming into her dads’ precious quartz sink that time she absolutely needed to go purple freshman year, and we got in so much trouble. I remember reading the directions out loud as she hunted for a suitably crappy towel, praying she wouldn’t notice my hands trembling as she guided them to her scalp. Help me rinse?

  I pull back. We’re jammed up with airport traffic and Lindsay laughs, shoving me. I laugh too.

  “This is wild,” she keeps saying, pressed up against the window. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m actually here. I’ve never been to New York. You knew that, right? Nobody at school would believe me when I told them that. Like, how is it that I’ve been pretty much all over the country, but never to New York? My whole family’s losing their minds.”

  Her excitement makes the eels that have been slithering inside me since last night relax slightly. I barely slept. Barely choked down breakfast. But now, despite all that, the first flashes of heartburn I’ve experienced in weeks, I shake my head, grinning. “I know everything about you.”

  “Oh.” She grins back. “Right.”

  Traffic loosens, and we roll down the ramp toward the highway through scraps of leftover fog. It’s obvious I should say something else. Something to keep the flirtation going, if flirting is what we’re doing. Except my heart thuds so loud even a passing semi can’t drown it out.

  “So,” Lindsay continues, flopping back against the seat, “what are we doing first?”

  It’s just that I know how talking goes. Not being able to speak until suddenly you are, words gushing, washing yourself and everybody you love away in a torrent of anxiety. It’s like I haven’t thought about what to do together at all. Like I didn’t whisper the details to my pillow all night.

  “It’s a surprise,” I manage.

  Lindsay says skeptically, “You hate surprises.”

  “Not this one. And…” An invisible force grips my throat. “Y-you like them. You’ll like this one.”

  Her grin widens.

  The eels slink back.

  If I’d decided to leave the house with my black lipstick after all. If I’d worn the new clothes, the ones Sadie found for me. Then I’d have the courage.

  Slyly, Lindsay pokes my arm. Beneath her fingernail, my flesh tingles. Electric goose bumps.

  Don’t tell her how you feel, this voice in my head urges. My father’s voice. But you have to, he says, answering himself. Do it afraid, remember? Two throaty scratched-up whispers.

  Seventy-two hours to make a decision. To choose one side of this line Sadie has drawn, that he drew, between dishonesty and truth. What if that’s not enough time to work out the solution, what he would want me to do?

  “Well,” Lindsay says, taking her nail away, “you’d better have some big plans to justify… I don’t know, how ridiculously MIA you’ve been lately? Did you even look at the links I sent you?”

  I swallow. “Yeah, yeah, totally, it’s just all that touristy stuff is—”

  “Wait! Did you see the one about—”

  Inauthentic.

  “Hold on, let me find it…”

  A waste.

  “Here! Okay.” Lindsay thumbs rapidly through her phone. “It’s that thing where you can basically see the whole city from Top of the Rock, I think the building’s called? Is that the surprise? Tell me”—she holds her phone to my face—“seriously, because if it is, I’m going to die”—the text blurred compared to her shiny gold jacket that Peter told her was ugly, those spirals of hair fizzing all around her cheeks. I glance away, and when I look back, Lindsay’s still vibrating with anticipation, my resolve in pieces. Light-headed, I lean over her to point out landmarks as we inch down the parkway. Empire State Building. Chrysler Building. One World Trade. From this angle, it’s easy as looking at a postcard. The whole island laid out in diorama mode.

  “Wild,” she repeats. “I can’t believe you can see them all at once like this. Just, chilling there across the water. Where are we now?” I explain that I don’t know the name of the neighborhood, exactly. But the airport is in Queens.

  “Queens. Got it.” She strains against her seat belt, riveted by the view. When we cross the Triborough Bridge, she cracks a window. More hair whips from her bun. “That flight was unending, Koda, I’m not kidding. Six hours! And you know what’s crazier? You could fly from New York City to London in about that time. Papá told me.”

  I lean away from her lashing hair, furious with myself for not having something to add to this by now. Something like, Well, my father would’ve known all about travel times and airplanes too. Of all the questions I’ve asked Sadie, why didn’t I think of this one? They traveled all over the world together.

  Automatically, my thoughts pull to her. What she’s doing today, and where, with who… if she’d just freaking answer the texts I sent on the way to the airport, I might know. But here I am, stuck speculating. Studio again, probably. Em. Knocking seltzer cans over with their hands as they argue.

  I look over to see Lindsay tipping her head back, taking deep, ecstatic breaths of pollution.

  I’ll introduce them by explaining, Sadie’s the reason we don’t need to see New York.

  Sadie is New York.

  “Oh man, I almost forgot.” Lindsay grabs her phone. “Insta stories. I swore to my little cousins that I’d…”

  This will go okay. I know it will. Yesterday, Sadie said, You crush me. She swirled her scratchy thumb on my palm.

  “Koda? Ready?”

  Lindsay smushes close, holding her phone up. My body thumps.

  “Should we do nice?” she asks. “Or wild?”

  I hesitate. Are those not allowed to be the same thing?

  She whacks me. “Okay, no, you are so not starting with the overthinking. I’m declaring it now, this is an overthinking-free weekend. Therefore”—she clears her throat—“we’ll each do what we want on the count of three. One, two—”

  We both stick our tongues out, like Sadie and my father in all those old pictures.

&nbs
p; * * *

  Mom hugs Lindsay almost longer than I did when we stop by her office to say hello. Squeezes her arms, tells her how great her new hair looks, while I suck the end of my braid.

  “I thought we could all do dinner tonight,” Mom says, leaning back against her desk. Wearing those beige suede boots that go past her knees, hair arranged in a fist at her nape. “Around—let’s say six? I’m getting myself out of here early. That’s a promise.” Lindsay says dinner sounds awesome—can we do Greek?—and I force myself to agree, even though dinner won’t give us much time with Sadie.

  “Fantastic.” Mom claps her hands. “I’m sure we could find a great Greek place. I’ll have my assistant”—she rummages around the paperwork on her desk, peeks under her laptop—“text you the address. Do you girls have any plans in the meantime? It looks beautiful out there, with the… with…” She picks the laptop back up, like the word she’s searching for might be hidden beneath it. Then she sighs. “The sun.”

  “Not really,” I reply at the same time Lindsay says, “Koda won’t tell me.”

  Mom lowers the laptop, a question revolving in her eyes. I think quickly.

  “Down in Brooklyn. The aquarium. It was supposed to be a surprise, but now…” I heave a shrug, acting super put out until gradually, her suspicion passes. She pats my arm.

  “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to spoil it. You went there recently, right?” To Lindsay, she adds, “I’m sure you’ll both have a really nice time.”

  “Definitely. I love aquariums.” Lindsay glances at me.

  Back on the sidewalk, I draw her aside. “Can you keep a secret?”

  The light is sharp like it only gets on winter afternoons, lemon juice in our eyes. Lindsay’s wearing a scarf. She only put it on once Driver dropped us off at the office, a hilarious ordeal that involved popping her suitcase open, a whole ski trip’s worth of scarves tumbling onto the crosswalk before she found the right one. Now she squints at me from behind it.

  “Did you seriously just ask me that?”

  Okay—stupid question. But this is an extremely sensitive situation. “We’re not going to the aquarium, Linds. We’re going… Just trust me that my mom will flip if she finds out. Okay? And I don’t mean like, yell a bunch and take my phone away for the night. We’re talking ground me to freaking infinity here. So you have to promise…” Her mouth crumples. I rush on. “You can’t tell her where we’re going, or that the person I’m about to introduce you to is… Don’t tell my mom that we know each other. Basically, just—don’t mention this person. At all. Ever. My mom hates her. Like, hates her, and if she knew about us, she’d never let me see her again. So promise. Promise you won’t say anything to her.”

  “Hates who?” Lindsay demands. “You’re not making sense.”

  The scarf is the same cashmere one she piles on any time temps in LA dip below 70. It’s chillier than that today—30 at least, not that there’s time for specifics. As I lean to whisper in Lindsay’s ear, the fabric brushes my mouth.

  When her eyes meet mine, they’re enormous.

  “For real,” I confirm. Pride swells up in me. Overwhelming, practically tidal. If I’d known Lindsay would be this astonished, I wouldn’t have kept Sadie secret for so long.

  Lindsay looks down, gnawing her bottom lip like she did in middle school. “But how did you meet her? Did… why… I mean, if your mom doesn’t want you hanging out with Sadie—”

  “Shh!” I cover her mouth.

  Her eyes are even wider now, so big that you can see the brown flecks that make them hazel. Warmth oozes against my fingers as she whispers, “If your mom doesn’t want you hanging out with her, don’t you think that’s a bad sign?” She licks my palm and I squeal, flailing away. “Seriously, Koda.”

  I shake my head, pushing my irritation down, my disappointment. This was not the reaction I expected. “That’s exactly why we should be hanging out. One of like, a million reasons.”

  “Parents say those things for a reason,” Lindsay insists. “I mean, yeah, it’s super annoying, but she’s only looking out for your best interest—”

  Best interest? I laugh. “My mom’s too selfish.”

  Her eyes flash. “It’s selfish of you to say that.”

  Please. Like I need another one of Lindsay’s hypocritical lectures about family. Like she’s some authority just because she’s got not just parents, but nieces and nephews and little cousins, grandparents she actually gets to visit, even if it’s only a couple weeks out of the year. She still disobeys her dads, sneaks out, smokes, gets caught, all the time. But pointing this out will only start a fight. I move off down the street, saying, “This situation with Sadie is different. You’ll see when you meet her.”

  The sidewalk is crowded, full of people walking too slowly, with too many bags. We’re on the west side, but my phone should know the fastest route across town. I swipe and swipe, hunting for a landmark that’ll bring us closest to the studio, whose address I probably should’ve memorized by now. Lindsay shouts questions at my back. “Huh?” I turn around. Some old church—would that be nearby?

  “Your friends,” she enunciates slowly. “When do I get to meet them?”

  Sunlight jags into my eyes. I throw a hand up to shield them. “Sadie’s my friend.”

  Lindsay’s cheeks are pink from the wind. She shoves a bit of hair behind her ear, only for it to spring back immediately. “What about that one girl?” she says quietly. “Your not-girlfriend?”

  The sound that scrambles out of me is not quite a laugh, but close enough.

  A woman carrying a yoga mat pushes between us. It’s yellow, with a print of cats eating pizza that Lindsay stares at long after the woman has disappeared around the block.

  “I was with Sadie when you said that,” I explain.

  Her eyes zap to me.

  I add weakly, “ ‘Assume’ makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ ” An infuriating Momism, but easier than reminding Lindsay that Sadie was my father’s girlfriend. That she’s actually easier to love than you’d think.

  My ears are scalding, Lindsay’s a little red too. Like we share this genetic weakness against anything too embarrassing or cold. Quickly, to stop her mouth from crumpling more, I tell her all I’ve held on to about Sadie. Like how cool she is, and funny. I tell her about when we went thrifting together, laughing so hard—real laughter—that there’s hardly any room for the story, Sadie scribbling all over me. I explain, in hi-def detail, every last glorious instance of her comparing me to my father, how we held hands on the subway yesterday, and when I finally come up for air, Lindsay has moved away from me, turtled so deep into her scarf I can’t see her mouth at all.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE ELEVATOR GROANS. I STAB the up arrow repeatedly, instructing Lindsay to ignore the sign.

  “You mean the one that says ‘out of order’?” she asks, gazing around the dusty lobby.

  “Yeah”—I hit the button some more—“it still works most of the time, so. We take our chances.”

  “We?”

  “Sadie and me.” At last, a ding. The doors shuffle open. “Who else?” I say as we squeeze inside.

  “I guess this is just a lot of information to take in all at once? First you tell me that you met your dad’s ex, that you’ve been friends, or something, for two months, and now suddenly you’re a ‘we’?”

  “I told you, we hang out all the time. What else would we be?”

  Lindsay shrugs. Shrugs again when I motion for her to push the button for the fifth floor, which, okay—I’ll press it. Since moving to New York, operating an elevator by myself has become an unexpected luxury. A poster behind Lindsay’s head explains basic first aid. I stare at it as we ascend, the elevator sighing old-dog sighs. Lindsay fiddles with a thread on her sleeve.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

  My leg jiggles. This is taking forever? A literal eternity? We’re going to the fifth floor. Not Saturn. “I don’t know.”

&
nbsp; “Bullshit, Koda, of course you know. So spill. Why?”

  My turn to shrug. When is it my turn to interrogate her? I’ve got lots of questions. Like why, in the two hours since she’s arrived, it’s starting to feel like that’s how long we’ve known each other. Two hours, two minutes, instead of four years. I don’t recognize her attitude, or the way she’s twisted up her hair, the look she’s giving me… anything. Behind her, a genderless cartoon person clutches their throat, which words along the bottom claim is the international symbol for “choking.” I don’t know what this poster is doing in a music studio elevator. I don’t know why I can’t just tell Lindsay that okay, yeah, maybe I am selfish, a coward, but this freaking inquisition alone justifies hoarding Sadie all to myself. “She values her privacy,” I say pathetically.

  Lindsay shoves more hair behind her ear. Jealous, obviously.

  The doors ding, launching my heart even higher into my throat. Everything here reminds me of Sadie, whispers, almost there—the shabby carpet and beige walls that Lindsay eyes suspiciously, her lip between her teeth. Even the woody pencil smell is totally Sadie, not that I have any way of explaining that as we approach the tiny writers’ room at the end of the hall. Maybe it’s pervy to notice how somebody smells. Dangerous. Like I couldn’t mention the pencil thing without also confessing, You know, like how chlorine reminds me of you?

  Pressed against me in the narrow hall, Lindsay doesn’t smell very chlorinated anyway. Only slightly minty from the gum she must’ve chomped on the plane. A sign taped to the door says DO NOT DISTURB!!!!!! in rose-gold Sharpie. I’m about to knock when Lindsay covers my hand.

  “It’s different,” she says.

  “What is?”

  “Deciding not to tell your mom, whatever, that’s your business, but if you can’t tell me, your best friend, that you’ve met someone, shouldn’t that be your biggest clue that maybe something’s wrong? I don’t like this, Koda. It’s weird. Just like, weird vibes. Your dad wasn’t even on good terms with her by the end. Everybody knows—”

  Rage riptides me. “Don’t talk about him,” I hiss. We’ll get kicked out of here if we don’t keep our voices down. “Don’t tell me what he was or wasn’t. You don’t know, okay? Nobody knows. Only Sadie—”