All Night Long (12 page)

When she climbed out and toweled off, her stomach grumbled. That hadn't changed from Amazonia. Swimming always gave her an appetite. She pulled on the same clothes she'd been wearing, then padded up to the main house to find something delicious. She went in through the back door.

Nothing could have prepared her for who she saw in the living room, sitting on the buttery Italian leather sofa next to her aunt.

It was her mother arrived, unannounced, from the Amazon.

Lydia raced for her mom's arms. Karen Chandler hugged her daughter, looking as if she could have stepped directly from the jungle. She wore bush shorts and a T-shirt advertising Coke—her
mother never paid any attention to what she wore. Her thick blond hair was frizzing out of a messy ponytail. Lydia didn't think she'd ever seen anyone so beautiful in her life.

“Mom!”

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Oh Mom,” Lydia murmured. “This is the best surprise.”

Karen smiled. “I got a FedEx from Kat.”

“FedEx? When did FedEx start delivering up the river?” Lydia was shocked. This would change life in the Amazon completely.

“About a week after you left, actually. They run a boat three times a week from Manaus. Costs a fortune. But I think they're using it in an advertisement.”

“I know it was selfish of me,” Kat said. She looked pale. There were dark circles under her eyes.

“Hey, I'm glad my little sister still needs me sometimes,” Karen said.

Looking at them sitting together, it was so obvious they were related. They shared the same eyes, same hair. Even their body frames were near identical.

“How long will you be here?” Lydia was still in a state of shock.

Her mother shrugged. “As long as I need to be.”

Kat smiled gratefully. “Take your mom upstairs to the green bedroom, okay? It's got the best shower. Eight showerheads.”

“Heavenly.” Karen sighed. “I'll just take a shower and then come back down, okay?”

Kat nodded. She already seemed lost in thought.

Lydia led her mother down the hallway. “Won't Dad need an
assistant?” She grabbed her mom's bag—a single dusty, battered canvas backpack.

“You remember Dr. Butkowski, don't you?”

How could Lydia forget? Right before she left, he was the well-meaning doctor whose introduction to the world of tribal medicine via a time-honored Amarakaire scrotum-cupping exchange probably left him permanently sissified.

“He came back,” Karen explained. “He's working with your father now.”

“Him?” Lydia was shocked. “Boy, I would've bet big bucks that he'd go running back to civilization faster than an Ama covered with honey when the black flies hatch.”

Her mother laughed as they made their way up the grand staircase. “You never know.”

Lydia gave her mother a quick version of the grand tour. The last time Karen had been in Los Angeles, Kat and Anya had lived in a different house, so this was entirely new to her. The kitchen, the sunroom, the game room, the sitting room, the indoor/outdoor back porch, the TV and media room, the family room, the formal living room, the formal dining room—all of it drew appropriate oohs and aahs from her mother. But her mom was most impressed by the library, where Anya kept her rare Russian novels, and where Lydia's hand trailed over a signed first edition of Dostoyevsky's
The Idiot
.

Her mother rubbed a forefinger along the book's spine. “This is so hard on Kat. She and Anya have been together forever.”

“Between you and me, Mom? I can't stand the bitch.” She led her mother down the hall to the green guest room.

“I couldn't stand her either, sweet pea,” her mom confessed,
falling back into her southern drawl as easily as Lydia had. “Every time Kat talked to me, I knew she wasn't really happy. She was like a serf in her own house, which is a bunch of heavy-handed, draconian horse dooky. I hope you're being treated better than that.”

“Now that she's gone, and you're here … ?” Lydia smiled as she set her mom's bag on the floor next to the forest green quilt-covered king-sized bed. “Enjoy your shower. There's endless hot water. Stay in as long as you like.”

“Where are you going?” Karen asked.

“My guesthouse.”

“Good. I'll stop by after my shower. I want to hear everything. Where you eat, who your friends are, what your new school will be like … and most importantly, who's this boy Billy you wrote to me about.”

Lydia started back to her guesthouse, but before she was out the back door of the main house she heard the main landline ring. Thinking that it might be Anya, and deciding she wanted to shield her aunt from talking to the Merry Matron of Moscow, she answered it in the kitchen. “Carpenter residence,” Lydia chimed in a Scottish accent, having some fun at Anya's expense. “ 'Ooh are ya this evening?”

“Lydia? Is that you? Man, I lucked out. Can you speak up? I can't hear you very well.”

Shit. The connection
was
bad, but there was no doubt about the voice. Luis Amador, the golf pro by day, stalker-freak by night, one-night-fling from hell.

“Luis? Why are you—how many times do I have to tell you? Just. Go. Away!”

The shaky phone line made the chuckling faint, but it was still
there. “And how many times do I have to tell you? I am always here for you. Particularly now, since you broke up with your boyfriend and need a shoulder to cry on. Or a lap to sit on. Or a—”

Lydia cringed, her knuckles turning white around the neck of the handset. What was wrong with this guy?

“It's a real sad thing when a boy cannot take no for an answer,” Lydia seethed. “Someone might think you're compensating for being on the small side. And I'm
not
talking about your height.”

Luis laughed. “We both know that isn't true.”

Shit. She didn't remember
anything
from that night, so she'd have to take his word for it. Another tack was called for. “Billy and I are exclusive now,” she told him. “You and I had fun. But it's time to go have fun with some other lucky lady.”

“Wait. You're still going out with him?” Luis sounded stunned.

“Right,” Lydia confirmed. “So even
if
we slept together—and considering that I was too drunk to remember, which by the way, is an incredibly stupid thing to do that won't happen twice, thank you very much—the important thing is that Billy believes me. And you will never convince him otherwise.”

“Well, you might think so, bitch. You might think you're done with the past, but you know what? The past isn't done with—”

Lydia couldn't take another moment of this. She slammed the phone down, then took the receiver off the hook in case Luis planned to call back. She'd hang it back up later.

What a scumbucket he had turned out to be! If he thought he was going to intimidate her, he was messing with the wrong trained-by-a-shaman girl.

With a crack that sounded around the stadium, the referee's assistant fired the starter's pistol to end the first half. Both teams—Bel Air High School in its blue uniforms with white letters, and Echo Park in its white unis with green and gold trim— straggled off the field as the public-address announcer declared the score.

“And at the end of the first half, the score is, the Echo Park Eagles, twenty-seven, and the Bel Air Bengals, three. Please welcome the Echo Park Eagles marching band to the field!”

“Olé, olé olé olé!” The cheer went up from the Echo Park bleachers. This cheer was so familiar to Esme; they always greeted the marching band with this Spanish chant taken from the world of soccer. The utterly bizarre thing was, she was not sitting with them.

Esme was sitting with the enemy.

How many times had she looked disdainfully over at the rich
kids from the rich school and hated them, with their salon-streaked hair and their designer whatever. Their Beemers and Jeeps and hot-shit little sports cars filled the parking lot. You knew which vehicles belonged to kids from Echo Park. The rusty pickup trucks. The pimp-your-ride vans with the oversized wheels and the ghetto-blasters. And then there was the way the rich kids would look at the Echo Park kids, like they smelled bad. It had pissed Esme off so much that she'd stopped going to away games.

Only now here she was. Part of
them.

She'd arrived with Kiley and Lydia. Kiley had driven them in Platinum's white BMW 321i, and parked in the three-level parking structure north of the athletic complex. They paid the nominal admission charge and entered the vast, gleaming football stadium right out of
Remember the Titans.
Esme saw three or four girls she knew from the Echo. They cut their eyes at her; twitched their hips and whispered to one another, obviously about her. Esme told herself she didn't care—it wasn't as if she'd liked those girls when she was still in the Echo. Two of the girls, Consuela and Daisy, were in the Razor Girls and could gangbang with the best of 'em. In tenth grade, Daisy had a baby who was being raised by her mother. Consuela was in and out of juvie. Still, Esme couldn't help it. As she climbed the bleachers on the Bel Air side with Lydia and Kiley, she felt like a traitor.

Now it was halftime, and as much as she liked Lydia and Kiley, she really could not sit on the side where she did not belong another minute, even if she did go to school there. She excused herself and went around to the Echo side of the stadium, peering around, looking for her best friend, Jorge. He'd sent her a text message that he was coming to the game, but she hadn't seen him.

She slid into a seat next to Marisol, a shy girl with a long braid down her back who Esme knew from her honors English class. Marisol was also a friend of Jorge's.

“¿Qué pasa, chica?”
Esme asked, falling into the cadence of the Echo without even thinking about it.

Marisol eyed her coolly. “Esme.”

Marisol's friend Antoinette studied Esme through half-closed eyes. These girls were at the top of their class, two of the few Esme knew who would go on to college. And they didn't seem to like Esme any more than the gangbangers did.

“Have you seen Jorge?” Esme asked.

Marisol just shrugged. She two-fingered a homemade tostada from some aluminum foil and took a bite. Esme's mouth watered. Evidently Marisol had brought food made by her mother, who had a job in Santa Monica cooking for a famous movie director and his actress wife. A real job, because she'd actually been born in the United States; not an off-the-books-because-she-was-illegal job.

“How you like Gringo-land?” Antoniette asked.

How
did
she like it? How could she explain that it was wonderful and horrible at the same time? Over here the people looked like her. Dressed like her. Talked like her. Over here, she didn't have to feel strange about using Spanglish if she wanted, or even a word in Spanish if the Spanish word was better than an English one.

“It's okay” was all she finally said.

The Echo Park cheerleaders finished their cheer. Across the stadium, the Bel Air kids rose and cheered as one: “That's all right, that's okay, you're gonna work for us someday! That's all right, that's okay, you're gonna work for us someday!”

“Charming,” came a familiar male voice that Esme would have known anywhere. She looked up. Jorge was standing in the aisle regarding her. “You slumming it?” he added.

She took in his familiar lanky frame and piercing dark eyes. Just seeing him made something inside her relax. He was the smartest person she knew; a poet, a rapper, a political organizer. Plus, he knew her better than anyone else in the world.

Jorge wore black jeans and a blue T-shirt. His hair had grown since Esme had last seen him, and he had it slicked back on his head. Not nearly as tall as Jonathan, nor as well built, but he was still very handsome. In fact, Esme thought he'd never looked better.

“Makes me not want to sit over there. Ever.” Esme's eyes were dark.

“You really wanna define yourself by where you sit?” Jorge asked.

Esme shrugged. “Why not? Other people do.”

“Oh, well then,” Jorge mocked, a smile tugging at his lips.

Just looking at him made her realize how ridiculous she sounded. She watched the Echo Park band step onto the field wearing their familiar green and gold uniforms.

“So.” Jorge shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You don't call, you don't write,” he teased.

“I've been busy,” Esme said.

“Jonathan?”

“Work,” Esme replied. She didn't really like talking with Jorge about her love life. He hadn't approved of Junior, her former boyfriend. And she was sure he wasn't high on Jonathan, either.

“And soon school,” he added. He tugged her away from
Marisol and Antoinette, who were listening in on their conversation while pretending not to. “Your parents are right, you know. This is a huge opportunity for you. Don't blow it.”

“I don't need a third parent,” Esme said crossly, tossing her hair off her face.

“Good, because I'm not in the market for a daughter,” Jorge shot back. “The whole teen-dad thing is highly overrated.”

“No shit,” Esme agreed. She knew many teen dads, the vast majority of whom did not parent their kids. It always came down to the mom, age sixteen, fifteen, even fourteen, often with the help of her mom or grandparents. That, along with gangbanging, was the life Esme vowed she would never live.