Emancipated (18 page)

“Yes,” Candace said, beaming. “Definitely you. You're gorgeous. Do you realize I've never seen anyone with eyes like yours? People comment, you know.”

“They do not.” Grace felt her cheeks heat up.

“Do too.
Your sister has the bluest eyes I've ever seen. Ooh, they sparkle like crystals. Your sister's eyes! They're like blue icicles
.”

“Liar.”

“Self-absorbed geek. Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Candace said. “And I think you're being hard on Paolo, too.”

“What do you mean?” Despite herself, Grace found she was staring hopefully at Candace.

“He's not seeing anyone right now. As far as I know, he's never had a girlfriend. Not a steady one.”

Grace said, “All the better to stay available for his tennis students.”

“Or maybe he's looking for the right girl.”

“If that's true, then why go for Lucy?”

Candace frowned. “Are you kidding? She's amazing.”

“Yeah, but
he's
not exactly her type. Come on, he's practically preppy.”

“Yet ironically, Lucy is the one at a prep school.” Candace smiled.

“Not by choice. And you know what I mean.”

“Opposites attract,” suggested Grace.

“But they don't last.”

Grace could feel herself growing warmer. Candace was starting to regard her with amused suspicion. “You like him,” she concluded after a few seconds.

Grace couldn't reply.

“Yep,” Candace said blithely. “You like Paolo. I shoulda seen it coming. What does it for you? He's so
blah
.”

Grace was torn between defending Paolo's blah-ness and denying the accusation. She hesitated to go down the route of denial. She knew herself well enough to know she probably wouldn't be convincing enough. Not to Candace. Then there was the matter of having someone to confide in. Grace preferred to keep thoughts as private as these to herself, but with Paolo sharing space with them, it was getting harder and harder not to feel her resolve crumble and crack.

She could see the time coming when she'd need someone to understand her tears. It filled her with a kind of horror to picture herself on her bed, surrounded by Maya, Candace, and John-Michael, weeping like a pathetic whiny tween because some lame-ass guy wasn't giving her any attention.

Distraction. She opted for distraction.

“He said he might join Amnesty International at school,” she said, hopeful.

“Project Death Row?” Candace snorted. “Yeah. That's gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“Paolo? Sure. A real man of letters, that one.” Her sarcasm was thick.

“He's not just a jock. He wants to be a human rights lawyer, remember?”

“And he told you this when?”

“At the party,” Grace said, indignant. “You were there, for chrissake.”

“When we were
smoking
? You think that was for real?”

“
In weed-o veritas
. Don't you think?”

“Huh?”

Grace glanced sideways at Candace. “Are you saying it wasn't?”

“We were getting high. He was doing his Mr. Deep-and-Mellow schtick. How did you not see that?”

“I think he meant it. We talked about it more after you left.”

“Whatever floats your boat.”

Candace began to slide off the folding chair.

“Candace.” Grace grabbed her arm before she could walk away. “Don't tell anyone.”

“About you liking Paolo?” Candace said, raising her voice a little. “Fine.”

“I mean it.”

“Don't worry, sis. It's in the vault.”

As Candace returned to the set for the next scene, Grace wondered if she could trust her own stepsister. She glanced at her smartphone. An email had just arrived.

He called. Says he needs to see you soon. He sounded awful lonesome.

San Quentin State Prison. This weekend. She needed to get up there. It had to be possible. But how?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

VENICE BEACH, SATURDAY, APRIL 11

“Hey, Paolo. You're certainly braver than me, swimming this early.”

Grace was outside the house by the spiral staircase, waiting for a taxi, when Paolo got back from a bracing early-morning swim in the ocean. Normally he didn't swim until June, when the sun was hot enough to make the water bearable without a wet suit. But he was tired of waiting. Plus, he needed the exercise, and the memory of Darius had made him wary of the public tennis court farther along the beach.

He patted his head with the towel. “It's cold. But there's nothing like it. Although you need to watch out
for the surfers.”

Paolo watched her for a moment. Grace seemed anxious, even agitated. He suggested that she call another taxi.

“They're all busy.”

“Where do you wanna go at this hour?” he asked.

“Just to the bus terminal.”

“And then where?”

Grace hesitated slightly. “To San Quentin.”

Paolo stared. Then he remembered—Grace wrote to death row prisoners. “The prison in San Francisco? That's . . . that's like a zillion miles away!”

“I can't afford to fly.”

“You staying overnight?”

“My cousin Angela usually comes along with me to these visits, on account of me being under eighteen. She lives just outside of San Francisco. I usually stay with her.”

Grace wasn't giving much away about the reason for her sudden visit, but Paolo assumed that she was going to say good-bye to one of her prison pen pals. “That's a tough trip,” he admitted, with grudging respect. He thought about his schedule over the weekend. It wouldn't be hard to move things around. He felt instinctively that someone shouldn't have to do such a noble thing without support from one of the housemates. It would be good for him to get out of town for a while. It might even make Paolo feel good to help Grace—less like the kind of a loser who helped crooks take luxury cars off idiot rich kids.

“I'll drive you.”

Grace looked gratifyingly amazed. She stared for a second and then laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. We'll make a weekend of it,” he said.

“Sure, of course, that would be incredible! And I'll pay for the gas, I absolutely insist.”

“We could swing by San Francisco,” Paolo suggested. “I haven't been in years.”

Grace nodded, utterly delighted. After a pause, she leaned in for a tentative hug. Paolo was a little surprised at her awkwardness. Girls were usually all too ready to hug him. Grace didn't strike him as someone who had issues around personal space, either. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, the tiniest hint of suspicion flared into life. But within a second Paolo had dismissed it.

They both went inside. Grace hung out in the kitchen while Paolo dressed and packed an overnight bag. John-Michael was loafing on the couch, staring at the TV, and eating Reese's Puffs straight from the box. When he heard about their plan he sat up.

“Why don't you let me drive you both? I've got the Benz. It's a seriously cool ride up the PCH. And you know what—I've never been to San Francisco.”

Half an hour later, Paolo found himself in the passenger seat of a convertible, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway with the sun beating down. Grace sunned herself on the backseat while Paolo glanced across at John-Michael and remembered his fateful ride with Darius.

He'd tried not to think about it, to dismiss the memory, to simply move past it, but the sense of powerlessness, of being manipulated, wouldn't quite go away. In retrospect he'd folded so easily.

Maybe the only thing to do was to put the whole experience in a box marked
history
. Everything he wanted to do lay in his future, after all. The insistent little digs at his conscience were easier to dismiss when he stopped looking back, only forward.

The housemates decided to take the scenic route along the coast, up the 1. With the sun shining, they stopped briefly, at an In-N-Out just outside the city. John-Michael and Paolo shared the driving—an unexpected bonus.

But as they approached San Quentin just after two in the afternoon, the gravity of the situation seemed to hit Grace. She became even quieter than before. In the visitor parking lot, Paolo turned to her.

“You need us to come in with you?”

Grace smiled a quick, artificial smile. “No. My cousin just texted me—she's already in the waiting room. Death row, guys. It's . . . it's really not very pleasant.”

John-Michael said nothing. He'd made no bones about his reasons for wanting to come along—he wanted the excuse to visit San Francisco. But Paolo hesitated. Having come all this way, he felt that he ought to escort Grace into the prison. All that
talk
about how he wanted to be a human rights lawyer. If he backed down, he'd look like a wuss. But right now, faced with the grim reality of a lookout tower manned with snipers and the somber reception buildings beyond the high walls and razor wire, Paolo felt a sudden revulsion. He tried not to think about Darius and what they'd done together.

Grace began to climb out of the car. Paolo leapt out of the driver's seat and opened his door for her. Impulsively, he said, “I'm coming in with you.”

John-Michael looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. He slid over to the driver's seat and plugged in his earbuds. “I'll watch the car.”

“It's a high-security prison, man. You think anyone's gonna risk stealing a car from here?”

John-Michael didn't budge. “Watch out in there.”

As Grace signed in, Paolo hung back, watching. The waiting area was pretty full, a mixture of regret-laden, middle-aged women and a few tough-looking adult men; shaved and even tattooed heads seemed to be the norm. For the first time since the encounter with the Spanish tennis pro when he and Darius hustled Jimmy, Paolo was glad of his austere new haircut.

Paolo was careful not to look anyone in the eye. The atmosphere was cold and sterile. He'd imagined it would be like a hospital, but it was much worse. An undercurrent of despair ran through the place. He could barely even look at the few prison guards who wandered in and out. Paolo sank into a molded plastic chair, rifled through the magazines, and picked out
Entertainment Weekly
.

Grace waved at him from the security gate. She seemed so young and fragile compared to almost every other visitor. Then she was gone.

Paolo waited. When he was done with
Entertainment Weekly
he flicked through a
Smithsonian
, and even took a shot at
Harvard Law Review
. He didn't want to be alone with his thoughts for even a minute so he concentrated hard on every article. Finally, when he thought he'd really just about had enough and was thinking of returning to the car, Grace emerged. She looked tearful and drained. At her side was a woman in her late twenties, pale and blond, with a visible family resemblance to Grace but not nearly as pretty.

Paolo stood up. He took her into his arms without a word. This time she didn't hesitate. For a few minutes he just hugged her. Grace's cousin Angela stood by, watching discreetly, a weak smile on her face.

Paolo murmured into Grace's hair, “Was it rough?”

She nodded, brushing away a tear. “I don't like to let him see me cry. Guess I store it up for after.”

Grace's cousin stepped forward. “Hi, I'm Angela.” Paolo shook the hand she offered and gave a polite
smile as the cousin said her good-byes to Grace and left the prison grounds as quickly as possible.

Paolo watched Angela leave, then turned to Grace. He didn't know quite how to phrase his next question. He'd avoided asking it during the drive but now it seemed only fair to give her an opportunity to talk.

“Was that the last time?” Paolo asked. “You know . . . that you'll see him?”

Grace stared in confusion for a moment. Then she shook her head, clearly upset. “No,
no
. What gave you that idea? No! He's going through an appeal.”

“Hey, that's good, that's great. It must be real important to him to have you show support like this. Does he know how far you came to see him?”

She nodded, glancing at the front doors. “Of course he knows.” But she didn't seem eager to talk about her pen pal. “Can we go? I don't like to stay any longer than I absolutely have to.”

“Sure, I totally understand.”

Back in the car, John-Michael had put up the top and was nodding his head along to some music on his phone. He squinted at them through the open windows.

“Hey, buddy,” Paolo called. “We're ready to leave.”

John-Michael acknowledged them with a couple of nods. “Ready to see San Francisco by night? Get some chocolate at Ghirardelli, hang out on Fisherman's Wharf?”

“Dude, shouldn't you be hitting the Haight?”

“Oh sure, walking homosexual cliché that I am, you mean?”

“I'd be happy to go to the Haight,” Paolo said. “Except I'd get more dates than you.”

John-Michael laughed, shaking his head. “No way, King. Although you do give off an I'm-So-Not-Gay vibe that's so powerful, it's practically gay.”

Paolo laughed, too, a bit harder than was sincere. Grace was finally smiling a little. He was glad they'd been able to distract her a bit, although she seemed less relieved and more wistful than he'd have expected. If he'd been visiting someone on death row, he guessed he'd be happy to get the “good deed” over with. But obviously, after a while of writing letters, you came to care—maybe too much.

Paolo wondered if it was like that for the prisoners' lawyers. Could he ever bring himself to defend someone on death row? It had to take a huge amount of courage and resilience. Their visit had made this fact painfully clear.