Everything Leads to You (19 page)

“Good morning,” she says through my rolled-down window. “I borrowed Morgan’s truck.”

The 110 has never been so empty as it is now, before 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but when we get to the Rose Bowl, people are already lined up to get in. I’m used to the bustling, friendly version of this flea market, the eleven o’clock version when everyone is there to make a day of it, meandering in and out of booths and breaking for burritos at the food trucks. At 5:00 a.m., though, no one is meandering. Everyone is eagle-eyed, targeting specific booths, inspecting the vintage furniture and clothing and decor and either placing them on giant metal carts or slapping
SOLD
signs on them and continuing to the next thing. These people are vintage-shop owners, ready to sell what they scavenge here for two or three times the price, or they’re decorators, furnishing the houses of private clients, or they’re from the art departments of movie studios. They, like me, are looking for what will make the set transcend an artificial invention, the addition that will make audiences believe that what they’re seeing is real.

Rebecca takes the color swatches I’ve put together for her and goes off in search of rugs for Juniper’s and George’s houses. I target the stands that sell art, still unsure of what I should be looking for. Yesterday afternoon I lay down in the middle of Toby’s living room and stared at the wall for an hour, thinking that maybe the answer would come if I wasn’t searching through magazines and online shops for it. But all I got was blankness so I called Ava, feeling more nervous than ever waiting for her to answer. I know that Charlotte is right and I shouldn’t even be hoping for anything more than friendship. But the things that I wish for are rarely within my control.

I asked her, “What do you think Juniper would hang on her walls?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, like, floral images? Because of the botany?”

“Tried that.”

“Let me think.”

I could hear her breathing in the space between raspy sentences. I tried to picture her in her room at the shelter but I didn’t know what it looked like, and honestly I couldn’t imagine Ava Garden Wilder living in a place like that.

“Family photographs,” she said. “The script doesn’t talk about her family, but she seems like the kind of person who would miss them.”

Something in that felt right to me, but unless I found models to pose as her family it would be pretty much impossible to pull off. And it isn’t the aesthetic I’m going for. I want a set that feels romantic, emotional. A place where someone would dream about a different kind of life.

Now, sifting through hundreds of pieces of art, I find something: a painting of a woman with a long neck and a soft smile.

Portraits.

It’s similar in feeling to what Ava was thinking, but has the potential to be more beautiful. Juniper will have drawings and paintings of strangers on her wall, old things found at flea markets and thrift stores. She surrounds herself with images of people so she’ll feel less alone.

Rebecca texts me a photo of three rugs with a question mark. I text back,
Yes, No, Yes.
And I visit four art stands and find six portraits that I love.

Driving back at eight with a few rugs and a chest of drawers in the bed of the truck and my portraits stacked on my lap, Rebecca says, “We watched all the audition reels last night.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nods. “Your friend is good.”

“Yeah, she is.”

I wait.

“How good?” I ask.

Rebecca smiles.

“We’ll see,” she says.

~

Ava meets me at the Hollywood Goodwill. There are thrift stores I like better, smaller spaces with carefully curated stock, but we need dirt-cheap artwork and I am willing to comb through the stacks to discover it.

“Portraits,” I tell her when we get to the corner where the art is. “The apartment is mostly blues and greens, so if anything matches that color scheme let’s be sure to grab it. But a couple pieces could pop, especially if they’re good ones; if you find a couple red pieces don’t hold back.”

“A variety of sizes?” she asks.

I nod. “They’ll all be hung together on one wall. I’m looking for mismatched styles and sizes. I already have six but could use at least ten more.”

We get to work, sifting through everything from framed band posters to amateur oil paintings. Ava starts a pile and I add to it, and I find that I like working with her. The way that she isn’t asking me what I think of what she’s finding, how she’s just moving fast and efficiently, knowing that we’ll look through them all together when we’ve finished.

“Half of these portraits are of Jesus,” she says. “I’m assuming it’s okay to skip over them.”

“That would cast Juniper in a different light.”

“
It is morning. Juniper stands before a wall full of approximately sixteen Jesuses in various sizes and styles.
”

I laugh and Ava smiles down into the stacks, working again, and I have to force myself not to look at her.

Theo is supposed to make his final callbacks today, and with every hour that passes without hearing, I am struck with both hope and dread. Hope because I know that Ava has a good chance, even though she’s an unknown, even though he doesn’t know about Clyde. She was that good. And why would Rebecca bring it up if the news was going to be bad? But I know Theo had a lot of actresses to choose from this time around, and I really want this for Ava. We don’t need another setback now when things have been going so well.

I flip through a few landscapes, an abstract in muddy browns, an old circus poster. Then I find a pen-and-ink portrait of an old man and I add it to the pile.

“Emi,” says a voice I recognize, and I turn to find Laura Presley.

“Oh, hey,” I say.

And then I remember what I wrote in her yearbook and feel a little embarrassed, because when I wrote it, I never expected to see her again.

She’s looking at Ava so I introduce them.

“That’s quite the stack you guys have,” Laura says, her eyes darting from Ava to me. She’s holding a suede jacket with fringe and a pair of pink sunglasses.

“It’s for a film I’m working on,” I say.

“Cool,” she says. I can tell she wants to see, but I don’t have time to show her everything and explain it all, so I just say yeah and smile and wait for her to walk away.

“Great finds,” Ava tells her. “I love the fringe.”

Laura looks down at the jacket as though she’d forgotten about it.

“Thanks,” she says to Ava. Then, to me, “I didn’t see you at graduation.”

“Yeah, Charlotte and I left right after the ceremony.”

“You aren’t very sentimental, are you?”

“Only about some things.” I wait for her to respond but she doesn’t, so I say, “Well, it was nice to see you.”

She laughs like she gets the point.

“Okay, Emi,” she says. She looks at Ava one more time, and then she says good-bye and walks away.

I turn back to the artwork and shake my head at Ava.

“Was she looking at me strangely?” Ava asks.

“She probably thinks we’re dating,” I say. “Laura and I went out for a while junior year.”

“Oh,” she says, and she blushes a deeper red than usual.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I just didn’t know you liked girls. Well, I thought you might, but I wasn’t sure.”

“You weren’t?” I ask, but I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. People talk about coming out as though it’s this big one-time event. But really, most people have to come out over and over to basically every new person they meet. I’m only eighteen and already it exhausts me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just figured you knew.”

She shakes her head no.

“I’ll put it this way,” she says. “When you grow up in the desert and the only people you’re allowed to hang out with are the people who go to your mom’s church, and the girl you think is in love with you turns out to not be in love with you at all, there’s a tendency to feel a little bit alone in the world.”

“But I mentioned Morgan.”

“Morgan isn’t always a girl’s name,” she says.

She locks eyes with me, her blush fading. There’s a confidence in the way she’s looking at me that makes it difficult to know what to do or say next. Especially when all the things I
want
to do and say are not the things I should.

“Yeah, well, this Morgan is a girl,” I finally say, remembering the strands of this conversation, pretending that what we’re actually talking about is Morgan and not what Morgan represents about me. “We had this on-and-off relationship for the past year, and she didn’t want to let me go, but at the same time she wanted to date other people and it was just really confusing.”

“Oh.” Ava nods in understanding and then shakes her head in sympathy, her gaze broken, her blush returning, all traces of confidence escaping.

And I realize that what I’ve said makes it seem like I want to get back together with Morgan, when I don’t. Especially not now, with Ava standing here next to me in Goodwill, a pile of portraits at her feet, her hair pulled to the side in a ponytail, a wisp of it fallen on her graceful neck, her eyes wide and vulnerable, clearly embarrassed by presuming that I’d find her attractive just because I like girls.

In the conversation we’re not having, the one that actually isn’t about Morgan at all and is instead about Ava and me, I would be saying,
When you look at me this way I want nothing more than to kiss you
. I would be saying,
Maybe I did know you figured I was straight. Maybe it felt safer that way
. I would be saying,
Could this be a good idea—you and me?

Instead I say, “But I finally got over her.”

Ava, looking at the bin of small pieces of art instead of at me, asks, “Do you see her a lot?”

“Yeah. She’s working on the film. She kind of got me the job.”

“How can you do that? I don’t know what I’d do if I had to see Lisa again.”

I shrug. “You’re probably still in love with Lisa,” I say. And then, “I’m ready for something new. Someone new, I mean.”

She reaches into the bin, moves a few framed pictures aside. I can see a smile tug at the corners of her mouth but she still doesn’t look at me. She lifts out a small portrait of a woman in a thin green frame.

“I’m not in love with Lisa,” she says.

A buzz comes from inside her purse. She sets the portrait on top of the pile and pulls out her phone.

“Hello?” she says, and then she turns to me, her hand flying to her mouth. “Yes,” she says. “Hi, Theo.”

I stare at her with my eyes wide, not breathing until she says, “Yes, of course I’m still interested. Yes, I can come right now.”

She hangs up.

“They want me to come in and read for the part. I can’t believe this.”

“You’re perfect for it.”

She laughs, incredulous.

“I have to go. But wait! Let’s take a picture first. Who would have ever imagined that my life might change while digging through art bins at Goodwill?”

She reaches into her purse, saying again how she can’t believe this is happening. But I can. This is what was supposed to happen, what needs to happen. It’s one of the steps that leads to the happy ending I imagined for her at the Chateau Marmont, the character doing what she didn’t know she was capable of, an early hint that the film you’re watching is of the life-affirming kind.

And I’m wrapped up thinking of the scenes that will follow: Ava on set, embodying Juniper. The press conferences and business lunches. The red carpet and first screenings. Some minor setbacks to temper the triumphs, moments of stillness and of action. She’s the perfect person to be cast into this life: so beautiful and kind, so sad beneath all of that charm. Ava’s holding her phone out in front of us, not just celebrating a moment but making it into a scene the way a perfect character would.

But
.

A character in a movie doesn’t startle you with a tight grip on your waist when you imagined she’d have a lighter one; she doesn’t smell like the morning, or press her soft face against yours, so close that you feel her eyelashes against your cheekbone as you pose for a photograph together, tilting the phone up for the best light, pulling it farther back to get the setting, working on the composition so the clutter of the shop frames the photograph but together, in the center, are both of you.

Chapter Fourteen

“Do we need real dinner?” Ava asks when she appears in my doorway a few hours later. “I feel like baking a cake.”

A grocery bag is propped on her hip. I peer inside: flour, olive oil, eggs, baking soda, strawberries.

“A celebratory cake,” she adds, grinning.

“It’s official?”

“I was the only one they called back.”

“I knew it!”

I take a step back and let her in, saying, “Cake is clearly the perfect choice for a celebratory dinner.”

“I’m so glad you agree.”

“So tell me about it,” I say as we head into the kitchen.

“I don’t even know what to say. All we really did was fill out some paperwork but it was still one of the most exciting afternoons of my life. Just think about it. Less than two weeks ago I was knocking on your door with no idea why I was here. Now I’m acting in a film with famous people. I’m SAG eligible.” She shakes her head. She scans Toby’s apartment. “I have friends,” she says. And then, more quietly, “I feel like I belong here.”

“That’s because you do,” I say. “Acting is in your blood.”

“It still feels unreal.”

She steps over to the sink and turns on the hot water. She washes her hands slowly, her eyes the kind of far away that makes it easy to stare at her without fearing getting caught. Her hair is still in its side ponytail, but this time every strand is perfectly in place. I wonder what Theo thought when she walked in his door, whether she looked as luminous to him then as she does to me now.

“Before I left Leona Valley, when I pictured my ideal life, this sort of thing never even entered into it.”

“What did you picture?” I ask her, leaning against the kitchen counter while she rinses strawberries.

“Well, I was trying to be smart about it. I thought I could get a job in LA and commute for a few months until I earned enough to be able to rent a room somewhere.”