Pasadena (4 page)

“What does that mean?”

“Yes, he's cheating. No, Tally doesn't know yet, and I overheard the school nurse talking to Mrs. Vogt in the front office. It seems this girl passed on a little ‘rash' or something.” She made air quotes around the word “rash.” “Dane thought it was jock itch.” Maggie broke into peals of laughter. “The nurse told him he had to notify his girlfriend, that it could cause problems. I guess he thought he had doctor-patient confidentiality or something because, when the nurse offered to tell Tallulah, he confessed it wasn't her. The nurse was in the office calling the girl's school to reach her. Isn't that awful? Truly awful for her and for Tally, but Dane's such a douche. He had it coming.”

“STDs are no joke,” I said, finding it hard to join the laughter.

“Says the virgin.” Maggie slapped my arm. “Come on. Enjoy this. You don't even like Dane.”

“He's Tallulah's boyfriend. I don't like either of them.”

Maggie shrugged. “Tally's not so bad. And at least she keeps Dane from macking on the rest of us.”

“Yeah, except now he's poaching at Rosemead.”

Maggie laughed and lay back, resting her head on a stack of my textbooks. I lay down next to her.

“We should tell Tallulah,” I said.

“Nope.” Maggie folded her hands behind her head. “
He
should tell her. I told him so.”

I sat up on an elbow to read her face. “You
told
him? He knows you know?”

Maggie shrugged. “Somebody's got to keep him honest. Besides, isn't that what friends are for?”

Dane is pleading with Tally in the corner. Maybe I went too far. I push back from the table. “I've got to powder my nose.”

Eppie smirks. Joey sighs and drops his hand off my leg.

I take my time in the ladies' room, reading the adverts on the inside of the stall door. Teeth whitening and a limo service. It's like a how-to for desperate people—fake smile and rented opulence for only $299. I'm suddenly tired, like the autoflush is pulling me down. I'd say it's jet lag, the adrenaline of the past hour draining way. But it's
worse than that. I stand up. Just a little more face time lies between me and a good night's sleep. Everything will look brighter in the morning. My mom used to say that.

I'm splashing water on my face in preparation for round two at the table when the door opens with the alacrity of a ringing bell. It's Edina. She pushes it shut behind her, leaning against it to keep anyone else out, and me in.

“Edina,” I say with a nod of acknowledgment. I squeegee my face over the sink with one hand, waving the other in front of the automatic paper towel dispenser. I tear the towel free and bury my face in it. When I come up for air, Edina's still there, watching me.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I'll get out of your way.” I move toward the door.

“That would be a first,” she scoffs. But she doesn't move. Her arms are folded across her chest. “I don't get it. What did Maggie ever see in you?”

I take in Edina, her eyes tiny in her angry face. There's a catch in her black nylons that's threatening to run. Her nails are painted, and bitten to the quick.

I smile and blow my nose on the wadded toweling in my hand. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

She scowls at me. “I'm serious, Jude. You're obnoxious, rude, surly. You rub everybody the wrong way.”

“Not true,” I say, tossing the towel and resting my back against the sink. “Just you, Tallulah and Dane. Everybody else loves me.”

“Why?” she asks again, ignoring my quip. The look on her face is intense, bordering on desperate.

“Because Tallulah's fake perfect and Dane's an ass, and I don't let them forget it. And you? You, I just don't like. No offense.”

Edina laughs, a little hiccupping noise. “Oh, now why would I be offended?”

I shrug. “Some people might be.”

“Maggie liked me,” Edina says, like it's supposed to hurt me. Like friendships are monogamous. But clearly, if the tableful of people outside are any indication, there was plenty of Maggie to go around. “That should be enough for you.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Enough for me to what?”

“To accept me. To let me be a part of the group.”

It's my turn to laugh. “Clearly, you
are
part of the group. You're here, aren't you? Hell, even Maggie didn't make the cut tonight. Just you, me, and the Little Rascals out there.”

“How can you be so flip about it?” Edina snaps. “Maggie's dead.” She's starting to tear up.

I clench my jaw, refusing to go down that rabbit hole with her. “I know, Eddie. And here you are, cornering me in the bathroom, asking me to play nice. Isn't that just a bit off point?”

“You just called me Eddie. Maggie called me that.”

“I know. I was there.”

“What else do you know about me? I mean, did she ever talk about me?”

I sigh. “If she did, Edina, I swear I wasn't listening. Look. You're upset. I get it. You loved Maggie, so did I. Don't you want to know why she died?”

“No!” Her face crumples and she's crying now, full bore, nose running and everything. I wave another paper towel from the dispenser and hand it to her.

“I don't want to know what would make someone so . . . so . . . so much better than us kill herself. I mean, if life is too hard for Maggie Kim, then how are the rest of us supposed to . . .” She trails off and I see the shadows around her eyes are from more than just smudged Maybelline.

At this point in the script, I'm supposed to give Edina a hug and seal the rift between us. Or fall into it together,
one big crying jag that makes us besties for life. But this isn't a movie. “Take your time. Pull yourself together.”

She blows her nose and stands there snuffling.

“Maybe you should talk to someone,” I suggest.

Edina blinks at me in disbelief. “I thought I was.”

I glance past her, unwilling to see the bruised look in her eyes again. I've got enough bruises of my own. “I meant, like, a friend.”

Edina surprises me by laughing. She throws her head back and rolls her eyes heavenward. “God, you are such a bitch.”

She snatches another paper towel and uses it to open the bathroom door. “You know,” she says, “Maggie had this picture. A happy little girl in a sundress. She showed it to me once, told me it was you when you were nine. She said it was proof you were a good person. Like no one could smile like that and not be.”

My jaw clenches again, unexpectedly. Edina scans my face like it's a bar code, trying to get my number. I don't give it to her.

She shakes her head with a soft snort. “Must've come with the frame.”

I manage a quirked smile. “Must have.”

The door swings shut behind her and I collapse against the sink.

That version of me, the little girl with the celluloid smile? That was another thing I shared with Maggie. And only her. A butterfly in my stomach flaps its ugly wings. I feel betrayed.

I wash my hands, stalling for time. It's either that, or punch someone.

The door opens again and Eppie enters, grinning. If I stay in here any longer, I wonder if Tallulah will come in and join the fun, too.

“It's like a revolving door in here. What's going on?” I ask.

Eppie shakes her head. “Girl, what did you do to Edina?”

I shrug. “Nothing she didn't do right back to me.”

Eppie snorts and hands me a paper towel. “And so comes the end of another fine meal.”

“Is it over already?”

Eppie leans against the row of sinks and pulls out a cigarette from her bag. I can smell the bright scent of cloves as she puts it to her lips, unlit. “Already? That was the longest meal of my life.” She groans and shakes her whole body like a dog drying itself off. She looks in the
mirror and frowns at the cigarette before putting it back in the pack.

“Besides, who can eat at a time like this?” She shakes her head and exhales. “This was way too ‘grown-up' for my taste.” She picks a piece of tobacco off her tongue. “Hank and I were thinking of something a bit more relaxed Tuesday night, on the beach at Dockweiler, or up at Blue House.”

Blue House is Eppie's dad's place in Eagle Rock. She splits her time between her mom's town house in Pasadena and the weathered blue Craftsman her dad, Mike, rents across the freeway overlooking Downtown LA. Mike is an old hippie, tanned as a piece of leather and mellow from a lifetime of weed. His girlfriend, Shasta, reads tarot cards for everyone at their house parties. Maggie was more of a champagne-and-caviar girl, but even she could not deny the bohemian tug of Blue House.

“God bless you, Eppie child.” I kiss her on top of her spiky hair, breathing in the faint scent of patchouli.

“Aw, Jude, you just need to hang in there, all right? Blue House. Tuesday. And then . . .” She spreads her hands like seaweed on the water and I fill in the blanks.

Then we bury Maggie, then we make it through the summer and the rest of our lives. In another few weeks,
we move on to our senior year, the beginnings of our last good-byes.

Maggie's death is a training ground for all the other endings we'll face this year. She's the wake-up call that says you're not a kid anymore. Tally knew it with her buttoned-up, adult dinner party. Clearly, I did not.

The ladies' room suddenly feels too small to hold us both.

“You got a ride home?” Eppie asks.

“Joey's got me.”

“I bet he does.” She winks and slips sideways so we can open the door to the world outside.

• • •

“Not very subtle,” Joey says as we climb back into his car.

We're the last to leave. The valet, a young guy with a name tag that says “Chico,” closes the door for me. I nod at him and shrug at Joey. “What can I say? I'm not Maggie.”

Joey shakes his head in a way that says
fair enough
. “Where to now?” he asks.

I've done enough damage for one night, I decide. “Take me home.”

Again, to his credit, Joey says nothing. He's a smart one. A classy guy. He pulls into the road and half smiles at me, the wind ruffling his hair.

It makes me wish life was normal again, that things could be different between us. But normal's been in my rearview mirror for a long time, and with Maggie gone, it's faded completely from view. Joey and I are friends. Good ones. And that's all we'll ever be.

T
he air smells like an East Coast autumn, like burning leaves. Joey points north toward the San Gabriel Mountains. A line of fire is marching across the foothills. In the moonlight, it looks like the dull red glow of a giant cigarette butt, bright on the front line, then cooling to a cinder. The wind gusts and for one moment, the fire burns brighter. Then we're surrounded by swirling ash, carried on the wind like an unfamiliar snow.

The house is quiet when he drops me off—my mom and Roy must be out. It's the first good news I've had in days.

Joey drives off and leaves me to unpack. I wash a load of laundry in the rickety machine at the back of the house
and start the dryer before climbing into bed. Jet lag and grief make for good soporifics. To the click and roll of the dryer, I fall fast asleep.

• • •

I sit up in the middle of the night, wondering what woke me. The room is quiet. The air conditioner groans, shifting gears for another cooling cycle. I stretch out, cracking vertebrae up and down my spine.

The doorknob moves. It twists slowly, like someone is absentmindedly entering the room. I freeze. Despite the AC, I start to sweat.

But the door is locked. It stays closed.

“Welcome home, butterfly,” a voice croons through the door.

Good night, Roy. Rest in Hell.

• • •

When I wake up again, it's still dark out, and the fires have gotten worse. My windowsill is lined with ash, and the air is dry enough to make my lips crack.

Last night, I dreamt Maggie, not Roy, was in Hell. Thanks to what Mrs. Kim said. That was one for the Hallmark aisle.

I look out the window. It's too early for the sun to be up, but my cell phone is buzzing. I check the text. It's
Eppie. She and Hank are headed to Malibu in that old beater pickup of theirs, with the Six-Pac camper shell on the back. Their own traveling beach cabana.
Surf's up
, the text says.
There's room for one more
.

• • •

Malibu, California. It's a thousand miles away from Pasadena as the car crawls, but only forty-five or so by map. Another Spanish rancho taken from the local natives, Malibu made its living from pottery and movies, not orange groves. Now the potteries are long gone, but the movie stars remain, and so do the wannabes. Traffic jams are epic along the Pacific Coast Highway in warm weather, even on a Monday. No wonder Eppie and Hank practically camp out there all summer long—they could save the planet with the gas they don't use driving back and forth.

The truck rattles to a stop. I wake up in the back, nestled in a pile of old blankets and towels.

This little hut is what makes a Six-Pac a Six-Pac—a gypsy caravan on the back of a pickup truck. During the summer, Hank and Eppie eat, sleep, and screw here. I'd never been inside before today.

In the dim light from the louvered panels along the door, I can just make out my surroundings—walls hung with bodhi seed beads and plastered with pictures of
everything from giant, curling waves and fair-haired surf champs to the friendly face of the Indian elephant-headed god, Ganesh.

A dull ache throbs behind my eyes, in my chest. Time to make it through another day. I press a wrist to my head for support and breathe. Willing the ache to go away.

Maggie. Maggie. Maggie.

A gust of wind swirls around the cabin as Hank throws open the door, stirring the heady scent of patchouli oil, Nag Champa incense, and sweat.

“Morning, sunshine!” Hank says perkily. Like he's a cartoon alley cat on a fence, I throw my shoe at him.

“Grumpy!” he says, dodging it. He pulls two wet suits down from hooks on the wall. “Don't get up. We'll change out here. There's a suit somewhere beneath you when you're ready.”

“Thanks,” I growl, and nestle deeper into the old blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Morning and I aren't friends, but I'm glad Eppie texted me. Joey has a family thing and couldn't play chauffeur this morning. Besides which, he's still miffed at me for the way I acted at dinner last night. But that can't be helped. I'll make amends eventually. At least, that's what I tell myself. But I don't need to apologize to Hank or Eppie. They're too laid-back
to be offended. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and drag myself into the daylight.

Eppie and Hank have been together for almost two years now. Maggie used to joke that when they finally got married, they would just tie themselves to each other with surfboard tethers instead of wedding rings.

Seeing them out on the waves together, it's not hard to believe.

It's an hour after dawn, disgustingly early in my book, but here we are at Point Dume. I sit on the back bumper of the truck, pulling the neoprene spring suit on over my tankini. Behind me, the bluffs rise in wrinkled sheets of stone and scrub. Out on the water, the wonder twins glide in the newly risen sunshine. The little cabin rots around me, salt air slowly eating away at the rusting brown-and-tan exterior. Six-Pacs, as a general rule, should have been shot in the head and put down long ago. But here in sunny SoCal, they live on. Like that farm parents tell their kids all the dead dogs go to. It's real, and it's called Malibu.

I can hear Eppie's shout of victory as she rides the next wave in. I walk down to the edge of the damp sand to meet her.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Ready to greet the day?” Eppie's in a spring suit, tie-dyed purple neoprene that cuts
off at her thighs and shoulders. She looks like she's all muscle. Her short black hair is fanned out behind her like a wet cockatiel. She's beautiful.

I smile and shake my head. “Thanks for this, duckling. I kind of wanted to spend some face time with you and Hank. The restaurant wasn't exactly my finest hour.”

Eppie shrugs nonjudgmentally and I follow her back to the truck, sidestepping her shouldered board. “Café Chichi wasn't exactly my scene either,” she admits. “For Christ's sake, the girl is dead. Do we have to pretend we all like each other now she's gone?”

I look sideways at Eppie. “You feel it too?”

“Hells yeah,” Eppie says, swinging her board down to rest against the truck. “Maggie girl was the glue that held this little shitbox together. I mean, I love you, babe, and Hank does too, but Dane and Edina? Just looking at them crushes my mellow, you know? Maggie made it work. That's all there is to it.”

I lean my back against the side of the truck, the metal warmed by the sun. The marine layer's not so thick today, the sheets of mist already lifting up and away from the ocean.

A hundred yards out, beyond Hank and his waiting board, a couple of dolphins wheel by. I point them out and Eppie grins. “My sisters,” she says. “We play sometimes.”

I think about my sister. Maggie. The only one there ever was.

Eppie hops up into the back of the truck. “You want a drink?”

“Sure.”

She tosses me a can of orange soda from a cooler. “Sorry, out of caffeine.”

“No problem,” I say, and wipe the rim with the hem of my suit.

A moment later, Eppie emerges. “You don't usually take us up on the surf, girlie. So, what brings you to Mother Ocean this fine day?” She plops down on the back bumper. I join her. Eppie tucks her legs up to her chest, resting her arm on one knee. She drags a clove cigarette out of a pack on the floor of the truck.

“Want one?” she asks. I shake my head. “Yeah, me either. I quit months ago, but what can I say? I love the smell. They're not as strong if you don't light 'em, but still. Gives a girl something to do.” She alternates between holding the cigarette between her lips and swigging her soda. We perch there, watching Hank beat the ocean into submission one wave at a time, punctuated by the occasional laugh from Eppie, who keeps an eye on her man.

“What brings me here is the same thing that brought me home. Maggie Kim,” I say.
My Maggie.

Eppie gives me a glance and shakes her head. “Man, I knew you were close, but you weren't, like, in love with her or anything, were you?”

I smirk. Me in love with Maggie. The idea. “I loved her, sure,” I admit. “But I wasn't
in
love. Last I looked, you didn't have to be a lesbian to want justice for a dead friend. And you don't need to be screwing someone to want to understand why they died.”

Eppie holds her hands up in a mea culpa, cigarette and soda dangerously clasped in the same hand. “Hey, hey, no offense. It's just, you came on kind of strong last night and had old Tallulah's panties in a bunch in nothing flat. And I see the way you and Edina give each other the stink eye. Maybe
you
didn't want to bonk Maggie, but I'm not so sure about that one.”

She takes a fake drag off her cigarette. “She was stealing Maggie's clothes, you know. One piece at a time. I recognized them. Maybe it wasn't a sex thing, though. Maybe she just wanted to be a Maggie Kim impersonator.”

For an instant, I can see it, a stage full of drag queens dressed in Hepburn black and Onassis veils, all smoking filterless cigarettes. Edina Rodriguez is at the end of the row, failing to be statuesque or convincing.

I laugh out loud and Eppie grins. “Jeez, I was wondering
how far I'd have to go to get a rise out of you. There were midgets in the next scenario.”

I bump her with my arm. “I remember why we're friends now,” I say, and she grins even wider.

“Cool. Say, I know Maggie being gone is, like, crazy and all of a sudden. That same kind of ‘I just saw her yesterday' bullshit people always say. It don't seem right.” Eppie shakes her head. “But Maggie had kind of a death wish about her, you know? She could party hard, and she could be a princess. She . . . I don't know. She could seem like she didn't give a damn. I'm not saying that's a reason for suicide, but maybe the drugs and an accidental bath in the family pool isn't such a surprise.”

My laughter is gone, all dried up in that instant. “I never said it was a surprise. Maggie could have died a million ways to Sunday since I've known her. Just not like that.”

Eppie is silent for a moment. I let the silence stretch, waiting to see if she's got something to fill it.

Eventually, she does. “Let's surf.”

• • •

The ocean is cold, especially this early in the morning with the sun not quite hot enough to warm us, but we paddle out anyway, Eppie on her longboard, me on the shortie she and Hank keep in the truck.

I haven't surfed in ages, but it's like riding a bike. I know what to do. Paddling out past the break on my stomach, my arms are tired before long. It feels good, though. Being in my body instead of my head.

My lips are salty when I lick them. I sit up, straddling the board, and turn to face the shore. Nothing worth catching is rolling our way. Eppie sits a dozen yards to my right, bobbing like a rubber ducky. She's half water elemental, Eppie is. The ocean sings to her and she dances to the music, waiting for the crescendo. She waves at me. I smile back.

Up ahead, the small swells roll in, barely cresting white and washing up the pebbled sand. Hank is up shore from us and way out. We wait and I start to doze again, little waves rocking beneath me, lulling me to sleep. The sun comes out from behind a cloud and I close my eyes. Waiting.

“Sleeping pills,” Maggie said.

“Running car in a locked garage,” I countered. “You can't smell carbon monoxide and it puts you right to sleep. Pills you can always barf up.”

We were sitting on the hill behind school again, at the start of junior year. There'd just been an assembly for
some freshman who offed himself by hanging. Popular rumor said it was some kinky sex thing gone wrong, but students that knew the kid said it was only a matter of time. Maggie and I didn't know him, but it had sparked an interesting conversation: If you were going to do it, what was the best way to die?

“Old age,” she said, and we both laughed. “Although, I guess that's not suicide. That's just life.”

“Oh, I know. Death by chocolate,” I said. “Definitely.”

“The cake kind or the ice cream kind?”

I thought about it. “Both. I mean, you want to be sure.”

Maggie snorted and we fell silent, suddenly feeling guilty that a skinny little fifteen-year-old was dead by his own hand, and we were celebrating life on his grave. We both sighed and watched the kids below us head for the buses or their cars, scattering across the parking lot like marbles dropped on a sidewalk.

“I'd want to be asleep for it,” Maggie said finally. Like death really was the Grim Reaper and she'd rather keep her eyes closed than see him coming.

“Make it relaxing? Like lying on a mattress on a pool in the sun,” I said.

“Like that,” she agreed. The best way to die, when old age and chocolate just wouldn't do.

“Jude!”

Eppie's voice pierces my ears like the scream of a seagull. I'm in the water, floating, the surfboard tethered to my ankle slaps the surface beside me. I open my eyes. Eppie is there, suddenly, reaching, pulling me up from the sun-warmed water.

“There wasn't a mattress,” I say out loud, and seawater fills my mouth. I sputter and try to help as Eppie pulls me back onto my board and frog-kicks us back to shore.

“I'm sorry,” I say when we hit the coastline.

“Sorry? One minute I'm catching a wave, next thing I look back and you've rolled under. Jesus, I thought you'd whacked your head on the board and gone down,” Eppie gasps.

We hit the strand and stumble, collapsing onto the sand. I feel half asleep. Like the song says, “life is but a dream.”

We climb up the beach in slow motion, dropping our boards by the truck. Eppie reaches into the cabin for some towels and tosses one to me. I wrap up in it and watch her fish around for another clove cigarette.

“I'm sorry,” I say again. “I was just thinking.”
About Maggie.
But that much is obvious.