The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (8 page)

"Let's hit the liquor cabinet," I say, too
loud. Melanie socks me. In her room, Melanie hooks up her iPod, which is thinner
and smaller than a chocolate bar. I'm not really up on the latest toys, but
Melanie
tip, tip, tips
on her computer, and in a second, music starts
playing.

"I'd know that guitar anywhere," I
say.

"The CD isn't even out yet," Melanie says. It's
Hunter Eden. A new release. Melanie gets this stuff because her dad's vice
president of the PR firm that handles a bunch of musicians. This gives him a
measure of cool factor, even if he gets manicures and his skin looks too soft
and he has hair only on the sides of his

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head but is snow-plowed bald straight across
the top. This also gives Melanie inherited cool factor, and concert tickets,
too. She's taken me to a few, which isn't a bad friendship bonus. We got to sit
in this little box, separated from other people, and a waiter even came. It made
me feel like I was crashing some strangers' wedding reception and eating their
food.

"Turn it up," I say, and we listen for a while.
Hunter Eden's playing probably two hundred thirty beats per minute, but he isn't
just fast, he's good. Add sexy into that, and you just wanted to lick his
leather boots. Too quickly it's over, and the little chocolate bar moves on to a
new song.

"Wow," I say.

"Thought you'd appreciate that," Melanie says.
She takes her shiny blond hair out of her ponytail, puts it back just the way it
was. "Wanna watch a movie or something?" Melanie spins her DVD rack around, runs
her fingers across the titles. Her room is a technological amusement park--TV,
DVD, computer, stereo, video games. Apparently, this way you could watch
anything you wanted all by yourself in your own room, nudging yourself at the
funny parts and telling yourself to be quiet because you couldn't hear when you
were talking.

"It makes me sick. I'll never be that good," I
say.

"You can be anything you want to be," Melanie
says. She got those words fed to her in her bottle. All those Armyish
recruitment lines that talk you into some state of hyped optimism that no human
being regularly feels without narcotic aid are deep within her, embedded at the
cellular level.
Think positive! Never say "never"! The key to success is
positive self-esteem!
In my opinion? It's fine to have a reasonable amount
of self-doubt. Maybe it's even necessary to avoid being an obnoxious human
being. Cavemen

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did not do affirmations. Pilgrims fighting
disease and freezing temperatures did not focus on eliminating negative
self-talk. The dusty and disheveled folks trudging on the Oregon Trail made it
without one-year and five-year goals tacked to the insides of their covered
wagons. I don't think they even
had
self-esteem in those days.

"Are you still going to be a marine biologist?"
I ask Melanie.

"I guess," she says. "How about
I Know Your
Secrets?"
She shows me the DVD case. Girl running in the dark, scary house
in background.

"Whatever. Why do you want to be a marine
biologist?"

"God, Indigo. You've asked me this a thousand
times. I like fish."

"You don't like fish," I insist.

"Yes, I do." She pops out the movie, slips it
into the player.

"You hate the water." Anyone who's ever gone to
a pool with Melanie knows this. First, she stands at the side of the pool
forever, with the dread of a sacrificial virgin who must leap into the volcano.
When she finally gets in, she swims like those old ladies who don't want to get
their hair wet. Little cupped prissy hands. Her chin in the air. It is the kind
of thing that makes me like her. She tries so hard to be a part of things that
you can't help but root for her.

"So?"

"You know, maybe I'm an idiot but 'marine' and
'water' kinda go together. You might as well say you want to be a mountain
climber but you hate mountains. A skydiver but you hate sky. And fish. Take
fish. You don't have any. Not an aquarium, not a single guppy, not a poster of
fish or a fish bedspread or books about fish."

"No one has a fish bedspread, Indigo. Can we
drop this,

57

please?" Melanie knows what I'm getting at,
that's why she's annoyed. See, I've always told her she should think for
herself, but that idea freaks out Skyview people. It's as if they fear they
might lose what they already have if they don't walk the tightrope of
acceptability, same as people knock on wood or walk around ladders. Follow
convention or the big hand of fate will reach down and grab your Mercedes and
your flat-screen TV. And convention tells you what to
be,
because certain
professions ease and trickle and embed themselves viruslike into the kids at
school at certain times. Three years ago, everyone was going to study
psychology. Then they were all going to be pediatricians, and this year it's
marine biology. So many of Melanie's friends want to be marine biologists that
there is practically going to be a one-to-one ratio of fish to
fish-studier.

"And I thought you only made the waiting list
for UC Santa Barbara. You know I love you, but shouldn't you be looking at other
options?" Let's just say that when it came to taking the SATs, poor Melanie
hadn't been able to bring along all of her tutors.

"Did you come over just to give me crap about
my future? My parents will work out something," she says. "Now shut up and let's
watch the movie."

I do and we do. I sit patiently through all the
scary-movie essentials: (1) Girl gets creepy caller on telephone when her
parents are away. (2) Girl hears noise--oh my God!--but, alas, it's only the
family cat. (3) Girl does some incredibly stupid thing, like hunting around the
front yard for creepy caller. (4) Girl finds out creepy caller is actually in
her own house. (5) Girl tries to get away but her car won't start, and no one
has AAA in these movies. (6) Phone lines are down by storm, so girl can't call
AAA even if she

58

had it. (7) Girl stabs creepy caller with
kitchen knife. (8) Creepy caller appears dead after girl makes him into sushi,
but he's not dead after all. (9) Girl summons inhuman strength and reaches the
knife before he does and then administers the death blow.

"I swear, I've seen that before," I say when
it's over.

"I am never, and I mean never, going to stay at
home alone," Melanie says.

I gather my shoes. They're still in a line with
the others, so I guess they were playing nice. I get into Mom's car, with its
oil change reminder sticker on the windshield, the date listed so far past that
it's when I used to watch cartoons and wear stretch pants. I'm relieved to be
back in the car again, but also there's this edgy sense of what might be
disappointment. I think of what Melanie said--My
parents will work out
something
--and I know she's right. It's what I most like and what pisses me
off about being part of Melanie's world--that there are no questions here. That
money makes everything decided and possible.

Here, weeds are not allowed.

59

4

"Mom. God, it's not raining anymore," I
say.

"Oh! Right," she says, and flicks off her
windshield wipers.

Mom drops me off at Carrera's on her way to
work. I was able to work before school and not just on weekends because I had
all my graduation credits and could have first and second period free. So Mom
and I "carpooled" the few miles downtown to the cafe, and from there she went on
to Dr. Kaninski's office in Seattle. Right then, Mom's trying to balance a
coffee cup between her knees as she shifts, which is a recipe for disaster even
with a cup sporting a lid with a little slit. "Indigo, I want to apologize for
snapping the other day. I feel like the worst mother in the world."

"What are you talking about?"

"Last night. At dinner. I've been up all night,
thinking how terrible I acted."

"Why?" I ask. "Mom, your coffee ..." I can see
it rising from the lip of the cup. Any moment it's going to splotch onto the
skirt she has on for work.

"Why! Are you kidding?" She lifts the cup,
sips, downshifts into second through the stoplight by the Front Street Market.
"I said I'd had enough. I told you guys you were ungrateful. I know you're not
ungrateful."

"You were right. We don't help unless you ask
us."

"When I got up this morning, Bex was dusting
the living room." Her voice wobbles.

"So?"

60

"So! I was hurtful. I threw that oven
mitt."

"For Christ's sake, Mom, it was an oven mitt.
It's got dancing vegetables on it. It's not like you threw the knives. You know,
then we'd have an issue." I swear, Mom could feel bad for days about things we
never even realized happened.

"When does she ever dust? She never dusts.
I
never dust. I've had that can of lemon Pledge practically since we
moved in. The bottom is all rusty. I've just been so stressed lately. God." She
looks like she might cry.

"You know my friend Liz?" I say. "Art class?
The cool one that moved from Oregon? Her mother's going through menopause too.
You should hear her talk about it--it's hilarious. Her mother tells her, 'We
never spend time together anymore! Where are you? We're growing apart!' And then
when Liz makes a point to be around the house, her mom says, 'What are you doing
home? You need to get a job!' Liz says she comes downstairs and sees her mom
standing in front of the open refrigerator, just staring."

"Indigo, jeez. Would you quit with the
menopause thing? I'm too young for menopause. You can be over forty and just be
a bitch." Her guilt is disappearing, deflating, as if it has been punctured. I
like her better like this.

We reach Carrera's, and I haul my backpack up
and open the car door. "Have a good day," Mom says. "I'll, you know, try to keep
the hot flashes down to a minimum."

"No throwing oven mitts at work," I
say.

Trina's car is parked at the curb, but
something horrible catches my eye.
Red-block-letters-on-black-
plastic-rectangle horrible. A sign in the
Thunderbird's window: for sale.

I shove open the cafe door, clattering the
bells so loudly that Jack leaps to his feet and gives a woof of
alarm.

61

"Tell me I didn't see what I thought I saw," I
say. "In the Thunderbird," Joe says.

"You saw what you thought you saw," Jane says.
"Easy on the bells, huh, Indigo?"

"We all saw," Nick Harrison says.

Trina rips the top off of two sugars and pours
them into her coffee. She's wearing this white cape, with white leather pants.
The emerald ring from Roger that she used to wear on her left hand is gone. "For
Christ's sake, you people are more attached to that car than I am."

"I'm sorry, but you cannot, I mean
cannot,
sell that car," I say.

"If it's a matter of money," Joe says, "we can
help you. Not that I have any myself, but we could all pull
together--"

"Hey, I'll have a bake sale," I say.
"Anything--"

"It is
not
a matter of money," Trina
says. I didn't think it was. Trina exhales the scent of cash. "I just want to
rid myself of any reminder of Roger."

"That was two weeks ago, already," I
say.

"God, Indigo, two weeks is
nothing,"
Trina says.

"I'm still not over Victoria," Jane says. "That
was six months ago."

"She was too controlling anyway," Funny Coyote
says. "You could tell by the way she bossed you around."

"Yeah, you know, Jack never liked her. That
should have told me all I needed to know right there.... A bad sign," Jane says,
and sighs.

"I'll never be over my wife ... ," Nick says.
"Well." He clears his throat.

We are quiet for a moment, except for Luigi.
"Way down among the Brazilians, coffee beans grown by the billions ..."
he

62

sings softly. Finally Trina says, "I'm getting
rid of everything that makes me think
Roger.
The car, the leopard throw
rug, my diaphragm--"

"Thank you oh so much for the diaphragm
status," I say. I bring Nick his orange juice and Funny her eggs and pancakes
and bacon. Extra napkins, like she likes. Leroy must be sleeping late
again.

"I changed the message on my answering machine.
Not that I'm under any illusion that he's going to call or anything. But if he
comes running back ... I had my neighbor record it for me. He says, 'You've
reached Pizza Hut. Today order a large special and get an order of cheesy bread
sticks free.'"

"Roger was controlling too," Funny
says.

"No, he wasn't! You never even met him!" Trina
says.

"You said he told you what to wear," Funny
says. "High heels. That's control."

"If Trevor ever told me to wear heels, I'd pull
those little hairs on his arm," I say.

"Men should leave fashion to the ladies," Joe
says.