All Night Long (24 page)

“You're kidding,” Kiley said.

“If I'm lying, I'm dying,” Lydia sang out. “To not let a boy with that kind of change buy me one little pair of shoes seemed downright criminal.”

Kiley had to laugh. One thing about Lydia—she could always make Kiley laugh.

As they made their way up the steep narrow path and Kiley began to huff and puff, she noticed that Lydia, even in her non-climbing-friendly four-hundred-dollar shoes, was moving forward like a freaking gazelle. Esme filled them in on the fact that Jonathan had come to her, claiming he had not had sex with Tarshea at all, that in fact she'd shown up at his place drunk. And that his stepmother had fired Tarshea, who was already back in Jamaica.

Kiley was amazed. Was it possible that Jonathan hadn't really cheated on Esme? “Do you think he was telling you the truth?”

“I don't know and I don't care,” Esme insisted.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Lydia sang out. “Hey, what is this mountain we're climbing, anyway?”

“Mount Lee,” Esme replied. “And we're almost to the top.”

“What's at the top?” Kiley called up to her.

“You'll see,” Esme called back.

Finally, they came to a fence. Above the fence was a ring of security cameras. Kiley smiled, because she now realized where they were, even if she didn't know why they were there. Behind the fencing was the fifty-foot-high Hollywood sign.

“The Hollywood sign!” Lydia exclaimed, delighted. “Dang, girl, I would never have expected you to take us to the Hollywood sign. I know all about this place. The sign was put up something like eight decades ago and it originally said Holly-woodland, to advertise some new apartment complex.”

“Don't tell me you read that in the Amazon,” Kiley said.

“Did too.
Vogue
did a photo shoot and got permission to
actually use the sign. It used to be lit up with something like four thousand lightbulbs. And let's see, what else … some actress jumped off the H and killed herself.” She blanched. “You weren't planning to off yourself, I hope.”

“Of course not,” Esme replied. She leaned her back against the fence. Kiley watched emotions flit across her face. “This sign? It meant something to me. A world so far away from the Echo it might as well be Mars.”

Kiley nodded, feeling terrible for Esme, who no longer had a job that put her inside that world.

“Diane asked me to come back and work for them,” Esme said quietly. The edge of her mouth ticked upward. “She even offered me a raise.”

“Tattoos pay a whole lot better,” Lydia pointed out.

“That's not what's important!” Kiley insisted. “If you go back to the Goldhagens, you can do senior year at Bel Air High with us, and go to college, and … if you want the high life, you can earn it for yourself.”

“I can earn it doing tattoos,” Esme said angrily. “Ain't nothing magical about the Goldhagens.” She turned to face the fence, lacing her fingers through it, staring out and up at that giant sign. “It feels just like this at the Goldhagens'. Like everything huge and magical and rich is just out of my reach. But I'll always be behind a fence. I'll never belong there.”

“Well, hell's bells, girl, none of the three of us belongs there!” Lydia exclaimed.

“You do,” Kiley reminded her. “You were born on the other side of this fence.”

Lydia didn't say anything. She knew it was true just as much as they did.

“Tom's going to Russia,” Kiley said softly. She hadn't told them yet, as if saying it out loud would make it more true. Yesterday, Tom had called to tell her that the offer for the movie had been made. That he'd be leaving for Russia in ten days. Kiley hadn't seen him since the night they'd made love. He didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to see her. It was almost as if what they'd done together—which was such a huge thing for her—had never even happened. Or as if it simply didn't mean to him what it meant to her.

Leaning against that fence, staring up at the sign, Kiley told her friends all of this. She felt tears form but willed them away.

“Okay, well, you'll miss him,” Lydia agreed. “But he'll be back.”

“You don't even get it,” Esme said, the words hard in her mouth. “Kiley gave him something precious. He's treating it like it's
ninguna cosa grande
, no big thing.”

“Admittedly, I didn't consider it so grand when I did it,” Lydia said. “I'm just saying maybe you're reading more into it than you should, sweet pea.”

“And maybe I'm not,” Kiley countered. “Look, I can't tell you what to do, Esme. But if you want my opinion …?”

“Yeah,” Esme finally said.

“Your tattoo talent isn't going anywhere. But if you quit school now, you'll probably never go back. Never go to college. And I realize college isn't
everything
,” she added hastily. “But it kind of is to your parents.”

Kiley wondered if she was about to go too far with what she was about to say. What the hell. She was going to say it anyway.

“No matter how much money you make, Esme, if you don't go back and finish what you started, I think you'll spend your whole life feeling like you're still behind this fence.”

It was quiet for a long time. Finally Esme mumbled, “I have to think about it some more. Jorge wants me to go back,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“He's in love with you,” Lydia said. “You know that, right?”

“Kind of,” Esme admitted.

“Well, do you want to jump his bones or be his buddy?” Lydia probed.

Esme shrugged.

Lydia sighed. “You don't give a girl a lot to go on.”

“Diane gave me a week to decide,” Esme said.

Lydia smiled slyly. “Did Jorge give you a week, too?”

Esme laughed. “No. All I know is, I can't be with Jonathan. Whenever I'm with him, I feel like I'm trying to sneak into a country where I don't belong. No matter how I feel about him, or how much I think I want him, I can't live like that anymore.”

“Maybe you should give yourself a week on that decision, too,” Kiley ventured.

“Okay, y'all, how about this,” Lydia said. “One week from today we meet right back here at the sign. Esme tells us what she decided.” She pointed at Kiley. “You tell us if Tom is a good guy who got a great job offer, or he used you and he's lower than a pregnant duck. And I'll tell y'all just what Flipper can do with his…flipper!”

Kiley cracked up. There was really no one like Lydia.

They agreed to meet, one week from that very moment, at the exact same spot.

As they climbed down the hill, Kiley was lost in thought. She really had much more in common with Esme than she did with Lydia, in certain ways. She didn't feel as though she belonged in
the rarefied world in which she now found herself any more than Esme did. Maybe she just hid it better.

But she did know this much. Whatever happened with Platinum—who could start doing drugs again at any moment; and whatever happened with Tom—who might not care about her nearly as much as she cared about him—some way, somehow, Kiley would find her own way to the other side of that fence.

She impetuously tugged on a hunk of Esme's hair, recalling a phrase Jorge had taught her when she'd briefly lived in the Echo herself.

“Mi vida loca,”
Kiley said.

Esme smiled. “Yeah. My crazy life, too.”

“Right back atcha, sweet pea!” Lydia called as she led the way down the hill. “It's a crazy-ass life, but someone's got to live it! I guess that's the three of us.”

Kiley found herself laughing with her friends all the way down the hill.

Raised in Bel Air, Melody Mayer is the oldest daughter of a fourth-generation Hollywood family and has outlasted countless nannies.