American Girls (28 page)

Understatement.

She looked out the big open window while she talked, glancing up the hill every once in a while in the direction of the producer's house, and then back at the coffee cup between her knees.

“I know you can't stand Roger, but we have a history. I think it's partially that he's my ex, and that sometimes makes me feel like I have a grandfather clause for making out, not sleeping together, and I know Dex and you both would never understand, but it just doesn't seem like anything to kiss Roger. Then—and I know that he says he wrote a role for me, but the fact that Dex's pilot got picked up, and my nose is a disaster, I just wanted to wreck it first. He can't cast me just because he wants to, and even he knows things don't work that way. I won't be the person left behind. I can't explain what I did with that producer to him. I just can't. People like to imagine that they get a girl who's been depressed, or confused, or desperate, and it's so romantic and exciting, but they definitely don't want to imagine what she might have really done. Trust me. I know of what I speak. Tragic is interesting but only if there was no collateral damage, and there always is.”

My sister was matter-of-fact, even when her life lay in pieces around her.

“Dex wouldn't have left you.”

She looked at me now instead of the landscape.

“But he would have. He really would. Anyone can leave anyone. And you're probably right, he might not have left me this week, or even this month, but this is not a town built on lasting relationships. We'll probably talk again. He might care that I have an explanation for the photos, he might not. How could I tell him about Roger after that? What purpose would it even serve? I don't love Roger. It won't happen again. Who's really better off by knowing?” She gestured at the garbage at her feet. “I'd say he's already seen enough.”

I didn't know why my sister did the things she did. I couldn't match the Delia on the couch up against the Delia in pieces on the floor any more than I could match the Manson girls against their crimes. Maybe she really did love Dex, and she was being stupid and afraid. Maybe she had slept with half of Hollywood, but it suddenly didn't seem like my business to be calling her a slut. I felt bad about the way Doon and I had joked about her. I wanted Dex to forgive her. I wanted her to get a second chance, whether she deserved it or not.

“Don't you still have to film with Roger?”

“I do, but I can control myself around Roger, believe it or not.” She gave an eye roll of self-disgust. “I even told Dex that I'd been shooting with him, before we came back here, of course. And about Mom.”

Mom.

I needed to pack, but I just wanted to sit down. My sister moved her feet and I curled up on the other end of the sofa.

“What did he say?”

“He said that I must really not trust him. Irony, right?”

“But you don't, do you?”

“I don't trust life,” she said.

My sister tossed her baby-blue blanket in my direction. The fabric smelled faintly of vanilla, her perfume, and I felt for a minute like I was going to cry, like I wanted to bottle that scent and take it home with me, to keep a little part of my sister close, no matter how big a disaster she was. I felt that way when I smelled the top of Birch's head as well. He had that powdery baby smell, and I wanted to hug him so hard when he was sleeping that I sometimes worried I would break him. I could remember smelling him like that, but I couldn't get the scent, the same way I knew that by the time I was on the plane I would have lost that feeling around the smell of my sister's blanket.

Maybe she wasn't the disaster. Maybe I was.

“Are you ready to go back?”

“I'm almost packed,” I said. “I pack really fast. I promise.”

She shook her head.

“That's not what I meant.”

I knew what she meant.

“I don't know. I kept thinking Mom would apologize at some point. And now Doon is mad at me too. I miss them all so much, and I want things to be like they were before, way before, and I know that's not even possible because it doesn't exist anymore. I just feel like Mom can be the nicest person and then the craziest too.”

“Because she can be.”

“But does the crazy make the nice not true? I read about all these awful families this summer, and I know ours isn't that bad. It's not like Dad's a pervert or Mom locks me in a closet, but sometimes I still feel like neither of them is really trying that hard. And then I think to myself, ‘Well, it's not like it's their job to try,' and then I think after that, ‘But wait a minute, yes, it is,' and then I just get so mad at both of them that I want to run away again, only someplace farther away and with more money. Don't look at me like that, it's not like I'm going to do it. I want to see my brother and I want to figure out how to survive this new, stupid school, but I also want my parents to just work a little harder at being my parents. And then I just feel like a jerk.”

Delia waited before she spoke. “I think you can't expect more from people than they're able to give. And you're happier if you don't hate them for it.”

I thought about it for a minute. It was the kind of thing people said that you knew was probably true, but still didn't help very much.

“And if all else fails,” she said, “I can loan you my credit card and you can come back next summer.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I gave her the hardest hug I've probably ever given her in my life, and she hugged me back just as tightly. I wanted someone to love her, too, to keep her safe.

“I almost forgot,” she said, breaking away and getting her bag from across the room. “Dex said to give you this.” She tossed a T-shirt in my direction. “Too Many Rich Crackers.” “He said to wear it the first day of school and to think of him.”

“Right,” I said. “I'll make sure to have a backup form of social suicide, though, just in case.”

Delia yawned and laughed at the same time, then went back to her place on the sofa.

“If you ever talk to him again, tell him thank you.”

“I know he's a good guy,” my sister said. “That's what makes it harder, believe it or not. I spent half my life swearing I would never end up like Cora.”

Her voice was soft. I thought for a minute that she was going to cry.

“Jeremy and I were talking last night,” I said. “He said the hardest thing in life is figuring out how to be regular.”

“Because he's clearly an expert,” Delia said. “And haven't I been nice in not asking you where your pants are?”

“You said this was a dress.”

“Obviously, I was wrong. So where did you go? Did you two lovebirds have fun?”

I thought about trying to explain the whole night to her, but it seemed like it would just sound like the most fantastic lie.

“We did.”

“Should we have a talk?”

“It wasn't
that
fun. Scout's honor.”

I gave her the
Chips Ahoy!
salute and sat next to her on the sofa. The house was quiet and still, like the morning after a hurricane blew through town. Adrenaline was rapidly giving way to fatigue, and I slumped against my sister's side, which was softer and more pliant than I'd imagined. She wrapped an arm around me and rubbed the top of my arm, slowly and rhythmically, humming a song that our mother used for Birch.
Hush, little baby, don
'
t say a word.
I was almost asleep when my sister stopped humming.

“Anna. I'm not trying to make you mad, so please don't take this the wrong way, okay?”

I woke up a little but didn't open my eyes.

“I know Mom owes you an apology, and I know the two things aren't comparable, but”—she paused, trying to be careful, I guess—“did you ever apologize to her? It's not that easy waiting on a couch all night for someone, even if you are furious at said person.”

I didn't say anything and she started to hum again, but I couldn't fall back asleep.

“I'm not trying to be a jerk,” she said.

“I know,” I whispered.

 

20

My sister claims that I fell asleep again, but all I remember is sitting on her couch one minute, and the next finding myself in her car with my bags packed, looking out the window as I said good-bye to her apartment, to the summer, to Los Angeles.

On the way to the airport, my phone twitched. A one-word text appeared from a number that I didn't know: “THNX,” followed by a picture of a tiny pink rabbit waving a sparkling wand dancing next to the letters. I scrolled through my address book when it hit me. Paige Parker had written me back. I won't lie, I'd hoped that it was Jeremy, but at the same time, those four stupid letters and bunny made me feel ridiculously okay. The universe seemed to be saying:
Thumbs-up, Anna, you don
'
t suck all the time!

“Good news?” Delia asked, raising her eyebrow like it had to be from a guy.

I rolled my eyes back at her and then she parked and walked me through the airport all the way to security. Delia hugged me and then handed me off to an airline official whose name tag read “Michelle.” Michelle made small talk as she escorted me to my flight like a low-security prisoner. After I was safely buckled in my seat, she left to shuffle another kid from one place to the next. The walk from security to the gate had felt like a walk in a dream, slow and almost underwater. By the time I boarded, I was completely exhausted and yet too awake to sleep at the same time. The summer was really over.

I started my paper on the way home. The plane circled a wide arc around the city as it rose, the early evening's pink glow warming the hills of Hollywood. Farther off, the occasionally broken darkness of the ocean loomed, and Los Angeles seemed like something perched on the edge of the earth, beautiful and always slightly in danger of being swallowed whole.

Somewhere, my sister was telling or not telling Dex the whole truth of what she'd done the night before, and Jeremy was sitting in a meeting asking for the serenity to face another day. The plane might even have flown over the jail where Leslie Van Houten was doing life, guilty as much as anything of choosing the wrong friends. There were beautiful homes full of boxes and dog shit, the kinds of things that didn't make the gossip sites or glossy magazines.

Jeremy had texted me twice to wish me a safe trip home, but he hadn't called and neither had I. Part of me was sad, the kind of sad you get at the end of a really beautiful and tragic book.
Gatsby
sad. My evening with Jeremy was one night and it was messy and perfect, and it was probably best just to leave it alone, to accept that anything that freakishly awesome should probably just be sealed in the amber of memory and left undisturbed. That was poor Jay Gatsby's mistake—he had one great night with Daisy and tried to turn it into a whole lifetime. Then again, how could he not?

The lights in the cabin dimmed and I pulled down the shade of the window so that the woman next to me could sleep. She had on earphones and a face mask, and within minutes her head was tilted back taking in choked, openmouthed breaths. I put on my own earphones and read the second part of my assignment from Mr. Haygood:
What
'
s so great about Los Angeles?

Probably because I am a professional procrastinator, I pulled out the magazine that someone had left behind. Right underneath
“
What NOT to Say to Make Him STAY,” in gummy pink letters, was “My Shopping Diet: Olivia Taylor Learns to Live Lean and Love It.” The article was a page and a half, about how hard it had been for her to stop shopping at first, and how many other things she'd started doing once she got used to it. Allegedly, she'd started writing “nice notes” to her friends every day. But the craziest part was that there were pictures of the inside of her house, and it looked like an actual house. Someone had cleaned it out before the photo shoot, or they had the most advanced computer in the universe erasing every bag from every corner and hallway. The picture featured Olivia, Mr. Peabody, and Iggy, and she looked like the kind of girl you'd want to be in the kind of house you'd like to own. I closed the magazine and put it back in the mesh pocket.

It was almost too easy to hate on Los Angeles. The city was a kind of apocalyptic tar pit, a freak show of broken hearts and half-fulfilled dreams, full of artists, liars, parasites, and roadkill, all of whom had just a touch of violence in their hearts. Even today, it was Manson territory without the Manson. But those hills and canyons were beautiful as well. Anyone could see how easy it was to write off the glitter, the fake boobs and hair, the way that the dumbest and worst seemed to rise to the top, that at the end of the day it was probably all just a big lie, but I still couldn't do it myself. I may not have wanted to stay, but I sure liked to visit. Maybe Los Angeles was like Gatsby's dream of Daisy, but for all of America. Instead of sitting on a pier and gazing at a green light across the water, now people just sat in their living rooms and watched the wide-screen, 3-D version of some life that was out there for the taking, if only they could get off the couch.

Los Angeles
, I wrote,
is not really so different from the rest of America.
Los Angeles was Olivia Taylor spending the rest of her life trying to become Olivia Taylor again. And then I borrowed a phrase from Dex, who'd borrowed it from someone else.
Los Angeles is simply the illusion America most chooses to treasure. The Manson murders changed that, and America, but maybe not that much.

And then something weird clicked, the way an idea can start to make sense only when you're in the middle of writing, and so I wrote what would become my paper on the airsickness bags in the pocket in front of me. I wrote about Jay Gatsby and Leslie Van Houten. They might have seemed worlds apart, but they weren't so terribly different. They both wanted to escape their families. They both believed in something that wasn't half as awesome as it seemed to be at first, and believing in the wrong things ruined both of their lives. Had the Manson murders really changed America? Or was Manson just America gone wrong all over again, but with women in the headlines? I was either getting an A or going to hell.