First There Was Forever (14 page)

M
om came in to my room on Saturday and sat on the edge of my bed.

“Hey, baby,” she said. “It’s eleven. Time to get up.”

Mom smelled clean, like she’d already showered. She was wearing a yellow T-shirt and khaki shorts.

“I’m still tired,” I grumbled.

Mom leaned in toward me and started untangling a knot of hair next to my ear. “Lima, do you ever brush your hair?”

I liked when Mom got super-close to me and I could see the freckles on her skin and smell the good Mom smell underneath the smell of her shower products.

“Sometimes,” I said. “When I feel like it.”

“You know it’s Daddy’s birthday tomorrow,” Mom said, gently unwinding the strands of hair.

“I know. I didn’t forget,” I said. “What are we gonna do?”

We always spent Dad’s birthday with Nana, and I had been getting more and more worried about it as the day approached, knowing that we couldn’t do that this year.

“He said he just wants to go to Gladstones for dinner. Just the three of us,” she said.

Mom and I hated Gladstones, with its soggy, fried food and tacky Malibu tourist paraphernalia, but that was a secret we kept from Dad. It would literally break his heart if he knew.

“Sounds good,” I said.

Whatever sadness Mom and Dad had about Nana was tucked neatly away, out of sight.

Meredith called me while Mom and I were doing the breakfast dishes. Meredith never texted.

“Hi, beauty,” she said when I answered. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” I said. I hadn’t seen Meredith since before the holidays, and it felt good to hear her voice.

“There’s a really amazing silent movie playing at the New Beverly this afternoon,” she said. “Want to come? We can eat at the old farmers’ market afterward.”

I glanced outside at the perfect sky and ocean, and I thought about all the clatter in my head and decided a silent movie was probably exactly what I needed.

I got ready quickly, and silently stared out the window while Mom drove me to meet Meredith.

The theater was in a busy part of the city, trafficky and bright and polluted. Meredith was waiting out front, wearing aviator sunglasses, a long floral dress, and a suede jacket.

“Meredith looks so grown-up,” Mom said as she pulled up to the curb.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She has really cool style.”

“Hmm,” Mom said, her mouth forming a straight line.

Meredith came over to the car, and I got out. She wrapped her arms around me and held me protectively under her arm while she talked to Mom.

“This movie is going to be so special—thank you for bringing Lima all the way out here,” Meredith said to Mom. Sometimes she really did seem like a grown-up.

Mom smiled and nodded and told us to have fun. As we walked inside, I thought how weird it was that no matter how polite Meredith was, Mom always seemed suspicious of her.

The movie theater had red velvet chairs, and the screen was smaller than regular movie theater screens. It even had a heavy curtain that parted when the movie started.

Everything felt like an antique, touched with the magic of all the people who had been here over the years. Maybe it’s because LA is kind of a new city, but there aren’t that many places that I’ve been that are really old.

In the cool, dark theater and the wordless universe of the movie, I actually felt a good wave of calmness. Maybe the world was bigger than I thought. Not just all about Hailey and Nate. I almost, for a fleeting second, glimpsed a life that might exist after high school. I tried to catch it, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it had emerged.

When we got out of the theater, it was night.

“There’s this incredible taco stand at the farmer’s market,” Meredith said. “I’m starving.”

The old farmer’s market in West Hollywood wasn’t a real farmers’ market like the ones Mom and I went to for fresh produce. It was a bustling, rowdy outdoor food court that resembled a county fair more than anything. Tourists and locals swarmed through the labyrinth of exotic food stands and wine bars. I followed close behind Meredith, trying not to lose sight of her in the crowd. Meredith ordered us six tacos, and we ate them standing up at a yellow plastic counter. We must have gone through a hundred napkins, wiping salsa and sour cream and that red oil from the carne asada off our mouths.

“I love Louise Brooks,” Meredith said, talking about the movie we had just seen. “She says so much without saying anything. It is so sexy.”

Nobody at school talked like Meredith. Nobody said stuff like “sexy.”

“You have that quality, too,” Meredith continued. “You say so much with your face. I can just watch you.”

I blushed. “I think you’re like that!”

Meredith smiled. “No, I just try to be like that.”

“You do?” I said. “Like, how?”

Meredith shrugged, pushing the remainder of the taco into her mouth. She blocked her mouth with her delicate hand.

“Did you go out last night?” I asked.

It’s weird how Meredith almost never talked about anything personal. Even asking what she’d done the night before felt like prying.

Meredith frowned, staring off into space. “My memory is terrible. Last night? Oh, yeah, Walker and I didn’t do anything. We listened to music. We video chatted with our father in Marrakech for a while. I wish I was there. I can’t wait for next year.”

“What’s next year?” I asked.

“Walker and I are going travel,” she said, straightening up. “We’re starting by visiting our mom in Paris and then from Paris we’re going to Istanbul and then we don’t know. I want to ride the trans-Siberian railroad. And Walker is obsessed with Japan. We are keeping our plans open.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s amazing. And that’s okay with your parents? Like not going to college?”

“We might go eventually,” she replied vaguely.

“Are you deferring for a year?” I asked.

“We didn’t apply. We went on a college tour last summer and it all just seemed so wrong. We couldn’t picture it. Being in some dorm. The whole thing,” she said, frowning a little. But then she brightened. “But who knows. Maybe I’ll want to go to college after seeing the world.”

I wondered if Mom and Dad would let me travel for a year before going to college. Everything always sounded so sensible the way Meredith said it, but I could already imagine the millions of questions my parents would ask if I tried to suggest something like that.

“I want to travel, too,” I said. “That’s why I like that Joni Mitchell song ‘California.’ It makes me glad to be right here.”

“I know, it’s a perfect song for being glad to be in LA,” she said. And then she took her cell phone out of her pocket, glanced at the screen, and sighed. “There’s a party in Hollywood later. Walker wants to go, but I don’t feel like it. I’d rather just go back to your house and sit on the beach.”

I was surprised. Meredith had never slept over. “Really?”

“Walker wanted to see some girl. I think he’ll probably bring her home with him,” she frowned.

“Oh,” I said. “Walker has a girlfriend?”

“No,” she chuckled. “It’s not like that.”

“Definitely come over,” I said.

We left the farmer’s market and Meredith drove us back to Malibu.

“What does Walker do when you take the car?” I asked.

She dragged on her cigarette before she answered. “We have another car,” she said. “My dad’s Mercedes.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

And then she laughed. “It’s so funny that Walker has to drive that thing.”

I liked when Meredith laughed, but I also felt excluded. She had so many private jokes with herself. She laughed hard for about another minute, and then she took a long, steady breath and turned on the stereo. The singer was a man. His voice was soft and broken and coaxing.

As we drove west toward Malibu, the city changed. It went from urban to suburban and finally to the wide, dark expanse of the beach.

“Who are we listening to?” I asked as we turned onto the PCH. The gravel of his voice matched the grinding, unsmooth gears of Meredith’s old car.

“Leonard Cohen,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I nodded, and then laughed. “Like your cat!”

“Like my cat,” Meredith agreed, and then cut off the stereo. “I’ll teach you to sing it. It’s one of those really easy ones to sing.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’d like that.”

I felt so lucky to get to hang around Meredith. Her friendship felt like a prize, or a secret, or a key.

Y
uri was assigned as my partner for the spectra lab. It was an outside-of-class lab, and the only time we could find to meet up was Tuesday after school.

The room monitor that day was a young-looking assistant from the dean’s office. She sat quietly behind Patty’s desk reading a magazine.

“Let’s do hydrogen first,” Yuri said, nodding toward a glass tube that radiated a bright blue light, like a neon glow stick.

I positioned the spectroscope in front of it. “You go first.”

Yuri bent down and looked in. “I think it’s continuous, not linear. You check.”

He stood up and lightly touched my arm, gesturing for it to be my turn. Yuri was one of those people who had to wear his regular glasses inside of his lab goggles, which made him look really silly. Even so, there was something handsome about him with his dark wavy hair and dimples. He’d had the same girlfriend all year, a senior named Ziyue, who walked him to chem every day.

I bent down and peered through the eyehole. I had been sort of excited that this lab had to do with light, but the spectroscope converted the glowing blue of the hydrogen into something dry and boring. Just a numeric equation.

By the time Yuri and I had finished, the February sun had already gone down and it was dark out. I had never been in the science classroom at this hour, and the night sky turned the big glass windows into mirrors.

I texted Mom to come get me, then I grabbed a granola bar from my locker and walked over to the patio behind the administration building. I thought hopefully that maybe Nate had a meeting with the dean today and would still be there, but the patio was empty. Disappointed, I wandered back to the main campus through the student parking lot. I wove in and around the remaining cars, to see if I recognized anyone’s. Meredith and Walker’s spot was empty. Skyler’s spot was empty, too.

When I realized I didn’t know who the few cars belonged to, a dense loneliness settled on my chest like a weight.

I walked to the computer lab, resigned to getting a head start on my homework while I waited for my mom. As soon as I stepped in, my heart literally leaped. Nate was there. Alone. Sitting at a computer, his face illuminated by a glowing screen. I had hoped for a situation like this so many times over the last few weeks that I almost felt like I had willed it into being.

When he saw me, he gave me a small acknowledging nod and I returned it.

I sat down at a computer a few stations over. I was careful not to sit too close to him. I could feel his eyes on me, though, watching my motions, doing that uninhibited staring thing that he had done in the past. I resisted looking in his direction. All I had wanted lately was the chance to be alone with him, and now that I had it, I was too shy to even speak.

“Long time no see,” he said finally.

I allowed myself to turn and meet his eyes. I nodded in agreement.

He cocked his head and looked at me curiously, like he was putting something together.

“Want to take a break?” he asked. “We can go up to the roof.”

I left my backpack in the computer lab and followed Nate up a set of stairs at the back of the building. People always talked about sneaking up on the roof to smoke or make out or skip class, but I’d never been. At the top, Nate pushed open a door and held it for me as I walked outside.

The roof was weird. Big bulbous vents were clustered like bushes. The ground was covered with a strange, soft gravel. There were no lamps so it was darker than the rest of the school. LA spread out all around us. The lights of cars, office buildings, streetlamps, and storefronts lit up the city like a giant, flat Christmas tree.

I turned to Nate. He picked up a pebble from the ground, tossed it up, and attempted to kick it midair. He missed. He did it again. This time, the pebble grazed his shoe. He sighed, and squinted out at the city. I felt like I could watch him do anything and never get bored.

An ambulance drove by, and its siren blared like an opera over the low groan of traffic.

“What are you doing here so late?” he asked when it had passed.

My vision had adjusted to the dark, and I could see that his blue eyes were swimming.

“I had a chem lab,” I said. “What about you? Did you have a meeting with the dean?”

“Nope, other stuff,” he said. And then he cracked a smile. “But good memory. About the dean.”

His smile melted something inside of me.

“Hey,” he said, his tone changing. “How is your grandmother?”

“She died,” I responded quickly. The words hit the air like stones hitting a wall. It was weird, for the first time since Nana had died it actually seemed real. I felt the unyielding, irreversible truth of it. I would never see her again. Hot tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t repress them, so I pressed my forearm hard across my eyes, blocking the tears from spilling down my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

After a minute, I dropped my arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said softly. He stepped toward me and put his hand on my shoulder, like he was going to pull me in for a hug. But instead he just let it rest there for a moment before dropping it back to his side.

His hand left a burning imprint on my shoulder, as if the place where he had touched me was on fire. We looked at each other for a moment. The city swirled around us, cars and electronic billboards and helicopters, and we were separate. In our own, secret pocket of dark.

Just then, my phone vibrated. A text from Mom saying she was here. A bubble of disappointment swelled inside me. I really didn’t want to leave.

Nate walked me downstairs. We didn’t talk, but our silence felt rich and active, like even without speaking we were saying things. In chemistry, Patty was always reminding us that air isn’t negative space. It’s full of molecules in motion, and when I was around Nate, I really understood what Patty meant.

Back in the computer lab, I picked up my backpack and swung it over my shoulder.

Nate watched.

“Okay,” I said, trying to hold his gaze, feeling gripped with a sudden shyness. Was I supposed to give him a good-bye hug? I just stood there, frozen.

He stuck the palm of his hand out to me, as if he wanted me to give him a high five.

I slapped his hand and he caught it, his fingers wrapping around and through my own. My awkwardness vanished. Nate was so comfortable, so confident, it made me feel safe. And the sensation of our bodies touching, even just our hands, was so overwhelming my mind kind of went blank.

After a minute he said, “You should go meet your mom.”

I nodded. I dropped my hand and drifted outside.

On our drive back to Malibu, the city looked clearer, more vivid than it had in forever. I noticed the rich green of the street signs, and the array of colors of the cars on the freeway. When we turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean greeted us, moonlight sparkling on its surface like a zillion flickering stars.