First There Was Forever (7 page)

T
he next morning we headed to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, which turned out to be loud and exhausting. The others seemed fascinated by everything they saw. They handled pots and old picture frames and dusty records. And the amazing thing was, it seemed like they were actually able to assess the quality of this stuff.

Meredith thumbed through a bin full of jewelry and produced a glittering necklace.

“That’s pretty!” I said, admiring the way it reflected daylight.

She looked at it thoughtfully. “No. Not special.”

And then she moved on. To me, it was all the same. Special because it was old and weird, but also just stuff that you wouldn’t actually wear.

I was getting pretty bored and cranky. It was hot in Pasadena, and the flea market was crowded and dirty. I wanted to go home and talk to Mom. I was feigning interest in some vintage posters when Meredith called my name.

“This. You.” She was holding up a leather jacket.

It didn’t look like much to me. It was smallish and black, with slightly beat-up leather that was starting to crack around the elbows and collar. It had two zipper breast pockets and another set of pockets lower down.

“Cute!” I lied. “But I’m too hot to try it on. And I have no money.”

“Don’t worry about that. Get over here,” she said affectionately.

I begrudgingly dropped my purse and let her put my arms into the sleeves. I knew right away that it was a perfect fit. The leather felt cool and mild on my skin.

Meredith turned me toward a mirror that the vendor had leaned up against the side of his van, and I looked at my reflection. I was stunned. There was a hardness to the jacket, a dark history you could sense from looking at it. It was the jacket of someone who had done bad things, who had taken risks, lived a dangerous life. Wearing it, I seemed to assume some of those qualities. I was transformed. Even I could see the magic.

“This is so cool,” I said, my eyes finding Meredith’s in the mirror. “But, still. I literally only have seven dollars with me.”

Meredith wrapped her arms around me from behind. I liked seeing the two of us together in the reflection. Even though we didn’t look alike, our faces seemed to match. Like people who belonged together.

“You have to have this jacket,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll get it for you.”

I looked at the handwritten price tag hanging off the sleeve. It was over a hundred dollars. My heart sank.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “It’s too much. I won’t be able to pay you back.”

Meredith slid out from behind me and cupped my face in her hands. Her eyes were smiling. “Shush. It’s a present. I seriously don’t care.”

• • •

The sun sparkled through the big trees of Laurel Canyon while I waited on the steps of the twins’ house for Mom and Dad to pick me up, and bits of yellow light swam around me like a million shimmering fish. It was so pretty here, and the last twenty-four hours had been an amazing adventure, but it felt incomplete without being able to share it with someone. I wished Hailey were here. We could analyze Henry and Lily and how foreign but cool Meredith’s world felt.

I picked up my phone and called her. After a few rings, it went to voice mail and the sound of her voice on the recording stung. Missing her felt physical, like an icy wind blowing through my rib cage.

Hailey hated voice mails so I sent her a text instead.

Tried calling you. I miss you! Love you! Call me! xoxox

What was Hailey doing right now? What had she done all weekend? I couldn’t remember a time when a weekend had passed and I’d had no idea what she’d done. A high breeze moved through the trees and the rustling leaves made a sound like the ocean.

“Where’d that jacket come from?” Mom asked when they arrived. Mom was sitting in the passenger seat and Dad was behind the wheel.

“I got it at the Rose Bowl this morning. Meredith bought it for me,” I said.

Instead of backing out of the driveway, Dad turned the engine off and turned to face me.

“Aren’t we leaving?” I asked.

“What you did last night was not okay,” Dad said.

“What did I do?” I asked, growing hot. Images of the night before flashed through my mind.

“You went out without asking if you could,” Mom said. “And you got in the car with a driver who we don’t know.”

“I asked!” I protested. “And you know Meredith and Walker. They came to your anniversary party.”

“Asking is not the same thing as getting permission,” Dad said. “You should have waited. You can’t just leave.”

“And to be honest, Li, I probably would have said no,” Mom added.

“Why? Why in the world would you say no?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I knew the answer. Meredith and Walker were just the kind of people parents were afraid of.

“Meredith seems very independent,” Mom replied.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “Isn’t it a good thing?”

“What Mommy means,” Dad said, “is that they’re fast.”

“Fast?” I repeated. “Really?”

“Look,” Dad said. “We’re here. Why don’t we go inside and talk to Howie Hayes. You know he’s a client and I haven’t seen him in a while. If you’re planning on sleeping over here again, we’d just like to know that you’ll be safe. That he’s a responsible parent.”

“You can’t,” I blurted, panicking. They would freak out if they knew there hadn’t been any adults here the night before. I would never be allowed to come over again. “He went out to lunch. He’s not here.”

I didn’t have a lot of practice lying to Mom and Dad, and I held my breath while I waited for them to see through me. Instead, Dad turned on the car and started down the driveway.

“Okay. But this conversation isn’t over,” he said. “You can’t just go out without permission.”

“I know,” I said. “I promise I won’t do that again. Ever.”

Dad turned onto the twisty street that led back to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and I started to relax. There were colorful, stucco houses tucked into the hills and big, gnarled trees that canopied the road.

“We haven’t seen Hailey lately,” Mom added, after a moment. “Is she friendly with Meredith Hayes?”

“Not really,” I said. I glanced at my phone and a hard pebble of sadness formed in my throat. She still hadn’t texted me back.

I
decided to meet Hailey outside of her second-period class Monday morning. The hollow feeling of missing her hadn’t gone away, and even though she never got back to me, I was dying to give her a hug and smell that familiar Hailey smell. I was wearing my new leather jacket, and it made me feel brave and optimistic. Hailey and I had started tenth grade on the wrong foot, but I was ready to right things. I could forgive her for ditching me at my parents’ anniversary party, and for not including me in her social life. We could get past that.

Hailey and Skyler stepped out of the classroom side by side, and I waved at them from across the hall. Even though I didn’t really want to talk to Skyler, I was glad she was seeing me in my new jacket. She always had to have the coolest things, and I was sure she’d be super impressed.

Skyler looked me up and down and then ignored me. She hooked her arm tight around Hailey’s neck and said, “I have to get something from my locker. Come with me?”

“I called you yesterday, Hailey,” I blurted out, a mix of hot emotions rising in my throat.

Hailey stopped. She was quiet for a second, and then she said simply, “My phone died.”

I stood there awkwardly, not sure what to say next. My face burned with shame and hurt. There was no way I could tell her I missed her. Not with Skyler hanging on to her like that.

Hailey looked at me for a moment longer, and then a concerned expression slowly transformed her face. She opened her mouth to say something but Skyler cut her off.

“C’mon, Hailey,” Skyler whined, toddler-like.

Hailey laughed and allowed Skyler to steer her down the hall away from me.

T
he noise level in the library during lunch was the perfect amount of loud for studying. Too much quiet could be even more distracting to me than too much sound. Maybe it was because I had grown up listening to the constant thrumming of the waves on the beach and the grinding buzz of cars on the road, but true silence rang in my ears like an alarm.

I was working at my favorite library table when I got that heavy feeling you get when someone is standing behind you. I turned to check and there was Nate. Gray hoodie. Dirty jeans. Ballpoint pen clamped between his lips like a cigarette. He walked around the table and slid into the seat across from me.

“What Spanish class are you in?” he asked, nodding to my textbook.

“Spanish two. Sixth period,” I said,

“I have that class fifth,” he said. “Are you studying for the quiz?”

I looked up at him, and felt my cheeks grow immediately hot under his warm blue gaze. “Yeah.”

He took the pen out of his mouth and placed in on the desk.

“Quiz me,” he said, giving me this lopsided smile.

“
Me gustaría ir a España, pero no puedo
,” I read cautiously.

“I would like to go to Spain, but I can’t?” he translated.

“Right,” I said. “Conditional of
hablar
?”

“
Hablaria, hablarias, hablaria, habliaramos, hablariais, hablarian
,” Nate recited.

I was impressed. “Right.”

“Give me something hard,” he said.

I searched. “Second person conditional of
poner
versus
poder
. They’re similar.”

Nate closed his eyes for a minute and I watched him think.

Finally he said, “Shit, I don’t know. Tell me.”

We quizzed each other back and forth for the rest of lunch. When one o’clock arrived, Nate stood up.

“Are you going to Cole’s Halloween party this weekend?” he asked. And then he teased. “I know how much you love to party.”

“I didn’t know about it,” I confessed. “Are you going?” A strange bubble of nervousness formed in my throat when I said it.

He flicked his ballpoint pen on the desk so it spun around and around, like a top. When it had slowed to a stop, he shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

• • •

“I heard Cole is having a Halloween party,” I said to Hailey in the car-pool line later. “Maybe we should go and dress up as something together. Like, I know we’ve always said we’d do Thelma and Louise.”

“I’m going with Skyler,” she said casually, “and we’re dressing as fucked-up fairies.”

“Oh,” I said, deflating a little. I hadn’t been planning on dressing up this year until I’d heard about the party from Nate, but since then I’d started to get excited. I’d spent all sixth period brainstorming. I could wear overalls and be Shelley Duvall from
The Shining.
Or wear Dad’s clothes and be Annie Hall. Or Hailey and I could do something together. In fifth grade we’d gone as conjoined twins, and even though it was basically impossible to walk in the three-legged jumpsuit Mom made us, it was the best Halloween ever.

“Cole’s is going to be stupid anyway,” Hailey said, checking her cell phone. She was barely paying attention to me. “We might, like, not even go, ’cause we’re going to Bridget’s brother’s friend’s house first. And if that’s fun, we might just stay there.”

I felt myself being pulled under a wave of disappointment. Hailey must have sensed it because she put her phone away and focused on me.

“I’m sorry, Li. Are you mad?” she asked in the baby voice that she reserved for times when she was trying to get something from me. “I didn’t think you would want to go.”

“I’m not mad,” I said quickly. “It’s not a big deal.”

The autumn Los Angeles sun was sitting low, shedding a pallid light over the cars and washing out the concrete walls of our building.

Hailey’s mom’s car pulled up in front of us. Hailey had been resting her backpack on her feet and now she scooped it up and climbed into the car.

I waved to Brenda and she waved back, her face hidden behind a plaster mask of make-up.

Hailey stared straight ahead as they drove away, and I watched them go, wondering what they would talk about in the car, or if they would talk at all.