Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe (19 page)

I set ten brown paper bags on the prep table. Josie turned off the propane tank and plopped a scoop of charred, stiff chilies into each bag. I quickly folded the top, creating a tight seal. The bags puffed, dampened, and darkened as they filled with steam.

Ana waved a bag and called out, “Buck a bag! Fresh roasted chilies! Buck a bag.”

All afternoon Ana and Josie manned a booth at the Tardeada, selling fresh roasted chilies for a smokin’ hot deal of a buck a bag. They also sold six different kinds of burritos with all the toppings. The chilies, Josie said, were their secret promo weapon. “People smell the chilies,” she explained. “They come and buy. Then they see burritos and buy them, too.”

People at the Tardeada bought plenty. We’d sold hundreds of
burritos and bags of chilies. Now it was after seven, and we were closing the booth.

With the last tumbler of chilies roasted, I slipped out of my burrito shell and started to clean the salsa bar. Josie opened a paper bag of roasted chilies she’d set aside earlier and poured the still charred but now limp mass onto a cutting board.

“You too quiet.” Josie scraped the blackened, papery skins from the chilies. “Why you no talk? You always talk.”

I snapped lids on the guacamole, green salsa, pico de gallo, habanero salsa, onions, jalapeños, sour cream, and cilantro sprigs. “I’ve been thinking.”

“About?” With a sharp knife, Josie slit a chili down the middle and slid the blade along the flesh, scraping away the membrane and seeds. Using the knife in a rocking motion, she chopped the veggie into small pieces.

“Chilies.” I stacked the toppings and put them in the insulated cooler. All the while, an ache throbbed in the center of my chest, keeping time with the crashing waves on the beach below. For the last few weeks I’d been roasted like a chili thanks to Brie, and a few days ago I’d been sliced and diced by Duncan, who didn’t want to come to the Tardeada with me and who’d been avoiding me since trash ball. “Things haven’t been too good lately in my universe.” I pointed to the cutting board. “I’ve been tumbled and roasted, then steamed and scraped and chopped.”

Ana squeezed my shoulder. “That good,
Rojita.”

“Good?” Did Ana need more English lessons?

“Sí, good.” Josie picked up a raw green chili. It was long and
lime green, smooth and shiny. “This chili okay. Good for pico de gallo. But”—she pointed her knife at the soft, smoky, roasted chilies—“better with fire. Better for salsas, pollo deshebrado, calabacitas, todos. Fire is—how you say—flavor.”

“I could do with a little less flavor,” I said under my breath as I packed the rest of the salsa bar and checked my watch. Flavor or no flavor, I had two live shows now to deal with, and I needed to get home and review my research material for
Heartbeats
, check in on the blog, and call Clementine to see if she had reviewed my format clock for the second hour of my
Chloe, Queen of the Universe
show.

I pictured my shows. My growing fans. Me reaching out to them. Them reaching out to me. Connecting across invisible airwaves. Life wasn’t all burned chilies. I did have something good in my life. KDRS was good.

Holding on to that bit of good, I said good-bye to the sisters and headed toward the parking lot. Bonfires glowed on the beach as noisy groups of people strolled the brightly lit walk. Couples holding hands. Young families wheeling strollers. Clans from schools talking and laughing.

Slipping off my plain black Vans, I left the crowded beach walk and slinked into the cold, dry sand above the path. Here sand dunes rolled and sea grass whispered in the night, masking the laughter of the clans at the bonfires below.

My fingers flitted over the tops of the grass blades, and I realized Brie, Merce, and I hadn’t done much laughing the past few months, and the sadness had sunk in well before the Mistletoe
Ball. If I had to pinpoint a date, I’d say it all started on the beach at our end-of-summer sleepover. Every August Brie, Merce, and I dragged loungers and a cooler full of snacks to the private beach behind Brie’s house. We’d light a beach fire and talk until the sun rose. We’d talk about crushes and classes and clans. We’d talk about our dreams and deepest fears. Every year we’d start the summer sleepover an hour earlier, but our talk and laughter always outlasted the night. Until this year.

This past August we fell asleep before midnight. I figured it was because Merce was still struggling with her mom’s death and Brie had come back from a hellacious summer cruise with her warring parents. I hadn’t said anything to Brie and Merce about the lack of laughter that night or the lack of whispers and wonderings. A part of me didn’t want to recognize it, to name it, because then it would be real. I think that night on the beach was the night the threads started to unravel.

I strolled through the dunes, watching the smiling, laughing, cuddling, singing, chatting people at the bonfires, all silhouettes outlined by flames. Here in the light of the fire, lines separating clansmen blurred.

As I headed past the next bonfire, an achingly familiar seallike sound barked on the air, and my body stiffened. Because where there was Mercedes, there was Brie. The last time I’d seen Brie, she’d plucked a feather from my cupid wing and crushed it with a hollow laugh that raised the hair along my arms.

I turned, catching sight of Merce. She stood shoulder to shoulder not with Brie but with a pair of girls from the brainiac
clan. She talked and waved her arms. The girls tossed their hair and laughed. When their laughter died, Merce started talking again. It was strange, seeing Merce so animated.

Seconds later Merce raised her head and looked across the fire. Our eyes met, and her face grew serious. We stared at each other for the longest time, separated by flames and two different worlds. Should I close the distance and ask her about her new world and tell her about mine? Should I ask why she wasn’t with Brie? One of the girls tugged her arm. Without another look at me, Merce said something to her friends, eliciting peals of laughter.

Again, the world went all topsy-turvy. Merce wasn’t the jokester. She was the smart one.

The night grew blacker and cooler as I passed the final bonfire, my arms wrapped around my waist. Here the crash of waves and rush of wind pounded the night. As I crested a dune, I saw two figures sitting on a piece of driftwood and staring at the ocean. The moonlight silhouetted their bodies. The boy’s hand rested on the girl’s back and his broad shoulders tilted toward her, two people so close, they looked like one. At one point the boy cradled the girl’s hands and brought them to his lips.

My feet stilled. I didn’t want to go any closer. I didn’t want to be reminded of what I didn’t have with Duncan.

A gust of wind off the ocean rushed the beach. The girl shivered, and the boy reached for something around his neck. A scarf.

My toes dug into the frigid sand.

But it was early February, chilly, especially here on the beach. Lots of people wore scarves. Anyway, it couldn’t be Duncan. He
said he definitely didn’t have a girlfriend. But those shoulders were broad and strong, the hair dark and wonderfully windblown, and scraggly bits of yarn dangled from that scarf.

The chill in my feet climbed my legs.

Another gust of wind kicked up sand. The boy shielded the girl with his body, and when the worst was over, he stood, pulling her with him.

My knees refused to work as the couple walked up the beach, his arm around her shoulder, bodies so close you couldn’t tell where hers ended and his began. When he raised his face, there was no mistaking those silvery eyes.

Duncan froze mid-step when he spotted me. The girl leaned into him, her cheeks flushed. Was it from the cold or from the excitement of being in Duncan’s arms, a place I longed to be? The muscles along my neck tightened, refusing to let loose the words racing up my throat. Another gust of wind peppered us with sand. The girl shivered, and Duncan drew her into the wall of his chest.

Okay, Dunc, why don’t you turn up the chili roaster another notch or two?
What’s a few more blisters and some scorched skin?

Still Duncan said nothing. Tears blurred my vision, and I told myself it was the gritty sand. So Duncan and I had played Garbage Games and ate eggs and cheese on toast. So what? We were nothing to each other. At least I was nothing to him. I was too loud, too self-centered, too controlling. And he was too nice to point that out.

“Gotta go. You know. Stuff.” I needed to put an ocean of space
between me and Duncan and that quiet waif of a girl he couldn’t keep his hands and lips off of. I rushed past them.

“Wait!”

Dunc had said the same thing on the day admin announced they were shutting down the station because of my survey. Back then I’d wanted to run from Portable Five, to get far away from the radio staffers, who had every reason to hate me. But Duncan’s next words,
We need her
, kept me at the station, at his side. I needed to be needed now.

My feet stilled in the ice-cold sand. I crammed my fists against my watery eyes. Damn! Why did I have to be so needy?

Duncan bent and whispered something against the girl’s hair.

She looked like a beach mouse, frightened and small and jittery. Duncan rested his hand on her shoulder and gave a soft squeeze. She rubbed her cheek against that hand and left, making her way through the dunes to the parking lot.

Duncan stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the ocean. A full minute ticked by, my booming heart counting the seconds.

“Okay, let me start,” I said around the hard, scratchy lump gathering in my throat. “Who is she?”

Duncan rolled his head along his shoulders. “It’s complicated.”

“Seems to be a common theme with you.” Another whip of wind stung me, and I hugged my shoes to my chest.

A low growl thrummed in his throat. “She’s not my girlfriend.” He jammed his hands through his wind tossed hair. “She’s not even a friend. She needs me.”

“Hmmmmm. She
needs
you. Care to elaborate?”

He raised his face to the moon and stars as if seeking their help. “I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t. There’s a big difference, Dunc.” I threw my shoes to the ground. Time to bare my heart. “I like you, Duncan,
really
like you, and at times I think you feel the same way, but you won’t let me get close. You won’t let anyone get close, and it’s probably because of all your family . . . stuff. But that’s okay. I can deal with crazy family stuff, and we can ease into a relationship. What I can’t deal with is the silence. I need to know how you feel about me. I need to know what you want from me. I need you to talk to me.” Wind and sand swirled, stinging my hands and face.

I wanted to say more. I wanted to fill the silence with words that made sense and lessened the ache in the middle of my chest. Because words, whether given on a late-night radio show or whispered between BFs at end-of-summer sleepovers, soothed. But the next words needed to be Duncan’s.

A seagull squawked, and somewhere on the black sea a buoy clanked.

Dunc knifed his fingers through his hair and ran them down the length of his corded neck. Seconds ticked by, then eons, and Duncan remained silent.

And there it was. My answer.

I grabbed my shoes—black Vans the color of chilies left too long in the roasting tumbler—from the sand, spun, and ran to my car before Duncan could see the tears rushing down my cheeks.

• • •

On Monday after school Clementine sat across from me in the production studio holding her thumb and fingers in the letter C. Thirty seconds to the debut of
Heartbeats
, my new call-in show, which focused on love and relationships.

Meet my new BF, Irony.

Here I was, a total fail at the vast majority of relationships in my life, hosting a show about relationships. Were the airwaves ready for this? Was I?

“On the beam.” Clementine’s voice came through my headphones.

I flicked on my mic. I was going solo in the control room this afternoon. Duncan, even though he’d promised to work the boards, had failed to show. While I didn’t expect him to contact me, not after our one-sided heart-to-heart on the beach Saturday night, he should have warned Clementine, who now had to juggle assignments so she could engineer my program. Clem raised her right hand, then one by one lowered her fingers. Five, four, three, two, one . . . She cued my theme music.

Thudda-thud. Thudda-thud
. Heartbeats pulsed over the airwaves and gave way to a flute that spoke of love and longing. I closed my eyes. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

The control room door clicked. My eyes flew open. Duncan, winded and red faced, unwound his scarf and tossed it in the corner. He took the seat next to me and started adjusting dials and knobs. He said nothing, didn’t even try to meet my gaze.

Across the glass Clementine mouthed,
Dead air!

I gave my head a shake and grabbed the mic as if it were a life preserver. “Greetings, listeners and lovers. This is Chloe Camden, and I’d like to welcome you to
Heartbeats
, where love is on the air. You heard right, friends, this is your queen, but you can call me the Queen of Hearts, because this afternoon we’ll talk about . . .” I pointed at Duncan, who cued the first stinger, a slurpy kissing sound. We both looked straight ahead. “. . . love and relationships.”

For the first ten minutes I talked about the physical responses to love and attraction, things like why your heart rate increased and pulse pounded, why your hands grew sweaty or you forgot to eat. All the while Duncan dropped in bites from interviews with my heart surgeon mother and a psychologist specializing in relationships. We worked side by side, close, but not touching, which was fine. My heart was safer this way.

Within fifteen minutes, the phone bank was full. Clementine prepped our first caller and wrote a name on a sheet of paper and flashed it at me.

I did a double take, at first thinking Clementine had written
Brie
. A few weeks ago, Brie was everywhere, spewing lies, circling me like a shark, and wreaking havoc in my life, but I hadn’t seen her since the day she plucked a feather from my cupid wing. She wasn’t at the Tardeada with Merce, and I hadn’t seen her at school the past few days. I wasn’t sure if I should be concerned or relieved.