Blackbird (8 page)

“Did you make that?” you ask.

“Yeah. I have a YouTube channel where I post them. It took me two years to get all those little moments together. I was constantly pulling out my phone, trying to record people. You’d be surprised how much it happens. That one on the subway—the guy with his headphones? That’s my favorite.”

“Mine too.”

“The scandal was about the videos. My therapist would say I referred to it as a scandal to bait you because I want you to know what happened. I wanted you to ask. And maybe that’s true.”

“I’ll ask. What happened? Was it that video?”

“No—another one. I’d show it to you, but my parents went through every phone and computer I’ve ever owned and made sure it was deleted. They hired one of those Geek Squad people. It’s floating around the Internet somewhere still. They haven’t fully wrapped their brains around the Internet, and what that means for my video.”

“It was that bad?”

The girl pushes her sunglasses up over her forehead and leans in. “
I
didn’t think it was bad. It started because of this photo that was going around school. I didn’t know her, but this freshman girl texted a picture of her boobs to a guy she was hooking up with on the soccer team, and he forwarded it to his friends, etcetera. Two days later and everyone at school had seen it. And here’s the thing . . . they hated
her
. Everyone was talking as if she was the bad guy, not him—and he was the one who sent it to everyone he knew. At a certain point I just got sick of it. So a few of my friends and I made this video—all boobs.”

“All boobs? What does that even mean?”

“Boob shot, after boob shot, after boob shot. Just boobs. I took video of my friends changing their shirts and bras, then I set it to music. Our faces aren’t in it. The whole point was: What’s the big deal? Why is everyone shaming this girl? She hadn’t been to school for a week, and her friends said she wasn’t eating and she couldn’t stop crying. I was like: They’re just boobs, people. WTF.”

“So it didn’t go over well.”

“No. Hence the trip to see Mims. I still think I’m right. . . . Anyway, what about you? What are you running from?”

Her wording catches you off guard, and even though you know it’s just a turn of phrase, everything about it makes you uneasy. There’s no reason the police would ever look for you here, but you can’t help glancing at the back gates, making sure nothing seems off.

“Just craziness at home. My parents fight all the time. It’s better to come here and just get away.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of nice here. . . .” The girl stands and walks to the edge of the pool. It isn’t as clear or clean as it could be, that’s obvious, but she starts down the stairs, letting the water settle at her shins. She’s about to go in farther when a voice calls out from the other side of the fence.

“Iz, come on,” a woman says. “We have to meet them in a half hour. If we don’t leave soon we’ll get stuck on the 10.”

“I better go,” the girl says, splashing up the stairs. She leans over, gathering her things. “But I’ll be around tomorrow . . . and the next day . . . and the day after that. No car.”

“Me neither. So you’re . . . Iz?”

“Izzy. Now you have to tell me yours.”

“Everyone calls me Sunny.”

“See you tomorrow, Little Miss Sunshine?”

You smile, and it feels so good it’s surprising. As you lean back on the chair, the sun is comforting, and for the first time this morning, your shoulders relax. You know it’d be better if you didn’t see her again. If you made up some excuse telling her why you won’t be around tomorrow. It’s more risk.

But as she starts toward the gate you say nothing, and that seems like answer enough. She holds the sweatshirt in her hand as she waves good-bye.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“COUSIN RITA.” BEN
throws the Jeep into park and turns the engine off. He hasn’t stopped smiling the entire ride.

“Rita, really? How about Tess, or Zadie? Something cooler?” You pull the visor down, looking at your reflection in the tiny mirror. You’ve styled your bangs straight, so they sit right above your glasses, covering your brows.

“I think Rita’s funny,” he says.

“It’s an old woman’s name.”

“That’s why it’s funny.”

You look outside the passenger window. Kids stumble up the lawn, some with red solo cups, others pulling flasks from their back pockets. The driveway is strewn with crunched cans. Behind the metal gate, you can just see the top of the crowd, heads bobbing, the occasional hand thrown in the air.

“I shouldn’t have talked to that girl today . . .” you say, picking up your conversation from earlier. You run your finger under the leather wristband. Ben found it in a drawer and gave it to you, the strap now covering the tattoo.

“What were you supposed to do, ignore her? That would’ve been even weirder.”

Ben grabs a few plastic boxes from the glove compartment and tucks them in his hoodie. “That news clip ran three days ago; if she hasn’t seen it by now, she won’t,” he says. “I was the one who drove you there and even I had to play it back three times to be sure it was you. Worst thing that happens is someone tells my mom I had a girl over. She’ll probably be relieved I’m not just sitting around in my underwear eating Cheetos.”

He steps out of the car, waving for you to follow. A girl and boy sit on the lawn, the beer sloshing over the side of her cup as they kiss. “So what’s the story?” you say, leaning in so they can’t hear. “I’m your cousin?”

Ben laughs. “Yeah, sure. No one will ask, though. We’ll be in and out in ten minutes.”

You keep your head down as you leave the Jeep, your hand going up to block your
face. The music is loud. The house spreads out on the side of a hill, the city below quiet and calm. Ben walks in front of you. He presses his hand into his jeans pocket, feeling for the tiny boxes you watched him assemble. He’d promised he was just dropping stuff off. In and out, just stopping by, he’d said.

He slaps hands with a boy in a Dodgers hat. You weave through the crowd, squeezing past girls with heavy eye makeup and stiff curls. “Rex, this is my cousin Rita!” Ben yells. A boy with bloodshot eyes smiles, nods at you. Ben pushes farther ahead, toward a set of sliding glass doors. Beyond them a few kids pass around a bong. Ben spins back, grabbing your hand.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Promise you won’t get into too much trouble?”

“I’ll try my best.” You turn, taking in the packed yard. A boy has gone into the pool with all his clothes on. Now his sweatshirt balloons out around him, his jeans clinging to his scrawny legs.

As Ben disappears inside you cut across the patio, under strands of old Christmas lights, to a table covered with half-empty bottles. Two girls are there, squeezing limes into some pink concoction. You pour whiskey over ice, taking the first sip, enjoying how it warms your throat as it goes down. Ben was right. No one seems to notice you. The girls are talking about some friends they met up with in some park, how they go there to drink sometimes (no cops), and maybe they’ll see a band tomorrow at the Echoplex.

It’s freeing, being lost among so many people. Some guys are playing beer pong beside the pool. Other kids are sprawled out on the grass, hair tangled and wet, their eyes half closed. You’re wearing a baggy T-shirt, a hoodie, and shorts, and that’s its own layer of invisibility. Not a single guy turns to look at you. No one studies your face. You sit down on the patio and take off your sneakers, letting your feet land in the cold, clear water, soaking your legs up to the knees.

You drain the drink. You watch the party unfold in front of you. The boy splashes over to a raft, resting his arms on it. Girls form a circle in the far corner of the lawn, dancing. You think:
This is what normal looks like.
Your limbs warm, the pain in your side slips away. You don’t know how much time has passed when Ben comes back. He looks into the cup. “Having fun?”

“I should’ve made one for you.”

“Nah, I don’t drink.”

He’s not smiling when he says it—the only reason you know he isn’t kidding. “Why?”

“Because . . . I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“So you don’t drink or smoke. . . . Why are you selling pot, then?”

A strange smirk crosses his lips. He leans in, his voice lower than before. “Easy on the judgment, Miss I’m-Wanted-by-the-LAPD.”

“Come on. . . . It’s a fair question. . . .”

“I sell it to make money. Isn’t that why most people do it?”

You take another sip of your drink, sucking down the watery mix. “You go to high school with these people?”

“They’re private-school kids,” he says. “I’m at Marshall High. I don’t exist to them.”

You don’t know exactly where Marshall is, but it explains the drive to this house, how it took over half an hour, winding down through the narrow canyon roads, unable to see beyond the headlight glow. Now that you’re out here you feel farther away from everything that’s happened, from the worry that people might recognize you from the news. “Am I doing a good job at being ‘normal’?” you ask.

Ben laughs. “Yeah, you fit right in. Do you feel normal?”

“I feel more normal than I have all week.”

“Usually I’ll just stay out as late as I can after school,” Ben says. “Kids go up to Griffith Park and hang out in the parking lot. Or I’ll just drive around. But today was the first day that I actually wanted to come home. It was weird.”

“Thanks . . . I guess?”

Ben laughs. “I meant weird, like . . . good weird.”

While he was at school today you noticed the picture on the fireplace. His dad, his mom, and him, when he was around twelve or thirteen. They were at some formal event. Ben was dressed in a suit and tie. His mother was laughing, her eyes looking off to the side of the camera. They seemed happy, frozen in this perfect moment.

“When did it happen?” you ask. “Your dad, everything with your mom . . .”

“My dad died three years ago. He was ten years older than my mom and he just got sick. He had this cough, and he just kept ignoring it, he kept going to work. And then it got worse. Then he was in the hospital . . . and then he died.”

“What was it?”

“Pneumonia. After he died I was so mad because it was just stupid, you know? If he had just gone in sooner he probably wouldn’t have died.”

You think again of the funeral, of the church that existed in those few brief minutes. When were you there? Was it your own father? You want to mention it but it doesn’t feel right—like you’d be comparing his life to some imagined life, something you’re not even sure is real.

He looks out into the party, watching people push through the crowded yard, some holding their cups above their heads. “And my mom . . . I don’t know when that happened. I know when my dad died she had to sort through all this stuff. There was a lot he hadn’t told her about and I know she was stressed. But then I realized she’d kind of lost it . . . she started hiding things from me. She was acting like a different person.
She went in two months ago.”

You move your hand toward his, slipping your fingers underneath his fingers just to see how it feels. His expression is more serious, and for a moment you feel tentative, nervous even. His face is just inches from yours.

Ben picks up your hand, squeezing it. He pulls it closer to him, treating it like some delicate thing, turning it over, pressing it between his palms. Then he looks out into the party, where a few more kids have jumped into the pool with their clothes on. One girl sits on the stairs in her jean shorts, her shirt and hair soaked, her mascara running onto her cheeks. “So that is the story,” Ben says. He turns to you, leans in, smiles. “Any more questions? Can we just hang out now?”

“No more questions,” you say.

“Good, then let’s get out of here.” He hops up, pulling you to stand. You slip your bare feet into your sneakers but Ben is already moving. You stumble behind him, trying to catch up.

“Where are we going?”

“Swimming.”

He doesn’t look back as he says it. You turn toward the pool, watching a boy struggle to get on a neon-pink raft. “Where? Your house?” you ask.

“Better,” he says. “You’ll see.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

IT’S HARD TO
see where the trail ends and the brush begins. You wind down the narrow path, your hands on Ben’s back, your feet unsteady in the sand. Far below, the ocean is silver and shimmering, the moon casting light on the water. “Just a little farther,” Ben says. “It’s right here.”

The metal staircase cuts down the side of the rocky cliff face, dropping two stories to the thin stretch of sand below. You follow behind Ben, watching where he puts his feet.
He avoids the rusted, broken holes in the metal, the spaces where the stairs have eroded. You grab onto the hand rail, holding tight, the other hand on the strap of your knapsack. In just a few minutes you’re on the beach below.

It’s a narrow strip of sand against a steep cliff, a few rocks rising up from the shallows. A hundred feet away an old sailboat is turned on its side. From where you stand you can see the coast to the south, speckled with light, a Ferris wheel turning in the distance.

“This is one of my favorite places. We used to come here when I was a kid.” Ben turns to the water as he peels his shirt up and away, exposing his bare back. You drop the knapsack on the ground, pulling the thin blanket out and setting it on a nearby rock.

You take off the sweatshirt, leaving it there in the sand. Ben has already waded into the water, toward a small outcropping of rocks. You roll the bottom of the shorts up, tie the T-shirt in a knot above your belly button, and follow, letting the cold water hit your ankles, your thighs, your waist.

You hold your breath, dipping below, swimming to where it’s deeper. You’re far enough out that you can’t touch the bottom, but it’s easy to move with the waves, and you wonder where and how you learned to swim. In just a few seconds you’re a dozen feet from the rocks, their silhouettes cutting the surface of the water. The massive cliff face behind them is nearly thirty feet high.