Pasadena (5 page)

“Listen,” Eppie finally says when she catches her breath.
“I know you guys were friends and you spent a lot of time together, but I think one of the reasons Maggie had such an odd lot of us was because she used us differently. I mean, there were things she could talk to you about that I would have been clueless on, and vice versa. So maybe you don't have the whole picture.”

“And you do?” I ask.

She shrugs, shakes her head. “No. I don't. I mean, there are what? Seven other people to consider, including Hank out there. All I know is, one day Maggie asked me if I'd ever almost drowned. All the time Hank and I spend out on the water, sure, it's happened before. A lungful of ocean and that could be all she wrote. That's why we surf together and keep one eye on the water at all times.”

“Why did she want to know?”

Eppie flicks imaginary ash from her unlit cigarette, both eyes on the ocean now, watching Hank as he comes in to shore and starts walking down the beach, board under his arm.

“She wanted to know if it hurt. God, I want to light this. I'd better . . .” She puts the clove in her pocket and tosses the pack away from her, into the depths of the Six-Pac. “She wanted to know what it would feel like to drown.”

I nod. “Sleeping pills, a swimming pool, and an inflatable mattress with a slow leak. We used to talk about the best way to die. If the pills didn't kill you, the water would. And you'd sink down nice and easy.”

Eppie laughs. “You don't know a lot about drowning. Not a pill in the world gonna keep the water from hurting when it gets into you.”

I shrug. “Doesn't matter. We weren't going to do it.”

Eppie doesn't look at me. “Yeah,” she says, “right.”

Maggie in the pool. Me in the ocean. I guess she's not convinced.

Eppie finishes her soda, belches loudly, and tosses the can toward a nearby trash drum. She makes the shot. Orange soda sprays around the inside of the garbage bag, rattling against the metal drum.

“So, it's just a coincidence, then?” She says it like she's asking a question. Or maybe making an accusation.

Eppie jumps down from the truck. Hank is almost here. She makes a show of helping him with his board.

“Hey, sleepyhead!” Hank calls out to me. He peels his wet suit down to his waist in that unselfconscious way guys who already have girlfriends do. It must be true love.

“Hey, Hank,” I say back, and slide down so he can gain
access to the back of the truck. He disappears inside and Eppie and I are alone once again.

Eppie looks at me while I finish my soda. Then she takes the can from me and drops it into the trash with hers. “Joey's worried about you.”

I shrug. “Everybody's worried about something.”

“He really cares about you, you know. I thought you guys had something going there before school ended.”

I feel my stomach tense. That's the problem with the past. No matter how much you might want to forget it, there's always someone there to remind you.

“Like what?” I say.

“Like
feelings
, maybe. We were rooting for you.” She gives me a little smile.

“We?”

“Yeah. Me and Hank, even Maggie. You two deserve a little happiness. He's such a good guy, and you . . . used to seem kind of sad, when you first got here. But then you lightened up. You seriously think Joey had nothing to do with that?”

I don't know what to say. Maggie changed me. Maybe Joey did too, but Roy single-handedly changed me right back.

I don't want to think about this. I bite my lip to keep from answering.

“Anyway,” Eppie says, giving up. “He likes you.”

“Enough to come pick me up from Malibu?” I ask, ignoring the implication.

“No doubt.” She shakes her head and finally lights her cigarette. Hank climbs back out of the truck, a granola bar in one hand.

“Break time's over, ladies,” he says. “Let's hit it again.”

“Not for me,” I say. “I'm tapped out.”

Hank looks at Eppie and shrugs. “To each his own. Blue House tomorrow night?”

“Definitely,” I say.

He grins and winks at Eppie. “See you out there, babe.” He kisses her on the lips and jogs back down to the water. I go inside and change back into my shorts. Then I text Joey. He can't stay mad forever.

He'll know if there was a mattress in the pool.

I sit down beside Eppie on the bumper when I come out. My phone buzzes with an incoming message:
No mattress. On my way.

“What'd ya do, text him?” Eppie laughs. “God, he's whipped,” she says.

“Maybe he just wants answers, like me.”

“Well, I think it was suicide,” Eppie tells me. “Maggie wasn't exactly happy, you know.”

“I know,” I say. “Still. You ever do a sleepover at her place?”

Eppie shakes her head. “No. Why?”

I smile. “Her suicides always ended with popcorn and a movie.”

Y
ou owe Tallulah an apology.”

Those are the first words Joey says to me when I climb into his car at the beach. The top is down so we can wave good-bye to Hank and Eppie out on the water. They'll stay out here until the party tomorrow, then come back again after the funeral until school starts. I envy the simplicity of it all. The feeling they both have that this is home. But life is not that easy for the rest of us.

We pull out into traffic on PCH and wend our way back to Pasadena. The cars are moving a little faster headed inland, but this is still going to take a while. We soak in the sun and the gasoline fumes, and I think about what Eppie said. Joey must really love me to sit in this crap both ways.

“Did you hear me?” he asks insistently.

But I don't give. “Tally owes the world an apology. She's a holier-than-thou colossal bitch.”

“She's your friend,” he reminds me.

“No. She's not. She's my classmate and my acquaintance.
You
are my friend.
Maggie
was my friend. Eppie is my friend. And Hank, and, hell, maybe even Lukey Loo, but not Tallulah.”

Joey's knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. “We've known each other for a long time. All of us.”

I sit back and put my bare feet on the dashboard. “Look at you, the peacemaker. Think about it, Joe. We all knew Maggie better than we know each other. She's gone now. ‘Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.'”

Joey laughs sardonically. “Really, throwing first-year Yeats at me instead of admitting you're being petty? Tally's talking about skipping the funeral because of you.”

“Oh?” I say, combing my fingers through my hair. “Who's being petty now?”

“Still you,” Joey says.

“Hey, ‘to thine own self be true.'”

My phone rings. I swipe it open. “Hello?”

“Jude, it's Dr. Bilanjian. How are you?”

The voice is female, neutral, calm, and oh-so-familiar.
It sends a jolt of adrenaline down my spine. “Dr. B,” I say. “Long time no chat.”

“Do you have a minute to talk?”

I look around at the traffic walling Joey's car in on four sides, the crowded beach to our right, the haze pressing down on us from the water. “I'm afraid not. I'm in the middle of something. What's up?”

Dr. B pauses for a long moment, lining up the words like golf balls on a practice range. Once she starts swinging, there'll be no need to stop. “Your mother called me. She told me she's worried about you and wanted to know if we could have a few sessions. Would you like that, Jude?”

Dr. Theresa Bilanjian is my psychiatrist. Not therapist, not counselor, my psych doctor. I am not on meds, nor am I in therapy anymore. But there was a time, right after we moved to Pasadena, when my mother thought a few months of talking to a professional would be a good idea. “To help you adjust,” she'd said.

I'd gone to Dr. B for most of my freshman and sophomore years. By then, I'd made friends—namely Maggie—and I hadn't slit my wrists, so I was allowed to have my Wednesday afternoons back.

“Well, if you decide to,” she says, plowing through my silence, “I have some time Wednesday afternoon. Why
don't you swing by the office? It sounds like we'll have some things to talk about.”

I hang there, mouth open, a thousand responses coming to mind, all of them negative.

“Okay,” I say. The path of least resistance. If I refuse, my mother won't leave me alone. Dr. B is less cloying than my mom. “See you then.”

“Who was that?” Joey asks when I hang up.

“Nothing. Friend of my mother's. Where were we?”

“Sitting in traffic, arguing,” he says. We sit in silence and crawl forward a few more yards. I shove the phone call to the back of my mind. Dr. B can wait.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Joey asks, changing the subject. Good boy. Even I can use a halftime every now and then.

“Luke's. He's got something I need to see.” Photos, I'm hoping. Scads of them.

But what would they tell me?

Maggie Kim was the sun in our universe. We all circled her. Never the other way around. And now that she's gone, we're shifting orbits. Colliding, like me and Tally, or drifting apart. It makes me wonder what Maggie saw in everybody else, these people she called her friends. Edina, Tallulah, Dane. What were they to her when they
mean so little to me? And who meant so much to Maggie that she would share her bed with him, but not his name with the rest of us?

Or maybe he meant so little. And that's why Maggie's dead.

• • •

By the time we get back to Pasadena, it's nearly three o'clock, and later still by the time we get to Luke's house. Luke lives south of my place, in Alhambra. Craftsman bungalows and stucco apartment buildings swap blocks with each other, leapfrogging toward the boundaries of crisscrossing freeways. Luke's parents have money from a dry-cleaning chain they started when Luke was still in diapers. It keeps him in camera equipment and photography lessons. Soon it'll pay for a college education and maybe a portrait studio of his own one day.

The house is a stucco ranch affair, newer than the bungalows across the street.

Luke's father opens the door. “May I help you?” He's polite and looks like a professor, with his rolled-up shirtsleeves and rimless glasses. He speaks with a careful Mandarin accent. I wonder if he knows his son is a Class-A stalker.

“Is Luke home?” I ask. “We've got a photo project we're working on. He said to come by and he'd show us
the contact sheet.” Luke takes photography classes every summer. It's as good a cover as any.

Joey blinks at me but says nothing. Mr. Liu calls over his shoulder in Chinese. The distant sound of dishes being washed by hand stops and a woman responds. It must have been a very late lunch.

“Fine,” a girl sighs in English. Amanda Liu, Luke's younger sister, appears in the doorway behind her father. He disappears into the house.

Amanda wipes her soapy hands on a kitchen towel. “Hey.” She knows us from school, a freshman who's learned our faces the way a tourist learns major streets in a new town. “Luke had a thing. He should be back soon, though.”

“Mind if we wait?” I ask. She hesitates, looks over her shoulder.

“How'd you like Shelstein's history class?” Joey says out of the blue. Amanda blushes and gives Joey a full metal smile. Her braces and her desire make me cringe.

“It was cool,” she says. “Especially the Rome stuff.”

“I remember that,” Joey says, smiling a smile I've never seen. A confident smile. He leans into the doorway, posing pompously. “And that is why Rome wasn't built in a day,” he says, mimicking Shelstein's gruff tones.

Amanda laughs and steps away from the door. We take the unspoken invitation and follow her inside. Chiming an explanation to her parents in Mandarin, she leads us back to Luke's room. The narrow bed is all but dwarfed by a desk with a giant computer monitor and a deep bookcase stacked high with photo albums and archival boxes.

“You guys want something to drink?” she asks, wiping her palms on her jeans.

“That'd be great,” Joey says. He manages to make it sound intimate.

Christ, if this girl had a tail, it'd be wagging.

“Water,” I reply.

She nods and scurries away. I drop down at the computer and start searching the photo files. Joey sidles up behind me. There's a stack of DVDs labeled for the past month on the desk, but none for the week Maggie died. It must still be on the hard drive somewhere.

Amanda comes back with two glasses.

“Oh,” she says when she sees me on the computer.

“No, it's okay,” I tell her. “Luke called my cell. He's running late and told me where to find the stuff. We'll just take a look and talk to him later.”

Joey steps up and takes a water glass from Amanda, closing his hand over hers. As if that was necessary. I let him handle it and go back to scanning the files.

Suddenly, there it is. I pull a flash drive out of my bag and download what I need—Thursday, Friday, Saturday's photos. I shut off the computer and turn around. Amanda is drinking my water and giggling at something Joey said. Jesus, he's fast. It must have something to do with lowerclassmen. They're not immune to him yet. His brown eyes and that damned smile.

“Done,” I say.

Amanda is reluctant to see us go, but she perks up when Joey says he'll look for her at school. Just a hello in the hallway would boost her street cred. If it led to an actual date with a senior, it would change the entire landscape of her social life. Joey just threw her a bone. Or maybe he's scratching an itch and he wants me to know it.

“Home, Jeeves,” I say when we're back in the car.

“Quite,” Joey says. “Quite.”

• • •

The living room is empty when we get back to my place, but I can hear the TV on in my mom's room. She doesn't say anything as we go by.

Joey follows me to my bedroom. I lock the door and flip on my laptop. Joey sits on the edge of the bed, drumming his fingers on his leg.

“You going to call Amanda?” I ask, plugging the flash
drive in and flicking through its contents. I see him shrug in the reflection on my screen.

“Just doing my job,” he says, and lies back on my bed, bent at the knees.

“And what's that?” The photos are loading. Jesus. Even Luke's thumbnails are saved in high res. I turn to look at Joey while I wait. He's staring at the dingy popcorn ceiling, hands folded behind his head like he's looking up at clouds.

“The usual. To serve and protect,” he says.

“That your motto?” I ask with a smirk.

He sits up on his elbows. “Every sidekick should have a motto. A code to live by.”

“Oh, so you're my sidekick now?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Close to accurate,” he says. “What else do you call someone who stands by your side and gets kicked?”

He studies me for a long moment. I don't look away. “You think you've been kicked?”

“Right in the head.” He lies back down. “Why else would I help you steal somebody's private property and flirt with his sister to do it?”

“For Maggie,” I say, turning back around.

The pictures are loaded. I set up a slideshow so I can see them fill the screen.

If he's got something else to say, I don't hear it. Maggie's smiling at me from the screen, that brilliant red-and-white smile turned deep, saturated into black and white and moody grays. She looks glamorous in these pictures, thanks to Luke's love of monochrome. She would have been pleased.

Taken from afar, there are blurs in the corners, rose leaves and tree trunks that tried to block the camera and failed. He must have moved around, looking for the best angle. Maggie in the foreground, the house behind her, the street. The taillights of an old sports car driving by. And then there's Maggie again, sitting by her pool, drink in hand, laughing on the phone. The time stamp reads
18:00:00
. Maggie was alive at six o'clock.

“Holy shit,” Joey breathes at my shoulder. “You weren't kidding.”

“Nope. Luke's been photo-stalking Maggie for almost a year.”

“Huh.” Joey sits down again, leaning forward to watch the show.

Maggie hangs up. Drinks. Smokes, never quite looking at the camera. She scratches the inside of her nose. These are candid. She doesn't know Luke is there.

But then something happens.

Maggie puts down her drink. She stretches. She looks straight at the camera.

The next instant, she's smiling. She disappears into the pool house and emerges in the slip, a matching robe over it. Not pool wear. She's dressed for seduction.

Behind me, Joey gasps. The pictures judder forward. Maggie is pointing at the camera. Still smiling, she reaches out a hand. Crooks her finger. She's inviting him in.

The slideshow stops.

Luke Fucking Liu.

I remember the roses on the kitchen table. The ones that came too early to be for a funeral. But they were for Maggie anyway.

“Shit,” I say. “Maggie popped his cherry. Would he kill her for that?”

Joey shakes his head, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Why do you keep saying that? Maggie died. She killed herself. She got drunk and high and she took a header into the pool. Even if it was an accident, even if she just slipped, there is no killer here. It's just Maggie's fault. She got stupid and she's dead. You never blame her for anything, Jude. Never. But now you have to. Anything else is just crazy.”

He stops his ranting and stares at me. “Listen, I know
you're hurting. I am too. I went with this because I figured you needed . . . something. But Luke Liu isn't a killer. There hasn't even been a crime! I can't do this with you. I'm done playing games.”

He stops again. Sighs. And then he leaves.

There's a tightrope you walk with some people. Too far to the left, and you lose them. Too far to the right, and they want more than you can give. Right now, the line is thrumming with tension. I've got to focus to keep my balance, and hope Joey can keep his.

I sit there for a few minutes, Maggie's photo beckoning me in. Then I lock my bedroom door again.

Tomorrow night at Blue House, I'll talk to Luke. And as for Joey, I know I've just kicked him again. But he's loyal. He'll be back.