“Are you going to be able to stay awake for the drive?” I ask Jake.
He holds up the coffee cup, jiggles it with a grin. “Isn’t that why they invented caffeine?”
* * *
The moshing experience combined with getting pounced on by a certain overeager Robot Suicide Squad band member has taken its toll on me; I try to stay awake for Jake’s benefit, but about an hour into the drive I nod off to the strains of some Nirvana jam. The closer we get to California, the more willing Jake is to play recent music. This means R.E.M., Soundgarden, the Pixies, even Courtney Love’s old band—a lot of grunge and punk and alternative. Jake says that’s because the only good music made during the nineties fits into those genres.
When he said that, Laney made an indignant noise from the back. “You’re ignoring rap,” she complained. “If you think you’re too indie or alternative or whatever to appreciate Tupac and KRS-One and Tribe Called Quest, then you can eat shit, because you’re missing out on something amazing.”
I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. I’m so not in the mood for more arguments. Sleep comes easy, dreamless and deep, until Jake rouses me a while later. The first thing I see is his hand on my thigh, shaking me awake. When he notices my open eyes, he quickly draws his hand back.
“Hey,” he says softly as I push myself up. “We’re in California.”
My heart speeds up. I push myself straight in the seat and catch the spreading smile on Jake’s face as he senses my growing excitement. Outside in the night, things look the same, mostly. The same endless stretch of highway. Still, knowing that we’ve made it, finally, makes me want to sit up and drink in everything.
“California?” Laney’s leaning forward from the back, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “We’re here?”
Jake looks sheepish. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have woken you up. I know it’s not the most exciting thing ever.”
“No,” I say quickly, “I’m glad you did.” And I am. I want to remember this.
“Oh, I know what would make this perfect!” Laney exclaims. She unbuckles her belt and clambers over the seat, rummages around in the back and returns a minute later with June’s urn in her arms. “She should be here for this,” she tells me.
I know the urn isn’t June. I know that, but I still feel myself choking up a little.
We did it. We’re actually here.
The three of us sit and appreciate the significance of the moment for a while. And then Laney says, “I still can’t believe you punched a guy in the face.”
She giggles, and after a second Jake laughs, and I can’t help but laugh, too. It is sort of hilarious in retrospect. Bizarre, and surreal, but hilarious.
“What’s even funnier is that Jake here was so quick to defend our honor,” I tease, grabbing his chin with my hand.
“Our hero,” Laney sings as she presses her cheek to his.
I pick up my camera from between our seats and, without warning, take his picture. He makes a face as the flash goes off.
“I hate it when you do that,” he says.
“I know, but we need a portrait to commemorate your heroism.” I wave the emitted photo back and forth lightly before placing it in the glove compartment with the rest. I listen to the music coming out of the speakers, the low, melancholy singer warbling about the California stars. “Who is this?”
“Wilco,” he answers. “Have I told you about them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Ah, now see, that must be remedied. Would you ladies care for some background information?”
Laney snorts. “Like we could stop you if we tried!”
“True.”
He grins, and I return his with one of my own, settle into my seat and close my eyes. In front of us the road to California stretches out, and above us the California stars shine, and next to me Jake begins his latest lecture.
chapter thirteen
When we stop at the seaside motel in Huntington Beach, Laney and I get our own room. Jake says it’s because he’s going to lose it if he doesn’t get some alone time—and then Laney is all, ohhh, alone time, I know what that means, hope you have some extra socks, and Jake goes to the room adjacent to ours and shuts the door firmly, makes a big show of turning the lock.
I’m happy to have an entire bed to myself, even if the mattress is old and stiff and smells weird. It’s more space than I’ve had in a while, and I want to take up all of it. I reach my arms out so they’re braced against the headboard, stretch my legs until my toes curl, and fall asleep to the ancient fan groaning in the corner.
I wake to the sound of muffled sobbing. When my eyes open, my first thought is that it’s my mom. Except it can’t be her, because she’s two thousand miles away from here. I sit up and notice there’s a light on in the bathroom. And then I notice Laney’s bed is empty.
“Laney?” I pull the sheets off my legs, pad over to the bathroom door and rap my knuckles on the wood. “Laney, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
I try the knob, but it doesn’t budge. Locked. Shit. I knock a few more times, rattle the knob in vain. She doesn’t answer, but I can still hear her crying. I’m getting really, really worried. Panicked. I need her to say something, to tell me she’s okay. All I can think of is June and the garage. My chest tightens. I’m having a panic attack. Oh, God.
Jake. Jake will know what to do.
I run out of our motel room in nothing but my long T-shirt and bare feet and pound on his door as hard as I can with both fists. I don’t stop pounding until Jake opens it and squints at me.
“What’s up?” he asks around a yawn. I hear faint strains of music behind him from the portable CD player he must have set up somewhere.
“Something’s wrong with Laney.” My heart is racing about a million beats per second, but I’m already feeling a little calmer, having him here in front of me.
He follows me into our room and to the bathroom door. He’s smart enough not to waste time trying to coax her out—if she won’t come out for me, she won’t come out for anyone.
He turns to me. “I can probably jimmy this open.”
“You know how to pick locks?” I ask. Before he can answer I say, “Wait, never mind. Of course you know how to pick locks.”
“Do you have a bobby pin?”
“Yes, right here in my pocket along with this stick of gum, a shoelace and a number two pencil. Will that be enough for you, MacGyver?”
“What about a credit card?”
“What do you think? I’m sixteen!” I try to think. “Wait. Hang on.” I rifle through my bag for my wallet. “My library card. Will that work?”
Jake slides the card through the crack between the door and frame. He leans his weight against the hard wood, bending and angling the piece of plastic, jiggling the knob until a soft click sounds. As soon as the door gives, I push past him and into the bathroom.
Laney sits on the floor with her back to the tub, legs drawn to her chest. She turns her tearstained face away from me, body twisting as one hand grabs blindly at the shower curtain. I drop to my knees in front of her, try to make her look at me. The points of her shoulders shake under my hands.
“Laney, stop. Stop for a second. What is going on? What’s wrong?”
She closes her eyes as fat tears squeeze out, one after the other, and then holds up one hand. I glance down to see her trembling fingers curled around something that looks like a thermometer.
“What—?” I don’t understand. I twist around, searching for Jake. He stands next to the sink, a small cardboard box in his hands.
And then I realize. Not a thermometer.
A pregnancy test.
“Laney…” I turn back to her, swallowing hard, and say, “Are you. Laney, are you pregnant?”
She opens her eyes and nods.
My heart turns to stone in my chest. It does not compute—Laney, my best friend, pregnant. Pregnant by that scumbag Kyle, who apparently got her drunk and took advantage of
her while she was three sheets to the wind. For a few seconds I’m too shocked to move, absorbing this information. But when Laney’s face crumples again, I put my arms around her, pull her close.
“What am I going to do?” Her body-racking sobs wane into a steady stream of silent tears. “I can’t have a baby. What would I—How would I—” She stops, too overwhelmed to consider the possibility.
“It’s okay,” I soothe. “We’ll figure something out.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t have a baby,” she cries. “I can’t. I can’t.”
I hold her tight against me. She says I can’t again and again into my shoulder, until her voice fades and she just breathes raggedly, in and out. It’s not like it’s rare for Laney to cry—she cries a lot, compared to me—but I haven’t seen her fall apart like this. Ever. But she’s never had a reason before.
“Laney, if you want to…” I hesitate. “If you want to…end it—”
“You mean, have an abortion.”
“Yes,” I say. “If you want to have an abortion, we’ll figure it out. And—and if you don’t, we can figure that out, too. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do it.”
She goes quiet for a long while. “I—I don’t know.”
“Okay.” I gently smooth the hair off her forehead, and keep stroking it. Laney likes to be touched, and I’m not a touchy-feely person, but I’d do anything for her. Anything to make it better. “It’s okay,” I say again. “You don’t have to make up your mind right now.”
She cringes. “Even if I decided to—you know.” Her voice gets all wobbly, mouth bending like she’s on the verge of tears. “How would I pay for it? It’s not like I can hit up my dad and ask to put it on his Visa. Are you kidding? He’ll disown me if he finds out! And my mom—Oh, God.”
“Don’t worry about the cost. I can get you the money.”
I’d almost forgotten Jake was in the room. He steps forward, face serious and drawn.
Laney glares. “Oh, that’s rich. Why would you do that? I’m just a slut, right? I bet you think I should’ve kept my legs closed and none of this would’ve happened.”
I could kill Jake for what he said earlier. Laney has problems, I know that better than anyone, but it wasn’t his place to say something like that. It’s not anyone’s place. And now she’s going to think this is her fault, and it so is not. There’s no excuse for what that Kyle guy did.
On second thought, it’s him that I want to kill for hurting my best friend.
Jake looks chagrined. Good. He should.
“I don’t have any excuse for what I said before,” he says. He’s looking Laney right in the eye. “It was wrong. I know that. Look, I’m not telling you to do one thing or the other. But whatever you decide, don’t let it be because you don’t think you have a choice.”
I thought after all of the driving and all of the drama that I would lapse into a coma the second my head hit the pillow. Things don’t quite work out that way. While Laney crashes hard, I rise with the sun. As soon as I open my eyes I’m completely awake, staring at the ceiling. It’s a dingy white and there’s a mysterious rust-brown stain, possibly a handprint. I close my eyes and count backward from one hundred. When that doesn’t work, I count again. No luck.
So I decide to run.
June was always the athletic one. She spent three years on the track team—it wasn’t her best sport, but it was the one she loved most. She used to tell me that running cleared her head.
Well, my head could use some clearing. Everything is so complicated. The mess with Laney. How I feel about Jake. How I feel about my sister. I want someone to make things black-and-white. Someone to tell me, These are the people worth caring about, who won’t hurt you or let you down. These are the people who will put you through the wringer and abandon you in the worst ways. When it really counts.
The beach is close—down some stairs, around a corner and boom. There it is. The ocean. I’ve never seen the Pacific before, and now it is spread out all in front of me, an endless wall of blue. Less blue than I’d imagined. I’d envisioned that picturesque jewel-turquoise from June’s postcard. Waves cap white and roar into the beach, one stacking on top of the next. I hike over the sand to the shoreline, stopping just short of where the tide ripples in, and jump back when it splashes over my toes. Only a few people are out here, some early-morning surfers braving the cool temperatures and paddling out into the water, stomach-down on their boards.
I turn and run as fast as I can. Seagulls caw and fly off in different directions when I cut straight through their cluster. I run, my shoes sinking into the spongy sand with each step, run until my lungs burn and my legs ache. I don’t pace myself, I just run and run and June is right, she is so right, I’m not thinking, not about anything, it’s just me and my heartbeat in my ears and the sound of the ocean and the sky above it.
I run until I feel like I’m going to pass out, which doesn’t take very long, since I have next to zero stamina. I know you’re supposed to walk it off, to keep your muscles from cramping and locking up, but my legs wobble and buckle beneath me, so I collapse in a heap on the sand and look out over the waves. For a few seconds I think I feel a crying jag coming on, but it dies somewhere in my throat, and then I think I might throw up, but I don’t.
June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying this kind of pain. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go out there, spread her ashes and let her go.
I want to stop running away from everything.
I want to find something to run toward.
It’s a long time before I head back to the motel. The wind whips my ponytail off the back of my sweaty neck, the air heavy with the scent of salt and morning. Laney is up by the time I return to the room, sitting on the bed and drinking from a foam cup as an infomercial plays on the television.
“I really want a BeDazzler,” she says.
I glance at the studded pair of jeans on the screen. “I’ll remember that for your birthday.”
“I’m holding you to that,” she replies. She looks me up and down. “So where were you?”
“Took a walk,” I answer evasively on my way to the bathroom. I shut the door and sit on the closed toilet lid for a while with my head in my hands, trying not to feel so shaky, then come back with a towel and eye the coffeepot on the dresser. “I’m surprised you’re up,” I say. “And you made coffee? Very ambitious.”
She shrugs. “You know what they say. Desperate times, and all that.”
We watch infomercials for a while, since every other channel comes in static snow. Laney keeps making cracks in a voice too loud and overly enthusiastic; she wants to pretend everything is normal. I don’t have the heart to do anything but play along. We’ll have to talk about the hard stuff eventually, but for now, it can wait.
Around eleven, I pour a cup of coffee, grab a handful of sugar packets and knock on Jake’s door. No answer. I assume he’s still asleep. With all of that driving, I hardly blame him. But as I start to walk away, the door creaks open, so I turn back. And nearly drop the coffee.
“God, Jake!” I shield my eyes with one hand. “Put on some pants, would you?”
“Cut it with the histrionics, Scott. It’s not like I’m naked.” He pauses and adds, “You should be so lucky.”
Jesus, isn’t it a little early in the morning for suggestive comments?
It’s only after he’s taken the coffee cup out of my hand that I dare to venture another look. Jake lounges against the doorway with an amused expression. His cheeks are smooth—he must’ve shaved—and there’s a white towel wrapped dangerously low on his narrow hips, revealing the defined V of his pelvic bone.
It’s definitely too early to be seeing all of that.
I try, and fail, not to stare. “You are so gross,” I tell him. Not very convincingly. r />
“Yeah, and you love every second of it,” he says, shaking out his shower-wet hair and spraying me with tiny droplets. I jump back with a surprised squeak. “Besides, you’re one to talk. At least I’m not parading around in a sports bra like you.”
“I would pay good money to see that, though.”
I turn my back until I hear the rustle of denim as he steps into his jeans, the sound of him doing up his zipper, and when I look again, he’s in the middle of fastening his belt.
“What’s on the agenda today?” I ask.
“There isn’t one. That’s kind of the point.”
He rakes a comb through his hair until it lies flat against his head. It’s funny seeing it like that, rather than all disheveled and messy. For the first time I notice his ears—they’re nice, close to his head and not too big or too small.
Only I would notice a guy’s ears when he’s half-naked. There’s something seriously wrong with me.
“I thought you’d still be sleeping,” I say, not looking at his ears. Or his chest. The floor. That’s a good, safe place to keep my eyes. “All of that driving—how are you even able to function?”
“A divine combination of caffeine and sheer force of will,” he explains. He takes the coffee cup off the nightstand and sips from it. “Where’d you get this? It tastes like shit.”
“Laney made it.”
“Ah,” he says, and drinks some more. “Why don’t you guys go hang out at the beach? I’ll go pick up some breakfast. Donuts. Donuts sound good?”
I borrow one of Laney’s swimsuits, and we stretch out on our towels near the shore, her working on her tan while I read Kurt Vonnegut. When Jake returns, he tosses a greasy white paper bag onto the ground and plops down beside me with little fanfare.
In full daylight the water is a brighter blue, and more surfers have joined the early-morning crowd, riding in the tumbling waves. With the sun out like this, it looks more like June’s postcard. Laney sleeps on her stomach, soaking up the rays—which seems unnecessary. Summer has hardly started and already she has a perfect tan, dark and even. I always wanted skin like that. Mine only burns a fierce red and peels before fading to its natural white state.